Arceus / Giratina is Way Better Than I Expected

I have never been a fan of Arceus VSTAR / Giratina VSTAR. Even when the deck was supposedly good, I thought it was terrible. I brutally destroyed my Arceus / Giratina opponents nearly every time I faced it in tournament, so much so that I felt bad for my opponent playing such a handicapped deck. When I did lose to the deck, it was only by bricking or experiencing horrendous luck, and that was few and far between. After all, the deck’s main appeal was its disruption with Judge and Path to the Peak. A couple of months ago, when thinking about post-rotation, I did not even consider Arceus / Giratina a deck. It was a deck I never thought much of to begin with, and the rotation just killed its best card (Path to the Peak).

Then the Champions League Fukuoka rolled around, and Arceus / Giratina got Top 8. Not just once, but it actually occupied two of the Top 8 spots in this massive post-rotation tournament. Even after that, I almost entirely disregarded the deck, as I assumed that the high variance tournament happened to favor it by pure chance. Why would I play a mediocre Arceus deck without Path when I can play a much more powerful deck like Charizard ex, Lugia VSTAR, or Chien-Pao ex?

In the interest of doing my due diligence when testing for EUIC, I finally brought myself around to Arceus / Giratina. While this deck isn’t a highly-remarkable broken deck or anything, it is much better than I expected. Although the bar was on the floor at that point, I found myself enjoying the deck and also winning a decent amount. In this article I’ll be discussing Arceus / Giratina in-depth, explaining what makes the deck tick, why it’s good, and some of its key matchups.

Somehow, this format is shaping up to have some decent matchups for Arceus / Giratina. Lost Box, Snorlax Stall, Ancient Box, and Future Box decks are all great matchups. Even Charizard is a much better matchup than expected. Arceus is well-rounded and fairly consistent, and the Giratina gives it much needed power. On the other hand, it has to contend with tough matchups like Lugia and Chien-Pao. What’s great is that Arceus naturally plays lots of Judge, which often slows down those two decks. They rely on early-game combos to pop off and carry them through the rest of the game. The presence of Judge softens the blow of those two matchups, making what would be typically really bad matchups into only slightly unfavorable ones. I’ll talk more about these matchups a little bit later.

Some Arceus / Giratina decks play lots of tricks such as Eri, Choice Belt, Technical Machine: Devolution, Relicanth, etc. I’ve found these cards to be frivolous, inconsistent, and far too situational. As usual with new formats, I opt for as much consistency as possible. It’s possible for tech cards to have enough value to justify their inclusion, such as Iron Leaves ex. For the most part though, those kinds of cards contribute more to losses than wins, especially into an unknown meta. I personally expect the EUIC meta to be filled with all sorts of decks, so I want to be ready for anything. I want to have a deck that is neutrally good and has a chance to beat lots of random stuff. Charizard and Lugia are at the top of the hit list, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised to face seven or eight different decks in Day 1 of tournaments this early in the format.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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