Baltimore Meta Forecast and Deck Selection
Top 6 decks to consider and practice against
The Baltimore regional championship is coming up and it will be played in the same exact format as worlds - and for the first time we are using the world's Swiss tournament structure as well. So this is as close as it gets to a rerun of worlds, just with a mixed population of all skill levels and competitive intent (and tournament results to inform deck choice and deck lists).
World’s Results
Lets begin with what happened at worlds. Day 1 we saw Regidrago lead in popularity by a mile which should not have been a surprise to many. I think we’ll see this concentration of Regidrago drop down to about 14-18% at Baltimore.
Charizard and Raging Bolt will likely battle for the number 2 and 3 spots, while Lugia and Ancient box should fill out spots 4 and 5. In addition, I expect miraidon and Roaring Moon to both uptick in play, likely roaring moon more since it got 2nd place and i personally believe its a better deck than miraidon. Gardevoir is still viable, but in a massive event of mixed skill levels I think Gardevoir will be fighting to make the top 6 graphic. Because of these predictions - you should be prepared to play against these 6 decks:
Regidrago
Charizard Pidgeot (likely with Dusclops/Dusknoir)
Raging Bolt
Lugia
Ancient Box
Roaring Moon
If you have the time and energy to prepare matchups against 4 more decks, I would suggest spending time thinking about these matchups:
Snorlax
Iron Thorns
Gardevoir
Miraidon
Deck Selection
I have 3 rules of deck selection. Your pool of decks to choose from should check all 3 of these boxes:
Conceptualization
Functionality
Feasability
Conceptualization: Do you understand your matchups against the top 6 decks I mentioned? Do you understand the intrinsic functioning of your deck such as prize mapping, ideal turn 1 boards, prize checking, and common ways opponents can play around your strategy?
Functionality: Your deck works consistently and reliably. If you need to jam so many techs into your deck to keep it alive in the meta or your strategy is not focused, then consistency will suffer.
Feasibility: how good is it into the perceived metagame? This is the least important since metagaming for day 1 of a 2500+ person event is a crapshoot. Still, you would like to have some favored matchups, some even matchups, and a minimal amount of unfavored matchups against the top 6 decks i listed.
If you cant check the box on all 3 of these for a deck, then that deck is probably not the play for you. Its better to play a deck which you understand the concepts for that is slightly worse into the perceived meta, then a deck with a better matchup spread which you’re not confident in piloting.
Note: for juniors and seniors you can spike a high placement just by knowing your deck better than the rest of the field, keeping it high consistency, and having unique gameplans into the top matchups. Example: Edison C placed 2nd at NAIC and 7th at worlds with Gholdengo, an objectively lower tiered deck. Masters can do this as well but its typically done with very high skill ceiling decks like charizard and gardevoir.
Regidrago - Why or Why not?
Regidrago is the best deck in the format. It has virtually zero awful matchups. Sure Raging Bolt is statistically unfavored, stall is very volatile depending on your opening starter, prize cards and what they can mill with fortune sisters and eri, but Regidrago truly has a chance against anything. The reason to NOT play regidrago is if you’re unconfident in the mirror match. I’d expect to play against 2 drago over 9 rounds - if you aren’t able to consistently beat the mirror in practice then this might mean you want to move to a deck like Raging Bolt which will give you an inherent advantage vs Drago, the best deck.
Raging Bolt - Why or Why not?
Good matchup against the best deck? Check. Lets look at the next few decks… Zard, Lugia, Ancient Box… these are all tough for Bolt. The zard matchup becomes better if you play Spiritomb and Judge as well as Spiritomb helping against Lugia. The Ancient Box matchup becomes better if you play Charms and Lost Vacuum (to send a capsule to the lost zone or remove pokestop in combination with iono or judge). The good thing is that Bolt is reliably able to fire attacks off and if the opponent falters during the opening turns you have a shot at running away with the game against almost anything. If you want to have a lot of choices and impactful decision making, bolt might not be the best for you. But if you want your deck’s strength to carry you a bit and take a dice roll into some matchups, this is your deck.
Charizard - Why or Why not?
I am personally very tempted to play zard to this event. Although the drago matchup is bad, Im confident I could win if my opponent doesn’t play perfectly or has some bad luck. The rest of the meta looks like a farm for zard: Bolt, Moon, Miraidon, and Ancient Box are all good matchups with Lugia being somewhere in the middle thanks to dusclops and dusknoir as well as a frequent temple of sinnoh tech. The cons for zard is that it takes long, technical turns, requires a solid understanding to perform even decent with it, and it has a horrible matchup against the best deck in the format.
Ancient Box - Why or Why not?
Lets keep this one simple. Ancient Box has an incredible matchup spread but it lacks on-board draw support (assuming your opponent kills greninja and you dont run fez) which makes it unreliable throughout portions of the game. Also it takes a while to know if you can win the game or not since you dont start swinging for big damage until late, so this can cause ties.
Other things
I think retreat lock is very strong for this event. Mawile, Water Ogerpon, Snorlax, Calamitous Wasteland, etc. It won’t be popular, but it could be strong. I considered mawile in Gardevoir so you can try to retreat lock drago as your win con since that matchup is pretty bad otherwise.
Lugia is very strong for this event but likely wont be popular enough that you NEED to worry about it. I think on average, players will play against roughly 1 Lugia with some hitting 0 and some hitting 2 within 9 rounds. I’ll personally be keeping temple of sinnoh in my drago list this weekend. But im also considering Jamming tower as a second stadium because its good against Cape in zard, Capsule in ancient box, and Charm in bolt. Speaking of stadiums, Lost City could be annoying for zard lists with 2 or 3 mander and for Ancient Box (and against gardy but im not weighing that matchup with much importance).
Typically I wouldn’t want to play a 1 card tech like Sinnoh solely for a 10% meta share matchup, but temple of sinnoh in Regidrago gives you an absurd boost in win percentage against Lugia. I evaluate that it turns it from an unfavored to a favored matchup and that is too big of a swing to pass up on. I also think Lugia will be around at the top tables due to its matchup spread and since I want to win the event every win counts.
Conclusion
Make sure you have a functional deck that you’ve prepared matchup concepts for and replicated those concepts in practice. If you’ve successfully used your prepared ideas in the desired matchups in practice, all you need to do is replicate that in the event. Don’t change your deck because of a low percentage deck like snorlax or thorns. Don’t change your deck because you heard about a high percentage of a bad matchup: even if a deck is 12% percent you will on average play against 1 of it in 9 rounds.
Thanks for reading and good luck!