I expected Surging Sparks to be a boring set. Some mediocre new decks (Ceruledge ex), upgrades to Miraidon ex that wouldn't make it good (Magneton and Latias ex), and a couple Trainer cards that might help existing decks (Precious Trolley in Charizard). If you’ve looked at recent tournament results, you already know that I was wrong. For my defense, the results from Japanese City Leagues indicated that little would change: Raging Bolt was still the most popular deck, Regidrago was good, Gardevoir never dies, etc. But while our format is identical to Japan's, our metagame has differed for a while. Ffor example, Charizard ex is still a top two deck over there, while it has been struggling in the West; conversely, even though it was winning events left and right in Europe, Regidrago struggled to rise above tier 2 in Japan, although that's changing now. At the time of writing, Sacramento regionals has been the only major event in the Surging Sparks format, and yet here's a few things that happened:
- Miraidon ex won. In fact, the finals was a Miraidon mirror match. The deck feasted on Regidrago throughout top cut, putting a dent in Regidrago’s recent domination.