Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm and welcome to another article here. Today we are going to jump ahead and analyze the latest results from Oceania International Championship, a tournament of extreme importance given that it was the first one when Team Up was already legal. The impact of the new set has been insane and many of the top tier decks that used to dominate the format last season (Blacephalon, Decidueye, Straight Malamar...) seemed to have disappeared. American player Isaiah Williams the winner of the event piloting a strong Jirachi Zapdos deck and proving everyone the incredible potential of this duo.

After an intense day of competition it was extremely interesting to see the decks that reached the Day 2. By far, the most repeated strategies were Zapdos Jirachi, Zoroark Fighting variants, PikachuZekorm Tag Team and Ultra Necrozma Malamar. It is not difficult to understand this sudden shift of the metagame if we take into consideration the power creep Team Up has brought to the game. PikachuZekrom was one of the most popular decks of the event thanks to its capacity to go all in with a second turn Full Blitz and wreck the opponent field. In a similar way Ultra Necrozma rose in presence, perhaps for the first time in the entire season, thanks to the incredible consistency Jirachi and Viridian Forest bring to the deck.

As for Zoroark, the deck defended its territory as it always does, this time in combination with Lycanroc, Weavile and Alolan Muk. It was precisely Zoroark Lucario one of the decks that made its way to the finals since it had all the resources to deal with PikaZekrom and Jirachi decks at the same time. However Zapdos Jirachi emerged as the final winner of the event becoming undoubtedly the most impacting deck of the event. The deck finds constantly the tools it needs with multiples Jirachi and is perfectly able to regularly hit for +100 damage while forcing the opponent into a 6 prize race. No wonder why it got so far in the tournament.

And now? It seems that the logical response is that players adapt to this new order and start playing some strategies that will counter Zapdos and PikachuZekrom. I can see options like Passimian or even some splashable fighting attackers appearing in the next big tournaments so to stop lightning decks from dominating again. This next weekend we will have and SPE and a Regional Championship in Europe and EEUU respectively so be ready to see some interesting evolution. Thanks for reading!