Hello, Cut or Tap readers! Seeing as this is my first time writing for the site, it only makes sense for me to provide you all with a short introduction to myself as a player. My name is Caleb Rogerson, and I am a professional Pokémon TCG player for Team DDG. So far this season, I’ve attended six major tournaments, placing in the Top 64 in five of them! Most recently in Sacramento and Toronto Regionals, I placed in the Top 64 and Top 32 respectively, using the same Regidrago VSTAR list for both tournaments. In this article I will dive into exactly why Regidrago VSTAR has seen such high levels of success lately, my thoughts on card choices and tech inclusions, and how to approach playing and countering the archetype moving forward.
After seeing Regidrago dominate Toronto Regionals, taking up six of the Top 8 slots and becoming the eventual event-winning deck when piloted by Calvin Connor, it’s reasonable to ask how we got here. After a strong close to the Stellar Crown format with the deck taking down LAIC, the deck has only continued to skyrocket in success in the Surging Sparks metagame. Sacramento Regionals, the first major tournament of the format, was taken down by an all-Miraidon finals. As Andrew Hedrick discussed in his Miraidon article following Sacramento, the deck was able to triumph over the five Regidrago that made Top 8.
What changed after Sacramento? What happened to Miraidon? Well for one, decks with a better matchup into Miraidon, like Klawf/Terapagos ex and Charizard ex, began to rise in popularity for the Stuttgart and Perth Regionals. With the Miraidon deck mainly capitalizing on its Regidrago matchup, the success of Charizard ex in Stuttgart and Klawf/Terapagos in Perth began to diminish the reason to play Miraidon. Additionally, Regidrago players have learned the successful Miraidon lists and adapted to gain percentage in the matchup. Multiple successful Regidrago lists from Sacramento chose to include a copy of Lost Vacuum instead of the traditional Jamming Tower. In the Miraidon matchup, Regidrago can use Kyurem’s Trifrost attack twice, attacking three targets on the Miraidon player’s board for 110 on back-to-back turns. With Switch Cart being removed from Miraidon lists, the only counterplay to this line is Bravery Charm. Using Jamming Tower to shut off Bravery Charm can often lead to the Miraidon player’s Area Zero Underdepths leaving play and allowing for the discard of damaged Pokémon before Trifrost can clean them up to win the game. Lost Vacuum, on the other hand, can remove a Bravery Charm while not removing Area Zero Underdepths from play, allowing for a clean double-Trifrost win.
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