Deck Power Rankings: 2022 Indianapolis Regionals/Santa Catarina Regionals/Bilbao SPE

It's been a while since we've published our typical PokéStats Deck Power Rankings, but it's never too late to revive tradition! For those unfamiliar with our methodology for these rankings, we poll a group of top players on what they personally consider the top 10 decks heading into the next major event weekend. A #1 ranking earns a deck 10 points, a #2 ranking is worth 9 points, and so on down to the #10 deck earning 1 point. We then tally up the cumulative rankings to present a final power ranking of archetypes for the next major event. 

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. 

Players surveyed: Joe Bernard, Isaiah Bradner, Henry Brand, Jesper Eriksen, Stéphane Ivanoff, Phinn Lynch, João Pedro Medeiros, Luke Morsa, Frank Percic, Xander Pero, Rahul Reddy, Bruno Guerra Sermann, Gabriel Smart, Tate Whitesell

Further Analysis: Dallas Regionals Deck Power Rankings

We've just published our Deck Power Rankings for this weekend's Dallas Regionals; you can view them here. Just as we do before every major event, we ask our panel of some of the game's top players to rank what they each believe are the top 10 best decks heading into the tournament, and sum up those individual rankings to create the final product.

I thought I'd add some additional commentary to the current rankings, since Dallas is going to be the largest Expanded tournament of all time and there are several interesting decks present (and not present) in the rankings.

Night March still on top

Praise Joltik!

Night March was, once again, by far the most-praised deck by the panel. Of the 13 panel members, only one listed Night March below second place on their personal rankings. (That one player listed it fifth.) All these top-two placements led to 143 total points for Night March, beating out the second-ranked deck by over 40 points.

This is interesting because Night March was perceived to be a very powerful force in the metagame that many players would seek to counter in Dallas. After watching Night March light up the last Expanded event, San Jose Regionals, players began looking at not just teching Karen or Oricorio into their decks, but actually switching to decks with an inherently good Night March matchup, such as Seismitoad-EX/Giratina-EX. (Interestingly, the attributes that make these lock decks good against Night March, at least in theory, also make them good against the other powerhouse of the format, Zoroark-GX, by denying Special Energy.) However, it seems that despite this trend, the experienced players on the panel felt that Night March was still far and away the strongest pick, able to defeat its counters well enough to continue dominating in Dallas.

Looking at our sample of League Cups between San Jose and Dallas, we can see that Night March saw comparatively little success at the local level:

It's still good, sure, but not dominant like it tends to be at Regionals. This supports the idea that the deck requires a very high skill level to play well, which is why we see players like Michael Pramawat and Azul Garcia Griego succeeding with it at Regionals, but less-notable players don't do as well with it.

Therefore, here's my advice: expect Night March to once again be a powerful force in the Dallas metagame, but don't necessarily expect to play against it that much if you're going. The deck is deadly in the hands of great players, but its low success at the League Cup level indicates that less-accomplished players will have a tough time beating the deck's many counters.

Xurkitree-GX could shock the competition
if it's included in Wailord-EX decks
in Dallas...

Wailord and co.
Several members of the panel didn't just list "Wailord" in their rankings; they specified "Wailord/Xurkitree." Xurkitree-GX is immune to attacks from Pokemon with Special Energy attached, so it clearly has a lot of potential in Expanded where the top two decks from San Jose (Night March and Lonzoroark) play only 4 DCE, and no other Energy. Both those decks run Hex Maniac, which can negate the Ability for the single turn needed to OHKO Xurkitree, but if you can chain Xurkitree and attempt to run your opponent out of Hex by milling VS Seekers or letting them burn VS Seekers on other Supporters, you can set up a scenario where the 4-DCE-deck player literally cannot win. (If they Prize Hex Maniac, of course, you also win easily.)

Wailord received a fair amount of love from the panel and despite the high cost of the optimal list (with Tropical Beach), you should expect to see it - and Xurkitree-GX - in Dallas.

Queen Bee's back.

Old friends
Primal Groudon-EX and Vespiquen were two decks not included in the panel's San Jose deck rankings, but they each took 24 points in the Dallas rankings. Both are perceived to have even to favorable matchups against Night March and Zoroark variants. You might want to test against Vespiquen since it is an inherently strong deck and a good Vespiquen player like Rahul Reddy could take down the event with it, but keep in mind that it can be countered in the same ways as Night March (Karen and Oricorio). Primal Groudon is probably the most expensive competitive deck in the game due to needing Tropical Beach, but someone with access to those Beaches may decide to play it, so at least know how to navigate the matchup on the off chance you hit it.


More notes

• The top five decks in these rankings all use Zoroark-GX. The card is incredibly centralizing - we can debate whether that's a good or bad thing, but ultimately Zoroark-GX has had a massive impact on the game. 
• Turbo Darkrai wasn't really present in San Jose but has always been a very strong deck with its sheer consistency and damage output. The Charizard Lounge has a free article up on the latest build of the deck and it wouldn't be surprising to see it do well in Dallas. 
• Shock Lock, the Sam Chen/Ross Cawthon/Mike Fouchet contraption with Stoutland and Raichu, is still in the rankings with 4 points... biding its time... 

Stay tuned to PokeStats for full coverage of Dallas Regionals this weekend. We're going to be doing some different things than what we've done before while covering events and it looks like it will be really cool. 

Fort Wayne Regionals Deck Power Rankings

Welcome to the debut of PokeStats's new Deck Power Rankings! Last season, I ranked decks based on a set of algorithms I created that accounted for previous meta presence, finishes, and upcoming cards/expected techs. However, these formulas ultimately fell short of the accuracy I hoped to achieve, so for this new season, I'm trying something different. My new system is similar to the way ESPN does their Power Rankings of sports teams (most notably the NFL): prior to every weekend's (or major tournament, in Pokemon's case), dozens of NFL experts are asked to rank the teams from best to worst. Point values are assigned to each team in each set of rankings, and the points are averaged out to create the final rankings.

My system works in a similar way. For these first rankings, a fairly small sample of top players was interviewed, although I plan to increase this number for future rankings. I simply asked each player to list their top 10 decks for Fort Wayne Regionals, gave the #1 decks 10 points, #2 decks 9 points, and so on, and then simply added the points together.

So without further ado, here are PokeStats's first Deck Power Rankings of the new season - hopefully an accurate representation of what decks should be expected at Fort Wayne Regionals!

The first thing that stood out to me was, of course, the tie for first place! Some players considered Trevenant the best deck and others claimed it's Darkrai, but both decks (as well as Night March) were always highly rated. (Night March was almost always behind the other two.) However, Trevenant never fell outside the top 3 in any individual player's rankings, while at least one player had Darkrai outside their top 3.

Darkrai, Trev, and Night March make up a clear trio of top decks, with Night March having over twice as many points as the 4th-ranked deck, Espeon-GX/Garbodor. One of the stories to watch in Fort Wayne is how well Garbodor decks translate to Expanded. Expanded is an Item-heavy format and it will be interesting to see decks adapt. The Charizard Lounge's Andrew Wambolt also pointed out that Espeon/Garb and Drampa/Garb will bring Garbotoxin back into Expanded, where it's been largely unseen at recent events. This could be problematic for some decks.

Slightly behind Espeon-GX comes a trio of heavy-hitting decks: Volcanion, Gardevoir-GX, and M Rayquaza-EX. The first and third of those have proved their worth in Expanded before; Gardevoir is the newbie, but there seems no reason why its success in Standard cannot translate over to Expanded.

Primal Groudon sees a slight decrease in favorability with the popularity of Turbo Dark (a deck that surprisingly has a decent Groudon matchup according to many players) and Gardevoir-GX, which can one-shot Primal Groudon with relative ease if it can get around Focus Sash.

Seismitoad decks are probably going to be played in a variety of ways; the most popular with the players I interviewed was Toad/Bats, but Garbodor, Seviper/Lasers, and Giratina-EX all seem to be worthy partners as well. Toad is a bastion of the Expanded format and I'm fairly certain it will crack the top 32 at Fort Wayne, and maybe go further.

Rounding out the Top 10 we have Raikou/Eels, a deck which Chris Schemanske profiled on SixPrizes recently and which gains some new tricks such as Eelektross BSH. The deck only cracked the top 32 three times last season, but every time it did so, it performed well, with Andrew Mahone piloting it to 18th place and Michael Slutsky and Sam Chen both taking it into the Top 8. The ban of Archeops is extremely beneficial for Eels decks, and the fact that fewer decks will likely be playing Maxie's engines is another plus. Eels also tends to go favorable against Trevenant (using Rough Seas) and Night March (using Karen and keeping up in the Prize trade).

The decks outside the Top 10 are a mixture of old Expanded archetypes (like Blastoise) trying to revive themselves with new cards; and new Standard decks (like Golisopod-GX) translated into Expanded. There are some decks, like Yveltal-EX or Greninja, that saw Expanded success last year; it remains to be seen whether they will succeed at Fort Wayne, but no player I interviewed thought particularly highly of either deck, with a few exceptions who were fans of Yveltal. Also note that Accelgor is largely considered dead in Expanded with the rise of Acerola and Guzma - however, one player I interviewed ranked the deck quite highly, hence its 7 points above.

One thing is certain: there is a very clear "big three" (and to some degree merely a "big two") to watch out for at Fort Wayne. Your deck either needs to be Trevenant, Darkrai, or Night March, or it needs to be able to beat those decks. There are plenty more viable options, and Expanded may well be on its way to being an enjoyable format because of them, but we'll have to wait until the tournament's conclusion to see where we really are. PokeStats will be covering all the action from the year's first Regional live on Twitter, so stay tuned!

Thanks to the following players for contributing to these rankings: Alex Hill, Brad Curcio, Christopher Schemanske, Connor Finton, Jose Marrero, Mike Fouchet, Peter Kica, Rahul Reddy, Ryan Sabelhaus, and Zach Lesage.