Welcome back, Subs! I’ve had some distance from the computer as of lately and I’m excited to be writing for you all.
Pokemon TCG has become quite stale when talking about the Stellar Crown format. With this in mind, it becomes harder to prepare for the upcoming tournaments that round out Standard pre-Prismatic Evolution. Birmingham, Rio De Janeiro, and San Antonio will have little impact on each other in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean Top 8’s across these tournaments can’t be different. In this article, we will discuss the conclusions of this format, and what decks I think have potential to strike on the tail end of this lull.
Let’s hop right into it.
Summary on the Late Stellar Crown Meta
Since the release of Stellar Crown, we’ve seen a number of decks emerge and fall from grace. Terapagos ex variants come to mind when I think about a deck that couldn’t last too many tournament streaks. Whether it was paired with Pidgeot ex, Palkia Vstar, or Klawf, it was met with the same underwhelming performance once success first struck. I think a lot of these decks have strengths, however when our meta finally centralized around a top three, it became clear Terapagos would never get results like it accomplished in November. The top three, for clarification, are Regidrago Vstar, Charizard ex, and Raging Bolt ex. These decks have stood the test of time since the World Championships, and have solidified themselves as gate keepers. Terapagos’s issue with these is that Charizard ex is highly unfavored, and it takes a close 50/50 to slightly unfavored Regidrago matchup, depending on the coin flip and list inclusions.
Another deck that is close to my heart that has totally petered out is Lost Box. Even with some meta shifts positive for it, like increased play from Gardevoir or Archaludon, it still doesn’t compete with the staggering amount of top players that choose to pilot Regidrago to events. We have one of the most ridiculous matchup spreads in our format right now, where Lost Box is beating close to 70% of this metagame, but because of 13-20% Regidrago, and the increased talent piloting it in Day 2, Lost Box is left with little results.
After upgrading to Stage 2 you will see the rest of Hunter Butler’s article and an audio recording of this article narrated by Andy Hyun: 
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