Lugia's Last Ride
a look at Lugia VSTAR for Vancouver!
Hello Schemanske’s Corner readers! My name is Josh Frink and today I am going to be doing something that a year ago I would be too embarrassed to do. For those of you who have known me for a long time, you know that I have spent a large portion of my time in the Pokemon Community hating on one specific archetype, building a following off of berating it and those who chose to pilot it. That archetype, of course, is Lugia VSTAR. Now Lugia VSTAR started from a place of glory, being arguably the strongest deck ever printed on release, but this quickly changed when rotation stripped away many of the cards that made the deck so dominant. Since then Lugia has struggled to find an identity in each metagame, bouncing from Single Strike, to Colorless and finally landing on the iteration that exists today: Legacy Energy Lugia VSTAR. Despite the rocky road, we now find ourselves approaching the final North American major that will see Lugia VSTAR legal for play, and honestly, the meta is shaping up to be incredible for it.
Now Lugia VSTAR does not come without its fair share of risks. The deck has a tendency to brick, the large number of energy can create clunky hands at any stage of the game and a reliance on getting 2 Archeops in the discard pile early can allow games to end before they even start. These factors in tandem with the plethora of Lugia counters that exist in the meta game have made many a tournament into a hostile environment for our favorite lord of the seas. So what makes Vancouver different? Well, first and foremost, many of its worse matchups had fairly lackluster performances at the recent European International Championships. Gardevoir failed to convert into top cut despite a plethora of strong players choosing to pilot the deck and more importantly Miraidon had a fairly poor showing at EUIC, failing to have a single instance in the top 16. Now this does not inherently mean that these matchups will cease to exist, on the contrary Miraidon and Gardevoir both remain strong decks in the format, but the more we see top players gravitate away from these archetypes, the more opportunity Lugia will have to shine.
Lugia VSTAR itself also had a fairly difficult event over in London, with only a single Lugia VSTAR player managing to finish within the Top 64. This shouldn’t instill very much confidence in a would be Lugia VSTAR player, but hear me out. If people are assuming that Lugia is a weak play, many of them will also choose to cut their answers to the deck, expecting it to see very small amounts of representation. With less Spiritomb in Gardevoir, less Temple in Dragapult and fewer top players choosing to pilot Miraidon, Lugia VSTAR seems primed for a comeback.
Many of the decks that performed well at EUIC are also strong matchups for Lugia overall, or at least they can be if the deck is built to deal with them. So on that note, let's take a look at the list.
