Welcome back, Cut or Tap subscribers! Hunter here to present insightful information on the phenomenon that is Vikavolt Melony box. I’ll be setting the stage for how a completely unknown archetype took down two Regional Championships, earning $7,500 and almost 400 CP. More impressive than the prizes this deck has conquered, the sheer size of these tournaments command respect for the placements from both Krekeler and Gibby. Following the breakdown of both players’ versions of the deck, I will introduce my current build prepared for the Crown Zenith meta in Orlando. Before we can learn about what perfect storm brought the lightning to Texas, lets look at the list Alex Krekeler used to get 2nd place out of 1200 Masters.

2nd Place for Arlington Masters

Alex’s list combines a melting pot of attackers partnered with Melony to accelerate energy to the different V attackers, depending on what we sit across the table from. The star of this list, however, is the Vikavolt V. Vikavolt V’s Paralyzing Bolt attack takes advantage of not only the heavy item engines in our metagame, but also relevant type weakness of the most popular archetype: Lugia Archeops.

The best performing decks from this current meta game are the following : Lugia/Archeops, Lost Zone Box, and Mew Vmax. The Vikavolt archetype was created to counter these three decks, so it’s no mystery why Alex was able to get 2nd place in Texas. The LimitlessTCG data shows the Day 2 meta placing: Lugia/Archeops 37%, Lost Zone Box 16%, Mew Vmax 9%. This makes a combined 62% of favorable matchups for Alex, creating a meta suitable for his Anti-Meta deck. We will come back to this data when studying Gibby’s run as well.

Something to note about the deck is the unique draw engine that Alex decided was best to facilitate a turn one item lock. Mew is his ideal starter, finding him cards like Battle VIP Pass, Quick Ball, and Trekking Shoes to dig through the deck. Rounding out the draw engine are Crobat V and Lumineon V to search for that ever important Melony. Lastly, we have Radiant Greninja; although we have ball cards to discard Water energy, Greninja is the most efficient way to both activate Melony and draw an additional two cards.

This deck also has utility with the energy used, such as the Speed Lightning Energy that, when attached to a Lightning Pokemon, allows the user to draw two cards. The engine starts to come together, and we are drawing upwards of 7-9 cards a turn. This is why the deck was so efficient at finding pieces to the combo.

Now that we understand how this deck functions at a baseline, I’m going to explain why Alex chose these tech attackers and how he used them.

The first we can look at is Raikou V, which has a great Ability in Fleet-Footed, but more importantly shares the lightning type with Vikavolt. Lightning Rondo does 20 damage based on both players benches, so with a full bench we can hit for 220 damage. This benchmark is important because we can knock out most Pokemon V if both benches are full. Due to the Lightning weakness on Lugia V and the importance of bench Pokemon such as Archeops, Lumineon V, and Oranguru. Raikou easily one-shots Lugia V and Lugia VStar. This creates a massive threat to resource trading when Raikou V only takes two energy to utilize, while Lugia VStar is an Evolution Pokemon and requires four energy.

However, the most potent tech in Alex’s deck for the matchup was Aerodactyl VStar. When winning the coin flip in this matchup, the Vikavolt V player can simply bench Aerodactyl V turn 1. Then the following turn before the Lugia player can evolve to use Summoning Star, we can use our VStar attack Ancient Star, and turn off Abilities completely. Because Ancient Star grants us an Ability, the Lugia player cannot remove this effect with current lists. Alex used this knowledge to his advantage, stopping the Lugia decks from ever accelerating energy.

Lastly Drapion V was an easy component to add for the Mew VMax matchup. Dynamic Tail is incredibly strong, even with the likes of Path to the Peak. Alex intelligently included Lost Vacuum and Training Court to have outs to the eventual counter-play.

With this list in mind and techs explained, lets move forward to Gibby’s list, which was heavily inspired by Alex’s.

Vikavolt – 1st Place for San Diego Masters

Once more we are going to refer to LimitlessTCG data for how we dissect the eventual Regional Champion Gibby’s success. Day 2 meta share data shows slightly different, but almost identical, representation of Vikavolt’s favorable matchups: Lugia/Archeops 38%, Lost Zone Box 20%, and Mew Vmax 7%. Surely you all can see how the storm brewed again?

When a meta is developing, normally the top decks can switch around a fair amount. These two tournaments did the exact opposite of a meta shift, it went full circle back to Texas. However, besides the meta call being correct again, Gibby had some changes up his sleeves. (Get it? “Sleeves”?) Gibby added a fourth Celebrations Mew to his list, which I quite enjoy because it’s your most optimal starter. Finding those early combo pieces through Mysterious Tail is the best way to complete a turn one Paralyzing Bolt. Not only that – if you have extra bench space, having a fourth Mew makes it more likely that you can chain Mysterious Tails with Scoop Up Net or Switch Cart.

Back to Switch Cart for a second. This card is incredibly useful when agonizingly starting a Pokemon like Drapion V or Vikavolt V with the respective two and three energy retreat costs.

The last inclusion Gibby rocked was the one copy of Judge over Marnie. This combats the popularity of Oranguru, and I feel it’s the best disruption Supporter choice for most decks at the moment. Judge actually stumped Gibby’s opponent in the 14th round, advancing him to Top 8.

The techs Gibby changed weren’t the only thing I noticed about his play. Instead of using Paralyzing Bolt the whole game for certain matchups, he would aggressively clear threats on the bench as opposed to holding the lock. Nick Moffit playing Lost Zone Box was sporting the Galarian Zapdos V in his list, but Gibby adapted using Vikavolt’s secondary attack, Super Zap Cannon to remove it. Only watching Alex’s games I wouldn’t have stumbled upon this strategy which, since my testing began with the deck, has improved my play into decks like Lost Rayquaza, Lost Kyogre, and Lost Goodra VStar.

A final note to the archetype with both of these lists. This deck is preying on the way decks are being built, while also countering the popular archetypes, which is exactly the type of positioning you want in order to be successful with an anti-meta deck.

Taking a brief break from list inclusions and strategies, I want to discuss some slight meta changes from San Diego to Liverpool. The most prolific addition to the meta is the presence of Lost Goodra Vstar which I previously mentioned. Goodra Vstar is an interesting archetype that has had success in the past, winning Utah regionals by my fellow Cut or Tap teammate Hale Olbernolte. He paired Goodra with Arceus Vstar to accelerate energy to Goodra in an Arc/Duraldon type of a build. Now Goodra Vstar is being paired with Comfey and Colress’s Experiment to enable Mirage Gate as the energy acceleration of this build. Stephane Ivanoff took his consistent streamlined Goodra Vstar list to an impressive 2nd place, and Vinnie Scheflhaut placed 7th with a slightly more teched build.

Vikavolt still enjoys being paired against Lost Zone Box, but the Goodra matchup is a bit different in terms of strategy. We will touch back on this when I break down my current build heading into Orlando. The last contribution to the meta is that Mew Vmax has claimed another Regional Championship, rocking with five stadiums in Leon’s build. As mentioned earlier in this piece, Mew Vmax is a favorable matchup for Vikavolt, and some new inclusions in the Crown Zenith expansion will increase the win rate vs Mew even more!

Without any further introduction here is my updated Crown Zenith Vikavolt list, in my current top two picks for Orlando:

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