Chapter 7: The Pre-Show of the LATAM Showdown in Buenos Aires

Hey there trainers!

We’re 2 months into the 2025 Play! Pokemon season, and next up will be the 3rd South American tournament taking place in Buenos Aires, Argentina!

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 last week in Gdansk.

The Europeans had 2 Regional Championships in 2 weeks. A lot of competition in a short time, with the next one already coming up in another 4 weeks. Gdansk counted 96 registered competitors, and the competitors clearly took notes from Lille.

Ariados crawled out of its nest and made an appearance of 31% usage in Lille, but it was the top dog.. or top spider I guess in Gdansk. Ariados and Azumarill make an extremely strong core. It’s also the reason we’ve seen more Clodsire with Stone Edge lately.

Big names again rose on top here, and some of the competitors brought good spice too. P4T0M4N with Golisopod, Welton with Skarmory, 0uden with Dragapult and Zzweilous with Shadow Drifblim and Magnezone, and TontonBatteuse with Alolan Raticate.

In the end, it was TontonBatteuse taking it all. The reads on the meta have been so on point by the Frenchman, and last season he was the Runner-Up in Gdansk with a Seaking and Clefable on his team. While so many competitors played out of their minds, it was only deserved TontonBatteuse won here. This solidifies his position on the leaderboard and likely secures his EUIC Travel Award too. The points have not been updated at the time of writing, and I think currently TomahawkUK and Kazim33 are looking very good in the Travel Award race as well.

But it’s not over just yet. Colin6ix will be competing at the LAIC and can secure that Travel Award as well with a good run. Paulasha97 may be able to get close, but I think she needs to win it all at the LAIC for that. And I believe Zzweilous doesn’t have a lot of championship points from local tournaments, but if he can max out on those in the next 2 weeks he may actually be able to end near the 800 Championship Points and get that Travel Award, too.

Gdansk was the last Regional Championship to compete for the EUIC Travel Award, but that race is still somewhat going on. After the LAIC, the race starts over again for the NAIC Travel Award.

Anyway, now to South America. This is the second year Buenos Aires is hosting a Special Event for GO. Last season, the location had 44 competitors and it was won by desinked. It’s been a month since we’ve seen the last LATAM tournament, so it’ll be exciting to see how the European and North American meta may have influenced them and what they will bring. Let’s zoom in on some of the (expected) competition here.

Look, I may already have featured this player so often. But it’s Argentina, he is Argentinian, it just makes sense. MartoGalde is the third place finalist of the 2024 World Championships, he won the last Special Championship which took place in Lima, Peru and he also got to top 5 in the first Regional Championship in LATAM, in Joinville. I like to have variance in the competitors we zoom in on but at this point you really can just not deny MartoGalde.

Last season, MartoGalde got to the top 10 in Buenos Aires. If there’s anything at stake for Marto at this point, it would be to win a title in his home country. Overall he is looking incredibly good. And for getting the EUIC Travel Award, too.

These Argentinian players did exceptionally well at Buenos Aires last season and we may see them as well:

0senteyutn0 – 2nd place

HectorCuello – 3rd place

Leanbernal10 – top 5

RealDante5991 – top 5

Danii89cjs – top 10

Next up, of course the Chileans. I wanted to list Ventuski at first, but he had a staff role at Lima and it’s possible he may be doing that again.

desinked played in Peru as well, and he made top cut there. I think I featured him in a previous article, and for good reason. Like MartoGalde is now, desinked was in form for a few months and added quite a few medals to his name. He is the reigning champion of Buenos Aires as he won here last season.

He even top cut in Lima this season with a Shadow Ursaring. One thing is for sure: the odds of being prepared for desinked are near zero. He is in the race for the EUIC Travel Award as well – at the time of writing he is sitting on a 5th place. One more spot to climb for desinked!

Next up, we have the Brazilians! Some of them are also looking to get those Championship Points to qualify for the World Championships once more. Amongst them is the commentator LNDsAureo! …Just to be clear, he is competing, not commentating.

LNDsAureo has one medal to his name; the first Regional Championship he competed. After that, he did get a couple top 10s and qualified for the 2023 World Championships in Yokohama, too. With that taste of competition, I have no doubt LNDsAureo is going to shoot for the stars here.

Along with LNDsAureo, we’re likely to see more Brazilian superstars such as LNDsTSteinar, LNDsRargef, LNDsKanan, Kourlash and JWNaldo.

And then finally, the competition from across the oceans! It’s actually someone I featured last week as well. Maybe a bit biased to feature someone twice in a row, but I think it’s cool PvPSteveeeeeeeeeeee will be here too!

He played in Gdansk last week, and is now on his way to Buenos Aires! The man is making a big trip and looking for some success in the international competition. Despite his preparation, he didn’t do quite well in Gdansk so he is definitely looking to do better in Buenos Aires.

I expect to see more competitors this time than last time (44), but since it’s hosted by PlayLATAM we can’t exactly tell. Regardless, this will be seen by many as a final display of the meta before the largest and most important showdown that will be taking place in Sao Paulo in 2 weeks: The LAIC!

If you want to see and know more about the LATAM competition, make sure to check out the LAIC preview that will be broadcasted this Friday on the official Pokémon channels. SpeediestChief2 is the panelist for GO and I’m sure he has some cool insights in what’s to come!

Before closing up, I would like to remind all our precious readers that Mankey community day takes place Sunday November 10th from 2pm to 5pm local time. Both Primeape and Annihilape will be able to learn Rage Fist, which is looking to be a Ghost-type Dragon Claw clone with a guaranteed attack buff. It won’t be eligible yet for Buenos Aires, but it will be for the LAIC! Make sure to get both a Primeape and Annihilape – they may become relevant again!

35 Energy and 50 Damage with a guaranteed attack boost per use

We don’t know at this moment if there will be a stream, but if so you can find the link below here – including the bracket as always.

https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-buenos-aires/

See you next time for the first International Championship of the season!!


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