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 the 2nd championship coming up in North-America, Louisville!
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. Let’s take a look at what happened last weekend in Lima, Peru.
The Special Championship in Lima counted 60 registered competitors and had a community broadcast from Play Latam! We were able to watch some competitors play with many familiar names such as ArceusAurelius, JavierV20, IceCr1s and desinked, the latter even brought a Shadow Ursaring!
We didn’t see much of that Shadow Ursaring on stream though. The Pokémon that again performed so well, just like last week in Dortmund, was Malamar. It was on 9 out of the 16 top teams in Lima! And it got to the grand finals again. Last season had 3 Chilean players in the top 3, but now a Peruvian competitor ran through the winners bracket. Sebasmalito brought Jumpluff back to the stage after it dropped off so quickly in the new meta and it proved to be very good against many teams with Malamar, Ground-types and Azumarill.
Anyway, cool. Malamar is the highlight every week, now Inadequance is trying to make Jumpluff great again. Is that the news we got from Lima?
No… it’s actually funny that Jumpluff had made it so far. It was one of the Pokémon that made it to the top usage at the start of the season due to its fast attack Fairy Wind being buffed. But it was not the only Pokémon that fell off so much. The other Pokémon that was top usage and then got dropped quickly was Alolan Sandslash, even though wdage won in Baltimore with it.
I mean, even the numbers in Lima show this. Where are Jumpluff and Alolan Sandslash in that top 16? Jumpluff had a usage of 3 (which is still more than I anticipated) and Alolan Sandslash (both non-Shadow) had a usage of 2. Surprisingly, the Jumpluff usage on day 2 was equally high as the Serperior usage which is very low. Perhaps LATAM isn’t really into Grass-type Pokémon?
Funny part is, Jumpluff and Alolan Sandslash met in the grand finals in Lima. Sebasmalito ran through the winners bracket, while MartoGalde made a crazy Losers bracket run on day 2. The meta in Europe shifted quickly to Dewgong as the prime Ice-type attacker, but MartoGalde showed that Alolan Sandslash won a Championship earlier on in the season already for a reason. Wdage used the Shadow variant, but MartoGalde went with the non-Shadow variant. This allows Alolan Sandslash to take Fire Punches from Diggersby and Earthquakes from Clodsire a bit better, so it doesn’t need to go into shield disadvantage right away. On top of that, the matchup versus Azumarill is improved as well assuming Alolan Sandslash uses Powder Snow as the fast attack.
Its weaknesses to Fire, Fighting, Feraligatr and Dunsparce remain though, making Alolan Sandslash a typical RPS Pokémon in many scenarios. And I think that’s why players quickly opted for Dewgong, which has more neutral play in even some of its worse matchups. But the fact Alolan Sandslash does so well against Pokémon like Toxapex, Azumarill, Cresselia, Grass- and Dragon-type Pokémon makes it a terrific Pokémon to get some good RPS in.
Now here’s a fun fact for the real ones following my content; non-Shadow Alolan Sandslash can actually win the 2 shields scenario straight Ice Punch against Dunsparce with a very specific stat spread. It would require a very high Defense stat to reach a bulkpoint, and an above average Attack stat to reach a breakpoint. An example of a stat spread would be like 4 Attack, 15 Defense and 5 HP – emphasizing mostly on the Defense while having some Attack. Do keep in mind that Alolan Sandslash wins this matchup by like 1-3 HP so it does make it very close.
Either way, that’s all about the Pokémon. MartoGalde managed to flip the bracket by 3-0 and then won the grand finals by 3-1. His reads and gameplay were on point, showing that he retained his form from the World Championships.
A big congratulations to MartoGalde for winning his 2nd gold medal and the 350 Championship Points (CP) from this tournament. He already got 280 CP last week in Joinville from his tied 5 place there, so that adds up to 630 CP. The remaining tournaments in South America that count for the EUIC travel award are Buenos Aires and the LAIC, so these are really big steps for MartoGalde on his way to London!
We had a community broadcast from PlayLATAM to view some of these battles. I don’t think these battles or the Lima meta will impact the meta of the next upcoming Championship because that channel doesn’t have as big of a following as the official channel does, though MartoGalde winning a tournament is usually good exposure to players inspired by his teambuilding. The next championship will be in Louisville, the United States.
At the moment of writing, Louisville counts 120 registered competitors! I think this number may even grow to 140. It’s the first time we’ll have an official championship for GO here.
Louisville is going to have quite some big names playing. The competitors will be relieved to hear that Baltimore champion wdage won’t be competing here, but other hard hitters such as ItsAXN, OutOfPoket, MagicMayson and OnionFr4nk will be around. Which makes it a bit of a tough choice to zoom in on 5 particular players when there are so many…
Lets just do that anyway.
A content creator and commentator with so many accolades in the Play! Pokemon circuit. The only player to have won a Regional Championship in every season so far. Reis2Occasion barely didn’t manage to get to day 2 in Baltimore, but he is here in Louisville to try it again.
Reis hasn’t had much success on the international stage, but he is always a force to be reckoned with in the North American championships. And he usually does so by having a unique pick on this team. At the 2024 World Championships, this was the Shadow Poliwrath. In Baltimore, this was the Venusaur. I’m excited to see what he’ll bring this time and if he brings any unique Pokémon.
But Reis is going to have some tough competition. After staffing in Baltimore, his rival Doonebug97 is back in action. While Doonebug did get an impressive second place at the 2024 EUIC, his latest scores at the 2024 NAIC (3-2) and 2024 Worlds (0-2) have put him quite behind on the competition now. Both titans want to prove again that they can perform on the highest level.
The 2024 Portland Champion will be competing in Louisville as well! While Abhinav7998 doesn’t have as many top accolades as some other favorites, his performance in Portland was one of the best I’ve seen.
Not only does Abhinav compete in the North American championships, he also has competed in the India Playoffs before. Abhinav has been advocating for the competitive APAC circuit as it is quite different from what we are used to in Europe, North America, South America and Oceania; competitors in APAC usually have 1 region wide tournament to qualify for the World Championships, which starts around late spring. The opportunities are not exactly the same, but Abhinav will be competing again in North America to get some more India representation on this seasons World Championships!
I think Arrohh comes close to having competed in the most championships out of everyone. And just like Abhinav, he may not have as many accolades as some other big players do. Arrohh has 3 medals to his name but yet to win a championship.
Now let me tell you why I like Arrohh as a notable name. He has competed in 22(!) tournaments, and never had a ‘negative’ score – meaning he never had more losses than wins. Considering Pokémon GO PvP definitely has quite a luck factor in it, this is insanely impressive to me. Even the best amongst us have had an 0-2 or 1-2 score. In fact, all of our world champions so far have had an 0-2 or 1-2 in a tournament before!
Arrohh may be the face of persistence and keeping your head up. If you keep going and never have a negative score, there’s gotta be one day you win a championship.
Now we bring it a bit more international. But not too much just yet. We’ll have some Canadians coming over to Louisville! I know LyleJeffsIII and GordonTheFlash will be competing, and those are two names that have top cut before. Lyle has even won multiple championships and has 3 medals in total to his name.
It took a while before Lyle saw success though. In his first 5 tournaments, he couldn’t get more than 4 wins. Until the 2023 NAIC – this is where he broke through with a tied 5th place – and with the invites cascading down at the time, he qualified for the World Championships in Yokohama, Japan at the very end of that season.
Worlds didn’t go that well for him, but he came back strong. A 2nd place in the first tournament of the season in Pittsburgh, only behind wdage, followed up by 2 Regional Championship wins in the next 4 tournaments. Him and Doonebug were considered the best players North-America had to offer for a bit – up until both didn’t succeed as much as they were hoping for at Worlds. Just like Reis and Doonebug, Lyle is one of those titans looking to prove himself on the big stage again.
Let’s go a bit more international. He competed in Baltimore and took a 4th place medal from North America to Europe, and now the antagonist of Baltimore will be here again. 2 weeks after commentating the Dortmund Regional Championship, TomahawkUK is determined to repay the victory of NiteTimeClasher in Liverpool with a gold medal of his own.
If TomahawkUK brought anything but that Pangoro in Baltimore, I think he may have been able to push even a little bit further. But I’ll give it to him, he is not shy to use some whacky picks and is actually able to get somewhere with them too; he even got to top 10 at the 2024 World Championships with a Shadow Bastiodon! Despite his poor taste in Pokémon usage, TomahawkUK is an absolute threat for the North Americans and a great representative for the Europeans. There’s always something extra to it when an international competitor tries to achieve success in a Regional Championship in another continent.
It’s only the start of the season, but the stakes are already high. These points are valuable for the North Americans in the race for the $3500 travel award for the EUIC that takes place in February, in London, and I’m looking forward to who will be taking the lead here. As always, you can find the link to the broadcast and the bracket down below!
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-louisville
See you next time trainers!