Lost Impact — The Giratina Fad

fad [fæd] noun 1. an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object’s qualities; a craze.

Lost Zone Giratina VSTAR is a deck that has hovered around Tier 3 in recent memory, and has not been considered a real deck since Silver Tempest‘s release. However, seemingly out of nowhere, this deck has spread like wildfire. League Cups and Challenges have started occurring en masse, and Giratina has dominated both local and online tournaments. In fact, it has won three large online events recently, along with countless of the local sanctioned tournaments.

But let’s back up for just a minute. When Giratina first released, it was considered a Tier 1 deck and you were all but guaranteed to face it at any tournament in the Lost Origin format. However, even then, it was nothing spectacular. It managed to get a few Top 8 spots at Regionals, but was notorious for underperforming compared to how popular and widely played it was. When Silver Tempest dropped, Lugia VSTAR completely invalidated the deck and set it back to the Distortion World. Six months later, rotation hit and looked like it was going to shake things up in a good way for Giratina.

When Scarlet & Violet came out and ushered in the mid-season rotation, Giratina received some hype, but ultimately didn’t end up doing anything at all. Most recently, Paldea Evolved dropped along with Super Rod and Jet Energy. However, in this format’s only major event (so far), the deck did not have any notable showing.

So why? Just why is this deck showing up now? Is the deck just that good and nobody realized until now? There are several factors contributing to the flash mob of Giratina showings. At NAIC, former World Champion Henry Brand played the deck, but did not even make Day 2. However, his addition of the Cross Switcher gave the deck some much-needed fangs that it didn’t have before. This combined with the Japanese tech of Roxanne and Iono plus Path to the Peak for a disruption focus allows the deck to have multiple strong win conditions without compromising too much consistency.

Of course, the new cards from Paldea Evolved help out a lot. Henry played four copies of Jet Energy in the deck. Jet Energy works perfectly here, and it should be your manual attachment almost every turn. Mirage Gate can easily fulfill your colored Energy costs, and Radiant Greninja makes use of extra colored Energy that end up in your hand. This deck seems like it was tailored to make optimal use of Jet Energy.

Another factor that is more timing-specific is the rise of Arceus VSTAR. Arceus won both Juniors and Seniors at NAIC, and got second place in Masters along with several other top finishes. People just like playing Arceus. Recently I’ve been referring to Arceus as the highest output-to-input deck. This means that if you compare how good the deck is compared to how much effort and brainpower it takes to build and play, the ratio is ridiculously high. (Lost Box, on the other hand, has an extremely low ratio by this metric.) Anyway, the point is that Arceus is quite popular at the moment, and that was unexpected before NAIC.

This is good for Giratina, as Giratina matches up well against Arceus. Lost Impact tears through their two-Prize Pokemon, and Arceus has limited ways to beat Giratina. Trinity Nova doesn’t KO Giratina V through Double Turbo Energy, even with a Choice Belt, and only other Giratina VSTAR can one-shot Giratina VSTAR. Many Arceus variants have no way at all to one-shot Giratina VSTAR. Furthermore, Arceus sometimes relies on its Stadiums as win conditions, but against Giratina, they are minor annoyances at best.

That said, I think the popularity of Giratina is a little bit overblown at the moment. My opinion of the deck since Scarlet & Violet is that it is not bad, but not amazing. It will probably settle around Tier 2. For as long as Giratina has existed, it has had problems with clunkiness, and now is no exception. It is somewhat high-maintenance, and also has to include techs like Cross Switcher and Path to the Peak to have win conditions. The clunkiness is manageable because the deck uses the amazing Lost Zone engine. Of course, all that matters in the end is its win rate, which seems to be pretty good at the moment.

In my opinion, the biggest problem with Giratina currently is its weak Gardevoir ex matchup. This wasn’t something Giratina really had to worry about before, but Gardevoir remains one of the most popular Tier 1 decks in the Paldea Evolved format, and that matchup is not pretty. Just as Giratina has found new strengths, so has it gained new weaknesses.

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!