Hey there trainers!
We’re almost 2 months into the 2025 Play! Pokemon season, and next up will be the 3rd European Regional Championship taking place in Gdansk, Poland!
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. Let’s take a look at what happened in the past 2 months.
The Europeans are known to often bring some whacky picks to the table. In Dortmund, there weren’t really any surprises. But Lille definitely had a spooky one: Ariados came out of nowhere and replaced Diggersby on the top 12 usage!
I can’t explain exactly why Ariados usage has increased in favor of Diggersby, but it’s a change that I don’t mind. Everyone holds their breath with every Scorching Sands thrown by Diggersby, and not because it’s exciting. It’s more because it’s obnoxious that this bulky Pokémon has an efficient attack that has a chance to debuff, without any drawback.
But the common Shadow Drapion does the same with Crunch? Yes, but at least that one can be knocked out relatively easily due to its low bulk.
Ariados is one of the most unique Pokémon out there and received a similar buff to Shadow Drapion. Because of the Poison Sting buff, both Pokémon don’t really need Poison-type charged attacks anymore for the damage output. Drapion now prefers Water-type coverage in Aqua Tail, and Ariados prefers Grass-type coverage in Trailblaze. Even though Ariados generally doesn’t like to see Ground-type Pokémon, it actually can put up a fight against them now. With Lunge and Traibllaze, you now have one attack that buffs your own attack stage by 1, and an attack that drops the opponent’s attack stage by 1.
With a meta full of Pokémon weak to Grass- and Bug, the charged attacks of Ariados fit in just perfectly. Pokémon like Azumarill, Malamar, Feraligatr, Dewgong and Serperior have to be careful and even Toxapex, Drapion and Diggersby don’t like to see Ariados. Steel-types are nowhere to be seen right now and Clodsire and Dunsparce are decreasing in popularity. That makes Ariados incredibly strong in the meta right now.
Like I said, the Europeans bring cool picks sometimes. I want to highlight obviously the champions team, but for sure the teams of LurganRocket, TontonBatteuse and AnicorXII. Those three made, in my opinion, the best meta calls.
Magnezone as one of the Steel-type Pokémon does SO well into anything that is not a ground-type Pokémon and teams were visibly 4 to 5 times weak to it. The only mistake LurganRocket made was to bring it less than he should have.
AnicorXII and Arrohh apparently shared the same thoughts; they brought Registeel. And just like Magnezone, Registeel often covered many Pokémon on a single team. Just think of cores like Azumarill and Ariados. He paired this with Mandibuzz and Araquanid – these Pokémon are not exactly the strongest in the meta in my opinion but have good corebreaking functions and made sure that opposing Malamar had very little play.
TontonBatteuse played the core of Skarmory, Charjabug and Greninja. The 3 Pokémon not only pair well in typing and coverage, but also in energy and shield management. We saw multiple times how TontonBatteuse took shields with either Greninja or Skarmory and sweep with the other. And then the Charjabug has a similar role to the Magnezone, but is a bit more flexible into Ground-type Pokémon not named Clodsire. In my opinion, this was the best meta read I’ve seen this season.
But all these creative meta reads did not lead to a championship victory. We had a familiar name make it to the grand finals for the 5th time in his competitive career: the Final Boss Colin6ix. But he was on the losers side this time, and his opponent was… someone who had never played in a championship before. We knew this guy is kinda good though. Boem20 is a formidable grassroots format player, and on his first attempt at a championship he ran through big names like DanneWWW, LurganRocket, ThoTechtical and Paulasha.
Colin was able to take a set and reset the bracket, but Boem20 made the calls in the last set just a little bit better. Ariados was all over the place, but it was the Shadow Quagsire making the clear difference. Without a real hard answer to a Shadow Quagsire safe switch, Colin slowly started losing ground. Boem20 successfully defeated the Final Boss, and became our 2025 Lille Regional Champion.
Fun fact: Colin’s first tournament also was in Lille – the 2023 season. And he swept that one too. The Dutch and Belgians have been very strong in Lille so far.
Now let’s head to the next chapter. The next upcoming Regional Championship actually takes place in Europe again, 2 weeks after Lille already! Gdansk is one of my favorite places to visit and was a blast to cast last season. I won’t be around this time for a different opportunity – but we’ll get into that later in this article.
The meta is likely not going to shift a lot. I do think that we may see a bit more Clodsire and Dunsparce again. Maybe Stone Edge Clodsire is the play now to check Ariados better? It would also do very well into the newly introduced Morpeko. Morpeko is a Pokémon that can run through teams in the GO Battle League with that deadly combination of Thunder Shock and Aura Wheel.
But I don’t think it’ll be as effective in the Play! Pokémon Circuit. It’s definitely not bad, but there’s also no surprise factor. I think the blind 3 format is where Morpeko shines way more, because in the Show 6 format players can adapt their strategy to deal with an opposing Morpeko. Because they know it’s there.
Well, I wrote that when Morpeko wasn’t banned for Play! Pokemon. Now it is. So no need to fear this little corebreaker!
Last season Gdansk had 116 competitors, this time I expect around 100 competitors. At the time of writing, 87 competitors have registered. As always, we’ll zoom in on approximately 5 competitors.
And as always we’ll also start off with the more local competitors. If we think of Polish players, two names come to mind immediately: Nickname29585 and koksiak2400. Both have won championships before, too! Nickname reached top 8 in Gdansk last season, and this season he reached top 3 in Dortmund! He is totally back.
Gdansk is going to be extra special for Nickname. Maybe he doesn’t know it yet, but here’s why. He is currently top 4 on the European leaderboard, and the top 4 of the leaderboard per region (EU, NA, LATAM, Oceania) after LAIC qualifies for the EUIC travel award. This is an extra travel package of +/- $2000. Usually this is $3500, but since the EUIC is considered as in-region for Nickname, it’s a bit less. Still a good amount of money though! And with TomahawkUK, TontonBatteuse and Kazim all not competing in Gdansk or at the LAIC (at least they’re not registered at the moment of writing), he can pretty much secure the EUIC travel award with one more good performance.
The amount of Polish competitive players isn’t as big as that of countries like France, Spain and United Kingdom, but they do tend to perform well here. With Nickname and Koksiak leading the Polish in the competitive circuit when it comes to consistency, we should also look out for names like IbiQer, SNOR3K, Bakemi, MDoubleU22 and Ziemniol15. Oh and you know that cool Polish graphic designer G47IX? He will be competing here as well!
While I don’t have a specific name to zoom in for competitors from this country, I do want to give a brief shout out to the Czech competitors too. They were very strong in Gdansk last season, with XXLKaktus reaching top 4. He will be here too – but as far as I know, him and Stepis5 are the only Czech competitors registered at this moment.
Going a bit more internationally, we’ll take a look at the German competitors. For Dortmund I zoomed in on Stonecollection, this time it’ll be Zzweilous. He reached top 4 in Dortmund and has been the inspiration for many competitors in Lille. All those Walrein teams? They were likely inspired by Zzweilous.
Now, I’ve been told he’s been cooking something else, something spicy, something secret for Gdansk. But I’ve not been told what this exactly is (I guess he can trust some people with his secrets, grr). Zzweilous plays in a good amount of my practice tournaments, showcasing his picks and talent. But he may be keeping this one for himself, and I’m curious to see what that’ll be.
Zzweilous is someone growing more and more in his consistency. After 2024 Toronto, he has always reached at least the losers finals in his group (the data shows a 0-2 at Gdansk as well, but he actually didn’t compete here last season). His brother Jonkus isn’t registered at the moment, so I don’t think we’ll see him around.
Speaking of consistent performers, here’s one that has really taken our breath away the past few tournaments. He started off in the seniors division in the 2022 season, but that no longer is around and he has to compete with the big boys. But PvpDavid has shown that he takes no issue with that. His performances in especially the bigger tournaments are unrivaled.
With Galaxkobolten and DanneWWW, Sweden has a good chance at winning the Gdansk Regional Championship. It may be hard to get around all these countries as a younger competitor, but I honestly think that with the results at Worlds and EUIC, PvpDavid is pretty much making profit off the competition right now.
And of course, there will be some Spanish representation in Gdansk too. I’m not talking about the topplayers we already see so often – Paulasha and Andriss – no, it’s P4T0M4N! He won the Gdansk Regional Championship last season. We may have forgotten his name just a little bit because of his underwhelming performance at Worlds 2024 and we haven’t seen him at Dortmund and Lille, but this will be his first championship this season to try his hands at the new meta. Even though we haven’t seen his name for a bit, keep in mind he reached the grand finals 3 times in just 9 tournaments.
Patoman may have to prove himself a bit again to the viewers, but I’ve no doubt he can pop off right away. With precise knowledge and careful but adequate aggressive gameplay, Patoman is a top threat to anyone competing, and he’s shown that over and over. It’s going to take some really good reads and calls to get past Patoman and he’s definitely looking to defend his title here.
And for the last couple of competitors to zoom in on, I’d like to give the spotlight again to competitors that came across the ocean to visit a Regional Championship! Don’t give me that look, you know I love international competition.
mxchmp from the United States will be competing here! One of my favorite streamers to watch (she is very goofy) is visiting Gdansk. Her performances have been very inconsistent however – from a top 10 at 2022 NAIC to a 1-2 at 2024 EUIC. She stands out for bringing very spicy teams and honestly, if I were a top competitor here I would be frightened. That Haunter-Beedrill core might just be corebreaking my entire team. (For the record I don’t know if she’s bringing that but just an idea of what kind of goofy team she may bring.)
I don’t know what it is, but those Australians just love to visit Europe around this time. In Lille we had Laurenlolly competing, and this time we’ll have PvPSteveeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (genuinely no idea how many e’s)! And while he’s not on the same level of goofyness as mxchmp, he definitely likes to bring out those spicy picks – such as Wailmer. Last season he also put up a community broadcast from scratch for one of the Australian Regional Championships. Great to see him flying out as well and after that he’s even competing at the LAIC too!
Gdansk is a beautiful city to visit, and I’d definitely recommend it for anyone looking for a nice November trip.
Before wrapping it up – there’s one more thing I want to mention. Maybe self-plug a little bit. Gdansk is not the only event happening this weekend! After day 1 of the Gdansk Regional Championship (on Saturday), there will be a GO Battle Day Stream on the official channel! Featuring myself, MartoGalde, Sophtoph and Poké Daxi – we’ll be hosting an interactive and educative GO Battle League stream where you can ask us anything about PvP. We may even take team recommendations and try them out for you, or advise you on them!
After watching the stream for a while, you’ll receive 7 fast and charged TMs and a Rare Candy XL. That has to be worth my waffling for a bit.
You can find the link to the broadcast and the Gdansk bracket here:
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-gdansk
See you next time!
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