Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here at CCG Castle. Today I want to cover a deck that has become, for its own merits, one of the top tier decks of the entire format: Zacian Combo. This is not the first time I have mentioned the deck but I feel that its popularity has risen so much lately that it needs to be addressed properly. Let’s analyze why this strategy has taken the tournaments by storm!

There are two pillars of this strategy: Zacian V and the Jirachi Prism/Net engine. Zacian V needs no presentation at this point. It is basically a Pokémon that does just everything right. With a very respectable HP, massive damage input and a versatile drawing ability, this metal Pokémon has seen play since it was released to formats ago. The first immediate partner Zacian had was Arceus, Dialga & Palkia Tag Team especially because they shared similar energy requirements. The attack boost of Altered Creation gave Zacian the capability to take down even the powerful Tag Team Pokémon in one single blow. But now the decks have adapted and evolved up to the point that Zacian has proved that it is so good that can be much more than a secondary attacker.

On the other hand, we have Jirachi prims star, a card that for many, many months have been nothing but a funny Pokémon to play in meme decks. When the player draws Jirachi from the prize cards, it can be played directly onto the bench and the player gets an additional prize.  It has been thanks to the release of Scoop Up Net that it has acquired a whole new dimension and with Detective Pikachu’s Mr. Mime and SW&SH Oranguru, the otherwise difficult situation of drawing Jirachi from the prize cards becomes a very possible and repeatable one. The idea is to search the Jirachi, use Oranguru’s to place it at the top of the deck and then bench Mr. Mime to put it directly into the prize cards. Add a couple of Scoop Up nets to the mix and there you go, 2 extra prizes in your game.

If you think about this small combo above, it is clear that it has to be played with low-prize attackers (crazy if you think that 2 prizes is low for the current state of the game) to reach its maximum potential. And there is probably no better 2 prize attacker than Zacian right now. So the idea is to quickly power up a couple of Zacian V with the help of some Metal Sacuers, kill a Tag Team Pokémon in two hits with Jirachi in your prize cards and then simply Boss Orders for a Dedenne. Or alternatively, kill a Tag Team Pokémon and a non GX/V Pokémon using Jirachi’s ability twice. The result of this is a very powerful deck, consistent and very difficult to beat. And very interestingly, this Jirachi/Mime combo has the potential to work with other partners perhaps yet to be explored. In fact, there are some player testing TEU Zapdos with this combo already to see how far they can take it.

So all in all, it is clear that this format still has some surprises for us but  Zacian has the potential to be present in many of them! Thanks for reading!