TSUNAMI TCG
Japan's #2 deck doesn't exist here
Mega Rayquaza is the second most played deck in Japan right now. In 67,632 Western tournament finishes, it appears exactly zero times — and that is not an accident. It becomes legal here in November, and its first real test will be LAIC.
16.7%
of Japan's field
0
of 67,632 in the West
Japan: Gym Battle results, Aug 24 · West: Tier 2 season to Aug 25
Why it's missing
Mega Rayquaza ex is an M6 card. Japan got that set on July 31. The West does not get the same pool until November 6. The deck isn't unpopular here — it's not legal here.
So this is not a warning about Worlds. Nobody is bringing Mega Rayquaza to Worlds this weekend. It's something more useful: Japan is already three months into the format we inherit in November, and the first major event where it matters is LAIC, mid-November.
Which means the testing window for LAIC does not start when the set drops here. It started in Japan on July 31 — and it is public.
The gap, deck by deck
Share of field, Japan against the West. Where the West shows a dashed line, the deck has no presence at all.
Japan's most played. We run it at less than half that rate.
Not legal here until November 6.
We play it twice as much as Japan does. It wins 46%.
Two things worth noticing beyond Rayquaza. Japan plays Dragapult at 18.8%; we play it at 7.7% — the same card pool, less than half the adoption. And we play Mega Excadrill at twice Japan's rate while it wins 46% of its matches here.
What the deck actually plays
From the list that won its event on August 24. Some cards have no official English name yet — because the set isn't out in English. That gap is the whole story.
Pokémon (16)
- 2× Mega Rayquaza ex
- 3× Mega Kangaskhan ex
- 2× M6 card, no English name yet
- 2× Ethan's Ho-Oh ex
- 2× Terapagos ex
- 2× Latias ex
- 1× Fezandipiti ex
- 1× Meowth ex
- 1× Chien-Pao
Key trainers
- 4× Ultra Ball
- 4× Crispin
- 3× Energy Switch
- 2× Glass Trumpet
- 2× Boss's Orders
- 2× Cyrano
- 2× Lillie's Determination
- 2× Area Zero Underdepths
Energy (15)
- 8× Basic Fire
- 7× Basic Lightning
Read this as a signal, not a statistic. The Japanese snapshot is 48 decks from a single day. It holds up against a second, independent Japanese source — Mega Rayquaza has 35 results across 20 events there — but it is nowhere near the 67,632 finishes behind the Western numbers. We'd rather tell you that than round it away.
Why we watch Japan
Sets land in Japan first, and the gap is usually two to three months. That means the Japanese ladder is a working preview of the format the rest of us are about to inherit — decks already tested, lists already tuned, bad ideas already discarded.
Everyone can see this weekend's results. Almost nobody is reading November's.
We publish this every week.
Japan's ladder, read against Western results, before the set lands here. Free while we're getting started.