Fly Me to the Moon — Roaring Moon ex for San Antonio

Hey everyone! It’s Charlie and I’m happy to be back with another article. In my last article, I went into detail about one of my favorite decks in the format right now, Regigigas with Pikachu ex. I think this deck is pretty good, extremely underrated, and has a pretty great meta spread right now. The only downside is its fragility. Sometimes the middle of the game can be dicey depending on how your first turn went, though it’s still very doable with the extensive recovery cards. If you want to read about all my thoughts on the deck in detail, go check that article out first. It’s still certainly on my radar heading into San Antonio.

Speaking of San Antonio, it’s North America’s last major event (outside of the Puerto Rico SPE) prior to Prismatic Evolutions, which is to say it will be the last major event before the introduction of Budew. While things may be different over here, Budew’s impact in Japan cannot be understated. The king of our current format, Regidrago VSTAR, is often ranked as low as Tier 4 (!!!) by analysts in Japan, almost entirely due to Budew’s impact on its early game. If an evolving deck is able to use Budew on their first turn to stop Regidrago from using Items on its second, they can often stop Regidrago from attacking and enjoy an extra turn to set up. When combined with other stalling tactics like Boss's Orders on high-retreat Pokemon, this can buy you a lot of time to set up almost any Evolution deck. Regidrago’s greatest strength was always its early-game aggression, and if that’s taken away, it stands to become a much weaker deck. Will Regidrago be able to evolve further and come up with a solution for this, too? I guess we’ll find out around EUIC!

Before we think about that, though, let me return to San Antonio. While Regigigas is still at the top of my list for now, that won’t stop me from exploring other options. One of those options I’m liking a good bit is the topic of today’s article — Roaring Moon ex .

Why Roaring Moon ex?

For a deck that got second place at the World Championships this August, Roaring Moon has had quite an underwhelming season. While it was never seen as a Tier 1 threat in any version of this format, it’s always been a formidable force that boasts a great Regidrago matchup. With this in your back pocket, you can see a lot of success given Regidrago’s meta share. Not only is it one of the most popular decks overall, it’s by far the most popular deck among top players. I’ve heard many of my friends say things along the lines of “I’ll be playing Regidrago until I can’t anymore,” or “Playing Regidrago is my job,” which speaks to how good they think the deck is. With unmatched power and versatility, a 280-HP Weakness-free attacker, and one of the most powerful engines in the game, the only thing Regidrago is missing is a powerful turn-1 attack. Speaking of turn-1 attacks, what deck are we talking about again? One of the best decks in the format at pulling off a turn-1 attack?

Regidrago’s inability to attack for two Prize cards on the first turn is also its Achilles’ heel. In most matchups between two-Prize decks, the dreaded 2-2-2 Prize race can often dictate who wins. When Regidrago can attack first, it can often get ahead and sustain its board for long enough to win. However, when it fails to get ahead or the opponent does it first, Regidrago has very few options. While Kyurem‘s Trifrost gives it one way to escape the 2-2-2 Prize race, it’s very difficult to pull off against a smart player. Luckily for us, Roaring Moon is built to go second and take two Prizes on its first turn, jumping ahead of Regidrago before they can strike back. If you’re able to sustain this game plan and take three KOs, Roaring Moon can draw all six Prize cards before Regidrago catches up. However, if you ever fail to take a KO or can’t get around single-Prize annoyances like Cleffa and Radiant Charizard , they can often use that extra turn to steal a win.

With all that in mind, let’s get into my current list:

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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