Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm and today we are going to discuss the results of the recent North America International Championship. The largest tournament to date (1500 players from all places of the world) ended with the victory of the French Stephan Ivanoff who successfully piloted his Zoroark Garbodor deck through the end of the event. In contrast with other tournaments, Zorogarb was not the only Zoroark variant that topped but, rather, part of the dominant option. In fact, many players opted to play Zoroark again and achieved great positions with it, leaving Buzzroc in a secondary place. So, the question is... What Zoroark variants were played and why did they perform so well?

To begin with, there were (mainly) four Zoroark variants at NAIC, each of them equally strong on their own way: Zoroark Gabodor, Zoroark Golisopod, Zoroark Lycanroc and Straight Zoroark. All of these were able to reach day 2 pretty easily and proved, once more, the tremendous power of consistency in this game. Each strategy has of course its advantages and it is up to the player to decide which one fits his/her style better.

Zoroark Garbodor exerts great control on the field by locking abilities and punishing the opponent for playing many items with a late game Trashlanche. Zoroark Lycanroc, on the other hand, is the most aggressive of the builds, targeting Pokémon on the bench continuously before they can even evolve. Golisopod Zoroark, an old contender, might be as consistent as a deck can ever be. Finally, Straight Zoroark (or "Zorolock" as some people are calling it) only relies on a 4-4 line of the fox and, thanks to all space available, complements the 2hkos with a ton of disruption cards like Hammers, Grunt or delinquent.

Now, the reason why all these variants performed that well at NAIC is precisely the consistency they offer and the positive match ups against some meta decks. Buzzwole Lycanroc can be beaten thanks to the psychic attackers available and Malamar (another popular contender) has lots of trouble dealing with Parallel City and an aggressive start from Zoroark decks. In a tournament with as many rounds as NAIC, the deck that consistently draws the more has an advantage to perform well.

What these results show, all in all, is that the metagame adapts and evolves continuously; it is not static. Buzzwole was massively played for the past weeks up to the point that Zoroark variants increased their psychic attackers and included Weakness Policy so they could deal with it. This defensive approach and the rise in popularity of Malamar explains the results from this past weekend.

Now, Zoroark reigns once more. One has to wonder... Is there a situation where Zoroark can't adapt and be victorious?