Metagame Predictions (Toronto 22-23)

Metagaming for Toronto Regionals Dec 3rd 2022

This is an outline of my thoughts on what the metagame share will be like for the masters division of the pokemon tcg toronto regional championships in the SSH-Silver tempest (D-Block On) Standard format. I’ll explain my predictions in detail and the logic behind how I evaluate what the metagame will form to look like. It is generally good practice to prepare to play against the decks you believe will be 10% or more of the field, and try to group smaller percentage holding decks into categories that you can tech for all at once. Example: if you expect zoro box, vikavolt v, and lightning attackers like zeroara VIV and amazing rare Raikou to each show up in about 2.5% of decks, you could generalize that into 10% of decks that will be able to hit lightning type weakness and rationalize playing a dunsparce in your lightning weak deck for 10% of the field, although you don’t have concrete names to which decks will make up that 10% conglomerate.

Lugia VSTAR - Estimated 27-30%

Lugia VSTAR is the newest big bad in the TCG and a playset of 4 Lugia V + 3 Lugia VSTAR currently goes for around $130, not including the other 5/6ths of the deck. Although the price tag doesn’t matter to the upper echelon of competitive players as they will invest whatever they need to for the best chance at a good performance, there is a non-zero amount of players that attend regional championships who are not ready to fork over a couple hundred dollars for a new deck when they recently purchased a Kyurem, Palkia, Giratina, Arceus, etc deck months ago. Because of this, I am wary of making a prediction of over 30% for Lugia VSTAR. It is very good but not every competitive player will be playing this deck by default. Reasons to NOT play Lugia Vstar not including money/availability are: Wanting to avoid a multitude of mirror matches, not wanting to face the counter meta as the main target of the weekend, play a counter deck to take advantage of the people playing Lugia, and being more comfortable with a different deck that people are less practiced against IE: Day 2 or even further is possible for a good pilot with Lost Box variants, Kyurem, Palkia, Tina, Arceus Inteleon - to name a few decks. Lugia won’t be the only archetype in day 2, top 32, or even top 16 and top 8. I would be shocked if there is less than 10 different archetypes in Day 2, but I would expect Lugia VSTAR, Lost Box, and Mew to be the most populated archetypes in day 2.

I’d expect at least 50% of lugia vstar decks to be identical or nearly identical to Tord Reklev’s 1st place list from LAIC. Tord noted in a recent stream/video that V Guard energy is a consideration for the list moving forward and I expect many people to cut the 4th Archeops for V Guard Energy.

Mew VMAX - Estimated 12-15%

Trying to narrow down the meta share for the 2 separate variants of mew (with Fusion strike energy and without fusion strike energy) feels borderline impossible and also fairly extraneous to the purpose of predicting a meta which is preparing your deck and matchup conceptualizations. Both variants of Mew VMAX are aggressive and in my opinion, they surpass Lugia VSTAR in consistently and more importantly reliably doing the same thing every single game. However, what they lack in comparison to Mew VMAX is adaptability and resilience. Lugia VSTAR has a multitude of attackers in general builds of the archetype including Lugia, Lugia VSTAR, Lumineon, Yveltal, Charizard, Raikou, Archeops to name the most popular ones and this is very appealing to a player that wants to be able to adapt to matchups and situations on the fly. Mew VMAX however, depending on the build is either limited to Mew VMAX or Mew VMAX, Mew V, Meloetta, and very rarely Genesect V as attackers. To put this simply, I believe Mew VMAX will appeal to two portions of the playerbase: 1) those who want a top tier deck but not Lugia for any of the reasons listed in the Lugia explanation, or 2) those who want a consistent and reliable deck with linear lines of play that replicates game after game.

Lost Zone Box (Not including Giratina) - Estimated 12-15%

I expect the Kyogre variant to be about half of this share, with Sableye Zard being most of the remaining share and a small amount of Rayquaza or other less concrete variants making up the last small bit of this percentage. These decks are hard to play compared to the multi-prize decks we’ve been… graced with… for the past few years and depending on your goals and experience this may not be the archetype for you. I doubt this archetype could reach 20% due to the skill floor on these decks, but sablezard is easily the most entry level variant of the overarching LZB decks. The Kyogre variant will likely get a boost in play due to Grant and Azul doing well with it in LAIC and coverage on the deck from Andrew Mahone’s YT channel Tricky Gym.

Other - Estimated 7-10%

A gentle reminder that there will always be a chunk of the meta taken up by decks not identified in an archetypal system such as the one RK9 Labs uses for meta analysis.

Regigigas - Estimated 5-8%

Even for recent tournaments when Regigigas was an insanely good play, it didn’t reach numbers much higher than this so I have tapered expectations for the popularity of this archetype. Regigigas is not as good against Lugia as it seems, especially against players who have practiced the matchup. It is a strong meta deck and will undoubtedly find itself into Day 2, but I’m not expecting much from the archetype this time around unless Lugia players drop the dunsparce manaphy combo in troves.

Palkia Inteleon - Estimated 5-8%

There are people who have retreated to the mountains for months to master the art of Palkia Inteleon, and even some of those people won’t play this deck for Toronto. It has fallen off, but decks don’t just go from being indisputably Tier 1 to nothing in the next set very often.

Kyurem Palkia - Estimated 3-6%

Solid deck, not much more not much less. Doesn’t have awful matchups (if you play a couple techs), doesn’t have great matchups. Its pretty easy to play in terms of competitive play and its a deck a lot of people built and liked in the last set.

Arceus Duraludon - Estimated 3-6%

Players who don’t test the Lugia and Mew matchups may think this archetype is better poised than it actually is. That is not to say its bad, but I think the other decks mentioned thus far are all better.

Giratina Comfey - Estimated 3-6%

What was the best deck in format prior to silver tempest is now a bit sub par compared to Lugia and Mew, and even its other lost zone counterparts. Giratina Comfey is still a good deck, but in my opinion the preparation and in-game decision making required to pilot this deck to success is no longer worth it when compared to other choices we currently have available to us. Giratina is high skill floor and high skill ceiling, but doesn’t have the consistency and power to make that worth playing it at this time.

Vikavolt V Regieleki VMAX - Estimated 2-5%

Vikavolt V Regieleki originally seemed like a good counter deck into a field of Lugia VSTAR. Now that it has become the norm for Lugia to play Dunsparce and also taking into account that Lugia players have had time to consider this matchup, this archetype has become much less appealing to play to a regional championships. The power level is mid and the consistency is mid, but if you are playing against a lightning weak deck (Palkia or Lugia) or a low HP high item reliance deck (Lost box) then the power level circumstantially rises. Will Vikavolt make it into day 2? Wouldn’t surprise me. Will it make it much further? Probably not. The issue with these decks that rely on some sort of soft-lock with low damage output is that skilled players can often find lines of strategy to gain advantage against players who are expecting lugia to just fold because of weakness + no items.

Zoroark Box - Estimated 2-3%

Zoroark Box is really good against Lugia and Mew, and absolutely horrendous vs Lost Zone decks. This is the crux of the argument whether or not to play zoro box in my opinion. It is also a little different if you’re used to V based decks which will keep some players away.