Hello, Cut or Tap readers! We are soon approaching the end of the Surging Sparks format and the introduction of Budew from Prismatic Evolutions. Regidrago VStar has dominated this format, and has been the deck I have found success with myself. At the last Regional Championships in Toronto, I was able to pick up a solid Top 32 finish with the deck, but I nearly played an entirely different archetype to the tournament before switching back to Regidrago at the last minute.

The deck I had been almost convinced to play was Lugia VStar, a deck that seemed primed for success in the metagame the way it had developed. Lugia VStar had not seen much play lately, leading to most Regidrago VStar players cutting their Temple of Sinnoh, and overall very little respect for the deck was given in deckbuilding. This made Lugia an appealing play, and I also was pleasantly surprised by the number of different options and lines the deck had with the addition of Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex. The spread damage from its Torrential Pump attack can often allow you to take three-prize turns if you are forced to hit into something with a lot of HP with Lugia VStar earlier, and it even has the ability to shuffle your Legacy Energy back into the deck, meaning you could potentially still use Iron Hands later as well. Its first attack, Sob, also can occasionally have uses to deck your opponent out if they don’t have any switch cards remaining, since you can reduce its damage to 0 using a Double Turbo Energy.

After upgrading to Stage 2 you will see the rest of Andrew Hedrick’s article and an audio recording of this article narrated by Andy Hyun:

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