In this case, our next major event is actually three in one, with Indianapolis Regionals (USA), Santa Catarina Regionals (Brazil), and the Bilbao Special Event (Spain) taking place on May 7-8. We asked a group of American, European, and Latin American players (plus one Australian world champion for good measure) for their rankings to get a global analysis of the metagame. Here are the results!
Analysis
✎ Tate Whitesell / @twhitesell42
- The only decks listed by all 14 players surveyed were Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX, Mew VMAX, Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon, Whimsicott VSTAR, and Malamar. All five of these archetypes have established champion-contender results in this format, with the first three winning at least one major event so far this season, and the latter two reaching second place at EUIC and Liverpool Regionals, respectively. These should be considered to make up the central metagame for the current format, and testing should center around these decks, while any rogue consideration should be able to beat at least a few of these decks.
- A few decks were listed by only a few players but have comparatively high point totals, indicating some players were particularly high on these decks relative to others. Arceus VSTAR/Bibarel and Arceus VSTAR/Beedrill fall into this category.
- Support for Duraludon VMAX has been rising recently as the archetype has been decreasingly respected since Riley Hulbert's Full Grip Games $2k win at the beginning of the format. Nine of the 14 players surveyed included the deck in their rankings, although no one ranked it higher than #4 and most players had it in the bottom half of their top 10.
- The lowest any player ranked Mew VMAX was #7, but every player besides that one ranked it in their top 3. The lowest any player ranked Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX was #3. Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon was a consensus top-3 deck but was ranked #5, #6, and #8 by three players.
- Some surprising entries in the overall top 10 are Sylveon VMAX (#9, coming off Thai Nguyen's Top 8 performance at EUIC) and Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX (#10). Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX has had few significant results in this format, but five of the 14 players surveyed included it in their top 10. The deck is theoretically in a stronger position in this more developed metagame, as it takes favorable matchups against Arceus VSTAR variants and Whimsicott VSTAR while being able to easily tech to improve matchups against the other top-five archetypes.
- Overall, this is a centralized metagame-- the top three decks are very close to each other, but significantly ahead of the rest of the field. However, there are other decks that have the capability to do well and, as you can see from the bottom of these rankings, there is still some room to innovate rogue decks in this format.
