Standard Deck Tech: Giratina VStar, The Antimatter Lord

Hello everybody. I'm Rodrigo, and I'm here to bring you more ideas and deck possibilities for the Standard format in the Pokémon TCG.

And in this article, with the expansion hype Lost Origin, let's start with the expansion's signature cards, the symbol that registers it: the fearsome Giratina.

With a high health of 280 HP and no weaknesses of the Dragon-type archetype, Giratina starts off strong and reshaping the game so that current decks try to deal with this new threat.

Now with the return of the Lost Zone mechanic, its V-Star attack, Star Requiem, with a minimum of 10 cards in the Lost Zone, can KO an opponent's Active Pokémon, regardless of their HP, Tools features that increase health or any effects — which makes this card a great danger to anyone facing it.

Deck Analysis

The deck consists of simply putting as many of your cards in the Lost Zone as quickly as possible, and for that, we have Comfey LOR 79 with its Flower Selecting ability, where if it's your active Pokémon, you look the top two cards of your deck: one goes to your hand and the other goes to the Lost Zone. That's the basic principle.

After that, your later feature, hypothetically assuming that this look from the top of the deck came to your hand, on the best play, the Trainer Supporter Colress's Experiment LOR 155 makes you look at the top 5 cards of your deck : Put 3 in your hand and the rest for the Lost Zone. It is in this cycle that you must maintain your strategy so that you can set up the quick power-up for Giratina V LOR 130 and Giratina VSTAR LOR 131.

About power up, we come with the card Mirage Gate LOR 163, which can only be activated if you have a minimum of 7 cards in the Lost Zone: you can search for two different basic energies and link them to one of your Pokémon.

This is basically the script for Giratina. And speaking of this Pokémon, let's get to know its cards:

HP: 220

Weakness: None

Resistance: None

Retreat cost: Two colorless energies

Pokémon V Rule Box: If it is KO'd, the opponent takes two prize cards

1) Attack - Abyss Seeking: For a colorless energy, look at the top four cards of your deck. Two go into your hand and the other two to the Lost Zone.

2) Attack - Shred: for a grass, psychic and colorless energy, it deals 160 base damages and is unaffected by any effects of the opponent's Active Pokémon.

HP: 280

Weakness: None

Resistance: None

Retreatl cost: Two colorless energies

Pokémon VStar Rule Box: If it is KO'd, the opponent takes two prize cards

1) Attack - Lost Impact: For one grass, one psychic, and one colorless energy, you deal 280 base damage and discard two energies attached to Giratina-VStar to the Lost Zone.

2) VStar Attack - Star Requiem: For a grass energy and a psychic, you can only use this attack if you have at least 10 cards in the Lost Zone, and if you can fulfill it, the active Pokémon of your opponent is automatically KO'd (the attack or ability that has the name VStar can only be used once per match).

Important Pokémon

As a secondary attacker, we have Cramorant LOR 50 which serves as a resource of a prize card to not force Giratina's Lost Impact attack to lose more energy, and especially against Miltank ASR 126 which is an anti-Pokémon V card found regularly in the Blissey V CRE 119 decks.

To look for resources, we have Crobat V DAA 104 with the ability Dark Asset, which, if played, from your hand to the Bench, can draw up to six cards. We also have Radiant Greninja ASR 46, which with its Concealed Cards ability, you can discard an energy card from your hand to draw two cards.

Trainer Cards

- Colress's Experiment LOR 155 is precisely the focus of the deck, the heart of the Lost Zone engine, which will be very frequent in decks that will have this approach.

- Gardenia's Vigor ASR 143 is for quick power-up with grass energies.

- Boss's Orders BRS 132 It's practically mandatory to force a specific knockout, even more so to use Giratina's VStar against a Pokémon that is a problem in the game that your opponent has on the bench and wants to eliminate in one turn.

- Mirage Gate LOR 163 is excellent for power-up, as it can take two different basic energies and attach them to your Pokémon. But for that, you need to have at least 7 cards in the Lost Zone to fulfill its effect.

- Lost Vacuum LOR 162 is a card that has the same effects as Field Blower GRI 125 but with Lost Zone costs. It is classified as a Trainer Item card: you can only use this card if you discard a card from your hand that goes to the Lost Zone as a tribute. You choose any Item Tool or Stadium card in the game (either yours or your opponent's) and send them to the Lost Zone.

- Training Court RCL 169 increased in price, given the current Metagame, and valued the Rebel Clash expansion.

- Ordinary Rod SSH 171 is for resource recycling, returning two energies from discards to the deck and two Pokémon as well; and always being able to choose either the energies, or the Pokémon; or perform both (and of course you will redeem both).

- Air Balloon SSH 156, classified as a Trainer Item Tool card, grants retreat of two colorless energies for the Pokémon equipped with it.

- Choice Belt BRS grants 30 additional damage against Pokémon V.

Advantages

With an absurd acceleration in the first three turns and many item cards that speed up the discard process for the Lost Zone, such as Mirage Gate LOR 163 and Lost Vacuum LOR 162 and thanks to Comfey LOR 79, Giratina is a powerful Pokémon that, with the dragon archetype, is exempt from taking double damage due to weaknesses and is very aggressive.

Not to mention the Shred attack that ignores the defending Pokémon's effects, such as inhibiting damage from basic Pokémon like the Flying Pikachu VMAX CEL 7 that is present in the format, and still has the Lost Impact attack on its VStar form that does 280 damage, which is nice damage and can knock out all VStar currently, like Arceus VSTAR BRS 123 and Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR ASR 40.

Disadvantages

As the deck needs to pay tribute to the Lost Zone, you should be very careful with the luck factor when using cards to be discarded when using Comfey LOR 79 and Colress's Experiment LOR 155 as they don't offer any filtering.

It might be complicated having to make choices of cards that go to the Lost Zone and don't compromise your game later on, or also in the use of energies to make the Lost Impact attack, which sends two energies to the Lost Zone, which can be bad in the long run or even against control decks that sabotage your energies, forcing you to spend the Ordinary Rod SSH 171 ahead of time.

It's an objective, raw and effective deck in its current format.

With satisfactory results in Japan and being welcomed in the West for its dynamics and damage efficiency, it will probably be used by many people in the same way as it was with Arceus-VStar and Flying Pikachu-VMax, guaranteeing its space in the sun this second semester of 2022.