Reflecting on EUIC and Moving Towards Rotation

Hello PokeBeach readers! Isaiah here, and I am happy to be writing another article for you all! Last time, I talked about Regidrago VSTAR, one of my favorite decks from the last few months, and how I thought it could still succeed in a world dominated by Budew. The Europe International Championships happened not long after I wrote that article, and there was some good news and some bad news for Regidrago VSTAR fans.

The good news was that Regidrago VSTAR had a few strong finishes, with two in the Top 32. While it was only two people, a couple of finishes among over 3,000 players does show some promise for the deck in the future. However, the bad news is that the third-highest-placing Regidrago VSTAR player finished 203rd, a truly unbelievable drop off. In fact, that might be the biggest gap I have ever seen between two finishes of a deck that has ever been considered Tier 1.

This level of a drop-off certainly sends mixed signals. On one hand, multiple copies of a deck making deep runs clearly indicates that the deck has potential, and a lot of it. This would seem to imply that the Regidrago VSTAR decks that finished poorly were just unlucky or had poor runs, but the deck is actually good. This is somewhat refuted by the fact that FIVE Regidrago VSTAR players were clustered toward the bottom of Day 2, which seems to instead imply that the two that had deep runs were just a fluke. Regardless of which way you interpret these results, the conclusion is clear that Regidrago VSTAR is now a shell of what it was prior to the release of Budew, with its ~6 months at the top being one of the craziest runs for any deck in the history of the Pokemon TCG.

Taking a step back to look at the bigger picture, the rest of the format is in an interesting place right now. The Europe International Championships just proved what we already knew in a lot of ways, with multiple Dragapult ex decks making deep runs, peaking at a second place finish in the hands of fellow writer Natalie Millar, but other than the three Dragapult ex in Top 8, I am not sure if I ever could have predicted the rest of the decks.

Archaludon ex has been the target of a lot of hype lately, likely due to its convincingly favored matchups against Dragapult ex and Miraidon ex, so it is not exactly a surprise that the deck was able to finish in the Top 4. With that said, the Top 4 finish was the deck’s only finish in the entirety of Top 64, with the second-highest finishing Archaludon ex player finishing 70th. Typically, I would say that this is a cause for concern, much like the disappointing finishes for Regidrago VSTAR, but I think there was one massive external surprise factor that caused Archaludon ex’s average finish to be so low, and that was Gholdengo ex.

To put it lightly, Gholdengo ex is BY FAR Archaludon ex’s worst matchup. They are one of very few decks in the format that can threaten you with a one-hit Knock Out, which is bad enough, but you also struggle to ever respond with a one-hit Knock Out of your own, pretty much only being able to do so with Black Belt’s Training or Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR‘s Metal Blast, both of which are fairly inefficient.

Normally, this would not be cause for concern, but at the Europe International Championships, things were a bit different. Completely out of left field, Gholdengo ex saw a massive surge in play rate among top players, with five in the Top 32, tying it for the second highest representation in Top 32. All of a sudden, Archaludon ex players were facing way more Gholdengo ex than they should have realistically expected, and against top players to boot, leading the deck’s average finishes to go down dramatically. Gholdengo ex, on the other hand, had a great weekend. Like I said, the deck was highly represented in Top 32, but the deck also had one representative in Top 4, Xander Pero.

Going forward, I think this deck is the biggest takeaway from the Europe International Championships. Block Snorlax also had a surprisingly good weekend at the Europe International Championships. To be frank, I had not really been considering this deck very much leading up to the event, mostly because a lot of people told me it was bad, but evidently those people were wrong. I would not count on the deck going forward because it does still have a few questionable matchups at the top, but the deck is much better than I thought.

Despite all of these, no story at the Europe International Championships could outshine Ryuki Okada and his Poison Terapagos ex / Klawf deck. When Budew was released, I remember thinking that this deck could be pretty powerful. After all, Budew being able to do up to 80 damage after Poison is an insane amount of damage to have to overcome, especially under Item Lock. However, I did ultimately put the deck down just because it felt inexplicably too weak. Ryuki proved me and many others wrong, though, exhibiting a dominant performance two weeks ago showing everyone that Budew for 80 damage and Terapagos ex for 290 damage while not activating Flip the Script is, in fact, absurd.

One of the biggest grievances that I have about this deck, though, is that the deck is really bad against Gardevoir ex and also not great against Dragapult ex, at least historically. It does, however, have the classic trick up its sleeve of being able to win the game before they ever get to play with Pecharunt, as was shown in Game 3 of the finals. Other than these two matchups, though, the deck has an incredible matchup spread into the current format, and considering that these matchups, while bad, are certainly not unwinnable, the deck is very clearly one of the best decks in Standard right now; how about we discuss the top plays for the Stockholm Regional Championships later this month?

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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