Greetings! It’s been a while since my article last month, so here’s a short recap of what’s happened since then:

1. I attended Anaheim and barely missed points with Mega Rayquaza
2. I attended St. Louis and landed in Top 64 with Mega Gardevoir
3. I fulfilled the dream of mine to visit Australia and finished in Top 32 with Mega Gardevoir

The last few Regionals I plan on attending are Roanoke, Madison, and Mexico City. If you see me, feel free to say hi! I’m completely open to discussing anything. I’m going to U.S. Internationals, but not Brazil because of school. Missing a week and a half because of Australia set me back in plenty of my classes, most notably calculus. I was also 20 points off of 16th place NA and a stipend for Brazil. After having this happen, I realize it’s extremely important to try as hard as possible for every tournament. I’ve had friends that missed Top 16 or their invite by 5 points in previous years because they didn’t max out League Challenges and Cities (AKA League Cups). A Top 64 at Regionals, another round won in Australia, or even winning a League Cup instead of placing Top 4 would have earned me the stipend.

Standard as a Whole

The meta is incredibly unstable looking towards the vast amount of Standard events ahead (Salt Lake City, Brazil, Roanoke, etc.). Decidueye/Plume took over Australia, but lost to Volcanion in the finals. Volcanion had never won a major tournament before, so is a favorable meta all the deck needs to succeed? I think that Volcanion, Decidueye/Plume, Mega Mewtwo, Mega Rayquaza, Lapras, and Turbo Darkrai are the decks to watch for in Standard. Other decks that may appear are Vespiquen, Mega Gardevoir, and Yveltal/Garbodor. I think all of these have the potential to win the tournament with the correct meta. Success in a Standard tournament is all about picking the deck that loses to the least popular decks. If no one in your area plays Mega Gardevoir, play Mega Mewtwo! This works for every other deck and their bad matchups. Turbo Dark and Yveltal/Garbodor are unique because they have fairly even matchups all around compared to the rest of Standard. Every other deck takes a hard loss to something, but also takes a decisive win from something.

Mega Rayquaza Rises from the Ashes!

I believe that Mega Rayquaza is an incredibly good deck in Standard. The deck has plenty of raw power that other decks can’t keep up with. It also hits incredibly good numbers against Decidueye/Vileplume. I think that John Kettler and Alex Wilson’s clash in the finals of St. Louis is indicative of the matchup. In Standard, Mega Rayquaza does not have immediate access to Hex Maniac through Jirachi-EX, but Vileplume is harder to hit on T1 in Standard. Mega Rayquaza also has good matchups against Volcanion, Mega Gardevoir, and Turbo Dark.

This article — “Now You See Me” – Standard as a Whole and In-Depth Analyses of Mega Rayquaza, Mega Gardevoir, and Quad Lapras-GX! — was originally published on SixPrizes.