An Excited Heart — The Missing Piece for ArcTina
Hello everybody! This is Gabriel Semedo again, and this time, I’m going to talk about a very different Arceus VSTAR / Giratina VSTAR list. This was an original idea by Dalton Acchetta and myself, which we developed together over several days in order to find the most perfect list possible.
The new Twilight Masquerade set is out, though there hasn’t even been time to absorb everything from the previous format yet. Until a few weeks ago, I was with Dalton developing a new list that was capable of beating Charizard ex and Chien-Pao ex, but now, with the new set, it seems that Charizard ex has disappeared and Chien-Pao has returned to Tier 2. (At least, that’s what recent results from Japan show.)
The results of tournaments in Japan always serve as a reference for us in the west, but many such results are not replicated here. Because of this, you should not trust them completely — only use the information as a reference to start your own tests and training. You might think that some deck “died” or “came back” just because of the results in Japan, but that’s not exactly how things work.
In today’s article, I want to analyze the deck Dalton Acchetta used to reach the finals at Santiago Regionals, because I believe that our new list is very strong, and even capable of playing competitively in this new format with Dragapult ex and Raging Bolt ex .
Four Arceus V, Four Arceus VSTAR
Arceus VSTAR is once again one of the strongest Pokémon in the format. It alone can trade almost on an equal footing against the best decks in the format, including Charizard ex, Chien-Pao, Lost Box, Future Iron Hands ex, and Ancient Box. Every problem that Arceus VSTAR can’t solve, the other Pokémon in the deck can fix in one way or another.
One thing worth highlighting is that in this format, I believe it is necessary to use a full 4-4 Arceus VSTAR, rather than the classic 4-3 line that has typically been used since the 2022 World Championships. The reason to use the fourth copy of Arceus VSTAR is that there are matchups where you want to put up to three Arceus VSTAR on the field at the same time. Matchups like Ancient Box make it essential that you change Pokémon every time one takes damage. Additionally, playing four Arceus VSTAR considerably increases the chance of evolving into it on the second turn.
One Giratina V, One Giratina VSTAR
When Dalton Acchetta sent me the first version of this list, it didn’t have any other Pokémon V besides Arceus itself. When I started testing the list, though, I felt that there was something missing. At first I thought about Regigigas VSTAR, but after a while we started considering 1-1 Giratina VSTAR and two Psychic Energy. Those who see it from the outside might think that the list was based on a common ArcTina list, but in fact the list started as a straight Arceus / Radiant Charizard list, and evolved to include Giratina VSTAR from there.
Giratina VSTAR needs no explanation. It has a lot of synergy with Arceus VSTAR and brings another high-damage attacker option to the deck. Even though Radiant Charizard does a similar job, it is still important to maintain a Giratina line since it’s so easy to consistently use its attacks. It’s not just Giratina VSTAR that’s important, either — Giratina V has almost as important a role, too, as its attack allows it to Knock Out Mimikyu much more easily than having to put five Energy on your Radiant Charizard.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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