A Mean Look at Arceus VSTAR/Umbreon VMAX
Hey everyone! This is Charlie and I’m super excited to be back with another article. I’ve been working pretty hard on my testing lately, but unfortunately haven’t come up with anything super fun that’s also good into this meta.
I’ve been playing Gardevoir ex decks throughout some events in this new format, which got me enough locals finishes to polish off my invite, but with that done, I’d love to shift my focus to a more interesting deck at the moment: Arceus VSTAR / Umbreon VMAX. I’ve played against this deck a few times throughout my adventures at locals and also played against it a whopping 3 times during my Hartford run, and this deck has never failed to impress. It’s so simple, yet has so many different ways to threaten your opponent’s game plan. Furthermore, it doesn’t struggle much with time, which will be a huge asset heading into this new format where the slowest decks get even slower.
The is the list I played to 34th place in the main event and Ian Robb took all the way to the finals.
With that said, let’s get right into the list:
Arceus VSTAR/Umbreon VMAX Deck List
Deck List Breakdown
This list has a few interesting choices that I’m excited to talk about, so without further ado, let me get into why I made the card choices I did here and some other cards I’m considering:
Four Arceus V, Three Arceus VSTAR
The four-three Arceus line has been a staple in Arceus VSTAR variants since the card was released last year, and it fits perfectly in here as well. Arceus V is a great starter and you always want it on your board turn 1 with an Energy attached to it, so maxing out this count makes sense. In most games, you only ever expect to use two Arceus VSTAR at max, so playing three copies has always been a great number if this is your expectation.
Last year at NAIC, I played a deck with a four-two line, which I partially regret due to struggling to find Arceus VSTAR at important times. In this format, consistency is king, so the full four-three line makes sense.
Two Duraludon V, Two Duraludon VMAX
People seem to be forgetting that Lugia VSTAR won the last NA Regional, and from my testing, I can most certainly say this deck is still strong, however, they still fail to have a great answer to Duraludon VMAX, so we continue to play the card in our Arceus VSTAR decks and take a highly favorable matchup. If you can KO the Single Strike Urshifu V before the VMAX comes out and don’t have too many Prize cards worth of Pokemon on your board, you instantly win, which I think is a common enough occurrence to keep Duraludon VMAX in here. Also, Duraludon VMAX is a perfectly good attacker into decks like Lost Box and conveniently OHKOs Chien-Pao ex at 220 HP, so it still feels like a good fit in this deck.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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