Regieleki’s Scarlet and Violet power leads to day-one restrictions for competitive play

A lot of familiar faces have made their way to the Paldea region in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet thanks to the new Pokémon HOME update, and they’re already started shaking things up on the competitive side this week.

VGC players are safe for now since the current Regulation C format will last another month, but a quick decision was already made in the popular Smogon single battle format—Regieleki is officially banned from the OU tier following a May 31 vote.

In fact, it was a unanimous vote that pushed Regieleki out of the most popular singles tier and into Ubers where the most broken Pokémon battle it out. But what exactly makes Regieleki broken enough to be banned from OU?

With a base Speed of 200, Regieleki is the fastest Pokémon in the entire franchise. It’s also a pure Electric type, meaning its only defensive weakness is Ground. To counter Ground-type Pokémon who threaten it, Regieleki can easily Terastallize into an Ice Type and fire off a super-effective Tera Blast. With both Electric and Ice STAB (same-type attack bonus) in addition to incredible speed, Regieleki would have been an absolute menace in OU singles.

Players like YouTuber Joey Pokeaim claim they knew Regieleki would be banned.

While Regieleki isn’t legal in Scarlet and Violet VGC just yet, its presence might still affect the meta in a small way thanks to a special move it learns—Electroweb.

For now, this move can only be transferred to two legal VGC Pokémon, Ampharos and Magnezone, but this could eventually change in the event that Regieleki or other Electroweb users become legal in a future VGC format.

Whether Regieleki survives in Scarlet and Violet VGC remains to be seen.