#295 The Best (& Worst) Plays for the 2026 Pokemon TCG World Championships

Hello and welcome to the Metapod Podcast, Pokemon TCG podcast that revolves around the evolving meta. I am Yu-Gi-Oh one of the hosts of the Metapod Podcast. And thank you so much for coming to our World Championship episode. The World Championships are happening later this weekend. Just going to be a solo episode for me. Usually I have a co star, Sean, he is ill. He messaged me a couple hours ago and said, hey, man, it's just been a tough week for him. So he's like, I gotta get some sleep. Living over in Europe, obviously it's Zebra late. So I was like, no worries, Sean. You know, it is. It's not too much different than what we've been talking about the last couple weeks, especially when prepping for the World Championships. But we're going to talk about that in this episode today. I'm pretty much going to like, ear list. I think that's the best way and easiest way for me to kind of converse with you guys and convey what I think the World Championships are going to look like over in San Francisco. That's happening this weekend. And before we get into the actual conversation of what it is, just want to let you guys know I've been talking about the last couple weeks how I'm actually going to be live during the World Championships. I'm going to be trying to dip my toes more in Pokemon commentary to hopefully Pokemon reaches out to me for a regional or something of the sort to commentate. Now that I'm doing professional commentary for a couple different games, I think it'd be really cool to. To do Pokemon. Obviously, as someone who's been playing for, oh my gosh, have we been playing for like eight years now or something of the sort. Holy cow. Sean and I, time flies when you're having fun, especially in the Pokemon trading card game. But I will be live over on my YouTube channel. That's where I'm gonna house it. And then I think what I'm gonna do is post individual videos of my commentary and of the matches over on the MetaPod YouTube channel. So you can. You guys can see it there. I'll have linked in the show notes and the description below and I'll post in discord of my YouTube channel as well as I'll be playing on Twitch as well. Right. Twitch will autop, populate the vod. I'll be streaming at the same time on both of them, so you'll be able to see those there. And again, I'll post it in the Discord server once those goes up. I don't have the actual stream set up yet for on YouTube. I've just been trying to pull things together. It's actually been really, really busy because one piece just released a brand new set and a ton of brand new information for the future of the game. So I've been very busy with that obviously. But there has still been Pokemon things that have been happening as of the last couple weeks, including the Full Grip Invitational. The Full Grip Invitational did happen. Tricky Gym did stream that. It was a invited tournament, a closed tournament of I believe 40, so players competing for $5,000 in total pricing. And this is the top eight. This is not after the top cut, this wasn't the final placings. But looking at this top eight, right? Look at these names that we have in here. Especially if you're watching the video version, if you're on the audio only version, I'll tell you a few of these names of the players that are competing in this. You got Emma Hagan, right? A very, very well known name. One of the top players in the world, in my opinion, competing in the Full Grip Invitational. You've got Jesse Parker, right? Andrew Zhang, Austin Charles here. You know, you got some pretty good names as well in here that competed in this championship. So something to note, even though it was a very closed tournament, very small tournament, and within the top eight of the champions. Oh, it's a little bit hard to see of the video version because I got the World Championship logo on the overlay. So let me move this right here, but top eight of the Full Grip Tournament had a couple different decks inside here. Obviously Dragapult was the number one deck. Not really a surprise to anybody because, well, Dragapult, as we talked about for the last several weeks, is just a dominant deck, right? Is one of the best decks or is the best deck in the format. It is the deck to beat. There was one, two and three Dragon Pults associated within the top eight of this championship. You also had in here one Mega Extra Drill, one Slow King, one Mega Lucario, one Raging Bolt, and then is there one other one, but also a Mega Low Punny rounding out the top eight. So Dragon Blue Ice really the only deck that had multiple placements within the top eight of this tournament. That happened over in Ohio, Akron, Ohio. But there was a good population of a bunch of other decks that made it within the top eight. No Alakazam though, unfortunately. And trying to think, I. I knew off the top of my head, I can't remember right now what actually one, I'm pretty sure Full Grip had posted what it was. I should know this. I. I had it in my head before we got into here. Let's see, full grip. Just going to look up on their Twitter real quick because I know that they posted about it. Let's see, it was Lucas with Low Punny Bronzong entering into the tournament, playing Mega Excadrill in the finals of the championship. So that's what made it into the top two. And again, the full VOD is over on Tricky Jim's channel, if you want to go ahead and check that out. Out. But in here, right, Obviously Mega Extra Drill. You know, I've been a big fan of Mega Extra Drill in this format as a deck that personally I would play if I was playing in the World Championships. Maybe not necessarily because I think it's the best deck, but I think it's a good viable deck that can do a lot of damage in this format at the World Championships in itself. So very, very cool to see. I don't have decklists from the championship because, well, decklists. Full group decided not to release the decklists of their tournament that they had just simply because the players. There were a ton of players that were competing in the World Championships that competed in their tournament. So trying to keep those decklists a little bit more hidden, obviously, you know, if you go on the VOD of Tricky Gym, you could more than likely figure out most all of the lists if you take the time to pause and, you know, go in slow motion looking when they're doing their searches and things like that. So you could go ahead and do that if you wanted to. But I think it's still like a pretty good general idea to figure out what was the most relevant in here. So now is the big old question, you know, what do I think the World Championships are going to look like here in the upcoming format? And I don't think there's going to be a lot of surprises to you all within this list. Obviously I'm going to put Dragapult in the S tier. I'm going to put all three versions of Dragapult in the S tier. But if you are curious on what ones I think are worth it, I think Dragapult is going to take up most of the meta. I think Dragon Pult is the best variant. Just straight Dragapult, right, is very good within the Dragon Pole mirrors. And I think if you're going to play Dragapult, you need to play the best variant that's going to be the best in the mirrors, in my opinion. I think Dragapol D Nora and Dragapole Blazkin are going to be still very, very good and a tier above the rest of the decks that we've got in this championship. But I think Straight dragapult is the best way to play it within this format. I think what you could do, I mean, I could customize the tier titles. Actually. I'll just put BDIF for the first tier, I'll put other dragapults in the second tier. And then moving in, it'll just be like, I'll just move these down A B and then maybe like worth not playing. I'll say for the different tiers that are going on, okay, these are going to be my official tiers of what I've gotten here because I still think there's a fair amount of decks that are going to be pretty good in this championship. And again, I think any version of dragapult is good within the World championships. But honestly, I think straight drag pulled is the best way to play it and I think that's the way that a lot of the top players will probably play it. And if you, especially if you're going in and you're worried about the drag pull mirror, again, just go in with a regular dragapult because I think it's the best version of dragapult for the Dragon Pole Mirrors. Obviously I'm gonna put Mega Extra Drill in a. Obviously I've been hyping it up the last couple weeks. I still think it's very good. I think honestly one of the worst things for Mega Extra Drill is itself, right? There are a fair amount of games when your metal makers don't just. They just don't attach energy, right? Maybe you're healing, right? You don't get a lot of healing off within the game. Or maybe your opponent comes up and, you know, takes out your matangs, right? If your matangs never get online, it's very hard to be able to pilot the deck to a Zebra high level within the game. And I think Mega Extra Drill is still going to be a good play. I. It wouldn't surprise me to see it within the top eight or whatever the top cut is of the world championships, right? If they do asymmetrical top cut, right. Just depending on how many there are after the X amount of rounds, things of that nature. Still think it's pretty good. So I would recommend, you know, if you're looking for a deck to play at worlds or maybe at your local tournaments, whether it's the World Championship, local Tournaments that are happening celebrating or World celebration tournaments I think is officially what they're called. I think honestly Mega Extra Drill is a great one to play. I think also. And Zorark is going to be sitting. I'm not going to order these tiers too much but I think End Zork is actually going to be a really good play. But I have a caveat to it. I think the End Zorark decks that are going to be very good within the tournaments are going to be your Mateuses, are going to be your Liam Halliburtons, you know, people of that sort that have been playing dragonfold like toward Rackliffe, you know, that have been playing and Zorg for so long and are so high on it, I think are actually going to do well within this tournament. I don't necessarily see End Zorark being something that the common person like me or Sean could be able to pick up and do well with at the world Championships. I think it's very, very skill intensive by the pilot. I think it's very pilot dependent and I think Mega Extra Drill is going to be something or I'm sorry, Mega Extra Drill and and Zorc are going to be decks that are going to be pretty good but in the right hands. Right. But I think the Mega Extra drills probably, if I were to rank them I think is going to be kind of a step lower than End Zoric because I think in the right hands especially Enzor is just a very good deck. Trying to think about a little bit of what else I find to be pretty good. Good. I kind of think Slow King is probably in this category as well as a pretty good deck heading into the world Championships. Slow King, I think just being able to do the spread and force your opponent to have the answers and responses to be able to get around that. Right. Especially with the spread. You know, the big hits that Slow King can provide especially with the metagross are very good. But there are plenty of different answers if you're looking to respect Slow King in my opinion. But I still think it's a very good deck to be able to take within the world championships. And again just like we saw like in the Full Grip Invitational as we were seeing in these different bigger online tournaments. I don't think Slow King is bad play at all. I think Slow King is definitely something that I would expect to see within the asymmetrical top eight. Whatever it may be thinking about what other deck I want to mention right here, let's just keep it on the one price I'm actually not Zebra high on Alakazam to Dunsparce, right. Especially, you know, after the full grip invite after the Tournament of Doom. Like Alakazam has just not really had that finishing point. I think it's just the abysmal matchup that it has into Dragapult and how, you know, you have so many people on Dragapult, it takes up so much of a meta share. It really just depends on the. What would I say? Depends on your matchups, right. Of, you know, if I'm hoping to not hit a bajillion dragapults, then boom. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean I'm not going to play Alakazam right if I'm expecting to hit so many dragapults. So I'm not overly high on Alakazam. I think Alakazam's best shot at making it within the top cuts of the championship is going to be if you dodge all of those dragapult players going into more of some of the kind of one Prizm decks that we've got going on. I think two cannon probably worth not playing within the championship, I think. I'm honestly, I've also been not impressed. Sorry to hate on the one Prizm decks, but with two Cannon and Delmise the Hide and Sneak deck, I think they're really cool and I think that they're fun to play. But in terms of the World Championships, I'm not seeing it for either of those decks. I think there's just some matchups that you know, you can't get around and stuff like that. Even if you try to tech in some other things like Rabska. I know a lot of people are saying Rabska and Alakazam is probably a very good play heading into the World Championships this weekend. I don't know if those things will work out as well for you, but definitely some cool stuff that you can do with those decks, especially at your local championships. You know, as cups and challenges are going to start back up here in the next several like month or weeks things of that nature. But I don't really see it for the deck in my personal opinion. Festival lead though, I will put alongside Alakazam de Dunsparce. Although I don't think it's a great play heading in there, I do think there are some really cool cheeky things and aggression that you can provide. Especially you know, if Enzorg has a pretty big meta share size. Right. Being able to maybe festival lead and get that weakness damage off. Especially with Grimmsnarl. I'll throw Grim Snarl in this tier as well. You know, the more dark Pokemon that are sitting around with the Festival Lead, being able to hit weakness I think can be a really good sign for the Festival Lead deck. And plus I think you can do well in some of these other one Prizm matchups, right? To be able to turn the tide. Anything with that. Anything with that brass weakness, I think can be very, very good for you. Especially when you get ahead on the Prizm trade. Maybe against Dragapool, you set up stuff like Rapska, Shaman, things of that nature to be able to protect your bench and be able to force one Prizm every single time. I think Festival Lead could be cool, but I think Grim Snarl, right? We see Grim Snarl get a lot of hype at the beginning of the formats and then just falls off. So I would put Grim Snarl kind of in this B tier alongside Alakazam and Festival Lead. Not something that I'm overly high on, but not necessarily incredible. I think. I honestly think Lucario is kind of in this category of not worth playing. I just. I know Lucario does get some spurts and I know there are some people very high on it. But then when you see everybody else trying to replicate it, it's just. It's just bad. Right? So I don't know. I don't really see it for Lucario. I think there are some cool things, but I think Lucario is best suited in like a much more tighter closed off tournament than the World Championships. Even though the world Championships is closed off and very small. Right. Compared to a lot of the regionals that we have. Whether that's North America, Europe, Latin America, etc, I don't think it's closed off enough for that situation. I just. I don't see it for Lucario. I think it's cool deck though, and I like getting hype around it every single set. But, you know, not going to be something that I'm overly into. You talk about like the ogre pond box, the ogre pawn box, I think could slide in. Do I want to put an A or B? That's going to be the real question. I think maybe I'll throw it into B. But if I was gonna rank inside this B, it'd probably be like the highest of the bees. Like you could make an argument probably going into this A tier. I think. No, actually I'm just gonna throw it into B. I think Lily's clefairy is just that good of a card. Right. And if every one of the top players is just going with Dragapult, because Dragapult Is that good of a deck? Being able to hit for a weakness on Lily's Clefairy, Being able to force one less Prizm on the Lily's pearl. Right kind of card on there. And then just being able to do more ex abstract things like with the water Ogre Pond or the Teal Mask Ogre Pond or something like that. Or maybe cheese. A game off the Cornerstone Mask Ogre Pond just gives you a little bit of variety in your different matchups and what you can. So I would say probably base or like the it's called basic box on here, but I would just call this like Ogre Pond box is what I would say with Lily's Clefairy. I think it's probably just in this lower end of like this A tier because you know, hitting into Dragapult is just so nice in my opinion. Talking about some of these other. Yu-Gi-Oh We just have like Ogre Pond decks and Megalopunny that's left within this in this little tier list. Obviously it's going to be a short episode today because it's just me. We're just talking about our thoughts kind of in the World Championships. Not too much to talk about. Is a lone episode. Mega Low Punny. So I'm not a huge believer in the Megalop Honey. I think very similarly to Mega Lucario. Probably more restricted to a much more condensed tournament. I know did very well right within this full grip championship that we just talked about. But I. I'm not sure if I fully believe in that Megalopunny. If it was like, you know, Emma Hagan running the Mega Low Pony, then I could say like, oh, maybe something's there or you know, they're a crack player or something like that. Obviously they're going to make Top A or whatever. But I don't really see it for Megalowpunny going into Raging Bolt though. Kind of staying on the topic of Emma Hagan, I think probably Raging Bold can be. I'm trying to think of which of these A or B tiers that I would put it in. I don't know, Emma Hagan was running it. I think that there might be something there with Raging Bold. I'm very much influenced by Emma Hagan, so I think I'm gonna put it in this A tier alongside like what I've got Ogre, Palm Box, Clefairy, Slow King, Extra Drill and Zorg. I think this is a pretty solid deck. I think just being able to beat stick ram into something, you know, being a little bit over 200hp where you have these kind of like infinite damage caps. I think could be really cool with this deck with Crispin, you know, and again with Teal Mask, Ogre pun, just accelerating energies, right? You just need one to have a good run and when one have has a good run, you just run tail with it. Or. Or you, I should say, you run away with the tournament. So I would say Raging, Raging Bolt, Ogre Pawn. I. I have the names in the decks, but they're not the same names as they are in the screen. I think Raging Blue Ice a solid deck heading into the tournament and we'll see if. If it has much representation heading into the World Championships. But Ogre Pond, Meganium, along with like the Arboliva package, things of that nature. I think I'm more convinced to put it in this like B category of the deck. I think it's something that if it was not in the Tournament of Doom and didn't like have a huge showcase within the tournament Doom, I might be convinced to put it in the A tier. But I think the secrets out on the deck or. Well, it's not really much different than what it was when it first came out, right. When it did so well in that Japan Championship. So it's like. I think kind of the hype for it in the Pitch Black format has already been seen. It's very much like Grim Snarl, right? It's. The play has already been seen, it's already been there. So I. I'm not Zebra high on it, but I think it could do some damage within the tournament because I think overall, structurally it's a pretty decent deck, right. I think especially when you can get that McGinnis line, you can get those double energies similar to Raging Bow, where you can get that uncapped damage potential, I think could just be really good, in my opinion. I think could be a stronghold in here. And then one more deck that I'm going to talk about real quick before I get to the end is going to be Crustle. I'm going to add this into here because I know Crustle. I named this deck Crustle. Crust Lee. No, Crustle. Crustle going to be added into this. Crustle is a name especially as the. The big counter pick in here. I don't generally see Crustle being a good option within the World Championships this time around. I think there's just too many decks that can respect it, too many decks that can have sort of answers to it. So I don't really see it for Crustle. I Think that you'll still see some people playing crustle Do I think one will do well? I don't expect one to hit top eight truthfully or the asymmetrical top cut, but I don't know. I'm. I'm personally just predicting at the World Championships that people will have a response into the deck. So that's going to be the, the tier list that I have, the conglomeration of the decks that I think will do well within this tournament. Let me zoom in for the YouTube people a little bit closer so then you guys can see a little bit more, especially with that World Championship logo. I didn't think when I was making this overlay the World Championship logo, kind of covering up some of these decks that are in this tier list. So apologize to the video watchers on here. Again, this was, this was thrown together by me. Usually Sean is the one that controls all the like overlay and the, that what you actually see. So you can tell how much I depend on him for having a clean podcast episode. He's a big help in the podcast, so hope he, hopefully he gets better soon. And I'm sure next week we'll be back into the grind together of the, of what happened at the World Championships and going into the. What should I say, going into the next season. Right, the 26, 27 season. Because as we talked about, I think on last week's podcast episode, like it's less than a month until we go back into the World Championships, which is very, very exciting. And then Delta Rain or whatever the set's called. Storm Emerald. What is it called in English? I can't remember exactly. That's going to be right around the corner as well. And then, you know, you have Vegas regionals that I'm gonna try to play in or hopefully cast in, if they call me, things of that nature. But again, as most everybody is gonna say, I think Dragapult is the best tech that you can play within the championships. And I think the best Blue Ice going to be Dragapult straight Dragapult, right? Best deck for the Dragapult mirrors. In my opinion. You have a lot of flexibility whether you want to add hammers into it, whether you want to add, you know, some other different tech options in here. And especially if you hit heads on Hammer, it's hard to lose, especially in the mirrors. Other Dragon Ball decks, though, like Blaziken and Dusk Nora, I think are very good. If I were to rank the two between each other, of which one I would rather play of Dragon Ball Dust Nor and Dragon Ball Blaze. Again, I think Dragon Ball Dust Nora is a better option than Dragon Ball Blaziken. I think it will Dragapult Blazing and will have the smallest meta share out of the three different Dragon Bolts and I think that's been pretty common. You know, maybe not a surprise to a lot of people, but if I was not going to play Dragapult in any form or shape, which decks would I consider playing? I would consider playing Mega Extra Drill, Slow King, the Lily's Clefairy Box, the Slot Box, I think as a lot of people are calling it Raging Bolt, Ogre Pond, but also Ends Zor are the decks that I would consider be playing into the World Championship, going into some of the other decks that I think if you're going to play maybe I wouldn't expect to see in a top cut, but we'll have representation at the World Championships Festival Lead Alakazam To Dun Sparse. Unfortunately I don't see it for Alakazam in the World Championships. Sadly, as much as I love the Deck Presley Grimmsnarl and also the Ogre Pond Meganium decks I think are going to be good ones in there. So that's going to be the tier list for me at least. We'll see how much Sean makes fun of me for how right I was or how wrong I was, you know, next week on the podcast. But thank you so much for joining me. Hope you enjoyed this video and hope to see you at the World Championships, whether it's maybe on stream if you're playing or maybe in the chat with us. I think Sean is planning also to join me on the stream at least for some of the rounds of the World Championships, because I know the timing's not very good for Europe, at least for kind of the middle area. I think the streams are set to start at 8:30 Pacific Time on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So that's when I plan on being live with you guys for the championships and then Yu-Gi-Oh we'll just go until they're done or I got something else going on because I think on Saturday I have something going on at 6:30. So we'll see how long the tournament takes, especially if it's 8:30. But I'll be live at least until then. So again, thank you so much for joining me. Hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll be back in full force hopefully next week and let us know in the discord what you're excited about of the championships. See you later.