New Sun and Rain Team Could Change the Pokémon Champions Meta
American esports player Alex ‘Lexicon’ Underhill has won the Grand Champion Festival Encore tournament—a massive competitive event featuring over 4,000 players—with an unconventional team strategy that could reshape Pokémon Champions’ competitive meta. His victory centered around an innovative team composition that combines rain and sun weather effects, two of the game’s most powerful strategies typically used separately.
Lexicon’s winning roster featured a hybrid weather-based approach, incorporating Pelipper and Archuladon for rain-setting capabilities alongside Mega Charizard Y and Venusaur for sun-based tactics. By merging these opposing weather systems, Lexicon demonstrated a novel way to leverage both weather types within a single team composition, providing flexibility and coverage that traditional single-weather strategies lack.
In Pokémon Champions’ VGC doubles format, weather control has established itself as one of the dominant competitive strategies. The game’s smaller and more streamlined roster compared to previous Pokémon titles has concentrated strategic viability around fewer core tactics, with weather effects—particularly rain and sun—becoming central pillars of team building. Lexicon’s approach of integrating both conditions suggests players may have overlooked synergistic possibilities.
The tournament victory carries potential significance for the competitive meta. As word spreads about the hybrid weather strategy and its success against thousands of competitors, other players may begin experimenting with similar team architectures. This could diversify team compositions and challenge the dominance of single-weather-focused teams that have previously defined competitive play.