Hello everyone, this is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here in CCG. This season overall has been incredibly close with a multiplicity of decks being able to fight for the first positions of the tournaments. However, if there is one strategy that has been present in the majority of events, it has to be lightning decks. Now, the coolest thing about lightning is precisely that it has the capacity to adapt and transform into different variants with only a few changes, something that no other deck in the format can. Let’s explain this issue further and see how the metagame has adapted to deal with it.

 

For the sake of clarification, when I say “lightning” decks I am referring of course to those kind of engines benefiting from electric support that focus on one main electric attacker and employ secondary Pokémon to support the strategy: Jirachi Zapdos, Jolteon Zapdos, Pikachu Zekrom, Zapdos Ultra Beast…. In my opinion, the line that separates one deck from another is so thin and fuzzy that I would argue that all the mentioned combinations belong to the same archetype rather that existing separately. If we think about it, they all use the same core to function and with the celebration of tournaments, players have just opted to add more or less copies of different cards in order to improve a certain match up.

 

Let’s take some quick examples to prove my point. PikachuZekrom can play most of the time as a normal Jirachi/Zapdos/Jolteon deck but the other way round is also possible. There are some decks with heavy focus on Zapdos and Jirachi that have started to run a single copy of Pikachu Zekrom for the aggression it provides. Are 6 cards of difference enough to classify them as different decks? That’s the question I want to raise. Depending on the amount of copies and the choice of secondary support Pokémon, the decks gain certain advantages and disadvantages. Jolteon, Zeraora or PikachuZekrom, all provide different outs during a game but they come with a cost so players are doing their best trying to balance them thinking about expected pairings.

 

That being said, I believe that the electric archetype has taken the metagame by storm and has forced decks to adapt in order to counter them. Zoroark (only a ban can make it stop winning) can effectively deal with every deck in the lightning spectrum running fighting attackers and, most important, shutting their possibilities to get pluses with the Muk ability lock. Blacephalon Naganadel, another top tier deck of the past season, had to reinforce its Muk line knowing that the priority is to set the lock as soon as possible. However, those strategies have proved to be pretty solid against lightning variants and currently they run at the same level in terms of competitiveness.

 

All in all, I would say that lightning archetype is currently the one with more capacities in the current state of the game, even though it is far from being the ultimate unbeatable option. So if you are planning to play a large tournament soon, be sure to be prepared to face those strategies.