Pokémon Worlds 2024: Iron Thorns ex takes it all!

8/21/2024

It's hard to believe, but another Pokémon World Championship has come to an end, this time in Honolulu! You may have seen me write about NAIC earlier this year. There was a bit of a gap in events following that, so the race to find out what would be most viable in Hawaii for the big Championship was the talk of the Pokémon TCG community.

When it was revealed for the Silver Tempest set back in September 2022, Regidrago VSTAR was hyped up by many to be absolutely busted. I can personally attest that at least my local card shop wouldn't stop buzzing about it. Pokémon had a bit of history involving cards with the ability to copy attacks being pretty crazy, like Mewtwo & Mew GX. Regidrago VSTAR also has an outstanding VSTAR Power, allowing it to mill the top of your own deck and get any two cards from your discard pile back into your hand. For whatever reason, Regidrago VSTAR never quite took off in its earliest years. While it seemed easy enough to power up with good ol Arceus VSTAR, it seemed that in practice, powering up Regidrago, and finding Double Turbo Energy for Arceus, and getting the other Dragon Pokémon you needed in the discard pile was just a tall order. Regidrago VSTAR enjoyed rogue status and fringe playability, with a lot of speculation about what kind of cards could come out to take it to the next level.

Enter Regidrago's new best friends, Teal Mask Ogerpon ex from Twilight Masquerade, and Kyurem from Shrouded Fable. With Ogerpon, decks that needed Grass energy now had a fairly reliable way to accelerate it onto the board (and move it later with Energy Switch), which also functioned as a small, but valuable draw engine. Kyurem, meanwhile, is targeted hate for Lost Box decks, and possibly some unknown deck that may come up in the future with the new Colress' Tenacity. Kyurem can deal 110 damage to three different benched Pokémon, which is a tremendous amount of damage—330 total, and on a single prizer no less! Not that being single-prize particularly mattered to Regidrago, as it usually wants to just chuck it in the discard pile.

Let us not forget another Twilight Masquerade monster, Dragapult ex! Dragapult became feared across the community as it seemed to tear up Japanese events. By the time Dragapult reached the western hemisphere, it seemed like the deck was not quite all it was cracked up to be, at least in our format. While strong, being a stage 2 always comes with a few issues. But hey, just throw that mf in the trash and let Regidrago handle it!

Between all these new options, and an explosive popularity after the discovery of all these things in combo with Regidrago VSTAR, it seemed that it would be the deck to beat at Worlds. And it was!

A very near quarter of Worlds entrants chose to bring Regidrago VSTAR as their weapon of choice! Expected combantants like Lugia VSTAR, Charizard ex, Gardevoir, and Raging Bolt made healthy appearances as well. And in 5th place, a shocking electric Pokémon made itself known. Iron Thorns ex! Iron Thorns has the Initialization Ability, which shuts down the Abilities of all other non-Future Pokémon. Naturally, this is a very strong Ability! Many looked to Iron Thorns ex with dread upon its reveal, but it never quite found a home as "Future Box" style decks didn't take off right away.

On paper, Iron Thorns does target the expected meta with precision. Facing against it in the opponent's active spot, Charizard ex could not use its Infernal Reign Ability, nor could Pidgeot ex use Quick Search. Ogerpon can no longer Teal Mask. Lugia VSTAR can't use Summoning Star. Gardevoir ex cannot use Psychic Embrace, and Radiant Greninja cannot use Concealed Cards. You get the idea. Iron Thorns does have weaknesses, of course. With a three energy cost attack, powering it up can be slow without a Double Turbo Energy, but that will reduce its already fairly low damage. The effect of its Volt Cyclone attack to move an energy to a benched Pokémon is mandatory, which is often a blessing but sometimes a curse.

Most decks in this meta need to deal with cards like Iron Thorns ex, including Cornerstone Ogerpon ex, and a similar card, Mimikyu. Both of these cards are surprisingly splashable, Cornerstone in particular has been seeing an increase in play because it can be so hard to deal with. The usual answer to this is Cancelling Cologne, which is an excellent card but is usually a one-of, at most, in many decks. With this in mind, what's come to be known as Quad Thorns was invented. With four Iron Thorns as the only Pokémon, it ensures that the opponent has no other targets and that Iron Thorns' Ability is in play almost all of the time.

I'll admit, I thought Quad Thorns was a silly idea. Rogue and functional, sure, but I wouldn't have called it a solid deck by any stretch. I still think "Quad Iron Hands ex" is a way worse idea, but maybe I'll be wrong about that too!

Top 8, And The Gesture

Top 8 at Worlds looked about what I expected, as far as their being four Regidrago VSTAR decks there. I also wasn't extremely surprised to see a Raging Bolt ex make it. The other decks surprised me greatly! Let's talk about how these decks made it, and the incident shook up the final bracket.

Miraidon ex is back! Whoever made this call gets my certified Good Pokémon Player award (a very illustrious one). While Miraidon fell off pretty hard in popularity, one thing that it was, and is still, fantastic at doing is knocking out Basic Pokémon V. Miraidon has the potential, to take the first prizes going second, taking out Regidrago V before it has a chance to evolve, killing tempo for the Drago player. Meanwhile Drago really prefers to go first because it's got to evolve into the VSTAR. Jesse Parker's Miraidon list is a work of brilliance, nicely tuned to take the meta head on, with new inclusions like Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex and Fezandipiti ex that stop the deck from dead drawing after it turbos through all its resources. Lugia was also a strong presence on day one, with Lugia itself bearing a Lightning weakness, it made a lot of sense to call upon the power of Miraidon and its Tandem Unit Ability.

Seinosuke Shiokawa's "Moon Moon" deck was completely unexpected. While Miraidon and Iron Thorns might have been on the brains of the wiser, even established TCG commentators had a hard time believing it made it all the way. Roaring Moon ex has an invaluable attack to KO anything in the active spot, though it leaves itself at 30HP to do so. With the absolutely wild Professor Sada's Vitality and help from Dark Patch, Roaring Moon can simply take six prizes faster, and more confidently, than a lot of other decks. It's not scared of big HP Evolution Pokémon because it can just kill them regardless. Seinosuke brought along Pecharunt ex for its powerful ability to Swtich Dark-type Pokémon at a whim, and Fezandipiti ex for draw power. Hm, did I say Ability? Uh-oh!

The grand final ended up being Fernando Cifuentes' Iron Thorns vs Seinosuke's Roaring Moon. It was an amazing match, with Cifuentes' pulling out all the stops with Judges, Crushing Hammers, and even a one-of Penny to pick up damaged Thorns. I was particularly fascinated with Giovanni's Charisma, which I swear is a pretty good supporter, but it went unplayed in the final. Seinosuke was unable to use extremely helpful Abilities, so he was reliant on simply drawing into Sada for draw support, and finding Dark Patch at the right time. It was tough, and he did a damn good job, but Cifuentes took the Championship.

That was almost not the story, however. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, because I genuinely dislike when things like this take attention away from the gameplay and strategy. I don't find these things fun or amusing, they're annoying and distracting. I also want to say that everyone who made it into top cut deserves respect and admiration for their gameplay and skill.

In the original top eight bracket, Ian Robb, with Regidrago, defeated Fernando Cifuentes. However, after the end of the match, Robb made a gesture that appeared inappropriate. He was retroactively given a game loss, causing Fernando to advance in the bracket and face Jesse Parker's Miraidon ex. While we'll never know for sure what would have happened in that original bracket, it's not unlikely that Jesse Parker would have beaten Ian Robb. We were very, very close to a Miraidon vs Roaring Moon final, which would have been cool! Jesse Parker would end up getting third place, so it's not like Miraidon's viability in this format is in doubt any more.

Fernando's Iron Thorns deck being the final boss was its own delight. It was unexpected in more ways than one! But just like with Miraidon, I think the viability of Iron Thorns in this format isn't in question, and joins a slew of decks we can gladly confirm as competitively playable. Nor is Fernando's skill in doubt, he had no role in the disqualification of Ian Robb and I will not be having anyone call him an "undeserved" champion.

HOLY CRAP TRAINER'S POKÉMON ARE BACK

I actually stayed up late to see what the TCG reveals were going to be. I also, admittedly, have a casual interest in TCG Pocket after originally writing it off. While we knew that some Trainer's Pokémon were coming back in Japan in January 2025, the trailer that formally reintroduced this mechanic back into the game was an absolute riot worth staying awake for.

You may be familiar with the old Gym Heroes/Gym Challenge cards like Misty's Gyarados, or something newer in the same vein like Garchomp C Lv.X (you could call this Cynthia's Garchomp). This is that mechanic brought back, cards that specifically interact with X's Pokémon like a kind of archetype.

They also appear to be cracked as hell! Marnie's Grimmsnarl here can accelerate FIVE Dark energy to any Marnie's Pokémon on the field. Take not also that Marnie's Grimmsnarl evolves from Marnie's Moregrem. You won't be able to evolve on top of existing Pokémon without their Trainer's name. This was a bit disappointing for fans who were eagerly awaiting what Steven's Metagross ex was going to be, and if it could be used in conjunction with Metal Maker Metang, which would have been really cool.

What got me bouncing around in my seat was N's Zoroark ex. For Sun and Moon era fans, they know Zoroark GX, extremely well, who could attack for high damage with a Double Colorless Energy and draw a ton of cards. For me, the first deck I ever fell in love with playing the Pokémon TCG was Phantom Transformation Zoroark. They have combined elements of both of these cards to create N's Zoroark ex. It's got the Trade Ability exactly like GX, and it can copy the attacks of other N'S Pokémon on the bench. This is so cool. I love when they can take a look at their design history, and what's iconic for players, and remix it all in a new way.

Speaking of design history, the trailer showed off some amazing animation of meta staple cards fighting it out. Charizard ex, Chien Pao ex, Dragapult ex, Iron Hands ex, all made appearances. It was so cool, and I felt very seen. Just the night before I was playing my Chien-Pao deck, and tied with a 'Zard in bracket. They had some cool animation for last year as well, so I hope this trend continues!

I think things are gonna get really fun and crazy for Pokémon in 2025. But we have the rest of 2024 to burn through first. Stellar Crown is less than a month away, introducing Stellar Tera typing to the TCG and bringing new support for Terastalized Pokémon, which have been a somewhat low-key element in the card game thus far. There's also Surging Sparks coming up in November, which will be made up of the Japanese Paradrise Dragona set and some starter set products, which are actually pretty good cards.

If you're not into the Pokemon Trading Card Game yet...as usual, the best time is now!

I choose you!

- James