No Path, No Problem — Giratina Slaps in Post-Rotation

Hello everyone! As I’m writing this, I’m making my way back from EUIC, and you’ll probably be reading it after Orlando Regionals has taken place. Our new format is now in full swing, and the results from EUIC were somewhat surprising. My group actually ended up playing Giratina VSTAR, which was not a deck on my radar a week prior to the tournament. However, our testing led us to the deck, and we teched out the list for several troublesome matchups.

The tournament went alright for my group, but it could have gone better. I was somewhat close to making Top 8, just needing to win rounds 14 and 15. Unfortunately, I tied round 14, and then ID’d round 15 to guarantee cash since I was out of Top 8 contention at that point. Azul and Caleb made Top 16 and 32, respectively, with the same 60.

Giratina was, and continues to be, a strong play in this format for several reasons. First, it is a no-nonsense deck that has few weaknesses. It has a nice balance of consistency and power. While it can be slow at times, this does not necessarily affect its win rate. When playing Giratina, I feel I have a good shot to win any matchup. Furthermore, the deck has plenty of versatility and skill expression, which I enjoy.

The other great thing about Giratina is its matchup spread. While it initially seems to have several unfavored matchups, we included several techs into our list to patch them up. The Charizard ex matchup is favored thanks to the inclusions of Spiritomb and Iron Leaves ex. Spiritomb also fixes the Snorlax Stall matchup, and helps tremendously against Lugia VSTAR. We aggressively teched against Lugia at EUIC, opting to play two Temple of Sinnoh in addition to the Spiritomb. Giratina naturally destroys Iron Hands ex and Arceus VSTAR decks, making those matchups quite good as well. Baxcalibur and Lost Box are two slightly unfavorable matchups. You don’t want to face them, though they are very winnable. Giratina’s worst matchup is Ancient Box. If they start Flutter Mane, you’re going to have a bad time. Even if they don’t, you’re strictly unfavored. That said, the matchup is still far from an auto-loss.

I would be remiss not to discuss the Banette version of Giratina that took second place at EUIC. Banette ex functions as a hard counter to Baxcalibur, making it an efficient tech that solves an otherwise bad matchup. There are also some other spots where Item lock could be useful, such as against Charizard or other Lost Zone decks. Furthermore, Banette ex’s Poltergeist isn’t a bad attacking option, especially against stall decks. The non-ex Banette essentially repurposes your Shuppet in every game where you aren’t using the ex, which is most games. Banette’s Puppet Offering is a powerful Ability that turbocharges your Lost Zone while also grabbing any Supporter out of the discard. This functions as an incredible consistency piece, as you can simply leave Banette on your Bench until you need it. This usually gets an extra Colress's Experiment, and it can be used to recover off a Roxanne or Iono. Otherwise, it functions as an extra Boss's Orders or Roxanne, depending on the situation.

Banette is certainly interesting and useful, but of course, I think my list is better overall. Banette was a good call for EUIC because Baxcalibur was popular, but I expect there to be less Baxcalibur in the future. That deck underperformed, and it doesn’t even beat Charizard now that many lists have Eri and Technical Machine: Devolution. I also expect Lugia to slightly dip in popularity following its underperformance at EUIC. Lugia is undoubtedly powerful, but it is quite inconsistent and loses hard to Iron Hands. Therefore, I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to play two Temple of Sinnoh going forward.

Enough yapping. Here’s my list. It covers as many bases as possible without sacrificing much consistency. In the end, it’s not a special or revolutionary list, but it does its job well.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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