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EP. 37 | Frankfurt, Monterrey, & Pittsburgh 2026 Recaps
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Hello, everyone! This is Episode 37 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.
We have a colossal episode for you this week, spanning 3 Regional championships in 3 different regions. We begin the show with our 2026 season-opener in Frankfurt, Germany, where Inadequance and his Shadow Giratina dominated the competition. Then, we head to LATAM, where LNDsRargef topples every opponent, including The Pride of Argentina, Marto Galde. Finally, we end with the Pittsburgh regional championships, where NA saw its first out-of-region champion in LNDsTSteinar. Our host Zzweilous gives us a 1st-hand perspective of the Pittsburgh finals, as he was the runner-up! Speedy and Zz weigh in on these topics and more. The 2026 season has already given us some of the most memorable moments in Championship Series history, and we are just getting started...
So, if you're ready... go ahead and lock In, and good luck, have fun!
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Transcript
LATAM Champion Search - Pokémon GO
00:00:02
zzweilous
The Tales of Transformation season has kicked off, but some things never change. you're looking for the first LATAM champion of the new season, look no further than to L&D as Rajev. If you see inadequants center a tournament with this trusty Giratina, be very afraid.
00:00:18
zzweilous
And if I make a grand finals, well, we'll get into that.
Introduction to Show 6 Podcast
00:00:22
zzweilous
Another thing that remains unchanged, you're still listening to the Show 6 podcast, where Speedy's Chief 2 and Zizwilis, break down the official championship series for Pokémon GO.
00:00:31
zzweilous
So once again, it's time to log in. Good luck and have fun.
Pittsburgh Meeting & Pexpert Segment
00:01:00
zzweilous
Welcome in Welcome, Speedy. I'm glad you're here again. We just met in Pittsburgh the other day. um We did have some time to hang out during a segment, which was called the Pexpert segment.
00:01:13
zzweilous
um So not only some PvP action, but also a little mini game that we played during the show or ahead of the show. The clip was played during the show. um And yeah, we had to pick our or pick up a cotton ball with our nose, move it from a to B,
00:01:30
zzweilous
And then we had to answer questions on the new Peck receivers, like the buffed Peck Pokémon in the Tales of Transformation season. And I will have to say, i did learn something that weekend, and it was the Zatu moveset, because I did not know that previously.
00:01:48
William Dunphey
It was hilarious because we're supposed to be the experts. And then asked you about Zatu and you list off a couple of the charge attacks. And I wanted three charge attacks because it's too easy to just say two.
00:01:59
William Dunphey
So I asked for three and then you suggested one. I said no. And then I actually offered the wrong answer as the as the correct moveset, which turned out to be totally false.
00:02:05
zzweilous
yeah yes
00:02:09
William Dunphey
um if you're If you're watching this and you watch the stream, we totally did it for content. We want to chat to to rage and it was just rage bait. All right. for all of our
Humorous Zatu Moveset Discussion
00:02:18
William Dunphey
trainers.
00:02:18
zzweilous
this is this is the double legacy show six podcast zatu that runs the ah nightshade sky attack moveset none of which it actually learns in game um it learns ominous wind but
00:02:26
William Dunphey
yeah
00:02:30
William Dunphey
I will say, so it was you, Mish, and Anna that were in the skit. I will say, Anna is like an encyclopedia. She's incredible because we finished the skit and she asked you two, which Pokemon did Will ask you about?
00:02:43
William Dunphey
And you both told her. And she knew all the movesets. She knew exactly what Sato learned. She knew exactly what Togekiss learned. ah Named all of the different charge stacks. I was like, my goodness. I thought, ah again, I thought we were the experts, but Anna is the true expert here.
00:02:55
zzweilous
Yeah, Anna's incredible.
00:02:56
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:02:57
zzweilous
I'm glad she had such a successful return to the competitive circuit as well.
00:03:01
William Dunphey
Me too. Me too. She was she was incredible.
Tournament Previews: Frankfurt, Monterey, Pittsburgh
00:03:03
William Dunphey
She was stunning. And we have a lot to cover in this in this podcast. So we're going to talk about Frankfurt, Monterey, and also Pittsburgh. So we kind of gave you some some little sneak peeks of Pittsburgh, but it's going to be a little while before we come back to it. One last thing I'll say is that, ZZ, I finally got the chance to interview you in Pittsburgh.
00:03:22
William Dunphey
ah That was so much fun as well. I felt like, ah yeah, it was very poetic. And we got some awesome screen grabs that were sent to me by friend. So thank you again for that. That was great. um ZZ, we're going to kick off things with Frankfurt.
00:03:35
William Dunphey
And there's... You and I went back and forth. We weren't sure if we should make this two episodes or one. We're going to do just one colossal episode and try to get everything we possibly can into it.
00:03:43
zzweilous
yeah
00:03:45
William Dunphey
But there's so much to talk about. And I think that we would be remiss not to just open up talking about the meta and then going into the actual players. So going to Frankfurt, this was a tournament that you competed in as well.
Strategy in Frankfurt Tournament
00:03:58
William Dunphey
Did you feel as panicked and as uncertain as some of the other trainers? Because, I mean, heck, it's the first meta of the season. There's so many question marks.
00:04:07
zzweilous
So I was really annoyed with myself about Frankfurt actually and the reason for that was that I tried a little bit of a different approach. So because it was the very first tournament of the season I decided that I just wanted to bring Pokemon that felt really safe and reliable so I could get points on the board.
00:04:24
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:04:25
zzweilous
Like I trusted in my play over the summer I was like in a little bit of a slump. I couldn't really get anything to work in the go Battle League. So like Some self doubt always creeps in, but with the start of the new season, I had really, really good results, not necessarily in practice, but at least in JBL and I felt more confident.
00:04:45
zzweilous
So my idea was, okay, you just bring what's safe and what supposedly works. um But yeah, what I ended up doing was that i brought the exact type of meta that the people had the meta read ready for. So...
00:05:02
zzweilous
While I did manage to make day two, I didn't technically top card because I did fizzle out at Tide 12th 13th. And because it was a 107 person tournament, um the official top card, like once you exit your group, is only eight people. it was like not a catastrophe, but a slight disappointment. And I think that is due to my a very uncharacteristic lack of risk taking that I engaged in for that tournament.
00:05:32
zzweilous
um And I think other trainers took a lot more risks and as it tends to be the case in Europe, that gets rewarded.
00:05:39
William Dunphey
Yeah, if if a typical ZZ Wildest team is a spicy meatball, this was like a scoop of vanilla ice cream in my mind. We had ZZ's team with the Shadow, Kenta, Marowak, Azumarill, Chargebug, which is probably the most ah spice on the team. Galerian Maltrace, Shadow, Scizor, and Galerian Corsula. So I agree with you. I mean, this has all the same facets that we saw at the end of the season last season, and then maybe some you know one slight corebreaker in the Chargebug.
00:06:07
William Dunphey
um There are so many interesting overall meta trends for this tournament as well that that appeared here but then kind of faded as we got closer to ah to Pittsburgh. And I think ah a lot of this is, you know, trainers have had a week to review the the results, have had time to think about things.
00:06:24
William Dunphey
But yeah. Yeah, I was surprised a bit at the number of fairy types in the team compositions here. Inadequance with Wigglytuff as well as Potoman. Then you had Alfie finishing second with Togekiss.
00:06:36
William Dunphey
ah We had a fair number of Azumarill. And then KingOWT fifth overall with Tinkaton. ah So we had basically every fairy present except Dedenne skipped class, which I'm sure everyone in Frankfurt was happy about.
00:06:49
zzweilous
Yeah, very much so. And I think like most, if not all of these fairies do have merit. um Obviously like Togekiss a little bit of, ah like it felt like almost an outlier because was very much hyped up initially after we found out that Aura Sphere is only 40 energy now, which is just a fantastic attack that Togekiss gets access to.
00:07:14
zzweilous
Then it was briefly ranked within the PB Poke top 10 even. And a lot of people wanted to practice, lost with it in practice, and then dropped it.
00:07:19
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:24
zzweilous
Alfie stuck with it and made it work, ah piloted it all the way to the grand finals.
00:07:26
William Dunphey
yeah
00:07:29
zzweilous
um Then there's a bunch of Tinkerton, which I think... Like Tinkerton, I personally consider a little bit of a fraud, but it's a fraud that I can understand.
00:07:40
zzweilous
um i think it's fraudulent because Bulldoze is just a very, very weak move
00:07:44
William Dunphey
yeah
00:07:44
zzweilous
um So like its coverage is kind of underwhelming, but because of that steel subtyping, it just does some things defensively that no other fairy type really does in that way.
00:07:55
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:07:55
zzweilous
um But the standard performer on that front for me was actually the Wigglytuff, which ended up winning the event, placed third, it came in fifth. um Wigglytuff really was a standard performer.
00:08:08
zzweilous
And I must say, I think I mentioned it on our preview episode ah where we discussed the meta options. that I think Wigglytuff is no longer just an RPS GBL, you pair it with your Vastodon Pokemon, but actually a flexible thread that can play really, really well into the meta.
00:08:25
zzweilous
And because it has that normal subtyping, it is an excellent answer to the Galarian Corsula, that even Upper Shield cannot beat Wigglytuff.
00:08:32
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:08:34
zzweilous
So in that role, it really countered one of the standout Pokemon that we have in the meta really, really really well. And yeah, it's it's taking the initial gold medal. It was no surprise um if you think about all the Galarian cost that ever brought.
00:08:50
William Dunphey
really I really love that you close with that point because that's exactly what I think. When you see a Pokemon like Wigglytuff that's normal and fairy, not only does it have great offensive targets when you're expecting at least one Dark Type on every single team, but defensively, finding a way to slow down the Galarian Corsula or the Dusclops I think is is absolutely key.
00:09:08
William Dunphey
I was kind of comparing this meta in my mind to Worlds because... A lot of trainers are coming into the season saying, oh, well, in the Candle Cult, you know, we're seeing a lot of unique species. We're seeing a lot of of different Pokemon win.
00:09:20
William Dunphey
But it feels like the big three, the Galarian Corsula, the Shadow Kanto Marowak, and the Cradilly, like we talked about in our season preview episode, were still just as strong as ever. And not a lot of things looked like they were changing that much, besides the fact that Glyzopod was on the downturn.
00:09:34
William Dunphey
um One Pokemon that we didn't really talk about, and I haven't prepped any notes on this, so I'm i'm curious to hear what you think. One Pokemon that ah was so strong at Worlds, became a World Champion, was on both Potaman Beelzeboy's team, was Lapras.
00:09:49
William Dunphey
And yeah we mentioned Weekly Tough, we mentioned a couple of the fairy types, but why in the heck did Lapras absolutely fall off? I mean, I only see it one time in this graphic on ah RGR's team ah within the top 16, but that Pokemon was like ubiquitous at the end of last season. Is there like a strong explanation for that?
00:10:07
zzweilous
I wonder whether that has to do with Crudeli going from a Pokemon that is common to a Pokemon that is essentially mandatory. mandatory
00:10:16
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:16
zzweilous
um I wonder whether it's an overcorrection to some of the new things that have become popular in the very first week. So in GPL we saw like the aforementioned Togekiss that now has fighting coverage. We saw Empoleon which was essentially MIA in Frankfurt but it's just a thing that people were running a lot.
00:10:36
William Dunphey
Fraud. Fraud.
00:10:39
zzweilous
Maybe, potentially. um Then like a lot of Shadow Scizor, we had Dark types that you mentioned already with a lot of Galarian Moltres running around where you have double resisted sidewaves into it.
00:10:51
zzweilous
It just felt as if the Pokemon that um most players were interested interested in in that moment were pretty hostile to Lapras and also the Switch that already happened during the World Championships where people dropped the previously popular Dust Globs, which is a fantastic matchup for Lapras, especially if you have that Psywave breakpoint, in favor of the Galarian Corsula, which is and neutral enough matchup, but one where you don't do as much Psywave damage and where you take super effective from power gems.
00:11:15
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:11:26
zzweilous
um Yeah, all of that makes Lapras little less free. I think it's still actually viable and maybe a little underexplored, um But yeah, in Frankfurt, at least, we only saw RGR, who is a Swedish trainer, who I think had their breakout um last year at any IC, of all places, and also won a pretty high-profile practice tournament in the lead-up to Frankfurt.
00:11:45
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:11:50
zzweilous
And yeah, they finished ninth overall with the singular Lapras in day two in Frankfurt.
00:11:57
William Dunphey
So my opinion is is similar, but I feel like there's an undercurrent, no pun intended. There's an undercurrent of another reason why Lapras has kind of fallen out of favor. And I think it's due to the rise of electric types, ah because previously you had a lot of rock and grass type coverage. You had the Cradilly with, of course, both.
00:12:17
William Dunphey
You had the Power Gem on something like the Glaring Corsola. ah But now you have an additional threat to Lapras and opposing water types being the Charjabug, the Lantern, Thunderfiend Steelix as well. Unova Stunfisk has been rising. And I know some of those matchups are competitive for Lapras, but up energy, it's pretty disastrous for the Pokemon, no matter which way you cut it. so ah it Again, it almost feels like when you look at an overall meta, you look for targets, and maybe advantageous Pokemon that has a lot of targets is something like Wigglytuff, where you know what you're going to see. You're going to see Corsula, you're going to see a Dark-type, you might even see a Fighter, so Wigglytuff has targets.
00:12:55
William Dunphey
It feels like Lapras just has too many threats or too many obstacles in the current meta. And I do agree with your early point that you made that it might be an overcorrection of sorts because water has always been an incredibly strong ah facet of competitive Pokemon Go. but But as you look at the overall teams, it feels like the water ground role has kind of consolidated itself squarely into the Gastrodon, which I'm sure we'll spend a lot of time talking about.
00:13:20
William Dunphey
um I wanted to mention a couple of Spice picks because EU always brings the spice. I absolutely adore that about your region, and I am low-key jealous at times. Inadequance with Giratina, Altered, Shadow Form, of course.
00:13:32
William Dunphey
Alfie in second place with the Shadow Charizard. As you scroll down the list, you see some pretty interesting picks, like Lantern on Emi Weedle's team. We were talking about picks for this meta, and you said Lantern was the least cope of my picks, and Emi Weedle, I appreciate you, champ, for proving me right.
00:13:48
William Dunphey
RGR with Pangaro.
00:13:48
zzweilous
I said that and then I built WIC Lantern and lost to Weedle on the stream. So that was very smart of me.
00:13:54
William Dunphey
oh god Oh, God.
00:13:56
zzweilous
ah
00:13:56
William Dunphey
You know, sometimes, yeah, it's it's easier to give advice and to take it. I definitely experienced that in my own life. Pangoro on RGR's team. Shadow Torterra on 19 Lawrence.
00:14:08
William Dunphey
We also had Shadow Dragonair on Stone Collection, which I love to see. He's always been a dragon master. Bats with Meowskarata, which I don't think ah will be topped anytime soon. And I don't know. Other than that, Dunsparce on Alfie's team as well. Maybe Alfie had a ah an inkling of an idea that a normal type event was coming. Who knows?
00:14:27
William Dunphey
Who knows?
00:14:28
zzweilous
Oh yeah, now now we can actually catch, like we can catch Dunsparz and then e evolve it to the Dunsparz, which is Dunsparz, but longer. So that is very exciting. I think it learns just about the exact same moves.
00:14:41
zzweilous
and It has a little less, like the stat product is a little lower. It's still on the bulkier side, but it's not as tanky as the regular Dunsparz. So I don't know.
00:14:50
William Dunphey
the
00:14:50
zzweilous
it It does power up to the Ultra League level. So you could if you always wanted to Dunsparz in Ultra League, now you can do
00:14:58
William Dunphey
I think the difference in rankings is Dunsparce is ranked 56 overall on PvPoke, and the Dunsparce ranked 256. So quite a gap, almost a chasm ah between those those two Pokemon.
00:15:10
William Dunphey
um In terms of the stream for Frankfurt, I mean, there's always a lot of excitement. It was the same weekend as the Monterey tournament, but we did not get a Monterey stream. So...
00:15:21
William Dunphey
All eyes were on Frankfurt. I just wanted to compliment the casting pairs that were chosen for the event. They were so, so good. I'm a huge fan of Lou, always been a fan of Lou. And I think that she is the most complete host ah that we have probably in the entire Pokemon casting team across all games.
00:15:40
William Dunphey
And she also is just showing her flexibility and adaptability, being able to translate all of her talents over to Go. ah thought I thought that's always been very impressive. ah We had Farid and we also had Leo.
00:15:54
William Dunphey
Incredible pair. They definitely brought the hype. ah But then we had a newcomer to the to the tournament circuit. And I just thought maybe you could weigh in on this person. I i don't know if your friends, foes, are even closer than that.
00:16:04
zzweilous
Yeah, I have to say I am probably the number one Jonkers fan. ah Not only is he a very famous YouTuber, he's also my brother and one of my early inspirations for getting into PvP and getting good at PvP because he was actually the one who ah kind of got me into the game a little more back in the day because I had no idea that um something competitive for Pokemon Go was coming.
00:16:29
zzweilous
I was just like casually catching, like occasionally opening my game,
00:16:30
William Dunphey
Yeah?
00:16:33
zzweilous
but yeah, like I was always somebody who had like this competitive streak and that really turned me from a casual into a tryhard. So yeah, I have to credit a lot of what happened to me over the last couple of years to my to my little brother. And i was super proud of him for his very first cast. I think he did a fantastic job.
00:16:56
zzweilous
um I know like he's been like he's been talking in English for his videos a lot, but it's something different if you
00:17:02
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:17:04
zzweilous
do it in your second language, off the cuff, in a live situation. And he was so quick on his feet, like mentally with ah his game knowledge. And I think he just really did a fantastic job.
00:17:15
zzweilous
And yeah, all the feedback that I have heard on that tournament, on that cast has also been really, really positive. So i really hope he gets invited again. Obviously, I'm biased, but do believe he deserves more chances, chances behind the casting desk.
00:17:30
William Dunphey
I'll tell you the kryptonite for content creators switching over to commentating as ah as a pair, as a duo, is um the risk of monologuing, of just going on for too long. Because you're used to doing that with all the content that you create.
00:17:44
William Dunphey
No one else is failing the air. So you really have to kind of keep on speaking. And i didn't I didn't pick up on Jonkas doing that a single time. He was very, very good. He was willing to give it over to his co-caster. And I thought it was so clever. I was just as actually just messaging Amanda about this.
00:17:58
William Dunphey
I felt it was so clever to pair Lou, you know the most ah well-equipped host and and professional over in EU, with someone who has just this absolute depth of knowledge of about the game and has commentated everything.
00:18:13
William Dunphey
At this point, he's probably got over 1000 videos on this channel, right? I mean, just just so, so many rounds of commentary.
00:18:17
zzweilous
Yes, very, very much so.
00:18:21
William Dunphey
I thought that was so clever to put them together. And um
00:18:24
zzweilous
And like if you didn't know it, you would not have known that it was his very first cast, I think. So yeah, they really did a great job of immediately getting that little bit of chemistry that you need if you're casting in a duo.
00:18:29
William Dunphey
exactly.
00:18:37
zzweilous
Yeah, the good job to everyone involved because I can only assume it's not as easy as they made it look.
00:18:46
William Dunphey
Exactly. Shout out to Fareed for bringing the hype, definitely channeling his inner butters for that cast. I definitely noticed a lot of excitement from him. And then Leo, man, Leo cracks me up. Leo had so many different quotes. One, one that really, i was, I was actually driving in today and it, I was listening to the cast and it made me laugh.
00:19:05
William Dunphey
He said, don't be silly. Lead Cray Dilly. was like, Oh my God, that is so, so accurate. Yeah.
00:19:12
zzweilous
He's a jokester.
00:19:13
William Dunphey
That is so accurate. um But yeah, ZZ, outside of the cast and production, I think everything is great. um The Frankfurt stream really showed us that things were firing on all cylinders. Are there any runs that you want to get into in the group stage of the bracket before we get into Top Cut? Because I really feel like this this tournament felt very akin to Pittsburgh in the sense that you had so many...
00:19:37
William Dunphey
former regional champs, ah former IC champions, world champions competing. And it just felt like this was a literal knife fight all the way through ah this this entire bracket. I mean, you have so many names from EU like Howie, Cookshack.
00:19:53
William Dunphey
You have Alejandro DL, Inadequance, RGR, Pato Man. And that's all in group A. All the names I just said are in one single group.
00:20:01
zzweilous
Yeah, yeah
00:20:04
William Dunphey
Like, come on, be real.
00:20:07
zzweilous
yeah. There's honestly this soundsly so many, like, I think what really was um being showcased in Frankfurt as well is the depth of quality we have in Europe.
00:20:19
zzweilous
Because like, you' you've mentioned all those really well-established names.
00:20:20
William Dunphey
Agreed. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:20:24
zzweilous
um But if you like, for example, take a look at Group D, You also have people like, like you had the group finals between Ripley, who was the 21st seed and KingLWT, who was the 10th seed.
00:20:40
zzweilous
And we know that both of those players are really, really good. Like Ripley is consistently strong in GBL, isn't really, there's no of the podcast, by the way, shout out to Ripley here. i had a really nice conversation in Frankfurt with him.
00:20:54
zzweilous
um And he hasn't been as committed to play Pokemon so far. And King OWT very strong showing in, I believe it was Birmingham last year, but also nobody who is known for flying out to too many regionals. So the 21st seed versus the 10th seed of the group in group finals.
00:21:13
zzweilous
And you were still not really surprised because those and names already had proven that they belong up there with the best.
00:21:13
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:21:15
William Dunphey
yeah
00:21:20
zzweilous
um But yeah, like they had to find fight through a real gauntlet like Ripley, Starting off against the Gengar Life, consistent page one leaderboarder, follow the Gengar Life on Twitch.tv.
00:21:33
zzweilous
um Then 2-1 against against DaneWWW, also somebody who has won a medal before. Then a 2-1 against Bats with the... That's like a batshit crazy pun in there are with this Miosga Rada team.
00:21:51
William Dunphey
I love it.
00:21:51
zzweilous
um
00:21:52
William Dunphey
Hmm.
00:21:53
zzweilous
to then make it to group group finals and go down one to KingOWT, who like in his own right beat players like MW22, who I think maybe a Polish battler who has been doing fine in the past.
00:22:10
zzweilous
Patali Snacks, who I think maybe made top cut in, was it Bologna last season? It was like towards the end of last season. And then Snorrek, who has been in multiple top cuts before to then reach the group finals and actually beat Rikali 2-1. So like you only have high profile opponents and then you have the 21st against the 10th seed in the group finals.
00:22:32
zzweilous
And I feel like that's just that's just what Europe is. Like there's like even your first round is never easy.
00:22:35
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:22:38
William Dunphey
Exactly, exactly. i've I've been kind of eyeballing Group C as well. This is a group where you had Nighttime Clasher as well as Scafo, the Mega Junko, Stone Collection. ah You had Eu Uden as well as Boom.
00:22:51
William Dunphey
ah Boom had a really impressive run but was defeated by one of the old guard in Stone Collection in the semifinals only to fall down to that Lurgeous side bracket and defeat Nighttime Clasher, defeat Withered, and to win the rematch versus Stone Collection.
00:23:05
William Dunphey
So, I mean, it's so amazing too, because you look at that group and you see all those really high profile names, and then you look at who actually won the group and it was Chris, ah Chris LB7 versus Stone Collection, which is a trainer that, you know, we haven't heard too much about and it's not that familiar.
00:23:14
zzweilous
yeah
00:23:20
William Dunphey
yeah. Yeah, this was absolutely an insane bracket. Looking at this, I was like, my gosh, anyone who entered this tournament had to be sweating. But because there was only 107 players there was no top 16, the groups are also bit bigger.
00:23:33
William Dunphey
So you might have those trainers split up into smaller groups if the tournament was larger.
00:23:35
zzweilous
Yeah.
00:23:38
William Dunphey
um Going into day number two.
00:23:40
zzweilous
Okay. Well, well, well, well, we're on this topic. This is just like something that I want to want to mention.
00:23:42
William Dunphey
yes
00:23:46
zzweilous
You trainers get your casual friends and make them sign up to these events because like, even though this like feels so stacked, I, I feel as if a lot of that is because only the top trainers even register.
00:24:02
zzweilous
Whereas in Pittsburgh, you still had a ton of really high caliber players, but there were a lot of people who were just like casually going with friends, having fun and trying their best.
00:24:07
William Dunphey
Thank you.
00:24:13
zzweilous
And all of a sudden the tournament is like 80 people bigger. And we, we want the numbers to rise in Europe, just like, so we can like point towards that number and see like, Oh, Pokemon goes growing. Oh, Pokemon go should remain ah part of the championship championship championship series. Very difficult word.
00:24:33
zzweilous
Um, And yeah, I feel like people should dare to compete a little more or dare to go to these events, even if it's an intimidating field, because I don't know, I thought the attitude and when i entered Pittsburgh was a lot of people were just playing for the fun of it.
00:24:50
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:24:54
zzweilous
And I think that's lovely. I think we need that undercurrent of just like casual getting into the scene without fear of strong opponents.
00:24:56
William Dunphey
yeah
00:25:04
zzweilous
um to really have sustainable growth within the scene because if you are new right now like i guess this is going to be easier once we get swiss which was centered at um but like you need to start somewhere right and i feel as if like even though we have these this big depth like this pool of top trainers um i want to see more like unknown names rather than like
00:25:22
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:25:32
zzweilous
all the names being kind of known, but just a lot of them.
00:25:36
William Dunphey
I have a confession. So when When Pokemon Go first entered the championship series, I looked at the numbers for TCG, and they've only gone up since 2022.
00:25:49
William Dunphey
But I used to kind of laugh at the TCG players who would go and compete when you 2,000 or 3,000 more players. and i used to think like how many of them realistically think they can beat Azul? Or how many of them realistically think they can take down toward Recklev in the finals?
00:26:07
William Dunphey
Like who who really thinks that they can actually win this whole thing? And this is just such an interesting psychological ah moment that we were kind of in because Pokemon Go for the first two seasons was win it all or or just falter.
00:26:21
zzweilous
Yeah.
00:26:22
William Dunphey
If you won an event or play second, you got your world's qualification and that was it. ah But then they introduced championship points. And of course, we're still, I think, emotionally and mentally like adapting to the fact that you can grind these events that you don't have to win all the time in order to to qualify for Worlds.
00:26:39
William Dunphey
And again, I used to laugh at these at these TCG players. are like, my God, they're so delusional. like There's 3,000 people here and they really think that they are like the chosen one. like What kind of weird ego does it take to walk into the room and think that unless you're someone like Tord Reklev?
00:26:54
William Dunphey
But I've kind of come around on that. i've I've come around on the opinion that you don't have to just win. You play because you love to compete. And I think that is a a driving force that Pokemon Go as a community is still kind of learning and adapting and opening their minds up to.
00:27:05
zzweilous
Exactly.
00:27:14
William Dunphey
And um ah to your point exactly, having people that are just there to play for the love of the game, I think is is important. And we need to embrace that. Pokemon community members have a reputation for um complaining, for you know always pointing out things that are wrong.
00:27:31
William Dunphey
And I know the double elimination bracket is not perfect. And I'm never going to sit here and say from my privileged point where I you know actually get flown in to cast the events, oh, people should spend their money to come here and go O2 just so we can have a bigger bracket. Because that sounds super selfish. And it is selfish to think that way.
00:27:49
William Dunphey
But... Honestly, if we had more people actually competing because they enjoyed the game, because they wanted to spend time with friends, and it wasn't too much of a hindrance on their finances or their their day-to-day lives, I think it'd be great. It'd be great for the entire community. So I hope that um we continue to grow.
00:28:06
William Dunphey
Because this is something I wanted to touch on with Monterey, and we will ah we will get there. But I noticed only 107 trainers in Frankfurt. And when I went in 2022 for EUIC,
00:28:14
zzweilous
Yeah.
00:28:16
William Dunphey
That is a massive airport. That is a gigantic airport.
00:28:19
zzweilous
Yes.
00:28:21
William Dunphey
And it felt like an easy place to fly into. So what happened? Mm-hmm.
00:28:25
zzweilous
It's so accessible. It's much more accessible than Dortmund used to be. And it's like slightly bigger than Dortmund, but not to the degree that I would have expected or at least hoped for. it And one thing, like little bit of perspective that I also want to give is that like,
00:28:40
zzweilous
growing the bracket also grows the price pool in a way, like not really in terms of the very top of it, but if we had, yeah, exactly.
00:28:51
William Dunphey
The kickers.
00:28:53
zzweilous
Like if we hit the 129 people kicker, um more people would get championship points and more people would get um TCG packs for their performance. So you're only growing the pie and like, obviously it's,
00:29:07
zzweilous
um difficult to just say that, oh, you person that currently doesn't compete, start competing because the pie needs to grow. But I just feel as if there's so much in it for so many people, if we had the dynamic that other regions may already have in Europe.
00:29:26
William Dunphey
I agree. I agree with you. um I can't find the information about the kickers offhand as easily as I would have liked. But um we should talk about that as well, because that was a big update for this season. The kickers were kind of restructured ah based on on performance. Yeah.
00:29:41
William Dunphey
yeah this is something that came up internally when it comes to Pittsburgh as well, because a lot of us commentators will just – will quote the number on Chalanch because that's that's the number that we know. But if you actually look through the bracket and you look at no-shows, people that obviously just didn't even arrive to compete, that kind of counts against the overall attendance because obviously they're not physically there.
00:30:01
William Dunphey
So while we might see 181 on Challange, it might not always be the actual number. And if we see 107 on Frankfurt's Challange, we know that at least a few people probably had an interrupted flight, couldn't make it in for whatever reason, overslept, whatever it might be. So...
00:30:17
William Dunphey
Yeah, that's an interesting thing. And um I know I had a conversation briefly with Necra backstage in Pittsburgh, and she looked across the table and said, if Go was Swiss, I would compete because I don't want to go there and have O2 and then just have my entire weekend gone.
00:30:35
William Dunphey
I would rather, if if I got to play seven rounds of gameplay on day one, I would consider it a good investment because it's good practice. It's good for me as ah as a trainer, for experience, et cetera, et cetera. So Yeah, that's my personal opinion. um I agree with you, though. This Frankfurt bracket was very, very heavily influenced by a lot of mainstays that we've seen throughout the competitive circuit.
00:30:58
William Dunphey
um And like you said in the intro, some things never change. So maybe we should slide over and take a look at the day two bracket. ah ZZ, I recognize that you also were able to...
00:31:09
William Dunphey
to make kind of a pseudo day two. They saved some matches from day one and had them in day two just for the the content, I believe.
00:31:17
zzweilous
It's like a real day two, but a fake top cut in a way. um I'm just counting day twos. So like in terms of day twos, I still have made every single day two in the 2025 calendar year when I entered a tournament.
00:31:23
William Dunphey
Okay.
00:31:32
zzweilous
So I am proud of that, but it is the second top cut that I missed. So that's that.
00:31:36
William Dunphey
Okay. That's fair. That's fair. um If I'm not mistaken, I think that Jonkis actually commentated one of your matches, which I thought was really cool because then it meant that you had one brother competing and one brother commentating, which I don't know if that's been done.
00:31:46
zzweilous
Okay.
00:31:51
William Dunphey
I feel like the only ah other other opportunity for that would have been if Nighttime Clasher commentated Sustenance Eater, which I have not seen that happen. So yeah, that's...
00:31:59
zzweilous
Yeah, I don't that has happened yet.
00:32:02
William Dunphey
It was the semifinals of Group B versus Emmy Weedle, who eventually, as you alluded to, took you down with Lantern. ah you had a couple of ah You had one more win against IBI, but then were knocked out by 19 Lawrence 92. So something I want to come back to that I will ask you about later is how your experience in Frankfurt helped prep you for Pittsburgh.
00:32:23
William Dunphey
But let's go ahead and jump into the day two meta.
00:32:23
zzweilous
Mm-hmm.
00:32:26
William Dunphey
So... Is there anything that you want to point out about our top eight trainers? I mean, you had Amy Weedle with Lantern, Boom with Thunderfang, Steelix, and Glyzopod, which I thought was a dead Pokemon, but but he revived it.
00:32:39
William Dunphey
ah You had some Wigglytuffs, some Togekiss. What do you think?
00:32:44
zzweilous
um So I think like a couple cores stand out to me and like a couple archetypes that then translated to practice tournaments, maybe to to future events, maybe are already derived from past events.
00:32:59
zzweilous
um For example, if you look at the day two in Frankfurt, you have stone collection, you have King OWT and you do have Alfie all with a team that features a Fire Flying type, a Normal type, and a Ferry type.
00:33:18
zzweilous
um Like it's more typical of that archetype of team to feature Furret and Tinkerton.
00:33:19
William Dunphey
o
00:33:26
zzweilous
Alfie did switch it up a little bit with the Dance Bar Centogekiss, so a bit more spicy and inventive. But I think that is just like a combination, like a triple core of Pokemon that we've seen a couple times already.
00:33:41
zzweilous
And I think it probably started with Philbeck and Philbeck's victory in Bologna last season, where he managed to go undefeated.
00:33:49
William Dunphey
Oh.
00:33:51
zzweilous
And the start of the show surely it was um that Shadow Malamar that he had on his team. But he also had that combination of, think was a Talonflame, a Furret, and a Tinkerton. So those three Pokemon, like whether it's Talonflame or Shadow Zard, whether you like Fast Move or Charge Attack Damage more, it's essentially dealer's choice.
00:34:11
zzweilous
um But yeah, I think um but choosing your go type your ghost type counter as a normal type makes a lot of sense with the fire flying um star of your team. Because if you were choosing a dark type as your answer to ghost types, you would leave yourself vulnerable to a zoom role.
00:34:33
zzweilous
um Because the water typing would counter the fire flying, whereas the fairy typing would counter the dark. So if you have a Fire Flying, you typically want to go with the Normal for that role.
00:34:45
zzweilous
um
00:34:47
zzweilous
And then also the Fairy Typing, which in turn helps to mainly keep the Furret safe.
00:34:47
William Dunphey
Such a good point.
00:34:47
William Dunphey
Hmm.
00:34:57
zzweilous
um like like The Dance Bar's Togekiss dynamic is a little different. or you have like You want to protect that from Mud Slappers more, whereas you want to um protect your for it from um opposing sucker punches like or like like moltres first and foremost uh is where you want to protect it from um because your sucker punches are resisted so you want to use a fairy type like tickets one for that so like those three like always have like really good synergy between each other and three of those teams making it to day two in frankfurt make me think of that as something that we can note down and essentially
00:35:18
William Dunphey
Absolutely.
00:35:37
zzweilous
say, okay, that is an archetype of a team that we can run and be comfortable with. I think players like H. Shearer also used it in Pittsburgh to good success.
00:35:48
zzweilous
um Whereas, yeah, like um like there's there's other archetypes too, but this was one that stood out to me because it was so common. um Yeah, do did did anything stand out to you, Speedy, in terms of team composition on those top performing teams?
00:36:06
William Dunphey
Yeah, I really like your point about Furret and Tinkaton. As I look over the entire top cut, I actually see that multiple times, ah to to your point exactly. And there's one Tinkaton team without Furret, but it's got a Diggersby instead. So the normal plus Tinkaton seems to be a very, very prominent strategy. And we saw that a couple times as well in the Pittsburgh stream. If there was a Galerian Moltres lined up against the Furret, it was just lights out. It was it was no good.
00:36:32
William Dunphey
um Something you you mentioned as well before we started recording was the Dragon and Steel combination, which I thought was really strong. The Shadow Giratina altered and Shadow of Scizor on Martyn's team, or the Shadow of Scizor plus Goudra on Potomain's team.
00:36:46
William Dunphey
It seems like a really good combination. Those two Pokemon, ah in terms of typings, are usually nemesis, right? They always clash against each other, but when they paired when they are paired together, Very, very, very, rare very strong. um there's So I have like a unified theory of team building after Frankfurt and Monterey, but I want to get into it post Monterey because I think it makes makes the most sense after that.
00:37:08
zzweilous
Okay, okay, fair enough.
00:37:09
William Dunphey
But um because it it just ties the two together. But... Again, I mentioned this earlier, the ah the rise of electric types in the meta is something that definitely surprised me. um I made a joke with you and in Pittsburgh. I said, oh yeah, well, Chargebug is just a European Pokemon. those Those Europeans are always bringing the bug.
00:37:26
William Dunphey
And we did see several of those ah in Frankfurt as well. but Yeah, I mean, um oh, I will say this. I will say this. I'm so glad I didn't forget. We did have Boom in the top eight with Shadow Steelix.
00:37:39
William Dunphey
Everyone was talking about newly buffed Dragontail Steelix being the play, but it was so fascinating to me how we get into this this new meta, and it's back to Thunderfang.
00:37:51
William Dunphey
It's Thunderfang in Frankfurt.
00:37:51
zzweilous
Yeah.
00:37:52
William Dunphey
It's Thunderfang in Monterey as well as Pittsburgh. And I think there is a distinct reason for that. That's part of my unified... team building theory that we'll talk about later. But yeah, Thunderfeng Steelix, where everyone thought it would go to Dragontail.
00:38:01
zzweilous
Okay. Yeah, I think it just fills the electric type role, right? Like it's like a pseudo electric, but like you don't really have um dragon, like like dragon only hits dragon for super effective.
00:38:07
William Dunphey
Perfect.
00:38:14
zzweilous
You don't have that many targets, whereas you do cover waters and flying types with electric damage. So that is just, a lot more a lot more interesting in terms of, okay, where do you want to apply your damage? And also, like I think one of the reasons why Dragontail Steelix was projected to be excellent was because we didn't know breaking swipe parameters yet.
00:38:36
zzweilous
So it was projected that you would reach a breaking swipe with a guaranteed debuff in four Dragontails, but it's actually five Dragontails now and the move is more expensive and it's overall less of a good deal.
00:38:36
William Dunphey
Mm.
00:38:48
zzweilous
So yeah, definitely definitely see that.
00:38:49
William Dunphey
yeah
00:38:50
zzweilous
And I do want to mention also, think we first saw that during the the in-between meta early in March, when we had two tournaments, where Golisopod and Shadow Steelix worked in tandem very well together.
00:39:03
William Dunphey
me
00:39:03
zzweilous
And Boom brought that back. And I think this is a combination of Pokemon that we will see more of in the future as well. I believe that in Pittsburgh, we also had people trusting that combination.
00:39:14
William Dunphey
Obviously, the grand finals were insane. I'm sure we'll get into that momentarily. But one other series I wanted to shout out was the Losers Round 1 versus Boom. Excuse me. With Boom versus Pato.
00:39:26
William Dunphey
That series was absolute cinema. um Glyzopod for Boom almost did the impossible to take down Pato Man's Corsola. I believe it came down to a decisive game number three. And the way that Pato was able to win is he essentially dragon breathed down the Glyzopod with his Gudra.
00:39:42
William Dunphey
And just the... The second that the X-Scissor was loaded and ready to go, the Dragon Breath applied and KO'd the Glicepot. I think if Boom gets that X-Scissor, I think he wins that game because he had the crunch stored on his Steelix already.
00:39:50
zzweilous
Yeah.
00:39:55
William Dunphey
But because Pato gets the full farm down, he's able to double Aqua Tail the Steelix and win. um That series was insane. And I feel like if you watch back Worlds 2024 in Hawaii, we got to see trainers like like David, like Beelzeboy.
00:40:09
William Dunphey
And I feel like when you see a matchup like this between Pato and Boom, you're seeing the next generation of PvPers, and it's so exciting.
00:40:18
zzweilous
arguably the current generation too but yeah like the the future is in good hands like uh those ah those guys are going to be like able to excel at the top of the game for as long as they want essentially and yeah it was the first time boom got eliminated from a tournament from a tournament and who else would it be than the best eu player of last season in part of man to finally take him down um he got demoted to
00:40:20
William Dunphey
Arguably, yes.
00:40:24
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:31
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:40:44
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:40:46
zzweilous
losers by things stone collection previously but um yeah the first time boom didn't win still top eight finish like what can you say like uh yeah use futures uh cracked beyond belief as they say
00:40:54
William Dunphey
Yeah. Can't be mad at that.
00:41:01
William Dunphey
Yeah, I did see a nice post and I don't expect you to respond to it. So I'll just kind of I'll drop this and we'll go into grand finals. I did see a nice post from from Pata man. I know that you you two have a history of battling each other.
00:41:13
William Dunphey
i saw ah he called you his goat on on X. I thought that was very, very kind. I don't expect you to respond unless you want to. But I thought that was that was very that was very nice.
00:41:23
zzweilous
I can just say that I appreciate that a lot.
00:41:23
William Dunphey
um
00:41:27
zzweilous
I feel like I still, i think with my whole, um I always come second thing. Like I do have a gold medal. It's right there. it's It's right there on the wall.
00:41:38
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:41:39
zzweilous
um But like with four grand finals losses in a row, I do want to prove it to myself more than to anyone else. But i was I was very grateful for all the support that i received and all the kind of words. So,
00:41:52
zzweilous
its i did I did read that. i was I'm still just coming home, settling back in.
00:41:59
William Dunphey
yeah
00:41:59
zzweilous
So I haven't replied to everybody yet, but ah very much
00:42:05
William Dunphey
Well, and not not to – I apologize for maybe getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but we have another grand finals to talk about.
00:42:10
zzweilous
all right. all right
00:42:12
William Dunphey
Let's let's go ahead and talk about the Frankfurt grand finals where Inadequance took on 9-Alfie-9 in one of the most – as far as team compositions go, one of the most European grand finals I think we've ever had.
00:42:25
William Dunphey
Yeah. I mean, you literally had a Wigglytuff staring down ah a Togakiss, a Blastoise staring down a Cradilly, a Shadow Talonflame looking at a Shadow Charizard, a Shadow Scizor versus a Dunsvars, and a Shadow Giratina Altered versus a g Glaring Corsula.
00:42:27
zzweilous
ah
00:42:41
William Dunphey
This was, I mean, there was only one shared Pokemon between each team. I don't know if that's a record or not, but that was absolutely just a showcase. I loved it. I loved every second. and
00:42:51
zzweilous
Yeah. it's like and And one thing that I especially love was because like we have talked a lot about Frankfurt so far. We haven't talked about Martijn a lot because Inadequance, obviously our first European champion.
00:43:01
William Dunphey
That's true.
00:43:06
zzweilous
And the thing about him is that I feel as if like when we talk about the best players of the current moment, a lot of that has to do with how often they compete, how often they remind us of their qualities.
00:43:24
zzweilous
And nobody has ever...
00:43:24
William Dunphey
Recency bias.
00:43:25
zzweilous
Exactly, exactly. um And nobody has ever really doubted Martijn's ability. His one bad tournament run came with Quasar. We know that it's Quasar now, not Quasar.
00:43:38
zzweilous
um But everything else the man has done has just been excellent for like years on end. But he hasn't played as much because he was focused focused more on the casts but casting aspect.
00:43:50
zzweilous
They call him the do-it-all Dutchman after all. So he's he's doing it all.
00:43:53
William Dunphey
It's true.
00:43:54
zzweilous
But now he went back into competing. Nobody really knew. like Is he trolling with a Giratina? Is he cooking with a Giratina? And yeah, it turned out that just like in Utrecht a year and a half ago at this point, he was just onto something that everybody else was ignoring.
00:44:13
zzweilous
Part of that was the rise of Chargerbug, which was popular back then when Giratina won as well.
00:44:19
William Dunphey
Oh, I remember.
00:44:19
zzweilous
And unless Chargerbug is running crunch, Utrecht is walled the entire moveset. So that is a fairly nice feature of that particular dragon. um But also just like the way Giratina evades some of the supposed ghost counters, because while the Danceparce on Alphys team is very well equipped at taking down Galarian Corsola, which can't really two-shot it ever, and it's also relatively slow to its moves.
00:44:51
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:44:51
zzweilous
When a Shadow Guru Retina lands two Dragon Claws, it's able to Shadow Claw down in the one shield scenario. So that was not actually that hard of a counter. And which was very, ah like one thing that was very serendipitous is also that in Utrecht, Martijn showed the world what a like charge attack priority catch looks like, where you swap on a move, press your own attack, win charge attack priority,
00:45:13
William Dunphey
yes
00:45:20
zzweilous
and essentially get your damage off while also ridding the opponent's Pokemon of all its energy. That was a high-level play that Martijn showcased back then.
00:45:29
William Dunphey
He did it against Charjabug too.
00:45:29
zzweilous
Now, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that was, like, very much how I remember that, oh, that was a charge about meta as well. um So, yeah, that was, like, a highlight play that you can clip and make a segment out of to replay for the next regional.
00:45:47
William Dunphey
Yep.
00:45:47
zzweilous
And I don't know whether this is going to be clipped and made a segment out of, but another thing that really showcased a mechanic of Pokemon Go PvP that Martijn did was in the first game of the Grand Finals, um he was in an endgame situation where he tries to Shadowclaw down a Galarian Corsula by swapping in his Giratina.
00:46:07
zzweilous
It survives on 1 HP, but it's exactly 1 HP. So he can charge attack priority tie the Galarian Kostler with his left over Gastron, which still has a charge attack left.
00:46:18
zzweilous
And even though Alfie still had a shield at that moment, Martijn still managed to pick up the knockout through that shield because every shield reduces the charge attack damage to one. It doesn't nullify it, it just reduces it to one.
00:46:36
zzweilous
So if you are a singular you still lose the game. And that very rarely happens, but it does happen. And in that high stakes moment, it was Martijn's win condition and he executed on it and took that first game in very dramatic fashion.
00:46:54
William Dunphey
It's almost like Inadequance has this ability to look through the catalog of top 1% maneuvers in competitive to Pokemon Go and just kind of flip through the folders and then just pull out whichever one he wants to actually execute on stream.
00:47:11
William Dunphey
His bag is so deep that he's able to just reach in and grab out things that that most other people would not even consider or even think about.
00:47:19
zzweilous
He had some nasty turnweights as well where people like tried to catch his energy throughout the tournament but nope not happening not against this guy so yeah it's always just like a a real feast for the eyes to to watch Martijn compete with like 60% RPS 40% absolute crazy spice and 100% goated place as they say so it was because like
00:47:24
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:47:28
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:47:46
William Dunphey
Yeah, what was...
00:47:48
zzweilous
Shadow Talonflame, Weekly Talon of Gastrodon, that is a little RPS, but there's also nobody better at using it because that core, with the regular Talonflame to be honest, that core also did carry Shadow Palkia to an EUIC trophy earlier this year. So he's kind of bringing back the classics um and yeah he's been doing it in spectacular fashion.
00:48:13
William Dunphey
Yeah, you just reminded me of a quote by a group called Fort Minor, which is Mike Shinoda of Lincoln Park. this is This is kind of corny, but I don't quote anyway, right? 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain, and 100% reason to remember the name.
00:48:30
William Dunphey
And I feel like Martijn approaches his tournaments that way. Because like you said, no one knew what to expect, right? Is he cheesing? Is he just bringing in a different legendary dragon in order to have fun with it?
00:48:42
William Dunphey
ah But I feel like maybe personally, after Martijn commentated Worlds and was obviously stellar as as a commentator, I feel like he might have gotten this sense like, oh, I commentated and I really enjoyed it.
00:48:57
William Dunphey
But I do not want people to forget that I can also play with the best of them. And it's not that he has like a chip on his shoulder. But he definitely goes into these tournaments with the sense that he has something to prove, which I think is is an important distinction. Because, you know, someone with a chip on their shoulder is like rash and easily offended and and things like that.
00:49:18
William Dunphey
I don't see Martijn that way. I see him as very cool and calm in his approach. But mentally, there's a firestorm in his head at all times. And you can see that on stage.
00:49:27
zzweilous
He just really he really enjoys like putting on display the things he can do because he knows that okay like this is a little special and like he always has fun on stage too, which I always love to see.
00:49:40
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:49:41
zzweilous
um And yeah, that way hes he's been putting on a show for sure.
00:49:46
William Dunphey
Exactly. Well, as you alluded to in the grand finals, we can get into a closer analysis of this. ah Game one, inadequately Shadow Scizor into Gastrodon. He does bring that Shadow Giratina altered form, not only to game one, but to all four battles of the grand finals, which I thought was really, really cool.
00:50:04
William Dunphey
um One note I wanted to make about that Pokemon is that I looked in the Sims because my Shadow Giratina altered is is total dog crap. It's like 1461. so bad.
00:50:14
zzweilous
no.
00:50:14
William Dunphey
but ah
00:50:14
zzweilous
ah no
00:50:15
William Dunphey
I looked at all the Sims and I thought, well, if it's going to win matchups and if it's still that strong, I'll go ahead and build it. What I noticed is that Guillotine Altered, ah it beats up on a lot of the lower meta stuff, a lot of things that you won't see very much of, but it struggles really hard against top meta, against all the fairy types, all the steel types, all that kind of stuff.
00:50:37
William Dunphey
And what Inadequance did multiple times is he... applied enough pressure and created an opening for the Giratina to succeed. And you could argue it was primarily due to the fast attack pressure that he was exerting with the incinerate, with the charm, ah whatever it with the mudslap, whatever it might be. But it was also in part of...
00:50:57
William Dunphey
due to the way that he played Scizor and Blastoise. Blastoise was such a wedge for him. ah he was He was studious enough and kind enough to send me a graphic of all the times that he you ah shielded his Pokemon and all times that he brought his Pokemon. And he brought Blastoise the most out of any of his picks.
00:51:14
William Dunphey
And like you and I have talked about, Blastoise is not a flashy Pokemon. It's not going to... uh disrupt the whole show and and just you know have these stunning knockouts like a blasphemer and charizard might have but it is a wedge it's an absolute unit and uh again i'm just going back to the combination of the fast tech pressure plus the blastoise wedge and then the shadow scissor being hyper aggressive and taking shields i thought was was just the perfect blend of pokemon and when i look across the field to ah to pittsburgh
00:51:31
zzweilous
Mm-hmm.
00:51:40
zzweilous
yeah
00:51:44
William Dunphey
And to um Monterey, I almost wonder if this blending of fast attack pressure and charge attack pressure that Martijn always brings on his teams, I'm wondering if that was kind of a lost art that wasn't as well translated to the other tournaments. But I don't know.
00:51:58
William Dunphey
I'm sure we'll get into that.
00:52:00
zzweilous
I also want to mention that I think Blastoise Scizor is an excellent core.
00:52:00
William Dunphey
It looks like... Yeah. Ah.
00:52:04
zzweilous
um I did have that on my team of six as well in practice leading up to the event. And I ultimately decided to drop the Blastoise because my team was soft to Galarian Moltres.
00:52:21
zzweilous
And Blastoise does win the two shield scenario against Galarian Moltres, but struggles in the zero and one shield scenario against Galarian Moltres.
00:52:21
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:52:28
zzweilous
So I looked at Martijn's team and I was like, oh, if I struggled with Blastoise instead of Azumarill when faced the Galarian Moltres, how did he do against Galarian Moltres?
00:52:29
William Dunphey
yeah
00:52:42
zzweilous
And if memory serves me correctly, he faced two Galarian Moltres teams. First of all, I think he faced like four different Italians at tournament. So I don't know why he has it out against the Italians, but...
00:52:55
William Dunphey
I don't know. sounds personal.
00:52:55
zzweilous
um
00:52:57
zzweilous
Yeah, like I would maybe like think about why that happens. um But yeah, I think he faced two Galarian Moltres. There was a match against Alejandro off stream where I think he went one two
00:53:10
William Dunphey
Mm hmm. Yes.
00:53:13
zzweilous
um And then there was a 2-0 victory over a mind choke on stream.
00:53:19
William Dunphey
Correct.
00:53:19
zzweilous
But a mind choke didn't bring the Galarian Moltres once.
00:53:22
William Dunphey
Hmm.
00:53:23
zzweilous
i And I was a little bit surprised about that because... There is that Wigglytuff bench pressure, that is true.
00:53:29
William Dunphey
Sure.
00:53:30
zzweilous
But even Wigglytuff doesn't resist a Brave Bird if you get some energy somewhere. And other than that, um one losses that Shadow Talonflame has compared to regular Talonflame is the two shields against Galarian Moltres.
00:53:44
zzweilous
Blastoise, as I mentioned, on like needs two shields to win that. Shadow Scissor is like half decent, but the energy gets walled. And then there's a Shadow Garantina that doesn't want to get sucker punched and a Gastron that essentially it doesn't want to match up a flying type.
00:53:59
William Dunphey
Agreed.
00:53:59
zzweilous
So I was really wondering like how Martijn made it through the onslaught of Galarian Moltres that we saw in like parts of the tournament. And I feel as if the answer to that is he avoided them for the most part.
00:54:14
zzweilous
And if he didn't avoid them, they weren't just they weren't brought out against him as much. So like I was wondering, Will people just copy that team and call it a day? or will they maybe add some extra insurance against Galerian Voltres? It ended up being the case that nobody really had the guts to bring a Shadowgun Ritina to a tournament, which I understand that you have to be built a friend to run that.
00:54:41
zzweilous
um But yeah, i would have I would have loved to just see Martijn maneuver around the Galerian Voltres because I think it is possible but it would have been difficult. And I would have just loved to see how he would have approached that challenge.
00:54:55
zzweilous
It didn't come to that, but that was just like an observation that I made when looking at this team and potential weaknesses.
00:55:02
William Dunphey
You're exactly right. I'm looking over the rounds that Inadequance played versus Lenono, Alejandro, Amainjoke, Pataman, Chris, and then twice versus nine Alfie. It's so fascinating, too, because you only see the two Galarian Moltres.
00:55:15
William Dunphey
But Martijn actually went up against four other Wigglytuff. which is also remarkable in my mind, considering he did have the Giratina altered form. But to your point exactly, the Wigglytuff is going to apply pressure to that Giratina, but it doesn't have the core breaking potential that a g Glare Maltres does against a Mud Slapper, plus a Giratina, plus a neutral Blastoise matchup, plus ah a Glassy Scizor, etc., etc. So, yeah, that was that's very interesting you point that out. I feel like so many times like we try to pick the team that has the perfect coverage versus everything,
00:55:50
William Dunphey
But, I mean, every now and then, it comes down to just not running into the things that you are definitely weak to. Because every Pokemon trainer, no matter if you're playing Training Card, VG, Unite, whatever, you can't cover everything.
00:56:03
William Dunphey
And that is the great team-building challenge of Pokemon Go and competitive Pokemon in general. so Yeah, that's actually a really, really good point by you. I didn't realize he only battled two Moltres. um Game three of the Grand Finals was the only one that Alfie defeated Martijn in. So this kind of mirrored their previous matchup, ah resulting in a 3-1.
00:56:23
William Dunphey
In that game number three, Inadequance led the Blastoise into the Galarian Corsola. Alfie won the lead, but Martijn got a three Shadowclaw farm down on the Galarian Corsola. Dunsparce comes out for Alfie at that point.
00:56:36
William Dunphey
Alfie calls a Trailblaze onto his Gastrodon. He mudslaps down the Scizor before the second Trailblaze is ready to go. So again, very small margins there. And then the Gastrodon mudslaps down the Giratina to win it. So...
00:56:48
William Dunphey
That was a competitive game, but I noticed in the body language on stage, obviously if you're coming from the winner's side bracket, you're going to be more confident. But I noticed on stage, Martijn did not seem bothered.
00:57:00
William Dunphey
He didn't seem upset with the game loss. He kind of just kind of locked in and just did his thing. I think he very much kept in mind the long game and how many times he would have to lose in order for Alfie to win the championship.
00:57:13
William Dunphey
And then game four, Martijn writes the ship. He leads that gear 10, all his reform into Gastrodon. It takes down the Dunsparce-Togekiss back line that Alfie had, and he did it with a Gastrodon and a Wigglytuff. So you could argue the Gastrodon versus the Togekiss have been disastrous, but being able to control um Switch by forcing Alfie to swap into the Dunsparce kind of lined things up for him.
00:57:37
zzweilous
Yeah, I want to make two further callouts for games three and four.
00:57:37
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:57:42
zzweilous
So in game three, the final situation comes down to the shield call of whether Matai Nguyen would bait with a night slash or just immediately go for the trailblaze because he was only ever getting to a small move and a big move.
00:57:42
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:57:54
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:58:01
zzweilous
um And yeah, I think the reason why Martijn did go for the trailblaze was because in game two previously, Martijn won that. He did see that Alfie was willing to call a body slam on his Corsara when the Gastrodon had the water pulse energy ready.
00:58:20
zzweilous
and if like So he was essentially going into that endgame scenario with the knowledge that Alfie is comfortable calling the bait when it was like such a 50-50 scenario.
00:58:33
zzweilous
This time Alfie didn't call the bait um turned out to be the exact exact right choice again and resulted in a game win for Alfie.
00:58:39
William Dunphey
yeah.
00:58:42
zzweilous
And one thing that I want to call out about Game 4, I've heard people being surprised about why Alfie stayed in with the Gastrodon against the Giratino Alter at first, um because that's just not a good matchup.
00:58:57
William Dunphey
yeah
00:58:57
zzweilous
um But yeah, he did a lot of mudslaps before eventually dipping into the dance bars. And I think the reason for that is that the entire line that Alfie brought was really really really weak to um Shadow Scissor so it made sense to already build up energy to um make it so that you won't have to throw five mud slabs if you were to that if you needed to take out a potential Shadow Scissor in the late game because
00:59:30
zzweilous
That's what you would would have needed ah in order to take out the Shadow Scissor with the last Pokémon being a Tobikus. So just setting me himself up for a potential combo play situation in a late game.
00:59:41
zzweilous
There ended up not being a Shadow Scissor, so it didn't really come into play. But I can see like with how the line would have worked into all six of Martijn, why he decided to stay in initially.
00:59:51
zzweilous
So not actually a misplay, just like covering for a potential backline Pokémon.
00:59:52
William Dunphey
Agreed.
00:59:57
William Dunphey
Agreed. It's very um poetic. Again, your intro is absolutely on point per usual. Things change, but some things stay the same, and Inadequate's being able to fast move and finesse his way through certain matchups, and...
01:00:08
zzweilous
Thank you.
01:00:12
William Dunphey
ah it's It's such a a unique thing to watch as well because it almost feels like he's taking more risk by playing these alignment-dependent Pokemon, but he just makes it work. There's just something about how he calculates out the matches and how he thinks about the gameplay where he's not afraid to push all of his chips to the middle of the table and go all in when he thinks he's got the win condition.
01:00:32
William Dunphey
I think that comes down to confidence and team reading and prediction because he's done so many battles and so many scrims. I mean, he's got a very good idea what to expect. Shout out to Alfie as well, a trainer that I was not very familiar with, making it all the way to grand finals and being toppled only by the do-it-all Dutchman and Worlds runner-up.
01:00:49
William Dunphey
And he did it with a team that featured Togekiss, Don Sparse, Shadow Charizard. What a wild a team from Alfie.
01:00:58
zzweilous
Yeah, just like goes to show that Italians should travel out of the region more because, um I don't know, i feel like a lot of, like there's a lot of talent in that country, but um like most of the events that Alfie did so far were Torino, Bologna, then he did Stuttgart and EUIC last year, but again Bologna.
01:01:19
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:01:19
zzweilous
So like as of now, like 50% of the events he ever did were in Italy. But feel as if like, especially his last two results, which were the seventh place in Bologna, as well as the runner up now in Frankfurt, should give him the confidence to maybe try his luck at some more international locations because he definitely has the quality to make it far.
01:01:42
William Dunphey
I agree. I would love to see Alfie battle some more. i think that getting that close to a a grand grand finals victory, I feel like, especially for a trainer that's stepping outside of their region for the first time, I encouraging. And would love to see Alfie compete more as the season goes on.
01:01:58
William Dunphey
I'm not sure if there's anything else you want to add to Frankfurt. I think it was it was a great way to start off the the season. And again, Inadequance, reasserting his dominance atop the Pokemon Go hierarchy as expected did so well. And I'm so, so proud of him.
01:02:14
William Dunphey
um If you're ready, we could move on to Monterey.
01:02:14
zzweilous
yeah
01:02:17
zzweilous
Yeah, let's let's go to the Dedenne country, as I like to call it, because it is the only regional so far that has featured the polarizing electric mouse in Topgad.
01:02:30
William Dunphey
Exactly. So Monterey, this is a tournament that we did not get a stream for. Unfortunately, i would have loved to see the battles. I think we say this about every LATAMS tournament, and hopefully we start to get those streams. But you're exactly right, ZZ. Looking at the at the meta here from our Dracoviz top cut graphic, ah third place, excuse me, second place, third place, and fourth place, as well as one, two, three, four times outside of that within our top 16 alone there was didene and it's so funny not seeing it at all in frankfurt and then seeing it in spades here um but this tournament to me before we get into the the actual meta i just wanted to say that this tournament to me felt like
01:03:12
William Dunphey
an experiment in terms of scheduling that I think did not pay off the way that that TPCI probably would have liked. Now, what I'm getting at is the fact that we only had 171 trainers registered for Monterey.
01:03:25
William Dunphey
And last season, it was literally 100 trainers bigger than that. And I feel like that's a huge discrepancy. Same city, ah same country, of course.
01:03:35
William Dunphey
And the difference in trainers is just insane. I mean, that's literally like bleeding...
01:03:39
zzweilous
That is... that is wild.
01:03:40
William Dunphey
almost almost half of your attendance, which is not a good metric to track. So
01:03:46
zzweilous
Do you have any insight in what they did different or is it really just like time of year?
01:03:52
William Dunphey
ah ah So actually, I think i think you you already hit the nail on the head. So Monterey last year was in April. April 2025, you had 275 competitors.
01:04:02
William Dunphey
This year it was in September, which is just after Worlds. And um I think you can you can ah agree with this. I think anyone across the world, to be honest, can agree with this.
01:04:14
William Dunphey
The trip to go to the US is very expensive. If you're going to compete at Worlds in Anaheim, literally Disney Town, if you're going to travel internationally from Brazil or from from EU or wherever you might be traveling from, Australia, Japan, etc., the flights are expensive, the hotels are expensive, ah eating is expensive.
01:04:37
William Dunphey
And I feel like this tournament coming just right after Worlds was a big, big scheduling mistake. And I feel like... I could see it. I could see the vision, right? Because this is Mexico. This is not the, you know, the Southern area of Latin.
01:04:52
William Dunphey
This is not Argentina. This is not Chile, et cetera. This feels like it should be more accessible, ah especially for trainers that maybe are in North America. And we did have several go down to Monterey to compete just like last year.
01:05:03
William Dunphey
But at the same time, I'm noticing two different groups that really showed out and showed up. And those were the Brazilians, the LNDS team, as well as the 7-Eleven team.
01:05:15
William Dunphey
And we know that there's um you know team arrangements where they're actually able to go to these events ah more affordably than people that are just flying on their own. So i really feel like this was – if this tournament would have been moved to April, I do think would we would have had similar attendance.
01:05:32
William Dunphey
But just so quickly after Worlds, I saw 107 Frankfurt, and I thought, oh, well, that's that's not great. And then I saw ah negative 100 for Monterey. I said, oh, that's not good at all.
01:05:44
William Dunphey
So that was concerning.
01:05:45
zzweilous
uh yeah i don't believe this is going to be a trend necessarily but it's certainly a development that maybe could have been avoided but certainly this is not what we have come to expect from mexican events in particular because those are like among the most attended like if you look at monterey if you look at like think merida was capped but could have been really big if they tried um
01:05:46
William Dunphey
But –
01:06:01
William Dunphey
Agreed.
01:06:10
William Dunphey
agreed
01:06:12
zzweilous
So yeah, there's like always, I guess almost more demand than supply typically. um Whereas, yeah, this one was like smaller, but I feel as if in terms of quality, like if you look at that top cut, it's still so many big names that came out not only from Mexico, but also from the US and specifically from Brazil.
01:06:37
William Dunphey
Exactly, exactly. a lot of big names. ah This is kind of similar to what we talked about in Frankfurt. As I was scrolling through the bracket, I will say there were a lot more names in Montserrat that I did not recognize compared to Frankfurt.
01:06:49
William Dunphey
I do think there was um much more name recognition over there, but...
01:06:55
zzweilous
It has to do with stream matches too, right?
01:06:55
William Dunphey
Oh, absolutely.
01:06:57
zzweilous
Like there's players like, I was like talking to somebody recently where they were like, about like a practice match situation against somebody called Dell31416.
01:06:58
William Dunphey
Absolutely.
01:07:11
zzweilous
And they were like, I've never heard of them.
01:07:12
William Dunphey
Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
01:07:13
zzweilous
And I was like, that is actually one of the best Mexican competitors. And they met Torv8 again, um but they just haven't had the exposure as much um because of that.
01:07:17
William Dunphey
yeah
01:07:23
William Dunphey
yeah
01:07:25
zzweilous
lack of streams so far. So again, another season of hoping that that will change in the future. But yeah, I feel as if the name recognition isn't quite there, even though the quality of play may well be.
01:07:38
William Dunphey
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I mean, you and I know Dell's name because we've we've done these breakdowns and we've seen just how impressive they are.
01:07:43
zzweilous
Exactly.
01:07:45
William Dunphey
But yeah, without the streams, without the recognition, it's it's easy to overlook some of these players. um But to your original point about the meta, we saw a lot of similar developments that we noticed in Frankfurt.
01:07:56
William Dunphey
For example, a lot of ground ah being the Gastrodon. We saw Cradily, basically, as you said, mandatory on these teams. ah We saw flyers, but there was one big surprise that I really, really enjoyed watching. We saw some of this in Pittsburgh as well.
01:08:09
William Dunphey
Of course, I'm just going say it's got to be Murkrow with Peck. What a fascinating pickup. More fairy types than we saw in Frankfurt and way more than we saw in Pittsburgh.
01:08:21
William Dunphey
Uh, glaring course also mandatory. So I feel like if you were listening to this and you want to build a competitive team that is solid for the next two months or so, if you focus on glaring course like Cradily, you have two of these six pieces that you will need and the rest is negotiable.
01:08:35
William Dunphey
Um, I want to dive in and talk about spice picks just real briefly, and then we'll talk about the overall teams and some of the themes that we were seeing. Did not mean to rhyme, but that's just how it turned out.
01:08:46
William Dunphey
um K1W1 playing Torterra and Empoleon. which is really cool. We saw Torterra as well on Lauren's team in Frankfurt. Jenvon Schweetz playing Shadow Annihilate, a little world's throwback there that I really did appreciate.
01:09:00
William Dunphey
ah Just a Wild Mango actually playing Furret plus Glaring Corsula plus Double Ground plus Togekiss, which is definitely fascinating. Then we had trainers like Arvasaur with the Unova Stunfisk and Shadow Quagsire. I wanted to shout out Arvasaur in particular as ah in in regards to how they did in the bracket because Arvasaur I'm a big fan of.
01:09:21
William Dunphey
And then Dunebug tried to beat the Empoleon fraud watch by bringing Empoleon on his team. I'm sorry, champ. I still think it's a fraud, and I'm shocked, actually, that you made it that far with the Penguin.
01:09:35
zzweilous
i see I see the vision though, like Empolion and Togekiss with two ground types to discourage electrics. or There's something there.
01:09:35
William Dunphey
But that being said...
01:09:42
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah, well, then you just need to beat fighting, and you just need to beat ground, and you just need to beat grass. So there's a lot of of ah open boxes that need to be checked off there, in my opinion.
01:09:53
William Dunphey
um But the recurring themes, I noticed, were the two big teams that attended the Monterey Regional Championships, those being the Lindos with Kanan, Harjefe, and Steiner all playing the exact same team of Galerian Corsola, Cradily,
01:10:08
William Dunphey
Gudra, Lantern, Galarian Moltres, and Shadow Scizor. And then the 7-11 group with one deviation that I will mention, but primarily you saw Gastrodon, Fortress, Cradilly, Murkrow, Dedenne, and Galarian Corsula.
01:10:22
William Dunphey
And the exception being Ritchie, who Ritchie played Gastrodon, Claude Sire, Cradilly, Galarian Moltres, as well as Dedenne Corsula. So... He changed two pieces. He changed the Fortress out for Claude Sire, and he changed the Darkfire out for Glary Moltres. So he just wasn't feeling the the team, and he did his own thing perfectly okay.
01:10:41
William Dunphey
But I do think it's funny, because we don't see this in Europe, right? I mean, outside of maybe like tea and pizza, we don't really see these these trainers bringing the exact same teams.
01:10:51
zzweilous
Yeah, and that is actually something that I talked about with my grassroots team before where we're a little bit torn about whether it makes sense to just come up with the one team that is then the source for that weekend and everybody knows how to play it and it's the best option that we do have.
01:11:10
zzweilous
And like if you have so many people running the same stuff, you also have like four or five times the amount of playtesting that goes into refining it compared to if you just do your own thing. So there's advantages to that approach.
01:11:24
zzweilous
But then there's also like everybody having their own ideas and their unique Pokemon that they are very good at.
01:11:29
William Dunphey
Sure. I agree.
01:11:30
zzweilous
And maybe like you see it with Richie, maybe Richie feels like, oh, I'm a better Moltres player. I'm a better Claude Sire player than I am a Fortress or Murkrow player.
01:11:40
zzweilous
And that's entirely fine.
01:11:41
William Dunphey
sure
01:11:42
zzweilous
ah feel as if even though there were two Murkrows that placed higher, like a fourth place finish, That doesn't mean that Richie was wrong. That is still a very, very high and impressive finish at a tournament as stacked as this.
01:11:55
zzweilous
So um yeah, I do see the approach and yeah, I noted those, I'm i'm compiling my list of um team archetypes and um both the LNDS team, which is the Shadow Scissor plus Dragon archetype that we already talked about, um as well as the
01:11:57
William Dunphey
and agree
01:12:06
William Dunphey
Ah.
01:12:16
zzweilous
um the I call it the IO Murkrow team because we know that IO Murkrow is a team builder for 7-Eleven primarily. um And obviously the Murkrow is the standout pick.
01:12:29
zzweilous
That also went into my folder of teams that I want to keep an eye on and know that I'm like kind of okay into them going forward.
01:12:37
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:12:38
zzweilous
um And yeah, I think like the way the team works um is that you have the Murkrow as your main sweeper because a lot of people will not be prepared for it they will not know the matchups and also just has great team core breaking potential into mud steppers and costola as well as winning the head-to-head against gallery and moltres um but then the thing that you need to do is to like cover your your bases in a way that
01:13:09
zzweilous
Credily doesn't become a problem because you obviously run a Mudstepper, everybody runs a Mudstepper, most people run a Mudstepper.
01:13:12
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:13:15
zzweilous
Rachev actually managed to do without. um But most people can, you can expect to have either Canto Merovac or Gastrodon, in this case they opted for Gastrodon mostly.
01:13:28
zzweilous
um And now if you have the Flyer and the Mudstepper, then you need something to um protect this core from opposing Credily because Credily grass coverage, um rock coverage, really strong core breaker into those two.
01:13:43
zzweilous
So what do you do to scare it away? Most people say, oh, I just run Shadow Scizor. That's so good in the Cradilly.
01:13:50
William Dunphey
Sure.
01:13:50
zzweilous
Can you run Mercrow with its like primate level or even less stat product and a Shadow Scizor? I don't believe you can because you only get two shields per game.
01:14:02
William Dunphey
no
01:14:02
zzweilous
So you want something bulkier, something flexible. And 7-Eleven found that for the most part in Fortress. Ritchie with the Claude Zaya also bringing a pick that wins all even shields against Crudeli and doesn't need to shield its move. So similar in terms of how it functions.
01:14:21
zzweilous
But yeah, the main answer was the Fortress paired with the Murkrow. Also very strong into Fairy types. Same goes for Claude Zaya yet again. so yeah, I feel like that team slot was...
01:14:34
zzweilous
instrumental in protecting the macro from its most common threads in the bracket.
01:14:40
William Dunphey
It's so fascinating you point that out. And I feel like... It's one of those things that we don't we don't think about explicitly, but we notice over time. Because um just in terms of general stat product, by the way, you're on the money. So Murkrow at rank 1 is 1584 stat product at level And rank a prime ape, staggering.
01:15:03
William Dunphey
and level twenty four point five so merro is even glassier than a primatepe which is staggering um But i I started to do a breakdown, and i haven't I don't think I've actually told you about this, but I started to analyze winning teams by stat product.
01:15:18
William Dunphey
And what I noticed is that 2100 is like the golden in number. Most Pokemon on winning teams have about that in terms of stat product, and there's usually only one exception to that, whether it's a Primeape, a Scizor, a Greninja, a Murkrow.
01:15:33
William Dunphey
There's only one exception in terms of glassiness, but most teams have at least 2,100 across the board on their other five Pokemon. So I think if you're looking through the Peavey Poke rankings and you're trying to find Pokemon that, oh, this will be really good one day if it gets buffed, like, i don't know, Dondozo, if you look at the stat product and you see that number 2,000 to 2,200 or even more, then you're actually in in really, really good shape. So I really appreciate that you brought that up because it looks like the obvious choice is Scizor.
01:16:03
William Dunphey
but the fortress with its ah additional bulk gives you enough breathing room. it lets you get to back to your switch timer. it lets you debuff the opponent as well with the rock tomb and set up the Murkrow even further in case you will need to survive an attack, which we did see a couple of ah attacks getting taped by Murkrow over the weekend. But yeah, you really broke that down so well. I appreciate that.
01:16:23
William Dunphey
um In terms of overall meta, I think it's time. I think it's time for me to to give you my unified theory. What do you say?
Unified Team Theory in Championship Series
01:16:30
zzweilous
Yeah, please.
01:16:31
William Dunphey
Okay. So you alluded to this. I'm making a timestamp right here. Unified team theory. You alluded to this before. You said everyone runs a Mudslapper. Everyone runs like a Cradilly.
01:16:45
William Dunphey
Based on the Monterey results and the Frankfurt results, I kind of distilled everything down into slots. So... Essentially, you start with the first two. You start with a Galarian Corsola, or alternatively, you could play something like Dusk Ops.
01:17:00
William Dunphey
Then you move on to your Cradilly slot, which is typically ah very, very good roll compression. It's very hard to replace Cradilly, but you might kind of wedge in something like a Dewgong with its anti-flyer capabilities or a Shadow Scizor with its Trailblaze capabilities ah in that slot as well. But 96% of the time, it's going to be Cradilly.
01:17:20
William Dunphey
Your third slot is a flying type, which is typically Glary Maltrace or Shadow Townflame, but we have seen the occasional Murkrow. We have also seen Shadow Charizard fill that role. The fourth slot is a steel type.
01:17:33
William Dunphey
ah We've seen Tickaton, Bastidon. ah We've seen Corviknight in your case. We also see Shadow Scizor filling that role from time to time. The fifth slot is a ground or water type, and usually both, ah that that being Gastrodon, but Shadowkid to Marowak also fills that role.
01:17:50
William Dunphey
And then you essentially have a flex slot as your stick slot, but primarily it's geared towards anti-flying threats. So you'd have something like a Lantern, Dedene, Unova Stunfist perhaps.
01:18:03
William Dunphey
ah Thunderfing Steelix also slots into that really, really nicely. It can serve as your Steel type or your anti-flyer, depending on the rest of your team composition. But I feel like once you actually look at these Dracovis graphics and if you kind of kind of mentally align the Pokemon into those different slots, Goudra also fits in the flex slot because it has Thunder Punch and it also has access to Aqua Tail, which gives you a little bit more flexibility. So if you slot those things,
01:18:28
William Dunphey
It can work out. One more note I'll add is that Ice Punch Annihilate or Ice Punch Primeape also can fit into your anti-flyer slot while not being explicitly electric. But I do think that that is the the unified theory, at least in this point of the championship series. And there are always exceptions.
Current Meta Analysis & Unexpected Picks
01:18:45
William Dunphey
Furret, you can slot into your ghost slot if you need a good safe switch ah with only you know minimal weaknesses. Togekiss fits into the flyer slot, but it's also a bit of ah an anti-grassin fighter as well, so there's a lot of flexibility.
01:18:58
William Dunphey
I don't know what you think.
01:18:59
zzweilous
Primae as an anti-flyer is so interesting because that is partly true, but it's mostly true if the Premier flyer is Galarian Moltres because then you resist the sucker punches while all damaging with your own charge attacks.
01:19:14
zzweilous
um Once the Dark Flying type is Murkrow, however, um those packs hurt.
01:19:15
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:19:21
zzweilous
You do not get to a lot of charge attacks as a Primae.
01:19:22
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:19:25
William Dunphey
Right? Yeah, they absolutely annihilated it. So that's why we've seen a prime appear there, and it was on my caster predictions for ah for Pittsburgh just because of its core breaking potential, but it's not as successful as it has been in seasons past.
01:19:38
William Dunphey
um I'm not sure if there's anything else you want to say about the overall meta. I think you made such a good point in the choice to to pick up the fortress over the Scizor. Murkrow was a big surprise. I played it in Go Battle League. I made a little video on it. I thought it was fun, but I thought it was too glassy. ah But getting to your moves in only 10 turns is definitely a huge upgrade.
01:19:58
zzweilous
Yeah, I feel like we've we've seen enough proof of concept for Murkrow to now recognize it as a real Pokemon. So, um yeah, certainly the breakout star from this tournament.
01:20:10
zzweilous
But yeah, the winning team was something else. It was the Lantern and Eleanor's Roger.
01:20:15
William Dunphey
Yeah. And speaking with Harjeff over in Pittsburgh, ah I think it was during our Pittsburgh Steelix draft segment that we did. ah Somebody asked him, maybe I think it was maybe Arrow or Butter. Somebody asked him, why Lantern?
01:20:28
William Dunphey
He said, because it's so fantastically neutral into everything. If you're up a bit of energy, you can spam off surfs against the Kanto Marowak. So even your hardest counter, maybe your hardest counter would be like a Gastrodon, but one of your hardest counters, you have a lot of ah lot of pushback. And also the electric type pressure keeps Pokemon like Glary and Moltres at bay. keeps other pure water types that you might see at bay.
01:20:50
William Dunphey
So I do think that that Lantern had an enormous enormous amount of play. um Before we get into grand finals completely, i do want to do a quick run through the bracket. This is um a bit more of a closer look ah in terms of our bracket breakdown that we're going to try to add to the show going forward.
01:21:08
William Dunphey
I'll run through this real quickly, but I've got some notes on some of our groups. So in Group A, this was Harjeff's group. He ended up defeating Hector Minitoy2o in the Group A finals. But also in this group were some notable names like Eduardo Lomas, Inbeto, and Vic Rioja.
01:21:23
William Dunphey
Group B was Marto's bracket. Marto won three rounds before defeating Paul Garcia in the Group B finals. Group C, Arbasora. I mentioned this earlier. Arbasora, I'm a big fan of. ah Friends with him.
01:21:34
William Dunphey
We battled when I was in Mexico City for the Niantic qualifier a while back, and I also ran into him at Worlds in Hawaii. Very good trainer. I had to RPS him out of my mind to win our group or a win our battle when I faced him, but it looks like he's continued his winning ways ah by winning Group C. The Losers' Finals was Richie versus Paco Bran in Round 7, but Richie had to get through Rocha in Losers' Round 6 in order to get there, so a little bit of 7-11 on 7-11 violence.
01:22:04
William Dunphey
You hate to see it, but it happens. Group D, Losers' Finals was Dix Brooks versus K1W, which K1 won 2-0. Group E, Ryze defeated
01:22:12
zzweilous
and do what to I do want to um just jump in here because Dixbox I played in practice, and they were running Snarls Crafty.
01:22:17
William Dunphey
Yeah, yeah.
01:22:21
zzweilous
So we were very close to a Snarls Crafty Topcut there.
01:22:22
William Dunphey
What?
01:22:25
William Dunphey
Holy crap. I had no idea. Okay. that That would have been insane. I don't even know what that does. Like, what does that offer you? Does it beat Corsola?
01:22:32
zzweilous
it gets to upper hand really fast. um I don't know.
Bracket Breakdown & Standout Performances
01:22:36
zzweilous
It's a Pokemon.
01:22:37
William Dunphey
It is. It is. Group E, Ryze defeated Andrew Maniares in the semis, but lost to just a wild mango 1-2 in his group finals. However, he redeemed himself by falling down to the losers bracket and defeating Ramsey to win that and progress on to day two.
01:22:54
William Dunphey
Group F, Iomero took down Dunebug 2-1. Dunebug won at the Group F losers finals versus Yuri. Yuri was sent down to that losers bracket, interestingly enough, by Iomero, and he ended up beating Teddy, GM10, and Javier, C2182 before facing Dunebug in the losers finals. So Yuri actually, a name I'm not very familiar with, but very, very talented.
01:23:16
William Dunphey
In Group G, winner's finals was Lalo LG7 versus Jen Von Schweetz. Lalo was the trainer that actually knocked me out of that Niantic Mexico City qualifier. I battled him twice, and he's he's very, very talented. And Jen, I believe, is still with 7-11, but Jen defeated him.
01:23:32
William Dunphey
DeSynct was in this group. You want to know what DeSynct was running in Monterey?
01:23:37
zzweilous
I think I took a look at it. um What was it?
01:23:43
William Dunphey
i can I have it here. i can tell you.
01:23:46
zzweilous
Yeah, I'm trying to remember. i don't remember.
01:23:49
William Dunphey
Okay, DeSync, always a fun trainer to watch, was running Shadow, Dusclops, Empoleon, Gastrodon, which is the most normal of his Pokemon on his team, Gligar, Guzzlord, a shout out to ZZ, Guzzlord, and pitts Pittsburgh, and Shadow Alolan Ninetales.
01:24:06
William Dunphey
What a team.
01:24:06
zzweilous
Oh, the buffed Weatherball. Yeah.
01:24:09
William Dunphey
Uh-huh.
01:24:10
zzweilous
i honestly can kind of see how Alolan Ninetales plays well into some of the top meta, because if you are a Murkrow, you don't want to see that.
01:24:16
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:24:19
zzweilous
you're a Cradilly, you are like okay into that if shields are down, but nobody wants to... like like People save shields for their Alolan Ninetales, right?
01:24:29
zzweilous
And then as long as the Ground type of the day is just a regular Kanji Marowak. That's probably also pretty great for the Alona Ninetales.
01:24:29
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:24:35
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:24:37
zzweilous
So I can see the vision.
01:24:38
William Dunphey
Yeah. And if, if you're up against glaring malt race, that's also a pretty solid matchup. If you're facing off against a fur it, you're resisting all the sucker punches and you're pacing at the same rate to the weather ball or even slightly faster.
01:24:50
William Dunphey
So I don't know if you face a, you know, a stun fist, that's also a positive matchup for the nine tails.
01:24:50
zzweilous
That's very true.
01:24:55
William Dunphey
I think there might be something to that. Um, De-synced loss in round two, though, unfortunately, to a trainer named Rosku193. Rosku was playing Altaria, Shadow Annihilate, Dusclops, Empoleon, Azumarill, Cradilly. So another spicy team. ah Group F was also home to TZSpanx, who was the Monterey runner-up last year. If you remember, he was in the Grand Finals versus Dunebug.
01:25:20
William Dunphey
TZ was defeated by Genvon Swietz in round three, but he won four rounds in a row before being eliminated by Lalo in the Group G losers finals. So TZ Spanx, our former runner up, was almost in top cut. He just barely missed it.
01:25:34
William Dunphey
L&D Skanan also was in Group G. And finally, we get to Group H, which is the last group of the tournament.
01:25:39
zzweilous
Thank
01:25:40
William Dunphey
L and DST Steiner wins this group. He takes down link on to one in his group finals stud muffins, which I didn't know was in Monterey actually traveled down to Monterey and was battling it out there. He was knocked to losers in round two, but he won three more rounds before facing against Malra hole, Malra hole 15 in losers round six.
01:26:00
William Dunphey
And then the group H losers finals was link on versus Maruho and link on one to O. So again, I know the bracket breakdown is is probably a little long winded, but I do think it's nice to give these trainers ah their shout outs and to, to let you know, kind of like where everything went, especially for a tournament that we didn't have a stream for.
01:26:18
William Dunphey
I think it's good to kind of highlight like who was in which group and who was in losers finals, which normally would be off stream anyway. So very, very exciting stuff. And then credit to Rise, and you sent me a video as well. I'm not sure who recorded that video, but credit to Rise and that individual for actually giving us the grand finals footage. So we actually got to see those games.
01:26:39
zzweilous
Yeah, um so ah credits are going to Javier Young Machete, who um did stream the finals in the Hangout Discord, and also to Mish for recording them.
01:26:45
William Dunphey
Ah.
01:26:55
zzweilous
So we do have both perspectives, I think.
01:26:56
William Dunphey
Heck yeah. Yeah.
01:26:58
zzweilous
um And yeah, so what i remember from seeing that footage is... um that Rajiv essentially tried to, i think, like, bait out the fortress a lot because that was, like, one of the main threats.
01:27:15
William Dunphey
ye
01:27:18
zzweilous
um And, yeah, tried to rely on the Galarian Kossela to take down that fortress. And I think, um like, my perspective was a little bit cut off, but I think the first game he actually got the lead that he wanted with the Kossela into the fortress.
01:27:32
zzweilous
and then eventually managed to align the lantern onto the murkrow and the murkrow tried to do something with pacing and shielded serfs and tried to get out of it again honestly those water guns kind of chunk um so yeah that's not the greatest place for a murkrow to be um
01:27:32
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:27:52
William Dunphey
Well, it was tough for Spartan in that game as well, because not only did he have the lantern versus his Murkrow, but as soon as he did shield and get out, he sent out the Cradilly and Harjefe had the Scizor.
01:28:03
William Dunphey
So it was like, there's no escape really in that game one.
01:28:03
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:28:08
zzweilous
For sure. Yeah, that's, such again, that's the one thing that Cridity never wants to see. Like when once the bug steel type comes out, it's typically curtains.
01:28:13
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:28:17
William Dunphey
Exactly. um And like I go back and forth because I was told that the Brazilians pronounce his name as Harjefe, like jefe as in boss. But then you have people like Butters who doesn't get the E right all the time. And he's like Harjefe instead of Harjefe.
01:28:34
William Dunphey
So and then, of course, we have the Harjefe, which we always say. So I apologize everyone if it irritates you that I'm switching back and forth, but it's an old habit. ah Game two,
Challenges in Streaming Tournament Coverage
01:28:43
William Dunphey
Harjef goes back to the Galarian Corsula, this time into Gastrodon lead. This one was actually a very close game.
01:28:49
William Dunphey
um In both games, one and two, I noticed that Spartan shielded the first charge attack before he fired Rock Tomb from his Kredily onto the fortress, but it ended up with Lantern water water gunning down his fortress all the same.
01:29:03
William Dunphey
And then game three, this one was Harry. ah This one was literally Galarian Moltres lead from Harjeff into Dedene. And somehow Harjeff brought it back.
01:29:10
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:29:14
zzweilous
Yeah, so let um let me remember that one. I feel as if it ended up being crudilly in the bag for Rajiv, which then just had tremendous core-breaking potential into ah Spartans, Dedene, and Gastrodon.
01:29:35
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:29:36
zzweilous
um So yeah, as soon as The fortress was out of the picture, um which I think the, was it the Shadows, Scissor or the Lantern that baited out the fortress?
01:29:47
zzweilous
I have forgotten to take notes,
01:29:48
William Dunphey
so No, it's okay. I've got some play-by-play for us. So obviously disastrous lead for Harjef. Harjef safe swaps to Scizor immediately. And what what happens here is really curious because Spartan decides to stay in with the Dedene long enough to fire the Parabolic Charge and then switch to Fortress.
01:30:07
William Dunphey
So he does take the shield. But in the process, he ends up ah giving five bullet punches of energy over to Scizor. So normally in even shield, even energy, Fortress has a a good shot at taking down the Scizor, especially if you can trigger a debuff here there.
01:30:23
William Dunphey
But because Scizor was already at five bullet punches, it was really far ahead. And then the nail in the coffin for that switch control matchup between the bug steals was that Harjef got the Night Slash boost on the first attempt.
01:30:34
William Dunphey
So I actually went back and and looked at the Sims and I was like, oh, did the Night Slash boost change this matchup?
01:30:35
zzweilous
Oh yes.
01:30:39
William Dunphey
Is that why he won it? And the answer was no. As soon as he got the five bullet punches, Spartan had no way to win even shields with the Fortress versus the Scizor. It just wasn't going to happen. But the Night Slash boost kind of reinforced the fact that Hargefe was going to take Switch.
01:30:53
William Dunphey
And ah to your point, after Hargefe was able to bring down the Fortress with his Scizor, he let the Scizor go. But at that point, he had his Cradilly versus the opposing Dedene and then his Galerian Moltres versus Spartan's last Pokemon, which is Gastrodon. So that was really a story of the mid-matches. And you could argue that Spartan could have in instant switched into his Fortress versus the Scizor. But his team really lacked a strong answer to Scizor. And I think that was his undoing.
01:31:19
William Dunphey
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:31:20
zzweilous
yeah I think it was also just like maybe a risk that felt worth taking, but at the end of the day, a risk that didn't pay off, that Spartan just went ABA a week to the Kredili on Rajaf's side, which again, like it's a risky bring into the comp with the fortress, but if you don't get it lined up against the fortress, can just yeah you can get so much mileage out of the Kredili, and Rajaf managed to do just that.
01:31:30
William Dunphey
yeah
01:31:49
zzweilous
And I guess the boost was just the icing on the cake.
01:31:52
William Dunphey
Yeah, it was really funny as well listening to um Rise livestream these battles because he wasn't exactly commentating, but he would offer like like ah popcorn comments, right? He'd be like, oh, this looks really tough for Harjeff or Spartan's in trouble here.
01:32:09
William Dunphey
Uh-oh, you know, in a typical Rise episode.
01:32:09
zzweilous
Yeah,
01:32:12
zzweilous
yeah yeah, yeah. I hear it in Ryze's voice in my head.
01:32:15
William Dunphey
yeah ah He's a great guy. I'm so glad he that he streamed those matches. and i'm I'm so glad as well that Machete streamed their version and that Mish was able to record it. so Again, we want full streams for these tournaments. These players deserve it. They've got insane attendance and a insane insane talent. I hope we get that.
01:32:34
William Dunphey
But for now, everyone, you'll have to settle for the Show 6 podcast and the monologue that was the
01:32:38
zzweilous
Thank you.
Insights into Pittsburgh Tournament
01:32:39
William Dunphey
bracket breakdown and some of our recap on the grand finals.
01:32:42
William Dunphey
But Harjeff is able to win this event overall. He wins the first event of the season. And what's also interesting is that we got to see our two LATAM kings, right? Our two crown bearers here in the winner's semifinals when Harjeff took on Marto.
01:33:00
William Dunphey
And Harjeff ended up winning that series 3-1, Marto falling to that loser's side bracket. So that was really exciting.
01:33:07
zzweilous
Yeah, it was even the winners finals and then in the losers finals Spartan got Mato and that's how that went down.
01:33:12
William Dunphey
You're right.
01:33:14
zzweilous
But yeah, like if sure, sure, winners finals is Rajef versus Mato.
01:33:15
William Dunphey
You're right.
01:33:19
zzweilous
Like those two, those two are up there for a reason for sure. Like classic Brazil versus Argentina clash. And this time Brazil came out on top and that appears to be a theme for the start of the season.
01:33:29
William Dunphey
It was...
01:33:34
William Dunphey
It was so funny too because ah in Rise's stream, he literally has the phone and he kind of angles it over towards where um Marto and Harjeff are playing. And it's just two guys sitting at a table like any other table for any other pairing because there's no stage.
01:33:49
zzweilous
Yeah, yeah, those guys deserve a stage. They deserve a stage.
01:33:52
William Dunphey
Yes. Yes, my thoughts precisely. They deserve it. so Spartan almost able to defend Mexico, but does fall to Harjev 3-0 in the grand finals.
01:34:03
William Dunphey
But you've got to love all the the effort that the 7-11 team and the LNDS-Tuzzi team have put into this. So very exciting to see. right, my friend. I'm there's anything else we want to add a ah Monterey if we want to get into Pittsburgh.
01:34:16
zzweilous
i think we should move on to the first north american regional of the season we still don't know the first north american grand finalist of the season but everything else we have already seen and will be able to comment on
01:34:31
William Dunphey
Ah, very, very funny. Very funny.
01:34:33
zzweilous
finish
01:34:34
William Dunphey
um All right. So going into this event, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about um not player related stuff. I wanted to know what you thought about the casting pairings.
01:34:47
William Dunphey
We had DeFi and Homestice Henry and we had myself and Butters. And I'll give you the first half of it. um Henry is is incredibly talented. I think he is a gifted orator.
01:35:01
William Dunphey
ah Whenever you hear him describe certain things, he uses such incredibly colorful language that I want to incorporate into my my commentary as well. For example, there's like a Shadow Charizard lead into a Steel-type at one point.
01:35:14
William Dunphey
And he said, this is an explosive lead. I was like, man, that is such a cool word, a cool phrase to use. And Defy, I felt like had one of her best casts of her entire career. I mean, she absolutely popped off and I could tell she was having so much fun with Henry. And it's it's great as well to kind of get her ah her play-by-play, her hype, her excitement, and then have Henry just pick the ball up and run with it in terms of analysis, in terms of ah matchups, shielding scenarios.
01:35:42
William Dunphey
And also DeFi kept on calling out the counts for the moves. You know, oh, it's five pecs to the foul play or it's yeah know Seven assets to the the rock tomb. That was very, very helpful, I think, for new players. And then, dude, I just heckin' love working with Butters.
01:35:56
William Dunphey
I don't know if you could tell, but we were we were shouting our lungs out in that cast, and hopefully we didn't overdo it. We had a lot of fun.
01:36:03
zzweilous
You guys had fun and honestly, like to your point, I had people like talk to me about the cast after the weekend and multiple people were pointing out that DeFi had a great performance.
01:36:19
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:36:19
zzweilous
And overall, I just like the idea that with how like we've we've been at this for a couple of years, right? But for the most part, the casting, like the cast pairings haven't actually switched all that much like you always said like you had butters and caleb you had defy and alpha feeb and obviously there's like dynamics that are established and that are beloved by the audience but i like the idea of getting people out of their comfort zone a little more so they maybe can showcase other aspects of their casting talent next to a person that may have a different style of their own and honestly like pittsburgh
01:36:39
William Dunphey
yeah
01:37:03
zzweilous
was just something that worked really, really well for me. doesn't mean that it has to be repeated that exact same way every single time.
01:37:09
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:37:10
zzweilous
um But yeah, I thought that the audience response to the cast was fantastic. And even though I was rather busy doing during that weekend, um from what I have been able to listen back to, i can only echo that sentiment.
01:37:20
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:37:26
zzweilous
um So yeah, I really enjoyed the casting. I enjoyed the very silly segments that you set up for in between the battles.
01:37:35
William Dunphey
ah
01:37:35
zzweilous
Like, I don't know how you come up with it, but um it's it's the exact right flavor of Goofy, so I do appreciate that. um And yeah, I thought there were some great interviews with the players after the matches too.
01:37:50
zzweilous
list If there are some regionals where um but like occasionally it feels a little rushed.
01:37:50
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:37:56
zzweilous
I feel like that's more so the case if there's like technical issues and you're running behind. yeah, there was like, a decent amount of space um that the competitors could fill out by having those moments where they could just like talk to the camera, talk to the audience. And you always get so much personality from the competitors. And yeah it was was overall just a very, very successful start to um like this this season of competitive Pokemon for sure.
01:38:29
William Dunphey
So I will
Creative Tournament Segment Ideas
01:38:30
William Dunphey
tell you this. I pitched 10 different segments to Pokemon and five of them got through five,
01:38:35
zzweilous
Where does he get them from? Where does he get them from?
01:38:38
William Dunphey
Five of them got through, which I'm very, very happy with the ones that did, whether it was the Mega Malamar Mega Prediction segment with Adib and Doombug, or if it was um the Pexperts with you, Mish, and Anna, or if it was Mason's Pittsburgh Slaying, or even our Steelix draft ah that we did, which was which was really cool.
01:38:58
William Dunphey
But um there was one. I'll tell you. I'll leak one. I'll leak one that didn't quite make it. So... Honchcrow is known as the the boss bird, right? And Murkrow just had a big impact in Monterey.
01:39:08
zzweilous
Yes.
01:39:10
William Dunphey
We just spent like 20 minutes talking about it. So I had one segment idea where I was going to wear a blue fedora and a white scarf. And I was going to be the boss crow.
01:39:20
zzweilous
Oh god!
01:39:22
William Dunphey
And I would have three of my mercros in the lounge. And I would say, you know, kind of like in mob boss traditional fashion, I would just tell them to do things that were uncomfortable, but they had to do it because I was the boss.
01:39:35
zzweilous
god
01:39:35
William Dunphey
and like And like one of the one of the quotes was – or one of the questions was, ah say something nice about Bastion. or Or you lose a game and someone tags you and says GG's.
01:39:46
William Dunphey
Say something kind back to them. You know? And it's just going to be wildly uncomfortable.
01:39:50
zzweilous
Okay, that those those are fun challenges, actually. I would have liked to see that.
01:39:54
William Dunphey
Yes. Yeah, so that that was when I was cooking. um I'll leak one more. So um what's his name? um Mr. Rogers was actually from Pittsburgh.
01:40:05
William Dunphey
And you know, he ah he always opens the show where he's tying his shoes and he's got his sweater and his tie and he's like so, so professional. ah This one was a little bit too corny, but I thought about it.
01:40:16
William Dunphey
I thought about dressing up like Mr. Rogers and tying my shoe in the middle of the crowd with all the craziness happening around and, and saying, will you raid with me neighbor? And walking up to someone and joining into a rave with them, reviewing their rate team and actually like trying to be really nice about offering suggestions and that kind of stuff.
01:40:34
William Dunphey
So I had ideas. I had ideas. There was, there was an Andy Warhol idea as well that didn't make the cut. So yeah.
01:40:41
zzweilous
This man is just an endless well of creativity.
01:40:42
William Dunphey
Anyway.
01:40:44
zzweilous
But yeah, that was Pokémon being played also. That's true.
01:40:48
William Dunphey
Like you said, it's it's the it's the right mix of cheese, I hope. So anyway, over to the actual Pokemon and the meta and the predictions.
Meta Trends & Strategy Analysis
01:40:58
William Dunphey
I just want to call this out, TZ.
01:41:00
William Dunphey
I predicted ah both Corviknight and Bastion in my caster predictions. And I feel like I mainlined the universe, alright? I knew exactly what was coming.
01:41:11
William Dunphey
But not everyone not everyone shared my sentiment. So let's look at some of the ah the more um common themes, the more overlapping themes that we've seen at this tournament.
01:41:18
zzweilous
Thank
01:41:21
William Dunphey
I do think that Murkrow's success in Monterey did influence a lot of trainers. We saw Dunebug, Ashton Ash, as well as Semi all playing Murkrow. Semi, the latter of the three, with Shadow Murkrow. We also had Galarian Moltres taking to the skies quite often.
01:41:35
William Dunphey
Cradillig and Galarian Corsolo were basically ubiquitous outside of a few other ghost-type subs. Bugsteals, I think we had a bit more Fortress, and we had a bit more Tinketan and Scizor in this tournament.
01:41:50
William Dunphey
um we also had some surprises lantern on trend's team as well as dugong and then uh arrow with the guzzlord and steel combination in his shadow steelix which is really cool uh what's so what stands out to you does does this feel like the proper like amalgamation of frankfurt monterey or is this its own unique creation
01:42:10
zzweilous
So, like, one thing that stood out to me a little bit is that I think that Shren is going towards Fortress rather than Scizor now. So, in Frankfurt, I thought that Scizor was essentially just the bug steal type of choice with the bats team the only exception in top 16, but that team also had a Mioscarada, so um maybe we shouldn't infer too much from that, but with how well Fortress did in Monterey, a lot of people actually, like a lot of trainers picked up on that.
01:42:42
zzweilous
We have um four Fortress in top 16, but only two Shadow of Scizor on the teams of Arrow and Out of Pocket.
01:42:42
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:42:51
zzweilous
So yeah, a little bit of ah of a change there. I think that the nice thing about Fortress, again, it's it's a Pokemon that you don't need to reserve shields for, so you can feel free to bring something else on your on your line of six that you invest the shields shields in instead.
01:43:00
William Dunphey
yeah
01:43:09
zzweilous
um For example, a Murkrow. It's so interesting that um we also did see the Shadow Murkrow. I personally always thought that, okay, this may be overkill because um one thing that you don't want your that you don't want to happen to your Murkrow is you don't want it to get fast attacked down.
01:43:30
William Dunphey
Interesting.
01:43:30
zzweilous
um But then I... Let me it this way. So... so I think the reason why Murkrow is good right now is because all the damage dealing fast attacks are resisted by it. Or like most of the damage dealing fast attacks are resisted by it.
01:43:51
zzweilous
You have Mud Slap, double resisted.
01:43:51
William Dunphey
interesting
01:43:52
zzweilous
You have Astonish, resisted. You have Sucker Punch, resisted. um So like a lot of the damage that is being put out immediately by Pokemon in the meta doesn't actually affect Murkrow all that much.
01:44:05
William Dunphey
Interesting.
01:44:06
zzweilous
But I think if you are a Shadow, Maybe even like assets from Credily start adding up. Bug bites from Fortress start adding up. And that way, I think you may run into trouble as the Shadow Mercro more quickly than you would do as the regular.
01:44:24
zzweilous
But again, like still great performance by Semmy who didn't go for the Fortress as the sole Mercro user who didn't go for that pairing. Instead had a team that was fairly soft to Credily.
01:44:37
zzweilous
But I guess if you are the Shadow Murkrow, a Drillapack probably still chunks Crinilly, plus you outpace. So um maybe you can just play that neutrally really, really well.
01:44:43
William Dunphey
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:44:47
zzweilous
um So yeah, that was like an observation that I had regarding the Murkrows. And yeah, other than that, I feel as if the teams that, first of all, there was an update to the 7-Eleven team and that Dedene, which was everywhere in Monterey, was now nowhere in Pittsburgh.
01:45:08
zzweilous
on So instead we saw Unovan Stunfisk fill out that role as a little bit of a more flexible electric type maybe. um Also one that can play better into the Shadow Sizzle. We just talked about how a Shadow Sizzle was a real problem for the team in the grand finals, but now you have an electric type that actually resists the bullet punches rather than taking neutral from them. So on that was certainly a consideration that ah played a role in that adjustment.
01:45:37
zzweilous
But yeah, I feel as if new ideas are still emerging with the um top two teams being a Bas-Yodon Shadow Annihilate team and a Corviknight Guzzlo team. So
Team Composition & Counter Strategies
01:45:50
zzweilous
yeah, there's certainly developments that haven't been seen yet at either of the previous regionals, in part informed by the fact that AirCutter Corviknight was not legal in either Monterey or Frankfurt and only became available in this new AirCata Community Day version for the Pittsburgh Regional.
01:46:12
William Dunphey
I need to apologize to you, ZZ. I've been trying to to put it in the back of my mind, but I just have to say it. I think we talked about this in our meta preview, and I definitely told some friends this over the past weekend.
01:46:25
William Dunphey
I kept saying the same thing. I said, Corviknight is going to top cut, but I don't think it's going to win. And I was more correct than I intended to be. And if I put that bad juju on you, take full fault for it.
01:46:38
zzweilous
Exactly.
01:46:39
William Dunphey
But um yeah, you mentioned Air air Cutter Corbin. I think a couple times we might have confused the viewers on stream ah because we would just say this Pokemon has not been eligible until now.
01:46:50
William Dunphey
But it has, of course. We saw Nickname win last season with it. Air Cutter was not eligible, and I'm really glad you made that that distinction.
01:46:55
zzweilous
exactly
01:46:57
William Dunphey
So I that's important for people to know, especially if you're new to competitive Pokemon Go. There is that two-week wait period after the Tuesday of release. So yeah. Again, air cutter Corbinite not eligible in Monterey and Frankfurt.
01:47:10
William Dunphey
Would it have made a difference there? Hard to say, ah but it definitely had its moment in in Pittsburgh. So I agree with you. A lot of the things kind of stayed the same. You did see that interesting support for Murkro kind of being built into that 7-11 team structure. Whenever I see Ashton Ash's team, I just assume this is an Eomero creation or at least, you know, 80-20 Eomero contribution. Yeah.
01:47:33
William Dunphey
But um I'm noticing as well, ah as I look at this bracket again, a lot of electric types kind of rising up here. Lantern on a trans team, charge a bug for out of pocket. ah Then you've got the two stun fisk in third and fourth place, ah your own charge a bug.
01:47:47
William Dunphey
And then Steiner kind of proves that there there are other ways to get the same job done. he actually went with double rock. And this was something I was thinking about on the drive in. um How can you stop double rock unless you decide to bring something like a counter user? Because when you do have the Cradilly and you do have the Bass Seed on, um it just feels like that's so much to work through. And the Cradilly covers that ground type weakness with its grass typing. So I don't know. It it feels like it feels difficult. I don't think Primate could beat double rock.
01:48:20
William Dunphey
It doesn't have the bulk to do it. i don't I think that the only option is Annihilate.
01:48:24
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:48:24
William Dunphey
I'm not sure how you feel about that.
01:48:27
zzweilous
I don't know. Like, it depends. um Obviously, and like it's not just double rock, right? It's also things that protect the two rock types.
01:48:37
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:48:38
zzweilous
um And, like, obviously, like, one fighting type is going to play really, really well into rock types. Like, rock is not a great defensive typing. Like, it's strength. Like, Bastiodon's strength lies in its...
01:48:52
zzweilous
um steel resistances and in its stat product whereas credily's strengths lie in its grass rock coverage which is just like one man grass hole as we alluded to previously where you can ah really core break those ground flying cores really well um and then obviously rock tomb just being really good attacks smacked on being buffed defensively i think rocks are vulnerable but they're probably not really targeted as much like at least bastiodon isn't um you know maybe like people are targeting the Cridilly in all all sorts of different ways like with the Fortress for example or with the Shedded Scizor or even with the Golisopod but those Pokemon have playable okay-ish matchups into Bastiodon at best so that doesn't actually work all that well and also there are like how many
01:49:50
William Dunphey
That's it.
01:49:52
zzweilous
other fighting types that we see in top card. I see one um Shadow Primape on the team of GCB, and I also see the um Annihilate, the Shadow Annihilate on Caleb's team.
01:50:00
William Dunphey
that's it
01:50:06
zzweilous
But other than that, they're pretty much missing an action. So it was a really good meta call to um bring those Pokemon together, also having some fighting coverage in Corsula, in Shadow Annihilate on that team. So overall, just like a a really balanced team with Bastiodon just being able to dominate neutrals.
01:50:27
zzweilous
One Pokemon that I had in mind that I wish I had um in in Pittsburgh was actually Clotzaya.
01:50:34
William Dunphey
Yeah? Oh, yeah.
01:50:36
zzweilous
Because Clotzaya, obviously, it fears the Gastrodon, but you can ensure yourself against Gastrodon in so many ways, whether you have the own Crideli, which then puts out Grass-type damage, whether you have Flying-types such as Corvinite,
01:50:52
zzweilous
Whether you just have neutrally winning matchups such as with Galarian Corsola. like There's ways of um combating Gastrodon and keeping the Claude Zaya safe.
01:51:02
zzweilous
But if you look at it, it's one of the few things that has a neutral winning matchup against Grydily. It has a solid enough matchup against picks such as Galarian Moltres, Annihilabe, or Corsola.
01:51:15
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:51:15
zzweilous
And it's one of the hardest answer to Bastiodon. There would be like four to five good to playable matchups for a Claude Zaya on that winning team. But the only Claude Zaya that made it to top card was on Silent Beast's team.
01:51:29
zzweilous
um And I don't believe Silent Beast got to T-Steiner. So um yeah, dodged that bullet, but makes a lot of sense because Claude Zaya was capping out at like 10-ish percent usage.
01:51:42
zzweilous
So not the most common Pokemon in the tournament.
01:51:43
William Dunphey
yeah
01:51:46
William Dunphey
So I'm really glad you brought up Silent Beast Team. I just want your
Unique Team Compositions & Player Insights
01:51:50
William Dunphey
your knee-jerk reaction, your authentic reaction here. What do you think of Silent Beast Team? So the full scope here is Gastrodon, Shadow Charizard, Furret, as well as Gudra, Clodsire, and Galarian Corsola.
01:52:03
William Dunphey
I know that with your specific playstyle, this might not be the perfect fit for you, but do you feel like this is a strong six?
01:52:12
zzweilous
I like this team. I like a bunch of Pokémon individually. like I've been bringing a lot of Galarian Corsula. It's been a little more targeted recently, but I still believe that it's like like it's not that bold of a call to say that it's the best Ghost type right now.
01:52:26
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:52:26
zzweilous
Gudra has a lot of flexibility. Firid has a lot of flexibility. You know that Firid, Gudra, and Shadow Charizard also core really well. Then you have another core in the Gastrodon with the Charizard, just like classic ground flying.
01:52:42
zzweilous
um There's a lot of stuff that really works, like, syncs well together. um One thing that I don't like about this team is that three of the Pokémon are terrible into Galarian Voltress, and the other three are, like, neutral to playable. um So, again, that's a moment where I would say, okay, I guess, like, I can...
01:52:59
William Dunphey
Good point.
01:53:04
zzweilous
I know that my po that my opponent is going to bring out this Pokémon every single time, so I just play Gujar, Clot-Zyacor, and I'm probably all right. kind of all right-ish. um But it's still a risk to take because you become very predictable for your opponent.
01:53:19
zzweilous
So like just imagine you go up against somebody who has both the Galarian Moltres and like an Ice type.
01:53:24
William Dunphey
With ice.
01:53:27
zzweilous
ah Then your two best answers are also, like if if it's like like a Dugong, for example, that doesn't even do terribly into Shadow Charizard, how do you really combat that without having to play RPS?
01:53:35
William Dunphey
Oh. Yeah. Yeah.
01:53:40
zzweilous
um So yeah, I like Silent Beast team building in general. We talked briefly in Pittsburgh and I was telling him how I remember like a deep run that he did last season and how he like played a Shadow Machamp in practice and went for a Shadow Prime mape in the real tournament and did super well.
01:54:00
zzweilous
So tends to prefer those maybe not super bulky but flexible Pokemon and had a really good showing again.
01:54:00
William Dunphey
yeah
01:54:08
zzweilous
on But yeah, I'm always scared of Moltres, so I can't really cosign that Pokemon. And yeah, I guess we'll get into being scared of more tras later on as well when we talk about the grand finals.
01:54:15
William Dunphey
That's fair.
01:54:20
William Dunphey
Yeah, absolutely. No, I really ah appreciate that that insight. And I feel like a lot of players who are listening to the show and maybe are like frustrated with their own team building, I think it's good for them to hear um you know your perspective and occasionally, maybe every so often, my perspective on on team building.
01:54:40
William Dunphey
But um I want to do a
Tournament Bracket Breakdown
01:54:41
William Dunphey
quick bracket breakdown here for Pitt before we get into our our top cut and then our grand finals. We had some really fascinating groups. And I just want to dedicate a little bit of time to talking about each of them.
01:54:52
William Dunphey
ah Group B in particular, I need to hear your thoughts on. So Group A, Jason2890 competed in Pittsburgh. I was really excited to see him playing because he is a Go Battle League titan. One of the best, if not the best to ever do it in Go Battle League.
01:55:07
William Dunphey
And he's always so well-spoken. That was one of my interviews was Jason talking about his GBL success.
01:55:09
zzweilous
yeah
01:55:12
William Dunphey
ah The bad news for Jason is that he won one round before he faced off against Harjeff. And he lost to Harjeff in round two. He won two more rounds in the in the losers bracket until Harjeff found him again for the second time and knocked him out of the tournament.
01:55:26
William Dunphey
So ah Jason was only defeated by one.
01:55:27
zzweilous
and want to I wonder whether Jason will ever be seeded once they add championship points to JBL. Because he may just accidentally qualify for Worlds based on that alone.
01:55:36
William Dunphey
Good ah question.
01:55:42
William Dunphey
ah No, seriously. I think if anyone has a shot to do it, it's him. And Jason, being such an impressive player, it's crazy that he only lost to one person all weekend. and He lost to that person twice, and unfortunately that ended his tournament run. So Jason was my my shout-out for Group A. i actually wrote these notes on the plane, so I'll just i'll just read these off.
01:56:02
William Dunphey
ah Group b I called this the homie group. Because there were so many homies here.
01:56:06
zzweilous
yeah
01:56:07
William Dunphey
ZZ versus Mish in round three, which is on stream. A little friendly fire there ah between the two of you. We talked about that in the interview. ah H. Shira was also in this group. She took down Adib in round three and then disposed of Magic Mason in round four.
01:56:21
William Dunphey
ah So she was really, really good. um Then we had Mish with a deep loser's bracket run until she met Lil' Winery in round six, who took down Mish.
01:56:30
zzweilous
Yes.
01:56:30
William Dunphey
So...
01:56:31
zzweilous
We like to, like, at my my team of sharks and recreation, we like to call that shark on shark violence. It happens far too often, but it was still a fantastic run by both of them, earning 160 championship points each.
01:56:37
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:56:45
zzweilous
So yeah, we're we're hoping to get a good amount of Sharks qualified for Worlds next year again. so that was a pretty decent start to that mission.
01:56:56
zzweilous
ah One thing that I did want to point out about group A, it was also a group where three trainers, three high profile trainers brought a Basuron in Jason, in Rajef and in Caleb.
01:57:00
William Dunphey
yeah
01:57:07
William Dunphey
Oh.
01:57:12
zzweilous
So that was essentially Where I thought they kept all the Bastis, but there was one more in the tournament as it turns out.
01:57:19
William Dunphey
Yeah, right. Three quarters of the Bastionons were contained to Group a and guaranteed basically to cannibalize each other.
01:57:22
zzweilous
Hmm.
01:57:26
William Dunphey
um So, yeah, what an unfortunate turn of events. But, ah yeah, the Group B was also very unfortunate to me because I kept on seeing the names. i was like, oh, my God. ah it's It's like the Mr. Incredibles meme where it's like those who know and those who don't know.
01:57:40
William Dunphey
It's like, oh, we're in the same group, and he's so happy.
01:57:42
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:57:42
William Dunphey
It's like those who know we're in the same group, and then it's just the the blacked out like dread that we're going to have to battle each other at some point.
01:57:44
zzweilous
a
01:57:49
William Dunphey
So that was really, really funny. ah Group C, Lil Sparty had a really nice run. I wanted to point this out. Lil Sparty brought down Valor, Ashe, and Pheeb before losing zero two to Dune, who was our third place finisher.
01:58:03
William Dunphey
This was also very cool in terms of Go Battle League because No Trouble Clef and N. Lucio. So our first ever GBLA champion all those years back taking on N. Lucio, one of my my favorite players in in um in that bracket.
01:58:18
William Dunphey
It looks like ah they both fell down to the losers bracket where they face each other, believe it or not. No Trouble took on N. Lucio, and Lucio won that 2-0. I believe No Trouble went in the tournament, which is unfortunate, but I do look for him to come back and compete some more.
01:58:33
zzweilous
But yeah, like that's one of the groups where we say like, oh, Europe is so stacked and like they have so much depth of talent.
01:58:34
William Dunphey
ah
01:58:40
zzweilous
I feel like that group was also in that way. Like that is just like a crazy amount of very high profile unseeded.
01:58:49
William Dunphey
Exactly, exactly. And in again, double elimination is not the most forgiving, but maybe one day, maybe one day we'll have Swiss. ah Group D, Silent Beast. This is a shocking run to me because Silent Beast ended up making day two. We were talking about his team earlier.
01:59:03
William Dunphey
He actually lost round two to Spellbringer, who I had a few minutes to catch up with on Friday when I was watching everyone battle out in the challenge. Spellbringer is a really nice guy. ah He lost round two to Spellbringer, but powered his way through that loser side bracket to make top cut, even winning a rematch versus Spellbringer in round five. So Silent Beast really turned it on after that.
01:59:25
William Dunphey
Group E was Steinar's bracket. We know how that went. He was able to win that winner's side of that. And then FrankieT52, one of my buddies from Orlando, he was knocked out of round six. If he would have won round six and round seven, he would have made it to day two on the loser side bracket. So I hope Frankie is proud that.
01:59:41
William Dunphey
of the run he had there. ah Group F, just briefly, the Tarion versus Hungry Wolfpack was the losers finals where Wolfpack won 2-0. Group G was stacked. All right. This was an insane group. We had Studmuffins, Rockhaven, Eomero, Trent, and Phoenix Stark.
01:59:58
William Dunphey
ah Trent won the winner's side and then Phoenix Stark defeated Eomero in the loser's side to advance from day two from Group G. So
Celebration of Women Trainers
02:00:05
William Dunphey
we talked about the earlier group with the GBL legends in it being good, but Group G was also insane.
02:00:11
William Dunphey
And finally, the last group I wanted to mention was Group H. BJ Powat takes down Sceptile Ice, who is Homestays Henry's number one fan, in round two. Enhoff defeated LNDS Kanan in round three, and then Kanan was eliminated by Sceptile.
02:00:25
William Dunphey
And then Phoenix the Boss versus Enhoff in the Losers' Finals, which Anna won 2-0. oh
02:00:30
zzweilous
It's such a crazy losers from three if you have Elenius Kahnan versus Scepter Likes.
02:00:36
William Dunphey
Right? SNC.
02:00:39
zzweilous
That could be a top four matchup easily.
02:00:42
William Dunphey
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Totally insane. ah But that's my break it, but break it, bracket breakdown.
02:00:48
zzweilous
Break it, break down. Yes, yes.
02:00:49
William Dunphey
Yeah. Break it down bracket of Pittsburgh. So.
02:00:53
zzweilous
I think one thing, like now that we went through all the groups individually, ah one thing that I want to call out specifically is how great it was showing the women of this community had this weekend because not only did they have plenty of streamed appearances, but we also had, I think for the first time since Baltimore last year when Kelsey Kaye and the Winery made Top Guard, we had
02:00:53
William Dunphey
ah
02:01:17
zzweilous
two women in top 16 with Enhoff and H. Shira. And also think that we had like five women in top 25 or 32.
02:01:29
zzweilous
So certainly something to be proud of for everyone involved.
02:01:30
William Dunphey
Yep.
02:01:35
William Dunphey
I really thought it was amazing when we had um two women battling on stage and the judge was Ali T. I was like, this is insane. This is so cool. But yeah, no, I thought that was incredible.
02:01:45
zzweilous
And I think then they ah like eventually called over Susie for like a dispute situation so
02:01:52
William Dunphey
That was awesome. um Obviously, we don't cover too many political things on the show, and I don't want to linger on this too long. ah But given recent news in the VG area, ah which is very, very, very sad, um it feels good that we have women trainers in Go that are competing, are active, and hopefully in every single ah moment that they're at the regional championships, they feel safe and welcomed.
02:02:06
zzweilous
yeah
02:02:18
William Dunphey
So, Seeing them on stage is one thing, and I'm really, really glad that they're able to ah to do that time and time again. I agree with
Grand Finals Analysis & Competitive Drive
02:02:25
William Dunphey
you. I thought this was an incredible showcase of of women trainers. And I shouted out Lil Sparty as well in her bracket run, Lil Winery. All the Lils had had really good runs, taking down big names.
02:02:34
William Dunphey
And Mish as well. I mean, Mish was awesome. I hope she's really proud of of but she had to of what she accomplished. She had to run up against some guy from Germany in round three. Talk about an unfair draw.
02:02:45
zzweilous
it was it was like it was like a really tough record like with magic mason coming off like a crazy world's placement too so yeah definitely definitely very strong showing and proud of my teammates making it this far
02:02:52
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:02:59
William Dunphey
Yeah, absolutely. Well, ZZ, if there's nothing else we want to mention about the overall top cut and the team compositions, I think we can go to the dreaded grand finals.
02:03:10
William Dunphey
What do you say?
02:03:10
zzweilous
jesus yeah let's let's jump in i don't even have I don't even have notes, but I will answer all of your questions that you may have.
02:03:17
William Dunphey
Okay, so so ah sorry, I need to take one step back. When you reverse swept Steinar the first time, after going down 0-2, you won three in a row.
02:03:25
zzweilous
Yes.
02:03:28
William Dunphey
That was one of the coolest moments I've seen in championship series history. I'm a little biased, right? But that was super sick. When you popped off at the end, you kind of brought your fist in and you shouted something.
02:03:40
William Dunphey
And it looked like some of those words started with F. I just want to know what was said when you had your pop off. And if you can say it on the broadcast.
02:03:50
zzweilous
I ah will be totally honest. I have no idea what I said in that moment.
02:03:56
William Dunphey
What?
02:03:56
zzweilous
like i have no I have no recollection. It was just like a ah reaction, right? like I don't think I thought of anything ah in particular.
02:04:08
zzweilous
i was just like so relieved to it.
02:04:08
William Dunphey
Wow.
02:04:10
zzweilous
like The switch clock came up one asset before the move was thrown and I decided that he because he had the knowledge of winning CMP, he would try to do it again.
02:04:23
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:04:23
zzweilous
and that's why I swapped at the time when I swapped. And then I just hoped that he would not get the perfect undercharge, which I know would be super, super difficult because you need to calculate how you acid down Corviknight, which like, how how would you know the damage ranges for that exactly?
02:04:40
William Dunphey
yeah What?
02:04:42
zzweilous
ah um So i was I was hopeful that I had it at that moment. And when I saw the amount of undercharge I knew I would get to ah an air cutter before getting thumped down. So, um, but yeah, it was, it was a really good moment.
02:04:52
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
02:04:55
William Dunphey
Well,
02:04:57
zzweilous
It was the first time I entered a grand finals from the winner side, by the way, not that it helped me.
02:05:01
William Dunphey
Oh, interesting. I actually didn't know that. um I'll, I'll insert the clip of the stream where you, you have your pop off. Maybe we we can get some bad lip readings going and people that watch it can commentate what they think you're saying.
02:05:10
zzweilous
Oh geez.
02:05:13
zzweilous
jesus
02:05:15
William Dunphey
ah But yeah, it looks, it looks something akin to let's effing go, or that's what I'm effing talking about is, is kind of what I, what I took from it.
02:05:23
zzweilous
That may be closer to what was said in that moment, but like I couldn't tell you for sure.
02:05:23
William Dunphey
But,
02:05:29
William Dunphey
Yeah, I absolutely loved it. it was yeah I think that's the most, um the most like ah how do i how do I phrase it? Not angry or aggressive, but that's like the most competitive energy.
02:05:40
zzweilous
Emotional?
02:05:41
William Dunphey
No, and not not even emotional because I've seen you be very grateful on stage. I've seen you be very humble. I've seen you you know express those emotions. This was more like towards the the fiery side.
02:05:52
William Dunphey
That was the most fire I think I've seen come out of you on stage, which I think was was really, really fun because you're always so well composed and well put together, right? You keep to yourself and you're very disciplined, but seeing you actually like pop off, I was like,
02:06:07
William Dunphey
Hell yeah, ZZ. I'm feeling this. This is insane. I haven't seen this side, but I like it, right? So that was the good news. That was the probably the peak point for you in this tournament.
02:06:19
William Dunphey
um Because as we've alluded to, if if you didn't watch the stream, ZZ did face Steinar again, this time in the grand finals.
02:06:19
zzweilous
Yeah.
02:06:26
William Dunphey
Steinar fell down to the loser's side bracket, ended up beating Dunebug, made it back up to that that grand final stage. um And things did not go as well as they did for you in your first meeting. So game one, this is actually a really famous... In my mind, this is already a famous game because you lead Chargebug into Bastiodon.
02:06:44
William Dunphey
Your full team is Chargebug, Cradilly, Corviknight, Steinar with Bastiodon, Galarian, Corsela, and Cradilly. What shocked me is that you stayed in for the four vault switches and then went to Cradilly.
02:06:57
William Dunphey
It almost felt like you were just... you were refusing to play the alignment game and you were not going to make the instant swap and you did not want to leave empty handed. And having that energy on the charge bug is what eventually saved you in that game number one.
02:07:13
zzweilous
So a lot of people asked me whether, like why I was leading Chargerbug so much. And there's there's two reasons for that.
02:07:25
zzweilous
So the very first reason was that there could never be a Bastiodon lead with an Annihilate in the back.
02:07:32
zzweilous
And that's because that would be an unnecessary risk for Steiner to take because I would have a positive matchup with my standard take Corviknight in the front if he did that, and then if he um had an Annihilape also, then that would just be threatened by ah my energy from the Corviknight. So um if he safe-swap the Annihilape in that situation, like, first of all, he could get met with the Galerian Corsoda, which would then just be game over for him, so we would probably never do that.
02:07:32
William Dunphey
Oh.
02:08:05
zzweilous
But also, I could just chip and dip with an Air Cutter, so that's another reason for him to never do that. If he kept the Annihilate in the back in a scenario like that, i could I would not even need swap to then have a Pokemon that probably was good into both options in the back. And even though Annihilate can make that really competitive while shields are up,
02:08:25
zzweilous
um i against every other Pokemon, I get energy for relatively cheap with the Corviknight. So just like the energy advantage that I would have had in an endgame scenario like that, It made me really confident that behind a Bastiodon there could never be an Annihilate.
02:08:36
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:08:43
zzweilous
So what I was thinking then was, okay, his second most likely Pokemon to come other than Bastiodon, in my eyes, was Galarian Moltres.
02:08:55
zzweilous
I was very surprised to not see that much Galarian Moltres at all in my very first best of five against Dynar.
02:09:03
William Dunphey
yeah
02:09:03
zzweilous
Maybe it was because I played so much Chargerbug, Criddleycore, um But yeah, I tried to really protect myself from that Galerian Voltres because that thing not only would have been a hard counter to Gastrodon, which was my like most obvious Basti answer, but it also would have entirely shut down Corviknight because it was on Payback and not on Raithberg.
02:09:27
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:09:34
zzweilous
Corviknight has a playable one shield matchup against Galarian Moltres if it was on double thigh movesets. um But like that, I can't really do anything. That's just really, really miserable for the Corviknight.
02:09:47
zzweilous
um So yeah I was trying to really ensure myself against the Galarian Moltres, which I was thinking would come every game. So if I had like one good thing in the back and one good thing in the front, I was very likely to have positive alignment against Galarian Moltres.
02:10:03
zzweilous
And then I also knew that if I um build up energy with the Charger Bug, then swapped in the Cridilly to tank the Bastiodon's Charger attack energy, he would be hard-pressed to really counter that Cridilly super well because of the fact that it was so unlikely for him to ah have the Annihilate ready for that situation. So he could maybe stay in with the Bastiodon against the Cridilly and win the matchup that way.
02:10:34
zzweilous
that would misalign switch clocks. It would mean that I had two moves on the charger bug to sweep the late game. um Or he could swap out and bring in another answer. But if he was to swap out into his Credily, then I would be ahead on energy even by just one acid.
02:10:53
zzweilous
And I would still be above half health if I only took that Stone Edge. And I would be able to potentially force alignment and then get my load a charger on whatever he had in the back while getting my Corviknight in the back onto his Basti and then sand attacking that a lot.
02:11:11
zzweilous
So I had like multiple ideas of how I would arrive at victory even if I let the charger into Basti. The mistake that I think I made in some of those matches where that was my initial position was that I swapped into the Cradilly too early.
02:11:29
zzweilous
I think I should have always done five world switches and loaded up to double charge attacks before dipping into the Cradilly because that way Steiner would have had to, or would have been likely to immediately throw the Stone Edge and leave me like significantly above half health.
02:11:49
zzweilous
There was at least one game, maybe two, where I only did four world switches
02:11:54
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:11:54
zzweilous
He got more um Smackdowns in on my Cridilly and those Smackdowns doing more than assets, I presume, ah then made it so that my Cridilly was actually getting farmed down by his Cridilly.
02:12:03
William Dunphey
ye
02:12:09
zzweilous
So that was a lack of commitment on my end to the farm up with the Charger bug. And that was informed by mishap that happened to me in game one of Winners Finals, where tried to not let him catch my...
02:12:23
zzweilous
ah charger bug energy on the Bastion while I managed to kind of turn the tables a little bit and had the charger against Voltres because I already flipped the alignment the way I align i laid it out.
02:12:38
zzweilous
um But I overtapped on my world switch, took one too many smackdowns once the Bastion came in after a short turn wait by him.
02:12:38
William Dunphey
health.
02:12:48
zzweilous
um And then in the end game, I didn't have enough health on my charger bug to take out the mortars. So that made me think that, oh, like maybe if I swap earlier, I may not have enough, and I may not have the exact same amount of energy on my charger bug, but I would have had more health if I had to take like a smackdown in the late game again.
02:13:00
William Dunphey
maintained some health
02:13:10
zzweilous
um But yeah, I needed to be very, very precise in all of those games. And there were at least three or four where i wasn't precise enough. So I couldn't really fight back from the positions I found myself in.
02:13:25
William Dunphey
Looking at the teams, um first of all, I think I just wanted to circle back to the very first point you made and just remind everyone like how valuable that insight was. like we We talk a lot about which which individual Pokemon are good or which archetypes are are strong or which you know duos or even trios are are powerful.
02:13:45
William Dunphey
But your ability to say, if if I'm going to see Bastion on, I won't see Annihilate on the same team. That process of elimination is something that I feel like we don't spend enough time. We don't dedicate enough um energy to actually explaining.
02:14:00
William Dunphey
And that's actually such a valuable point. I really hope everyone is enjoying this episode. It feels like a very, very good one. um But I wanted to to circle back to the issue that you were having with the Glary Moltres.
02:14:12
William Dunphey
um Your Guzzlord was running Brutal Swing and Sledge Bomb. I know there's some Guzzlords that are still running Dragon Claw. I'm not exactly sure what Arrow was running. He might have been running the same moveset as you.
02:14:24
William Dunphey
I believe he was. But um the Guzzlord seems like the most obvious answer, neutrally speaking, to that Glary Moltres. Outside of like the charge bug, the super effective damage, whatever. The Guzzlord seemed like the good answer, but the amount of stress that Steinar's team exerted on your comps is, it really can't be understated because sure, you can have the Guzzlord versus the Gastrodon. That's like very neutral. It's very close, extremely competitive, could go either way.
02:14:50
William Dunphey
You have your Guzzlord versus the Cradle, which is, you know, competitive still. You have your Guzzlord versus the Galarian Corsula, which is probably the most dominant matchup you had, but then you had two... abysmal matchups being the shadow annihilate and the bastion so two pokemon we began this whole point talking about were very difficult for your guzzlord to actually take and you did actually bring your guzzlord to at least a couple games i believe and it did well for you but you could tell the swing and momentum as soon as the bastion came back out and guzzlord had to try to do something against it it was really really tough to get past so
02:15:26
William Dunphey
Game one, you execute it beautifully in the grand finals. I believe your charge bug survives with just like one HP. Steinar switches in the Bastion and throws the Smackdown, and a less prepared trainer would have gone for a Volt switch, taken the extra damage, and lost the game.
02:15:42
William Dunphey
But with your control, you were able to throw the Discharge into the Bastion, withstand the assets to get to a X-Hizzur versus the Cradilly, and win that game number one. And you were all smiles after that. That was that was really fun because you recognized that you had it. And Butters and I were losing our collective minds at how good that that series was to start.
02:16:02
William Dunphey
um Game number two, this is gonna this is going to be so interesting because games one and two, Steinar played Bastion, Galarian Corsal, Cradilly. And then games three and four, he does what you were concerned about. He plays a Galarian Moltres. He swaps out his one Galar Pokemon for another, bringing in bringing the bird. So...
02:16:20
William Dunphey
so I'm not sure if there's anything you really wanted to say about game number two, but I do think that the adjustments in game number three and game number four made your pivot over to Gastrodon in the reset even more ambitious because you had seen ABB strong to take Gastrodon in the Glare-Multrace and the Graded League combo. So um in that first grand final set, can you just walk us through your mindset, how things were going, and what wasn't working through those next three games?
02:16:50
zzweilous
Okay, so I think where it all fell apart was I was in a winning position in one of the games. I don't remember whether it was game two or game three, but there was like a situation where I had a lot of um energy on my Corviknight and Steiner had a Corsola that was in payback range and a Bastiodon that was almost knocked out.
02:17:16
William Dunphey
Game two.
02:17:17
zzweilous
And...
02:17:19
zzweilous
And i was like, okay, you just wait until the astonish comes through and then you throw the payback. And then I waited for a turn and then i didn't trust the game because what has to happen and watch had happened in the winners finals is that I got some late visual updates and that was really annoying to me. So I
Technical Challenges in Competitive Play
02:17:40
zzweilous
just waited a turn rather than actually waiting for um the um animation to come through.
02:17:46
zzweilous
And I was so afraid that he was just like, farming me down as we were speaking um so and just waited to turn and through anyway because i just didn't have the confidence that what was happening on screen was actually what was happening uh and he managed to just also wait a turn and then catch on the bust i couldn't undercharge it enough to farm down to another payback and instead of with like three games to win it all all of a sudden i'm 1-1 and then like
02:18:09
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
02:18:17
zzweilous
I don't know whether it was game three or four, but eventually he figures out that, oh, he's relying on Corviknight as his Bastion answer. If I just bring Galarian Moltres, there's not really anything he can do.
02:18:28
zzweilous
And once Steiner found out that Moltres is actually his second best Pokemon, it was essentially over for me because like Bastion in the lead, Moltres in the back, that's just something that I can barely answer properly if I don't call the line perfectly and have like gastro then i chip the safe swap and then i keep alignment and then i have like like what what is even my i guess like he doesn't have payback so maybe charger is fine there but yeah it would have it would have been always would have always been really really tough for me um as soon as he figured out that moltres was so so strong for him so yeah like it was it was essentially like
02:19:10
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:19:13
zzweilous
uphill from the moment he found that out but yeah i threw away the tournament the moment i let him catch and yeah i wish i'd just like just like i consciously thought it to myself oh you just wait for the astonish and you have this game and i didn't wait for the astonish and yeah i was i was conditioned to the game not working so it's like a little tough
02:19:33
William Dunphey
a i so I can relate to that in terms of Go Battle League. i actually sent in a bug report to Niantic. This was um this was a few weeks back.
02:19:46
William Dunphey
But I sent in a bug report because I was in a similar situation as you where I was waiting for the moves to come through so that I could decide when to throw. ah But because of a the fear of a visual bug, I just went ahead and yellowed and threw anyway and ended up losing the game.
02:20:02
William Dunphey
And this was like, I know this is something that a lot of PVPers have struggled with over the past few seasons, but I was sitting, you know, on the couch playing a game and this happened and the rage that filled my body. When that happened to me, i was so tilted, tilted off the earth.
02:20:19
William Dunphey
I can only imagine how you must've been feeling up on stage with all this on the line, all this at stake. And that one moment, because that's that's really all you have is one moment to either second guess the game or to go all in.
02:20:30
zzweilous
yeah
02:20:33
William Dunphey
And it's so, so risky.
02:20:34
zzweilous
I would have
Strategic Shifts in Grand Finals Reset
02:20:35
zzweilous
had three match points and
02:20:38
William Dunphey
Yes. You would have more chances to to just seal it and put it away. this is Remember, everyone, this is the same thing that happened to Arrow when he was competing at Worlds.
02:20:49
William Dunphey
I believe it was um was two Steel types on the field, and Arrow was waiting for ah for the timer. And the move came through from his opponent. ah It's escaping me right now who he was playing.
02:21:03
William Dunphey
But the move came through from his opponent. He came in with the Steelix, but he was like a turn behind or something like that. And he missed out on the game-winning charge attack. So that's a major issue that i really hope gets fixed, patched, updated, however you want to say it, with competitive Pokemon. Because tapping, giving the input to the screen, should not be the only way that you can see what's happening. Because that's just, come on.
02:21:24
William Dunphey
Waiting a turn is a huge part of skill expression. Massive, massive part. um The game 2 to me was the game of 1 HP survivals. This was Bastiodon surviving on 1 HP to get the Stone Edge versus your Guzzlord and take your final shield, which is really tough.
02:21:39
William Dunphey
ah But then Guzzlord turns around survives on 1 HP to get the next brutal swing versus the Galarian Corsula, which made Steinar squirm in his seat. I could see he was very uncomfortable with that.
02:21:50
William Dunphey
But then, like you said, Steinar not force swapping allowed him to free up his timer. And then I have here Steinar catches air cut around Bastie and lands a power jam to Corviknight. But still, in the very last half second, this was a battle of Astonish versus Sand Attack.
02:22:06
William Dunphey
And Sand Attack just did not pull through and win you the game.
02:22:09
zzweilous
yeah
02:22:10
William Dunphey
Butters was even confused. Butters thought you won because he thought that the damage went through from the sand attack. But I had to explain to him. He's like, ZZ's up two o And in an alternate timeline, you were.
02:22:20
William Dunphey
But at this point, ah it was he was tied 1-1. So... so And then you're exactly right. um Steiner realized that Bastion and Glare Maltrace was the duo. To be honest, he was probably expecting for you to lean more into the Gastrodon, and maybe he was thinking that just playing neutral was the right play, but once he realized that you were leaning on the Corviknight to help you bring down the Bastion, like you said, Glare Maltrace was just too good.
02:22:45
William Dunphey
And then game four, ah you threw a move, then swapped Corviknight. Steiner immediately went Glare Maltrace into your Corviknight, and then... um Corviknight was one turn away from the payback at the very end, but it's unclear if you would have been able to beat the Glare Moultris after that.
02:23:00
William Dunphey
so That was the grand finals, the first iteration. And I didn't mention this on the cast. I told Butters afterwards, but I, you know, I watch, I watch everyone who plays.
02:23:14
William Dunphey
I noticed after that first grand final set that your body language changed. You folded your legs, you withdrew. i was looking at them, like adjusting the phones and you were like twisting your hands.
02:23:28
William Dunphey
I could see that there was like a sense of anxiety creeping in. so As a competitor in this grand finals reset situation, what was going through your mind? mean, you just told me you felt like after game two, it was over.
02:23:40
William Dunphey
Did you feel like you were running out of, out of options?
02:23:44
zzweilous
I felt like like after game two, it wasn't over. It was over once he discovered the Moltis. i was like I was making this really competitive before he knew what his optimal strategy was.
02:23:49
William Dunphey
Ah,
02:23:56
zzweilous
But it's the same way. like like Remember UIC grand finals. As long as Pato was bringing the Mandibus, ironically, just another more cope dark flyer.
02:24:08
zzweilous
like As long as that thing was on the field, I always had play. But as soon as he realized that, oh, my best Pokémon are actually different ones, it became uphill.
02:24:18
zzweilous
Even though i don't want to equate the EYC finals to this one, because um even though both Pato and Steiner played fantastically in those finals, I think that against Pato, I still had an even team composition, even after he dropped the Mana Bus.
02:24:22
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:24:34
zzweilous
um Whereas against Steiner, I think I was just always going to be on the back foot because... He had the neutral Cridilly, which I decided to not hardcover on my team at all. I decided that I want to play neutrally into it, but you can't play neutrally into a Bastion team.
02:24:50
zzweilous
So that's how he always had something safe to rely on, plus Pokemon that were really threatening for me, whereas I didn't have that safe bit as much. So I thought that was ah like a playable, but still team comp disadvantage.
02:25:08
William Dunphey
I agree.
02:25:08
zzweilous
And yeah, I knew that, okay, my my my set lead was gone after the record reset and my opponent has figured out his optimal strategy. So I knew I needed to take risks now and those risks unfortunately did not pay off.
02:25:28
William Dunphey
Well,
Emotional Stakes & Competitive Spirit
02:25:29
William Dunphey
briefly, they did. In game one of the Grand Finals Reset, ah the only note that I have here is ZZ embraces the RPS with like four exclamation marks. So game four, the reset, you strike back, you lead Gastron into Bastiodon.
02:25:43
William Dunphey
The Dons are on the field, right? um And then... Steinar swaps Cradilly, you go Guzzlord, the final set is Chargerbug versus Glare Maltrey. So you lined up everything here ah perfectly and really embraced the RPS.
02:25:57
William Dunphey
And this is something that I saw Steinar do earlier on in the tournament. ah He was not afraid at all to double down, even when things looked a little bit a precarious.
02:26:08
William Dunphey
So in game number two, after you you bounce back, you've got a window under your belt, we have a series on our hands. Game two, he goes right back to the Bastion, just totally undeterred, just not flinching whatsoever.
02:26:21
William Dunphey
This time he leads into Cradily. The only note I have for this one is that ZZ swaps the Galarian Corsula, and you get met by Galarian Moltres. So this is exactly lining up with what you were saying. Once he discovered the Bastion-Moltres combination, it was just really rough.
02:26:35
William Dunphey
Game three, Steiner goes a bit more neutral here, and I do respect him a lot for switching things up. He leads the Shadow Annihilate into your Corviknight, and ah already that probably tells you there's no Bastion in the back.
02:26:47
William Dunphey
And you've got Cradily charge a buck. So there is some hope here, right? You throw air cutters, swap charge a buck to catch the rage fist, which which I thought was really nifty. And then Steiner has a wacky, insane catch of payback on his Corsola.
02:27:00
William Dunphey
And I think that catch right there sealed up game number three of the reset.
02:27:07
William Dunphey
So... Game four of the reset, the final game of the series. This was a Guzzlord lead into Galarian Moltres, which is, you know, neutral. not ah Not definitive either way.
02:27:17
William Dunphey
Both the Dark-type shield. ZZ shields the first fly, and then Steiner shields the first sludge bomb. Steiner swaps to Cradilly. You go Corviknight. Gastron versus Galarian Corsula is the endgame, but Steiner reaches the final rock to to spear your Corviknight and win the series.
02:27:33
William Dunphey
So, again, the last two games he banded Sebastien on, but he brings that Galarian Moltres.
02:27:35
zzweilous
I was, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was very surprised that he leaned on the Galarian Corsula so much because, don't know, I felt as if I was willing to bring Pokemon that had pretty decent play into that, but I guess it's another thing on his team that was like mostly neutral, and he was certainly glad to encounter the Guzzlord in the front that game.
02:27:42
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:28:00
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:28:01
zzweilous
So, yeah.
02:28:02
William Dunphey
I agree. Well, Either way, i think you and Steinar both had an incredible performance. ah For Steinar, this was really emotional. You could see, i'm sure you saw on the VOD, you probably saw on stage.
02:28:15
William Dunphey
As soon as the series was over and he hugged you, he started to tear up. you know He got very emotional. um He's such a kind and gentle... He's like a bear, right? He's so kind and so gentle, but also such a big person.
02:28:29
William Dunphey
And I kind of said this in the cast. I said, look, he's in a region where you've got Harjef, you've got Corlash, you've got Kanan, you have all these other insane Brazilian trainers.
02:28:39
William Dunphey
in india In the grand finals of LAIC versus Marto, another Brazilian trainer in Vitarello, you have so much talent in that region. And I know that there have been...
02:28:51
William Dunphey
periods of time where Steiner has felt like he's living in the shadows of other people. And that's not a ah good, a good place to be mentally or emotionally. So for Steiner to be able to win the series, I think meant a lot to him.
02:29:02
William Dunphey
ah It's so tough, right? Because as much as, as everyone wanted you to win, i feel like if there was someone who deserved to win, was probably Steiner, you know, just such a kind, a kind soul.
02:29:13
William Dunphey
And, um you know,
02:29:14
zzweilous
Yeah, it's like another thing. I've never not felt happy for the person that defeated me a winning.
02:29:26
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:29:26
zzweilous
But I also start to notice that the more I'm in that situation and I just lose again, the more
02:29:38
zzweilous
yeah just you just struggle mentally with it.
02:29:44
William Dunphey
Yeah, I understand. And that's the thing as well. Like we talked about ah four grand finals in a row. And it's it's one of those things where I'm sure in the moment you don't really think about it that way.
02:29:55
William Dunphey
You're not like, oh, this is the fourth time I'm here. your Your body language and your approach to the grand finals and the interview, I really enjoyed the interview. I thought that you seemed confident. You seemed like you were in a good position.
02:30:06
William Dunphey
ah Mentally, you were having fun with it. I thought that was really good. And I really admire your approach all these grand finals. But yeah, man, you're a fucking competitor. You want to win.
02:30:18
William Dunphey
That's why you invest so much and you give so much of yourself to this. So yeah, I i obviously can't put myself directly in your shoes, but I can empathize.
02:30:30
William Dunphey
you know
02:30:31
zzweilous
And the thing is, like you can't ever take for granted that you make it this far. like
02:30:36
William Dunphey
Yeah, true.
02:30:37
zzweilous
with With every lost grand final, there's also the question of, will I ever get this far again? And like i can i can invest as much as I do invest and make it more likely, but I cannot guarantee it.
02:30:45
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah.
02:30:52
zzweilous
Because like if you take a look at who else is competing at these, it's just Just so much talent out there and it's not going to get easier going forward.
02:31:03
William Dunphey
yeah That's also a trap ah in its own, right? If you start looking too far ahead and you take your eye off the ball, that's a huge mental trap. So you've really got your work cut out for you, my friend.
02:31:16
William Dunphey
I mean, with all the the accolades and respect and adoration that you have earned in the community, there's still ah challenges, right? And Not all of them are on the surface and you definitely don't show them as deeply as you're feeling them. But it's such ah such a tough moment because, you know, I'm trying my hardest not to be biased during our cast.
02:31:38
William Dunphey
and And Steiner is just such a ah kind person who definitely deserves his own victories. I just wish that his victory didn't come at the expense of yours and vice versa.
02:31:48
zzweilous
Yeah, that's very true.
02:31:49
William Dunphey
You know what i mean? you know what i mean?
02:31:52
zzweilous
Oh man.
02:31:52
William Dunphey
i wish we could I wish you both could have won. That
Essence of Competition & Player Rivalry
02:31:54
William Dunphey
would have awesome. but um Yeah, ZZ. I don't think anyone questions your contribution. I don't think anyone questions your talent, just like nobody questions Steinar.
02:32:03
William Dunphey
ah We know that Steinar is basically Harjeff's greatest rival, and that's for a good reason. And you're rivals with folks like Pata, man. So you're right up there at the top.
02:32:14
zzweilous
Supposedly.
02:32:15
William Dunphey
Hey, come on. If if he is is paying you respect, he's not doing it if he didn't believe in it, right? So...
02:32:22
zzweilous
That is true.
02:32:23
William Dunphey
that was ah That was an emotional grand finals, a basically um fueled by explosive plays, insane team reads, great comps.
02:32:34
William Dunphey
My goodness. this This season, guess.
02:32:36
zzweilous
It was a good show of nothing else and I'm always glad to deliver that.
02:32:40
William Dunphey
Yes, exactly. it was It was a show for the ages. And Butters and I felt that too. I mean, Butters and I have been commentating since 2022. We did the first ever EUIC. And every time, I'm serious, like every time we went off camera, he and I were like, we turned to each other.
02:32:58
William Dunphey
We were fist bumping. We're like, oh dude, that was so good. Like, we're so excited.
02:33:01
zzweilous
Eh.
02:33:02
William Dunphey
Yeah. And then after the grand finals, I i didn't have any voice left. and i And Butters and I were talking. We're like, man, that might have been one of the best grand finals of all time. Like of all the tournaments we've done, all the dozens of of competitions, international worlds, all of them, that might have been one of the best, if not the best. So what a show.
02:33:22
William Dunphey
And what a time to be alive. You know? Well, if the 2026 season is starting that way, I cannot wait to see where it goes. I think that ah you and I are in this for the long run, and I know you have an incredible support system around you, and I know that Steiner has incredible support system as well.
02:33:40
William Dunphey
I'm sure that that has enabled you both to keep going even when you maybe felt like others were standing in the spotlight where you belonged. So i know that ah I know that you'll find your way back there, my friend.
02:33:52
William Dunphey
I know it'll come. So
Episode Recap & New Segments
02:33:54
William Dunphey
that being said, this has been a massive, massive episode. We've talked about Frankfurt. We talked about Monterey. We talked about Pittsburgh.
02:34:03
William Dunphey
We tried a couple of new things in this one as well. We talked about the bracket breakdowns, which ZZ coined the term of and will be asking for royalty payments for me very shortly. And we talked about casters.
02:34:12
zzweilous
this is true
02:34:14
William Dunphey
We covered a lot of topics. I'm not sure if there's anything we missed.
Upcoming Tournaments & Halloween Event Speculation
02:34:19
zzweilous
well we did cover like a whole lot of stuff so i feel as if we are at a point in the cast where we may just let our listeners go let them wait for i think it's milwaukee and below horizonte in probably like three weeks ish so still some time until the next show
02:34:28
William Dunphey
Yeah. I'm.
02:34:36
William Dunphey
i'm
02:34:39
William Dunphey
Yeah, I'm checking here. Belo Horizonte is October 11th and 12th. And then we have um Milwaukee the same weekend. Yeah, you're exactly right. Followed by Lille, October 25th, 26th. So um usually I prep a lot of things, like in terms of but when you can earn championship points and what's coming up.
02:34:59
William Dunphey
I'm not sure if there's anything else that you wanted to call out, but I do think those tournaments coming up in October are really exciting. October is also the spooky month. It's probably my favorite month of the year, my favorite event season of the year for Pokemon Go because we get the Halloween event.
02:35:12
William Dunphey
So I'm looking forward to that quite a bit.
02:35:13
zzweilous
Yeah, like while we were recording the podcast, Pokemon Go did drop like a preliminary schedule for the October events, like a content update, but there's still no details on what exactly the Halloween event is going to entail. So um yeah, we we may speculate.
02:35:34
zzweilous
People are still hoping for a Mimic to release, um but whether that is coming or not, every year there is that question. So far, the answer has been no, but we We keep our hopes up.
02:35:45
zzweilous
Oh,
02:35:45
William Dunphey
I feel like that's the hope every single year. And the closest we've gotten was when Pokemon debated us by giving us the Pikachu in a Mimikyu costume.
02:35:48
zzweilous
true. The fake one.
02:35:53
zzweilous
Oh, man.
02:35:54
William Dunphey
Like, geez.
02:35:55
zzweilous
fake one
02:35:56
William Dunphey
This is like the Cowboy. This is the collective Cowboy Hat Caterpie plead. Give us Mimikyu. I beg you. ah Yeah, there's an interesting event coming up as well with Diplin and Hydrapple coming to the harvest.
02:36:09
William Dunphey
I heard as well that this is like the the hardest ah evolution sequence of any Pokemon in Pokemon Go history in terms of candies. So that's going to be a thrill. But that's either here or there.
Reflections on Past Tournaments & Future Optimism
02:36:21
William Dunphey
ZZ, you're right. This has been a ah longer episode. i think that we covered about everything we're going to cover. And I cannot wait to talk about Bello, Horizonte, and Milwaukee.
02:36:30
William Dunphey
Milwaukee's actually pretty nice. I saw the B roll on had it going on.
02:36:37
zzweilous
Yeah, yeah like i've I've heard people talk about how Milwaukee isn't actually all that bad. And honestly, I did feel the same way about Pittsburgh. like i don't really like my My very first US regional was Hartford, of all places.
02:36:45
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:36:51
zzweilous
And that is not a great city. But Pittsburgh was lovely. i don't win Pittsburgh. i may I may come again next season.
02:36:59
William Dunphey
Yeah, it's the steel city, right? They used to ship um steel ah down those rivers ah back when Carnegie was at the top of his game. And after they cleaned up all that production pollution, it actually shows itself as a beautiful city with so many bridges and rivers and hills and mountains.
02:37:15
zzweilous
yeah
02:37:15
William Dunphey
I thought it was lovely. Yeah. i my friend, that was an incredible recap. We covered three incredible competitions. I honestly think this is the best start to a season we've ever had. And 2026 feels very, very special. So there's a lot of exciting things in the pipelines, behind the scenes, and ah in front of our eyes. And when all those things come together, it's going to make this a year that is unforgettable.
02:37:38
William Dunphey
ZZ, it's been an honor.
Gratitude & Excitement for Future Episodes
02:37:39
William Dunphey
It's been a pleasure. I don't know how i would do this without you. And I appreciate all of your insights. You're one of a kind. And I can't wait for the next one.
02:37:47
zzweilous
Yeah, I'll be here no matter what. It's going to be a couple of weeks break, but then we'll pick up the pace with Milwaukee, Belo Horizonte. We'll have Lille. We have Gdansk. We'll have so much to do in October and early November. So yeah, looking forward to it.
02:38:02
William Dunphey
Sounds good. I'll see you very soon, my friend. And thank you all for listening. This has been a long one, but good but a good one. And we will see you very, very soon.
02:38:21
zzweilous
Thank