Hi there trainers!
The 2025 Play! Pokemon season has started! We’ve had the first month of competition starting off with a tournament in North-America, South-America and Europe. This week, we have another tournament coming up in South-America; in Lima, Peru!
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. The tournament in Lima will be the first Special Championship of the season.
Wait, why is this tournament so special? Good question, voice in my head trying to think from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know what this is. A Special Championship is similar to a Regional Championship BUT has an upside and a downside.
The upside is that these are free to enter! At least they were last season in Europe. The downside is that there is usually no cash prizing, unless the tournament organizer can and wants to. I’m not an expert, but I believe this has to do with particular gambling regulations and restrictions in some countries.
But before heading into Lima, let’s recap the Dortmund and Joinville championships.
Dortmund 2025
The first Regional Championship in Europe took place in Dortmund, with 100 competitors competing. It was not the first championship worldwide though – and the players have been able to take notes from Baltimore 2 weeks before. A couple changes to the meta were very noticeable:
Malamar, Gastrodon and Jumpluff dropped out of the top 12 usage while Cresselia, Shadow Drapion and Toxapex jumped in. With significant numbers too! I expected to see even less Mandibuzz after its poor performance in Baltimore, but it still had a 32% usage. The increase in Cresselia considering the top 3 in Baltimore all had Cresselia on their team.
The more unique and winning picks from the team of wdage in Baltimore – non-Shadow Alolan Sandslash and Chesnaught – didn’t make much of an impact on the Dortmund meta and were rarely seen. The team of 0EL1TE0 with the Shadow Drapion may have made more of an impact. Perhaps those Pokémon were just easier to pilot or players felt more confident with those. Surprisingly, we also have seen only ONE Clodsire with Stone Edge on the broadcast. Every other Clodsire we’ve seen had Sludge Bomb, and that’s probably the preferred moveset now to break the common Grass + Azumarill core.
It’s difficult to say which Pokémon was the star of the show in Dortmund. Both the grand champion and runner-up took notes from Ilqm in Baltimore. Kazim and TontonBatteuse put on a formidable show with the Galarian Moltres and showing yet again that not only it may be the better Dark- and Flying-type than Mandibuzz, it’s also straight up worth adding to your roster of competitive Pokémon. I think Niantic is pretty happy with this promotion for the upcoming Adventure Incense event, where the Galarian birds debut in their shiny form.
Even though it didn’t make it to the grand finals at all, I would say Malamar was the Pokémon that made a huge impression in Dortmund. Dropping out of the top usage, but used by many top players such as Nickname29585, Maxy1000000P, Zzweilous and JavierV20. And they brought it to almost every game they played. It was so flexible – it only really struggles against Mandibuzz and has a hard time against Azumarill. But even into Shadow Drapion, it has play. We saw Stonecollection bait the Shadow Drapion of JavierV20 not once, but TWICE, and if JavierV20 didn’t catch the Superpower on another Pokémon, the Malamar actually would have won the 2 shield scenario.
To close off the Dortmund recap, I just want to say that the top competitors were marvelous to see. Kazim had never top cut an event before even though we all knew he is a very good player, and now he finally has done justice to his skill and won a tournament. TontonBatteuse, Nickname29585 and AMindJoke were competitors who haven’t had some success in quite a while and now finally found their way again in this new meta. Of course 23EJB and Zzweilous – the first Max Out season GBL Legend – as household names showing again they are able to adapt to any meta handed to them (kind of disappointed Zzweilous didn’t bring Shadow Sharpedo but I guess he made it up by fun battles to cast for me). Arreguiikdn as well top cutting for the first time and of course JavierV20 with the LATAM representation.
Speaking of JavierV20 and that LATAM representation, we also had a Regional Championship in Joinville, Brazil this weekend!
Joinville
Copag often has a stream and some usage data, but unfortunately we didn’t have a showcase of the first championship in South-America this time. So I’m going to mostly base this recap and analysis off the bracket and the top 8 that we do have.
Like I said in the edition of the Dortmund and Joinville preview, Joinville is a bit out of the way for many competitors so it tends to be one of the smaller championships in Brazil. Joinville counted 70 competitors, but amongst them were many, many very good players.
Upon arriving, there was a pleasant surprise for the competitors. They expected to compete on the devices they have always used before at the competitions, but they got to play on the iPhone 15 now! This was great news for not just the Joinville players but for the South-American competition in general.
There were not many surprises in the top 8 of Joinville. Some top competitors like Zarddy, LNDsWingzz, LNDsAureo, LNDsPawlinhoTad and LNDsJuhsmuniz didn’t make it, but we did see household names like LNDsRargef, LNDsTSteinar and LNDsKanan. And of course, that also includes the Argentinian invader – MartoGalde.
Out of the top 8 names, I think the only name we’ve not seen as much before is DarknessKyu – all the other names have made it at least on the LAIC broadcasts before.
If you didn’t see the bracket before, and ask anyone ‘Who do you think will win Joinville?’, I feel like the most obvious answer is LNDsRargef. And um yeah. He did it again. I believe this is his first time from the losers side of the bracket though. After losing to LNDsKanan in the winners finals of Group B, he knocked out Kourlash, GaravelloAndre, LNDsTSteinar and Copperkid, only to play LNDsKanan again twice in the grand finals. And he did it again. The new meta did not nerf LNDsRargef, marking his 3rd Regional win and 4th total championship wins. That’s the same amount as Doonebug97, but one of those championship wins of LNDsRargef was the LAIC.
Now let’s talk a bit about the meta in Joinville. We only have the top 8 numbers, and I’ll tell you something. Those South-American players are definitely doing better in terms of creativity than the North-Americans and Europeans. Only 3 Clodsire and 2 Feraligatr in the top 8…? Most of the teams have Diggersby and Toxapex as their core instead, and we even have a Goodra, Shadow Typhlosion and 2 Araquanid in the top 8.
Toxapex and Diggersby really look like the opposite core of Clodsire and Feraligatr. Both those Pokémon can take on Feraligatr, and Diggersby protects Toxapex from the opposing Clodsire. With so few Steel-type Pokémon in the meta, the Toxapex usage has been increasing and there are hardly any Pokémon that can break this up. A few picks that I could think of are Future Sight Cresselia and Powder Snow Alolan Sandslash. But even against those, Toxapex and Diggersby are not hopeless.
And there’s one more. It’s the one that LNDsRargef had brought. A Pokémon that also stood out in Dortmund, where TontonBatteuse got to 2nd place and Nickname29585 got to 3rd place with it. It’s Quagsire.
Mud Shot generates less energy now, but the Water- and Ground defensive typing is still so invaluable. Every team in the top 8 besides that of DarknessKyu has a Grass-type or pseudo-Grass type in Cresselia, but the Quagsire is relatively simple to cover with the new star that is Shadow Drapion. For extra weeding, Toxapex would cover it even more. The formula behind Quagsire and the team of LNDsRargef looks so simple, but it is creative and it shows that he made good use of it.
Players to watch out for: Lima
Now let’s move on to the next championship – the Special Championship in Lima, Peru! I don’t expect to see many of the same names that we saw on the bracket in Joinville and we will likely see other players shine here. Since the registration is done through PlayLATAM and not RK9, we don’t know at this point how many players there are registered – last season had approximate 60 competitors in Lima. We’ll see Ventuski again – but this time as staff to help out with the event!
Here are some notable names that I have for this championship. I don’t have a lot of achievements for some of these players – that is not because they are less successful or not as good, but simply because the LATAM region didn’t start with as many championships as North-America and Europe did. It’s only since halfway through the 2023 season that they now reach numbers equal to the other regions.
A content creator on Twitch and somewhat of a late rising star, desinked is a very prominent name to look out for as the reigning champion of Lima. And he’s looking to defend his title! Desinked tends to bring some relatively off-meta picks – he brought Guzzlord, Arctibax and Shadow Abomasnow before to tournaments. I guess he also brought a Carbink and Trevenant core to Worlds but uh yeah you know, Carbink..
After some decent – but not top-cutting decent – results in the 2023 Santiago Special Event and 2024 LAIC, desinked went on a tear. Play! Pokemon had announced a handful of Special Events all over Latin-America and desinked made good use of it. First he won in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Then, he was the Runner-up in Santiago, Chile, and after that he won the Special Event in Lima, Peru. This guaranteed him enough Championship Points to land the Travel Award to the World Championships in Hawaii. Unfortunately, that didn’t go super well with a unique Trevenant-Carbink core, as he landed on a 2-2 score here. But I think that will only make him hungry for more!
Also a competitor from Chile, IceCr1s has qualified and participated in both the 2023 and 2024 World Championships. Although not in the same colours – him and desinked have the same amount of medals and are definitely top threats for the competition in any tournament they play in. Last season he was the runner-up, and I think this time he is interested in upgrading that silver to gold.
IceCr1s tends to practice and master the same Pokémon over a longer period. But since this is a new season, I don’t know exactly what to expect from him this time. He has gained quite some Championship Points already. In fact, fellow Chilean competitor MemiGRR already has capped out on the local points! Those two players competing in Lima may be the two competitors with the most experience in this meta already.
The maximum amount of Championship Points you can gain this season is 260 – 4 Cup and Challenge wins – but this ‘resets’ for every International Championship Travel Award. With MemiGRR and IceCr1s grinding them out, they make for top contenders for any Travel Award coming up if they want to.
Chile has many top players and I’m sure I will be previewing more of them later on in the season, but let’s also zoom in on the more local competitors: the ones from Peru!
And the main competitor from Peru to watch out for has to be JavierV20. He visited Europe the week before and is going straight into another competition. He is bringing 280 Championship Points with him from Europe to the South-America leaderboards, giving him a huge head start in the EUIC travel award race – his main competition at this moment are the top players from Joinville, Brazil that took place during the same weekend as the championship in Dortmund.
Along with Astonash, desinked and MartoGalde, JavierV20 also has the Travel Award for the 2025 LAIC coming up in November. This is a set amount of prize money that is to be used to travel to an International Championship. For these 4 players, that will be a whopping $2000 to travel to the in-region International Championship. Both JavierV20 and MartoGalde – the latter also reaching a top 8 in Joinville 2025 and competing in Lima – are strong contenders for the $3500 prize money that is the out of region EUIC travel award!
As said before, South-America has not had as many championships as North-America and Europe and thus it’s difficult to measure or zoom in on the competition here based on previous tournaments. And the distances between the countries and championships are much larger than they are in Europe, too.
Instead, I want to highlight a player that has been very successful in the GO Battle League, also known as GBL.
Aaroncamp2102 may be the main GBL person to watch out for. In fact, he just whooped me by 2-0 in a LATAM grassroots competition, where the tiebreaker had to be played in GBL style, Open Great League format. So that’s some extra good reason to feature him here. I actually wasn’t aware I would be playing against this warrior that had reached number one on the GBL leaderboard before. That was a couple seasons ago, but it looks like he still has it in him as he reached tied 5 last season in Lima. I’m curious to see how he will do it this time.
Lastly, the two players I want to zoom in on may not be as hard hitters as the previous mentioned players are, but they are valuable content creators to the community and I would love to see them do well.
The first one is Thaliwi. She’s been traveling to many events worldwide and I believe I first met her at the Safari Zone in Sevilla. Oh, and I also didn’t forget that she cheered for ElCheasdasd when he crushed me at the 2023 World Championships in Yokohama, Japan. Grrr… No, but seriously. She’s been traveling, competing, and even helping out and coaching newer players at GO Fest events to help them get into PvP.
The second one is YonkouJean. A content creator known for making incredibly useful graphics on X including GBL teams and the moveset counts for the Pokémon in those specific meta’s. South-America often falls in the shadows of Europe and North-America due to lack of broadcasts or resources, but YonkouJean has been putting in immense and invaluable work for the global community and has been highlighting many of the LATAM players in his content. He reached a tied 15 place last season at Lima and I’ve seen him practicing the past few weeks in my practice tournaments, so let’s see if he can exceed his previous performance.
That concludes the preview for the upcoming Special Event in Lima! I’m not sure if we will see a broadcast, and that means the meta may also not impact the Regional Championship coming up after in Louisville, North America. If there is one – we will make sure to have the link to the broadcast in the description.
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-lima
See you next time!