2027 Louisville Regional Championships

Charizard won back some of the usage it lost when M-C began. Our Early M-C meta report found it well down in the format’s first weeks, though still good enough for the Baltimore final. At Louisville it went from about one M-C team in eight to more than one in six, almost six points up. Nearly one team in twelve was sun-rain, pairing Mega Charizard Y with Pelipper or Politoed: the Mega’s Drought sets sun and its partner’s Drizzle sets rain, so the team can play in either weather. That’s more than twice its share before the event and a little higher than at Worlds, where it was about one team in fifteen. Charizard’s partners came back with it. Venusaur, whose Chlorophyll makes it faster in sun, nearly always played beside Charizard and more than doubled, to over one team in ten. Grimmsnarl, which shared most of its teams with Charizard, went from about one in eighteen to about one in eleven. Garchomp doubled too, from one team in five to two in five. Most of that gain was Mega Garchomp Z, which usually played on teams without Charizard. It arrived on a run of wins: Brisbane and Frankfurt the same weekend, with both Frankfurt finalists carrying it, then Victory Road’s opening October Challenge. Players who kept the regular Garchomp mostly gave it a Choice Scarf: nearly three in four here, against about two in five before the event. The Mega has far higher base Speed, but a Scarf Garchomp with full Speed investment outruns any Mega Garchomp Z.

Delphox nearly doubled its share, to over one team in twelve, and made Day 2 a little more often than the field, but no Delphox team reached the top cut. Hisuian Arcanine fell from about one team in six to one in ten, while Volcarona, which rarely shares a team with it, rose from about one in ten to more than one in six after Eric Rios won Frankfurt with it. Neither reached the top cut. Male Basculegion slipped from about one team in six to one in seven as Female Basculegion, a sliver of M-C before the event, rose to about one in thirty. No team brought both, and together they held their share.

Ugarte finished Swiss high enough for a bye through the cut’s opening round. Paul Chua and Yichun Wu, who both brought Juan Salerno’s Recife-winning team item for item, had byes too but lost the first match they played. Chua had been unbeaten until the last round of Swiss, when Cary D’Ortona beat him in a rematch of the Toronto final D’Ortona won last season.

No semifinalist carried anything M-C added, though every quarterfinal loser did. Each semifinal team had a sun setter, a rain setter or both, as the booth noticed. The booth liked Ugarte’s version of the sun team, with Farigiraf where Salerno had Toxapex: it gives him a slow mode under Trick Room, where slower Pokémon move first, and the threat of that alone makes opponents wary of setting Tailwind.

Figueras won the opening game of the final: his Archaludon got rain and Tailwind behind it, and Ugarte had no way back to the sun. Ugarte answered by holding Charizard’s Mega Evolution, which brings the sun, until Figueras’s Grimmsnarl was down, and Figueras couldn’t take the weather back. The deciding game turned on luck that went Ugarte’s way: a Sleep Powder into Figueras’s Charizard that could have missed, then a critical hit. Ugarte said as much, and that he’d kept this team back from Baltimore because sun is the more volatile style. The booth credited his positioning around the luck: Charizard kept back for the last sun, and a Scarf Garchomp never locked into the wrong move.

Charizard and Venusaur, the sun core, gained share at each stage, and with Kingambit and Male Basculegion they had the table’s best Day 2 rates. Mega Garchomp Z had slipped behind Mega Raichu Y and Mega Charizard Y by Day 2, as the desk’s graphic showed. Garchomp still finished on nearly half the top cut, mostly holding a Choice Scarf. The desk said top teams carried the Scarf set to beat the Mega, and Figueras said the same about his.

Only a sliver of the field brought the team of Mega Floette Eternal, Mega Salamence, Kingambit, Male Basculegion, Sneasler and Rillaboom, but it put more players into the top cut than Mega Garchomp Z did: Ryan Loseto, Keanu Inosanto, Cody Hruby, and Justin Burns with Whimsicott for Rillaboom. The broadcast credited this team with the Global Challenge at the end of September, and it had reached the Brisbane final. With Wyatt Fout on Ugarte’s Baltimore team, they put Salamence on a quarter of the top cut, but none got past the quarterfinals.