Greetings from the future, subs! We are steadily approaching rotation and the release of Temporal Forces, which I couldn’t be more excited for. This past format has felt stale, with the top three decks being so powerful that your tournament finish will depend on your matchup roulette between them. These three – Gardevoir ex, Giratina Vstar, and Charizard ex – are not rotating from the format, but will increase or decrease in power level with these new changes.
In this piece, first I will briefly go over some of the top performing decks at the Fukuoka Champions League and where this leaves our beginning western-world meta. Then I will leave some thoughts on City League results, which overall better show what decks are most successful. Lastly, I’ll go over my version of the Turbo Iron Hands deck that has become popular despite my thoughts that I created a unique deck. (Boy, was I wrong about that.)
Before jumping in, a brief recap from Goiania Regionals which I attended. I played Charizard ex to a mediocre finish, but got points. My matchups were abysmal and so was my luck, having to play vs two Snorlax stall and two Chien-Pao decks. I’m now at 450/600, so the invite is feeling inevitable with four open League Cup slots.
Japan’s first major tournament with both Temporal Forces and Rotation took place in Fukuoka with over 2500 Masters. This tournament will be a factor for all other countries preparing for the eventual EUIC, which will allow the rest of the world to participate in this new format. I want to give some light background into early meta thoughts which shaped this tournament’s top cut, which is comprised of 16 players instead of eight. For those who don’t know, the Japanese players compete in a Best-of-1 format, with no ties allowed – ties result in a double game loss, so this affects some of these decks’ success as well.
After upgrading to Stage 2 you will see the rest of Hunter Butler’s article and an audio recording of this article by Andy Hyun: 
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