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EP. 44 | Curitiba, Seville, Houston 2026 Regional Recaps
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Hello, everyone! This is Episode 44 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.
Today, we recap the Curitiba, Seville, and Houston events. We'll begin with Curitiba, where LNDsRargef and Zarddy find themselves in another Grand Finals. Does the king of the Brazilian south prevail?? Then, we move on to Seville, where Piloswine - aka Paulaswine - rocks the meta. Europe always knows how to cook with spice. Finally, we conclude the show with a recap of Galarian Corsola's victory in Houston. We also answer the question: Which of the 5 Pokemon we discussed are actually back in the meta?
If you're ready... go ahead and lock In, good luck, have fun!
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:00
William Dunphey
Hello everyone, welcome into the Show 6 podcast where we break down the championship series for Pokemon Go. This week we're taking a look at three events being Curitiba, Sevilla, and Houston.
00:00:11
William Dunphey
In Curitiba, the king of the south, Harjeph, claimed his sixth title. Although Politoed was a great early meta read, it was far from the spiciest pick in Top Cut. In Sevilla, Palasha took EU's spice up another level, leaving her mark with Piloswine, a.k.a. Polaswine.
00:00:28
William Dunphey
A top four of all Spaniards rounded us out, and the title stood in Spain in the end. Finally, we conclude with Houston, where Florida native Elam poured rocket fuel on an already illustrious career. All of this and more in this episode of the Show 6 podcast.
Meet the Hosts
00:00:43
William Dunphey
So if you're ready, good luck, have fun, and lock in.
00:01:10
William Dunphey
Welcome back, everybody, to the show. Welcome in new viewers and listeners, as well as our returning community members. It is me, Sweeties Chief 2, with my co-host, ZZ Wireless. ZZ, we've been away for a while, and we have a mountain of content to get through, going to get through these first three events first.
Cultural Insights and Food Discussions
00:01:28
William Dunphey
How are you feeling?
00:01:28
zzweilous
Yes, I was checking our YouTube channel today and we are up to date with our episodes. However, I originally thought we weren't because the last episode was from four weeks ago. So really, we have we have a lot to get through.
00:01:44
zzweilous
It is the 10th of April currently. So we actually are progressed much further than the three events that we are talking about in this episode. But yeah, we're splitting this recording session up into two blocks. So to not overwhelm anybody. But yeah, I feel as if there has really ever been this many things to talk about. So it's time we get to it.
00:02:07
William Dunphey
I know we have such a backlog and thank you so much for shouting out to the YouTube channel. If you want to watch a video version, you can see all the funny faces that we make. You can see the costume actually that ZZ is wearing today. He wears a different costume every time. It's themed.
00:02:21
William Dunphey
It's seasonal. And ah and now now it is ah NBA themed. So if we have any ballers that are listening, you should definitely ah shout out to your favorite team, which I'm sure is also ZZ's favorite team.
00:02:29
zzweilous
uh
00:02:32
William Dunphey
um But you're right, ZZ. We've got a lot of a lot of content to cover. We have three events here. I have a special ah interview clip that we're going to do for the very first time. I asked one of our champions to give us some thoughts on the tournament and how it went,
Guest Interviews and Event Insights
00:02:45
William Dunphey
and we're going to play it as a pre-recorded bit.
00:02:47
William Dunphey
So i'm really excited to ah to hear that because that'll be our first foray into kind of a guest episode. um But I wanted to ask you first, ZZ, just briefly, because I'm so curious.
00:02:57
William Dunphey
You just wrapped up dinner. What is a typical German dinner?
00:03:02
William Dunphey
was so curious.
00:03:04
zzweilous
Okay, so today it was actually just like I ordered Greek takeout because I cooked for myself the entire week and today I was just lazy.
00:03:14
zzweilous
I wanted to just eat my food, record my podcast and not work on all the things at once. A typical German dinner, however, is even lower effort, kind of, because in Germany we have this, I would call it bread culture, whereas
00:03:22
William Dunphey
Fair. Mm-hmm.
00:03:33
zzweilous
around the world, oftentimes bread is seen as something unhealthy, maybe like a very simple food to eat. Germans really love their bread. We have like all those different doughs, all these different seeds on the bread and the bread rolls, Brötchen. And then we have a selection of cheeses, meats, vegetables that we eat with these little breads.
00:03:57
zzweilous
like Whether it's like the slices or the bread rolls, there's like So much variety and the typical German dinner, like the typical German day, has like consists of a warm lunch, but mostly this bread-based dinner for the most part. Obviously that can change for special occasions, but just as like a day-to-day thing, the so-called Abendbrot is very popular in Germany.
00:04:25
William Dunphey
That's so fascinating. And, you know, my apologies to all of our are European listeners who already know this. But to me, as an American, it's fascinating. I'm sure the same way a lot of Europeans will look at people in the U.S. and they'll say, oh, they probably just have a hamburger or pizza for dinner.
00:04:40
William Dunphey
And that's just the American thing to do.
00:04:40
zzweilous
thanks
00:04:42
William Dunphey
And sometimes, yes, that that does happen. But my picture of Germany was ah you are going to have bratwurst for dinner and you will enjoy it. Yeah, that's just kind of like what I anticipated.
00:04:52
William Dunphey
So it's it's interesting to hear about the bread culture.
00:04:56
zzweilous
So there is certainly also bratwurst culture. um But I don't know, like my favorite word and my favorite way to consume bratwurst is as like little bit of a snack to go.
00:04:58
William Dunphey
Okay.
Event Analysis: Curitiba and Sevilla
00:05:07
zzweilous
Like, especially like think of a German Christmas market when you're, it's like freezing outside and you get this warm currywurst and you have like your little, your little wooden fork that you pick into it.
00:05:20
zzweilous
You have the sauce, you have the fries with it. Sometimes you have the little bread roll as well, because again, we are bread country. um But yeah, obviously you can also have it as just a proper dinner, but yeah, like I prefer my Godfors as a snack.
00:05:31
William Dunphey
I still remember.
00:05:34
William Dunphey
i still remember Frankfurt 2022 EUIC, the first event Pokemon ever had or Pokemon Go ever had an official broadcast for myself, Butters and Caleb walk into a shopping center in Frankfurt and we say, you know what?
00:05:49
William Dunphey
We're in Germany. We should try some authentic German ah food for lunch. We shouldn't just have McDonald's or Chipotle or whatever. So we pick out this this German looking restaurant and Essentially, it's just a chopped up bratwurst in a little bowl.
00:06:04
William Dunphey
And then there's like a ketchup and some mayonnaise and some like pepper shaken over top of it. And then they hand you a toothpick and you just eat the bratwurst like that.
00:06:15
William Dunphey
And that was like our our experience there. So it's just so funny to me.
00:06:18
zzweilous
This is like relatively authentic German. um The other authentic German, just like street food is the Jona kebab, which you would think is Turkish, but it's actually kind of been developed in Germany by like the guest workers from Turkey that came over in the 50s and 60s. So it's like,
00:06:38
zzweilous
There's like, I don't know, like three to five million Turkish people or people with Turkish heritage in Germany. And they have greatly enriched our food culture ever since the end of World War II and the rebuilding era that followed. So yeah, actually like the Döna Kebab that you see everywhere, that is actually German and not just Fager.
00:07:01
William Dunphey
Interesting. and And that's so fascinating too, because people will say, oh, a hamburger is American. Nope, it was invented in Hamburg, Germany, literally in the name. But ZZ, enough about food. I don't want to derail the show too much. As as fascinating as if as I find the cultural discussion. ah Let's talk about Curitiba. And I'm going to try to say that correctly ah for the remainder of the show. But um I guess we can start broadly with the meta. I'll have a meta graphic up on screen if you are watching our YouTube version.
00:07:30
William Dunphey
And yeah, did you see any standouts in the meta or anything that really just pops off the the top cut to you?
00:07:36
zzweilous
So I think one thing that um is very special to this event is just the prevalence of Polytoad, not only on the winning team, but also on on other Brazilian trainers' team.
00:07:48
zzweilous
So that is certainly a spice pick that people may not have had on their lists as much. Polytoad obviously a beneficiary of the Mudshot buff, now reaching the strong same type attack bonus move of Weatherball in just eight turns. and Also having Ice Beam as coverage for Altaria, which was still a very prevalent choice in this event with 50% Altaria in top cut.
00:08:13
zzweilous
um But other than Politoed, which is like the little spicy star of the show, I think the more important aspects of this showing are the wider meta trends, where people expected low kick Annihilate to be a big player, and now it didn't even make the top 12 in terms of just sheer usage.
00:08:18
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:08:35
zzweilous
and really felt like an underwhelming start to life for this supposed new meta threat, whereas the actual big winner that some anticipated but didn't actually know to which degree it would dominate the meta is a Fortress, which now has the new newly improved Sand Tomb as an option to not only lower the defenses of your opponent, but also do a decent chunk of damage, which it previously did not do.
00:08:51
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:09:02
zzweilous
It was a plus 15 damage buff. Yeah, Fortress apparently started immediately as the most dominant Pokemon in the meta and is also, if I see this correctly, the only Pokemon that featured on both sides in the Grand Finals matchup.
00:09:19
William Dunphey
That's correct. I feel like the the meta is always a moving target. And we say that sometimes it sounds like hyperbole, but Annihilate look really good into an Empoleon licky licky intensive meta.
00:09:29
William Dunphey
Maybe there are other targets as well where you could you could land the Rage Fist or threaten with the close combat. But then when the meta shifts and you have just this abundance, this infestation of Wigglytuff, and then you have Fortress with its sub bug typing helping to shore it up quite a bit, the Annihilate just doesn't look ah quite as hot as it did initially.
00:09:38
zzweilous
Thank
00:09:47
William Dunphey
So I agree with you. um but The Polytoad is a big surprise. I think we saw as well this this particular batch of tournaments. We saw Dunebug playing Polytoad also in Houston, which we will talk about later.
00:09:59
William Dunphey
That's also a fascinating pick to me to see that Pokemon in. But, you know, Mudshot, Weatherball, Ice Beam, it's got a nice toolkit there. And I wanted to give you a shout out too, because Zardy in our second place slot actually brought Cresselia.
00:10:12
William Dunphey
And we'll talk, we'll give a full recap on the Pokemon that we thought were so back and which ones are not so back.
00:10:13
zzweilous
Yeah. yeah
00:10:17
William Dunphey
I was not a big believer in Cresselia, but I mean, maybe it's ah it takes a talented trainer to drive it to second place.
00:10:25
zzweilous
I will say that it is currently on my draft for the Prague Regional Competition. So maybe there's more Cresselia medals in its future, but thus far a strong start to life for Cresselia on Zardi's team.
00:10:38
zzweilous
Not really in terms of overall usage, though, and that is a trend that continues throughout the various originals that we will be talking about. Veselya, not really much of a favorite, but at least one strong individual showing.
00:10:52
William Dunphey
Well, I have a couple of meta trends I wanted to point out. This is going to be really a really fun episode because we talk about Volt Switch Fortress, and that's probably going to be the focus of this one. But then in our follow-up follow up episode, we're going to about the pivot over to Bug Bite.
00:11:06
William Dunphey
So with Fortress in this top cut, we had four regular Fortress and then six Shadow. But there were two trainers that picked up the Bug Bite trend early, those being LNDS Paulinotat and LNDS Kanan, And they were both running Shadow with the Bug Bite variant.
00:11:22
William Dunphey
So I think that also is kind of a tip of the hat to where this meta is going to go. um Something I also wanted to mention, Garavello Andre was piloting a regular Alolan Sandslash with Powder Snow.
00:11:31
zzweilous
Okay.
00:11:33
William Dunphey
This is going very different than what we're going to talk about in Sevilla with Chris LB's Shadow Claw Alolan Sandslash. Also, he was the only Ludicolo in top eight this entire season, which is insane.
00:11:46
William Dunphey
Ludicolo pops off in the PvPoke rankings when you're trying to team build, but it doesn't feel that practical just because Water and Grass is such an awkward typing. A lot of weaknesses there. And then this was actually the second top eight of the season for Shelgon, believe it or not, because E4, Senkelor, and Houston was able to play sixth overall with the Pokemon.
00:12:04
William Dunphey
So, There's a lot of spice here, and it's crazy when you have desynced in a tournament, and then there's another trainer who who might have a spicier team. It's hard to say.
00:12:13
zzweilous
But also desync with his Golbat Tinkerton core, certainly still being desync'd, so we can't really blame him.
00:12:20
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:12:22
zzweilous
He's also bringing the spice. Overall, I believe there's like 30 different species just in this top 16, which does go to show that, um yeah, LATAM is actually giving Europe a run for their money in terms of most creative region.
00:12:38
zzweilous
And a lot of newly buffed Pokemon, a lot of Maybe forgotten Pokemon um are being explored and still finding success.
00:12:47
William Dunphey
I want to make a couple more shout outs. So DeSynced on his team in particular, i zoomed in on the moveset. Shout out to Dracoviz. I swear, I spend so much time on Dracoviz and Peavey Poke these days. They're like my top two websites. Guzzlord was actually running Brutal Swing Dragon Claw, which is very akin to Ryze's Guzzlord in Houston. We also had the Shadow Golbat with Wing Attack, Air Cutter, and Shadow Ball. There's no Poison Fang tech here. The Air Cutter is just way, way too valuable. And one more moveset I wanted to point out was that Zardy's Florges did not have Trailblaze. It was Disarming Voice in Chilling Water. So very interesting meta reads here. And to to give you a little validation here, ZZ, all right, i've I've been keeping this in my back pocket. This interview didn't air when I was in in Houston or Orlando. But I wanted to tell you and all of our our loyal listeners.
00:13:36
William Dunphey
So I had a chance to sit down with Harjeff, Zardy, and Corlash. And I asked each of them what the strongest region was for competitive Pokemon Go. You want to know what they said?
00:13:45
zzweilous
Oh.
00:13:47
zzweilous
I would imagine Europe.
00:13:50
William Dunphey
Ah, well, of course you would. No, I'm just kidding. um So Harjef said APAC because we had two world champions from APAC. And that makes complete sense.
00:13:56
zzweilous
That's fine.
00:13:57
William Dunphey
That's a really good answer, right? But I was shocked to hear that both Coralash and Zardy said EU was the
Houston Event Deep Dive
00:14:05
William Dunphey
strongest region in the world. Stronger than LATAM, stronger than NA, stronger than anywhere else.
00:14:09
William Dunphey
And yeah, you I mean, you made reference to the SPICE index and LATAM ah taking it up a few levels. Maybe the skill skill ceiling is still in Europe. I don't know.
00:14:20
zzweilous
So what i have to say about the European region is that if you go to the Play Pokemon leaderboards where you see the championship point rankings, there's like 16 or so Europeans with a thousand or more championship points already.
00:14:36
zzweilous
And then like a bunch of trainers who maybe just didn't go to as many events that are following close behind. So there's just a huge amount of players who go to lot of events and always place highly.
00:14:52
zzweilous
And you have like half a dozen of those in North America as well. But Europe just has like two to three times to the amount of trainers with like a similar record.
00:15:03
zzweilous
And that makes every European bracket a real gauntlet. And also like one thing that, um I don't know, i'm not I'm not trying to like rain on anyone's parade here, but like nighttime pleasure, obviously LAIC champion, um Orlando champion question mark.
00:15:13
William Dunphey
all right.
00:15:21
zzweilous
um One of the best trainers in the world in any case. um Amazing season. His first three European regionals of the season didn't crack didn't correct the top 16.
00:15:35
zzweilous
And I think that just goes to show how competitive and how difficult the US circuit is.
00:15:41
William Dunphey
Have you had a chance to get out to the theater and watch Project Hail Mary?
00:15:46
zzweilous
and Not yet, no.
00:15:48
William Dunphey
I'll say it now. You definitely need to watch it, especially if you're a fan of sci-fi. But you said Orlando Champion question. That sounds like one of the characters in the film. that they say They say question or they say statement.
00:15:57
zzweilous
Yeah. Oh.
00:16:00
William Dunphey
And they're like, Firestar Orlando Champion statement. Right. So yeah you'll you'll appreciate the movie once you do get around to seeing it.
00:16:05
zzweilous
yeah oh
00:16:09
William Dunphey
ah But yeah, that's a really good point about about NTC. I think a lot of trainers, especially in NA, look at him as being one of the cream of the crop, the one of the elites. He was able to win L.A.I.C., but that wasn't E.U.I.C., right? So maybe there's a ah little a little discrepancy there. ZZ, before we get into Grands, I just wanted to ask if there's any other teams or any other Pokemon you wanted to shout out to.
00:16:31
zzweilous
um I feel as if we covered all our bases. um Like, one thing that I do want to shout shout out is DBS Daniel SMB in fourth place still rocking that Shadowcantumarowak.
00:16:36
William Dunphey
Okay.
00:16:44
zzweilous
The Mudsteppers have essentially disappeared from the meta, and I wonder whether that is an overcorrection or whether that that is just the correct play. But one of them got a fourth place medal, so maybe there's still something here.
00:16:58
William Dunphey
I wonder. I do wonder. I'm going to be honest with you. I haven't really experimented with Budslappers since the nerf. So maybe it just comes down to a question of playtime and becoming familiar. um So LNDS Hard Jeff was kind of enough to share with me the notes of the matchups for the grand finals. It did go all five games.
00:17:17
William Dunphey
um Hard Jeff was able to win game five in the end. But shout out to our special segment. I actually have a ah voice clip from him. And he's going to tell us about his experience in Curitiba and his matchup against Zardy, who I think is quickly becoming one of his greatest rivals in Brazil. So sit with us, everyone. This one's about three minutes. And let's hear from Harjev.
00:21:26
William Dunphey
Let's go. our first ever guest interview clip. How about that, zee z
00:21:31
zzweilous
I love that. hope we do more of these in the future because at the end of the day, can speculate, but only the players who actually were there can give us the insight as to what actually happened in the grand finals. And yeah, like, I think it's very interesting also to hear from Rajiv's perspective, what he thought was going to happen and
Strategic Recap and Storytelling
00:21:54
zzweilous
what then ended up happening where he was like, okay, kind of have very difficult team composition to bring the Quagsire into with like the Politoed, which you can't Aquatail with the Artaria, which puts out a lot of pressure.
00:22:07
zzweilous
And then Zardy just played a lot of Quagsire anyway, but also how he positions a safe swap behind the lead that can always give him like an advantage to in the end game, still pull it out, even if he leads like a Claude Sire into a Quagsire.
00:22:25
zzweilous
So yeah, honestly, like the Claude Sire, now that he called it out, It looks so good into a lot of Zarya's team.
00:22:26
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:22:32
zzweilous
um I would imagine that the Cresselia maybe is a little better into Claude Zarya now than it used to be because before the Psycho Cut damage buff, that was actually not a good matchup for Cresselia at all.
00:22:44
zzweilous
But between and night the Flogest, the Liki Liki, the Fortress, and the Guzzlord, there's a lot of Claude Zarya targets on Zarya's team.
00:22:52
William Dunphey
Yeah, exactly. yeah Actually, for the first time in, I don't even know how long, I had to look up the Sims with Cresselia versus Clodsire. And Cresselia actually does win that.
00:22:59
zzweilous
Thank
00:23:01
William Dunphey
It just takes a lot of time, a lot of psycho cuts, a lot of grass knots. I'm going to put up the full team chart here on the YouTube version so you can look at all the team compositions that were used. But I'll just kind of breeze through this really briefly, just based on what I can i can see from Harjeff's notes and based on what he told us in the interview.
00:23:17
William Dunphey
So Game one, Harjeff leads Shadow Fortress into Cresselia. I mean, obviously a fantastic lead for the Fortress. Cresselia can really do nothing here. i assume that what Zardy did was he safe-swapped into Licky Licky, and then that allowed Harjeff to bring in the Claude Sire.
00:23:32
William Dunphey
ah The final Pokemon were Wigglytuff for Harjeff and Quagsire for Zardy. So i I assume that's how that one went. Game number two, Harjeff led Fortress into Licky Licky. Harjeff basically ran back to switch the same team, but Zardy switched things around. This time he led Licky Licky. He had the Quagsire and the Cresselia, but just in a different order. And I assume that Zardy was able to align his Quagsire versus the Clotsire in the end to win that game.
00:23:56
William Dunphey
ah Game three, this was a crushing lead for Harjeff. This was actually Harjeff leading Wigglytuff into Guzzlor. So I guess a crushing lead for Zardy. Very, very difficult to overcome that. Harjeff wins game three. Game four, Cloudsire lead into Cresselia, the two Pokemon that that we kind of highlighted coming into this recap. Cloudsire only wins the twos versus Cresselia. Cresselia wins the zeros and the ones. If Harjeff swapped Corsola, he probably got countered by Licky Licky. If Harjeff swapped Wigglytuff, he probably got the shadow Quagsire. So either way, Azardi is able to win game four.
00:24:29
William Dunphey
Game five is the one that Harjeff talked about. He led Cloudsire into Quagsire. And that pivot over to the shadow Altaria was actually the the game changer there. Because there's no Florges on this team of three from Zardy. He brought the Quagsire, the Lickety Lickety, and the Cresselia. And the only hard-hitting move here, really, I guess outside of the Quagsire Stone Edge, would be the Cresselia Moonblast. And Harjeff, due to energy management and that Wiggly safe swap that he talked about, was able to overcome it.
00:24:54
William Dunphey
ah Full metrics here I wanted to point out. Zardy brought his Cresselia four out of the five battles in the Grand Finals. He brought his Shadow Quagsire every single time. And I'm so sorry, ZZ, but Harjeff did not play Politoed a single time in the Grand Finals.
00:25:09
zzweilous
This is like... but like still, it's a gold medal nonetheless. Polytote was on the team.
00:25:13
William Dunphey
It is.
00:25:14
zzweilous
it's It's a very cheerful team member, I'd imagine. um But yeah, like I guess i you the Show 6 Pick 3 format allows you to maybe only have like three to four viable Pokemon into a matchup and still succeed.
00:25:17
William Dunphey
it is
00:25:28
zzweilous
It's just about building a team of six that really does well into bite variety of teams that you all face. I'm sure Polytote did something somewhere, even if it maybe was nothing in the grand finals.
00:25:41
William Dunphey
They probably just cheered on the sidelines, you know, with its arms up and its little squiggle belly. Yeah.
00:25:46
zzweilous
But that's like good info, because what if somebody just wins a tournament that wasn't streamed and didn't use the spice pick that stands out a single time? People then copy that spice pick not knowing that it didn't do anything.
00:25:58
zzweilous
I don't know.
00:26:00
William Dunphey
Purely bench pressure, unless it's like that Bidoof that was registered, I think, in Orlando. There was a team with Bidoof on it. So basically five versus six.
00:26:07
zzweilous
Yeah, yeah i did it it went it went like 4-2. Dracovis.com recently introduced a feature that allows you to not only check for usage stats at any given event, but also you are able to filter for win rate.
00:26:23
zzweilous
And because Bidoof was on one team of six just as a mascot, um but that team went 4-2 in the event, probably without Bidoof's help. Bidoof was listed as a 66% win rate.
00:26:37
zzweilous
which is quite impressive and may inspire people to pick up Bidoof in the future.
00:26:43
William Dunphey
I feel like I feel like that should be when you when you Google search how to lie with statistics, that should be an example.
00:26:49
zzweilous
yeah Exactly.
00:26:50
William Dunphey
What a powerful Pokemon, you know?
00:26:51
zzweilous
Oh, man.
00:26:54
William Dunphey
Oh, that's so fascinating.
00:26:54
zzweilous
well
00:26:56
William Dunphey
Well, shout out to our trainers that competed in Curitiba. This was largely a Brazilian dominated event. The only trainer from outside of Brazil in our top 16 was DeSync.
00:27:08
William Dunphey
So shout out to him as well for always competing and doing his best. This is a good time to add a small addendum here. ZZ, you and I kind of talked about this. So we shouted out Jamothy as being the only trainer in history to win two events with the same exact team.
00:27:22
William Dunphey
And I got fact checked. I got reality checked real hard by our friend D synced because he said, ah I did that as well. So shout out to D sync, our first trainer to actually win twice with the same team. As I pull up the notes here, I'll tell you which events they were.
00:27:39
William Dunphey
And I don't have it. So I'll have to ah I'll have to go back into our our later or excuse me, our earlier conversations.
00:27:42
zzweilous
It was 2024 Buenos Aires as well as 2024 Lima. there you There you have it.
00:27:50
zzweilous
so again you go there you have it
00:27:51
William Dunphey
That's why we're a good team. There we have it, chat. that That's why we're a good team. Well, I'm not sure if there's anything else you'd like to add. 108 trainers competing in Curitiba. That is a southern city in Brazil and in the spring as well. The second weekend of March, probably very pretty, very, very beautiful in that part of Brazil. So with that being said, I think it's time to turn the page to severe
00:28:17
zzweilous
Oh yeah, that is going to be a very interesting one. Oh, hold up. Do we do we need to do Houston first, in fact? Because we do need to...
00:28:24
William Dunphey
Oh, sure.
00:28:26
zzweilous
yeah, yeah because like Houston happened before Sevilla, right? Because I do remember team building with the Elam team in mind that ended up taking the win in Houston.
00:28:38
zzweilous
And that team only really differs from Rajesh's team in that it replaced the
00:28:39
William Dunphey
You're right.
00:28:46
zzweilous
Politoed with a Quagsire. There's also like a difference in shadow status on the fortress that ended um ah up on the winning team, but the overall formula is near identical with Quagsire doing a lot of the same things that Politoed also does with having a cheap water type stab move available, with having the much short pacing, with having a coverage move that helps against flying types.
00:28:54
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:29:12
zzweilous
But the one thing that Quagsire notably has... as like an upper hand over a polytoed is just the ground subtyping, which is especially crucial in a meta where World Switch Fortress is all the rage and on every second team, essentially.
00:29:29
zzweilous
um so yeah, that was an adjustment that was being made. And yeah, it worked out quite well. Essentially the exact same same formula taking back-to-back regionals.
00:29:40
William Dunphey
ZZ, that's such an incredible point. And I didn't connect those two dots until you just said it. ah So DracoViz just rolled out that incredible feature that you talked about, the win rate. They need to roll out a new feature, which is duplicate teams, because I want to look at at the overlap between certain teams and then which Yeah.
00:29:53
zzweilous
Oh.
00:30:03
William Dunphey
you know a wide net to cast when you see six pokemon and you're like wait does this six mess with the other six when the pokemon are are in different orders and everything's kind of rearranged and there's a question of move sets too but that's so that's so interesting to see that elam's team was very very inspired by hard Jeff's team. And I think that a dune bug probably gave a little shout out to hard Jeff too. Cause he said, Elon, you forgot the poly toad. Let me bring it real quick. And it did appear on his second place team.
00:30:33
zzweilous
Yeah, so we're very much like and mirror image from what we saw in Brazil the week before. yeah if we go just through the top 16 bracket, um we see a lot of very familiar names in top four, with Elim taking first, Dunebug taking second, Nighttime Clasher in third place, and Itz Axon rounding out the medalists in fourth place.
00:30:54
William Dunphey
Thank
00:30:55
zzweilous
like If you were to tell me that these other the four names on your North American play Pokemon Mount Rushmore, like I would maybe like make a case for people like Ryzen Pocket or maybe like retired players like Vodash. But these are like all valid candidates for that. And to see them just take one to a fourth just goes to show how a stacked of a reach numbers was.
00:31:20
William Dunphey
Yeah, I really appreciate ah you had that in your notes too. You said basically Mount Mount Rushmore of NAPVP and we have a former world champion, an international champion in Clasher. You've got Dunebug a six time winner and then Elam in top four alone. That's insane. I want to shout out to a couple of other meta picks that we saw as well in our top cut. Mango with Umbreon bringing up the back of our top 16 there. um You know what? Umbreon looked really good. I believe that Phoenix was also playing Umbreon and he won the challenge with it the day before the event.
00:31:53
William Dunphey
I'm actually pretty high on this Pokemon. I think Umbreon is, it requires just a specific kind of trainer to play it. It'd be very patient. You have to throw a lot of charge moves. You have to overcharge quite a bit. It's not my style whatsoever, but it is a sick Pokemon and it's really annoying to deal with. Shout out Brandino with the Glarean Stunfisk. This was such a, watching Brandino play was such an interesting combination of plays that you didn't really expect making a lot of like switch decisions and bait calls that seemed kind of like they were out of the blue um but that combined with an unconventional team actually led to a ah top 16 performance which was really really fun to watch it was always like you don't know what you're going to get you ever watch those videos like on instagram reels where uh somebody will like reach for a bottle and they'll unscrew the cap and then they'll like throw the bottle and keep the cap We're just like subverting the expectation every turn of the way.
00:32:43
William Dunphey
That was what Shadow Brandino's gameplay looked like to me. um We also...
00:32:47
zzweilous
He did have he didn't have the spiciest team of the top 16. I believe he's the only player with four Pokemon on his sixth that weren't part of the top 12 usage. So certainly a very fun run to watch.
00:32:57
William Dunphey
Wow.
00:33:00
William Dunphey
Very fun. That's a good that's a good word for it there. We also had um and I i think um oh my gosh, I'm blanking because he told me his name and we said it several times on the broadcast.
00:33:13
William Dunphey
I S.A.I. Ray. um i always play. I blinked during the show closing to I can't remember his name. He's an octal player.
00:33:22
zzweilous
Yeah, the the one singular Noctile player.
00:33:23
William Dunphey
Essentially.
00:33:25
zzweilous
He also has four shadow Pokemon, so he needs bulk somewhere, and the one thing that Noctile does have is bulk. So I see how that makes sense. However, I'm a little mad. Like, happy for the guy.
00:33:40
zzweilous
I wish Noctile didn't make any top 16s, because then my prediction of Noctile being a fraud would have been even more accurate than it is now. um So I will have to claim that, unfortunately, this 9th place finish with Noctal was all down to ability and not to the island.
00:33:58
William Dunphey
Mm, fair, fair. Yeah. So the Noctowl making an appearance. Also two Shadow Drapians here in our top cut, but they, for all intents and purposes, were a bit of the bottom dwellers of our top cut. They did not rise up the rankings as we anticipated they would in the absence of Mudslap. Goalie Greg, very fun interview, very fun person to be around. Also play Clefable. And I believe that that he's just jumped just feet first into competitive Pokemon Go. I think he booked out all the remaining events. He's going to LA, he's going to Indianapolis, and he's going to NAIC. He's like all in on competing. So it's really cool to talk with him. And also Plank of Fable is is wicked cool.
00:34:36
William Dunphey
Let's talk about Ryze's team just briefly. i want to mention the Dragon Claw, Guzzlord, as well as the Shadow Galarian Weezing. But during the cast, it was a Shadow Shiny Galarian Weezing, which is a super tongue twister.
00:34:47
zzweilous
Oh.
00:34:49
zzweilous
if you If you have a flex like that, you do want to bring it out at any opportunity. I'm still hoping for a Dragonite buff so I can bring out my shiny Shadow Dragonite again that I once brought to NAIC back in 2024.
00:35:02
zzweilous
um But yeah, certainly Galarian Wheezing, one of those Pokemon that have such an interesting role compression because um lot unlike Clefable that we just talked about, it is a fairy type that beats other fairy types.
00:35:15
zzweilous
um The one problem with Galerian wheezing often is that you want to run all three viable charge moves in Boodle Swing for the pacing and anti-ghost coverage, Sludge for reliable stab damage, and Overheat to have a shot against those Corviknight that are everywhere.
00:35:21
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:35:31
zzweilous
And also, obviously, the Fortress as well.
00:35:31
William Dunphey
Exactly.
00:35:34
William Dunphey
Of course. And I do like that that Rise's team was a little bit inspired ah from his Merida win. He did carry over that Gorgeist Guzzlord core, the GG's core, as I like to call it. But with the meta changes, he had to change up some things as well. So as long as he could avoid having his his Shadow Shiny Glare and Weezing lined up against the ground type He seemed to find some success. And there were a couple times, if I remember correctly, during the stream that not having Sludge Bomb on his Guzzlord kind of came back to bite him a little bit. ah But the Dragon Claw is is a cool tech. and And that's not the last time I think we'll see that the Dragon Claw, ah Dragon Tail, Brutal Swing, Guzzlord combination. um
00:36:14
William Dunphey
Jello too good with a charge bug. There we go.
00:36:19
zzweilous
At least I'm not the only person stuck on Charger Bug in the year 2026, because that Pokemon feels a little expired, but it still does stuff. Like, it's one of the few electric types that actually have some bulk to it, which is really nice, especially in neutral situations.
00:36:34
zzweilous
where You do not have to shield every ah charge attack.
00:36:35
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:36:38
zzweilous
And also, if more people um switch their Quags, I am more set from Aqua Tail Stone Edge to Aqua Tail Mud Bomb, that becomes much more of a neutral matchup because you are not really threatened by a potential one hit knockout anymore.
00:36:53
William Dunphey
I'm just getting this vision ZZ of you standing outside the the doors to the Prague regionals and you're just handing money to whoever will register a mud bomb quagsire. You're just kind of like, yeah, just go ahead and lock this in.
00:37:07
zzweilous
I have pivoted my electric type, Speedy, because I am off the Charger Bug.
00:37:10
William Dunphey
oh
00:37:12
zzweilous
I don't know whether you saw the post on Twitter, but I hit Legend with a Shadow Ampharos. Bringing it back from 2023 in my Liverpool run, where I made ninth place with an Ampharos.
00:37:25
zzweilous
Ampharos is back. Now that nobody is mud-slapping anymore, I can just trailblaze the Quagsire and be done with ground types for the rest of my day. Honestly, it's it's looking so good.
00:37:33
William Dunphey
i'm I'm calling Butters immediately. Butters needs to know this information because he is an Ephros believer and he's been a believer in you ever since that fateful tournament.
00:37:41
zzweilous
Yeah.
00:37:45
William Dunphey
So I'm really excited to see it. um and Speaking of Ampharos, worst nightmare is probably Andy's Shadow Steelix, which we are going to see another Steelix perform pretty well in Orlando with Sammy.
00:37:57
William Dunphey
But Andy looks pretty good with that Pokemon. And, you know, I have a little soft spot in my heart ever since Seattle. Yes, I did align my Steelix into Stunfisk too many times. and That ended up resulting in my being eliminated. But Shadow Steelix is such a monster, such a menace, and it looks so cool.
00:38:14
zzweilous
I will say, i don't know whether it's non-Shadow or Shadow Emperors, but one of them actually wins the One Shield scenario against Steelix. So it's it's kind of it's kind of crazy, really.
00:38:23
William Dunphey
Get out of here.
00:38:26
zzweilous
But yeah, very, very strong run.
00:38:27
William Dunphey
Mm
00:38:28
zzweilous
Probably a career best finish for Andy as well. And one of the Pokemon also featured, not only and on his team, but also later on Nighttime Clash's team in third place, is the Medicham, which is another one of those Pokemon where we were like,
00:38:31
William Dunphey
hmm.
00:38:44
zzweilous
Blanchez- slightly different pages as to how back it would be eventually you were a big meta champ believer, and I was a cautious manager believer. Alex Blanchez- I will say you were more right than I was because meta champ seventh most used Pokemon and use and top cut um also will be an event winner and severe just so.
00:39:04
zzweilous
spoiled that a little bit already. um But yeah, certainly a very strong neutral pick that also has the additional benefit of taking a shield from Wigglytuff in the zero shield scenario, just because of its amazing pacing to dynamic punch and its bulk that allows it to take all the charms plus a charge attack while reaching for that second charge attack itself.
00:39:28
William Dunphey
Well, ZZ, it's not often that I get a meta call over the reverse engineer. So I'm savoring this moment. um'm I'm taking I'm taking a this is a Kodak moment for me. I'm absolutely going to enjoy this one. um But i will yeah, you know, a broken clock is still right twice a day. So. um I will say this. A couple more meta trends I wanted to call out. This is Clodsire's second event win this season. The first, as you pointed out too so expertly, is L&D's Hard Chefs in Curitiba.
00:39:58
William Dunphey
CurdiWordy would win with Clodsire the following weekend in Cape Town, South Africa, which we will talk about eventually as well. Shadow Steelix, and a fifth place overall. This is the 11th top cut for the Pokemon. It's won two other events, being Birmingham, piloted by Maxi, and Buenos Aires piloted by Elendiz Arreo. It was also the runner-up in Belo Horizonte with, you guessed it, Harjef. Final note I have is about Togekiss.
00:40:24
William Dunphey
This is its fourth-place finish with Itaaxan. It has had three second-place finishes this season, Frankfurt with nine Alfie II being the first one, and then the same trainer actually piloting it to two second-place finishes, that being Pato Man at LAIC as well as Sevilla.
00:40:41
zzweilous
Oh, that's fun to have that Pokemon succeed both in a limited meta as well as in the open format.
00:40:42
William Dunphey
Sevilla as well, so...
00:40:48
zzweilous
So that is that is interesting.
00:40:48
William Dunphey
Right?
00:40:50
zzweilous
um One question, Speedy. What's your, like, the Steelix titles that you listed, was that just from this season or was it, like, career titles?
00:41:00
William Dunphey
No, just from this season.
00:41:02
zzweilous
Oh, okay, okay. Because otherwise, like, I'm pretty sure I remember Beelzeboy winning worlds with it. So it has been a very strong Pokemon for a while. um But yeah, still very much like I hope that they bring back Shadow Onyx to Grunts later this month because April 30th is actually when we get our next Rocket Takeover event, which will last for five days. So going into May, which will allow competitors to pick up and tee away frustration from
00:41:35
zzweilous
the coveted Shadow Pokemon, but Shadow Onyx has not been available for a while. Now, would if they bring it back, it would even be available in its Shiny form, because if they had the their regular Shiny released in the wild, um Shadow Pokemon can always now also be Shiny from Grunts. So this could eventually be an opportunity for for us to receive Shiny Shadow Steelix if Niantic slash Scopely allows us to get that Onyx back in Grunts.
00:42:05
William Dunphey
Imagine how badass that would be. Just the the gold and purple, with the flames.
00:42:10
zzweilous
yeah yeah like just just imagine that on screen like i don't really like hostilix plays but i may be intrigued if i get a shiny shadow
00:42:10
William Dunphey
Oh, my God. Come on.
00:42:14
William Dunphey
Come on.
00:42:18
William Dunphey
it's It's fun to watch, though. It's fun to watch people just crunch and destroy things with it. So, yeah, I agree. You know, I've got a red phone here. It's not it's not going to be on camera because it's top secret, but I'll tell you about it verbally.
00:42:29
William Dunphey
It's it's called the Niantic slash Scopely hotline. And after this episode, I want to pick up that phone. I'm say Shadow Onyx and Rockets ASAP, right?
00:42:38
zzweilous
please
00:42:39
William Dunphey
We need it. We need it real bad. um What an incredible set of Pokemon, though. And you're right. Definitely a Mount Rushmore of NA trainers. I'm not sure if there are any other bracket runs or teams that we want to look at, but I am ready to discuss our grand finals.
00:42:54
zzweilous
I do have my notes ready as well. So why don't you take the lead, Speedy, and I will weigh in with whatever I have to yap about.
00:43:02
William Dunphey
All right, let's do it. So Elum jumps out to an early lead here in games one and two. Dunebug trying to invert the Harjef strategy, actually leading Politoed in game number one, whereas Harjef did not play it at all in Curitiba. But he leads it into Fortress, and things do not go well from there because Elum has this this really cute Pokemon called Wigglytuff. And Dunebug has this really menacing Pokemon called Guzzlord, which absolutely folds like a wet paper towel when it does see the Wigglytuff. Game two, Elam is able to lead his Galarian Corsula into Corviknight. Lots of neutral play here, but I think that the backbreaker was the Wigglytuff winning the Cap TIE over Gorghist and then the Icy Wind KOing it.
00:43:44
William Dunphey
And then um the Clodsire, we had a little scared there at the end because Clodsire had the Poison Sting down the Politoed.
00:43:48
zzweilous
yeah
00:43:49
William Dunphey
But as I said during the cast, right, it's nearly impossible to 3-0 somebody like DuneBug97, and DuneBug brings it right back. I'm not sure if there are notes you have on the first two games, or if we should go right into the comeback.
00:44:02
zzweilous
um there's there's two There's two fun facts that I do want to bring up just now because I think it lends itself to both the first game and the second game where in game one there's actually a situation where um Dune is not switchlocked just brings in his Guzzlord as a regular decision into the next Pokemon but Elim still doesn't concede the farmdown but just pivots into the Wigglytuff despite like the Guzzlord-Wiglytuff matchup actually like being one that you would maybe just like stay in for to secure alignment. But I believe that was the right call by Elim for two reasons. The first reason obviously being that if Guzzlord gets an energy head start, it can actually make things pretty uncomfortable even for a Wiglytuff.
00:44:51
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:44:51
zzweilous
And also, Wiglytuff is just Elim's most neutral Pokémon here. You think of it as a polarizing force, but there's no fortress on Duneberg's team. There is no Claude Zion on Dunbarg's team. There is no Empoleon on Dunbarg's team. The only Steel type there is is the Corviknight, which, like, the zero shield matchup is so very close, and in some scenarios, Wiggly is even able to just put up a shield at the right time and take that matchup if it wants to.
00:45:20
zzweilous
So even the hardest punish would just be a very soft loss at best.
00:45:25
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:45:25
zzweilous
So just, like, deciding to save the Pokémon that just won the lead and bringing in the Wigglytuff into whatever is a very safe play for Elim in any scenario. And then the Wigglytuff versus Gorgeist charge attack priority that you mentioned in game two, that actually is, first of all, obviously IV dependent. So if your attack stat on your Gorgeist or Wigglytuff is a little higher, that may favor you.
00:45:52
zzweilous
But just a few so if we um if we compare the rank ones of the respective Pokemon, Wiglytuff wins charge attack priority over the large and the super-sized Gorghast, but would lose charge attack priority against the average and the small-sized Gorghast. So if people tell you size doesn't matter, they are likely not talking about the Gorghast-Wiglytuff matchup.
00:46:20
William Dunphey
So that's that's what that means. they're They're talking about that specific matchup. okay, okay.
00:46:24
zzweilous
Probably.
00:46:26
William Dunphey
Well, that makes me feel better about the conversations I've had in my life. But no, um that's actually fascinating. And I've actually thought about that too. Like, should should a guide be made on which Gorgias you should play and the differences in the stats? And because the meta is is so ever-changing and so evolving constantly, it feels like it's hard to kind of posit all the forms of Gorgias versus the current meta because then it just changes in three months. And then you're like, oh, well, I'm not worried about this Captai because this Pokemon is no longer in the meta.
00:46:53
William Dunphey
So... Definitely an interesting discussion to be had. um But yeah, great great analysis there. I really like the point that you brought up about game one. I think during the cast, I even said that that Elam picked up that Doombug was ABA weak to the fortress.
00:47:07
William Dunphey
And he was. He had the Corviknight in the back. So there was a reason for Elam to bail it out.
00:47:10
zzweilous
Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:12
William Dunphey
But yeah, there were a lot of like switches in the mid game there. And you're right. He kind of tossed out the Wigglytuff and he said, well, worst case, it's a Corviknight and I just iced you in the heck out of it. That's what he did. So... Well, nobody sweeps the Dunebug, and in Game 3, Dunebug begins his comeback.
00:47:28
William Dunphey
So Dunebug leads his Licky Licky into Elam's Wigglytuff. Dunebug lets his Licky Licky go. He comes in with a polytoe, but he's still forced to throw a weather ball. So things are not great ah for Dunebug at this point.
00:47:40
William Dunphey
Elam sends out his Galarian Corsula into the...
00:47:41
zzweilous
Thank you.
00:47:43
William Dunphey
Polytoed instead of the Altaria because the Polytoed had some energy up it could have reached the Ice Beam. ah The real pivot point here for me was that Dune catches the Nightshade onto his Guzzlord and then essentially forces a dragon versus dragon matchup when Elam finally brings out the Altaria. Elam knows he can't fast move down but he tries anyway. And then Guzzlord eventually sludge bombs the Altaria to win game three and keep Dunebug in the series.
00:48:07
William Dunphey
Game four, we have Fortress from Elam leading into Guzzlord. This was, I think, the first appearance of the Alola Ninetales for Dunebug. And it was quite good for him here. Elam insta-swaps into Wigglytuff. Dunebug goes Corviknight, like you said, the only charm resist on his team, truly. And then Fortress is kind of useless in this game because Dunebug has his Guzzlord. He has the Alola Ninetales and the Corviknight. And it just doesn't feel like Fortress's energy goes anywhere. And the Claude Sire really struggles against the combined ice pressure from the Ninetales and the sand attacks from the Corviknight.
00:48:41
zzweilous
Yeah, that was just like a really good line call by Dune. In the late game, he even calls a Sand Tomb bait. i probably Probably the only loose condition in that position would have been to shield the Sand Tomb and then let the next move go once you're debuffed.
00:48:51
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:48:53
zzweilous
But yeah, overall, we just like if Dune has a lead like that, he doesn't let it go. So it does come down to the size of game five, at least in this set. It could have gone longer it if Dune took the last one, but in this one, Elim is ruthless and doubles down on leading Fortress. And this time he does find the Alolan Ninetales.
00:49:14
zzweilous
um And yeah, he does have the fortress protected really well with a Galarian Corsula in the back. So he does have an answer for the Gorghais that eventually comes in. And the nice thing about a Corsula into Gorghais, if the lead was an Alolan Ninetales, is that you can safely invest shields to secure that matchup.
00:49:34
zzweilous
Because you know that if you come out with a power gem, the ice type Alolan Ninetales will not love to take that either. um And yeah, like, if Elam led his fortress into Gass Lord, that would have been rough, because you can't really swap out of that negative matchup with the Corsola in the back. But Gass isn't on Dune's team here.
00:49:54
zzweilous
So, yeah, in in the endgame, he... think he tries to knock out the Corsola with a weather ball from his Elona Ninetales, but it barely doesn't do that.
00:50:06
William Dunphey
correct
00:50:07
zzweilous
And yeah, he then ends up having Elyki in the back that cannot possibly one v two against a full-heil weekly tough and a fortress so overall just a very comfortable final game victory by Elim who secures his third ever regional title.
00:50:25
William Dunphey
A cool nuance moment here. If I had to pick out one one specific ah moment was the the lead situation because Elam leads the fortress. He throws the Volt Switch, but Dunebug also immediately pivots and he goes into the Gorghast.
00:50:39
William Dunphey
And it's so fun because the fortress's Volt Switch is four turns and then the Gorghast's incinerary is inciring his five turns and damage does not apply until the final turn. So you see this Gorghast come in and you're like, holy crap, Elam, you got to get your fortress out of there going to get burned to a crisp.
00:50:55
William Dunphey
ah But because it took one turn to switch out, that means that the five turns stacked on top of that means that the incinerate did not register till turn six. So Elam's actually able to transfer over that damage from the incinerate into his g glaring core slot.
00:51:09
William Dunphey
And then he's just set up from there. So it's one of those nuanced things where I feel like but trainers like you and I will see that be like, okay, yeah, that's obviously what happened. That makes sense. But I feel like for for a lot of viewers who might not be as familiar with it, it's fascinating to see because that would have been Double super effect damage and a ton a ton of difference.
00:51:26
zzweilous
yeah
00:51:26
William Dunphey
But something that Elam started doing, i don't know if you saw this, ZZ, but I watched the player's body language. I think it's great for storytelling. You can draw a lot from from how they position themselves on stage.
00:51:38
William Dunphey
Elam added this like neck crack into his into his repertoire. And he's like, you know, cracking the neck.
00:51:43
zzweilous
a
00:51:44
William Dunphey
And he's like, you know, so locked in. And you're exactly right. That final game, I think he got a ah solid pop before he started that because there was just no turning back once that game started.
00:51:54
zzweilous
Yeah, you got to work on your body language if only to intimidate your opponent so they know what's up. um So yeah, certainly certainly one of the nuances that you need to excel on the big stage. and
00:52:07
William Dunphey
yeah
00:52:08
zzweilous
Well, if if anyone can do it, it's Elim. And one fun fact that I... are like It's not really a fact, just like a fun observation was also that both Drapion and Metagem are back in the meta.
00:52:21
zzweilous
But Elum didn't use Drapion, even though he used to be the Drapion guy in the Azumaral Drapion meta. And Axon didn't use Medichem, even though he used to be the Medichem guy.
00:52:31
zzweilous
I don't know what's up, but I hope that they will not entirely abandon their old favorites, because both of them appear to be relatively viable again.
00:52:40
William Dunphey
I hope not. i think that that accident is probably considering it. I'm not sure if he's going to compete in L.A. or if he's going to go to Indianapolis. I assume he'll play at any IC, but that that'll, as we know now, will be a limited format.
00:52:53
William Dunphey
So, yeah, there's there's still a couple of chances for him to play his favorite meta chain.
00:52:54
zzweilous
That is true. That's nice.
00:52:57
William Dunphey
Maybe he'll bring it back. Um, also random side note, but I saw a short from play Pokemon. i had something like 28,000 views, which is, it's pretty nice for a Pokemon go short, but basically it was an interview with accent.
00:53:10
William Dunphey
And the question was how do, how do you win a mirror match consistently? And of course this was a fantastic opportunity for him to talk about his Medi slayer, which is like the accent special.
00:53:20
William Dunphey
So that was really fun.
00:53:22
zzweilous
nice Yeah, that was legendary.
00:53:23
William Dunphey
Um,
00:53:24
zzweilous
I wonder whether there's like cycle cut bolt points as well, but I haven't found any just yet.
00:53:29
William Dunphey
Well, I'm sure he's looked too. So maybe maybe the champ knows what's up. um I think that's all I have for Houston. i had a fun time with this event. um we did some We did some pretty fun skits. We played Cornhole. We did ah we did the the space ah tinfoil hat segment too. I'm not sure if you saw that.
00:53:47
William Dunphey
um
00:53:47
zzweilous
I believe I saw it. Oh man.
00:53:50
William Dunphey
But it's...
00:53:50
zzweilous
Yeah, it was like It's Houston, right? like You have to you have to come up with like segments that relate to the city that you're in to some degree.
00:53:59
William Dunphey
Exactly.
00:53:59
zzweilous
so
00:54:00
William Dunphey
Exactly. And it was it was good.
00:54:01
zzweilous
And now we like with the with the recent news from outer space, like it's like it's it's becoming popular again, is just like astronaut lifestyles.
00:54:12
William Dunphey
Yeah, flat earthers in shambles right now. um But yeah, it was it was funny because it was very organic. The production team actually did not know that they could cycle the lights through different colors like that in the lounge.
00:54:25
William Dunphey
And I was i was telling them like, yeah, we should turn down the lights. We should have our phones in our laps. So it's like a low light. So it's like spooky time. They said, actually, let's try this. And they cycled through the settings on those big show lights. And they're able to get not only pulsing lights,
00:54:41
William Dunphey
intensity, but also colors. So it gave us this real, like we're in a UFO kind of feeling, which was, which was really cool. That one of my favorite segments I've done in a while. um But yeah, also I had man in the planet and Mooneus to do it.
00:54:55
zzweilous
that was such a good selection i didn't even know muniz before this but fantastic that they decided to come out to this ex exact regional
00:54:59
William Dunphey
and you
00:55:03
William Dunphey
I was trying to get flying pizza to join, but, but he was unable to, cause he, he arrived late and then, and then, uh, maybe I'll, I'll, I'll pull up a clip of it here if I can do this in the editing.
00:55:08
zzweilous
the
00:55:14
William Dunphey
But, uh, when I did the introductions her rise to occasion says, hi everyone. I'm rise earth Milky way.
00:55:26
William Dunphey
He's so funny, man.
00:55:27
zzweilous
Oh
00:55:27
William Dunphey
He's so funny. All right. Well, that's all I have to say on Houston. Cheers as well to my my co-caster, House Stark. He only does like one event per season. of We always have ah a really fun time. I think he's a great guy.
00:55:38
William Dunphey
So 158 trainers in Houston, but it's time to turn the page, ZZ. We're going to Sevilla.
00:55:45
zzweilous
yes, I went to Sevilla and I did not regret it. regrett it um i ended up placing seventh overall and that is like a respectable placement but I feel as if, like, even though I personally as a player didn't do better than good, I didn't do amazingly just good, at least my swine did because the Piloswine was kind of the the talk of the town in Sevilla where out of the top 16, four trainers actually had this Pokemon that was never before, like,
00:56:25
zzweilous
viewed as a serious competitive option on their team, including both grand finalists. And and those were Paulasha97 and Pataman, obviously two of the best trainers in Europe, two of the best trainers in the world, both trusting the Pyloswine.
00:56:39
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:56:41
zzweilous
So at least I have that meta read that I can still be like kind of rooting for that has gone further than than I did myself. And I thought it was such a good idea, right? Because if you look at the team that just won Houston, the Yelam team, in the two-shield scenario, there is actually not a Pokemon that beats Piloswine.
00:57:04
zzweilous
um You would imagine that Quagsire is a proper answer, but a high-ranked Piloswine is actually able to survive an Aqua Tail and eventually take out with Powder's Nose and an Icicle Spear.
00:57:17
zzweilous
And if you safe-swap your Piloswine, and you land an Icicle Spear before the and counterswapping Quagsire is able to land an Aquatail of its own, you will actually be able to two-shield farm down with Powder Snows if you hit a breakpoint that is fairly easy to hit into a Quagsire.
00:57:39
zzweilous
So the Premier Water type of that time wasn't actually a reliable check to Piloswine, and that left it with Nearly no enemies, especially in a World Switch Fortress meta.
00:57:54
William Dunphey
I'm telling you, ah where else? I'm genuinely asking our listeners, where else are you going to get insights like this, right? The Show 6 podcast is is rocking.
00:58:02
zzweilous
ah
00:58:03
William Dunphey
And a huge part of that is is our our co-host here, ZZ. ZZ, I really liked your your post. You kind of alluded to this in your introduction to Sevilla. Just on a personal note, I really kind of took the final the final sentence home.
00:58:17
William Dunphey
So I'll throw up the post here. This was on March 29th. ZZ says, pretty quiet season for me, but still three events to go before worlds, hyphen, and not a lot missing for a return to form. And that's very exciting for me to hear. Like you said, top eight, but you kind of left a couple of things on the table, maybe still making a few adjustments. ah That's really exciting to hear that you feel like you're you're coming back into it. So I'm rooting for you. a Question though, ZZ, let's be honest.
00:58:44
William Dunphey
you You said the pilot swine was a great meta read. just because it wins a lot of shield scenarios. But who the hell is also thinking of pilot swine if it's not in Europe? Again, I'm convinced that there's like a pact and you all get together in this massive Discord server and you say, okay, what are we going to do this time? And sometimes it's something totally bonkers. Sometimes it's it's pilot swine. I don't know what's going on. How did so many trainers arrive at this conclusion?
00:59:11
zzweilous
So I actually know the origin story of all those Piloswine. um Pablo and Dina's Piloswine, 13th place, it's a shadow Piloswine, but you will see some similarities to the team that I've been rocking with the Chargerbug present, with the Azumarill present, the Corviknight, the Medicham.
00:59:30
zzweilous
This is like fairly similar, and I believe the reason for that was that I actually played against Pablo in one of the Kendall called practice tournaments where i tried out my swine and had multiple very successful record runs to there.
00:59:46
zzweilous
And yeah, like we faced and the next time I see him in the tournament, he also has the pilot swine. That was actually something that a couple of competitors were really interested in after facing me. Goji from Korea also ah brought brought it to a couple of practices after um we competed against each other.
01:00:05
zzweilous
so that is like one way of the pyloswine spreading just people battling me in practice and like seeing that this thing is actually a real menace if you don't have like a clear way of dealing with it um the next pyloswine to highlight is actually the pathoswine the second place uh icicle spear stone edge um shadow pyloswine uh from patoman And you see the differences, right? Like this is a different moveset. This is a shadow. This is not quite like my swine and the team around it also looks fairly different still.
01:00:42
zzweilous
And that is because Pato actually um told me in Sibir that he was like a little, not not like mad, but like a little nervous after he saw me bringing all those pyloswines to practice because he had cooked up the pyloswine team like two weeks prior.
01:00:43
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:01:00
zzweilous
And then everybody was like all of a sudden aware of that Pokemon existing. And he was like, oh, no, is my secret tech being found out here? um But I would imagine that like he'll he'll still be happy with a second place finish, even though um i will say that this is the third time he competed in Spain and it's been runner up every time.
01:01:25
William Dunphey
Oh.
01:01:25
zzweilous
I think that this is probably like the highest thing, like maybe next to winning worlds. on his list to finally take first place in his home country, but still obviously another very impressive showing by Pato Man.
01:01:39
zzweilous
And finally, the victorious swine, the Paola swine, where Palasha did actually a very sweet shout out during the event that I didn't ask for. And I don't know whether I entirely deserve it because I think this Piloswine was made shine by the team construction around it.
01:01:59
zzweilous
um But yeah, she did mention that the origin story of her Pyloswine is that she queued into me running Pyloswine in GBL and got the idea from there. So I am responsible for three of the four Pyloswine in TopCAD by one like way or another. But obviously, I believe that what actually made the difference for Paola and not for the other people running the swine is that she found the perfect partner to it in the shadow, in the non-shadow Feraligatr rather, which was probably the breakout pick from that weekend, even though it only featured on one team and not on four. Probably like on two teams actually, because V Tenacity also had it in the top 16.
01:02:48
zzweilous
um And also I do want to mention Sankailor bringing it to Houston, I believe, was where he took fifth place with it, which was like, A little preview as to what was to come with the non-Shadow for Alligator, which ever since Pala's victory has risen to become a meta staple again.
01:03:06
William Dunphey
I think it's so ironic how Piloswine was the star of the show in Sevilla. And then a lot of the Americans looked at it and they said, I'm not playing the pig, but the gator.
01:03:17
William Dunphey
I'll play the gator. And we saw lots and lots of gator in Orlando. ah You know, in real life, wild boars are often an invasive species. And they come into an environment and they multiply and they become a problem. And they ah they dig up roots and destroy gardens. And they're kind of a menace, right? So yeah.
01:03:34
William Dunphey
Interesting that you kind of proliferated this pilot swine breakout, right?
01:03:40
zzweilous
and then and then you and then you go to florida and they're just bringing out their gators i see how it makes sense now
01:03:47
William Dunphey
Exactly, exactly. It all comes down to the environment. So, wow, that's that's really interesting. And that's honestly a better answer than I than i expected. So i'm I'm happy to hear it. And again, I respect the spice in Europe so much. It's one of those things where I didn't think anyone was going to play this Pokemon. That's like if if some for some reason, everybody just picked up Kecleon and started playing Kecleon. I'd be like, what what the hell is happening? But that's EU for you. um A couple other things I wanted to shout out here. We had a great run by Andris. I think she had some quality wins. Shadow Fortress and Shadow Quagsire. Also with Malamar on the team. Malamar is another Pokemon that's kind of popped up here and there. I think it's got some versatility and and some viability, but probably a lot less now that Bug Bite Fortress is seems to be the ah the standard Mark Star with Shadow Kanto Ninetales. This is something that Arrow also brought over to Orlando.
01:04:38
William Dunphey
I don't know if I see the vision with the Ninetales. It's fun, but it just doesn't seem like a Pokemon that's, in my mind, super reasonable. And I wanted to shout out to Stone Collection and Joninio17 in particular, because...
01:04:51
William Dunphey
On my caster predicts for Orlando, I had Talonflame circled, even double or or triple outlined as a Pokemon that I thought was going to be a big impact player. i mean, if you want to beat the Anilates, the Medichams, the Wigglytuffs, the Corbinites, the Gorgites, the Piloswine, probably the Fortress,
01:05:11
William Dunphey
If you want to beat all those Pokemon, you got to bring Talon of Flame. And I think that Stone and Joninio probably saw the vision, but it didn't work quite as well. And I think a large part of that is due to the fact that every single team, it feels like, has some kind of water. And it's mostly Quacksire.
01:05:27
zzweilous
Yeah, that's like actually a couple of interesting considerations towards all of those Pokemon ah that you just mentioned. For Andris Malamar, she chose the non-shadow version of Malamar, and that is actually a Pokemon that does want a slightly elevated attack stat compared to what the rank one would be to get a breakpoint into a Shadow Quagsire, which at like almost 69% here,
01:05:55
zzweilous
is probably one of the most common matchups that it will face. And that will actually take the matchup from soft losing to a fairly convincing win.
01:05:59
William Dunphey
Nice.
01:06:05
zzweilous
um Then there is the question of what kind of talent flame do I want to bring? Do I want to bring the non-shadow version or do I want to bring the shadow version that used to be more popular in recent months?
01:06:17
zzweilous
And I believe that Joninius decision to bring the non-shadow Talonflame in this environment does actually make quite a lot of sense, because against the non-shadow, Quagsire does need to land the Stone Edge to properly knock it out, meaning that you can take an Aqua Tail and hang on and not get much shot down, and instead threaten a knockout with Brave Bird or maybe Fly if the Quagsire slightly weakened.
01:06:45
zzweilous
So that is something to keep in mind where the shadow instead adds two shield wins over the likes of Empolion or Credili, which are not as common in the meta anymore.
01:06:58
William Dunphey
Do blade?
01:06:58
zzweilous
OK, the reason why Canto Ninetales is interesting is the community day move energy ball, which with a slight energy head start and also in the zero shield scenario, does give it an out against the Quagsire.
01:07:12
zzweilous
And what else? Still like the last thing that I want to talk about. Is this like more stuff that I can talk about?
01:07:16
William Dunphey
doblade
01:07:18
zzweilous
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's like teams and players that we haven't yet mentioned. Dianoski in fifth place with Doublade, which is one of the Blades of all time.
01:07:28
zzweilous
a very a versatile Pokemon, but also it can feel slightly fraudulent due to the non-stab damage from its Sacred Sword, as well as just like...
01:07:38
William Dunphey
Correct.
01:07:40
zzweilous
It's like a little bit awkward with Gyro Ball as a coverage move not being particularly strong. um But yeah, it is flexible and it can be a very painful core breaker to deal with. And yeah, Dianoski obviously leveraging that really well with a fifth place finish.
01:07:55
zzweilous
And my probably favorite non-Piloswine spice pick of the event is Chris LB's Shadow, Shadow Claw, Alolan Sandslash.
01:08:07
zzweilous
ah Chris Albee is the person that knocked to me out of the tournament. And that is in part because of the pressure that Sandslash is putting on even a Medicham that was on my team.
01:08:19
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:08:20
zzweilous
Because if you are the Medicham into the Sandslash in the two-shield scenario, you are just not winning that matchup. You're barely damaging the Sandslash at all.
01:08:32
zzweilous
Because unless you bait successfully with two ice punches... um you will not reach three dynamic punches, and therefore you will just feign to shadow close and an ice punch connecting, which is very like ironic for Alolan Sandslash to be a Medicham counter in the year 2026, but that is actually what happens if the Medi doesn't get the double bait in the two-shell scenario.
01:08:58
zzweilous
So a lot of innovation, a lot of unusual picks succeeding in the EU circuit as we've come to expect by this point.
01:09:06
William Dunphey
I really appreciate that you mentioned Dinoski's Dooblade and Chris LB's Shadow Call of Lolan Sandslash because that was the real ah backbreaker that I saw for for the former pick, Dooblade, was that matchup between those two players. Because I remember Dinoski, I think it was it was game two, maybe it was game three, uh switches in the dewblade uh into the sandslash and tries to win the twos versus the sandslash and just fails and i'm like yeah i think that this is this is the point of no return where dinoski uh was going to fall to chris and he eventually did um very fascinating team here from chris lb the floor just the licky licky the shadow malamar as well as the shadow quacksire and the corbinite Very fun team to watch play. And it's it's cathartic for me too because I've said before that Ice looks like a really good typing. And Inadequance brought out the Alolan Ninetales, one event with that. We've seen Alolan Ninetales take second place multiple times this season as well. But my pick back in the day was the Sandslash. And at that point, there was just too much Stunfisk. There was a lot of Quagsire at that point too. It just felt like there were too many obstacles. But I feel like Chris picked the perfect moment to bring this Pokemon As we work into our top three, I wanted to shout out to Strange T.O.P. or Strange Top, as he's also known. Best career finish ever in the championship series. Previous best finishes for Strange Top were ninth in Stuttgart or basically top 12 in Stuttgart this season. ah He was also top 12 in Utrecht and Stockholm last season. So Strange T.O.P.
01:10:36
William Dunphey
really coming into his own and that's off the the heels of an incredible performance in Spain.
01:10:42
zzweilous
Yeah, like massive up upwards trajectory. And also just like the top four players all being from Spain is just like a testament to that country, it just really having such a strong position within the European scene.
01:10:58
zzweilous
And if you look at the championship leaderboards, out of the top five players in Europe, three of them are Spanish.
01:10:58
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:11:04
zzweilous
So it's honestly like how the video game feels about their Italians, where like, This is almost a region of its own with how many top players are just from that one country.
01:11:16
zzweilous
And for Pokemon Go, it appears to be the Spanish.
01:11:19
William Dunphey
It's easy. It's been a month since we recorded. And that was the exact analogy that I was going to make. I because because you said before, what what the wolf is to VG, the duck is to go. i was going to say what Italy is to VG.
01:11:31
William Dunphey
Spain is to go Right. All right. All right. that the The wavelengths here are crazy.
01:11:35
zzweilous
just yeah I see we're on the same page.
01:11:35
William Dunphey
um I wanted to mention one more fun fact about Chris fourth place overall. So he actually fell to fellow Spaniard Andres in round three, and he ended up winning seven rounds in a row before he was knocked out by Potomac. So that's an incredibly ah fortuitous run by him as well to actually push himself that far. Seven rounds in the loser side bracket is not easy. And then falling, of course, to the Spanish goat pro ah prodigy. uh, Pata man is also nothing, nothing just to shake your, your finger at. Um, so I guess we could jump into grand finals here. I want to, I want to preface this by saying that Paula pulled off something that basically no one else is able to do.
01:12:19
William Dunphey
And that's three Oh, sweet Pata man. Basically no one can do this. It's very, very rare, to beat him this handedly. And she's only the third trainer, in the grand finals this season to win via 3-0.
01:12:32
William Dunphey
The other two were L&D's Harjeff versus Spartan L17 in Monterey. Harjeff was able to win that 3-0. And then we had Inadequance versus Collin in Stuttgart where Inadequance won 3-0. Paula is the only, um is the third trainer to do it this entire season. And we've had a ton of bracket resets ah in the grand finals. I'm going to get my notes together here once I add in Orlando.
01:12:56
William Dunphey
But from what I can see, ZZ, It's insane. But in terms of games won this season, we actually have more games in the grand finals being won by the loser side trainers than we do from the winner's side trainers, which.
01:13:10
zzweilous
That is...
01:13:12
William Dunphey
It's and it's not by a small margin.
01:13:13
zzweilous
like ah guess I see how like there's room to win for the loser side more because, like okay, on on the winner side you get to take more risks because you're not immediately losing the tournament of the back of one negative series.
01:13:14
William Dunphey
It's like by 13 or 15 games. It's a lot.
01:13:23
William Dunphey
Sure.
01:13:31
zzweilous
um But yeah, I did not know that. That does feel like an outstanding stat and it also feels like something that makes for really good television. so You've truly been blessed this year when it comes to it just like the the excitement building towards the the crowning moments of an event.
01:13:40
William Dunphey
Exactly.
01:13:47
zzweilous
Not as much in Seville because Paul Asha was just too dominant.
01:13:48
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:13:51
zzweilous
I will say i once 3-0'd Pato Man in the bracket reset of EUIC 2025. Did I still lose the tournament?
01:13:59
William Dunphey
I remember.
01:14:01
zzweilous
Yes. Did it help me to go 3-0?
01:14:03
William Dunphey
I remember.
01:14:04
zzweilous
No. But I once upon a time... Ankh was not washed.
01:14:11
William Dunphey
Well, i know it's I know what you're getting at. If you were on the winner's side, it would have been it would have been over, right? but But yeah. No, I don't think you're watched easy. I think you're just coming into a resurgence.
01:14:22
William Dunphey
um Something I wanted to...
01:14:23
zzweilous
just gotta time your winds well, right? You just gotta to time your winds well.
01:14:28
William Dunphey
and I've said this before during the cast and it's not hyperbole. I do feel like the best trainers peak at the right times, right? You don't want peak early in the season and then fall off. And then by the time worlds comes around, you're just not in top form. But if you have kind of a mid season and then you're suddenly, everything's clicking for you leading up to worlds and you really are on fire. That's the best time to peak, right? If you're going into the biggest competition of the year. So I think that's your strategy and you're just not telling everyone because you're too modest.
01:14:56
William Dunphey
All right. um But we can go ahead and jump into the grand finals here. This is a quick one, as we've talked about a couple of times. um And I think it started in game one. And I have in my notes here.
01:15:07
William Dunphey
So Pala led Medicham and Pato led Fortress. Pato also had Shadow Pilot Swine in the back. So my note says Pato is ABA weak to Medicham. And then in all caps, yikes, this is a not- Great position to be in.
01:15:23
William Dunphey
um Pato absorbs that the dynamic punch, pivots over to Shadow Quagsire. Pato reveals his pilot swine. He only gets one powder of snow. Paula sends out her own pilot swine. And because of that shadow versus regular dynamic, she's able to outlast ah a Pato man in game number one.
01:15:38
William Dunphey
That was my read on it, at least.
01:15:40
zzweilous
Yeah, like honestly, ah once you once you were, Pata was caught ABA week to manage him, it was really, really tough to come back from this because If you look at the Steam Fortress, Pyloswine, Quagsire, that is a strategy that banks on drawing out the Feraligatr to then sweep with your third Pokemon.
01:15:58
zzweilous
But you can't really draw something out if your back Pokemon is also weak to the lead. So that was really just like very, very unfortunate for Pato to to be caught ABA weak like that.
01:16:04
William Dunphey
Correct. Hmm.
01:16:12
zzweilous
And yeah, I i was like a little bit surprised because When I just looked at the matchups on paper, I was expecting Pato to bring Togekiss every game.
01:16:23
zzweilous
Because if you look ah if you look against Paola's team, obviously she can, as she later will in game three actually, just invest two shields into Piloswine and farm through a Togekiss. That is an option.
01:16:37
zzweilous
But on the safe swap, what is really stopping the Togekiss from being a real problem for her? So I was like kind of surprised to not see even more Togekiss action from Pato.
01:16:50
zzweilous
But I guess like he may not have been super trusting towards whether he wins charge attack priority against the Feraligatr, which is also an open question.
01:16:51
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:17:02
zzweilous
like That's an IV-dependent matchup. um And yeah, Paula also... Like, honestly, even the meta gem isn't that bad into Togekiss, just because you do hang on to one Psy Shock and you will reach two ice punches before Togekiss will reach two charge attacks. So I guess it wouldn't have been, like, an easy matchup. It would always have been an uphill climb for Pato, but he did not rely on that Togekiss, especially in those early games, which surprised me a little bit.
01:17:33
William Dunphey
Yeah, surprises me too. i agree with your your sentiment there. The Togekiss energy just looks like it goes everywhere. i mean, I guess you do have... Some matchups that are awkward. The Medichamp matchup, you have to rely on Peck.
Piloswine Showdown and Paola's Victory
01:17:46
William Dunphey
Psy Shock is only neutral. um but But elsewhere, it looks like it's got a ton of play with the fast and charge attacks. At least some some way or somehow you're dealing super effective or at least neutral at the worst. You're never in a really awful position unless you're shields down versus a pilot swine. Then it it really gets bad. Game number two, we got Piloswine versus Shadow Piloswine lead. Pala insta-swaps into her Feraligator.
01:18:10
William Dunphey
Pato sends out his Fortress, but Pato gives up control of Switch Advantage. The Feraligator just overpowers it. The key moment for game number two, in my mind, was Pala calling the Air Cutter. And then she's able to double up on the Icicle Spears. And when she gets off both of those charge attacks near the end of the game, that's just curtains. There's nothing Pato can really do.
01:18:29
zzweilous
Yeah, that was a really nice health range for the Pyloswine to be in, to just so survive that, double up, and then just have too much energy. And yeah, I think there was also a moment in the mid-game where Pato didn't fight for switch advantage, but then still had to give up a shield because his Alolan Ninetales wasn't able to handle the Feraligatr in time, wasn't able to farm down, had to invest a shield to protect from a Hydro Cannon, and that essentially...
01:18:56
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:18:57
zzweilous
left him without the shield advantage that he did initially secure in the middle matchup, um allowing Paolo to just have the favorable alignment and then just also a fairly unchecked Pylosvine that was too much for Pato to really deal with.
01:19:15
zzweilous
And then game three, Pato is done getting Medicham'd, is what is my notes, because he leads the Corsola, he has the Togekiss in the back, And somehow he still doesn't get the Medichem where he wants it to.
01:19:29
zzweilous
That was really unfortunate.
01:19:29
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:19:33
zzweilous
um But like I think the Corsola lead is a fair gamble because Pato has been bringing um the Corviknight and the Fortress a fair amount, which would scare away Paula's Wigglytuff, which is really the only bad matchup for Corsola.
01:19:49
zzweilous
um But still, like, At the end of the day, the Medichem on Paola's side does find the fortress on Pato's side. um There's a Feraligata on the Corsola, which, like, it's not a hard counter.
01:19:59
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:20:03
zzweilous
The one-shield scenario is actually favorable for the Corsola, but it's still not where you want to be. The endgame is both players have saved their shields. Paola saved them for a Togekiss, Paola saved them for a Piloswine, and the Paola's Nose, they are just enough to finish this game for Paola.
01:20:22
zzweilous
and secure her third ever title.
01:20:25
William Dunphey
This was a really fun cast to listen to because in particular, Gaines, Gaines was like losing his mind. And he and he he tossed in a bunch of like, y he said who so you know, all these like weird ah vocalizations that he does.
01:20:32
zzweilous
ah
01:20:36
zzweilous
Yes.
01:20:40
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:20:40
zzweilous
yeah I remember, like, old school game streams. Like I don't watch Twitch as much anymore as I used to.
01:20:46
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:20:49
zzweilous
I'm sorry to all the creators. I still love you. I just don't have the time anymore. But like game streams used to be like, he used to be so into prime ape back in the day when that one didn't even have rage fist. He was just like, oh, it's just this prime ape go. What a good swine monkey boy.
01:21:06
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:21:06
zzweilous
And like Kylo swine, like it kind of has like the prime ape nose. It's like akin to prime ape. It's like less of a monkey, but it's like still, Wave is still half a swine.
01:21:12
William Dunphey
It does.
01:21:17
zzweilous
And I think there were like memories being brought up from like the goofy Pokemon that Gainz liked to celebrate on the stream back in the day. And yeah, when it was Piloswine into Piloswine, he just lost it.
01:21:25
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:21:28
zzweilous
and i was like, i I love the energy.
01:21:30
William Dunphey
but
01:21:32
zzweilous
Like, this is how excited you are supposed to get when there's two Piloswine on the screen. what What else can I tell you?
01:21:37
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah. yeah that That exact moment is what came to mind for me. He's like, and in game two, we have pilot slide into shadow pilot slide. Whoa. Just so like crazy, crazy vocalization.
01:21:46
zzweilous
uh
01:21:50
William Dunphey
And he's getting into it. I really appreciate that.
01:21:52
zzweilous
a
01:21:52
William Dunphey
I, the excitement is so genuine. So good.
01:21:56
zzweilous
as
01:21:57
William Dunphey
Well, shout out to all of our incredible ah casting team for that event. And shout out to Paula as well. Very emotional win for her. as we kind of alluded to, she made a couple of references during the stream to some real life things that have been impacting her and kind of adding up over time.
01:22:13
William Dunphey
So. This win had to feel extremely cathartic for her, especially a trainer who I think this whole season has seen a lot of ups and downs and mostly downs, right? Doesn't feel like she's performing at the level that she is capable of.
01:22:26
William Dunphey
So for her to come in and reestablish her title, take back the crown of the queen of PVP, that was really, really fun to watch. So shout out to Paula. What a performance.
01:22:34
zzweilous
Yeah. Yeah. Paula's been on an upward trajectory for a while already. i think like the u i see ninth place finish was already like a sign that this was trending into the right direction again. And following that up with a victory on home soil, it's just, I can only imagine how good that must feel, especially after her last um tournament victory was actually from the 2024 season in Stockholm. So
01:23:03
William Dunphey
No way.
01:23:03
zzweilous
That was almost two years ago. um yeah you You wouldn't think it was like that far back because Paula was still consistently um just racking up good results across um international as well as national competitions.
01:23:18
zzweilous
But like sometimes you just have to be persist persistent and you will have your moment again. So yeah, very, very happy for her Very happy that she represented euos so well with such a spicy team and Well, certainly, like Paula is somebody who is easy to root for because she also shows emotions on stage, also doesn't disqualified get disqualified for them, which is also something that is really important.
01:23:45
zzweilous
um But yeah, overall, i know this this is like a slightly derailing comment, but I am sincere when I when i say that i um I was very happy to see
01:23:54
William Dunphey
Pause.
01:23:59
zzweilous
her take the title and it also does set up the the next year um narrative of oh can parto break the runner-up curse because at this point it almost feels cursed for probably the world's best trainer to come second place three times in a row in a sub country
01:24:17
William Dunphey
Yeah, exactly.
Predictions Review and Future Outlook
01:24:18
William Dunphey
I don't think that's good enough for Pato. You know, his standards are extremely high given his competitive success, as they should be. Also, yeah, didn't mean to leave you hanging there, Z.
01:24:27
William Dunphey
I was just laughing so much that I didn't want to to have my chuckles pick up on the audio. But yes, very good.
01:24:33
zzweilous
i didn't even and I didn't even plan for it to come across this way, but like it's difficult to to verbalize that and then not think of the incident that we will talk about in our next episode.
01:24:34
William Dunphey
Very good point.
01:24:38
William Dunphey
Hey, you know.
01:24:44
William Dunphey
Oh, yeah.
01:24:48
zzweilous
um But yeah, this was Seville.
01:24:50
William Dunphey
I just,
01:24:51
zzweilous
Seville was a fun one. um the The world was still all right back in Seville.
01:24:55
William Dunphey
you know what? I, I mean, back in the day, right? The the nostalgia is kicking in already.
01:25:01
zzweilous
yeah
01:25:03
William Dunphey
I almost feel like every trainer in Prague needs to bring a pillow and a blanket in order to tuck their headset in after the game is over. So maybe maybe we'll see that. I really hope we get something. But um yeah, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves and let's let's keep the the the flowers where they belong.
01:25:12
zzweilous
yeah
01:25:15
zzweilous
again
01:25:18
William Dunphey
That's in the hands of Paula, Elam, and Harjef, our three winners from this episode's Recaps, also very poetic, that Elam won his third title and Paula won her third title.
01:25:30
William Dunphey
Is that right?
01:25:31
zzweilous
And Rajiv won his sixth title. So it's like multiples multiples of three is kind of the the theme.
01:25:34
William Dunphey
Okay, he doubled up.
01:25:39
zzweilous
And given that this was a triple header episode, um what else could be more fitting?
01:25:44
William Dunphey
Exactly. I really like the the theme we have here. um So we have here in our our notes, there's a bonus content. We've kind of alluded to this. So I guess we could roll through this maybe in in three or four minutes and then wrap up the episode. um But we made some predictions. And for our long-term listeners, who I know listen to every single episode and I know listen to the end because you're all the best, we made some predictions about which Pokemon were back, which ones were kind of back, and which ones were going to be massive flops. And shout out to ZZ for keeping the notes so succinct. Shadow Drapion, Medicham, Noctowl, Cresselia, and Galarian Stunfisk. So I guess we can go quickly just point by point here and kind of recap, but you summed it up perfectly in our discussion.
01:26:26
zzweilous
Yeah, so it's it's really interesting because all of these Pokemon did have some sort of placement. um but to a very like varying degrees, I would say.
01:26:38
zzweilous
Shadow Dropion is probably the most enigmatic of picks from that list because it came third and fourth in various Latam regionals today.
01:26:44
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:26:49
zzweilous
And we both thought it would be so back, but it's still kind of on the fringes of the meta, but still like relevant enough to take home multiple medals. So I would say it's like almost fully back, but not quite yet in that upper category that we've already like suspected it to be in.
01:27:08
zzweilous
But maybe the fact that Feraligatr appears to be on the rise could help it out, because with that Dark typing, it does resist Shadow Claws. And with the pacing to Aqua Tail, it may be able to get to its second charge attack faster after connecting with the Crunch.
01:27:23
zzweilous
So Drapion potentially on the rise, maybe. Certainly one worth exploring. um Then Noctol, as we alluded to, there's this one ninth place that it has going for it.
01:27:36
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:27:36
zzweilous
I think that is already like close to a miracle run for this Pokemon, but it was it did better than I expected it to do, which, like okay, I will take that loss.
01:27:47
zzweilous
um Same with Medicham, where I was cautiously optimistic, but I was i did make the claim that Chrysalia would perform better than Medicham. Medicham became a champion, Chrysalia only became a runner-up.
01:27:59
zzweilous
So I would say that if we had to rank between the two, Medicham would certainly be in that we are so back tier, whereas Kerselja is in the tentative middle tier still. um And then Galarian Stuntfisk, it did came up on Brandino's team in Houston, and it was fun to follow, but it does actually have the worst record out of the five.
01:28:14
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:28:20
zzweilous
So it probably is closer to Noctowl tier than to the other guys.
01:28:25
William Dunphey
I love that Noctow has a tier named after it. that that You know, it's just it's just hogwash if it's at that level.
01:28:27
zzweilous
yeah Oh, man.
01:28:31
William Dunphey
um I have a few anecdotes to to kind of toss on top of this. So in terms of the Drapion, you know what? If it's King Alexander's Drapion from Houston that gets every single Crunch debuff, I think that Pokemon would be back in spades. But i don't unfortunately, I don't think everyone has that. The Metachamp shoutout, I think that's a really, really cool pick to see it pick up. um It's also...
01:28:52
William Dunphey
I think overtaking Annihilate pretty significantly in terms of usage. So that's something we didn't really expect to see coming in, but it's just a perfect environment for it. Dynamic Punch is so fast. Ice Punch gives you such such good coverage versus a lot of the flyer the flying type Pokemon that are currently in the meta. um Yeah, in terms of Noctowl...
01:29:11
William Dunphey
Yeah, whatever. Galarian Stunfisk, it looks good on paper. It's got an elite defensive typing. It just feels like it's underwhelming and it can't quite keep up the pace. I think my argument in the previous episode was that so many Pokemon have gained coverage moves.
01:29:25
William Dunphey
ah You have Pokemon with Flamethrower. You have Pokemon like Fortress that got Sand Tomb. They don't have to reach all the way for the Earthquake. ah You've got Quagsire on every team. You've got Sand Attack Corviknight. This is not the Steel Wing or Slash Steel Fly or Skarmory that we saw in the past.
01:29:40
William Dunphey
This is a Sand Attack Corviknight with the potential to boost and a payback. So I just think there's too much ah coverage. And there's it's kind of like Galarian Stonefisk walks into the forest and doesn't really see any threats, but then they appear around every every tree and every branch.
01:29:55
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:29:55
William Dunphey
So it's kind of like... You can't really navigate your way through, but that was a really fun exercise. We'll see what Cresselia decides to do on terms of the upcoming events. But yeah, this was a really fun It's easy. It looks like we're at an hour and a half and we're successfully wrapping up Sevilla as well as Houston and Curitiba or Curitiba if I'm pronouncing that correctly. And yeah, what a fun, ah what a fun, lighthearted and joyous episode.
01:30:22
zzweilous
Yeah, like the the future of Pokemon Go PvP appears to be bright as of post-Severe. Let's see what the future holds. I bet Orlando will be just a fantastic time for everybody involved.
01:30:35
William Dunphey
Yeah, I'm sure it'll be full of shooting stars and there's not going to be a fire that burns everything down that we're trying to build, right? So anyway, ZZ, fun time with you per usual. um Like you alluded to, we're actually going to record another episode right after this one. So if you enjoyed the show, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow, subscribe, and ah stay tuned because we're going to post another one in quick succession now that we're back. Well, ZZ, I don't know if you have any closing thoughts. I think I'm ready to stretch my legs and then get back into it.
01:31:04
zzweilous
Yeah, I'll just, I'll just like, I don't know. I'll stand up. I'll walk a couple. But I'll be back in just five minutes for the next episode. So don't go anywhere.
01:31:13
William Dunphey
Well, I'll tell you what's easy. When you stand up and you celebrate finishing an episode, you better be very, very gentle with those headphones. All right. All right. See you soon.
01:31:25
zzweilous
I cannot hear you anymore. I cannot hear you anymore. But i' I'm sure everything's all right.