How to Play the Most Well-Rounded Deck — Giratina VSTAR

[PMJ]

As this Standard format draws to a close, we still have about a month left until rotation. I’ve been playing some Giratina VSTAR lately and I wanted to discuss it one last time, at least before rotation.
Giratina VSTAR has consistently been a Top 3 deck in the Paradox Rift format. It is known for having an array of matchups that are neither good nor bad — Giratina has a decent shot at beating just about anything. Unfortunately, the inverse is also true, as it has very few slam-dunk matchups. Giratina is a well-rounded and anti-nonsense deck. It is difficult to counter, and has ways to deal with just about any situation. It has the potential to be aggressive and fast if it draws well, but is even better known for its comeback potential. Giratina has massive damage output, lots of skill expression, disruption, and different attackers. Its consistency isn’t the greatest, but at least most of the...

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[Nuclear]

Giratina’s well rounded until you top deck a tina v and all your switching and disruption cards for the first 4 turns.

 

[shiverychillz]

I have been playing Tina a lot lately and I just seem more often than not ending up with a hand full of energy and praying to get Iono'd. It is a very tricky deck to get you head around with different matchups but it does feel really nice to play when it draws well.

 

[pato]

In my opinion is the most versatile deck, very strong and disruptive, and there is no autolosses, you can win even bad matchups, but it requires a lot of thinking (sequencing, resources management, prize count, lost count) and resilience for major tournaments.

 

[angooseburger]

In my opinion is the most versatile deck, very strong and disruptive, and there is no autolosses, you can win even bad matchups, but it requires a lot of thinking (sequencing, resources management, prize count, lost count) and resilience for major tournaments.

The recent manaphyless builds actually auto loses to one particular chien pao line. T2 iron hands into a followup or late game greninja play. Sure you can only play one comfey, but eventually you're going to want to use sableye, which is when you're prone to being greninja'd.

Still quite difficult to pull off for the chien pao because you can't start chien pao and have it get punched by cram.

 

[Cacho]

The only deck that bricks harder than Lugia Vstar

 

[pato]

The recent manaphyless builds actually auto loses to one particular chien pao line. T2 iron hands into a followup or late game greninja play. Sure you can only play one comfey, but eventually you're going to want to use sableye, which is when you're prone to being greninja'd.

Still quite difficult to pull off for the chien pao because you can't start chien pao and have it get punched by cram.

This sounds like several specific and circumstantial scenarios, which, if anything, guarantee a certain advantage for the chien-pao ex, but it is not the same thing as autoloss. Autoloss means there is almost no way to win against a deck's basic strategy. Thats a bad matchup situation, not an autoloss. Tina's player can use a comfey+abyss seeking and prepare 3 Giratina Vstar, and after turn 3 just use Boss and disruption+Path, it doesn't guarantee victory, but it is certainly a way.