Exterminating the Rats From Lugia – An All-Basic Approach!

Hey PokeBeach readers, I hope your summer has been going well and that you have had the chance to play lots of Pokemon! I have spent a lot of my summer grinding games in the Shrouded Fable format and have gotten a pretty good idea of where each deck sits in the meta. As I am writing this I am doing my final preparations for the World Championships. It feels like every deck I have tried has shown immense potential, but is held back by a couple of bad matchups. I have come to the conclusion that predicting a metagame is of the utmost importance in this metagame.

Regidrago VSTAR has shown itself to be the deck the metagame is initially centralizing around. Any deck that can’t keep up with Regidrago is probably one you don’t want to be playing. With Regidrago commanding so much attention, it does allow for other decks to fly a bit under the radar. We have seen decks like Raging Bolt ex  and Miraidon ex become much more popular in online tournaments mainly because of their positive matchup into Regidrago. Moreover, if players want to devote space in their decks to beating Regidrago then they most likely have to forego techs for other matchups.

One deck that I think benefits greatly from having less of a spotlight on it is Lugia VSTAR. Heading in to NAIC, Lugia had a ton of hype and that led to cards like Enhanced Hammer and Temple of Sinnoh finding their way in to many players’ lists. The format was not only ready for Lugia, but heavily respected it as well. With Lugia having a fairly pedestrian performance at NAIC and new decks like Regidrago and Gardevoir ex taking up meta share, players have shifted their focus away from the deck. With less Special Energy hate being found in players’ lists, Lugia can execute its strategy much more easily.

In addition to less Lugia hate, the deck also boasts a positive Regidrago VSTAR matchup, meaning you will be happy to sit across from the most popular deck at most tournaments you attend! The deck still struggles with consistency, but I have tried to address that in my approach to building the deck. If you play the deck, you have to accept that sometimes you just aren’t going to get two Archeops on turn two, but the games that you do feel so incredibly powerful!

Today I wanted to go over my take on Lugia. I have a bit of an unconventional list that doesn’t run Cinccino, but I’ll explain why I think it is ready to take advantage of my expected Shrouded Fable metagame!

Do we Need Cinccino?

Since the release of Cinccino   in Temporal Forces, the card has been in 90% of Lugia decks. The card is obviously incredibly powerful, offering the deck the ability to pretty much Knock Out any Pokemon in the format with a one-Prize Pokemon. The flipside, however, is that an already inconsistent deck needs to devote significant deck space to an evolution Pokemon. There are multiple strong Basic Pokemon such as Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex and Wyrdeer V that can help take out large HP threats, but neither of them are as powerful as a Cinccino. The deck can also utilize Legacy Energy to turn one of your two-Prize Pokemon into a one-Prize Pokemon, almost making up for the fact that the deck no longer plays the Cinccino.  In a metagame centralized around Basic Pokemon ex and Pokemon V, Bloodmoon Ursaluna, Wyrdeer, and Lugia VSTAR should be enough to trade with your opponent’s Pokemon, but in metagames with beefy evolution Pokemon such as Charizard ex and Dragapult ex then Cinccino is sorely missed.

Heading in to the Shrouded Fable format, Charizard ex decks saw significant hype since the deck could slot in the Dusknoir line, but the deck has been slowly declining in play, mainly due to the poor Regidrago matchup. Similar to Charizard, Dragapult ex decks have been a bit gatekept from the format due to Regidrago. Those are two matchups where Cinccino would be very useful, but if they make up a small fraction of the meta then it might make sense to devote more focus to consistency and other matchups. On paper, Cinccino is also strong against Regidrago VSTAR since Regidrago has 280 HP, but the problem is Minccino  is a liability on your Bench. If you go second, your opponent can just use Phantom Dive plus a Hawlucha ping to eliminate your rat, or use Kyurem if you decide to bench multiple. By doing this, not only does your opponent take Prize cards, but they also eliminate your Pokemon capable of taking out an undamaged Regidrago VSTAR. When going first it is fine to bench Minccino, but the fact that half the time you need to avoid benching Minccino is cause for concern.

Here is my list I’ve been running!

This concludes the public portion of this article.

If you'd like to continue reading, consider purchasing a PokeBeach premium membership! If you're not completely satisfied with your membership, you can request a full refund within 30 days.

Each week we post high-quality content from some of the game's top players. Our article program isn't a corporate operation, advertising front, or for-profit business. We set our prices so that we can pay the game's top players to write the best content for our subscribers. Each article topic is carefully selected, goes through multiple drafts, and is touched up by our editors. We take great pride in our program!