Flying to the Top — How I Got 2nd Place at Baltimore Regionals and Lugia in Stellar Crown!

Hey PokeBeach readers! Hopefully your 2024-25 Pokemon season is off to a great start and you have been having fun with Stellar Crown. We had our first Regionals of the season in Baltimore, and I actually managed to take second place with Lugia VSTAR! I think many people were surprised at the results of the tournament, especially with Henry Chao’s Gardevoir ex deck that took me down in the finals. It just goes to show that even when a format looks “solved” there is lots of room for innovation. Not only did Henry surprise everyone with Gardevoir, but a group of Canadian players took the event by storm with a deck focusing on Noivern ex and Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex, taking advantage of many decks’ inability to make it through these wall Pokemon. If there is a lesson to take away from Baltimore, it is that the stagnant/solved formats are the ones where there is often the most room for you to innovate. When a metagame is easy to predict then it is much easier for you to counter it or to just pick a deck that will be solid into a lot of popular matchups!

I thought today I would break down how I achieved my big finish, and teach you a few tricks about how I metagamed for Baltimore! After that I want to go over Lugia in the Stellar Crown format since I think it will continue to be a very strong deck!

My Baltimore Run and Metagaming

Heading into Baltimore there were only two decks I was really considering, Regidrago VSTAR and Lugia. On my flight to the tournament I was leaning towards Regidrago since on paper it was the best deck in the format. It doesn’t have any truly unwinnable matchups, and has lots of room for skill expression. In a 2300 person tournament, your average opponent normally won’t be a Worlds caliber player so playing the best deck with lots of options to outplay my opponents was appealing. However, it felt like most of matchups for Regidrago would have had me at a slight disadvantage on paper. I also predicted aggressive decks such as Roaring Moon ex, Raging Bolt ex , and Miraidon ex to be somewhat popular. All three of those matchups are an uphill battle and rely on your opponent missing a two-Prize Pokemon Knock Out at some point of the game. No matter how well I play, there is a chance my opponent just hits what they need and I wouldn’t have a chance to win. Besides the known bad matchups, Regidrago is the most popular deck in the format with the biggest target on its back. Anyone who is trying to cook for this tournament would surely have techs for Regidrago in mind. All of this kind of turned me away from Regidrago. I knew the deck was still a great play for the tournament, as shown by two Regidrago players making top cut, but it just wasn’t the right play for me.

That brings me to Lugia. I think Lugia is a deck that always ebbs and flows in the metagame. The deck is always extremely powerful,  but needs the right set of circumstances for it to succeed. Lugia was one of the decks that underperformed at the World Championships relative to its play rate and expectations going into the event. In my opinion, the main reason for this was how many players had Temple of Sinnoh or Enhanced Hammer in their decks. These cards are Lugia’s biggest enemy and your opponent rocking one of these cards can significantly flip matchups. However, Temple of Sinnoh / Enhanced Hammer are very targeted tech cards that only see use against Lugia normally. In a metagame where Lugia isn’t super popular, it doesn’t make much sense to include a tech for it. A lot of deck lists are super tight and players want each deck space to be as impactful as possible. I predicted that there would be a large decrease in Special Energy hating cards. If a majority of the player base was predicting a low Lugia play rate, then it is only logical that there would be a decrease in techs for Lugia. I also was paying close attention to deck lists from online tournaments and top players. It seemed my prediction had some weight behind it as I was consistently seeing lists without Temple of Sinnoh and Enhanced Hammer.

The next thing that was appealing about Lugia was its matchup spread. The only decks that I would be scared to play against were the Lightning-type Pokemon decks, Miraidon ex and Iron Thorns ex. Both these decks saw success at the World Championships so it could look scary to have them as bad matchups, but I didn’t expect either of them to see large amounts of play. In the case for Iron Thorns, I think the linearity and perceived lack of fun would turn players off from the deck. For Worlds, players will play whatever deck gives them the best chance of winning the tournament, but at something like a Regionals most players want to have fun, and Iron Thorns doesn’t really scratch that itch for most players.

When looking at Miraidon, I just didn’t think the deck was a good play for Baltimore. Charizard ex and Ancient Box were receiving large amounts of hype, and both are poor matchups for Miraidon. An increase in Raging Bolt and Roaring Moon decks, and a perceived decrease in Lugia decks also did not make Miraidon an appealing deck. I figured many players would reach the conclusion I did and sleeve up one of the other aggressive decks instead. If people did play Miraidon, I expected them to have trouble reaching the top tables. So I knew if I could get off to a good start Miraidon would probably be far away in the rear view mirror!

When picking a deck for a tournament I see a lot of players fall into the trap of trying to beat everything instead of just making a consistent list and focusing on your good matchups. I fully accepted that if I sat across from Iron Thorns or Miraidon that I was probably in for a rough round. Luckily my gamble paid off and I was able to completely avoid both these decks during my tournament run!

Finally, I always preach to play what you know. Lugia VSTAR is one of my most played decks the past few seasons and I was confident I could pilot the deck at a high level. I would probably be more experienced with my deck than 99% of opponents I could sit across from.

With all of these factors in mind I decided to lock in Lugia for my tournament run. The next thing I had to figure out was my deck list.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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