Mastering Regidrago — A Truly Broken Deck
Although Regidrago VSTAR didn’t make the finals at Worlds, it would still be fair to say that the deck dominated the tournament. Following the release of Shrouded Fable just in time for the World Championships, Regidrago went from an extremely fringe deck, making Top 16 at NAIC, to the best deck in the format. And it wasn’t close. Everyone knew Regidrago would be the most played deck at Worlds, and it converted strongly into four Top 8 spots. Worlds is full of all the best players, and even most of the elite among them decided to play Regidrago.
Regidrago has everything you want in a Pokemon deck: power, versatility, skill expression, and broken combos. Some of the things Regidrago can do are too broken, I’d argue. Regidrago isn’t the fastest deck in the game, as it rarely attacks on turn one. It can often attack on turn two, and almost always by turn three. Depending on what the opponent is doing, attacking on turn three is usually good enough to still win. If Regidrago lacks anything at all, it’s speed, but it more than makes up for that in other ways.
As it happens, I have tested an excessive amount of Regidrago, as it is the number-one deck with a target on its back. Because of this, every deck I want to try out has to be pitted against Regidrago first. Regidrago is the gatekeeper of the Shrouded Fable format. If your deck can’t beat Regidrago, pack it up. Maybe next format. After all of my games with and against the deck, it’s apparent that Regidrago has a lot more depth than it first appears to. Due to how versatile the deck is, there are always some things to figure out in every game, and room to outplay your opponent. I believe this is evinced by the Worlds results. The four Regidrago representatives in Top 8 are all players I consider to be highly skilled, while the more average Regidrago players were left in the dust. Don’t forget, it was the most played deck at Worlds, so there were tons of them.
In this article I will discuss Regidrago’s strategies and matchups. Hopefully this will help you learn a little more about the best deck in the format. Even if you’re not playing it yourself, you need to know what to watch out for. It is almost inevitable that you will face Regidrago in any Shrouded Fable tournament.
List Options
PokéStop removed for a copy of Superior Energy Retrieval. Playing without Superior Energy Retrieval is definitely possible, especially with the two copies of Super Rod, but it requires being more careful with your Energy. Since Regidrago often has some leftover copies of search cards like Nest Ball and Earthen Vessel near the end of the game, this makes Super Rod’s versatility more enticing as a deckbuilding choice. I can’t say for sure which 60 is best, but the list seems to have been mostly solved. At least, that’s what I thought before Worlds. Although the variations between Top 8 lists aren’t major, they are more than I would have expected, with each list having some sort of trademark attribute. Going forward with this article, I’ll be using the above standard list as a reference for Regidrago, but I still want to mention the other options shown by the Worlds top finishers.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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