Hi there trainers!
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.
From here on, all points gained from tournaments held after the EUIC up until and including the NAIC will count for the 2025 LAIC travel award. The total, of course, will count for the Worlds qualification and Travel Award. This is only for Monterrey this weekend, and not for the Asia Championship Series!
I’m keeping this week a bit short on the meta prediction. Tinkaton has been released, and it’s not allowed yet for competitive play until Seville. While I’m somewhat skeptical of how it’ll perform due to a set of mediocre charged attacks, it has an amazing typing and great bulk too. It will be the main Pokémon to break the notorious core of Azumarill, Drapion and Sableye.
Atlanta & APAC recap
The biggest Regional Championship so far in North America! Atlanta counted 220 registered competitors. The game state at the NA Championships tends to be pretty bad yet the circuit there is growing. It’s the exact opposite in Europe and I can’t figure out why…
So many staple names were competing, but I think that the top 16 that advanced to day 2 had little surprises. There were definitely a handful of underdogs (one of them actually having a dog with them), but it probably wasn’t as much of a surprise that the grand finals was held between OutOfPoket and Ilqm. I don’t think there’s any doubt at the moment to say that these two are the most consistent performers in North America, and their teams were as hard meta as it could be.
Kind of raises the question at this point. Do they use the meta, or do they define the meta? Both teams were extremely similar, the only difference being Jumpluff and Cradily. However, I think Ilqm did it just a little bit better; he had Alolan Sandslash with Shadow Claw instead of Powder Snow and that gave him a huge advantage into Pokémon like Lapras and Azumarill. And they were all over the place.
As for the APAC qualifiers that same weekend – the World Champion Yekai0904 was actually not competing! Surprisingly compared to Atlanta, almost no Alolan Sandslash was to be found here. And look at how good it could’ve been – with Shadow Claw, you could defeat Azumarill, Jumpluff, Cradily and Drapion. The most common Pokémon in the meta.
These 16 trainers now have qualified for the Playoffs that will be held later this season, and the top players from that tournament will qualify for the World Championships.
Monterrey & Indonesia Qualifiers
Indonesia last season counted 99 competitors! YukiXCyz, Thomceane and 0SirPanicalot (you may know him as findpanic) are well known players from Indonesia and if I’d have to make a prediction, they’ll likely do well again.
Despite occasionally throwing battle after battle on his Twitch stream, Panic actually won the 2022 AND 2024 Indonesia Qualifiers so he must be pretty good! If I recall correctly, he even made it to the winners finals of his group at the World Championships.
Real talk though, GO Battle League and the official Show 6 formats have very different incentives to them, and he really doesn’t play that bad. In fact, I believe he even live streamed his Indonesia Qualifiers run last season on his Twitch stream (albeit with a big delay). Or maybe that was 2022. Just follow his Twitch stream and find out, perhaps we get to see a glimpse of it.
As for Monterrey, I asked Rochababyface who he’d think who’d do well here. After all, I’ve been throwing names all over the place and then they’re not even competing. I needed some help for this massive tournament in Mexico – counting approximately 270 (!) registered competitors. That’s the most we ever had for a Regional Championship!
First off, the promising names. DanielleLupin and TzSpenx haven’t competed in many official championships, but the former had qualified for last seasons World Championships and the latter is known to coach many other battlers. This may be their only championship of this season, so it’ll be a big one to prove themselves on the big stage.
Next up are two Mexican superstars. Richie1409 has been incredibly consistent over the entire season. Unfortunately he fell short in Atlanta – winning only 3 matches – but that’s only more fuel to get a feeling for the hometurf. He ran the same team as Astonash (except Richie had Shadow and Astonash had Purified Sableye), and Astonash on the other hand had an insane run with that Shadow Primeape in Atlanta. He was the glimpse of hope in this Azumarill – Drapion spam. I do think that bringing it everytime made him a bit too predictable. Regardless, these two are some of my favourite to see on a broadcast – just because of the passion and emotion they have when their plans succeed.
Moving to the non-Mexican competitors – Emili0oXx from Chile will also be competing here! He needs some Championship Points in case the Regional Championship in Santiago, Chile later doesn’t go well and Monterrey is a perfect opportunity to gather some. His last Championship was the LAIC, so it’s been a while.
There will also be American competitors around – and the other super star from Atlanta is also here… OutOfPoket! I don’t want to do too much glazing here because he said I would probably do that again some time so I need to save some words for NAIC or it will be too much. But uh yeah he’s pretty solid. Won like 3 medals this season already and maybe a 4th this weekend. Just maybe.
Closing words
That’ll be it for this week! I expect a very similar meta to what we saw in Atlanta, perhaps some more Alolan Sandslash, or some Fire- and Fighting-type Pokémon for those who don’t want to deal with it.
I don’t know if there will be a stream – I kind of expect one, probably on Facebook Gaming again – but we’ll see.
As always, you can find the link to the bracket and stream here.
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-indonesia-qualifier
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-monterrey
See you next time!!
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