Howdy trainers!
The Championship series have started again in the 2025 season, as we opened last week with both Birmingham and Rio de Janeiro.
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 at that point start with a ‘clean sheet’ for this race (that includes the points from locals, even if players are already capped at 4). The current total points however are also retained and count for the Worlds Travel Award.
Before we get into the next North American Regional Championship, let’s take a quick peek at what happened at Birmingham and Rio de Janeiro…
Birmingham recap
Birmingham in the United Kingdom was the largest Regional Championship to date in the 2025 season – counting 185 registered competitors. A big amount, but still less than Liverpool in 2024 (208 registered competitors).
This was for many an event to look forward to, because with Shadow Skorupi, Shadow Cubone and Shadow Totodile returning into the GO Rocket rotation PLUS the ability to remove the charged attack Frustration, it was possible to obtain these Pokémon again. And it showed immediately – Shadow Drapion rises to the #1 spot, and Shadow Marowak – previously an incredibly rare Pokémon – entered the top 12 usage.
But what we really take away from Birmingham, is how Poison- and Water-type Pokémon are almost a must. Azumarill and Shadow Drapion make for an incredibly strong core, and they were often paired with Ariados or Shadow Feraligatr. Galarian Corsola again had an impressive showing, but also only was a liability in the wrong matchups – and that was happening very, very often in battles where Shadow Drapion made a showing on one or both sides every game.
Something has to be done!
Zzweilous almost managed to puzzle past this common core in nearly every single game, but the final one was a bit too much for him. IcelandicLapras brought the hardest of hard meta, and showed why it is the hard meta. He made the most out of the bulk and sheer power on his team. Fragile Pokémon like Shadow Annihilape and Shadow Drapion could always use the protect shields to put dents in entire teams as Azumarill, Diggersby, Galarian Corsola and Jumpluff (even in its Shadow form) don’t need those as much.
His most recent best performance before Birmingham was a tied 5th place in 2024 Dortmund, just one placement off a medal… and then to think that the upgrade from there would be immediately gold. IcelandicLapras now has established himself as one of the top British players.
The biggest surprise to me of the tournament though was… how good the connection was and the game worked. I believe there was no dispute on the stream regarding a 1 turn swap in lag (which happens all over the place in the GO Battle League). That does give me some relief for the EUIC.
Rio de Janeiro recap
Moving on to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil! Unfortunately there was no stream, nor a usage chart of the overall tournament. Rio de Janeiro counted 93 registered competitors, but there were approximately 25 no shows! Brazil has a huge pvp community, but it looks like Rio de Janeiro may have been a bit out of the way for some.
As for the top cut – we do have some usage here! The Drapion – Azumarill core was actually not as common as in Birmingham, and some of the competitors brought out their inner spice lord again.
On top comes out the meta though – Kourlash managed to win his first Regional Championship in his career, taking down king LNDsRargef not just in the grand finals, but also in the winners finals! I suspect the Dewgong from Kourlash may have been too much for Rargef, and I think Dewgong is an excellent meta read too.
Let’s zoom in a bit more on these teams though, because there’s some unusual picks on them. I personally really like the Gastrodon pick from LNDsRargef. In a meta where Azumarill, Diggersby, Shadow Drapion, Shadow Marowak and Shadow Feraligatr are so dominant – Gastrodon can take on all of these. The only issue Gastrodon really has at the moment is that Body Slam is a cursed charged attack right now as it’s double resisted by Ghost-type Pokémon and thus making it not as effective into Annihilape and Galarian Corsola.
LNDsPawlinhoTad brought the Shadow Typhlosion. With the Thunder Punch buff, this Pokémon has slightly more play into some of its worse matchups such as Azumarill, Bibarel and Toxapex. It struggles more with Diggersby, Annihilape and Clodsire than Talonflame does, but it also does better against opposing Talonflame and Feraligatr. I must say though, I can’t really tell what the idea is behind his team considering Gastrodon, Dunsparce and Feraligatr are all terrible against Serperior. This would make the Shadow Typhlosion almost necessary to get some alignment or shield advantage in.
I think desinked not only tried to get as far as possible in the tournament as in performance placement but also in the competition of bringing the most nonsense possible. Shadow Registeel does pretty much everything worse than the non-Shadow variant, because Lock-on damage from both variants still do 1 damage. I guess your only advantage may be doing more damage with Zap Cannon on Azumarill and Focus Blast on Diggersby (which you can still not Lock-on down unless you get some chip damage in from a previous Pokémon). Honestly, that makes the Shadow Registeel pick just more impressive since it’s more a flex than a useful pick.
And then of course the non-Shadow Zapdos from both LNDsRargef and desinked. I like this pick more than the Shadow Zapdos – Shadow Zapdos is terrible against most Pokémon in the 2 shield scenario, but the non-Shadow counterpart can hang on better and get to a 3rd charged attack. With the Thunder Shock buff and an attack stat of approximately 136 (for comparison, Feraligatr 123), Zapdos doesn’t really need to be in its Shadow form to deal devastating damage. I think it’s an excellent pick in the Azumarill – Drapion meta, and it corebreaks Azumarill, Serperior, Jumpluff, Feraligatr and Annihilape altogether too.
San Antonio
But let’s take a look at what is to come this weekend. The Regional Championship in Texas is usually one of the biggest Regional Championships in North America. At the time of writing, San Antonio counts 139 registered competitors. There’s still some days left to catch up the 152 from last season though.
Okay so before heading into the players to look out for, these are some Pokémon to look out for.
For one: NOT Corviknight! It will not be eligible yet. Pokémon need to be released before Tuesday of the week of competition to be eligible for that Championship. The first time we will see Corviknight will be 2 weeks later in Mexico, Merida.
The other two that stand out are Shadow Diggersby and Shadow Serperior. Are these Pokémon you should be afraid of, and will they be game changing? I personally don’t think there’s a lot of reason to run the Shadow variants over their non-Shadow counterparts. A matchup that sounds out to me for Shadow Diggersby, is that it wins the 1 shields vs any Shadow Feraligatr consistently. Against the non-Shadow variant, some Shadow Feraligatr may hang on in the 1 shields.
On the other hand, 2 Aqua Tail from Shadow Drapion knock out Shadow Diggersby and make it worse when it is the main Drapion answer on a swap in. This is preventable if you have a Diggersby with a high attack stat, so you get a Quick Attack breakpoint and win using Fire Punch only. You may give up other matchups doing so though.
The same can be said for some cases with Serperior. Think of the times you have to throw your Frenzy Plant in a very low Azumarill because it barely hung on – that’s no longer an issue now. You do lose against Diggersby in the 0 shield scenario now as two Fire Punch will knock out and a Frenzy Plant doesn’t just yet.
We may see some of these Shadow variants, but I don’t think they stand out as much.
As for the players, I’ve jotted down some names.
First off – I already said before I would note down this player if they compete again and well they told me a while ago they’re here. MysticMamba24 has played in 3 championships, and he reached top 8 in two of those. I think it’s time for this man to pull off an IcelandicLapras.
Maybe it’s a bit ambitious to shoot straight for gold, but hey it’s possible. If anyone can make the underdog role work, I think MysticMamba might be our guy. His latest team in Sacramento had a Shadow Sableye, and it was backed up by a lot of bulk in Azumarill, Dunsparce, Shadow Jumpluff and Toxapex. Truthfully, I think Shadow Sableye was a pretty awful pick despite the Power Gem buff so it is only a testimony to MysticMamba’s excellent play style.
For the next spot, I have decided to name this competitor for now the ‘Texas Titan’ (not copyrighted so if any commentators want to yoink it, go for it wink wink). Doonebug honestly is not the first player to come up to me when I think of a typical Tex, but he won back to back in this state. It can be no one else.
While he holds the most Regional Championship wins to his name in the entire world for Pokémon GO, Doonebug has fallen a bit. Lackluster? Not really, but so far he’s not looking like he is winning another 2 or 3 Regional Championships this season. His last medal was the gold one in Orlando last season, and that was in April. It’s not like he is doing terribly either; a top 16 in Louisville, top 8 at the LAIC and top 10 in Toronto.
This may also have to do with Doonebug trying out very spicy picks such as Pangoro and Starmie. Those are not his usual sauce, and I think that a Doonebug finding his way or using the hard meta will have much better odds of succeeding. I’m calling it right here; Doonebug will win a medal in San Antonio. It’s his home turf!
But it’s also the home turf of someone I consider your typical Tex. Arrohh was the Runner-Up last season in San Antonio. At this moment, no one loves silver more than Arrohh, Caleb Peng and TomahawkUK. Which one of these three is going to break that second place curse and finally win gold?
I know Arrohh has been toying with some unusual team cores again, so I’m curious to see if he can match that up into the meta. His downfall so far every time has been disrespecting a particular Pokémon in the meta, and I think that if this would be Drapion this time – that is not a Pokémon to even think of ignoring.
There’s going to be another surprise competitor in San Antonio from another continent! But… they wanted to keep it a secret grrr… so we’ll see this weekend who that is and if they can perform at a Regional Championship outside their respective zone.
Closing Words
And that marks the end of this weeks article for San Antonio! If you’re there to compete and you get knocked out early – it will not be for nothing! I think San Antonio will be an excellent place to get in some Rookidee from the Magnetic Lures. And any Rookidee that you don’t like, you can probably get some zero and one star trades in as well. I hope that gives you something to look forward to!
Oh and also a reminder. Make sure to build a Corviknight with Iron Head! I haven’t looked into the recommended moveset yet, but it will be a legacy attack after this event so you may as well build one.
And as always, you can find the link to the broadcast and the bracket here.
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-sanantonio
See y’all next time trainers!!