Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to this article here at CCG. This past weekend Lost Thunder became legal and, as expected, its influence was just massive in the metagame. Different official tournaments took place all around the globe but none other gathered as much expectation as Latin America International Championships, the first International of this year. LAIC concluded after three intense days were many top players displayed new and amazing strategies from the new set. But at the end to the event it was precisely an old friend, Zoroark GX, the one that got the well-deserved first place. The American Daniel Altavilla showed the world once again that nothing can stand the power of trading. Let’s see what happened at the event and how the metagame looks like now.

First of all, I need to say that the established order from last format has completely changed with the inclusion of Lost Thunder. Starting with brand new decks, Blacephalon Naganadel made a solid debut in the game and, although it proved to be a strong contender, it was far away from being the tier S of the format. Besides, the very unique Granbul strategy (no hand needed!) stormed the event thanks to its incredible capacities of trading prizes and got a place in the disputed top 8. Even Unow, which seemed to be just a rogue deck, made its way into the Day 2.

Old decks also received crucial reinforcements with the release of the expansion and performed incredibly well during the event. For instance, Malamar Giratina variants got as strong as ever with the inclusion of the versatile Giratina and Spell Tags. Ninetales GX was included in many different strategies to boost its consistency: we saw this fairy Pokémon shine in combination with Decidueye GX, Gadevoir GX or Buzzwole Lycanroc to name a few. Zoroark GX variants, saw massive amount of play due to all the possibilities that Professor Elm and Ditto Prism bring to the deck.

At the end of the day it was a Zoroark control the deck the one that took the trophy home. To be fair, the building of the deck was a masterclass of metagame read. While it might struggle against very fast decks with tons of energy, the deck is configured to bring the game to a state where the opponent is not able to get the resources he/she needs and just loses from exhaustion. Very similar to stall decks, the cool thing about Zoroark control is its capacity to be aggressive as well as trade away useless cards, finding all the pieces it needs. With the recycling of Resource Management Oranguru, it basically becomes a Sylveon deck with infinite resources. One has to wonder if Zoroark GX will stop winning one day...

So, in conclusion, we have just started to scratch the surface of the entire change that Lost Thunder will bring to the game. I can’t wait to see what more decks rise in the next tournaments! Thanks for reading!