Before San Diego Regionals I had come to the conclusion that Persian Checkmate was the only deck I truly cared about and wanted to play. In my preparation for Dallas Regionals I have found that the same concept behind Persian in Standard can easily be applied in Expanded, but with more options and a higher level of consistency. The most significant additions are VS Seeker and Exeggcute, making the Roxie engine far better. That being said, all the decks in Expanded are stronger in this card pool, so the question has to be: Are the cards that checkmate gains in Expanded enough to get you wins against all the other broken ridiculous decks? I would say yes, and since this article is all about match ups, you can read about why that is the case. The most popular deck right now is Ultra Necrozma which is definitely favorable, while we take 50/50s or better against almost all the other popular archetypes.

These Revenge/Vengeance attackers that checkmate plays, make is possible for you to tech in any sort of Pokemon you want; Just Roxie them away in the match ups where they are not relevant. While I do not play Counter Energy in my current list, it does enable you to hit for weakness against anything you want to beat. In particular Sudowoodo (BKP) stands out because it allows you to one-shot against Dark or Zoroark decks, which take up a very significant portion of the meta. There are attacking options for any problem you might have, so building the deck is just a matter of finding the best techs. That’s all I will say about the list and building Vespiqueen in this piece. I have my list bellow, a section on how to play the deck in general, and the rest is on how to play your match ups.

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