Hey there trainers!
We’re almost 4 months into the 2025 Play! Pokemon season, and the next tournament marks the last one in the Pokémon GO Max Out meta!
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.
All tournaments from the LAIC, up until and including the EUIC will count for the NAIC Travel Award. This means that all players start with a ‘clean sheet’ for this race (that includes the points from locals, even if players are already capped on 4), but the current points are retained and used for the Worlds Travel Award.
The Europeans are about to start their race for the NAIC Travel Award, but for the North Americans this already started last week. Let’s recap Sacramento real quick.
Sacramento Recap
Sacramento counted 124 competitors, barely not reaching the 128 threshold which would make for a top 16 on day 2. It made for good competition though, and different competition too as we usually see a lot of different players in the west coast tournaments.
With the usage from my own practice tournaments, I predicted that the Serperior – Alolan Sandslash core would be skyrocketing in usage, and even Mandibuzz to tackle the Serperior – Feraligatr core would increase.
I guess I was kind of right? I’m pretty sure that it should be an Alolan Sandslash and not an Alolan Sandshrew…
Clodsire rose immensely in usage, way more than I thought it would. Many of them have been running Stone Edge over Sludge Bomb, primarily for those Galarian Moltres (it also works for Mandibuzz of course) and to a lesser extent, Ariados. But the Ariados – Malamar core that dominated in October is not that effective anymore at the moment because of the Clodsire – Azumarill core, which is just much more flexible and bulky.
With the decline of Sludge Bomb Clodsire and Ariados, Serperior has become safer to use. But the Grass-type Pokémon winning was… Jumpluff…? Again…? MartoGalde won the LAIC with it, and now Sjamesp21 wins Sacramento with it. If anyone needed another sign that the meta right now Alolan Sandslash, Grass and 1 or 2 Water-type Pokémon – there is your sign man. That’s it right there.
For the record, I’m not saying those Pokémon carried Sjames (or Sjay? That’s his X and Discord handle so I’m sorry if I butcher this up now). He got to 3 grand finals (2 wins) in 5 tournaments and reminds me a bit of the early P4T0M4N days. All of his plays just make sense, it looks simple when he does it, and he strokes his clean shaven chin while thinking, giving him extra aura points. I will stick to my opinion that Jumpluff is not a good Pokémon considering the losses it has in matchups it should win, but when the driver is Sjames or Marto… yeah you can probably put a Magikarp there and they will still make it look good.
Sjames and OutOfPoket dominating in Sacramento probably was not a surprise to anyone, but if you look at the overall bracket, it kind of was a surprise other top names didn’t make it to day 2. MysticMamba24 and Bogglish getting as far as they did was not on my predictions, but they played super well when they needed to and deserved their well placed spot. MysticMamba is kind of a player flying under the radar either way, since he hasn’t played in any tournaments other than the west coast ones. However he reached the top 8 twice in 3 tournaments so for the next west coast regional, I should probably put him in the ‘Players to look out for’ chapter.
The last up and coming player I want to note is TheTaurian22. He was not a player I initially counted as one of North America’s best – yes he is a Special Event Champion, but the 2024 Carolina Championships counted 5 players in total so it’s kind of a double-edged sword. That said, he reached top 10 at the 2025 LAIC and now a top 3 at Sacramento. That tells me he’s about to figure out how to win a championship with more than 5 competitors and in my opinion, TheTaurian has now manifested himself as a name likely top cutting the championships and possibly win another championship one of these days.
Players to look out for
Well then, Stuttgart. It’s usually one of the smallest Regional Championships in Europe. Last season counted 96 competitors, and at the time of writing (Monday before the event), the count is at 88.
For those travelling to Stuttgart just for the ThoTechtical fanbooth, I had to cancel it unfortunately. He does not love us like we love him and I was unable to convince him to fly with me.
I bet when he reads this, he is laughing and cringing at the same time 🙂. Ok, for real though, let’s zoom in on some top players.
First up, the local fauna. Is that an English word too? In Dutch, it means ‘wildlife’ in a particular area. Not saying Germans are animals, but this player kind of is. Zzweilous comes up with the craziest team compositions, and he actually even inspired retired-but-not-really players like ThoTechtical and also TheGengarLife in Lille to run Pokémon like Walrein.
And then he has the audacity to not only sweep my practice tournaments with those kind of teams (and some of those really are almost, if not as competitive as some Regionals in terms of skilled players), but also do well at the Regional Championships. He reached a top 4 in Dortmund with a team below his spice standards, but proves he is better without the meta at Gdansk with a top 2 finish.
He used a Magnezone, Shadow Drifblim and Pangoro. On the same team. And he became the Runner-Up of the Gdansk Regional Championship with that. Kind of poetic, because the 2025 Gdansk Regional Champion TontonBatteuse was the Runner-Up in Gdansk last season with the same kind of nonsense (a Seaking and Clefable). That same Frenchman is even leading the European leaderboards with 1140 CP.
The Germans need to step up their game a bit though, because they hardly do well in their own country and they’re very much behind the rest of the competition. Staple names Zzweilous and Stonecollection are leading, while 0uden is making steps to the top after his top 4 in Gdansk 2025.
I think this is the third time(?) I’m spotlighting this guy. Arguably one of, if not the best European competitor, he is also the reigning Stuttgart Champion. Colin6ix has a long list of accolades and with every single tournament, it’s just looking like he is adding another one to the list. Whenever Colin is competing, there is one question that must be asked: whose team is he stealing this time to do better than said person?
The Dutch competitors tend to do quite well in the German competition. Wait, does that mean… me…? I guess I got 2nd at Worlds after all…
I’ve heard some people say they wouldn’t hear the end of it if I won Worlds, but the truth is that I don’t really like to talk about myself unless I need to milk it for content. At this point I haven’t competed in 3 months and have yet to prove I can keep up with all this shorter switch clock and Feraligatr hogus bogus. My main concern at the moment is that I don’t want it to look like my competing skills overtake my casting priorities. So heading into this tournament, it feels like I can only lose. The bittersweet luxury issues, huh..
Well, I guess I ended up writing a bit of a dark paragraph about myself after all. Quick, let’s move on to a bright and shining star in our competition!
I actually have three of them in this sub chapter here. First off, pablondinas. A competitor that makes great plays now and then which has led him to two medals to his name. I would say Paula is probably the most successful Spanish competitor at the moment, but along with P4T0M4N, pablondinas makes for an excellent number two. And you know what, maybe we can figure that out in Stuttgart as they are both registered.
But my bold expectation this time is to see StrangehToP do well. …But why? He managed to barely qualify for the World Championships last season through local points, but actually hasn’t ever top cut.
Now here’s the funny catch. His best performance was.. at the 2024 World Championships. He swept on day 1, defeating formidable names in beeeach7, WMTGo, and OnionFr4nk, leading him into a tied 17 position at the highest level of competition. Now after a long rest, it’s time for him to pick up that level again.
And then the final player to look out for is… an Italian! I feel like I haven’t spotlighted the Italians much at all so far. I call this player ‘my son’ – but he is not really my son (he is only like 2 years younger than me actually). Perhaps now you’ll be thinking; wow, this biased writer is only picking his friends. That’s… not incorrect, because I am friends with the people I wrote about so far – but for good reason!
I picked Scafo99 because he finally won his first and long coveted medal in Gdansk by a top 3 finish. And then I clicked on his page to see if he had anything else that was interesting to write about. His record is actually insane. Scafo played in 14 tournaments, and reached top 10 in 9 of those. His only negative record was at the last World Championships, and other than that he never had less than 3 wins in the Championship Series. That’s actually an insane stat.
So yeah this chapter is a shout out to the Italians. They’re generally known for doing well in Gymbreakers and restricted formats, and it’s about time they pick up their game in Open Great League. Scafo is not the only well known Italian competing, as ASprescelto, CLeonardo77, AMindJoke and RagingTaz are also signed up.
Closing words
That’s going to be it for this week’s chapter! Stuttgart closes the Max Out season, and the tournaments following up will be in the ‘Dual Destiny’ season as teased today (Monday). I don’t know yet at this moment what the moveset updates are going to be, but I don’t expect big changes. Check out YasserAleed’s YouTube channel where we collaborated on two videos going in-depth on potential changes we’d like to see and that we’d expect to see!
As always, you can find the link to the bracket and the broadcast here.
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-stuttgart
See you next time!
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