By ArceusAurelius

Welcome to the Battle Frontier! I am ArceusAurelius, and I’ve been playing competitive Pokémon Go since May 2019. I’ve peaked as #19 on the GBL Leaderboard, earned several Top Cut finishes in Play! Pokémon Regionals and won a Cycle in the previous Silph Factions with my team Snovertappers. I’ve taken a look at the upcoming Battle Frontier’s Cycle 2 Serene Domain format.

The meta team of Battle Frontier has brought us the Serene Domain. Normal, Psychic and Water types are allowed together with Conkeldurr, Hitmontop, Haunter and Gengar. The banlist is rather extensive, with 19(!) Pokémon. Bulky mons like Araquanid, Chansey, Lickitung and Cresselia, together with Charmers and a lot of Counter users are gone. Grass and Water/Electrics are also gone, together with Mega Pokémon.

The Normals that are gone are the ones that are most threatening to Psychic types, giving the Psychics more leeway to play in this meta, but there are some catches.

There are a few Psychic types with substantial more play into other Psychics. Mew with Shadow Claw, Hypno with Shadow Ball, Malamar with Foul Play and its Dark typing and Alolan Raichu with hard neutral damage.

Defense Deoxys will naturally also see a lot of play, as it’s one of the few things that hits Normal types for super effective damage in this meta.

Inadequance has hosted a couple practice tournaments, where we can witness this meta unfold.

Deoxys Defense and Azumarill dominate the usage, as they are strong generalists who can take hits. No surprises so far. And when we look around the rest of the top usage, Alolan Raichu stands out as an incredible anti meta pick.

Expert tips

The biggest sleeper in this meta is in my opinion Oinkologne Female. It is bulky and has Body Slam for general damage, but its real value lies in Trailblaze. Being able to boost its attack while hitting large portions of the meta for super effective damage makes it my favourite Normal type here. Its biggest check is naturally Defense Deoxys, but because of its low HP stat, the one turn move Tackle puts in a lot of work also in this matchup!

If you haven’t invested in the pig yet, maybe this is the time to start a farm. E-I-E-I-O.

I’d also recommend keeping a Ground type on your team to be able to soak hits from Alolan Raichu, which hits the rest of the Domain incredibly hard. But watch out for Trailblaze.

Closing words

I believe this meta will be somewhat centralized with teams looking similar. Deoxys Defense, Azumarill, Jellicent, Alolan Raichu Raichu and Greninja are currently top 5 in usage and there are few ways to replace their uniqueness with other Pokémon. I would look for Pokémon that can break up this quintet, like Mew, Malamar or Golisopod as your flex picks to deter your opponent from bringing just their favourite three of these five. Then throw the rest to the pigs.