At the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Europe International Championships, there was a very popular team comp floating around the venue. Just check the top four most-used Pokémon—Flutter Mane, Amoonguss, Arcanine, and Palafin.
All four of these Pokémon make up the “Palance” core that has been dominating the early Regulation C meta. Ting-Lu, the most popular Treasure of Ruin at EUIC, has also been thrown into the comp, as seen on the near-identical teams of both finalists.
Veteran players Paul Chua and Gabriel Agati Madeira showed just how strong the Palance core could be by making their way to the EUIC finals. Interestingly, both team comps revolved around the Dragon of their choice in addition to Palance. Gabriel was running an incredibly tough Baxcalibur with the Clear Amulet, while Paul used a Roaring Moon with Dragon Dance.
And although Paul, the EUIC champion, used Roaring Moon constantly, he opted to leave it behind in the finals and put his full faith in the four Palance members. With his Roaring Moon on the bench, it was up to Palafin and Flutter Mane to get the job done. That big decision helped him win his first international title.
As Paul demonstrated in that epic finals match, Flutter Mane and Palafin are the two biggest offensive threats in the game when supported by Amoonguss and Arcanine. In fact, Paul and several other top Pokémon players spoke to Dot Esports at EUIC and weighed in on how this dominant core will affect the state of the meta moving forward.
To start, players were asked about their thoughts on Flutter Mane, who hit an incredible 79 percent usage stat at the tournament.
Alberto Lara, who came in second at Oceania Internationals earlier this year, explained how adding Flutter Mane to his Klefki team was a game-changer. Prior to EUIC, he was running Iron Bundle as his hard-hitting Special Attacker at Fort Wayne Regionals. Once he swapped Iron Bundle out for Flutter Mane (and made some changes to his Chi-Yu), Alberto said, “It just fit the team so well,” and gave him a chance to win any kind of matchup.
The OCIC runner-up’s swap from Iron Bundle to Flutter Mane was echoed by the penguin’s steep decline and the ghost’s boost in popularity at EUIC.
Nick Navarre and Aaron Traylor compared Flutter Mane’s high usage in tournaments to Incineroar, who was considered the most broken Pokémon in past formats when it was legal. The big difference between Flutter Mane and Incineroar is their role. While Incineroar is more utility-based with Intimidate and Fake Out, Flutter Mane is super offensive with high Speed and Special Attack.
To expand on Flutter Mane’s role, Aaron explained that it does one of two things: “First, it chips all of their Pokémon at the beginning of the game to make them weaker, so you can clean them up at the end of the game. And two, it can also come in at the end on its own, outspeed everything, survive some [attacks] because it has so many spare stats that you can invest in its defenses, and then finish off the game.” Basically, whether Flutter Mane opens up or closes out a battle, it always has the potential to cause a lot of chaos.
Because of Flutter Mane’s dominance, Nick said the Ghost/Fairy Pokémon “probably needs a nerf” even though he knows nerfs are rarely seen in the game.
While on the topic of nerfs, Nick also called out Palafin for being too strong. “Jet Punch getting dropped to 50 base power would be enough.” Jet Punch is Palafin’s signature priority move with 60 base power. That base power might not sound strong on its own, but it can be deadly when combined with the Water Tera Type, Palafin’s massive Attack stat in its Hero form, and the fact it enables Palafin to move before other Pokémon on the field. By reducing Jet Punch’s power just a bit, it could give other Pokémon more of a fighting chance.
The players also spoke on the Palance core as a whole and the direction the meta is headed in.
Aaron and Nick both anticipated the core to be popular after Fort Wayne Regionals, and they were right. Nick shared how he had spent over a week trying to figure out how to counter that specific comp but couldn’t come up with anything solid for EUIC. He then went on to say, “We don’t usually have things like this in VGC where just one comp destroys all counters, and so I’m not totally sure where the meta goes from here.” For now, it’s a “bring it or counter it” meta revolving around Palance. And counters are hard to find right now.
Aaron said he “expects [the meta] to get more boring.” After facing the same six Pokémon in a third of his matches on day one of EUIC, it’s apparent there’s already a lot of repetition, and Aaron thinks “things will get worse rather than better in terms of centralization.” But despite calling himself a “doomer,” he knows there are some creative players out there who can build unique teams that still perform well. Aaron named world champion Wolfe Glick as a player who “always finds a way to make something wacky work,” and believes that’ll give his friend a good chance at winning the upcoming North America International Championships.
Meanwhile, Paul felt more a little optimistic about the meta since it’s still early on in the format. He said, “Right now it’s going to feel stagnant, but after a few events, there’s probably going to be some variety.”
Other players in the VGC community also discussed the future of the meta following EUIC in a Reddit thread posted on April 17.
Like the players at EUIC, players in the thread in question all acknowledged the power of Palafin, Flutter Mane, Amoonguss, and Arcanine.
Echoing Nick Navarre’s thoughts on the meta, one trainer, SweatScoobyDoo, believes the future of the meta will be the Palance core or something that counters it. The Reddit user added, “The problem is simply that defensive teams are really consistent and [Palance] happens to be insanely good at [defense] and being far too good at [offense] for what it brings.”
Ggjeed also commented, “One thing to keep in mind is there has been a lot of sentiment (even in an interview at EUIC) how Reg C is hard to build for. I think a lot of people keep defaulting to what has been working because of that. It may be the best, but it’s also the easiest right now. The longer we get to simmer in one format, the more likely we are to see evolution.”
Indeed, many players are hoping to see some more variety in Regulation C before the meta goes stale with Flutter Mane and Palafin being too strong.
