The Pokémon Company recently announced the Pokémon UNITE Championship Series. Read on below to learn more:
Player Profiles: BabyMazo | Pokémon UNITE Championship Series Within Pokémon UNITE, BabyMazo is a member of From Brazil and a two-time Monthly Champion in the South America-East Region of the UNITE Championship Series. Outside of the game, he’s busy from morning to night with work, school, and content creation. Learn more about the skilled attacker in this Player Profile!
Player Profile: Goof | Pokémon UNITE Championship Series Goof, an Attacker for North American team Gaimin Gladiators, has already made a huge impact on the Pokémon UNITE Championship series. Goof and Gaimin Gladiators won the NA February Finals and finished in the region’s Top 6 in March. But there’s much more to Goof than just Pikachu and Hoopa! From gym to scrims, see a day in the life of Goof in this Player Profile!
Hear how one of the top Pokémon UNITE teams prepared for their biggest matches.
By George “Goof” Gebhardt, Contributing Writer The February Pokémon UNITE circuit finals have concluded, giving fans of the competitive scene their first official look at which team reigns supreme in each region. I am fortunate to be on one of the top teams in North America, the Gaimin Gladiators. We won the first event of the Pokémon UNITE Championship Series—the February Finals—without dropping a single game, and we look forward to continuing our success right up to the World Championships. Our team has put in a lot of hard work to get to the level we’re at, and a lot of aspiring players probably want to know more about what has led us to our success. In this article, I will explain how we formed our team, our preparation for this tournament, and our dominant run through the event. First, let’s look at some of the other top teams from when the Pokémon UNITE Championship Series kicked off. The European February Grand Finals were action-packed, with Yerman Burger Flippers facing off against Random Gaming. Both teams brought their best scoring-focused compositions and battled it out in chaotic style. Random Gaming surprised their opponents with a niche Crustle pick that tilted this no-defense, pure-scoring battle in their favor. With this win, Random Gaming, after having fallen to the lower bracket earlier in the event, claimed victory in the Grand Finals. As for Oceania, the favorite to win—Ground Zero Gaming—decided to play a more traditional style. With some brilliant adjustments to the standard western metagame, this team unleashed Talonflame and a solo top path Charizard. Their strategy paid off, securing them a 2–1 victory in the Grand Finals. In the following weeks, we saw the top teams of other regions experimenting with this Charizard strategy. Needless to say, there’s a lot of talent and a lot of evolving strategy everywhere that Pokémon UNITE is being played. OK, let’s take a look at the work Gaimin Gladiators put into their winning team strategy! A good place to start is the beginning. Leading up to the release of Pokémon UNITE, my friends and I were all really excited to jump in. We have competitive backgrounds in similar games, and many of us really just love Pokémon. Before we knew what the metagame would be, and before we knew if there would be a competitive scene, we had a rough idea of who would be playing what. Here is what each teammate brought to the table with regard to both talent and attitude. With Indie’s long history of playing the healer role across similar games, we knew Indie would be the perfect fit playing Supporter Pokémon. The thing about Indie is that he’s perfectly content just to float around on Eldegoss, saving us with Cotton Guard, but he’s also skilled enough to play any Pokémon or role. This is a rare combo in competitive games. He brings a positive attitude, and he’s always willing to take responsibility for his mistakes. Zugrug has a professional background across multiple other competitive titles—and a penchant for the “tank” role. Zugrug was a shoo-in for the Defender spot on our yet-to-be Pokémon UNITE team. He is nearly always calm under pressure and has experience on the big stage playing in front of a crowd (for if and when the time comes at the World Championships). Our plan for Lutano going into Pokémon UNITE was simple. We would figure out which Pokémon was the hardest and most mechanically demanding, then stick Lutano on it. This guy has been bringing it to our opponents on Lucario since the release of the game, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Toon was an easy pick for our Pokémon UNITE team as our longtime friend and consistent overperformer in any game our group has played. Toonslim is really having his time to shine in Pokémon UNITE and is arguably the best central area player in the world. This is me. I play the bottom path attacker for my team. When Pokémon UNITE released, I really wanted to play as Pikachu. Recently, my dream came true, and we won the February Finals with me piloting everyone’s favorite Electric-type Mouse Pokémon. I won’t talk up my gaming history here besides to say that it allowed me to make all the right friends for this journey. Despite all our preparation before the release of the game, the metagame of Pokémon UNITE was hard to predict months in advance. I’ll quickly break down the current “1-1-3” or “western” metagame as it pertains to the roles on my team and areas of the map. The top path is typically home to a 1-on-1 battle, with each team sending one Pokémon that excels at this duel for control. Lucario has been the prevailing choice since the release of the game, but we’ve seen Tsareena, Garchomp, Machamp, and recently, as mentioned earlier, Charizard from our Oceania February champions. The central area pick for each team is typically one Pokémon that benefits significantly from a large Exp. Points lead. This player must help their teammates on the top or bottom paths at two key early points in battle: 8:50 and 7:20, when the Vespiquen appear. It’s important that the chosen Pokémon is powerful at these times so it can begin building a lead. The bottom path is an all-out 3-on-3 battle. There’s usually a healing Supporter Pokémon, which has predominantly been Eldegoss. Joining it is a Ranged Attacker, as well as a Defender or a bulky Supporter to secure the last hits on wild Pokémon. This leaves the roles in the current metagame as follows:- Top path solo player
- Central area “carry”
- Bottom path “tank”
- Bottom path “attacker”
- Bottom path “healer”