The Sacramento Surprise — Arceus Makes A Comeback?!
Hello everyone! The North America Regional Championships circuit is well under way, and another massive Regional just took place in Sacramento. Although this tournament had an astounding 1,400 players, it was the smallest North America Regional so far! My group and I decided to play Lost Zone Kyogre. The single-Prize version of the deck featuring Zamazenta just won Peoria Regionals, and we only changed one card, cutting the terrible Beach Court for a fourth Escape Rope. I also wanted a second copy of Lost Vacuum because the deck has a hard time getting to ten in the Lost Zone quickly, but the other members of the group wouldn’t be convinced. To be fair, cutting Beach Court does slightly decrease the effectiveness of a second Vacuum. However, in the tournament, I sorely regretted having just the one.
Copying the previous winning list nearly card for card feels kind of lame, but with such a short turnaround time from the last tournament, we were short on options. I ended 5-1-3, which was disappointing. My loss was partially my fault, as I had the match completely locked up and neglected to play around Hawlucha. I easily could have done so, but I had no reason to expect that my opponent was playing the card, as I thought it was an exact copy of my deck without the Beach Court–for–Escape Rope switch. I should have played around it anyway, since there was basically no downside to doing so.
The ties were all from winning or won positions, but the single-Prize Kyogre deck is painstakingly slow, just like Gardevoir ex. I felt like I got punished for making the same mistake two tournaments in a row. Although Gardevoir and Kyogre are very different decks, they are both very slow and often make comeback wins after starting out behind. This simply results in too many ties. The fact that Kyogre won the previous Regional contributed to me overlooking this issue.
The Charizard ex matchup felt pretty bad too. I tied both Charizard I played against. Although I was in dominating positions at the ends of those games, I felt that if my opponents had had the slightest clue how to play the matchup, I would have gotten destroyed. My other tie was against a turbo Lost Box build that packed all three mirror techs: Echoing Horn, Hawlucha, and Roxanne. That matchup is difficult. I definitely could have played better at this tournament, but the deck felt very mid overall. Kyogre isn’t as widely useful as it once was, and aside from that, the deck lacks power. Azul made Top 8 with the same list, though.
Sacramento Results
The most popular archetype was Lost Box variants, followed by Charizard and Miraidon ex. Gardevoir was fairly popular, as usual. The overall meta share for the various decks was similar to Peoria, as predicted. Lost Box’s slight increase was not a surprise, as the deck has been overperforming lately. Mew VMAX‘s meta share did not change much, yet many people decided to bring counters to it, such as Spiritomb and Drapion V. It was a very bad time to be a Mew player. Lugia VSTAR remained in the middle with Chien-Pao ex, and Giratina VSTAR continues to fade into obscurity. Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX is always a rarely seen deck, but quite a few of them made their way into Day 2, with the highest placement in the Top 16.
Lugia VSTAR
Here’s where the surprises start. Colorless Lugia VSTAR dominated the tournament. Not only did it win the whole thing, but four of them made Top 8. Lugia was running the top tables throughout Day 2 and pulled through in a big way. My first thought after seeing the results of this tournament was to write off the whole thing as a massive fluke, but there is always an explanation for why things happen. Lugia is very weak against Miraidon and Charizard, which were two of the most popular decks. However, it is strong against Lost Box, which was the number-one most popular deck. Aside from Lugia itself, Lost Box was the main deck populating the top tables throughout the tournament, which contributed to Lugia’s success.
Lugia’s weak matchups against Charizard and Miraidon make it an objectively bad play in the current meta. Alexander Flatos, the winner of the tournament, faced zero Miraidon, and lost to the one Charizard he faced (according to PokéStats Live). He somehow faced four Rapid Strike Urshifu, which is a completely unexpected four free wins. To say he hit the matchup lottery would be a massive understatement. This is not to discount his accomplishment, as he still had little margin for error in his other matches. After all, every Regional Champion had to get lucky on their way there, but also had to play well in order to capitalize. This is just the explanation for why Lugia was able to win the tournament.
The other Top 8 Lugia finishers had similarly favorable matchups, but it’s worth noting that one of the Top 4 finishers did manage to make an overwhelmingly positive record against Charizard. Miraidon ex was everywhere at the top tables in Peoria just one week ago, but many of the top Miraidon players from that tournament were not even at Sacramento. This created a bit of a vacuum for Lugia to do well. I’d say it was a happy accident for all of the Lugia players, as they were able to dodge the archetype entirely and feast upon hordes upon hordes of Lost Box.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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