Hi there trainers!
The 2025 Play! Pokemon season has started! The first Regional Championship took place mid September in Baltimore, the United States, and now we move over to the first championships in Latin America and Europe!
My name is Martijn – you may know me as Inadequance. I am the 2024 Worlds finalist, and I’ll be writing most of these articles! The goal is to write the many tournaments that will be held globally as one big storyline.
Baltimore recap
The first Regional Championship of the season drew in big numbers already; with over 180 registrations, Baltimore was one of the biggest official tournaments held for Pokémon GO in the United States.
And for good reason; competitors were excited to try out the new meta, with the 50 second switch clock, that had positive reviews from players trying it out in the GO Battle League. And this definitely translated well to the Show 6 bring 3 format. We saw household names such as OutOfPoket, 0EL1TE0 and HouseStark93 show incredible gameplay with unique Pokemon such as Galarian Moltres, Shadow Machamp and Shadow Jumpluff.
And of course, there was also newer talent rising up. Lilwinery with her Shadow Typhlosion, Kelssseyk with her Talonflame and MerFFFy36 with the Arctibax put on a show and made it to day 2.
But the star of Baltimore was no one other than… wdage. Huh? Didn’t he quit like 7 months ago? He did, and now he came back – he said he likes this meta much more than the previous one, and it showed. He didn’t lose a set up until he faced his friend 0EL1TE0 in the winners finals. From there, he managed to win 3-2 in a tough set vs Ilqm in the Losers finals, to bounce back into the Grand finals.
There must be something uneasy about now playing a best-of-5 to reset the bracket and then do it again to win the whole thing against the person who knocked you down in the first place. 0EL1TE0 showed absolute mastery with the Feraligatr and brought it in almost every single broadcasted battle.
Everyone thought it was over quickly after 0EL1TE0 lead 2-0, but wdage bounced back. He showed us that yes Feraligatr is strong, but it can be dealt with, even in the hands of an elite player. He didn’t compete for 7 months, but in the first championship he competed again, wdage won it all and is the first Regional Champion of 2025.
Meta preview
So, what actually stood out in Baltimore, and what are we expecting in the next tournaments moving forward?
My hot take before Baltimore was that I think Azumarill is anti-meta. This time, my hot take is that I think Cresselia was the revelation of Baltimore. After the meta update, it was no longer to be found in the top 12 usage. However, 5 of them snuck through in the top 16, and all of the top 3 teams had Cresselia on their team!
All these Cresselia had Moonblast, and that’s probably to hit Dark-type Pokémon back. It also deals super effective damage to Dragon-type Pokémon. I think there may also be reason for Future Sight however, as it picks up the 0 and 1 shield against Clodsire.
That’s going to be an interesting development if the Cresselia stocks are rising, but also if players are taking notes from the team of wdage. The team of wdage is actually not that great into Cresselia at all; Azumarill and Chesnaught struggle hard, while Clodsire and Dunsparce are so-so. He only really had the Powder Snow Alolan Sandslash to keep Cresselia in check, and that can be a risky pick to bring as it loses hard to Feraligatr, the many Fire-types and the few Fighting-types in the meta.
Wdage is a good driver though, and while it wasn’t easy, he showed it’s not exactly impossible to defeat Cresselia with his team.
Another Pokémon that I’ll give a shout out here is the Shadow Drapion. Some people had it on their list as an interesting pick, but this Pokémon was wicked on the stage in Baltimore. Kelssseyk and LyleJeffsIII put on a show with it in most of their battles and 0EL1TE0 got to the grand finals with it. With the Poison Sting buff, Drapion doesn’t need to rely as much on Sludge Bomb for Poison-type damage output. Even without Sludge Bomb, the 2 shield scenario vs Azumarill is very good now. Your charged attack energy is still walled though, so the 0 and 1 shield are pretty big losses. But having Aqua Tail for Fire-types, Clodsire and just for the sake of the opponent losing track of the energy is probably preferable now.
Even the rare Galarian Moltres snuck into top 3, and even had a higher usage than the very common Mandibuzz.
The meta is looks pretty settled already in Clodsire, Feraligatr, Azumarill, Dunsparce and Serperior. A Pokémon on that list should be Mandibuzz too, but I expect to see a drop in this after it’s poor performance in Baltimore. With so many teams having Azumarill AND Dunsparce on the same team, it’s just so hard to make this Pokémon work. That said, it does line up well against that Cresselia though…
The last Pokémon I’d like to look at is one that we’ve hardly seen at all, and I do think this pick can be incredibly valuable for teams. It’s Ariados. Ariados has access to the buffed Poison Sting and much like Drapion, it doesn’t need Cross Poison really for Poison-type damage output anymore. Trailblaze also has been buffed – it went from 50 to 45 energy required and allows Ariados to get to both Lunge and Trailblaze in only 5 Poison Stings! With its high attack, it usually wins charged attack priority against Feraligatr, meaning that it could target quite some meta Pokémon: Azumarill, Dewgong, Serperior, Cresselia, Machamp and Feraligatr. Then again, it does have a rough time against Clodsire, Diggersby and Dunsparce (some of these are winnable in the 2 shields though!) so it has its offsets.
Players to watch out for: Dortmund
Over 90 players are signed up for Dortmund in Germany. It tends to be one of the smaller Regional Championships in Europe; last season 104 competitors registered. Last season it was the 6th European Regional Championship of the season, this season it’s the first one. Let’s take a look at some notable names that are competing.
The Dutch are coming! For the Dutch living the furthest from the border with Germany, it’s about a 3 hour drive only. And amongst them is, of course, the three time champion Colin6ix. It could have been 4 times even, but ArceusAurelius stopped him last season in Dortmund. Luckily for Colin, ArceusAurelius is not around this time. On the other hand, Colin relied a lot on Altaria last season and that Pokémon is unlikely to be around for the months to come as it received a nerf in its main charged attack Sky Attack.
Colin tends to have more success with the teams from his Tea & Pizza teammates. While he has been practicing quite a bit with different teams, it may be a fun game to look out for who Colin took notes from. And to see if he – yet again – manages to use that team or those Pokémon better than the player who came up with the ideas.
The epitome of the European competition; LurganRocket reached top 4 at Worlds 2022 and Tied 5 at Worlds 2024. And it looks like he is already excited to try and qualify for Worlds 2025!
He probably wasn’t too excited about Cresselia though. Now it’s not going to be the unique pick he was going to use… I don’t know if he actually was planning on bringing Cresselia, but it is known to be his signature pick.
LurganRocket had the most success in Germany at the Bochum Regional Championship in 2023. He was undefeated until the grand finals – where he would face off against his good friend 23EJB. Unfortunately the alignment was heavily NOT in his favour, and 23EJB managed to win it in the end, meaning that LurganRocket still has yet to win another title after his first win in 2022.
Oh and speaking of which, our next player to look out for is 23EJB himself! He didn’t play in the World Championships in Honolulu, Hawaii last season and even played VGC in Bologna, but it looks like the Austrian is back. And I can’t wait to see what he cooked up for this time. EJB has not played much yet this season and the 50 second timer is something he’ll have to get used to before Dortmund.
His best performance so far was winning the title in Bochum in the 2023 season, but overall he has been struggling to perform consistently. EJB is always a player to look out for in any tournament he plays however and when in form, he can take down anyone – so I have high expectations of him for this tournament.
I mentioned Colin, but we can’t forget about his Dutch teammate Statastan of course. Known to be a top show 6 bring 3 player for many years since PvP came out, Statastan has been one of the most consistent competitors since the start of the Play! Pokemon circuit. He has top cut half of the tournaments he played and has 4 medals to his name.
But… despite his consistent top performance throughout the seasons, he has yet to win gold! It’s a brand new season now with many opportunities to come, and the first two Regional Championships are relatively close for the Dutchman as well. I would expect to see him go to both Dortmund and Lille. One of his strengths is succeeding with the same team of 6 for many tournaments, so we’ll see if he brings the same teams to those two championships.
The last player to look out for is… a German player! We actually haven’t talked about German players at the German Regional Championship at all. Surprisingly, the top German competitors come in relatively small numbers. They’ve had some successes in every season though; DancingRob won the World Championships in 2022, Zephymastyx won the Malmö Regional Championships in 2023 and Zzweilous won the Barcelona Special Event in 2024.
Stonecollection is one of the notable names in terms of success. He has one medal to his name, and he qualified for the 2022 World Championships by winning his Last Chance Qualifiers bracket.
I think Stonecollection has two loves in Pokémon GO PvP: Shadow Dragonair, and Shadow Sableye. Body Slam has been nerfed, which makes Dragonair much worse now than other dragons such as Goodra, Arctibax, Dragonite and Guzzlord. But Power Gem went from a bad charged attack, to a very respectable and hard hitting coverage attack! I predict we will see the Shadow Sableye once more from Stonecollection. He hasn’t had as much success as many other notable names, but he is definitely on par with them in terms of skill.
There are more well known German names such as Ouden, JBGWinsenHSV and Fr43ka, but based on recent performances, I think Zzweilous and Stonecollection have the best odds at taking it home for Germany.
There will also be some international representation! JavierV20 from Peru will be competing in Dortmund. I’m curious to see if he can take some prizes from Europe to Latin America. Speaking of Latin America, there will also be a Regional Championship in Joinville, Brazil!
Players to watch out for: Joinville
At the time of writing, 61 competitors registered for Joinville. It’s a bit out of the way for many South Americans, on the southeast coast of Brazil. But that means that the players competing are likely the best and most competitive. Quality over quantity they say, right? There are going to be many names we know, and here are 5 that I’m zooming in for this one.
If memory serves well, I believe that the first Regional Championship in LATAM for Pokémon GO was held in Joinville, in 2022. And Zarddy was the player who won at the time!
Winning Joinville meant Zarddy would receive an invitation AND travel award to travel to the first Worlds Championships, and he reached a tied 5 position there – one short of a trophy.
Ever since Worlds 2022, Zarddy has been somewhat struggling on an international level. A 2-2, 4-2 and 2-2 record at 2023 Worlds, 2024 NAIC and 2024 Worlds is not what Zarddy is used to and Joinville – a familiar place – will be the first opportunity for him to reinvent himself and his gameplay.
I don’t think there will be many non-Brazilian competitors, but here is one of them! It’s the Tercero del Mundo, the Whimsicott Warrior, the Argentinian player with many accolades to his name. What you see on his stream is not the competitor – he goes from memer and washed up silph legend to someone hungry for wins. MartoGalde has won ‘only’ 1 Championship – the Regional Championship in Mexico City in 2022, but he has 2 more medals and a 3rd place Worlds trophy to his name. And just like Zarddy, he reached a top 5 placement at Worlds 2022, meaning he was 1 win off having 2 trophies at this time.
LATAM has many more Championships nowadays than they used to in the previous seasons, and MartoGalde is one of the players able to benefit from it by consistently gathering CP all over South America and even at the 2024 NAIC. The points in the new season will be important early on, because they will count for the EUIC travel award race!
I haven’t heard from PatrickyAlbani in a while, but if he’s around; he would be one of the more ‘local’ heroes. Curitiba is quite close to Joinville so I would not be surprised if we’ll see PatrickyAlbani back in action. He was the Runner-up at Joinville 2022 behind Zarddy, and qualified for the 2023 World Championships by winning a tiebreaker at the 2023 LAIC, where he came in 5th.
PatrickyAlbani used Dewgong in his last 2 tournaments in the previous meta, so he may be delighted to see that it’s even better now in the Clodsire meta. PatrickyAlbani might not be the first name people think of when guessing a local top battler, but he could be the dark horse to take it all.
Now of course, this name has to be mentioned. The only player ever so far to have won a Regional Championship by going straight 2-0 all the way, not dropping a single battle. LNDsRargef is the face of Brazilian top competition. Hardly anyone knew him at the beginning, and now he is cemented as a legend.
Rargef has 2 gold medals, a gold trophy from the 2024 LAIC and a 4th place trophy from the 2023 LAIC. Unfortunately he didn’t perform even remotely as well as he does in Brazil at Worlds 2023. After winning the LAIC 2024, he went to try out his success in San Antonio in the United States, but only went 3-2 here too. Rargef somewhat lost credibility as an international competitor, up until he tried out his luck once again at the 2024 NAIC. And boy was it a run. He traveled with Zarddy and LNDsTSteinar – and got to tied 5, one win off a 3rd trophy. Insane. His friend LNDsTSteinar even managed to get to top 3 – securing his 2nd trophy as well.
At the World Championships 2024, Rargef almost made it to day 2 in his stacked group, but he barely lost to DanneWWW.
I think at this point, both Rargef and Steinar are players that always have eyes on them wherever they compete. I can’t wait to see them compete again.
The Froslass Queen – like many others, LNDsJuhsmuniz will be competing in Joinville too! She made a name for herself at the 2024 Curitiba Regional Championship, using Froslass the way use Feraligatr nowadays. It took a whole lot of Umbreon to barely stop her. And despite Froslass not being so good anymore after the buff of Lanturn Azumarill and the introduction of Feraligatr, Annihilape and Rock Slide Vigoroth, she tried it one more time at the 2024 Sao Paulo Regional Championship.
That didn’t go too well unfortunately, as she went 1-2 there. Her recent performances may not be as good as that of LNDs teammates Rargef and Steinar, but after her graceful playstyle she had shown in Curitiba, She has been of similar inspiration for battlers all around the world. Ju Muniz might not be your first call to win a Championship, but is definitely not a name to be surprised of if she were to get far. And I think everyone competing at Joinville knows that.
The Dortmund Regional Championships are held during the weekend of 28th and 29th September. You can find a link to the broadcast and bracket here:
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-dortmund
The Joinville Regional Championships are held during the weekend of 28th and 29th September. You can find a link to the community broadcast and bracket here: