Is it Lost Zone’s Time Again? — Looking at Lost Zone in the Surging Sparks Format
Hello PokeBeach readers! Isaiah here, and I am happy to be writing another article for you all!
Last time, I discussed my Charizard ex deck from Louisville, and I am still very, very high on that deck. In my opinion, the deck is still one of the best decks in the Standard format and I really do not understand why it has been struggling to put up consistent deep runs in this format. Perhaps I am overestimating how good the deck is, but I have not seen anything to prove me wrong. As of the time I am writing this, the Latin America International Championships has not happened, but I certainly expect the deck to put up a few strong finishes in the right people’s hands.
Taking a bit of a step back, one of the most overlooked results that has happened so far this season was Michael Davidson’s 2nd place finish with Lost Zone at the Louisville Regional Championships about a month ago. As a deck that was previously at the peak of the format, including a win at the North America International Championships, it really should not be that surprising that the deck was able to put together a deep run.
However, if you have been paying attention to the results of basically any other tournament that has happened literally anywhere else on the planet, then this result is a bit more surprising, as the popularity of Regidrago VSTAR had seemingly wiped the deck off of the face of the Earth. Interestingly, Regidrago VSTAR was fairly favored into Lost Zone prior to the release of Shrouded Fable, but it just was not popular. Then with the introduction of Kyurem, a lot of people gave Regidrago VSTAR a second look, realized that the deck was absurdly powerful, and that was enough to effectively push Lost Zone out of the format.
At the World Championships and the Baltimore Regional Championships, Lost Zone continued to be nonexistent in the meta because of Regidrago VSTAR’s roughly 20% meta share at both events, and many assumed that we had finally seen the last of Lost Zone after it had been an ever-present force in the meta for the first two years of its life.
The release of Stellar Crown had an interesting effect on the format. Decks like Charizard ex got access to Briar, a card that situationally speeds up its Prize map, and of course Stellar Crown also marked the release of Terapagos ex into the format. Interestingly, the latter is a pretty good matchup for Regidrago VSTAR, so I am not exactly sure why Regidrago VSTAR has been less popular than it was before the release of Stellar Crown, but the assessment that a lot of people I have spoken to has generally been that the format got “too fast” for it. These people, of course, would be proven wrong by the Lille and Gdańsk Regional Championships, both of which were won by Regidrago VSTAR, but until these events happened, I do think a lot of people were overlooking the archetype a bit, with it clearly being one of the top three decks in the format, if not the best deck.
Importantly, it is that last part that was what gave Lost Zone a window for success. The thing about Lost Zone is that the deck has extremely good matchups right now. Like, maybe one of the best matchup spreads of any archetype in the game currently. But there is one glaring issue, and that is the deck’s win rate against Regidrago VSTAR, which is roughly 30% based on online tournament data. For reference on how bad that is, it is only narrowly better than Snorlax Block’s 28% win rate against Lugia VSTAR, which is another infamously horrible matchup.
However, at the Louisville Regional Championships, Regidrago VSTAR was not expected to be a particularly popular deck based on other recent tournaments. Maybe around 10% of the room, but nothing near the 24% of Day 1 that it was at the World Championships. This was enough to give Lost Zone a window. Across a 12 round tournament, you can reasonably assume you will hit one maybe two Regidrago VSTAR at worst. If you are able to steal a win or even a tie against them and beat everyone else, that should be enough to make it to the top cut of the tournament. At that point, if you face a Regidrago VSTAR, you might get lucky, but in reality, you would just have to be content with the $3000 you won and move on.
While the strategy is a bit risky to take such a harsh bad matchup, there are some cases where a deck’s other matchups are so good that the risk is worth it, and in the case of Lost Zone, that is true. Michael Davidson and a few of his friends all took the big risk, and luckily for them Regidrago VSTAR’s play rate was even lower than most would have expected, resulting in a couple of them making strong runs, with Michael of course finishing second place, Nathan Ginsburg finishing 17th (after beating me in round three! Spiritomb is annoying!), and Caleb Rogerson finishing in Top 64. Their deck list would prove to be the blueprint for Lost Zone’s sporadic success throughout the rest of the Stellar Crown format, so before we go much further, how about we take a look at Michael’s deck list.
Michael Davidson’s Second Place Lost Zone Deck List
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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