Two new cores have completely replaced Rinya Sun. The most popular one is already being dubbed Crystal Rain, in honor of the nickname of its most accomplished user, Jeongso Lee, even though this core of six has been in use since the beginning of the format. The second core is the French Rain, which has been mainly used by players from France and has found victory in Lille piloted by Thomas Gravouille.

Although it is a standard Rain team, it differs from the popular Sun teams in the fact that there is no weather abuser: there is no equivalent to Chlorophyll Venusaur with the option to either Gigantamax or spam Sleep Powders, or to Solar Power Gigantamax Charizard setting up the destroying G-Max Wildfire damage over time.

The main reason is because Kyogre alone is a threat in itself. Kyogre has great bulk, which sometimes can be enhanced with Calm Minds or an Assault Vest; and a specially offensive prowess, boosted sometimes with other held items like Life Orb or Mystic Water. Some hyperoffensive teams may even use Choice Scarf or Choice Specs to outspeed and completely catch the opponent off-guard from the very first turn of the battle.

Regarding movesets, Kyogre has a very powerful spread move in Water Spout, which in many cases outclasses its signature Origin Pulse, given the latter’s imperfect accuracy. Both of these moves are reinforced by Kyogre’s Water-type STAB and Ability Drizzle. The most common coverage is Ice (usually Ice Beam, more rarely Blizzard) and Electric (Thunder, which cannot fail in Rain), but some may even run Normal (Hyper Beam) to better deal with the bothersome Storm Drain Gastrodon. Its most common support move is Protect, but some slower, Trick Room-oriented variants may run Calm Mind too.

As mentioned before, Kyogre’s allies do not take direct advantage of the Drizzle-induced Rain as abusers. The Water type is very good to provide coverage for teammates, as it is only weak to Grass-type and Electric-type moves. In this way, Zapdos and Thundurus keep the Grass-types in check, while providing Speed control through Max Airstream boosts. Rillaboom and Kartana are also common partners to destroy Storm Drain Gastrodon and help with overcoming Sun-setting Groudon. Finally, the Shedinja in French Rain compositions takes advantage of being immune to the two types to which Kyogre is weak, always serving as an unexpected wincon and which forces the opponent to pick a Pokémon that does not like to face Kyogre, just to be able to defeat this little Wonder Guard creature.

As for Restricted Pokémon, Zacian is Kyogre’s preferred pair, as it complements the team with the other category of damage (physical). Other successful partners are Shadow Rider Calyrex, which helped German Jonas Wiegel win in Bilbao; or Dialga, which, although underexplored, assisted Briton Terence Dray in getting his Worlds invite at the Thailand National Championships.