Welcome back, Subs! I’m happy to be writing for you all before this next tournament. We are just a few short weeks away from the Toronto Regionals, which I will be attending and hoping for a solid finish! Before getting into Archaludon ex, let’s go over the last two tournaments in this new Surging Sparks meta, as you all have not heard from me since LAIC. This piece will cover the meta shifts from Sacramento Regionals to Stuttgart Regionals, as well as the new decks popping up. We will go over what these shifts mean, or if they even matter at all. Then finally, we will go over my Archaludon ex list that I’ve been testing for some time now, and why I think it’s a strong contender for the Surging Sparks Standard format.
Let’s not dilly-dally anymore – let’s hop into what happened at the Sacramento Regionals.
Sacramento Regionals Recap
Firstly, it was an understatement how incredibly hyped I was for this new format and tournament. Unfortunately, due to family circumstances, I had to withdraw from playing, but overall I believe I made the right choice. The reasoning for the hype was that one of my pet decks, Lost Zone Box, finally received a tool that could be used to bring the Regidrago Vstar matchup to close to 50/50 – this tool being the big man himself, Pikachu ex. Besides Pikachu, most people weren’t concerned with most of the other newly released cards, but lo and behold – another card from Surging Sparks was going to become crowned Champion.
Meta-wise, I think most players summed up that Regidrago Vstar, Raging Bolt ex, and Charizard ex would round out the top three highest meta shares, while other decent meta shares would be split by Lugia Vstar, Gardevoir ex, Lost Zone Pikachu, and Terapagos variants. I made a personal prediction that Palkia variants would be on the outs, thanks to the new Lost Box hype, which ended out being mostly true.
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Great take on the list!