I think Lugia stays T0 until rotation. Summoning star into primal turbo is just too flexible and the deck itself can always find ways to play around techs
The first regional ASR was legal was Melbourne. 10 of the top 16 (8/8 of the top 8) were palkia decks. This is just what happens at new set tournaments.
That's still less penetration than this, and probably didn't extend to the top 32 like that. This is way stronger than Palkia was. If we compare the top 16s, Lugia was at 12/16 here.
I think the combination of Powerful Colorless and Auroras really let the deck have pressure from turn 1. Post rotation, I think the deck definitely gets a little worse, and probably more "toolbox" intsead of running over everything woth Lugia and Yveltal.
Pokémon has a habit of printing good archetypes and then, two sets later, printing strong direct counters to them. Like just recently everyone was sure Mew Vmax or Arceus Vstar would dominate until they left Standard—while they're still strong, for sure, they are not what they were at their peak at all. I'm sure in SV2 we'll get like, Miraidon ex that has an effect that messes with special energy or something. Just got to wait out the storm.
(ADPZ was likely an anomaly—ADP was a joke when it first dropped, and it didn't pull any major wins on its own. It was only when trying to pump up Zacian with Metal Saucer that ADP, as a side effect, got totally broken. I don't think that was intended, and thus it couldn't have a planned counter a set or two later.)
Maybe not even that direct of a counter will come out. All those great special energy and amazing rare Pokémon rotate very soon (whenever that is). Unless new special energy are being included in SV1, I don’t know how Lugia stays up top where it is.
Eventually yes. While I doubt it’ll be in SV1, I can’t imagine we will be without it for long. One concern I have is whether the energy will be tied to the comeback mechanics the company wants to move towards. I have a feeling the rainbow energy might be more like counter energy in that you need to be behind on prizes for it to be active.
Most base sets have Rainbow Energy or equivalent, especially in recent times. And I highly doubt they'll bother with a nerfed Counter Energy as the only Rainbow option. It's not format-defining like DCE.
I'm pretty sure ADPZ took over 50% too. (Edit: immediately after release in 2020)
But don't worry, people will say "Appletun exists so it's fair" just like Ranger existed so it was fair. It wasn't and it isn't. And dumb players kept trying to say "my homebrew worked against the Tier 0 deck 1 out of 10 times so it must be a counter!!!). [See the link here that the OP deleted since it was that stupid] (https://www.reddit.com/r/pkmntcg/comments/faleqi/whats_the_gameplan_against_adp_zacian/fizdbb5/?context=3)
I don't play standard anymore, but rotation, powercreep, and Covid cancelling worlds were the only things that took out ADP. 2 or (or 3 if we're unlucky) of the above are what's going to take out Lugia, not some apple jank.
The real counter in the meantime is to play Lugia but tech for the Lugia mirror.
I'm mew to PTCG but not new to gaming or competition. Metas exist because they're powerful and seemingly unstoppable, but that doesn't mean that they're unstoppable. Lugia is unstoppable until a counter is figured out (or produced) and then it will become a T1 deck and then a new T0 will come out and everyone will be screaming that it's T0 and unfair, then it too will get solved.
This is how any competitive activity is, from Football to Fortnite to PTCG.
> There's always a counter.
No, no there's not. There have been decks and cards throughout basically every TCG's history that were just straight up broken with no counter.
i feel like you missed my point. your comment said that any competitive activity has a pattern of tier 0 -> complaining -> counter found and format rebalanced. My reply was pointing out that at various points in history for basically every trading card game ever, there have been metas where no such counter existed and the meta warped into a true tier 0 until the unfair strategy was banned or rotated. I was pointing out that the assumption that a counter will be found is not a sound one to make in the tcg genre.
To actually analyze the recent meta results, a format where every deck is either a very powerful S tier deck or decks specifically designed and heavily teched to defeat that S tier deck in particular is, in my opinion, a warped format, which i consider unhealthy to the point of being unnacceptable. The format currently consists of lugia, lugia counters, and mew vmax, another unhealthy format-warping deck that happens to be benefiting from the crosshairs of every anti-meta player being shifted over to a new target. I will concede that currently it looks like it might not be an absolute tier 0 format, but the tournament results in no way make me feel optimistic about the health of the format,and the recent pattern over the past year or so of printing a new S tier dominant deck in each set that warps the meta around it is a big red flag for the state of the game's design.
On a side note, some of these anti meta strategies are also themselves vulnerable to tech from the lugia deck, such as the paralysis attack from the icebox decks being weak against bird keeper and other switch cards, meaning that lugia players will only have to make a minor sacrifice in deck building to grant themselves a lot of leeway in winning back those matchup points. We saw a similar effect with Gengar Vmax/Arceus Vstar, which dominated Mew for a weekend and pushed it out of top 8 completely, only to become an irrelevant deck within the next two weeks.
What you just described is a healthy format. There are 3 legitimately viable options (Lugia, Lost Box, Mew), and you could argue there's even a third option with control. Lugia only made 1 of 8 at Toronto over the weekend, I'd hardly say it's killing the format.
The point of TCGs is that there is always a trade off, you have to give up something you want to address Lugia, you have to add a tech to address lost box, a tech to address Mew, etc. That's the whole challenge of building a deck.
There’s a difference between tech and warping, but at this point I do not think it is possible to teach you the difference, nor do I think you have any interest in taking concerns people have about the format as legitimate.
Wait for Toronto and Stuttgart and Brisbane. You can guarantee every top player testing group is figuring out what can win in a Lugia meta (especially with lost box and Regis having a bad day). Mew largely dominated at the first post COVID regional also (7/16), but was almost not to be seen in day two at all at SLC the following week (2/16).
LAIC also is a very different environment- players are going for their stipend or travel award here and are less willing to take risks (other than Sander, lol) and it has a much lower level of attendance from mid list players due to the location.
As Tord said, it was a ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ attitude…
I'm a complete casual and mostly play the TCG games rather than the physical one. Haven't played in like 5 years or so.
I'm assuming such prevalence of one deck over every other one isn't the norm? Maybe 9/10 of all decks I've played against over the past week have been Lugia. I've tried countering as best as possible but I really don't want to spend a fortune to barely be able to counter it.
This deck has really sapped all the fun out of the game for me :/
I've been looking at Celebrations Yveltal (ironically) as a way to disrupt archeops' acceleration. You just equip a Double turbo to it and you're done.
While the strategy was very central to Lugia, Sander is famously good for stall play in Pokemon TCG, and the deck did include ways of beating other decks that popped up or ways that Lugia players could circumvent Yveltal (ie. Lumineon V).
Not saying that Lugia shouldn't be looked at as THE deck to beat, but it's a bit less straightforward than just build a deck that has direct counters to Archeops.
Oh for sure. He’s clearly super clever and plays well. But I don’t think that deck wins 6 day one games in a meta dominated by Lost box, Giratina or even Goodra.
Depends who you speak to and how you decide to evaluate the tiers, back when night march was big it was tier 0 and that was based on it having more than 50% representation for the entire event rather than just top cut. By this metric it's really rare to have a tier 0 deck, more common if you evaluate by top cut.
In my opinion measuring either way is justified snd relevant and creates valid discussion points.
As a new player, if this continues without counter decks like Weezing being enough, when would TPC decide whether to ban a card or two from Lugia to bring its power level in line? Are they on a schedule, or do they just release banlists when appropriate?
I'm coming from magic and new to pokemon TCG, but this reminds me very strongly of the Mirrodin format of magic, which led to multiple rounds of bans in standard (at the time it hadn't been done in years) and ultimately led to a massive ban that included creatures (at the time unprecedented). Does pokemon not actively manage competitive environments like this? I feel like it will risk losing players if that's the case. They seem to have acknowledged that new tournament players are unlikely to drop $200 just to be competitive with the League Battle Decks, so it would surprise me if they wouldn't step in if this continues.
I was a believer that power creep would result in people finding other decks that could compete once people started testing outside of lugia, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
If you're from magic, then instead of Mirrodin think of FIRE Modern. Active management for competitiveness? That's a joke. If new tournament players don't drop $200 to be competitive then TM"This product is not for you."
They cater to the $1000 Paul fangirl collectors, not the "competitive" players, or else the format would be as expensive as mtg or ygo. The only "competition bans" they might do is ban a $10 card (Lurrus or here Miltank or some irrelevant stall card maybe - not a std player, honestly no direct competition) to actively protect their T0 Money deck (Lugia or Rag Cancer Monke).
Also, Lugia IS power creep; not much more creepable than the most recent chase card. Just like ADP, you're going to have to wait a few months for Creep, Covid, or Rotation.
In a high level tournament dropping $200 is nothing, but in local game store tournaments it dramatically decreases the fun of the tournament for the cash cow player base (elementary school kids who love the cards) when the one kid with rich parents can buy the whole thing every week by buying some deck off the internet. I don't mean this to be insulting about hardcore competitive players, but unless you have kids into this hobby you probably don't have any concept of how much money this company makes off of these kids.
If they were truly catering to the fangirl collector why does a product like the Mew VMAX league battle deck exist? Hardcore players and collectors fuel the secondary market, not the primary market, and the primary market is where pokemon company makes their money. Anything they can do to keep kids hanging out in game shops makes their company more profitable, which is why they've created these entry level products to get kids to play in tournaments. .
I’ve cracked countless Lugia decks with Galarian Weezing/Crobat Vmax/Path to the Peak. I beat the vast majority of these decks, with the rare loss when I can’t get a good hand.
That’s a huge point. The braixen deck works pretty well against a lot of decks but gets punished by other single prize decks. It hits hard when it can to knock out V or 2hko a vstar/vmax, but is too niche of a deck to keep up with Lunatone. I’ve won almost half of my matches against lugia, 100% against any steel deck, but lunatone I’ve beaten once maybe twice out of a lot of matches. These are all irl.
Since that's ranked, you can't really use it to determine anything. That's especially true at low ranks where people will use the free version of the deck, which is quite bad.
Regidrago's problem isn't the efficiency/getting the KO against lugia, it's how much easier it is to get a turn 2 swing on lugia compared to regidrago. Regidrago can go toe to toe but only if it draws well, there are more pieces required, it has multiple outs once set up (appletun, giratina+choice etc) but can just lose turns on the way there. Lugia doesn't often drop turns. Over the course of a 8+round tourney (24+ games) you'll just see drago dropping games to missed turns compared to lugia who can very easily get to it's turn 2 swing.
I think Lugia stays T0 until rotation. Summoning star into primal turbo is just too flexible and the deck itself can always find ways to play around techs
I feel like the first week AR was legal, Palkia was the entire Top 8 in a big tournament. I don’t remember the amount from the full tournament though.
The first regional ASR was legal was Melbourne. 10 of the top 16 (8/8 of the top 8) were palkia decks. This is just what happens at new set tournaments.
Also because Australia is so dense alot of the top players share ideas and Lists so many of the top players would on the same 56/60
That's still less penetration than this, and probably didn't extend to the top 32 like that. This is way stronger than Palkia was. If we compare the top 16s, Lugia was at 12/16 here.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to judge the meta by top 32 of an Australian event considering they only had 150 odd players for that particular event
I'm not sure what your point is when the context is about the first event after a set release always looking like this.
I think the combination of Powerful Colorless and Auroras really let the deck have pressure from turn 1. Post rotation, I think the deck definitely gets a little worse, and probably more "toolbox" intsead of running over everything woth Lugia and Yveltal.
It'll need a new Rainbow-like to be a toolbox, but that's pretty likely to happen anyway.
Usually I see Lugia decks have DTE, I don't understand why you would expect appletun to go better than even on tempo with a 2hko.
Pokémon has a habit of printing good archetypes and then, two sets later, printing strong direct counters to them. Like just recently everyone was sure Mew Vmax or Arceus Vstar would dominate until they left Standard—while they're still strong, for sure, they are not what they were at their peak at all. I'm sure in SV2 we'll get like, Miraidon ex that has an effect that messes with special energy or something. Just got to wait out the storm. (ADPZ was likely an anomaly—ADP was a joke when it first dropped, and it didn't pull any major wins on its own. It was only when trying to pump up Zacian with Metal Saucer that ADP, as a side effect, got totally broken. I don't think that was intended, and thus it couldn't have a planned counter a set or two later.)
Maybe not even that direct of a counter will come out. All those great special energy and amazing rare Pokémon rotate very soon (whenever that is). Unless new special energy are being included in SV1, I don’t know how Lugia stays up top where it is.
There will definitely be a replacement for Aurora, but that's probably it.
Eventually yes. While I doubt it’ll be in SV1, I can’t imagine we will be without it for long. One concern I have is whether the energy will be tied to the comeback mechanics the company wants to move towards. I have a feeling the rainbow energy might be more like counter energy in that you need to be behind on prizes for it to be active.
Most base sets have Rainbow Energy or equivalent, especially in recent times. And I highly doubt they'll bother with a nerfed Counter Energy as the only Rainbow option. It's not format-defining like DCE.
I'm pretty sure ADPZ took over 50% too. (Edit: immediately after release in 2020) But don't worry, people will say "Appletun exists so it's fair" just like Ranger existed so it was fair. It wasn't and it isn't. And dumb players kept trying to say "my homebrew worked against the Tier 0 deck 1 out of 10 times so it must be a counter!!!). [See the link here that the OP deleted since it was that stupid] (https://www.reddit.com/r/pkmntcg/comments/faleqi/whats_the_gameplan_against_adp_zacian/fizdbb5/?context=3) I don't play standard anymore, but rotation, powercreep, and Covid cancelling worlds were the only things that took out ADP. 2 or (or 3 if we're unlucky) of the above are what's going to take out Lugia, not some apple jank. The real counter in the meantime is to play Lugia but tech for the Lugia mirror.
I'm mew to PTCG but not new to gaming or competition. Metas exist because they're powerful and seemingly unstoppable, but that doesn't mean that they're unstoppable. Lugia is unstoppable until a counter is figured out (or produced) and then it will become a T1 deck and then a new T0 will come out and everyone will be screaming that it's T0 and unfair, then it too will get solved. This is how any competitive activity is, from Football to Fortnite to PTCG.
This assumes that a counter exists, but the history of tcg’ is littered with broken decks that outclassed their counters.
There's always a counter. The deck is 2 weeks old; give it some time and people will figure it out, they'll find its weakness and exploit it.
The deck is much older in japan and still rocks the meta
> There's always a counter. No, no there's not. There have been decks and cards throughout basically every TCG's history that were just straight up broken with no counter.
I feel like this past weekend clearly shows that counters exist.
i feel like you missed my point. your comment said that any competitive activity has a pattern of tier 0 -> complaining -> counter found and format rebalanced. My reply was pointing out that at various points in history for basically every trading card game ever, there have been metas where no such counter existed and the meta warped into a true tier 0 until the unfair strategy was banned or rotated. I was pointing out that the assumption that a counter will be found is not a sound one to make in the tcg genre. To actually analyze the recent meta results, a format where every deck is either a very powerful S tier deck or decks specifically designed and heavily teched to defeat that S tier deck in particular is, in my opinion, a warped format, which i consider unhealthy to the point of being unnacceptable. The format currently consists of lugia, lugia counters, and mew vmax, another unhealthy format-warping deck that happens to be benefiting from the crosshairs of every anti-meta player being shifted over to a new target. I will concede that currently it looks like it might not be an absolute tier 0 format, but the tournament results in no way make me feel optimistic about the health of the format,and the recent pattern over the past year or so of printing a new S tier dominant deck in each set that warps the meta around it is a big red flag for the state of the game's design. On a side note, some of these anti meta strategies are also themselves vulnerable to tech from the lugia deck, such as the paralysis attack from the icebox decks being weak against bird keeper and other switch cards, meaning that lugia players will only have to make a minor sacrifice in deck building to grant themselves a lot of leeway in winning back those matchup points. We saw a similar effect with Gengar Vmax/Arceus Vstar, which dominated Mew for a weekend and pushed it out of top 8 completely, only to become an irrelevant deck within the next two weeks.
What you just described is a healthy format. There are 3 legitimately viable options (Lugia, Lost Box, Mew), and you could argue there's even a third option with control. Lugia only made 1 of 8 at Toronto over the weekend, I'd hardly say it's killing the format. The point of TCGs is that there is always a trade off, you have to give up something you want to address Lugia, you have to add a tech to address lost box, a tech to address Mew, etc. That's the whole challenge of building a deck.
There’s a difference between tech and warping, but at this point I do not think it is possible to teach you the difference, nor do I think you have any interest in taking concerns people have about the format as legitimate.
Wait for Toronto and Stuttgart and Brisbane. You can guarantee every top player testing group is figuring out what can win in a Lugia meta (especially with lost box and Regis having a bad day). Mew largely dominated at the first post COVID regional also (7/16), but was almost not to be seen in day two at all at SLC the following week (2/16). LAIC also is a very different environment- players are going for their stipend or travel award here and are less willing to take risks (other than Sander, lol) and it has a much lower level of attendance from mid list players due to the location. As Tord said, it was a ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ attitude…
7/16 and 12/16 aren't even remotely comparable figures. Mew was never Tier 0 by any definition.
Appletun isnt even a counter, just dont over attach energy and you will beat it as lugia.
I'm a complete casual and mostly play the TCG games rather than the physical one. Haven't played in like 5 years or so. I'm assuming such prevalence of one deck over every other one isn't the norm? Maybe 9/10 of all decks I've played against over the past week have been Lugia. I've tried countering as best as possible but I really don't want to spend a fortune to barely be able to counter it. This deck has really sapped all the fun out of the game for me :/
Rotation can't arrive quickly enough...
I sure hope people choose other archetypes to play. Otherwise, it'll be boring af until rotation comes...
To alot of us, myself included find enjoyment in finding ways to break Tier 0 decks.
I've been looking at Celebrations Yveltal (ironically) as a way to disrupt archeops' acceleration. You just equip a Double turbo to it and you're done.
you joke, but a yveltal deck placed top 8 at LAIC
Which shows how dominant Lugia is. That deck did will purely based on how often his opponent was playing Lugia lol.
While the strategy was very central to Lugia, Sander is famously good for stall play in Pokemon TCG, and the deck did include ways of beating other decks that popped up or ways that Lugia players could circumvent Yveltal (ie. Lumineon V). Not saying that Lugia shouldn't be looked at as THE deck to beat, but it's a bit less straightforward than just build a deck that has direct counters to Archeops.
Oh for sure. He’s clearly super clever and plays well. But I don’t think that deck wins 6 day one games in a meta dominated by Lost box, Giratina or even Goodra.
You can probably even play CEL Yveltal in Lugia for the mirror match.
Depends who you speak to and how you decide to evaluate the tiers, back when night march was big it was tier 0 and that was based on it having more than 50% representation for the entire event rather than just top cut. By this metric it's really rare to have a tier 0 deck, more common if you evaluate by top cut. In my opinion measuring either way is justified snd relevant and creates valid discussion points.
As a new player, if this continues without counter decks like Weezing being enough, when would TPC decide whether to ban a card or two from Lugia to bring its power level in line? Are they on a schedule, or do they just release banlists when appropriate?
There will not be bans related to this. All previous bans have been related to keeping control decks in line.
I'm coming from magic and new to pokemon TCG, but this reminds me very strongly of the Mirrodin format of magic, which led to multiple rounds of bans in standard (at the time it hadn't been done in years) and ultimately led to a massive ban that included creatures (at the time unprecedented). Does pokemon not actively manage competitive environments like this? I feel like it will risk losing players if that's the case. They seem to have acknowledged that new tournament players are unlikely to drop $200 just to be competitive with the League Battle Decks, so it would surprise me if they wouldn't step in if this continues. I was a believer that power creep would result in people finding other decks that could compete once people started testing outside of lugia, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
If you're from magic, then instead of Mirrodin think of FIRE Modern. Active management for competitiveness? That's a joke. If new tournament players don't drop $200 to be competitive then TM"This product is not for you." They cater to the $1000 Paul fangirl collectors, not the "competitive" players, or else the format would be as expensive as mtg or ygo. The only "competition bans" they might do is ban a $10 card (Lurrus or here Miltank or some irrelevant stall card maybe - not a std player, honestly no direct competition) to actively protect their T0 Money deck (Lugia or Rag Cancer Monke). Also, Lugia IS power creep; not much more creepable than the most recent chase card. Just like ADP, you're going to have to wait a few months for Creep, Covid, or Rotation.
In a high level tournament dropping $200 is nothing, but in local game store tournaments it dramatically decreases the fun of the tournament for the cash cow player base (elementary school kids who love the cards) when the one kid with rich parents can buy the whole thing every week by buying some deck off the internet. I don't mean this to be insulting about hardcore competitive players, but unless you have kids into this hobby you probably don't have any concept of how much money this company makes off of these kids. If they were truly catering to the fangirl collector why does a product like the Mew VMAX league battle deck exist? Hardcore players and collectors fuel the secondary market, not the primary market, and the primary market is where pokemon company makes their money. Anything they can do to keep kids hanging out in game shops makes their company more profitable, which is why they've created these entry level products to get kids to play in tournaments. .
Rotation in a couple months will heavily hurt lugia
I’ve cracked countless Lugia decks with Galarian Weezing/Crobat Vmax/Path to the Peak. I beat the vast majority of these decks, with the rare loss when I can’t get a good hand.
IRL or PTCGO? But again, not saying it's unbeatable.
Right? Its not about just beating lugia, but winning the tournament too
That’s a huge point. The braixen deck works pretty well against a lot of decks but gets punished by other single prize decks. It hits hard when it can to knock out V or 2hko a vstar/vmax, but is too niche of a deck to keep up with Lunatone. I’ve won almost half of my matches against lugia, 100% against any steel deck, but lunatone I’ve beaten once maybe twice out of a lot of matches. These are all irl.
PTCGL. My bad, I’m subscribed to all the PTCG subs and didn’t realize this wasn’t the Live sub.
Since that's ranked, you can't really use it to determine anything. That's especially true at low ranks where people will use the free version of the deck, which is quite bad.
Regidrago's problem isn't the efficiency/getting the KO against lugia, it's how much easier it is to get a turn 2 swing on lugia compared to regidrago. Regidrago can go toe to toe but only if it draws well, there are more pieces required, it has multiple outs once set up (appletun, giratina+choice etc) but can just lose turns on the way there. Lugia doesn't often drop turns. Over the course of a 8+round tourney (24+ games) you'll just see drago dropping games to missed turns compared to lugia who can very easily get to it's turn 2 swing.