🖉 Kashvinder Singh Mann | @kashmann27
Here is a summary of this past weekend's events, which was the first outside of Japan to feature major events in the new H-Block onwards rotation, the legal sets for play being from Temporal Forces to the recently released Perfect Order set. Three different decks won the three events and in a fun little not, the 3 decks are the only ones from their variants to make Top Cut in any of the 3 events as well!
From the 3 major events, if we were to look at decks that placed in the Top 8:
- Teal Mask Ogerpon ex - 7
- 5 from Raging Bolt ex variant
- 2 from Lillie's Clefairy ex variant
- Dragapult ex - 6
- 3 from Blaziken ex variant
- 1 from Dudunsparce variant (Prague winner)
- 1 from the straight variant
- 1 from Dusknoir variant
- Cynthia's Garchomp ex - 2
- Crustle - 2
- Everything else with just 1:
- Mega Lucario ex/Hariyama
- Mega Starmie ex/Dusknoir
- Alakazam/Dudunsparce (Philippines winner)
- Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex/Froslass
- Tera Box (Korea S4 winner)
- Team Rocket's Box
- Archaludon ex/Dudunsparce
Alakazam wins in Philippines Master Ball League
Ricardo G. Patriarca book his spot into the 2026 Pokémon TCG World Championships by winning the Philippines Master Ball League with Alakazam Dudunsparce! It was the first Master Ball League in the South East Asian region for the 2025-2026 season and the first to feature a new tournament structure.
This is not the first major win for Alakazam but backs up that is it now a legit contender in the meta, especially after it's win at the Osaka Champions League. Ricardo ran a slightly different list for Day 1, opting for a 1-1 Mega Lopunny ex line initially before switching it out for the 4th Dawn and Dudunspace ex for Day 2.
Also congrats to Aki Gulmatico who placed 2nd with Raging Bolt ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon ex and by being in the finals of this event, he also earns a Worlds invite spot for this year's World Championships in San Francisco. Players had to get a x-2 score or better to make it into Day 2 where they would play 4 more rounds of Swiss, but now in a Bo3 setting.
And points scored were a bit different too,
- For a 2-0 win, winning player scores 6 points, losing player scores 0 points
- For a 2-1 win, winning player scores 5 points, losing player scores 1 points
- For a 1-0 win, winning player scores 3 points, losing player scores 0 points
For some reference, 6 players ended Day 1 at 7-0 (21 points)
- The first placed player ended on 31 points (46th in standings before Cut)
- The seconded placed player ended on 33 points (25th in standings before Cut)
- The third placed player ended on 32 points (42nd in standings before Cut)
- The fourth placed player ended on 39 points (5th in standings before Cut)
- The fifth placed player ended on 38 points (6th in standings before Cut)
- The sixth placed player ended on 28 points (72nd in standings before Cut)
And on the flip side, the first seeded player in Top Cut at 40 points ended day 1 at 6-1. 8th seeded player was on 38 points having ended day 1 at 5-2, scoring 23 points from the 4 swiss rounds (3 2-0 wins and 1 2-1 win).
Tera Box wins the Korean League Season 4 for 2026
Lin Pin Yuan took the win at the Korean League Season 4 with Tera Box, beating Donguk Jung (who finished 3rd in Season 1 of this 2025-26 season) and his Raging Bolt ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon ex deck in a close finish set. You can watch the match that was reviewed by Rahul Reddy
here. Pin Yuan is also now the first overseas player to win a Korean League Season event as he is from Taiwan.
There were 2 overseas players in Top 4, the other being Shinnosuke Sato who finished 6th in the previous Korean League Season 3 event and we also had Fabien Pujol who made Top 8 cut, his first Top 8 finish in an Asian event with an interesting build of Lillie's Clefairy ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon ex featuring Iron Crown ex, Tapu Koko ex and Frillish. It wasn't the only one in Top 8 with Seokmin Lee also piloting with a more typical build of Clefairy Ogerpon that we're used to seeing, but with a thin Raging Bolt ex package splashed into the deck!
Dragapult Dudunsparce wins the Prague Regional
And now onto the Prague Regional and if you had predicted a Dragapult ex winning the event, you'd be correct...but the variant of Dragapult ex winning this event probably was not the one anyone expected, with Mateusz Łaszkiewicz taking the win with the Dudunsparce variant, beating Elmar Tresp and his Crustle deck in finals. It was an interesting Top 4 that also featured a Cynthia Garchomp ex deck and a Mega Starmie ex deck!
Mateusz's list was a straight Pult variant with Dudunsparce (Run Away Draw and the ex) and no other supporting Pokémon like Mewoth ex, Fezandipiti ex or stuff like Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex in this list. The Dudunsparce ex was a key factor in helping him win in the finals against Crustle as was Hero's Cape, probably the Ace Spec not many was expecting to see in the winning list, or either finalist list for that matter.
There was another straight Pult list that made cut, thanks to the one and only Tord Reklev who fell to the Crustle player in Top Cut, his list had 3 Rare Candies in it! Also in his list that isn't as usual as others is the choice of Area Zero Underdepths as his stadium in the deck as his build does tend to rely on those supporting Pokémon a bit more.
But as we expected, Dragapult would be the biggest threat in the meta as this weekend's results showed it. Even though we don't have any info on the meta share for Korea and Philippines, seeing the decks that scored big results this weekend was enough to paint the picture:
- 5 out of the Top 32 in Korea League Season 4 were Dragapult ex decks (15.6%)
- 24 out of the Top 154 in Philippines Master Ball League were Dragapult ex decks (15.6%)
- 93 out of the Top 255 in Prague Regional were Dragapult ex decks (36.4%)
The numbers were constant in Asia while it was doubled those numbers and a bit more over in Prague! One of the decks that had more big finishes throughout the 3 events was Dragapult ex/Blaziken ex, with an 8th place finish in Prague and a 3rd place finish in Philippines.
Raging Bolt ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon scores big in all 3 regions
Perhaps the more interesting result of the weekend was seeing Raging Bolt feature in the Top 8 in all 3 regions, with runner-up finishes in both Philippines and Korea (both events had a Raging Bolt deck finishing in the Top 4 with 2 players) and 6th in Prague.
It is no longer the straight forward deck from previous rotation even though now the deck relies heavily on Crispin but it's not the only way it can energies on board with the likes of Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, Glass Trumpet and Energy Switch helping out. But not all the lists were same as you can see from the 2nd place finishing list in Korea which was build popularized by Sejun Park (who finished 32nd) while the 6th place list from Maé Brusasco whose list was inspired by Ian Robb's build.
The Korea list ran 4 Mega Kangaskhan ex and 4 Meowth ex, going for as much consistency as possible and opting for Raging Bolt over Passimian that saw more play for those who were using Ian Robb's build of Raging Bolt ex. That version also featured Wellspring Ogerpon ex and Water Energy for snipe options, Xerosic preferred over Judge as the disruption of choice and a 4th Teal Mask Ogerpon ex for extra draws and also Pecharunt ex as an out to retreat lock plays.
There wasn't much difference between Mae's list and Carlo who finished 3rd in Philippines, with Carlo going for Iron Leaves ex, an additional Grass and Fighting Energy in place of the 3rd Mewoth ex, Pecharunt ex and Xerosic.
Next up for players will be 3 events again on the 9th of May, with Aichi Champions League in Japan, the Malaysian Master Ball League in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the Los Angeles Regional in California.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
