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EP. 25 Birmingham, Rio de Janeiro, San Antonio 2025 Recaps + Corviknight & Galarian Corsola Accessibility, Meta Discussion, & Health of the Championship Series
165 Plays2 months ago
Hello, everyone! This is Episode 25 of "The Show 6 Podcast", where we bring you the highest quality coverage of the Play! Pokémon Championship Series for Pokémon GO! We explore the plays, the players, and everything else happening in the competitive scene.
In our 1st episode of 2025, we kick things off with a triple-header! First, we recap the Birmingham Regionals, where our host Zzweilous was in the Grand Finals! Next, lightning strikes twice in Brazil, as 2 Zapdos makes top cut! On top of that, Kourlash wins his 1st Regional title! Finally, we analyze how San Antonio has become the home of comeback kings, as Elite has an insane Loser's bracket run to win it all!! On top of our regional recaps, we discuss the accessibility and meta impact of Corviknight and Galarian Corsola, and the overall health of the Championship Series. We hope you enjoy this episode! Please leave us a review!
If you're ready, Lock In, press play, and good luck, have fun!
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Transcript
Reviving Pokémon Go Championship Series
00:00:00
Zzweilous
It's the year 2025, and the Pokemon Go Championship Series has awoken from its slumber. But something's off. Thick, dark clouds congregate on the horizons of the dual-destiny season, shrouding Birmingham's jump-lofts and annihilates in a violet, misty shimmer. Up in the skies of Rio de Janeiro, fierce thunderbirds and relentless vultures decorated with the bones of their fallen enemies fight for dominance.
00:00:29
Zzweilous
And in San Antonio, spiders, scorpions, and a skull-headed creature take the crown in a battle of giants. In the shadows, the steely silhouette of a certain crow is looming. But does it really pose the threat the wise elder Pippi Polk leads us to believe? Let her lock in to hear about all of this and more on the Show 6 podcast.
Introduction to Show 6 Podcast
00:01:17
Zzweilous
Welcome in, everybody. Welcome in. Speedy is Chief 2, who is obviously my co-host today again. My name is Ziz Wireless, and we are here on the Show 6 podcast to talk about everything Play Pokemon Championship Series. Speedy, what's that cinematic enough for you?
00:01:34
William Dunphey
You know, I wanted to take my headphones off and just run around the house and just absolutely go crazy. And at the same time, I wanted to insert myself into into the 1800s and um pull up a chair next to Edgar Allan Poe and read The Crow next to a a warm fireplace. That's just kind of the vibe I was getting there. It was exciting, but also very ominous.
00:01:57
William Dunphey
I gotta tell you, that was ah that was something special as a wireless. I'm so happy to be back in 2025, and man, you started it off really, really well with that intro.
00:02:07
Zzweilous
yeah Yeah, we just need to be a little atmospheric here. It's going to be a big episode, obviously, and we really need to tie it all together. We had um regional championships on three continents, or Birmingham and Europe, at the Rio in Latin America, South America, and obviously, and most recently with San Antonio in North America.
Regional Championships Overview
00:02:28
Zzweilous
I would say we probably should start chronologically, shouldn't we?
00:02:28
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
00:02:31
Zzweilous
um Because I may or may not have some things to say about the Birmingham Regional in particular.
00:02:39
William Dunphey
Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, huge episodes, so many topics. ah Of course, we're going to cover the regional championships because it's a new year. I just wanted to give ah ah a quick one minute refresher to everyone. ah This is the show six podcast and we cover primarily play Pokemon for Pokemon Go.
00:02:56
William Dunphey
I don't think we've ever talked about the other titles. So we cover only Pokemon Go in the Championship Series. And our goal is really to kind of illuminate the players, ah the format, the teams, just talk about the storylines and really help our listeners to get engaged. So if you're joining us for the first time in 2025 from Zweilis and myself, we're so, so grateful ah for you to listen to the show.
00:03:17
William Dunphey
ah Today we've got the three regionals, but there are also so many other topics, like we were talking about before the before we started Rolling's Wireless. We've got so much to talk about the meta, talk about Galarian Corsola, Corviknight, and also a look ahead, which is really good. So if you weren't able to attend the Championship Series events that we cover, we'll spotlight a few that are coming up ah this this
Casters and Competitors Spotlight
00:03:36
William Dunphey
month. and Honestly, I'm not trying to brag here, but I think there are a few people better qualified to talk about this, because I dedicate an an enormous amount of my time to watching the streams, to commentating the streams, to traveling to these events. And our co-hosts, Zzweilis, seems to be in a grand finals every other month. And you have to be very, very good to make it that far. And I'm really excited to hear about Birmingham, because you actually were yet again
00:04:04
William Dunphey
In the grand finals so i feel like what when i do the show with you i feel like i need to step up my game and actually put myself in a position to compete so might be coming out of retirement this year that's to be determined.
00:04:15
Zzweilous
I am always like a big proponent of casters competing. And I must say that Birmingham was a shining as an example for that because Ananda Landberg, Landberger, or like the the favorite caster of multiple ah world champions, mothers, um actually went up on stage and got a win life on stage as a competitor in Birmingham.
00:04:31
William Dunphey
no
00:04:39
Zzweilous
so ah essentially exchanging the the caster's desk to be on the other side of the microphone for this time. um And it was great to see her um just put on those competitor's gloves and really giving it ah giving it her all.
00:04:54
Zzweilous
And I know that she'll probably just go back to casting the next events, but um yeah, was I just love when people put themselves out there because um like as a caster, you are
00:05:00
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:05:08
Zzweilous
like such a figurehead of the franchise, I would say, like really a face of Pokemon Go. And even though like everybody will believe you when you say, Oh, like, okay, um, these are the strategies say I want to talk about this. I want to talk about that. And I know my stuff. Um, you can make it a little more believable when you actually show that you are capable of, um, doing the thing that you talk about all the time. So.
00:05:33
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:05:33
Zzweilous
always appreciative of everybody who really um like bridges that gap between competing and casting.
00:05:38
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:05:40
Zzweilous
um And yeah, that was like, i was I was about to say like this, also like somebody who made the opposite step, which was Marcus Osius Aurelius, um the Dortmund regional champion of the 2024 season with his caster debut in Birmingham.
00:05:41
William Dunphey
What I... Yeah.
00:05:57
Zzweilous
So like all of our casters, not only really knowledgeable, but also really good at the game.
00:06:03
William Dunphey
What I really appreciated about Amanda's gameplay is that she injected some drama into the series. You know, she lost game one. Just make things exciting. Make everybody say, ah, is is Amanda going to get a win on stream? Like what's going to happen here? And then in games two and three, she had some of the cleanest.
00:06:19
William Dunphey
Crispiest hot out of the oven baked to perfection charge tag priority ties that I have seen in quite a while and A lot of the time, you know, you're wondering do they know the counts? Do they know where the energy is at and then Amanda would just cap tie cap tie cap tie over and over and over and just Absolutely ah play so efficiently. She's able to come back and reverse sweep, which is really really fun.
00:06:40
William Dunphey
um I'm a big fan of ah Marcus Aurelius, Arceus Aurelius, however you ah you want to denote him. I've been a big fan since he was making his YouTube comment ah content, which I think he only made three or four videos, but I thought he was very, very insightful. Almost took like a wolf ah wolfy approach, a wolf-glick approach to his content, which I thought was really fun. And he was great on the caster desk as well.
00:07:04
William Dunphey
um It's interesting because as ah as a listener, you probably picked up on this wireless and um I definitely did. I really appreciated when when Marcus and Inadequance were actually separated and you put you know Marcus with Adelian or Lou and you put Inadequance with Adelian or Lou because then you get your Brainiac competitor, right? You get your Inadequance plus your your color commentary and then you get, or excuse me, your play by play.
00:07:31
William Dunphey
And then you get your your ah Marcus Aurelius plus your play by play. I thought that was really really smooth They did a great job all around and yeah, it was a great tournament
00:07:41
Zzweilous
100% was. and Yeah, it was a great tournament for me as well, even though I was, I honestly, I was i was um accusing myself of of washedness a little bit going into the tournament because obviously I tend to have fairly high expectations of myself. I put a little bit of a burden on myself um by doing so. um But yeah, like,
00:08:09
Zzweilous
Obviously, I have had great results in the past and now that I didn't have those results, both in Stuttgart and in Toronto, I was like, okay. This is a difficult place to be in. How do I react from here?
Birmingham Championship Highlights
00:08:24
Zzweilous
And going into Birmingham, I thought long and hard about that, and I decided my formula would be to not sweat it and just have fun. And honestly, that's been the greatest decision I've ever made. like I came with no expectations, and I made my second grand finals of the season, um beating some formidable trainers in the process, um playing some of my best PvP, I would say.
00:08:48
Zzweilous
And yeah, this run was powered by B-Barrel, a like one of the few Pokémon that actually ascended to viability in the Play Pokémon Dual Destiny update, the the move set update that we got in December, which essentially just like Did some tweaks here and there, but didn't really shake up the meta a lot.
00:09:09
Zzweilous
But b-barrel now with rollout to get to its surf and hyperfang stab attacks really quickly. Proved to be an excellent corporate guy. I used it a lot on stream. I didn't use it at all before I went on stream, but ever since I essentially used it in almost every battle.
00:09:25
Zzweilous
was It was a really fun signature Pokemon.
00:09:25
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:09:28
Zzweilous
And at the start of day two, I found a little B-barrel plush in like one of the little pop-up stores that they had at the venue and I just bought it for good luck and I think that really paid dividends.
00:09:41
William Dunphey
Yeah. I remember the commentators talking about how you were putting it in your back pocket. You know, it was like your, uh, your, your good luck charm.
00:09:46
Zzweilous
I love how like the little beaver tail just stuck out.
00:09:48
William Dunphey
You just pulled it out.
00:09:50
Zzweilous
It looked really goofy but it's like it's pocket sized right?
00:09:50
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah. But it was perfect.
00:09:55
Zzweilous
That's where you keep it.
00:09:55
William Dunphey
Yeah. So what I really, what I really appreciated about your team is, uh, your full team was B barrel and Digger's B.
00:09:57
Zzweilous
um
00:10:02
William Dunphey
So you were running double normal, but you also had Galarian Corsola, Chargibug, Talonflame, and Annihilape. And when I see the Chargibug, Talonflame duo, I think of Tonton Batus, you know, that's really where my mind goes, uh, because he seems to be one of the only, uh, trainers in the world who's bringing that Chargibug time and time again.
00:10:19
William Dunphey
And Talonflame, I would argue has been an EU staple for some time, but the combination at this point in the meta was really interesting. What I really like is that the b-barrel and diggers be obviously double normal only having the fighting weakness but you had four different Pokemon to really shore up that weakness and I feel like a lot of people are hesitant to bring maybe more than one normal or a normal plus a steal or a normal plus a dark sometimes because of the fear of something like an annihilate so Your team was was really fun to watch and I appreciate how you have um basically the only turn cycle you were missing on your team was the one turn. So you had three turn rollout on B barrel, two turn quick attack on Digger's B, three turn astonished on glaring Corsola, four turn volt switch on charge bug, and even the five turn incinerator on Talon. And then you had of course the two turn counter on annihilate. So a lot of a variety of pacing.
00:11:09
Zzweilous
And it's really a pity that I couldn't get the Want to Run Fast Attack in there somehow because I'm a big fan of Want to Run Fast Move Pokémon. You remember the um Shadow Gyarados at Worlds or the Shadow Dragonite at NAIC?
00:11:23
Zzweilous
I've always been like trying to incorporate those Pokémon just because it's so unpredictable when you can make a catch, right?
00:11:23
William Dunphey
How could I forget?
00:11:31
Zzweilous
And also,
00:11:32
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:11:32
Zzweilous
I ah really love the catch-and-sneak technique, which always works when you have a one-turn fast-move Pokémon, then um a four- or five-turn fast-move Pokémon in the back. So I could essentially swap on a Charger Tag one turn before a Charger Tag, and then catch the move on my Charger Bug or Talonflame, and then essentially sneak a full four-turn Bolt Switch or five-turn Incinerate. I couldn't do this with that team, unfortunately, but I would have loved for another good one-turn fast-move Pokémon to.
00:12:02
Zzweilous
to round it all out, but yeah, I'm um'm just so happy with my run.
00:12:05
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:12:07
Zzweilous
I want to shout out my team mate, Ben Cheesecirl, who is the originator of the team. It was like a little bit of a co-production because he took a team from me, changed two things, and essentially arrived at the Birmingham team that I ran.
00:12:22
Zzweilous
um So we we cooked this up together and it worked a treat. I think I got a little lucky with team compositions up until the grand
Strategic Insights and Meta Analysis
00:12:32
Zzweilous
finals. um For example against Anicore which was um just like personally one of my favorite series I've ever played just because even though I had a team comp advantage into his six, I lost lead both games and needed to come up with a strategy to wiggle my way out of that and just managing to pull that off against a again ah trainer who was like on fire that weekend and he was grabbing his very first medal as the fourth place finisher of Birmingham.
00:12:56
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:13:01
Zzweilous
um Really excellent showing but um Yeah, I had a lot of safe play with Galerian Corceland into his team and managed to leverage that effectively.
00:13:13
Zzweilous
And also, Galax Coboulton were faced twice.
00:13:13
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:13:16
Zzweilous
um Like, I didn't have to worry about fighting type damage on either Anycourse or Galax's team, because both of them didn't have Annihilape on their roster. So the normals were more free than usual. And if you have two normals, you're really appreciative of like nothing that could be there to exploit the double weakness.
00:13:39
William Dunphey
Yeah, exactly. your Your two normals, though, have sub water typing on B barrel and sub ground typing on Digger's B. So I feel like the superior on both of those squads was a little bit tricky to handle. ah But this is also you know a testament to your team as well. Having both Chargerbug and Talonflame on your team gives you two solid answers. um one of my One of my dear friends in the competitive community, ShinyHunterBen, he always says that you need to have two checks to all the meta Pokemon on your team. And once you've got that, you've got a really solid team. so I definitely think that you were covering your bases pretty well. ah What I really appreciated about Anacor's team was he used Unova, Stunfisk, and Mandabuzz Core. And when you're walking into a meta that's full of water types like Feraligatr and Azumarole, it's full of poison types like Toxapex and Claude Sire, and it's full of flying types, maybe like a Galarian Moltrace or the occasional Mandabuzz.
00:14:30
William Dunphey
Why not just bring ground and electric? Because this thing really goes crazy when the shields are down. And Anacor was so impressive. I saw in your notes so you wanted to spotlight him. That was the the actual trainer I wanted to talk about as well. Because when you look at this top cut, it's absolutely stacked. you know Even by EU standards standards, this one's very impressive. You've got trainers like the Gengar Life, Hamid Munir, Sanhudigo, Patoman, Palasha, KingOWT, Galaxica Bolton, as we mentioned a moment ago, and Icelandic Lapras, our champion.
00:15:00
William Dunphey
And to to run so deep into this tournament bracket, I mean, Anacor, like you said, was literally, I mean, not literally, but figuratively on fire in Birmingham.
00:15:11
Zzweilous
Yes, and I especially want to mention his meta read of, you know, Vastanfisk. I feel like it's the second time Anicor actually made a fairly unique and precise meta read this season. He had a top card in Leel, if I remember remember correctly. And I think that was like Narakonid, maybe even Arachisteal, correct me if I'm wrong, but there were like really unique picks on that team as well. So ah phil I feel like the the spicier he goes, the more success he sees.
00:15:41
Zzweilous
And the Unova Stunfisk in particular is really strong into the Pokemon pairing that was essentially the story of the weekend, which is Poison Double Water. Poison Double Water was everywhere.
00:15:53
William Dunphey
then It's the Nezavitans special.
00:15:54
Zzweilous
and It is the Nazarethan special. um And poison double water essentially means, okay, you have the shadow drape yarn, which is one of the best neutral picks out there. And you have the shadow fur alligator, which is devastating up energy and even has play into the grass types that typically tend to counter it. And then you have azumarill, which is just The book is Staple, the most commonly used Pokemon, typically alongside Shadow Drapion.
00:16:23
Zzweilous
And those three combined, like if you have those three on your team, um going back to the Shiny Hunter Band common, I feel like those are already two checks to every single Pokemon there is, so only those three already make a very solid team of six in this current meta.
00:16:23
William Dunphey
Mhm.
00:16:34
William Dunphey
Mhm.
00:16:39
William Dunphey
Yeah, exactly.
00:16:39
Zzweilous
And yeah, you're not gonna stand for this, just corporate stats, so that's that's nice.
00:16:44
William Dunphey
If you wanted to build like a cookie cutter team, I agree with you. I think you start with the poison, double water, and then you kind of ah tweak things around it, which makes a lot of sense. You're exactly right about Anacor and Leel. He was running a Raccoonid, Shadow for Alligator, Mandibuzz, Shadow Quayside, as well as Registeal, Alolan Sandslash. So double steal in the back.
00:17:05
William Dunphey
And he took down the likes of Wolfpack, Hikami, and the Gengar life. ah But he was failed by Thotetical and Collin were his two losses. And both of those losses came down to game three. So he really played hard. He finished ninth overall ah in Lille in 2025. So very, very well done by Anicor.
00:17:23
Zzweilous
Yeah, that's also like two, two players that you can lose against, right? Like nobody, like even if you're the best in the world, you would say, okay, against so tactical and Colin, like it's it's okay if you lose one, two, right?
00:17:29
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:17:38
Zzweilous
Like you can't always be guys of that caliber.
00:17:39
William Dunphey
Yeah. there's There's literally no shame in losing to Tho any day of the week or losing to Colin any day of the week. It's like, okay, well, you know, some things in life just happen and this is one of them.
00:17:49
William Dunphey
So it it makes total sense. Um, so I have in my notes here, uh, grand finals, of course, we want to talk about, we want to talk about shadow annihilate, which I would love to touch on. Uh, but while we're on the topic of Anna core, um, you, you mentioned something really interesting here.
00:18:00
Zzweilous
Yes.
00:18:04
William Dunphey
So, uh anacore king owt had a breakthrough performance and the ah third uk champion of the season after kazim and nezibethan is the uk back i mean they seem like a very strong continent and from from the outside perspective i would assume that either um the netherlands or maybe even spain were the top countries in eu but it feels like uk is is really starting the year off right
UK's Competitive Edge
00:18:29
Zzweilous
So i want to I want to say that the UK isn't really back because the UK wasn't really ever really there in the first place, right?
00:18:38
William Dunphey
Oh my gosh.
00:18:38
Zzweilous
Like your hat. I know I'm throwing shade here, but let's let's be real here for a second. Obviously, you had Tomahawk2k, who had the UK in his name, um and who had some like very impressive runs in the past, and will have some impressive runs in the future. But and if your best guy is known for finishing second, can you really be the best nation in the Play Pokemon circuit? I would ask you, you can.
00:19:06
Zzweilous
But this season, it's different. This season, the UK is on a tear. And I don't know whether Icelandic Lapras will even be the last champion from the from the country, because ah you have Enneko in fourth, you have King OWT in fifth, you have the Gengar Life in top card. There is a bunch of players, and like even a lot of players who didn't even make the top 16. I'm always thinking that like Maximilian P, Max Prasad will probably have um a break ah a breakout run um once more in a couple tournaments, most likely.
00:19:41
Zzweilous
me So like there's a bunch of players from from the UK where I would say, okay, it's it's likely that they'll make it far, and um now they're making good on that promise this season, and yeah, respect to them.
00:19:42
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:19:49
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:19:54
Zzweilous
like They're really announcing their presence on the big stage.
00:19:57
William Dunphey
Yeah, I feel like the UK is definitely, they have a strong presence in terms of team organization and and how they organize folks for local events. Of course, Adeleon working very hard over there ah to organize to organize players of their community.
00:20:12
Zzweilous
I'm so jealous. Can I just say that I'm so jealous because I was like. i'm I'm very jealous of the way they organize their locals because I live in a place, I live in a city of like almost 2 million, um but the nearest local event is like three hours away.
00:20:21
William Dunphey
Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:20:29
William Dunphey
No way.
00:20:29
Zzweilous
And like the the British just have that down to a tee. Like they just have local cup after local challenge after local cup. And I do envy that grassroots energy a little bit.
00:20:42
Zzweilous
I've been like talking to card shops, but they're just not really interested around here. and um A local that we had now isn't really hosting anymore, so it's tough times.
00:20:52
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:20:52
Zzweilous
But yeah, the UK definitely has a great grassroots and infrastructure that also allows those trainers to really practice against some top-tier opposition, because as we've talked about, there's just so many good players from the UK.
00:21:06
William Dunphey
Yeah, I feel like locals are something that we really still have yet to crack as a community. It's just so so surprising going from the old Silph days where you'd have you know ah two two to 500 people come out for a mega tournament when there's not even a cash prize. And you fast forward a few years later to today, and it's like tough to even get a local within three hours. Their local is about an hour from me, but a lot of the time they don't even get enough players to actually have ah you know the the to actually hold the event.
00:21:35
William Dunphey
so that can be a little bit tricky but yeah i'm i'm a little bit jealous as well and i know a lot of the the folks over there put in a lot of work reaching out to people organizing making a ton of effort ah which you know for a lot of people is uncomfortable to be social like that and to to introduce yourself and it's definitely challenging i mean i'm not i'm not one to to go and do that so i definitely understand it takes a unique kind of person Um, so I'm curious, we have, we have a shadow annihilate on Icelandic Lapras's team. I'm going to be completely candid. I have not looked at the simulations. I'm not sure what you gain or what you lose from this, but when I saw this on the winning team, I was surprised.
00:22:14
Zzweilous
I was surprised as well. like I was surprised that people decided to bring it, because just from the Sims, you would assume that the regular Annihilate does just fine.
00:22:25
Zzweilous
You probably have a better IV version of it.
00:22:28
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
00:22:28
Zzweilous
And like some matchups, like, for example, the Shadow for Alligator against Shadow Annihilate matchup, it's a little dicey, a little uncomfortable, whereas you would be able to two shield through a Shadow for Alligator in the matchup with the regular.
00:22:43
Zzweilous
um the shadow can lose that so there's trade-offs for sure but i feel like Icelandic lab presses team specifically gave me ah a lot of trouble because of that shadow annihilate because the one thing shadow annihilate can do is to land the first rage fist against a pokemon with middling bulk
00:22:57
William Dunphey
Hmm.
00:23:05
Zzweilous
And then just commit to the counterdown, which wouldn't be possible with the regular.
00:23:08
William Dunphey
Oh.
00:23:10
Zzweilous
So if you look at my Charjabach and my Talonflame, like we went over that, oh, I have actually four Pokemon that can do something against um fighting types.
00:23:12
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
00:23:21
Zzweilous
So my own Annihilape is not the greatest answer to a opposing Annihilapes. First of all, being down one counter already makes it so I can't see Impute Eye anymore. And also my Annihilape has a very specific attack stat that is higher than a high rank, but lower than a high attack Annihilape.
00:23:45
William Dunphey
Oh, yeah.
00:23:45
Zzweilous
I want to achieve like specific bulk and breakpoint targets, but I don't use my annihilate as an annihilate counter, per se, because I don't really believe in CMP with my annihilate-by-me combination. So that's essentially out of the equation as an answer. Then um there is my Talonflame. My Talonflame wins the zeros and the twos against Shadow Annihilate. It loses the one shield.
00:24:10
Zzweilous
and if it lets the ragefist go with the Shadow Annihilate getting to the ragefist after 6 counters, which is 12 turns, whereas I need 15 turns to my first move, so they will always get there first.
00:24:22
Zzweilous
If they if I let the ragefist go, they can just commit to the counter down. That's not great.
00:24:27
William Dunphey
That's disgusting.
00:24:28
Zzweilous
I lose to all shields. I can't really safely bring in my Talonflame without shielding the first one, and if I just shield the first one, you can just pivot into a counter, and then I'm in trouble also.
00:24:40
Zzweilous
So that's not great. Then there's Chargibog. Chargibog should do well, right? Not exactly, because if they land the first right twist, which again, they typically will, um, they also can just two shield counter me down.
00:24:54
Zzweilous
And if I even want to win the two shield scenario, I need to get two successful access updates, which is unlikely to be happening.
00:25:01
William Dunphey
Wow. Yeah.
00:25:04
Zzweilous
So. Honestly, my only really good response to the shadow version of an aylep on my team is the Galarian Corsola, and the Galarian Corsola runs the risk of playing the RPS roulette against Digispy and Shadowdrapion, which at least the Shadowdrapion is also fairly safe onto my team.
00:25:19
William Dunphey
Wow.
00:25:22
Zzweilous
So yeah, I was, I was not happy with what I saw on Icelandic Lapras team. And honestly, this is not to to take any, anything away of his performance that weekend, because he went six and one against me.
00:25:39
Zzweilous
You don't go six and one against me if you didn't play well. So, um, definitely ah much respect to the way Icelandic Lapras, like, first of all,
00:25:43
William Dunphey
Agreed.
00:25:50
Zzweilous
elected the Pokemon to be on his team. I feel like those are six of the top seven most used. You could say, okay, like, Oh, he's just running top meta. What's, what's the skill in that?
00:26:01
Zzweilous
I think there's skill in identifying six of the seven best performing Pokemon in the tournament. Um, and just choosing that exact combination.
00:26:07
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:26:10
Zzweilous
I feel like, um, If it was so easy, more people would have done it. And like there are teams that are, um like I think the San Diego team, for example, is identical. um There's other teams that are fairly similar, maybe um like just needing the extra shadow on the analogy and the jump love.
00:26:31
Zzweilous
Um, but still it's a unique team composition in that regard. And something that really was the correct meta read for the weekend.
00:26:42
Zzweilous
And then he just also read my soul and essentially every game, like, I don't know whether I won the lead more than once. I really had the opportunity to RPS and back. If I, if I wanted to, I felt like that matchup was playable.
00:26:55
Zzweilous
If I just got my pieces in the right position, but I just couldn't get there.
00:26:58
William Dunphey
Mhm.
00:26:59
Zzweilous
I just couldn't get there. So.
00:27:01
Zzweilous
Grand Finals is not really competitive, but honestly just topping off an excellent run.
00:27:01
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:27:06
William Dunphey
So I wanted to to touch back on one of the points you made about Shadow and Eyelape. I didn't even realize that about the matchups, that you could actually come in, um land the first Rage Fist, and then two shield through. And that ah seriously reminds me of kind of the position that Rise was in in the San Antonio Grand Finals, which we are definitely going to talk about in a little while.
Mental Strategies in Competition
00:27:26
William Dunphey
It just felt like there's that one key Pokémon that's so, so difficult to get rid of, and it really puts you on the back foot.
00:27:33
William Dunphey
And I wanted to catch up to the final point you made about the grand finals and not winning leads. ah Yeah, it was ah it was it was pretty rough in terms of these situations because in game one of grands, you led Galarian Corsola into Shadow Drapion, which is obviously an abysmal matchup. Game two, you led your Diggers V into Shadow Annihilate.
00:27:52
William Dunphey
And then in game three, it was Talon versus Azumarill. So not only did iceland Icelandic Lapras have that shadow annihilate that could basically control switch advantage whenever he wanted to against, what, four out of your five Pokémon.
00:28:07
William Dunphey
ah He additionally was was winning the lead and who winning it hard and if you look at your team compositions Game one of the grand finals you had diggers be in charge bug in the back both of those I would say playable versus shadow Drapion I think there's a lot of interplay there game two you had Galarian Corsola in charge bug and I think both of those like you said the charge bug a little a little dicey but when the shields are up Galarian Corsola could have taken down his shadow annihilate lead and and then again number three uh for the azumarole lead that he that he had you had charge a bug and b barrel obviously one of those is better than the other but i think b barrel is playable depending on the shields and the baits so yeah i would say that not only was he uh did he have that key pick that was going to be incredibly difficult for you to to stop
00:28:53
William Dunphey
But he was also making great team rates. I noticed this not only in his series versus you, but also in multiple series that he had ah in the tournament. He went up on stage against, I think, two or three different opponents that I watched. And it felt like he never really lost a lead. Either it was it was neutral, you know maybe playable, 500 or so rating, or he was able to just hard win it with a great call. And I feel like once you get into that flow state as a competitor, it's very, very difficult to stop.
00:29:21
Zzweilous
I would definitely agree, especially the flow state that you mentioned. I feel like that was something that I could tap into quite well for the bulk of the tournament.
00:29:26
William Dunphey
Mhm.
00:29:33
Zzweilous
Like, obviously I mentioned against Anacora Lost Elites, but for example against Galax in the Losers Finals.
00:29:39
William Dunphey
Mhm.
00:29:39
Zzweilous
Um, I already played two battles against him at the start of day two, where I had essentially the entire night to figure out, okay, what three Pokemon are the best and safest on his team and how do I combat them best?
00:29:40
William Dunphey
Mhm.
00:29:53
Zzweilous
So I, um, formulated a strategy where I relied on annihilate up energy because I figured the Pokemon that he would bring to counter the annihilate would be Azumarill, which isn't really a threat with its fast attack.
00:30:06
Zzweilous
So as long as I had shields or energy for my Annihilape, I felt comfortable there and just taking down everything that he was likely to bring. So I did that. I relied on Annihilape for two games. um But then going into the losers finals, I just like locked in, read his mind and figured that now that he knows that Annihilape is so strong for me, he will go hard against Annihilape. How does one go hard against Annihilape? One brings Galarian Corsula. Galarian Corsula is like,
00:30:36
Zzweilous
a a pseudo-rock type almost. So what do you pair with that? Oh, maybe a superior. So I was calling the superior Galarian Coast Lurker and what you look at that, it's exactly what he brought.
00:30:48
Zzweilous
So sometimes you just really are so locked into what your opponent's most likely adaptation to your strategy is that you can just stay that step ahead.
00:30:48
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:30:59
Zzweilous
And obviously it's it's helped if you have like more options like um, maybe a safer team composition. I feel like I was so fairly unsafe with what I brought into Icelandic Lapras.
00:31:12
Zzweilous
Um, just because, like, my safest Pokémon is probably, um, Charjaburg, but he just made a great use of Galarian Cozler, which is just neutrally odd books, and once Charjaburg is gone, and I can't really find for Switch, I don't really have play anymore.
00:31:27
William Dunphey
Yep.
00:31:29
Zzweilous
So, um, yeah, it's like, okay,
00:31:30
William Dunphey
Yep.
00:31:33
Zzweilous
Obviously just, just reading minds and winning leads is the one thing, but then there's also like, okay, if you're loosely, you need to have a plan B and I couldn't really, I couldn't really do either. that I didn't have enough mileage on my, on my charger back to have it be a reliable plan B, but I also just couldn't outread Icelandic Lapras. Even though this is an interesting and anecdote because we talked a little bit ahead of the matches and there was like also the grand finalists interview.
00:32:02
Zzweilous
And he was so nervous. I don't know why he was so nervous. I like, I can, I can, I can see why one is a little nervous when you go into your first grand finals, but like he played like a champ, like the actual champ of the Birmingham regional competition. But still like, I feel like it's, it's kind of subconscious, like you can be con consciously nervous and not really confident that you can take it home. But then once, once you just look at your screen, you just.
00:32:32
Zzweilous
You're just in that flow state again because you know your team and you ah think you know your opponent too because you've been doing it all day.
00:32:40
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:32:41
Zzweilous
He just executed it perfectly.
00:32:43
William Dunphey
I think, I think it's natural, right? For, for someone like, uh, like yourself or, or like Martine or Colin or, or Doonbug or Lyle Jeffs, any given names, I feel like once you've already done your first grand finals and the second one, you know, you probably still have a bit of nerves, but then the third and the fourth.
00:33:00
William Dunphey
It can definitely feel a bit more comfortable over time. And I think that that experience is just so valuable. I mean, we see that time and time again, when ah players have been on the big stage before, then they're able to shake off the nerves and actually focus and and play the way they want to play, which is really, really fun to watch.
00:33:13
Zzweilous
there
00:33:17
William Dunphey
And you can definitely see the gap. You know, when newer players are are reaching these heights for the first time and they take someone, they take on someone like a Palasha, you can feel the gap in experience in a lot of the situations.
00:33:28
William Dunphey
I know we've kind of beat around the bush on this, but Icelandic Lapras' full team was Azumarill, Diggersbeak, Galarian Corsula, Shadow Drapion, Shadow Jumpluff, and Shadow Annihilape. So actually triple shadows on this team. And if you plug it into PVPoke, the top counters are fascinating because you have some unconventional picks like Skarmory and Pidgeot. Those are two Pokemon that that really fare well against it. But then in the top four, you have Clothsire.
00:33:57
William Dunphey
both variants with Sludge Bomb and Stone Edge and with ah with Earthquake, right?
00:33:57
Zzweilous
Or...
00:34:01
William Dunphey
So I think it's Sludge Bomb, Earthquake, and Stone Edge Earthquake, to be clear. But ah seeing Claude Sire being one of the top counters for this team, at least in the PD Poke simulations, was fascinating to me because it felt like we were just in the Claude Sire meta like two or three two or three weeks ago.
00:34:18
William Dunphey
And this meta is like a moving target. There's actually a couple of posts that we saw from desync that we will talk about when we kind of wrap up our meta discussion, ah kind of feeling like it's almost impossible to plan for this meta. Well, stuff like this is probably why desync feels that way. It's like, wait.
00:34:34
William Dunphey
what happened to diggers be right you know we're having a party for him and then you run a team that's that's five times weak to diggers being somehow win the event like how does that work or excuse me not diggers be clotsire five times we to clotsire and you win the event so by using diggers be to beat it of course is what i was trying to say ah but yeah birmingham was a really fascinating event to watch congratulations again to icelandic lapras i can't wait to talk more about the meta development ah But unless you have any final notes, I feel like there were also two other events that we should we should spotlight.
00:35:05
Zzweilous
I have two final notes. First note, um just making it short, I think the difference between, okay, should you be nervous or not if you're going up against a competitor is whether those competitors have a nickname or not.
00:35:19
Zzweilous
There's just these, especially Europe does it a lot with the nicknames.
00:35:19
William Dunphey
ah um
00:35:23
Zzweilous
I think there's some in North America too. like People have been trying to establish the California king for elite. I don't know whether the California part needs to be expanded now, but, um, like you have Paul Asher, the queen of PvP, you have Colin six, the final boss.
00:35:39
Zzweilous
I think they still need to work on the taunt on one. I feel like that was like the Maso seasoning or something. I don't, I don't think that flows as well. So, uh, please cost us work on the nicknames a little more.
00:35:46
William Dunphey
Yeah
00:35:50
Zzweilous
And, um, if you really want to establish somebody as a top competitor, just. come up with it that that nickname and make it stick.
00:36:00
Zzweilous
And another thing, I think the Claude Sire downfall has to do with how it's a little bit of a sim hero. It just always assumes that like you land the earthquake, right?
00:36:10
William Dunphey
Yep.
00:36:14
Zzweilous
But we've been there in the Shadowdape run versus Claude Sire matchup and that's just not comfortable because it's it's about bait calls and um managing to actually land the big move and your pacing disadvantage is just too much in those matchups.
00:36:29
Zzweilous
And also I think the Annihilape introduction is also, like it's it's not a comfortable matchup. I talked about my Annihilape IVs earlier. Part of the reason why I have the IVs that I do have is that my Annihilape beats Cloudsire.
00:36:40
Zzweilous
So it's it's so-so.
00:36:41
William Dunphey
Ah.
00:36:43
Zzweilous
Digger speed beats Cloudsire down a shield. I don't i don't think it's a Cloudsire meta. Cloudsire has a fraud. I'm sorry, Cloudsire, but it is what it is.
00:36:50
William Dunphey
It was so funny because when I when i got dressed for for day one in San Antonio, I was wearing a ah black shirt and black pants. And um I recorded like a ah little video. And i'm I'm planning to make a vlog out of the event. I just need to get all that footage together. ah But in the vlog, I said, I'm wearing all black today because it's Claude Sire's funeral. So.
00:37:15
William Dunphey
maybe the funeral was it was a little bit earlier on in the season but yeah I feel like I share the same sentiment it's kind of falling out of out of favor ah which is fascinating to see because again max out was all about cloud sire for alligator but we kind of rotated through these different cores as we move through ah max out season and now we're in dual destiny we're still going through this kind of roulette um But some things really surprised me about the the meta and the way it's developed because the same weekend as Birmingham we had the Rio de Janeiro regionals which was in latin
Rio de Janeiro Regionals Analysis
00:37:49
William Dunphey
of course in Brazil 87 competitors and this meta was quite different than what we saw in Birmingham notably
00:37:58
William Dunphey
Lightning struck twice with two Zapdos in the top eight. D-Sync and Hard Jeff both playing the electric ah legendary bird. So, I mean, what is going on there? Because this kind of feels like the Unova-Stunfist debate a little bit.
00:38:16
William Dunphey
But not really. And what I mean by that is you have a lot of targets for the Zapdos like water types, opposing flyers. um If you're able to connect against fighting type Pokemon with your drill pick, it can be really devastating. But it's also, I mean, Zapdos is made of like, not even paper mache, it's made of like tissue paper. It's so fragile and so frail. So how does Zapdos even work here?
00:38:39
Zzweilous
So I think they've actually upgraded Zapdos to Paper Mache, just because um both LNDS Rajaf and Desync who brought the Zapdos to the event opted for the non-Shadow version rather than the Shadow version. um Way back in the day, when we still had um legendary Pokemon from research breakthroughs, we were able to obtain a Great League level regular Zapdos. I am fortunate enough to have one. It's bad IVs, but it is a Zapdos.
00:39:08
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:39:08
Zzweilous
um And people have been electing to run that Pokémon over its shadow counterpart and also over Emolga, which would be another more accessible um she um electric flying type. And I think that is mainly because the Shadow Zapdos is so flimsy.
00:39:27
Zzweilous
that it's uncomfortable even getting ah even against boosted counters from Annihilape or Talonflame incinerates. You can be in a matchup that you are supposed to win, and you still lose it just because you are so, so squishy. And the regular Zapdos somewhat mitigates that. And then you have it up against Emolga, where you can ask yourself, OK, what Pokemon do I want to have on my team? Both have Thunder Shock as the fast attack.
00:39:57
Zzweilous
And then they um differ in how they do their coverage moves, essentially, because Zapdos has access to a drill pack, which is a fairly efficient, um cheap, stab, charge attack. We'll talk more about drill pack later.
00:40:12
Zzweilous
um And then it also has a Thunderbolt for coverage, which is just a neutrally solid move. Whereas Emolga has Acrobatics as its big move, which is huge flying-type damage, lovely to have.
00:40:25
Zzweilous
But also it has to choose between Discharge and Aerial Ace for its cheap move. So the more accessible move of which you would throw more is less efficient than the Drill Pack move that Zapdos has.
00:40:30
William Dunphey
Mm.
00:40:38
Zzweilous
So I think that's the main reason why people were opting for the non-shadow Zapdos specifically because you have the better cheap move that is more attainable, you can reach it more often, and you are also not as squishy that you just lose matchups that you should win just based on fast attack damage.
00:40:56
William Dunphey
Yeah, I recall prepping for Silph Continentals, and I was like, you know what, maybe maybe I'll try Zapdos. And I played, I think, three or four different practice matches, but there was one where I went up against a team with Grotle, and a Grotle was able to razor-leaf through my Zapdos when it still had two shields.
00:41:18
William Dunphey
And you know I said, you know what, after that, I'm never touching this thing again. So I was really turned off the Zapdos, but I think it's closing power is absolutely immense. If we do a quick stack comparison here of Zapdos versus Emoga, I really like that you made that that analogy between the two because they are both electric flyers.
00:41:35
William Dunphey
Overall stat product for Emolga is just about a hundred points higher at 1753 on average and Zapdos is at 1640 So Zapdos definitely on the flimsier side.
00:41:44
Zzweilous
Thank
00:41:45
William Dunphey
It's got less HP It's got less defense, but it does have higher attack coming in at and an average of 136 attack and That's honestly very high.
00:41:47
Zzweilous
you.
00:41:53
William Dunphey
I think that's comparable to something like a Prime, if I'm not mistaken. But Emoga is at 127. So Emoga doesn't kind of have the the reach in terms of attack stat, but it is a little bit on the bulkier side.
00:42:06
William Dunphey
so I like this app does for its closing power, I think as a as a lead, or maybe even as a closer, it can be very good. I'm not sure if you want to safe switch it because it does have some very hard counters, something like a rollout user like B barrel probably annihilates it. If you so if you say switch and get met by a Claude sire, even though Claude sire is dead, it comes back to beat you there.
00:42:25
William Dunphey
ah So it can be really tough and ah to to confirm primates average attacks that is about a hundred and forty So that dose is just a ah four points below that so there I would say they're very comparable and once you get to the 130s I think you win charge tech priority against almost everything in the meta
00:42:42
Zzweilous
Yes, it's definitely like one of those Pokemon that you definitely always want to put your two shields on and then probably build a team around that. It's a little less reliant on on shield usage. um But just to to everybody who is listening to this podcast and asking themselves, so should I even bother with trying an electric flying strat if I don't have a regular Zapdos? I think even though those players opted for Zapdos over Emorga, Emorga is perfectly serviceable.
00:43:11
Zzweilous
and also has some unique wins. For example, in the Zero Shield, you are able to take out Digaspy, a ground type with Emolga. So um don't be too discouraged if you're if you're really interested in ah trying out those electric fliers.
00:43:19
William Dunphey
Wow, acrobatics, right?
00:43:25
Zzweilous
And yes, it's the power of acrobatics, which is um a move that we see on the occasional jump love, but not really in the championship series. Most people opt for aerial ace instead, just because of the pacing.
00:43:38
Zzweilous
Also in Rio, we had a fourth-place jump-off, a second-place jump-off, but the top finishers didn't have jump-off. The very top finisher, Koolash, had a team that I would consider just about the most meta team in the top card, which otherwise was really unique and diverse, but this is a meta-is-meta-for-a-reason moment, isn't it?
00:43:45
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:44:00
Zzweilous
because we have Azu, the classic Azumarill, we have Shadow Cantomero Wack, we have Shadow Drapion. this This is a trio that I think is like almost as good, if not better, than the classic Poisonable Water.
00:44:15
Zzweilous
And then to round that out, we have all Pokémon with above 2,000 stat product in Dewgong, in and in Galarian Corsola. That's the winning team from Kolash, first-time regional champion.
00:44:24
William Dunphey
Wow.
00:44:27
Zzweilous
Congratulations.
00:44:28
William Dunphey
Yes, very, very stout team. The Shadow Kento Marowak is also a little bit of foreshadowing into what what we got in San Antonio. So I'm definitely looking forward to talking about that. um I wanted to mention that Har Jeff is an ambassador for the community. He's one of the stars in LATAM. One of the most motivational speakers that that I've ever encountered whenever he has the microphone. You better have ah some tissues nearby because you're definitely going to have a a couple of tears. He just absolutely knows how to move his audience ah but he's also very kind and he was able to share some notes with me. ah I'll actually send you the photo so you can do a yeah ah live reaction here once I find it because it's there's a really nice touch here ah with with his notebook but while I'm doing that I just wanted to highlight some of the Pokemon that were brought and how this this grand finals actually went because the tournament wasn't streamed
00:45:21
William Dunphey
So the only kind of evidence that we have of this is just what he was able to share ah in his notebook. Harjef did run Annihilape Gastrodon, which we thought was was out of the meta practically, Galarian Corsilla, Zapdos Mandibuzz.
00:45:33
Zzweilous
Thank you.
00:45:35
William Dunphey
So Zapdos Mandibuzz double flying strategy with Dewgong as well. Dewgong definitely a very, very high performer. I think the image has gone through. Do you see what he has with his notebook there?
00:45:46
Zzweilous
The image did go through and I love the Zapdos plush. This is so cute.
00:45:51
William Dunphey
Yeah, that's him.
00:45:52
Zzweilous
um So yeah, I guess the B-barrel wasn't the only plush that came out that weekend to to help its owner to a second place finish.
00:45:53
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:45:59
Zzweilous
um yeah I'm a big fan of electric types. I think the Kanto Birds and also their Galarian counterparts are just peak Pokemon design and big Zapdos enjoy them myself for sure.
00:46:11
William Dunphey
Yeah, for all of our our listeners, obviously, only as wireless and I can see the image. Harjef keeps all of his teams and matchups in a notebook. once he Once he competes in these tournaments, he writes the notes down in real time.
00:46:23
William Dunphey
ah But he made sure when he sent me the photo to include a adorable Zapdos plushie sitting on top of the notebook. Just a nice little touch there from the Zapdos man himself.
00:46:30
Zzweilous
Breath.
00:46:32
William Dunphey
Um, but let's recap the grand finals just real briefly here because I do have some really interesting notes. Uh, so it went eight games. Uh, it was hard Jeff on the, I believe hard Jeff was on the winner's side or no, excuse me. It only went four games. He sent me the winner's finals and grand finals. He played against core lash twice, but the grand finals is what we'll focus on.
00:46:52
William Dunphey
grand finals went four games core lash on the winner's side hard Jeff on the loser's side ah hard Jeff was only able to win game number two and then core lash was able to win games one three and four in order to take the championship uh what's interesting is kind of the battle of the mud slappers here game one we had a shadow kenta marowak from core lash lead into the gastron from hard Jeff Uh, and as the series kind of developed, you saw a lot of mandibuzz from, um, from core lash and some glaring Corsola on both sides between the winners finals and grand finals, which is a total of eight games played between these two players. Core lash brought his glaring Corsola eight out of eight games, whereas hard Jeff only brought it five.
00:47:33
William Dunphey
Uh, then we have core lash with the shadow Kanto, uh, Marowak, which I thought was really good against a lot of teams in the championship series these past weeks, but not that good against hard Jeff and his double flyers. He only brought that shadow Kanto Marowak twice. Meanwhile, hard Jeff was free enough to bring that gastron in half of their total battles. So four out of eight times.
00:47:52
William Dunphey
this is always going to be a really fierce competition and i just want to say for any play pokemon representatives that are listening i really want these tournaments to be streamed i know it's a logistic logistical challenge we had our our um kind of warm-up season our rookie season if i may so if i may call it that for eu where we had community stream tournaments Uh, but still getting any kind of stream like that would be just a huge, huge benefit to the community. And spotlighting last time is, is one of the best things I think we can invest in because the trainers are some of the best. So all we can do really is look at the notes here. Um, glaring Corsola eight out of eight games between the winners finals and grand finals. I know you and I are going to talk about glaring Corsola pretty soon. It seems to be pretty darn good. Uh, but, but hard Jeff, um, and core lash grand finals is definitely a one to watch that I wish we could have seen.
00:48:41
William Dunphey
But congratulations to core lash like you said first regional championship, I believe
00:48:46
Zzweilous
Yeah, I think so too, and I think it makes total sense why the Khosla would come out so often for Kalash, just because if you look at Rajev's team, um there's some neutral matchups, the Gastron is fairly neutral, the Mira match is fairly neutral, and the Dugong can also make it kind of close, but the only winning matchup would be the Mandibuzz, and even that is only a winning matchup if the Mandibuzz runs Snarl, which most Mandibuzzes don't really want to play these days, just because they are more confident into Pokémon such as Annihilape if they run Air Slash for consistent flying-type damage.
00:49:18
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
00:49:26
Zzweilous
But Air Slash Mandibuzz can actually lose the two-shield scenario against a good Galarian Cozola, so potentially up to six positive matchups for Galarian Cozola into Rajav's team.
00:49:31
William Dunphey
Wow.
00:49:37
Zzweilous
So and Definitely a Pokemon that was the MVP of that tournament as well. And yeah, that might just lead us over to Marto Gaudé, our LAIC champion, who essentially sent out a plea, a cry for help on on Twitter where, or X, I don't know, it's a platform with a name.
00:50:00
Zzweilous
um that please, Niantic, make Gathering Corsola more accessible. It is such a good, such a important in Pokemon that it features on multiple tournament winning teams in just a weekend. And the only way we have of obtaining it is just hatching a lot of seven kilometer eggs. And that's not accounting for the Excels. That's not accounting for needing a good IV Corsola to actually get the most out of it.
00:50:26
Zzweilous
um So yeah, i'm I'm fortunate that I got one. I got one fairly early in my trades and then I put essentially all the rare excels that I've amassed over the years into it. um But that is not a viable solution for a Pokemon that currently is top meta.
00:50:43
William Dunphey
Yeah, I feel like we were having a similar discussion when glare and multrace was really good, um which was what it it feels like it was a long time ago, but it really wasn't. I think it was last fall that Pokemon was was really dominant. And then it popped off again on stud muffins team in San Antonio.
San Antonio Championship Overview
00:51:00
William Dunphey
ah But Glen Corsola seems to be really kind of making waves. No pun intended over the meta because the supporting evidence that Marto use was a screenshot of the top cut from Birmingham.
00:51:10
William Dunphey
where six out of eight of the top trainers had it on their team. And he's kind of like, hey, noticing this Pokemon is is quite popular. I think we should we should get more access to it. And I know ah some trainers, especially like Inadequance comes to mind. He's mentioned before that 142 HP stats that you need to hit or to win. I think it's the is it the the zeros versus ah Drapion or something like that.
00:51:36
William Dunphey
Whatever might be but um, I'm disappointed because mine only has 141. So I guess I better keep trading for a better one
00:51:43
Zzweilous
Yeah, for sure. Also, I think I like. I think Elite, the San Antonio champion, mentioned on a a recap stream that he didn't have a Corsola on his team, I don't think, but he would have had a Corsola over his Ariados if he was able to get one in time. so like Sometimes the reason why people choose not to run Galarian Corsola is just because they don't have one yet.
00:52:11
Zzweilous
so
00:52:11
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:52:12
Zzweilous
it's I think it's difficult to actually make this Pokemon more accessible just because um like obviously it's like a little bit of a regional form. it's I don't know. I think the best way of making it more accessible is twofold. Either you could put it into GBL rewards where you do want the Pokemon that um then could really help you in your PVP journey. So your PVP to PVP more. I feel like that makes sense intuitively.
00:52:42
Zzweilous
Or you could um just shake up the pool of Pokemon that you encounter during um regional and international competitions because you always have the event sponsor at the venue and there is a bunch of Pokemon that are really viable and interesting that you can catch there. For example, the Shallows forms in both um colors, by the way. so if you're interested in that. um that's That's possible to catch there. Also in Kay, there's this Pokemon that you'll really want specific every combinations. You can grind for them at those original events, but they only really update that pool once a season. They only really update it after Worlds. And I feel like maybe it would make sense that if you release a Pokemon mid-season, you could also up update that spawn pool maybe
00:53:29
Zzweilous
at the start of the season after because right now we are in a position where we have to hatch eggs to get Galerin Cosula and just can't even get more Rucidae for the Covonide that we'll talk about later on.
00:53:44
William Dunphey
Oh, oh, I know.
00:53:45
Zzweilous
And I have heard from people that you can't even elitium the exclusive move Iron Head onto it yet. I don't know whether that's true. I haven't actually tried that out, but should that be true?
00:53:56
Zzweilous
It might just not be possible to get a Corviknight right now unless somebody trades you a Corviknight that they've already evolved during the event, which is like an accessibility nightmare.
00:54:05
William Dunphey
Wow.
00:54:06
Zzweilous
So maybe it's for the better of Corviknight might not be the best Pokemon out there right now.
00:54:12
William Dunphey
Yeah, seriously. and And we have honestly, there's so much that I have to say about Corviknight. I've followed a lot of the discourse online. I know that you have as well. Oh, we've been engaged talking with community members.
00:54:23
William Dunphey
so Um, but yeah, I know don't want to get too far ahead of myself on that topic. Uh, Galarian Corsola. Yeah. I was, I was lucky enough to get a very good one in Mexico city. Uh, I traded with Benji praise and I got a rank 22, which 22 is actually my favorite number.
00:54:37
Zzweilous
Oh, that's massive.
00:54:38
William Dunphey
So I'm very, very, ah I'm super happy with that. Um, Unfortunately, Benji.
00:54:41
Zzweilous
But it also goes to show how ah Rank 2022 still doesn't hit the HP threshold that Martijn mentioned beats Dreypion in the zeros, so...
00:54:51
William Dunphey
Exactly, yeah, exactly. So even though it's like really, really, you know, an S tier reroll, it's still not good enough. That's that's just how how steep the upper crust is for the Galarian Corsola. Also, sorry Benji that I did not give you a rank 22 in return. i I still feel guilty about that. um But yeah, if we take a ah ah look here at San Antonio, honestly,
00:55:14
William Dunphey
with the overall team from elite I think he would have I don't know I mean obviously I'm not on the same level as him as a competitor I think he would have had a more difficult time if he would have played Corsola over the Ariados and the reason is is because his team Feels like it has some weaknesses to superior ah what I mean by that is we've got a zoom roll shadow Kanto Marowak shadow Drapion Shadow for alligator do Gong and then Eriados to tie things together and it was strange for me to see the Eriados on a winning team ah Because we haven't really seen them as often I think that the the grand finals between boom and Colin was probably peak Eriados that might be the
00:55:55
William Dunphey
The pinnacle of what we're going to get out of that pokemon, but still seeing it here, uh, if not mistaken I think it was the only one in top cut at uh at san antonio, which was a uh, a very healthy top 16 um But yeah, if you don't have that superior check I feel like running double water in a zoom roll and shadow gator with your dugong Which is also water and then your shadow kanto marowak, which is like helpless against superior I think that you're really in a tough spot.
00:56:22
William Dunphey
I mean, do you disagree? Do you think things turn out for the best?
00:56:24
Zzweilous
Yeah. I do agree, but I also think that, um, during that recap stream, I think it was on Yasuo's channel, um, I did hear them talk about that exact topic, how you would have patched up the superior weakness.
00:56:40
Zzweilous
So that would have been something that, um, probably you would have been addressed with like a little tweak here or there, but essentially like the main point was, okay, like I can't actually build around Galarian costumer because I don't have Galarian costumer.
00:56:50
William Dunphey
Hmm.
00:56:52
Zzweilous
So. What does the anti-fighting, like what fills the anti-fighting role in like a capacity that actually gives me an advantage in the tournament setting.
00:56:53
William Dunphey
Hmm.
00:57:01
Zzweilous
And I don't, I like, honestly, I think Ariados is a pretty good call. Like I would have probably.
00:57:05
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
00:57:07
Zzweilous
tried to build around Ariados if I hadn't had my team ready for Birmingham anyway. And the bug type of choice was Chargibug in there. But just the like the um utility of Ariados against the classic poison double water, then there's a bit in special.
00:57:22
Zzweilous
I feel like that already makes it quite viable and quite helpful Pokemon to have on your team.
00:57:27
William Dunphey
Right.
00:57:30
William Dunphey
Yeah, Ariados is definitely a ah what I would call a momentum oriented Pokemon. Either you're slowing down your opponent with the lunges or you are ramping up your poison stings and your attack overall with your trail blaze. So it's definitely a Pokemon that when the shields are down, it can really spiral out of control due to its coverage.
00:57:48
William Dunphey
ah For example, if you have a Marowak and a Azumarill in the back, and suddenly your opponent has an Ariados up a shield, you're in really big trouble. It can be really difficult to to win that game. So it applies a ton of board pressure, I think, to a lot of the common teams that we saw. And I think it worked out really well for him.
00:58:04
William Dunphey
but ah Elite was our champion in San Antonio. He took on rise to occasion in the grand finals. so ah But there was one trainer I wanted to mention that really had a standout performance. I just wanted to highlight Stud Muffins because Stud Muffins was bringing um maybe, I don't want to call this an old team. I'm kind of getting the vibes of like the Toy Story meme where the kid is throwing Andy into the trash. Like I don't want to play with you anymore because Stud Muffins had shadow for alligator Claude Sire core.
00:58:32
William Dunphey
ah He also has superior Dunsparce, Annihilape, and Galarian Moltrace. So this team, it it again, ah going back to our meta discussion, the meta feels like a moving target. And this team feels like something that would have been relevant you know three weeks ago or six weeks ago or whatever. But now we're seeing stud muffins go all the way to the to third place with it. And I think that a lot of it was off the back of that Galarian Moltrace because Whether his multrates was good against the team or just mediocre, it didn't matter. He was bringing it in every single game, it felt like, with the exception of maybe two or three that we saw on stream. And he played a lot on stream over the weekend. I'm not sure if you wanted to highlight Sudmuffins as well, but I was really, really impressed with him.
00:59:14
Zzweilous
It actually would have been one of the names that I wanted to mention, and I feel like Stottmuffin specifically is having a little bit of a breakout year, I would say. I think the first really good performance was, or like, good performances are, like, they don't always have to be top cards for sure, but I think the first time he really announced himself on the big stage was during LAIC, if I'm not mistaken.
00:59:37
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:59:37
Zzweilous
But yeah, the reason why I have known the start muffins before is because he plays a ton of practice tournaments. He is in Not every single practice tournament, that would be an overstatement.
00:59:48
Zzweilous
But he isn't so many of them, and he typically plays this exact team. So I think this is just a a knowledge advantage that he has piloting these six Pokemon.
00:59:54
William Dunphey
oh
01:00:00
Zzweilous
um And especially the Galarian Moltres is a Pokemon where I would say this is so neutral into so many things that you could call it a high skill ceiling Pokemon.
01:00:10
Zzweilous
Because if you just know your matchups, your your IVs, the damage ranges, um maybe also the the habits of your opponents. When would they throw a move? um When can I make a catch?
01:00:21
Zzweilous
um When should I bait? When should I throw the the Brave Bird? There are so many nuances that go into Galarian Mortress play. And if you just keep on playing that Pokemon week after week after week, you will get so good with it that it doesn't really even matter what the meta is.
01:00:32
William Dunphey
Mm. Mm.
01:00:39
Zzweilous
um because you are just so neutrally flexible with it that a good Galarian Mulchist player will be able to make it work in nearly every scenario honestly and I think um if you look at the let's just say the top five I think that does include flying pizza as well but just like if you look at the other names around stop muffins that's
01:00:50
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:01:05
Zzweilous
Elites as the regional champion. I don't know, was it his third or fourth win? He's like a multi multi-times regional champion.
01:01:12
William Dunphey
Third win.
01:01:12
Zzweilous
You have, yes, you have Rice to occasion, also three wins.
01:01:13
William Dunphey
yeah
01:01:16
Zzweilous
You have Out-of-Pocket, reigning NEIC champion. You have Dunebug, four wins. Like, all of these trainers have had accolades that could fill multiple pages.
01:01:29
Zzweilous
And then you have Start Muffins, who holds his own against those players. I think that's just an incredible achievement. And one thing that I want to mention between Flying Pizza, Start Muffins and Dr. Roast Beef, I really like what America has on the menu this season because it feels as if every new breakout trainer is somehow food themed.
01:01:45
William Dunphey
Right
01:01:50
Zzweilous
um but Yeah, I like to, I like to see some new kids on the blog because if we look at ah the regional champions in Europe versus the original champions in North America, it feels as if we have a lot of repeat winners over there in NA, whereas EU has like really, really honest, it's, um, it's like cliche name of being the, being the region with, okay, like you have,
01:02:15
William Dunphey
Diversity.
01:02:21
Zzweilous
so many good players but NA is where like they have like five top top top players to just tower above the rest um this is it's just like what people have been saying i don't know whether that is true necessarily but we all remember last world championships right um but yeah like something's just breaking into into that fold is uh
01:02:28
William Dunphey
Oh, OK, OK.
01:02:34
William Dunphey
Oh, yeah.
01:02:40
William Dunphey
Yeah. ah yeah yeah
01:02:47
Zzweilous
more than impressive. I think he's probably becoming a regular in positions like that, too. I don't think this is a one-off or a two-off or a three-off. It's just a regular occurrence now.
01:02:57
William Dunphey
We talk about the meta being condensed. you know ah Six out of out of the top seven Pokemon on Icelandic Lapras' team. Or maybe a few of your repeat offenders, if I may say so, about Azumarill for alligator, that kind of stuff. Well, maybe the the competitors are also a bit consolidated in NA. I don't know. I'd like to hear everybody's thoughts about that, because I definitely think we have some trainers that stand shoulders above the rest.
01:03:23
William Dunphey
um
01:03:23
Zzweilous
Are you suggesting um a march nerf for Rise to Occasion?
01:03:30
William Dunphey
Ooh, perhaps well, it will if we nerf rise and we also have to nerf Colin, so.
01:03:35
Zzweilous
This is also true. um yeah Yeah, it would be every little a little unbalanced if yeah everybody would just play Colin, right?
01:03:37
William Dunphey
So there's that.
01:03:43
Zzweilous
um
01:03:44
William Dunphey
I i wanted to touch on a good good.
01:03:45
Zzweilous
but
01:03:47
Zzweilous
I think we had like a little sneak peek at what nerfed rice could look like um during the um San Antonio stream because I think DeFi grew a few inches since the last broadcast.
01:03:55
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
01:03:58
Zzweilous
I think that was a situation ah where somehow ah things have changed a little bit. um I feel like I was different between day one and day two, but still there's there's some wiggle room in terms of height that we we've got to witness.
01:04:09
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
01:04:14
William Dunphey
See your. you're taking a lot You're taking it a lot better than I did because I got absolutely bamboozled on the broadcast. okay Because DeFi asked to stand on the stage when she interviewed Rai so that she could be taller than him. And I was shocked when I saw that first interview. I was like, oh, this is not what I what i was expecting. I think DeFi has just hoodwinked us all. She's actually you know seven feet tall and should you know should be playing in the WNBA or something. but um but instead I go to another interview I say oh okay so it's later on the tournament we're gonna we're gonna speak with with rise and defy again so let's toss it over where defy is towering over rise and they toss it over in this time she's not standing on the stage and rise is tearing over her and I'm like what the heck guys you know at least stick with the theme you're really making me look like a like a butt-head out here but um
01:04:58
Zzweilous
all
01:05:06
Zzweilous
Yeah, you've been had, man. You've been had.
01:05:08
William Dunphey
Yeah, I absolutely got thrown under the bus by, uh, by the production. And then they just went in reverse and ran me over again. Um, but yeah, that was that was really fascinating to see. And, um, ah I think, uh, what you said about nerfing rise also kind of tips, tips the hat towards the grand finals appearance as well, because if i I'm not mistaken.
01:05:29
William Dunphey
I've heard this i i want i want everyone listening to confirm but i heard that rise did not play against a mudslap team at all in his tournament run until he got to the grand finals against elite and i think once he encounter that mudslapper with the the squad that he brought to san antonio ah which which did feature ah Shadow Drapion, Toxapex, Annihilape, Mandibuzz, Diggersby, and Shadow for Alligator. Once he encountered that Shadow Kanto Marowak, it really felt like there was no flexibility. It reminds me again of what you were saying about your match ah in the Grand Finals versus Icelandic Lapras and the Shadow Annihilape. I felt like whenever Elite wanted to, he could send that Kanto Marowak out and he could just take control, switch advantage, just on a whim whenever he felt like it.
01:06:18
Zzweilous
and was especially It was especially devastating for us because typically Shadow for Alligator and Shadow Drapion make a really really really good core. That's like two-thirds of the Nezabithan Special.
01:06:30
Zzweilous
um but If you just have a two shielded Kanto Marowak, the Shadow Feraligita matchup goes from not great to absolutely dominant for Shadow Kanto Marowak just because you put out so much fast move damage that you don't even need to land a Bone Club to win that matchup straight up.
01:06:49
Zzweilous
um That's what you get for being a shadow. I think it's actually because I've actually been looking at that up because I figured that um the Kento Marowak was so strong against Ryze, he can't possibly have seen one on his way to the grand finals, right? And you're right, he didn't see one.
01:07:07
Zzweilous
I think he saw a Gastodon once, but the Gastodon is still a lot more manageable because it's more risky to bring into a Mandibust team. You have Body Slams for coverage. You don't have Rock Slide. It would be a lot more hard RPS if you have that in the wrong situation. And also, um like Pokemon such as Annihilape are pretty strong into that because Body Slams don't hurt, and Shadow for Alligator doesn't get much slept down in the two shield.
01:07:37
Zzweilous
So you will always have some play there. um So I think Gastron is less oppressive. A slightly more, I won't even say neutral pick, but yeah, definitely definitely not as brutal to deal with as the Cantomarouac from Elite was, which time and time again just
01:07:55
William Dunphey
Mhm.
01:07:58
Zzweilous
fast attacked through the Feraligatr and then the the lead was so big that the Shadow Rapion from Ryze said nowhere to go essentially and it was it was a cat and mouse game of getting the Mandibuzz aligned and if you don't get the Mandibuzz aligned it's just really tough and also having to ring that Mandibuzz makes it so that elites zoom roll We'll just have a field day because if you will lead the Mender Bus, you can't realistically have the Diga Speed or the Annihilate um in the back because that would make you ABA weak to it, right?
01:08:36
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:08:36
Zzweilous
Azumarill beats Mender Bus, beats Annihilate, beats Diga Speed.
01:08:39
Zzweilous
um So you could always just lead Marowak and have Shadowed Rapion and Azumarill in the back, because you can save swap Shadowed Rapion. Shadowed Rapion only gets punished by Digaspie and Annihilate, and if you need to save swap it into Mandibus lead,
01:08:39
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
01:08:51
William Dunphey
Hmm.
01:08:57
Zzweilous
then those won't be in the back because otherwise you're ABA to Azu. And that's essentially what Elite did time and time again, just banking on his opponent, not running a crazy ABA line, just running a line that makes sense and then mutually overwhelming that.
01:09:07
William Dunphey
and Mm hmm. Mm hmm. In the rise occasion versus elite grand finals, ah rise was coming in on the winner's side, elite from the loser's side. Honestly, elite had one of the one of the best loser's side bracket runs in day two that I think we've seen a long time in North America. Around one, he took down JJ and he then went through Spartan L one seven from Mexico. He went through the Torian in the Torian Zapdos, which I think was the only Zapdos in top cut San Antonio.
01:09:37
William Dunphey
he went through flying pizza he went through out of pocket and stud muffins so he went through an absolute w ringer to get to the grand finals so he was able to win the first set of the grand finals ah three to one rise only winning that game number two and then in the reset it actually went down to the wire to game number five Um, I don't know how much you saw of the stream, but I was pretty proud of our pre grand finals interview because over the past two or three years we've gotten to know these trainers pretty well. I feel like I'm getting better at asking questions and kind of, you know, leading to certain responses.
01:10:14
William Dunphey
um because a lot of the time you see you see this in sports I know that you have seen this ah probably innumerable times but a lot a lot of these cases where you interview a player they give you a really generic answer like oh we need to play better defense or we need to ah to score more I really like my new teammates they're great but behind the scenes you know there's different play calls there's different strategies being adjusted ah Maybe there are you know trouble problems and trouble in the locker room. I mean, they don't really talk about those kinds of things because they're you know PR trained and they know what to say. I feel like ah Rise and Elite are kind of getting to that point where they've been interviewed so many times that they don't really give you much personal information. And of course, they're not going to reveal their strategy either.
01:10:56
William Dunphey
So as an interviewer as a as a host kind ah kind of a role is challenging to get information out of them. um but One of the things that i I asked elite which I thought was was kind of funny and and I was really hopeful ah in all sincerity that it did not throw him off but I asked him if he got lucky.
01:11:16
William Dunphey
getting to the grand finals and there were definitely I think I think I remember three instances in particular ah there was one I can't recall if it was flying pizza but there was one trainer who had a brine on toxapex but just didn't throw it into the Marowak and it ended up winning that game ah There's another one. I think it was against the Tarian with the diggers be where He was trying to charge tech party tied the Azumarole on elite side and hit the scorching sands But the Azumarole was incredibly weak and the Tarian had the fire punch and didn't throw it He was just fixated got tunnel vision on the scorching sands and I think because of a one-turn lag on arrival he He missed the charge tech priority and didn't get the rematch or something like that.
01:11:56
William Dunphey
And then ah finally against pocket elite just went crazy and he threw an ice beam at a superior through two shields and that connected. And I just felt like, um, I, again, I don't want to say luck because you never want to say to someone before they go on the grand final stage. You never want to say, Hey, you're just here because you're lucky. Cause I don't think that that's the right way to, to psych someone up or to, you know, to be their friend or to be professional.
01:12:23
William Dunphey
ah But I just asked him I was like have you gotten some some fortunate breaks here and He was very honest. He said yeah I think that my opponents have made some errors that I didn't expect and that I tried to take advantage of and I just want to emphasize as well for Elite or whoever's listening and That's okay. When your opponent makes a mistake, you're not supposed to feel sorry for them. You're not supposed to, uh, diminish your wind. You're not supposed to feel like you didn't earn it. Any of those things, when your opponent makes a mistake, that is part of the game. When you're at this level playing against trainers like pocket, like Tarion, when you're at that level, you have to capitalize on mistakes. And I really hope that elite or anyone in in his position don't feel any guilt about that.
01:13:07
William Dunphey
Because that's seriously part of the competitive nature and and coming from the sports world as wireless I'm sure that you've seen plenty of the situations where some of the best in the world make a mistake and then someone else just takes advantage because that's the game we play.
01:13:20
Zzweilous
in german we have the word fila spiel which means game of mistakes and that essentially means that a lot of competitive games essentially depend on somebody just
01:13:35
Zzweilous
putting your foot wrong. And that's just how it goes.
01:13:37
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:13:38
Zzweilous
And if you're the one making fewer mistakes, that just means that you're the best. Sometimes being the best isn't about always being flashy and always being super dominant and never doing anything wrong.
01:13:49
Zzweilous
For example, in I think it was game two in the first game of the grand finals where elite reset the bracket. He had a bone club b loaded on his cantomaro whack and just throwing it, um I think, into, what's it, dsp it was one of the Pokemon of all time. Like he had a um bone club worth throwing and he didn't throw it. He just over farmed and he got taken out by a charter tech from Rises. And I think elite could have made that a lot cleaner by just throwing that. And that cost him one game, but it wasn't decisive and it was only one game.
01:14:23
Zzweilous
And still, um going back to you mentioning how big of a loser's run that was. Elite actually won 13 matches, like not only individual games, but matches against trainers, series of three or five.
01:14:38
William Dunphey
Wow.
01:14:38
Zzweilous
and This is, to my knowledge, the second longest um winning run on a like at a regional competition after only, can you guess it?
01:14:52
William Dunphey
Junebug.
01:14:53
Zzweilous
tuneba san an on your This is the place where the loser runs out.
01:14:59
William Dunphey
Wow, oh my goodness. Yeah, I was looking at that. You're exactly right. Uh, if you consider day one and day two combined, 13 round wins is absolutely astounding. Um, it's also interesting because elite had this mantra as being the trainer who kind of glided through the, the winter side bracket. You know, he was definitely, uh, one of the best trainers in the world and he proved it over and over again. And he was nine and O in grand finals appearances at one point in, in terms of games played.
01:15:26
William Dunphey
And the first time he ever lost to grand finals was was against Wadaj. in Baltimore. So then he makes his second grand finals appearance here in San Antonio. And I asked him before the grand finals interview, or before the grand finals matches, I said, are you nervous having such success in the grand finals, but then losing to Baudage in Baltimore? Like, how do you feel now? And he said, you know what? I didn't really think about that until you casters brought it up. And when you kept hammering that I was 9 and 0, 9 and 0, 9 and 0 in the grand finals,
01:15:57
William Dunphey
And I lost one. It got to me. I was like, Oh man, I've now I feel bad. Like am I, am I just doing my job here? Should I feel bad about this? You know, cause cause these are, these players are, you know, we cover them as you professionally speaking, but I'd like to think that they're my friends as well. You know, they're, they're good people and we share a lot in the community. So it's kind of weird to be like, Oh yeah, man, you know, I was doing great. And then you got into my head. So thanks for that. You know,
01:16:24
Zzweilous
Yeah, it it can never be that straightforward, or can it? um Like, I think obviously there is a big mental component that goes into these high stakes battles. But at the end of the day, um you're mostly just alone with your team and your opponent and your strategy. And I don't think outside factors can ever be that influential. And I also feel like I'm i'm a sports journalist, and I know the tendencies that um people like me or like us in this ah case where we are like esports journalists if we if you may call us that. um I feel like there's a little bit of over interpretation when it comes to the
01:17:09
Zzweilous
exact cause and effect of mental states going into certain matchups. For example, if we look back at my Birmingham grand finals, like I was ah was so calm and relaxed going into the grand finals. Icelandic Lapras was a little a little nervy and ah let me know that ahead of time and just like very open about it but also just like like Not visibly shaking, but still like, okay, this is my first time and I'm i'm new here.
01:17:33
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:17:36
Zzweilous
I don't know whether I can do that. I kind of needed to pep talk him during our grand finals interview a little bit.
Grand Finals Reflections
01:17:42
Zzweilous
And it didn't matter in the end. It just swept me. That's just how it goes sometimes. But in the same way, I would say, um oh, I lost my last two grand finals I was in. Will this um impact my mental negatively going into a potential next grand final? I don't think so. I feel like this was more down to, like, unfortunate calls, team compositions. Maybe it wasn't my day. Maybe the next day is my day. And I feel like it's... It's the same for a lead for other top competitors ah as well that, okay, maybe you would think about certain and eventualities ahead of a match or after a match, but during a match, I think it really, it really just comes down to the battles that you play, the team that you face and what your opponent is doing. and
01:18:28
Zzweilous
Um, yeah, then, then just the dice falls the way it falls and the sun it's, it's been great for elite, honestly.
01:18:36
William Dunphey
Yeah, and.
01:18:39
William Dunphey
and And what you said really reminded me of Rise's answer because I took him back and I said, Rise, I remember when you won your first tournament, it was the bracket reset against Doonbug in Milwaukee in 2022. And I remember you were fist pumping and you were standing up before you even finished your charge attack. Like you were really hyped and excited. And I said, ah are you thinking about that right now? Are you thinking about how you're going to feel after you win?
01:19:03
William Dunphey
And it made him laugh he's like dude not at all like i'm thinking about game one i'm not getting that far ahead of myself that i'm thinking about you know the events the eventuality of what's good what this is going to end up like i'm thinking about the next battle and i think that's the best mindset ah that you can have not thinking about your your past performance not thinking about the future performance.
01:19:23
William Dunphey
So so important to stay present in really ah important situations that you know that you encounter in life I know we're just talking about a a pokemon game But I feel like this goes for all things you know all things that you experience sometimes you just need to be there and Not have your mind wander anywhere else rise to occasion our second finisher he had shadow for alligator diggers be core with shadow drapeon toxapex as well as annihilate and air slash mandibuzz so definitely a very stout team i know that a few content creators are fans of the toxapex mandibuzz core is definitely very popular ah in months past shadow drapeon i think is the one sure thing
01:20:02
William Dunphey
on a lot of these teams here. ah If I'm not mistaken, uh, minus one, two, three, four, five, uh, 11 out of the top 16 teams in San Antonio had shadow Drapion and 14 out of the top 16 teams in Birmingham had shadow Drapion was not as popular in Rio. I think we only had, um, actually, actually we had one, two, we had four out of eight. So still 50%.
01:20:28
William Dunphey
In the top cut in rio, uh, but yeah, the the other numbers are quite staggering when you consider that and I really feel like um shadow drapeon it commands a hard counter And the problem that you run into is once you do have that hard counter, for example elite had a shadow cancer marowak Once you do have that mud slapper or that counter user like annihilate, then the problem is that you snowball yourself into RPS. And I know we're going to talk about the meta and and how things go. And I think that RCS Aurelius' is comment on Desynx posts actually speaks to this. You aren't playing RPS unless you choose to, but sometimes, man, it's so hard to overcome Shadow Drapion and having the right answer can can make a world of difference.
01:21:12
Zzweilous
Yeah, I think like, interestingly, Shadow Raven specifically, yeah I would, I would say is one of the least RPS Pokemon out there, just because, or like, obviously, if you're just locked into say a mudslepper that's going to be GTS for you, but
01:21:26
William Dunphey
Hmm.
01:21:29
Zzweilous
um There were situations where I think like one game that rise somehow won against elite was on the back of his shadow draepion where he farmed up a lot of energy with poison stings so he could just spam aqua tails and eventually land two to take out the um Shadow Kanto Marowak, so just the way it generates energy so quickly and is so spammy and even has the possibility of a crunch debuff if push comes to shove. The um Shadow Raypion is probably one of the RPS breakers, which is why so many people elect to bring it on their team, just because, okay, it's like kind of weak to counter, but not really. If the Annihilape doesn't have close combat, you can even take a shield in the zeroes. You have
01:22:13
Zzweilous
great neutral play into a zoom roll where you lose the zeros and the ones if you don't get an early debuff but you win the two shields um and yeah it's it it feels like the one thing that everybody brings just because it isn't so rps but you're right in that it does invite hard answers which are difficult to come by just because dark poison is such a unique typing that only knows ground as a weakness
01:22:38
William Dunphey
Mmm.
01:22:38
Zzweilous
And if you have a ground type, that invites flying types. Ground versus is flying very happy as matchup.
01:22:43
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:22:43
Zzweilous
Um, so yeah, it's, it's like, it's, it's fun that you can get both of these Pokemon, both the shadowed rapion, dropion, or the shadowed kantumara wreck from the current rocket leader rotation.
01:22:54
Zzweilous
So they only try and do those if you can, but yeah, it's, it's not easy to find a Pokemon that can be both the mudslappers and the shadowed rapion reliably.
01:23:07
William Dunphey
Interesting facts about Elite's team. I plugged it into PVPoke and I'm looking at some core breakers here. Apparently he was five times weak to Galarian Corsola. His only hard answer, excuse me, was going to be that shadow Drapion. um But there I think there's some interesting interplay between those Pokemon. So again, when you say being weak to something, it doesn't mean that you actually get annihilated by it. ah It just means that maybe you're not going to win even shield scenarios, so you have to play around more with your energy.
01:23:36
William Dunphey
Walrein is a very solid core breaker to his team, as is Unova Stunfisk. Regice, surprisingly, which I don't think we'll see any time soon.
01:23:44
Zzweilous
It's a little bit of a semi-hero, isn't it?
01:23:44
William Dunphey
um Yeah.
01:23:46
Zzweilous
They're agile. It always comes up, but never sees play.
01:23:47
William Dunphey
and Yeah, exactly. It looks good on paper, but then you realize, uh, you can only throw lock-ons and, and earthquakes and thunder and blizzard. And you're like, Oh man, this actually kind of sucks.
01:23:58
William Dunphey
Uh, and actually he was five times weak to be barrel, which, uh, I wanted to bring that up as well. I forgot to mention it with the, um, the last tournament in Rio, but court lashes team, uh, allegedly was six times weak to be barrel as well.
01:24:13
William Dunphey
So I, I, I do appreciate.
01:24:14
Zzweilous
Yeah, I looked at those teams and I was like, oh man, why couldn't that be my grand finals opponent?
01:24:19
William Dunphey
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:24:19
Zzweilous
Maybe next.
01:24:21
William Dunphey
Yeah. I was going to say the same thing. If we could have, uh, teleported you down to Rio or teleported you over to San Antonio with your team, uh, just directly into the grand finals time to bracket play.
01:24:30
Zzweilous
Yes, yes, yes. si i was I was like, please, please mention that. I don't want to go through all of those top competitors from all the regions.
01:24:34
William Dunphey
right
01:24:36
William Dunphey
But if, yeah, if you just switched places with someone for grand finals, I think it would have been very, very interesting to see how the b baro performed. But, um, but yeah, San Antonio was really awesome. I was very proud of the skits that I introduced, like the lasso, uh, the chili cooking contest, uh, the who's that Pokemon impossible edition. I thought all those were, uh, were really fun. And, uh, I appreciate production for letting us do more and more, uh, out of the box things like
Rivalry Matchups and Storytelling
01:25:02
William Dunphey
that. but And I'd be remiss not to mention my favorite series of the entire tournament had to be Rockhaven versus Mango.
01:25:10
William Dunphey
ah Butters and I were just screaming at the top of our lungs with some of the weights, the pauses, the swaps, the catches. That was absolute. ah if youre If you love competitive Pokemon, that was like like crack cocaine.
01:25:25
William Dunphey
That was absolutely insane.
01:25:25
Zzweilous
I love how the very last catch that Rockhaven did in that final game against Mango wasn't even necessary to to win the game, but it just looked so cool, and it was a really hype moment, and they were just like...
01:25:34
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah.
01:25:38
Zzweilous
like Everybody was already like in chat on their back of the ah like um the back of their seats, so... Is that how you say it? um Anyway, like everybody was so hyped because Mango made so many good plays, but Rockhaven being able to one-up him, and like, there was a simul-swap, there was just so many moments that were, it was like scripted, like, who plays like that?
01:25:48
William Dunphey
yeah
01:25:55
William Dunphey
I know. Yeah.
01:26:01
Zzweilous
But yeah, both would have deserved to go on today too, it could have only been one, but that's just the level of competition that we're at, man.
01:26:02
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:26:08
Zzweilous
Like, it's 2025, this is how people play.
01:26:12
William Dunphey
Yeah, right. And they continue to step it up, which is really, really impressive. Um, yeah, I just, I love to see plays like that. And, um, and that that easily could have been a grand finals. It could have been an IC finals. I mean, the the level of those two players, I would love to see both of them win a regional title. Uh, it might happen this year. It might not be till 2026 or maybe even beyond.
01:26:32
William Dunphey
But trainers like mango and rock haven are so so good I think that it's just a matter of time if they can continue to be committed I can see them rising up like stud muffins and flying pizza did this last tournament maybe even um Making their way into grands very soon.
01:26:46
William Dunphey
So I'm very very proud of both of them Edge
01:26:47
Zzweilous
also I also did now remember the saying and at the edge of their seats, so um I feel like we're good.
01:26:52
William Dunphey
yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you nailed it Hmm
01:26:55
Zzweilous
But yeah, it was a very fun tournament, so stacked. We also had the rematch between Junberg and Ryze, who are now 4-4 in their epic rivalry.
01:27:06
Zzweilous
I feel like those two are like... Like a kaiju battle in Japanese pop culture, where you have Godzilla and King Kong.
01:27:12
William Dunphey
yeah
01:27:14
Zzweilous
We have Rice and Junberg with their three and four gold medals, respectively, around their neck.
01:27:20
William Dunphey
yeah Yeah.
01:27:21
Zzweilous
And each one IC final as well. Are there more decorated players? And just having that match up, I feel like everybody was rooting for that to happen going into day two, and just to see it play out again.
01:27:35
Zzweilous
It was a treat. It was a great tournament to watch.
01:27:38
William Dunphey
So to your point earlier about some of the EU's top competitors having nicknames, I think NA is still working on that. But one thing that we are starting to do, which we started with with Texas, is in these rivalry match-ups, we're giving them names, almost like chapters.
01:27:54
William Dunphey
So this meeting, the eighth meeting between Doonbug and Rise to Occasion, has been dubbed the Tangle in Texas. And we're going to have a a nickname for each of their series that they meet in going forward as well.
01:28:06
William Dunphey
so
01:28:07
Zzweilous
Yeah, I just like the the storytelling aspect of of just following the journeys of those of those trainers. This is also like kind of going back to the, oh, we loved when RCS Aurelius was doing YouTube content, a point that you made way, way earlier in this podcast. but I feel like he had like this favorites for worlds video where he also just went over all of these characters and their journeys and their their signature picks and I just love it when people are really just building the narrative around this because it it is so much fun honestly and what are we here for if not to have fun so I appreciate it when people just like spin it a little make it make it interesting and
01:28:37
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:28:48
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm Yeah Yeah
01:28:53
Zzweilous
I think it's it's great to just be that protagonist in that as well to just really be this I don't know whether it's like a larger than than life character already But ah you're on television twitch dot.television, but um, it's it's still great Yes
01:29:08
William Dunphey
Yeah, I think it adds gravitas, right? It it makes things feel ah relatable in an interesting sense because the the the Pokemon Go competitive journey is obviously a single player sport, ah not too dissimilar from something like tennis, where you have you know theses these players that meet time and time again.
01:29:28
William Dunphey
ah But they also have their own narrative that develops and you aren't with them during training camp You aren't with them during scrims You aren't seeing behind the scenes of what their life is like or what their teammates are are saying and all that stuff So I think that as like like you said is kind of like eSports journalists or as commentators we're kind of writing that story for them to kind of fill in the blank so that people can can relate and say Oh, well, you know, Rice occasion has been, you know, he's won three championships and he's, uh, he's you know done really well in IC as well. I haven't, that I haven't had that kind of success.
01:30:03
William Dunphey
But I know what it feels like to have your teammates help you to scrim, to build your team the the weekend before, ah to you know have these kinds of friendships that you develop. I also played this event that Ryze played, where he got this Pokemon that he used. And that feels relatable to me. And I think that's such an important thing. Because otherwise, these are just players that, if you're a casual viewer, maybe you only watch one regional year, you will never meet them. You don't even live live in the same state or maybe in the same country.
01:30:31
William Dunphey
So relating to the audience and to the viewers is is definitely one of the most important parts of both your job and mine. So we do our best.
01:30:39
Zzweilous
Yeah.
01:30:40
William Dunphey
There are um some interesting things I wanted to mention. So we we want to do a meta discussion. We already covered Galarian Corsola. We also want to talk about Corviknight. So there's a lot to get through still. This episode is going to be a bit of a whopper.
01:30:52
Zzweilous
Oh yes. I'm looking at the COVID-19 section of my notes and it's like one and a half pages still.
01:30:59
William Dunphey
All right.
01:30:59
Zzweilous
There's a lot to talk about here. There's a ton to talk about. um Okay, where do we begin?
01:31:02
William Dunphey
Alright.
01:31:04
Zzweilous
um Just like maybe, just like testing the water.
01:31:04
William Dunphey
So.
01:31:07
Zzweilous
speedies How do you like the current colonoid?
01:31:12
William Dunphey
Mm, that's a really good question. Corviknight is one of those Pokemon where you look at the simulations and you say, OK, number seven in the Open Great League, number one in Ultra League. You say this Pokemon just has to be dominant. It has to be just just so strong and so flexible and the typing is so good. It's very few weaknesses, especially not meta relevant weaknesses like electric, which you don't see very often. I think that's an important distinction people need to make.
01:31:41
William Dunphey
is that you can be strong against certain things, but if they're not common, ah then it really doesn't do you much good. um But to summarize my point on paper, it looks dominant. But then you actually get into gameplay, and it feels like in a one-on-one static matchup with the shields up and no switches, this Pokémon does as advertised. It plays exactly how it looks.
01:32:05
William Dunphey
But then you get into actual real matches where your opponent is chipping and swapping and debuffs are applying and team composition becomes a factor. And it doesn't feel nearly as effective as you initially thought. I definitely have had a few matches where I tried to pair it up in GBL. I think you and I discussed this in DMs as well, how to build a team around it.
01:32:25
William Dunphey
And it just doesn't do the things that you want that Pokemon to do. like It really doesn't fare well against Annihilate, for example, but you say, hey, I've got Sky Attack, i should so I should win this, right? And it just doesn't go your way. Or you come up against something like a a ground type, like Marowak. And you're like, oh, yeah, you know I should win this because I'm a flying type. I'm also steel, but that shouldn't matter too much.
01:32:48
William Dunphey
And then that matchup is actually really close in the Even Shields. And then it does something that you expect, like Eriodos and Superior are hopeless against it, and that's fine. ah But it's definitely a challenging Pokémon to build a team around, and I don't know how well it's going to do in Eriodos.
01:33:05
Zzweilous
I'm largely on the same page and I want to get into the why we think that Corviknight is overrated by PVPoke, which is the most valuable resource to any Pokemon door battler and ah that makes how you can make sense of that. Because if we just look at the Sims for Corviknight against Birmingham's top meta, I just took the top 12 from the Birmingham regional competition.
01:33:31
Zzweilous
And I assumed corvinide in all even shield scenarios. And the zero shields, it beats eight and loses to four. In the one shield, it beats seven and loses to five.
01:33:43
Zzweilous
In the two shields, it beats six and loses to six. That's really good, isn't it? That's like, okay, you have you have like more positive matchups than you have negative matchups.
01:33:48
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:33:52
Zzweilous
that's That's not bad at all. And then you look at the average ratings where you go from 561, 500 being um absolutely neutral.
01:34:01
William Dunphey
a
01:34:02
Zzweilous
Anything above 500 is good. Anything below 500 is bad. 561 for the zero shield scenario, 549 for the one shield scenario. But now here's the kicker.
01:34:14
Zzweilous
In the two-shield scenario, the average rating is 465. It's water. It's like six versus six in terms of matches won.
01:34:26
Zzweilous
And it's such about average rating, and that is despite jump-off and superior featuring in that top 12. So you have like two dominant wins, but you are still under water.
01:34:33
William Dunphey
ooh
01:34:37
Zzweilous
And I think this is the main issue for Corviknight, that it really feels bad to play as long as shields are up, because it is a Pokémon that, even though it has Sign Attack, which generates energy quickly, doesn't have a cheap enough move to really be spammy. So other Pokémon will mostly outpace you,
01:34:59
Zzweilous
And then probably the amount of fast attack damage that your send attack puts out won't be enough to make a difference in a two-shell scenario. And that doesn't translate into PV poke rankings, um just because those rankings are based on an average of the zero and one shield matchups. So everything that goes into the rankingcks rankings is just Kovanet's great scenarios where the opponent can't shield the charge attacks as much that come out fairly slowly.
Meta Evolution and Player Reactions
01:35:27
Zzweilous
So I think Corviknight does have a place in the meta. It has a great typing. We were talking earlier, like what beats Drapion and a ground type, what shuts down a jump love. um But again, it's very dependent on the shield scenario you'll find yourself in. If your opponent can play around that and just keep two shields for the Corviknight matchup, um you will need to be quick on your feet in terms of how you manage your health and energy to make it work still.
01:35:57
William Dunphey
Yeah, very well said. it's definitely I know there's so much debate about this as well because I think one of one of the things that's really affected the hardcore PvP community, and I say that in the scope of like the top 100 to 500 players, which I think that's probably ah about as big of a net of people that are actually talking about this Pokémon that I've seen online, and me correct me if I'm wrong.
01:36:23
William Dunphey
But I feel like the those top players are the ones that were really upset about a lot of the moveset adjustments that were made. And so i don't I don't want to say that it's it's like the data miner's fault, but I kind of feel like it is.
01:36:37
Zzweilous
Mm.
01:36:38
William Dunphey
Because you know these things are coming out like, oh, this is the potential moveset. And this is what it's got in the source code. So this is what you can expect. And then, of course, once it gets closer to release, as we've seen with surf cloud sire or with skull toxapex,
01:36:52
William Dunphey
or now most most recently with Corviknight, it gets adjusted based on the current conditions where it exists. Because I do think that Niantic plans these events out, you know although it might not feel like it sometimes. They do plan these events out you know six, nine, 12, maybe even 18 months in advance or longer. And I i think that they know these Pokémon are going to arrive because it's based on a particular event that they know is coming on the calendar year.
01:37:17
William Dunphey
um But how it arrives into the meta is kind of a toss-up because the meta does shift, it does rotate, it does change, just ask desync, it changes all the time. um So if this Pokemon, what I'm trying to say is that if this Pokemon just released with the moveset it currently has and we never saw Brave Bird, we never saw Drill Peck, we never saw any of those attacks on it, would people be happier? That's really the question I wish I could answer.
01:37:44
Zzweilous
I think they probably would. Obviously we have no way of verifying or falsifying that claim, but there's definitely, I feel like there is a lot of, um,
01:37:57
Zzweilous
projected like a lot of desires for a meta shift projected onto Corviknight as well. And the fact that it used to have Drill Pack in the code gave people hope just for not even necessarily Corviknight to be good, but just for the meta to be different. I think this is what happens if we have a very small update um that essentially just didn't really shift the meta at all.
01:38:25
Zzweilous
Like the meta shift from max out to dual destiny was so minor. You essentially had the barrel that made an impact, but maybe like some thunder shockers, but other than that, it's essentially still the same max out meta that we already had for three months and now we're in the fifth month of a meta and people are
01:38:35
William Dunphey
Yeah. Mm hmm.
01:38:48
Zzweilous
People are a little bored. They might not be entirely upset, but they'll be a little bored. I actually um did a poll on on X after or before the Birmingham Regional actually. um And I was asking, we are one week away from crowning our next regional champions, but what are everybody's feeling on the Great League Show 6 meta? Five months into it.
01:39:10
Zzweilous
um And I was giving four options with solved, implying a standstill consolidation as far as popular teams and picks go. So the options were healthy, not yet solved. So the meta is fine and there is more innovation to be had. That was at 35.9%.
01:39:25
Zzweilous
Then there was healthy, but solved, which was okay. Like we are essentially at a standstill, but at least everything has decent neutral play into each other. Um, 21.4%. And we had unhealthy, not yet solved. So the meta kind of sucks, but there's still stuff to explore, which was 32%. And then we had unhealthy and solved, which is essentially everything sucks and there's no way to change that. Um,
01:39:52
Zzweilous
So if we if we break that down, we had 57.4% of people, so more than half that at least say that the meta is healthy, um which is good. So like there's not a direct need for intervention, but it still leaves almost 42.6% saying that it's unhealthy, with 32% saying that the meta is solved.
01:40:13
Zzweilous
um but a lot of people also saying okay there's innovation to be had still um like this essentially makes it so more than a third are to some degree unhappy with where the meta is at right now and this obviously translates to the call for change in a way um like it doesn't even have to be a majority as long as it's a um
01:40:29
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:40:38
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:40:43
Zzweilous
a minority that is substantial, we should still listen to that. And I think like even the people who maybe voted more favorably still feel a bit of the same feelings.
01:40:48
William Dunphey
Of course.
01:40:54
Zzweilous
They just also have fun with what we currently have. So I get it. I do hope that the March updates are going to be much larger and impactful than the December updates as well.
01:41:05
Zzweilous
Um, but the question is whether those people would really want the original recipe COVID night. or that they just want change and don't really care what it looks like.
01:41:16
Zzweilous
Because just four months ago, we essentially axed Skarmory, which was on both teams in the world's grand finals.
01:41:17
William Dunphey
and
01:41:22
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:41:25
Zzweilous
It was very RPS back in the day into both Gligar and Nanturne, which was a popular core.
01:41:28
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:41:33
Zzweilous
And typically, like most players would have agreed that Skarmory was not a healthy Pokemon in that matter. so Bringing that Pokemon back after like a bunch of meta staples fell out of favor and haven't really made a resurgence. I'm thinking well wal reign of of Noctowl, of Medicham. All of those have been out of the meta for more than a year. um They have not been brought back. And I don't think we should necessarily aim to bring Skarmory back, even if it has this nice fancy reskin and now calls itself Corviknight.
01:42:09
William Dunphey
Yeah, I think that's a great point. And ah one one line, I think I might actually end up clipping this and turning this into something else for us. But you said that I'm not sure if players just want change or and don't care what it looks like, or if they really wanted the return of Skarmory 2.0. I think what a lot of people don't understand is that meta meta shifts have consequences and when you have something that suddenly becomes one of the best pokemon in the entire meta it's going to bring a lot of other things into its gravity well with it and if you remember I know you remember this quite well Skarmory always had a little buddy and it was always a little mud boy
01:42:51
William Dunphey
And I feel like if we were to go back to that, go back to a Steel Flying and then a Mud Boy, we'd essentially be kind of reviving the Whiskash Skarmory meta from from Days of Old, which we had for multiple years. and And it would really kind of undo a lot of the changes. you know Poison wouldn't be as good because I think ah Pokemon like Toxapex, Claude Sire, ah even Drapion would fall out of the meta and people wouldn't play it anymore.
01:43:18
William Dunphey
And then you have you know other picks that would become suddenly incredibly RPS like and you could argue superior right now has its struggles but at least it's running into ah Teens with it with two water types and maybe only one ice type on them and there are some targets here and there and it keep it can keep gastron on the bench, but at least it's not going to get like annihilated by a skarmory or corvik night, so I feel like These things have ripple ripple effects.
01:43:43
William Dunphey
And when you you ask for one big change, you have to consider as well the aftershocks of what's going to happen.
01:43:49
Zzweilous
Yeah.
01:43:49
William Dunphey
um And I thought about this a lot. I know that you look at at Meadows quite often as well. um I haven't voiced this opinion, obviously, on social because I'm more interested in what other people think than what I think because I already know what I think.
01:44:01
William Dunphey
I want to know what other people are saying.
01:44:02
Zzweilous
It's true.
01:44:03
William Dunphey
You know, it's it's true. At least I think I know. um But yeah, I think um people want change for change's sake but a hard truth that a lot of competitors I think need to come to terms with is that metas are kind of like seasons and as much as you get into the winter season and it's first for the first it's sorry as much as you get into the winter season of the year and it's fun for the first two weeks and you like it being a little bit cold outside and But by week three you're complaining that your your toes are cold and you don't have any hot hot chocolate Left and you're annoyed you have to put on a sweater all the time You can't just change out of December You can't just change out of winter like that's something you just have to go through and I think a lot of players need to come to terms with the fact that metas like seasons exist for a while and then they go and you just have to adapt and that's one of the biggest challenges of being a competitor and A lot of folks online are talking about wall rain Trevenant needle Queen and like oh, yeah Oh man, it was it was the goat meta.
01:44:39
Zzweilous
thank you
01:45:06
William Dunphey
It was the best of all time. Oh, what a great what a time to be alive You know, what a great meta and I think a lot of them are forgetting that it was a great meta. Don't get me wrong It was really really fun But those three Pokemon were getting to their first charge attacks within ten turns and In the case of wall rain Trevenant It was like a knife fight or basically whoever landed the sea bomb or whoever landed the icicle spear was gonna get the knockout and yes It was a a dynamic meta but like every meta it had its downsides and things in matchups that were just not very fun and situations that were difficult to get through and kind of predictable and you know what like Even if you're a little bit bored with this if you change it into something else
01:45:46
William Dunphey
In two weeks you'll be bored of that too so i don't know my my my opinion these days while is is is just kind of cut down on the on the noise and listen for the real signals and i feel like thirty seven percent of of your respondents that are saying the meta needs to change i feel like that's not quite a signal yet. I think if we had a majority, 50, 60, 70% saying the meta needs to change, that's a strong signal communicating that things are are not fun, not playable, and we should shift it. But as of as of right now, I honestly think we're going to look back on this current meta pretty fondly, because you can bring what you want to bring. You can bring for alligator cloud sire, as we saw recently. You can bring toxapex diggersby. You can bring diggersby a zoom roll.
01:46:32
William Dunphey
You can bring these fun things and you don't always have to bring the same Pokémon.
01:46:37
Zzweilous
Yeah, um I don't really disagree. I want to briefly mention that I really love the mental image of the hot chocolate supplies running out. ah This is really what what makes winter so tough. like At some point, you will run out of hot chocolate. um But on a more serious note, I think you made some you made some excellent points there, especially mentioning that um I feel like some listeners would disagree with you there um when it comes to the ripple effects, because they would argue, oh, I'm actually more interested in the ripple effects. I want a new gravity well. I want a new centralizing force. And then everything rearranges around that and brings new Pokemon into the meta. But I think you already made the perfect counter argument that specifically the Steel Flying typing that Skamri and Kovanat share
01:47:29
Zzweilous
really invites those cores with mud boys as we call them with the water grounds where you really only have a handful of core bakers and otherwise pretty rps matchups against a lot of common picks and i like that kovanite plays differently than like differently than skarmory i like those are not just the exact same pokemon just the one thing is british and looks a little cooler um Because even though a center tag can be a little bit of an underwhelming move, especially in terms of fast attack damage output, it also makes it so that you can't really have that um
01:48:05
Zzweilous
mud boy pairing with Corviknight, like you can still have that, but it will leave a gap when it comes to um opposing flying types because now essentially attacking them with ground type fast moves from both angles, which makes it a lot easier to core break those two and will essentially force you to think out of the box a little more with Corviknight.
01:48:30
Zzweilous
um But also, Sandotec makes it so that some of the hard counter matchups that you would otherwise face, for example against Steel type, say a Bastodon in Go Battle League, which is now a favorable matchup for you, or an Electric type, which is for the most part it's still unfavorable, but it's not as hopeless anymore.
01:48:34
William Dunphey
Oh,
01:48:40
William Dunphey
oh yeah.
01:48:47
Zzweilous
I feel like Sandotec really gives Corviknight an option to be less RPS, less alignment dependent, and that is typically something that we strive for. The problem that kovanite has is its weakness in the two shield matchups where it doesn't do some things that it otherwise would do.
01:48:56
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:49:04
Zzweilous
I think, personally, is this is just a theory that Niantic might have been holding off at giving kovanite a cheaper move just because um they don't only have to consider the championship series, they also have to consider the ultra league meta.
01:49:18
Zzweilous
And right now, Covenant is very inaccessible for the Ultra League, but it's also the strongest Pokemon, um I think more convincingly strong than it is in the Open Great League.
01:49:31
William Dunphey
Wow.
01:49:31
Zzweilous
And it would have just been broken, like beyond dominant if it also had drill pegs. So I feel like that's the reason why they couldn't really go through with that. I would not be surprised if down the line they would maybe reconsider giving it aerial ace as a move that helps with the pacing. It would make it so that um The two shield matchup of Corviknight in the Great League would be above water against the common threats that we currently see, um which was like far like below 500 earlier, but goes up to 509, which is again above that 500 mark, so good. Consistently beats Annihilape if it has Aerial Ace as its coverage move.
01:50:11
Zzweilous
Um, so that could be like an update that they could consider. I don't know whether they're considered for March because that's pretty soon, but they could consider it for June. They could make, um, COVID a little little better, but I don't mind that they lean on the side of caution, especially because, um, I have been, um,
01:50:19
William Dunphey
Mmhmm. Yeah.
01:50:30
Zzweilous
talking to people that ran Corviknight in practice tournaments. And Corviknight has won some practice tournaments. It's been on teams that just swept entire entire practice tournaments. So I wouldn't, um like if you come to Merida unprepared for Corviknight, this might come back to bite you. I think Corviknight will make an appearance. I don't know whether it will go go all the way, but I think it's certainly a Pokemon that could show up on like two or three teams in the top 16.
01:50:58
William Dunphey
Oh, I was just about to ask you that exact question. I was going to rephrase it into the top eight, because that's ah typically what i what I expect from Merida, unless the tournament attendance really does blow up.
01:51:04
Zzweilous
said Oh.
01:51:11
William Dunphey
ah For reference, everybody, Merida is actually on the eastern side of Mexico, ah closer to Cancun. So it's an interesting interesting little factoid. um I've heard it's a really nice city.
01:51:21
William Dunphey
I was gonna say I expect less than 50% of our top eight to have it I'm gonna go ahead and call three Corviknight in the top eight which might be more bold than your call Yeah, yours yours was a top 16 mine's top eight Yeah, I'm gonna call three Corviknight in the top eight and maybe only one Corviknight for you in top eight.
01:51:32
Zzweilous
That's more than my three in the top 16, but yeah.
01:51:40
Zzweilous
All right.
01:51:42
William Dunphey
Is that how you phrase it?
01:51:43
Zzweilous
big Yeah, I think it's one covenant in top eight, but that covenant will go into, that covenant will win a medal. That will be a top four covenant.
01:51:51
William Dunphey
Oh, OK, OK. I like that. I like that ah that stipulation there. um Yeah, no, I think Corviknight is one of those Pokemon where it just, how do I say this?
01:52:02
William Dunphey
It feels a bit awkward. like It doesn't feel like familiar.
01:52:04
Zzweilous
Yes.
01:52:06
William Dunphey
It doesn't feel like Skarmory. It doesn't feel like Gliscor. It feels like some kind of combination of the two in in a strange way. Uh, and payback is really strong. I mean, I love, uh, nailing glaring course loads with payback. Definitely very satisfying. Uh, iron head, a bit underwhelming, but I do think gives you the most consistent and lowest energy cost damage. Uh, and if you think about future tweaks to Corviknight, which you touched on on briefly.
01:52:30
William Dunphey
Imagine if ah sand attack damage was increased and energy was nerfed slightly and then suddenly you have a Corviknight that is just digging up all the poison types and just absolutely picking them apart with fast attack pressure or sky attack Gets buffed Damage
01:52:42
Zzweilous
The problem with that would be that um Sand Attack is a one-turn fast move, so they always have to do like essentially a plus one per turn. So if you nerf it and buff it in terms of, OK, we nerf the energy, we buff the damage, that would be a 3-3.
01:52:59
Zzweilous
That would be Ground-type Water Gun. It might still be a little underwhelming, but it would definitely play differently.
01:53:02
William Dunphey
Mhm.
01:53:05
Zzweilous
So maybe then it would actually be an Electric-type Hunter.
01:53:06
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:53:09
Zzweilous
We don't know yet.
01:53:09
William Dunphey
I I'm just yeah I'm just throwing things out there, you know, I think.
01:53:10
Zzweilous
but
01:53:12
Zzweilous
Yes, they can go wild with stuff in the past, like in the future. They've they've done it in the past.
01:53:18
William Dunphey
Yeah, then that's why this is a polite way of saying, wow, that's a stupid idea. And I really hope they don't do that because that would never work. But I'm just i'm just throwing things at the wall here.
01:53:29
William Dunphey
I think that a sand attack, a payback, sky attack, it gives you a lot of flexibility.
01:53:32
Zzweilous
That's fun.
01:53:35
William Dunphey
Like you said, maybe adding an area lace as it currently exists or changing the properties of area lace and adding it. I mean, you never know. I think there's a lot of flexibility. I would love to see Corviknight maybe get a slight buff.
01:53:46
William Dunphey
ah before NAIC, before Worlds. I think that would be a really good time to buff it. um But right now, you know because it's so incredibly inaccessible, like you were saying, it's not even in the eggs anymore. i I've popped, I think, three Magnetic Lores. I haven't seen it on a Magnetic magnetic Lore either. I haven't seen it in Go Battle League. It it just ghosted everyone. It's just gone. And I don't know when we're getting going to get another chance. So I would much rather, I'll tell you what, I'd but i'd much rather.
01:54:14
William Dunphey
be in our current Corviknight situation where it's almost impossible to get, you have to trade for it, and it's kind of mediocre, then be in our current Galarian Corsa situation where it's very hard to get, you have to trade it, and it's almost mandatory if you want to make top cut. I would much rather be in our Corviknight situation right now.
01:54:36
Zzweilous
i'm I'm definitely in agreement there. um Yeah, it's going to be interesting too because we don't even know what will happen in March.
01:54:47
Zzweilous
like We are literally four weeks away from an entire new meta, hopefully, fingers crossed.
01:54:48
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:54:53
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:54:53
Zzweilous
Um, and we don't like, maybe Corvin I just naturally matches up better than what we are going to see there. That's also like always a possibility. It's just like at this point in time, it's, it's decent, but not broken. And I don't really think that's much of a complaint in its own right. It's just, it just reflects on the desire of people to have something that is really.
01:55:17
Zzweilous
groundbreakingly new and shakes up the meta.
01:55:19
William Dunphey
Hmm.
01:55:19
Zzweilous
And we haven't been getting that. But we're also, again, just four months away from another move update. And I also hope that they maybe just tie it into EUIC again.
01:55:30
Zzweilous
Sometimes like the the world's announcement was was so hype. I think the timing works out just fine. I hope they they do it again and give us a little sneak preview in in what's to come.
01:55:42
William Dunphey
and And for all of you all of you who don't know, the design for Corviknight is loosely based on the crows that gather around the Tower of London. So definitely would be very nice to see some kind of adjustments. And I'm really excited to see the EUIC. That's something i was I was hopeful for. Obviously, it's been on the loading screen art for Pokemon Go for several weeks. I was like, man.
01:56:03
William Dunphey
I really hope this comes out you know before February because I do want to see this Pokémon at EUIC. Definitely very um poetic to see it to see it like that. um I did want to toss it over to the community and see what people were saying. and I actually think that in a very very counterintuitive way, the threads from LNDS, Joa Victor, and D-Sync are actually related.
01:56:28
William Dunphey
And this just occurred to me as we were talking. So, uh, LDS Joe Victor, he talked about Corviknight, how it really got robbed, you know, it should have gotten its moves and that, uh, people are too afraid to break the game and that essentially we should have had this Pokemon as it was in the data mindsets because it would have been a centralizing force.
01:56:50
William Dunphey
And the reason that I think this thread relates to what DeSync was saying is because DeSync said, ah this actually ah comes back to you as well. I'll read the post here directly. This was from January 28th, so about five five days ago or so.
01:57:05
William Dunphey
A while back, ZZ was asking whether the meta was solved and or healthy. In my opinion, it is neither, but even worse. I truly believe with the current balance, the meta is actually unsolvable. Everything has hard counters and all of them are very meta, which means you can't truly account for everything while team building. Your best option is to try to predict what will likely be the current meta's flavor of the week,
01:57:30
William Dunphey
But that also leaves you vulnerable to any curve balls your opponent might throw at you. There are not many things to fall back on. And the reason that these two opinions, I think, are similar is because Joa Victor is kind of calling for the same thing. he calls he In his thread, he talks about meta-Cham Lickitung, he talks about metas of old and how they were predictable.
01:57:51
William Dunphey
I think that both of these players are frustrated that the meta keeps on cycling every two weeks and it's almost impossible to nail down and they thought that Corviknight would be that gravity well to kind of solidify everything in place. Am I off base here or do you agree?
01:58:08
Zzweilous
I think you might not be wrong. The question that I think is more interesting to answer is whether the way the meta is currently is necessarily a bad thing because I think that kind of just speaks to how so many different things and flavors are actually viable. And you just need to have a good read on the meta.
01:58:30
Zzweilous
And also just leave yourself enough room to mutually play out of matchups that are maybe a little less favorable for you. So for example, we've been talking about it for both the um Birmingham and the San Antonio grand finals that um I saw the Shadow Annihilate for the first time, whereas the Rise saw the um Shadow Kanto Marurak for the first time, both of which were problem Pokemon for our team. So that was essentially, okay, maybe there is too much diversity to um build a team that is good against everything. um But also, I kind of don't hate that you need to be a little bit of a risk taker in team building and maybe just have to
01:59:14
Zzweilous
um build around that gap. I don't think it's super fun to to watch for a a viewer if every matchup is the exact same.
01:59:26
Zzweilous
And I would almost say that we are, we could <unk> use even more freedom and variety because I think it's pretty condensed in people gravitating towards the Nesbethan special, the Poison Double the Water, in terms of flexible neutral picks.
01:59:28
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:59:44
Zzweilous
And Shadow Droppion especially, is almost at meta gem levels of dominance in terms of harm many how many people bring it to a top cut.
01:59:49
William Dunphey
Usage.
01:59:54
Zzweilous
um So like isn't isn't it almost the opposite that um this is almost too centralized? And I guess like you can almost prepared too well for what is what is going to come out.
02:00:10
William Dunphey
and Yes.
02:00:11
Zzweilous
It's just that most people just prepare by bringing the same stuff, but it's not too different from Medi-Liki in my opinion with the one example the one exception is that um Shadow Drapion and Feraligata are not as bulky but spammier than Liki Medibar.
02:00:30
Zzweilous
So I feel like the matches of old felt um a little more like they were a little slower maybe that made them feel more neutral whereas right now um it kind of just goes back to the point that you made that oh this feels more like the wall rain trevenant meta where everything gets to a charge attack in in 10 turns i feel like we are more in in that position i don't think it's like bad or good necessarily it's just like the flavor of the meta and
02:00:38
William Dunphey
Yes, exactly.
02:00:52
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:00:55
William Dunphey
we
02:01:02
Zzweilous
Some people like it, some people dislike it. I don't really think there's a definitive answer. It's more, okay, what's your preference personal preference? What do you like to see in a meta?
02:01:10
William Dunphey
you touched on a great point because in order to compete in the championship series, there was a large period of time. I'm talking like a year and a half, two years, where it felt like you needed at least four level 50 XL Pokemon on your team in order to to compete. You had to have your meta champ, your zoom roll, your Lickitung, and your Sableye. And I feel like those four appeared on tons of teams. And then there were some you know flexible picks here and there, but that only leaves you two slots.
02:01:39
William Dunphey
And when you compare that meta, you had much bulkier Pokemon and a 60 second timer. And now you have non XL Pokemon. Like if you look at the teams, I think the only XL probably I would i wouldn't say requirement, but the only highly recommended XL that you really need is likely going to be a zoom roll on your teams.
02:02:00
William Dunphey
Not only does it greatly reduce the barrier to entry to grinding this Pokémon, but it also makes the matches so much faster and so much dynamic, more dynamic. ah It does kind of throw back to the Walrain Trevenant days. And yes, we have our own accessibility issues right now. You could argue from from least to most, you could say Galarian Moltres is definitely tough to get, but you have your daily adventure incense.
02:02:23
William Dunphey
ah Shadow Canton Marowak just got added back which is a nice little burst for about five days when the rocket event was going on and then I think Galarian Corsola probably being the the second Least accessible Pokemon and then Corviknight probably probably being number one Corviknight with good IVs I should say being the most inaccessible Pokemon So yes, we do still have accessibility issues But at least it's not like a mountain that looks so tall that a regular player who's like, Oh, I've got 10 look at tongue x Excels. Let's see how soon I can compete in in the regional coming up. Wait, I need 286 more Excels. How am I ever going to get that? And then they just give up and they don't compete. I think there's like a huge disparity in, in the relation of our, um, our, uh, accessibility issues right now versus the past.
02:03:14
Zzweilous
Yeah, I'm just looking at teams right now. And honestly, we knew to do something about the bunnies. Like, other than Galarian Coaster, I feel like the most prevalent Excels that we still have are obviously a Zoom role, but also Biggest B. Those might be a little difficult to just pick up. I feel like another accessibility issue, just for people who might just want to um or to just pick up the game and start playing immediately, would also be just TM-ing shadow Pokemon outside of dedicated events where you can TM your shadows of frustration.
02:03:52
Zzweilous
I think Niantic has gotten better about that.
02:03:52
William Dunphey
Yep.
02:03:54
Zzweilous
We had the um TM frustration away bonus for a Go Battle week, which I think is a good thematic tie-in. But just like if i if I look at teams, almost every team that top card Birmingham had at least two shadows.
02:04:10
Zzweilous
um The winning team had three shadows. And even though right now, like very desirable shadows are in rotation, you would still have to wait until the next Rocket event until you can actually TM those.
02:04:22
Zzweilous
I think one thing that I also really want to like, would really like to see is just give us those difficult to come by TMs that allow us to specifically remove frustration from a Pokemon outside of the the typical service hours of my anti-Rocket events.
02:04:34
William Dunphey
Mm.
02:04:39
William Dunphey
Oh, I like that idea.
02:04:39
Zzweilous
Um, this is something that I want to see just like store like two or three of those that you, I don't know, like maybe they come with a box, maybe they come with the time research. Um, and then you can just store them.
02:04:48
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:04:50
Zzweilous
And once you get the Pokemon that you want good IVs, I don't know, like it doesn't matter what month of year of the year it is, how many months it is to the next rocket event, you can just keep that TM in your storage and use it on your shadow Pokemon.
02:05:02
Zzweilous
I would love to see that. I think it would do so much for accessibility because we talk a lot and we rightfully talk a lot about stuff like the COVID-19 situation where you can't catch a Rookedy or maybe the Excels where you really need to grind and obviously the rotations of what Pokemon is available changes and changes but I think the shadow situation is one that can't be underestimated.
02:05:19
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:05:22
William Dunphey
Yeah, what what if there was like a corrupted TM, which you can only get from defeating Team Rocket?
02:05:26
Zzweilous
with the
02:05:28
William Dunphey
And it actually allows you to TM away frustration ah yeah outside of the shadow event windows. Oh, man, that would be.
02:05:34
Zzweilous
You know, like make it, make it like a rare drop from a leader. Like every 10th leader, you might get that.
02:05:38
William Dunphey
Ooh.
02:05:39
Zzweilous
That would give people even more incentive incentive to, to grind those.
02:05:44
William Dunphey
Wow. OK, OK. Well, if Niantic's listening.
02:05:45
Zzweilous
Just like putting this out there, if anybody's listening in, please, like I don't even need to be credited. I just want the game to succeed.
02:05:53
William Dunphey
Yeah, same here, same here. And I feel like, um ah again, like i'm I'm not trying to, I know I'm going to get some some heat for this, but I've been, as you have been, in the top you know ring, top echelon of competitive Pokemon Go.
02:06:10
William Dunphey
For a long time right like we're you and I are able to kind of reach out to these players that are win winning tournaments and we're able to talk you know eye to eye on a lot of things and we've been around since the inception of the championship series, but I feel like our top crust of competitive players is not that big.
02:06:31
William Dunphey
I feel like we really need to start to grow from the bottom, from the base, from the roots, in order to expand our our top echelon of players. ah You see this most prevalently prevalently in NA where you've got a lot of repeat winners over and over. ah EU definitely has their standout players as well. um But if we got to a point where we had a different player winning every event that we had never heard of before,
02:06:55
William Dunphey
then it would be absolutely like electric. It would absolutely just and be one of the most exciting times as a viewer, as a commentator, as a casual player ah to get involved in the championship series. So finding ways to make sure the game succeeds and grows I think is really, really important. And again, ah favoring signals over noise is definitely I think something we need to be mindful of, right?
02:07:18
William Dunphey
um I know we have other topics as well. There's one thing I really want to talk to you about and I don't know if we can honestly allocate the time that we need to and that's the overall health of the championship series. ah Chris Brown did publish something really interesting on his feed on X formerly known as Twitter that I think is very very
Current State and Future of Pokémon Championships
02:07:36
William Dunphey
insightful.
02:07:36
William Dunphey
ah But we're already at the two-hour mark as well So I'm not sure if if we want to to pack it in and start the the year off with ah This awesome episode and and give everyone a tease for what's coming or if you want to keep going. How do you feeling?
02:07:48
Zzweilous
i think I think now that you have teased it, we should continue on with it. I feel like we can't just leave it on a cliffhanger, especially because I don't know. I think we might have other stuff to talk about on our next episode, which is probably going to dip into the first sharing of COVID-19 in Merida, but also look ahead onto EUIC and maybe highlight some of the competitors and meta developments that we expect for for that tournament.
02:07:59
William Dunphey
Ah True
02:08:11
William Dunphey
Oh, uh, a pre-show perhaps.
02:08:15
Zzweilous
Yes.
02:08:15
William Dunphey
Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Well, let's dive into this in this post from Chris Brown. If you're not familiar, everybody, Chris Brown is the leader, uh, of the global e-sports and events production from Pokemon.
02:08:28
William Dunphey
He is the director. So this is, this is the big gun, right? Who's really thinking about the future of e-sports for Pokemon. Who's on the front lines for a lot of this, you know organizing the venues growing the scene getting new players into the fold Increasing the production levels. He's really spearheading all of this um He posted two charts. The first one is the 2019 to 2025 North America regional average player attendance numbers and then the second chart is the same years 2019 to 2025 for EU
02:09:00
William Dunphey
Now, he does include all three games, TCG, VG, and GO. And the TCG numbers are staggering, right? If you look at, especially in North America, if you look at 2019, 2020, 2022, you have about 740 players on average. That ah nearly doubled to 1200 in 2023. It became 2000 on average in 2024, and now we're at a staggering 2500.
02:09:28
William Dunphey
So in just three years, we've gone from 700 average to 2500, which is staggering. VG is also growing maybe at a slower pace. In 2023, they had about 590 on average, 600 average in 2024, and then 723 in 2025. So growing a lot slower.
02:09:45
William Dunphey
uh but go seems to be growing ever so slowly than that right so i'll just run through these really quickly i know i'm throwing a lot of numbers and putting a lot of people to sleep 2022 79 players on average for go 92 on average in 2023 110 on average for 2024 and 140 on average for 2025 so Definitely slower growth. I'd say probably what is that 12 on average for the first year jump maybe 14 then you have 18 growth on average and then in the latest season you have 30 So we're not adding a whole lot of players to the scene. It's very gradual ah But EU is really what what I wanted to talk about because the growth in EU does not seem linear at all
02:10:32
Zzweilous
ah Well, that's that's one way of pointing it, right? Because like if you if you go down from 129 in 2024 to 126 in 2025, that's very much not linear at all. It's it's um going down. It's not good. its It really isn't. um But the the question is,
02:10:55
Zzweilous
What are the reasons for that and how can we change it? And I think a lot of top competitors, um I know a mind choke Alessio has been posting underneath um that graphic that ah he thinks that Pokemon Go needs Swiss for its um competitive circuit and I think that would be great. I'm definitely in favor of replacing the double elimination format with a Swiss format because it will give everybody who attends more rounds to play and therefore more rounds to improve and just ah more of a tournament experience, a proper tournament experience that isn't just I don't know like side events and spectating if you get eliminated early.
02:11:37
Zzweilous
um But also, I think Swiss is important for people who are already there, who then might be retained for the next regional if they really liked the experience, even if they might not be immediately top-cutting or doing super well. It's just like, okay,
02:11:53
Zzweilous
At least I played a lot and I think I improved and I really want to keep keep at it. um I think that's great if you ah are already if you have already been making the decision to attend one of these events.
02:12:03
William Dunphey
Mm.
02:12:03
Zzweilous
I think the major um the macha point where we can um improve would be how to tie in PvP and especially Show 6 with the actual game. Because as a casual Pokemon Go player, you can pick up the game and enjoy it without ever really touching PvP or knowing about Show 6 as a format or play Pokemon as a tournament series. There's like some PvP themed in-game events where you might be able to take a look at it.
02:12:38
Zzweilous
Um, but if we are being totally honest, like obviously there have been like some reworms over the years. Um, and they've been like, minorly experimental with like the more Peko introduction, which also hasn't really been doing much, but like they've been, they've been trying. They've not been entirely neglecting it, but I think not only the basic gameplay, but especially the presentation of PVP needs a little bit of an adjustment. I think.
02:13:08
Zzweilous
um The Go Battle League hasn't really been touched much at all since its introduction, and it is really basic anyway. so um Yeah, if if you were able to introduce some more creative in-game missions that are ah related to b PvP, if you were able to have some more interesting or creative tie-ins to the Championship Series, if Niantic and the Play Pokemon
02:13:40
Zzweilous
circuit, if TPCI were working more closely together, I think you could do so many fun events and promotional, um, you could put so many promotional ideas into action that you could actually make it so that people discover Pokemon Go PvP as something that can be exciting other than just, oh, like if I click on that button, I get into the Go Battle League and it's also there. Um, because I don't know, like we need enthusiasm and enthusiasm. We need excitement around our game mode. And we don't really have that currently. We just have a bunch of people who have been playing it for four to five years and enjoy the fact that they're really good at what they're doing. um And yeah, I just go out of your way to make it really fun and like a special thing that everybody wants to be a part of. I feel like you need to really galvanize that energy. And once you have that within the app, within the game,
02:14:35
Zzweilous
um I think once you discover the world that is out there with grassroots tournaments, with Twitch content, with YouTube content, like there is a lot of good work being done at the grassroots level. I just don't really think there is enough of an outreach so that the frankly massive player base of Pokemon Go will really be that excited about the PvP aspect of the game.
02:15:01
William Dunphey
Mm hmm. Imagine if you were to watch the original Pokemon anime and every single episode was just Ash shiny hunting and he just he just went around and he was like, oh, another regular Caterpie.
02:15:13
Zzweilous
a
02:15:16
William Dunphey
Oh, another regular Caterpie. Oh, another regular Caterpie. And then you know by episode 10 of the Safari Zone, he encounters the shiny. You're like, oh my god, I finally got the golden Caterpie.
02:15:26
William Dunphey
Wow, now I can move on. um Pokemon at its core has always been about battling. you know The slogan has got to catch them all.
02:15:32
Zzweilous
Yes.
02:15:34
William Dunphey
but
02:15:34
Zzweilous
This is us with the Pikachu Libre, by the way, but please go ahead.
02:15:34
William Dunphey
it's a
02:15:37
William Dunphey
Right? but Yeah, yeah. But but it's catching is a means to an end. because Because once you catch them is when you can unlock their real capabilities. And you and I have talked about this at length, right? Adding showsticks into Go Battle League or having more tie-ins between the tournament circuit and and the app itself and having more events. I mean, we've we've kind of gone over this in in past podcasts, if if anyone wants to go back and listen to them.
02:16:01
William Dunphey
But I feel like there's a substantial disconnect with Pokemon Go being kind of a casual game that you pick up, you turn it on, you walk to a park and you play, and then you just close the game and you stop playing. And I feel like that's not exactly ah the kind of environment where PvP is really going to thrive.
02:16:21
William Dunphey
And let's be honest as well with the launch of PVP, there were tons and tons of bugs. If you go back and you watch, for example, trainer tips, tempest cup tournament stream, which was an old self cup back in the day.
02:16:35
William Dunphey
He had like 350,000 viewers on that, on that tournament stream video, but then you watch it.
02:16:40
Zzweilous
That's crazy.
02:16:42
William Dunphey
It's insane and and those numbers today you never even think would be possible but if you watch the stream their games that lag out their bugs their games that crash it's just very very unpleasant to play and then there's another wave of um of kind of disappointment when i think that a lot of trainers started talking about an algorithm that was in the game that was meant to make you lose And I think that that really kind of poisoned the opinions of lots of casual players who maybe weren't very good at the game, picked it up, tried it and said, hey, every time I lead superior, I either get a bug type or a fire type or a steel flying type. And I think that the game is literally against me. So because of the randomness of this, I i think that it's rigged. I think it's not ah it's not fair.
02:17:29
William Dunphey
And a lot of people picked up the game, tried it, saw other people having that experience and just confirmed their belief. And then they just stopped playing it. And I think that with show six and the game's current state, yes, there are still problems. Of course, the one turn lag is horrendous at times and definitely makes me rage and want to throw my phone when I play GBL. And I can't imagine my charge buttons, charge attack buttons not appearing when I have my superior with a frenzy plant like Doon Bug did in San Antonio. Yes, there are bugs.
02:17:58
William Dunphey
But every game's got bugs these days. And I feel like we're really in the process of rebuilding the image of competitive Pokemon Go, especially since it got added to the tournament circuit. And once you introduce Show 6, the randomness ah aspect goes away. The algorithm aspect goes away because you're literally playing against a player who you know which Pokemon they're going to bring.
02:18:21
William Dunphey
And also, the game state is so much more improved than it was during the initial days that the minor bugs are frustrating. But I'm going to be honest with you, only the top 10% to 15% of players even know that they happened.
02:18:35
William Dunphey
Most players don't even know that. And if you and if you introduce a game and you say you know everything has to work perfectly or you just won't play it at all,
02:18:37
Zzweilous
This is true.
02:18:44
William Dunphey
then most people would never play that game. I don't care if I'm talking about Apex Legends or Valorant or Marvel Rivals or Halo Infinite or whatever. All those games have bugs. Every single game out today has bugs, and there are always going to be inconsistent things. I think I've tossed this example out before, but um your charge tech button's not showing up during a tournament is one thing.
02:19:06
William Dunphey
But imagine you're in the finals for ALGS, which is Apex Legends, ah their official tournament circuit. And you try to use your ultimate, your ultimate ability as your character.
02:19:17
William Dunphey
And instead of firing off, it immediately goes into cooldown, like it's been used, but there's no effect. And there's like $500,000 on the line. And you can't get a rematch, and you just have to take second place, because in the most important firefight of the entire game, you get hit with a bug.
02:19:33
Zzweilous
Oh
02:19:34
William Dunphey
This might sound like I made it up, but this actually happened in one of the biggest games in the world.
02:19:38
Zzweilous
no. but
02:19:40
William Dunphey
Yeah. So so seriously, like I know I know a lot of Pokemon Go players haven't played a lot of other games. Maybe they just are mobile gamers, and that's why they're in this. But every single game is going to have blemishes and problems.
02:19:52
William Dunphey
And hooking all this background to your point, I feel like if Niantic made more investment in the image and perception of Pokemon Go PvP, It could definitely revitalize it. This game is literally tied to a rocket ship. And then rocket ship is called the Pokemon brand. And you see the growth of the competitive circuit over these past three or four years. And when you consider that this is just the start of a real investment in competitive Pokemon, honesty is wireless. I wish you and I were like five years younger because this thing is really going to take off and I really want Pokemon Go to be a part of it.
02:20:30
Zzweilous
i've I've been thinking about that exact situation the other day where I'm like, okay, I'm 30 now. I have a proper day job, which takes up a lot of my time.
02:20:38
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm Yeah
02:20:39
Zzweilous
If I was 23 and in the same position in terms of the whole Pokemon part of my life, I might consider just going all in on that because I think with the, like 2026 is going to be such a big year for the franchise.
02:20:56
Zzweilous
The 30th anniversary is coming up. The 10th generation is coming up. There have been leaks on social media sites where it is suspected that 2026 is just going to be so, so big in terms of what an effort Pokemon as the company will be putting into everything.
02:21:11
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
02:21:17
Zzweilous
And the competitive circuit is a big part of that. So I think it's actually a great time to be invested in what we are invested in. I just really hope and like I honestly believe Niantic can do it. like Niantic, if you're listening, I think you can do this. I believe in you. um But I think what would need to happen is A, maybe like a little bit of a revamp where you can actually um do like a little coding session that makes GBL a tad more reliable.
02:21:49
Zzweilous
No one turn lag. I think that's, that's all we really ask. I think it has come a long way from where it used to be with like fast move denial being a thing, like bunch of like game breaking issues.
02:21:57
William Dunphey
Yep.
02:22:00
Zzweilous
Obviously we recently had the Chuka Buka first legend in the world.
02:22:03
William Dunphey
he
02:22:03
Zzweilous
kind of led But that was, that was like more of a visual that didn't actually impact the gameplay. I don't really count that as much because it didn't impact PVP as it would be played on a play Pokemon stage.
02:22:14
Zzweilous
But So, okay, like get the get the spaghetti out of the code. I think the code is a lot better than it used to be, but just like, just, just to be sure. But because we want to make it a big rebrand and every, everything needs to be perfect for the big rebrand, then maybe.
02:22:30
William Dunphey
Mm.
02:22:32
Zzweilous
at like special I don't know whether like people have been talking about weekend tournaments people have been talking about a show six mode I love the idea of a show six mode being implemented into the in-game just like random cues if we ever had that if we gave GBL a whole new feature just rename it entirely just don't even call it go battle league anymore i don't know like just take the battle frontier name from that grassroots organization we have that in regular pokemon anyway make it the go battle frontier now it has blind battles with the with the ladder and it also has those weekend shows six tournaments where you can and exclusive or like earn exclusive rewards in and it all looks nice and you have a little guide where it tells you as a beginner how can you actually play the game what is important to look for and
02:23:19
Zzweilous
um Is there an algorithm? Yes or no? No, there isn't. It's just because that's how blind battles work. Just like give it a little more care. Just like really take the players by the hand and show them this new shiny exciting place that is really polished and really branded as something different from what we had for like four or five years now. And then launch it like right after Worlds. Maybe right after there's some big news in the world of Pokémon with like a teaser for Generation 10 or the Pokémon Z-A Legends game. like there are so many um There's so much stuff going on that you could really use to fuel this rocket ship. like You could really latch onto that and really use it as something that builds momentum for you. I think Pokémon Go always has been a momentum game.
02:24:09
Zzweilous
There was huge momentum in 2016. There was huge momentum when PvP first came out. There was huge momentum at the start of the pandemic. There was a little bit of momentum when the Play Pokemon series picked it up, but um I think it really needs to come from within the app.
02:24:23
Zzweilous
And I think it can happen again, but it needs to be, it needs to be a well-planned and it needs to come soon, honestly, because I don't want us to miss out on the whole 2026 hype.
02:24:34
William Dunphey
Yep.
02:24:37
William Dunphey
Yeah, and not to mention 2026 is the 10 year anniversary of go.
02:24:42
Zzweilous
It's true.
02:24:43
William Dunphey
Yeah, so you have the 30th anniversary of of the brand. You have ah generation 10 being teased and you have the 10 year anniversary for Niantic.
Future Prospects for Pokémon Go
02:24:52
William Dunphey
So. 2026 it's going down.
02:24:57
Zzweilous
still 10 more months to go, but I'm i'm i'm i'm frankly excited.
02:25:00
William Dunphey
I know let's hang on until then.
02:25:03
Zzweilous
I think there's so much to look forward to still, but yeah, this like this this is just our little safe space where we can articulate our hopes and dreams and hope that some higher power, maybe John Hankey listens to us.
02:25:15
Zzweilous
um Yeah, we're just really hopeful. um um Yeah, it's not up to us at the end of the day, but I still think it's it's worth it to put some energy behind this.
02:25:27
William Dunphey
Yeah, agreed, agreed. So we'll keep working on it. We'll keep covering these these tournaments as they come up. I'm really excited to talk about the upcoming events. So we've got Merida on the first weekend of, I believe this is, yeah, the first full weekend of February, which is a second full weekend, which is the eighth and the ninth.
02:25:48
William Dunphey
Then we've got Puerto Rico in the following weekend, the 15th through the 16th. So we have two Latin events coming up. And then we've got EUIC, which is going to be February 21st through the 23rd. So well as I have heard that all 400 spots have been sold for Pokemon Go. So this is a maxed out tournament. It's going to be the biggest tournament to date.
02:26:10
William Dunphey
And um although the EU numbers on average are not looking great, I do think that that is a very good sign to see EUIC completely sold out. So that's going to be a really fun one. We're going to do an awesome pre-show for that, make tons of predictions, talk about the players we want to see succeed, the Pokemon we think will succeed. We did a really fun one last year where we even talked about like the top cut trainers and all kinds of stuff. So Definitely want to stay tuned for that one. But um one last thing I wanted to mention, if you're listening to this right now, you have just over four months. So you have 130 days until NAIC 2025, which is the cutoff for championship points and your world's qualification. Just remember, if you are trying to qualify for worlds, there is a cutoff limit on the leaderboards. I think is for EU,
02:26:57
William Dunphey
And last time it is top 50 for NA. It is top 75 So you definitely want to make sure that you are in the race up until the very end This is a marathon not a sprint. So make sure to max out your local events and compete at regionals whenever you can
02:27:14
Zzweilous
Yes, I will for sure be doing that too, just because um I feel like um I can be fairly confident that I will make it to Worlds, but there's travel awards to be fought for, and I might be in a position where I should think about that more seriously, but need some need some good IC performances for sure. and
02:27:33
William Dunphey
Mm hmm.
02:27:33
Zzweilous
um I'm looking forward to my EUIC pre-show performance as well. I will be preparing some spicy hot takes both for Pokemon and for competitors to succeed. It's always like one of my most fun formats that we do and um can't wait to get back into that.
02:27:48
William Dunphey
Yeah. I feel like for those pre-shows, we really just kind of go into our ah our own laboratories. We're drawing lines, and we're trying to you know connect things, and we're looking at them the meta, and we're like, oh, yeah, yeah. And we so you know our hair's all frazzled, and we're just trying to get the best insights we possibly can. So we'll see what happens with that.
02:28:08
William Dunphey
But that's why this it's been really fun. I'm not sure if you have any closing thoughts, but I think we covered a lot. We talked about the three regional championships, talked about glaring course accessibility. ah We gave our opinions on Corviknight. We talked about the overall meta, talked about the health of the championship series. I even gave everyone a little preview of what we're going to be doing in the coming weeks.
02:28:28
William Dunphey
um I've gotten a few messages. I haven't told you this yet. I've gotten a few messages. Folks want to see a video version of our show, and I think that um also making clips and sound bites might be something that I explore.
02:28:35
Zzweilous
Oh.
02:28:41
William Dunphey
Maybe instead of posting the full episode on X, formerly known as Twitter, I might just do clipable quotes and just have you know some sound bites from us. and um a preview of where the show is going and then send everyone over to their podcast platform to listen.
02:28:57
William Dunphey
I'm considering that as well. So this year is going to be really fun.
02:28:59
Zzweilous
I think that's a really fun idea. I honestly honestly like that. Maybe um like if we were to do a video, we could also just upload it onto a YouTube channel that would make it possible to i don't know like share on other social media platforms as well. If people don't really want to click into just the audio, but just maybe have it on on the laptop in the background as a video, maybe comment underneath that because I know that.
02:29:23
Zzweilous
Like on the podcast platforms, it's like sometimes a little difficult to engage with the content. But yeah on on this note, I also want to shout out everybody who came up to me at the Birmingham regional and just talked about Pokemon, the podcast and everything, everything in life.
02:29:28
William Dunphey
Mmm.
02:29:40
Zzweilous
And it was, it's always great to talk to people from the community and just to know that this is being listened to. And we are just, we are not just talking into the void here.
02:29:50
William Dunphey
No, absolutely not. we've We've had several thousand listens since we started the show. Hopefully that will continue to go up. And yeah, man, I wish somebody would come up to me and say they liked the podcast. I feel like everyone's telling you that, but they're like, Oh yeah, it's wireless. And whoever that other guy is that he hosts with, yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah.
02:30:09
Zzweilous
Maybe I'm just too busy as a caster during those original weekends, whereas I as a competitor, I just just play my battles and then I get to just walk around and don't actually have to do anything productive for the rest of the days.
02:30:21
Zzweilous
That's always nice.
02:30:22
William Dunphey
you Yeah, they like that could be part of it. I'm not sure. Maybe I need to ah to hit the stage, the competitor stage, and remind everyone you know that once upon a time I was good at the game. maybe Maybe I need to do that as well. But yeah, my friend, this has been a really fun episode. Again, still get shivers when I think about your intro. Very, very well done.
02:30:42
William Dunphey
It's been a ah fun fun episode, lots of topics covered, lots of ground cover. It's one of the longest episodes we've done. I think going forward, the episodes will be more like they were last year, but there's just so much to talk about and scheduling was a little bit tricky.
02:30:53
Zzweilous
yes
02:30:55
William Dunphey
So I do apologize on my behalf for that. But um yeah, I'm really excited for 2025 and let's see just how far we can take it. And then 2026, I think is is going to be a real, real big time that we can all we can all enjoy.
02:31:11
Zzweilous
I'm very excited for what's to come.
02:31:14
William Dunphey
All right, my friend. Well, until next time, uh, this is the pre Corviknight area era. We're heading into the post Corviknight era. Once it hits the field in Merida, but until then everybody i hope you had a great new year. So I hope that your 2025 is off to a great start. Make sure to keep up with your resolutions, track your goals so and stay on top of things. Cause I know we will be doing exactly that. And as well as my friend, I'll see you again, maybe on screen when you're in the grand finals, but definitely here on the show.
02:31:43
Zzweilous
Yes, yes.
02:31:43
William Dunphey
Peace!