Hey there trainers!
We’re 3 months into the 2025 Play! Pokemon season, and we just had our first International Championship of the season!
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 here, 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.
LAIC 2025 Recap
The LAIC lived up to all the hype and expectations. I shoutcasted the event myself and witnessed the electric crowd at the venue. With around 250 registered competitors, it was set to be the largest tournament to date this season.
The meta changed slightly too. While Ariados was still top meta, it decreased in the top usage by approx 25-30% since the last broadcasted tournament and now Annihilape and Primeape were introduced to the meta, as they just received a buff in Rage Fist. They both made it to the top 12 usage! But only a few of them made it to the actual top cut.
And which Pokémon was top usage? It was – of course – Azumarill. If any Pokémon for Pokémon GO PvP were to be the greatest of all time, it would be the Water- and Fairy-type bunny. And it reflected on the competitor winning the championship too. MartoGalde already was a formidable name many years ago in the grassroots format, and he is still around kicking lag and taking names. With MartoGalde reaching top 3 at the World Championships, winning the Lima Special Event and then the Latin America International Championship… he already achieved his 2025 goals within 3 months. Brother, the year 2025 hasn’t even started. He is possibly the best player in the world at this moment.
If you didn’t see the finals on Championship Sunday, you might want to check it out. Richie1409 put up a good fight and deserved his trophy, while 12Vitorello did everything he could to keep the title in Brazil by reverse sweeping the Losers finals and resetting the bracket in a straight 3-0 vs MartoGalde. The decisive game 5 between MartoGalde and Vitorello came down to an Azumarill hanging on with dear life by a few HP to a Brave Bird from Galarian Moltres on a CMP-swap that Vitorello predicted.
The International Championships award their top 4 players with a direct qualification for the World Championships, so these three players and Ashtonash have not only won a trophy but also their spot in Anaheim!
And that closes the chapter of the first one third of the season. In the next upcoming months, we will likely a see a very small meta change, the first Australian Regional Championship, the race for the NAIC Travel Award – and it’s all leading up to the EUIC.
But first, the next Regional Championship!
Players to look out for
The first Regional Championship on the west coast of the US has 103 registered competitors at the time of writing.
First off, of course, the reigning champion of Sacramento – the west coast king 0EL1TE0. His name may be complicated for me to type over and over, but his gameplay is simple: just win. And just copy paste his name everytime I write it. Out of 9 championships, 0EL1TE0 didn’t reach top 10 in only 3 of these.
With 4 medals to his name, 0EL1TE0 is looking strong to defend his title. At first it looked like he only really was able to perform well in the west coast championships, but then at the first championship of this season he was the runner-up in one of the east coast championships – Baltimore 2025.
What 0EL1TE0 does lack however, is performing on the international stage. With that in mind, Sacramento will merely be his stepping stone to winning an International Championship one day.
So who would be capable of stopping 0EL1TE0? I think 2023 World Champion itsAXN is a pretty good contender. He has 10 top cuts (top 8) in 15 tournaments! That includes 3 medals, an International Championship trophy and a Worlds Championship trophy.
The one thing to hold itsAXN back however, is that Medicham is still not as good as it used to be. He loves Medicham so much, he even brought it back at the 2024 NAIC (which lead to his worst result till then). And yeah I saw you asking for that Force Palm Medicham!!
ItsAXN has not been able to bounce back to his Worlds season level since that Medicham nerf, but he did get a top 4 in Louisville 2025 this season. Let’s see if he can keep this form up and find his way to the top again.
Next up I’m zooming in on two trainers. I will categorize these as ‘inconsistent, but may just knock it out of the park and win a medal’. JJan11 has won a championship before, but struggles to stay consistent. He competed in 18(!) championships so far, but managed to get only 3 top cuts. His read on the meta is usually quite good, so I’m curious to see if he can do something here. Looking at his Louisville and LAIC teams he hasn’t been able to come up with something creative so far.
But JJan is not the only one to find his form. ChemCoop has reached top cut only once in 6 tournaments and keeps getting stuck on the Losers finals of his groups. Unlike JJan, ChemCoop is not shy to try out many different Pokémon and looking at his record has used a wide variation to tackle the championships.
The last group of competitors is an exciting one. This one we call the ‘Clash of the casters’. The North American casters 2OButters, Caleb Peng and Sophtoph are all competing at Sacramento (and perhaps even more casters that I am not aware of)!
Caleb obviously has the best record – with 3 silver medals – to his name, but Sophtoph and 2OButters are two phenomenal battlers too. They’ve already made a name in the GO Battle League and showing off their knowledge in casting, but now we want to see them prove themselves in the championships, too.
At the moment of writing, Butters actually hasn’t registered yet but did say he would compete. So you know, if someone can like, poke him a bit because the PEOPLE WANT TO SEE HIM PLAY!!!
Closing words
That will be it for this weeks chapter! Sacramento and the Stuttgart Regional Championship the week after are in a bit of an awkward spot in terms of ‘hype’ and ‘excitement’ because it is likely we receive some small meta changes right after them, that many players will be looking forward to.
Regardless, I’m curious to see how the meta develop as the Annihilape and Primeape additions are still fresh, and only Ashtonash and Richie1409 were able to make them work. We didn’t see a lot of these Pokémon though as the notorious Grass + Alolan Sandslash core dominated mostly at the LAIC, and that’s probably what the Sacramento competitors will build further on or anticipate to.
As per usual, you can find here the link to the broadcast and the bracket.
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-sacramento
See you next time trainers!
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