Hey everyone! Regional Championships have returned over the past few weeks which is incredibly exciting, I’m very glad to announce that I managed to win the first one which was held in Brisbane, Australia! In this article, I’m going to go over the deck I used to win, how we came to the final list and where I would take Mew VMAX considering the results from Salt Lake City.

Heading into Brisbane Regionals, I knew that I wanted to play a deck with an inherently high-power level as it was the first major event which used cards from the Brilliant Stars set. The main deck which jumped out immediately was Mew VMAX. Mew VMAX has very high inherent power level and consistently which made me gravitate towards it in testing.

About three weeks before the tournament, Kaiwen Cababbe, another Australian player, started talking about playing three Double Turbo Energy in Mew instead of cards such as Psychic Energy and Fog Crystal.

While I was hesitant at first, after a couple of games with the new list I was quickly convinced. Playing three Double Turbo Energy smooths out your draws and makes it significantly easier to use Boss’s Orders on the second turn, which is influential when up against Arceus VSTAR variants. Deciding to commit to three Double Turbo Energy wasn’t a difficult decision and I encourage everyone who is still playing Psychic Energy in their Mew VMAX decks to try our version out.

One of the biggest strengths of Mew VMAX is that even if you lose the opening coin flip, you have potential starting hands which can win going second against almost any deck. This is due to the strength of Elesa’s Sparkle, Fusion Strike Energy and Meloetta FST.

We realized that if Mew VMAX can draw into a turn one Melodious Echo and take a two-Prize knockout that you put yourself in an incredibly favored position to win the game against almost everything. We built the list to maximize the odds of a turn one Melodious Echo occurring and four Rotom Phone and four Cram-o-Matic helps significantly at achieving this. 

Playing only special energy in our list wasn’t too concerning until decks with Duraludon VMAX started doing well, so we added Echoing Horn to the deck.

Echoing Horn was mostly added as a response to the rise of Arceus VSTAR / Duraludon VMAX in the weeks leading up to Brisbane Regionals. Against Arceus VSTAR / Duraludon VMAX, Echoing Horn allows you to win the game through taking six Prizes entirely on Arceus V, completely dodging the Skyscraper ability on Duraludon VMAX.

One of the more controversial aspects of the list we played in Brisbane was the two Rose Tower.

Playing high Stadium counts in Mew VMAX was seen as a given with the prevalence of Path to the Peak. However, going into the tournament, we realized that Path to the Peak is most impactful when it’s played on turn one when the opposing player goes first. If the Mew VMAX deck is given a turn of abilities, it’s likely to pop off and draw enough cards to be able to win through Path to the Peak or guarantee a Rose Tower for next turn by leaving it on the top of the deck with Rotom Phone.

The only decks which played Path to the Peak leading into Brisbane were Arceus VSTAR / Inteleon and Gengar VMAX / Houndoom. At the time, Arceus VSTAR / Inteleon only had two Path to the Peak, so it rarely impacted the early game and playing two Rose Tower was enough to win against it. Gengar VMAX / Houndoom was a lot scarier because it attacked with Darkness type Pokemon and played four Path to the Peak. However, we decided not to respect Gengar VMAX / Houndoom in Brisbane because the deck suffers immensely from consistency issues, and we were beating it almost 40 percent of the time in testing because of it’s struggled to set up. We decided that having the fourth Cram-o-Matic would be more impactful than having an extra stadium card to give ourselves the best chance of a full Melodious Echo on the first turn.

After practicing for a few weeks, this was the list which we ended up playing in Brisbane!

****** Pokémon Trading Card Game Deck List ******

##Pokémon - 14

* 1 Oricorio FST 42
* 4 Genesect V FST 255
* 2 Meloetta FST 124
* 4 Mew V FST 113
* 3 Mew VMAX FST 114

##Trainer Cards - 39

* 4 Battle VIP Pass FST 225
* 4 Ultra Ball PLB 90
* 4 Power Tablet FST 236
* 4 Cram-o-matic FST 229
* 2 Rose Tower DAA 169
* 3 Boss's Orders RCL 154
* 2 Escape Rope PRC 127
* 2 Switch KSS 38
* 4 Quick Ball SSH 179
* 3 Elesa's Sparkle FST 233
* 2 Choice Belt BRS 135
* 1 Echoing Horn CRE 136
* 4 Rotom Phone CPA 64

##Energy - 7

* 4 Fusion Strike Energy FST 244
* 3 Double Turbo Energy BRS 151

Total Cards - 60

****** Deck List Generated by the Pokémon TCG Online www.pokemon.com/TCGO ******
 

Overall, this deck accomplished the goal of having a high-power level. You play four Cram-o-Matic and four Rotom Phone, which give you incredible consistency at hitting your attacks every single turn. 

As you know, I ended up winning Brisbane Regionals with the deck list above! The metagame for Brisbane turned out to be mostly what was expected – the Top 8 ended up with four Mew VMAX decks and four different Arceus VSTAR variants. One new Arceus VSTAR variant which came out of Brisbane Regionals was pairing it with Galarian Moltres EVS to have a stronger late game against Mew VMAX.

I played against one of these decks in my Top 4 game, but I ended up winning 2-0 by making my first two attacks with Meloetta. Leading with both Meloetta prevents my opponent from going too far ahead on prizes to where their Galarian Moltres becomes ineffective, and I can Echoing Horn and win the game one turn before they can. Another play I made in this matchup was to delay evolving into Mew VMAX. This meant that even if my opponent was able to use Boss’s Orders around my second Meloetta, I still have two attacks to close out the game with.

One week after Brisbane Regionals, Salt Lake City Regionals happened in Utah in the United States. This event had incredibly surprising results, with zero Mew VMAX making the Top 8! I think this occurred due to several reasons. First, with both players playing Double Turbo Energy, the Mew VMAX mirror becomes incredibly difficult to control and is often dependent on who draws better. With Mew doing so well in Brisbane, a lot of the top-level players shied away from playing Mew VMAX and instead tried to counter it outright. You can see this through the decks that made Top 8 in Utah; only one deck didn’t use Path to the Peak or Darkness type Pokemon! 

Contrary to popular belief, I think Mew is a very difficult deck to play perfectly. It requires very complex sequencing and is often very situational with what cards you keep and what cards you throw away to try and draw more cards. The fact that Mew VMAX has access to a ton of different attacks complicates your game plans as well, when I played in Brisbane every single one of my damage dealing attacks contributed to winning a game, even Glistening Droplets on Oricorio. The fact that many top players decided not to play Mew and Mew performed relatively poorly is a testament to this. In fact, the top performing Mew VMAX player in Utah was Caleb Gedemer at 10th, a player who has seen a huge amount of success in Pokemon. The fact that even through the sea of decks trying to counter it, Caleb was still able to come 10th is a testament to the inherent strength of Mew VMAX when in the hands of a great player.

If you plan on playing Mew VMAX at the upcoming Liverpool Regional Championships this weekend, I would absolutely recommend playing a third copy of Rose Tower. While we were able to get away with two in Brisbane, I don’t think that’s possible anymore. Arceus VSTAR / Inteleon decks have started including a third copy of Path to the Peak and Sidney to try and strip Stadiums from the Mew VMAX player’s hand.

Because of this, having a third Stadium in your deck is worth the slight consistency hit so you avoid being scammed by the ever-prevalent Path to the Peak. The card I would cut for the Rose Tower is the fourth copy of Cram-o-Matic, which is the most cuttable card in your deck because it’s only successful 50 percent of the time.

I see a lot of players cutting Rotom Phones from their deck for Stadiums, which I completely disagree with. Rotom Phone is one of the most universally useful cards in your deck and there are almost no combinations of cards where seeing a Rotom Phone is a disappointment, but there are hands where Cram-o-Matic isn’t a great card. Rotom Phone also has excellent synergy with your Stadium card, Rose Tower, both to put it on top of your deck in preparation for Marnie and Path to the Peak as well as seeing more cards for an early activation of Rose Tower. I would play a third copy of Rose Tower over any other Stadium card for this reason, I was saved many times by Rose Tower and Rotom Phone in Brisbane when my hand would have otherwise been unplayable, and I believe that the value gained from being able to bump your own Rose Tower is very marginal.

This format has very heavy Stadium counts, with a ton of decks playing four Path to the Peak so it is rare for your stadium to stick around. While Rose Tower can sometimes help your opponent out, the value you get from that slight draw is so impactful that I would not consider another stadium card if you were playing three.

If you do want to go to four Stadium cards, I would recommend including Tower of Darkness.

While this deck doesn’t have any other Single Strike cards, you can discard other copies of Tower of Darkness to Tower of Darkness, giving you both extra draw as well as a way of removing extra Stadiums from your hand. However, I personally would stick to three Stadiums because I cannot think of another cut to make from your items, but if you do want to have that insurance for Path to the Peak, I would play Tower of Darkness.

One idea I have thought of is playing a third copy of Meloetta. This is mostly to facilitate your game plan of attacking with two Meloetta into Galarian Moltres EVS decks. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what card to cut from the list. I have seen some ideas around cutting to three Mew V, which I heavily disagree with. To pull off your Psychic Leap game plans, you need access to three Mew V, only playing three means you cannot afford to discard or prize a copy to use Psychic Leap.

In conclusion, I still believe Mew VMAX is a good choice for Liverpool Regionals this weekend. The inherent power level and consistency of the deck make it a very appealing choice for a large event like a Regional Championships.