Hey there trainers!
It’s been a month – a month since we had an article and a championship. But we’re getting started again with two tournaments this upcoming weekend!
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.
Before we get into our upcoming championships, let’s recap real quick what happened at the last one – Toronto…
Toronto recap
Toronto counted 154 competitors – one of the largest Regional Championships ever in North America! I guess it helps that it’s relatively convenient to reach from many places in Canada, the United States and even Europe.
If I’m not mistaken, it was also the first tournament where the new moveset additions were allowed. Bogotá the week before took place the weekend of the moveset update week, and that meant that for example Bibarel with Rollout was not allowed to use there just yet.
Did we see anything back from that? …Not really, but there definitely was a change in top usage Pokémon – most notably Diggersby and Annihilape. Fire Punch has been buffed, and Diggersby is the big winner of that. Annihilape did not get a buff, but it does well against Pokémon like Clodsire, Diggersby, Drapion and Primeape. On top of that, Ice Punch also has been buffed. The usage of Alolan Sandslash increased, but that too would be a victim of the ghost monkey.
Corsola XL candy are not easy to get, but it seemed that Toronto had quite some people who walk a lot. It made it to the top usage with a whopping 24,1%!
The loser of the update seems to be Dunsparce. And I think that makes sense, considering how hard Dunsparce loses to Diggersby. Diggersby and Annihilape being everywhere doesn’t give it a lot of play…
The Europeans competing brought an interesting storyline to Toronto. In big names such as Zzweilous, Colin6ix, TomahawkUK and I guess myself, there was a good chance a European could win it all. In fact, 3 out of 4 made it to day 2!
But a European did not win it. The person who won was someone we all know is good, top cuts pretty much every time, but had never won before. And I feel like just because they had never won before, they never really were on the list of ‘potentially greatest players’, or ‘players we expect to win this big tournament’.
A king without a crown. In Toronto, Ilqm finally found that crown. I admit it’s bittersweet that the Bibarel of myself or doctorroastbeef wasn’t able to win in Canada, but at least Ilqm broke the win streak of that stupid Jumpluff.
Meta prediction
Moving forward, what do we expect for this weekend? We have a championship in Birmingham and in Rio de Janeiro. Since Toronto was the first championship in this new meta, it’s difficult to draw a comparison.
That is if you didn’t have a madman with a server hosting a lot of practice tournaments! Based on that, my prediction is that the top 2 usage will be Azumarill and (Shadow) Drapion. I include regular and Shadow in one, so it’s possible Drapion may fall to a close 2 or even 3. Players have also found the way of the degen; my enemies speak ill of Wigglytuff, but Annihilape is the new degen in town. It will have a very high usage as putting 2 shields on it could allow it to defeat even some counters like Azumarill and Talonflame.
Which is ridiculous. We need to normalize Wigglytuff again.
Furthermore I predict a decline in Clodsire and Dunsparce, but an increase in Feraligatr and – I hate to say it, hopefully Marto doesn’t quote me another time – Jumpluff. Jumpluff has play into those big 3 common Pokémon being Drapion, Azumarill and Annihilape and the number 4 and 5 may very well be Feraligatr, Diggersby and/or Serperior. Those are all Pokémon Jumpluff can hang on to.
Do keep in mind that Jumpluff remains to be an incredibly bad Pokémon so it can also lose half of those matchups (that it’s supposed to win).
Rio de Janeiro
It’s been two months since I was in Brazil, and we have our next one here already; in the big city of Rio de Janeiro! Who do we think is going to win this one is the question. I would love to put the best performing Brazilian of the LAIC here – 12Vitorello – but I believe he won’t be participating.
To be honest, the LAIC was kind of brutal towards the Brazilians as they had 1 Brazilian in the top 8 and only 2 in the top 16 – one of them being (to no one’s surprise) LNDsRargef.
Pretty cheesy to put him in my Players to Watch again, isn’t it? But look, if you’re the best performing Brazilian (next to 12Vitorello) at the biggest tournament in Latin America, you’re a big name. I mean, that’s still probably the lowest of his accolades considering he won multiple championships but you get what I mean.
If we’re talking about the previous winner being a king without a crown – here’s another one: LNDsAureo. He is the Runner-Up of 2023 Porto Alegre (behind LNDsRargef) and of 2025 Buenos Aires (behind Nesabethan). He’s been practicing a lot for the upcoming Championship and I don’t think anyone is as hungry for a Regional win as this man is.
But there’s also young kings amongst us. LNDsxJoaoVictor is not even remotely a prominent name in Play! Pokemon… yet. But hear me out. Under the name ‘LNDsxJoaoVictor’, he has reached number 1 on the GO Battle League leaderboard between season 17 and 20. 4 times in a row, and there’s still 1,5 months left in season 21 left to do it again.
And that’s not all! Before this, his username was xJoaoVictor2006. And under that name, he reached number one on the leaderboard 3 more times. That is 7 times in total – I may need to be fact checked here, but that might just be more than anyone else in the world!
In my experience, GBL translates quite well into the Show 6 format at some point so I have no doubt Joao Victor may become one of the greatest sooner or later.
The final name I’ve written down is Copperkid. Top 3 at the 2025 Joinville Regional Championship and the 3rd best performing Brazilian at the LAIC – this may just be another king without a crown. Having that consistency lead him to one medal already and it’ll be likely it will lead to more.
I’m hoping the players can again play on the new iPhone 15 that they had at the Joinville Regional Championship and LAIC, accompanied with some good internet connection. That would be the recipe for an incredible tournament in arguably the most passionate and competitive continent in the scene.
At the time of writing, Rio de Janeiro counts 80 registered competitors. I don’t think we’ll be able to watch along – no stream has been announced just yet.
Birmingham
At this current moment in time, Birmingham counts a whopping 181 registrations. The Championships in the United Kingdom always gets a good number of people in – 208 registered for Liverpool last season!
Now the theme that I’m going to put forward here is painful, perhaps traumatic for some of the Europeans. It is… defending the championship from the North Americans. So far, the Europeans have not been able to win one in North America, but NiteTimeClasher (somehow) won in Liverpool last season.
I will be commentating the event, so I can’t help defend. But I have faith in a couple of these European warriors to get the job done.
First off, one of the best performing European competitors at the World Championships. LurganRocket reached top 5 there, and it’s looking like he is trying to qualify yet another time this season. Dortmund and Stuttgart didn’t go well for him, but he did reach a top 5 in Lille with a Shadow Magnezone.
LurganRocket doesn’t have a lot of local tournaments nearby, so his Championship Points have to come from his performances at the Regional Championships and the EUIC. Let’s see if he has another wicked corebreaker for this weekend to get him some points again.
Next up is a player not known for his consistency – but he has had some very good performances in the past. Nesabethan is the 2025 Buenos Aires Special Champion, and also the 2023 EUIC Runner-Up. While the meta in South America is not exactly the same as the meta in North America, it shows that Nesabethan is capable of tackling competitors outside his comfort zone. Perhaps he is even better against them.
That said, there are so many more good players just from the United Kingdom only. Maxy1000000P, TomahawkUK, JamieMcElwain, SirKori, Deanosky, vTenacity, Kazim33, TheGengarLife and many many more. And of course outside of the United Kingdom we have well known names such as Colin6ix, Paulasha97, MEweedle, Zzweilous and more.
But who do they have to defend Birmingham from? It’ll be 2 North American players (at least as far as I know)… OutOfPoket and HaydonusActual!
Now, NiteTimeClasher was not exactly a player we predicted to win Liverpool. OutOfPoket on the other hand is someone who is actually scary good at the game. He has reached top 10 in 8 out of his last 10 tournaments, making him one of the most consistent players in not just North America, but in the entire world. HaydonusActual used to be one of the best in the GO Battle League, but it’s been a while since we’ve seen those glory times.
So just for all the Europeans reading this. Be prepared. Stand strong. He may be one Superman.. (or Spiderman considering his age) but you have the numbers.
Closing Words
You can find the stream for Birmingham on the official channel – hopefully there will also be one for Rio de Janeiro.
As always, you can find the link to the bracket and stream here.
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-rio-de-janeiro
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-birmingham
See you next time!