Buenos dias trainers!
We’re 6 months into the 2025 Play! Pokemon season, and we’re heading towards the largest tournament of Pokémon GO so far – the EUIC!
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.
Next weekend, we will have the first Regional Championship in Mexico! It will be taking place in Merida, and is capped at 128 competitors. But first, let’s see real quick what happened at the last tournament, in San Antonio.
San Antonio Recap
San Antonio counted 159 registered competitors – the numbers have been doing great in North America lately! Birmingham and Rio de Janeiro took place a week before, and it gave competitors good insights into what may now be meta for San Antonio.
Those two top spots are no surprise – Azumarill and Drapion together are simply unbreakable. We’ve seen Steelix increase in usage in the GO Battle League as one of the Pokémon being able to (somewhat) tackle this core, but its performance when shields are down is honestly pathetic without any same type attack bonus moves and it is helpless into Diggersby and Serperior. Galarian Corsola at number three is kind of crazy though considering you need quite the XL candy for that.
And guess what, the Azumarill – Shadow Drapion core won the tournament! In a completely unique way, though. Well, maybe not if you look at who it is. 0EL1TE0 had an insane losers bracket run in the 2023 Fresno Regional Championship, and now he did it again: 8-0 in matchups on day 2!
An amazing performance, but the tournament itself was flawed in some ways. Both Doonebug97 and TheTaurian22 (again) lost a game due to the notorious 1 turn swap-in lag and lost the set in which that happened. The tournament may have not had the same results without that inconsistency. I guess it happens off stream as well, but these battles were on the main channel and very much visible for everyone to see. It was… outrageous, but also intimidating for competitors visiting tournaments to come.
Let’s hope it won’t be this bad – even if it happens, hopefully it won’t be as decisive – in the next championships.
Merida
So what do we expect then? I think the top usage of San Antonio remains, as it is very hard to break. I wouldn’t be surprised however if we see some off meta picks such as Drifblim. Galarian Corsola has an impossible matchup against Diggersby, but Drifblim can defeat it. Azumarill can fulfill the same role of corebreaking Annihilape and Diggersby though, so it’ll take quite the puzzle to put Drifblim in a position where it has more value than Azumarill. I also think Dewgong is still incredibly prominent, having decent matchups into Azumarill, Drapion and Diggersby.
So who can we expect to see here? We actually have a good variety of Mexican competitors, and competitors outside of Mexico. Starting with the Mexican competitors however;
First off, I think we can all agree this might just be the best Mexican player at the moment. When I watch Richie1409 compete, his plays range between Expert rank and absolute top tier divine gameplay. I think if he can gain some consistency in performing at his best, Richie1409 may not just be a contender to win another Championship, but perhaps even an International or World Championship.
I also picked him for his heart warming smile of course.
Two more competitors from Mexico that I have high expectations from are SpartanL17 and Iomero0. Iomero0 started off strong in the Championship series with a second place at the 2022 Indianapolis Regional Championship, but ever since he’s been one spot off a medal three times.
SpartanL17’s story began in a similar way; a second place at the 2022 Mexico City Regional Championship. But Spartan has not gotten as close just yet to a medal; so far his best performance after that was a top 10 at the 2024 NAIC (with a Bastiodon, too).
I guess all those three happen to be from 7-Eleven Gaming, but I almost also admit that these competitors are very often on the broadcasts competing. I may as well complete it with another teammate from them – but I picked him because he is NOT from Mexico.
MartoGalde wanted me to keep it a secret that he would compete at San Antonio, but this one is no secret. Unfortunately he didn’t do well there because he brought Jumpluff, but I’m sure the 2025 LAIC Champion will cook up something else this time. Hopefully not Togetic – I’ve seen that come along in drafts too and come on man. That is not the sauce. It even loses to Diggersby!
But there’s more from the LATAM Region! JavierV20 has won his first gold medal in Mexico City. And just like Marto – before travelling to London to compete at the EUIC, Javier will be trying his luck first in Mexico. Perhaps a warm-up for the Peruvian competitor?
There will also be some North-American representation, from both Canada and the United States! I expect some competitors from the south of the United States to fly over (perhaps Reis2Occasion insists on keeping it a secret again and doesn’t even tell me this time), but we also have GordonTheFlash who is escaping the cold in Canada!
GordonTheFlash is a formidable competitor who has gotten very close to a medal in three different tournaments (he even knocked me down to the losers bracket in 2024 Toronto). This is the first time he is competing outside of Canada and the United States, so let’s see how he will pair up against the Mexican competition.
Kelssseyk is a well known player within grassroots communities and the GO Battle League, but hasn’t competed in as many tournaments yet so far, but did reach the top 10 in 2025 Baltimore. She showed some incredible gameplay with her Dewgong there. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to continue that success in Toronto – but perhaps with some team adjustments she may be able to succeed again.
Closing words
Merida is the last large tournament before the Europe International Championship, and it’s a final opportunity for players to take a look at the meta and prepare.
There will be a Special Championship in Puerto Rico as well the weekend after Merida, but this will have approximately 16 competitors (as far as I know, it’s through PlayLATAM and not RK9 so we can’t see the numbers). It will be a good opportunity for competitors to get Championship Points, but it may not be as reliable as a meta take for the EUIC, nor will I write about it.
As for Merida, I hope we do get a broadcast. We’ve seen some streams on the Mexican Championships on the Pokémon GO LATAM Facebook Gaming page, so let’s hope.
As always, you can find the link to the broadcast and the bracket here.
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-merida
See you next time trainers!