Hold These L’s: Louisville and Lille Meta Analysis

With Lille Regionals finishing up, we have now seen quite a developed metagame in the Stellar Crown format with several tournaments already having taken place. Going forward, the Latin America International Championships will also use the Stellar Crown format, so this will probably end up being the most played format this season. Not until after LAIC will Surging Sparks be legal, though there are lots of interesting cards in that set that I will write about in the near future. Today, however, I will take a look at the two most recent Regionals and analyze the interesting meta developments. This will help us chart a course forward and make sense of all the data we have available.

At the previous week’s Louisville Regional, my Raging Bolt ex list actually won the tournament, although unfortunately not in my hands. I hit some rough matchups and barely whiffed Day 2, but that’s neither here nor there. More interestingly, Lost Zone box took second place out of nowhere after completely disappearing off the face of the earth. Some young top players decided to try their luck at avoiding Regidrago VSTAR by bringing Lost Zone box, and Worlds quarter-finalist Michael Davidson was able to do so, bringing the deck all the way to the finals. The rest of Top 8 was varied, though notably with two Lugia VSTAR decks present. There was also a clean top eight cut at that tournament, so there was no need to play an asymmetrical top cut. I also want to point out that for each of the three Regionals I’ve attended, I wrote an article here about my deck right beforehand. This includes the deck that won Louisville and the Terapagos ex deck I brought to the win-and-in for cut in Dortmund. In case you’re ever at a loss for a deck to play, I’ll usually be spilling my thoughts before each major tournament.

At the more recent Lille Regionals, it was the Regidrago VSTAR show all the way. This deck completely dominated at the top, winning the tournament and taking four spots in the top 9 asymmetrical top cut. Dragapult ex managed to make the finals, with Raging Bolt ex, Snorlax, and two Lugia VSTAR rounding things out in top cut. Lugia VSTAR has been one of the most consistent performers in this format thus far due to its impeccable matchup spread. I think Regidrago VSTAR is an alright deck, and I attribute its dominance in Lille to the fact that a lot of the best players at this tournament decided to play it. Now let’s talk about the individual decks going forward.

Lugia VSTAR

While Lugia VSTAR hasn’t had any big wins, it has been the most consistent and dominant deck across this entire format. Lugia VSTAR has made top cut at every tournament since Stellar Crown dropped, including two cuts at Louisville and Lille each. It also had two more Top 16 spots at both tournaments! Lugia VSTAR has been able to put up these results despite somewhat middling popularity. This is because Lugia VSTAR’s matchup spread in the current meta is incredible. Lugia VSTAR has a bad reputation as a somewhat inconsistent deck where a lot of things can go wrong. While this may be true, it has such an advantage in any game where it’s able to set up simply because most opposing decks aren’t able to deal with it.

If you’re a Lugia VSTAR player, your biggest fear is Lightning-type decks, however, even Miraidon ex is a winnable matchup, with Iron Thorns ex being the only auto-loss. If you can avoid running into Iron Thorns ex, you are likely to have a solid tournament run with Lugia VSTAR. The kicker here is that these Lightning-types are quite unpopular in the current meta, represented by extremely low meta shares. This is because those decks are pretty bad, especially into the wider field; although the Lightning decks are great against Lugia VSTAR, this meta is varied enough that the Lugia VSTAR matchup alone isn’t enough. In particular, they struggle greatly against the most popular deck: Raging Bolt ex . This all adds up to create the perfect conditions for Lugia VSTAR, hence why it has had such great success.

One interesting inflection point with Lugia VSTAR is the counts of Cinccino . Rahul Reddy’s successful list plays a thin 1-1 line, but despite his success, most players play a thicker line. 2-2 is most common, but I’ve also seen 1-2. Finally, a list playing 3-3 actually just made Top 8 at Lille. The 1-2 line is objectively terrible if you ask me — Lugia VSTAR can win games without Cinccino, and even the threat of it is sometimes strong enough, so I think a 1-1 line is fine. A 2-2 line is also decent as you can chain Cinccino in certain matchups, or threaten another one if Minccino gets sniped down. I don’t think a 1-2 line makes any sense, as you are almost never summoning one with Lugia’s VSTAR power. 3-3 seems like a bit much, especially in this format with Dusknoir and Regidrago VSTAR, as they can easily get sniped down. I wouldn’t want to rely on it too much, and the deck is tight on space.

Another noteworthy meta trend is decks completely neglecting to include Manaphy. It’s unclear if this trend will continue, but it exposes some glaring vulnerabilities to Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex, which Lugia VSTAR can easily make use of. A lot of Lugia VSTAR lists don’t play the Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex, but I think it’s pretty good right now. If people start to fear and respect decks like Regidrago VSTAR and Lost Box more after their recent successes, however, it’s possible that Manaphy makes its way back into lists.

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!