There were a lot of creative teams at the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Toronto Regionals this weekend with off-meta picks like Roaring Moon, Salamence, and Regidrago, but the winning team was the same one that won a tournament in France a week ago.
Chuppa Cross IV was crowned the new Toronto Regionals champion piloting a strong team of Chien-Pao, Flutter Mane, Rillaboom, Urshifu, Tornadus, and Hisuian Arcanine.
Coincidence or not, this is the exact same six Pokémon list Simone Sanvito piloted to win Lille Regionals last weekend in France, proving once again why Hisuian Arcanine is so good in the Scarlet and Violet metagame.
Even more interesting, when you take a closer look at Cross and Sanvito’s teams, there are only two minor differences. One Urshifu was running Protect, while the other had Detect—two moves with the same exact purpose. The two Tornadus also had different Tera Types with Steel as the most resistant type in the game and Ghost to avoid Normal attacks like Fake Out and Extreme Speed.
With these same six Pokémon winning back-to-back regional tournaments, what does this say about the current meta as a whole? How is it shifting?
One of the most notable observations was the lack of Ogerpon, who’d been pretty dominant under the Regulation E ruleset up until this point. Both the Hearthflame and Wellspring Ogerpon forms were among the top 12 most-used Pokémon at the past few regionals, but they both fell off the chart by day two in Toronto.
In fact, there were only two Ogerpon teams in the top eight—a very rare sighting of the Teal form and Cornerstone form, with the more popular Ogerpon forms nowhere to be seen.
Instead of Ogerpon, we’re seeing more pros gravitating back to Rillaboom and Amoonguss for Grass, Urshifu and Iron Bundle for Water, and Heatran and Hisuian Arcanine for Fire. Of course, Ogerpon is still a massive threat to watch out for in the format, but perhaps this is a sign players are becoming more comfortable in countering the DLC Legendary.
We also need to address Hisuian Arcanine, who was named the “Least Expected Most Successful Pokemon in Regulation E,” by pro player Neil Patel. Since its big VGC debut back in Regulation D, Hisuian Arcanine has snuck up in the rankings and won multiple tournaments, stealing the spotlight from its original Gen I form. And it’s arguably the current best Intimidate user in the meta, which is super impressive to say when it’s competing against the likes of Landorus—one of the most infamous threats in VGC history.
We’ll see how Hisuian Arcanine holds up when its fellow Fire-type Intimidate user, Incineroar, re-enters VGC. This will likely happen sometime after The Indigo Disk is released, bringing Incineroar and the rest of the Starters to the Gen IX games and eventually to competitive play.
