Season M-5 Week 5 Meta Report: World Championships results and the board they moved
By ChampTeams Editorial
This week the board reads 32 tournaments and 2,005 player entries, and for the first time that includes the World Championships. All 394 published Worlds team sheets are now part of the two-week window, so this is the first Reg M-B tier list weighted by what the best-prepared field of the year actually brought. Kingambit holds number one. Staraptor-Mega climbs into S and Garchomp drops out again. Reg M-C is expected next week with 26 new Pokémon, so this is likely the last board before the roster changes.
The tier list reads every 30+ player Reg M-B tournament from the last 14 days, and the World Championships fall inside that window. Official Play! Pokémon results are now ingested the same way online events are, so a major carries the weight its size and field strength deserve rather than sitting in a separate silo.
Meta score is a results-led composite from every qualifying tournament in the window. It blends tournament usage, win rate (shrunk toward the mean so small samples are not over-rewarded), top-cut conversion, and event wins, each weighted by how large the event was. Tiers come from the natural gaps in score.
The Season M-5 Week 5 tier list
| Pokémon | Tier | Win rate | Meta score |
|---|---|---|---|
 Kingambit | S | 51.9% | 166.5 |
 Sylveon | S | 51.5% | 155.2 |
 Basculegion | S | 51.8% | 154.6 |
 Sneasler | S | 51.5% | 154.0 |
 Charizard-Mega-Y | S | 51.1% | 153.0 |
 Incineroar | S | 50.6% | 152.6 |
 Raichu-Mega-Y | S | 53.2% | 151.4 |
 Staraptor-Mega | S | 51.6% | 147.2 |
What moved
Kingambit stays number one at 166.5 and has held the top spot for the whole season. It was also the most-brought Pokémon at Worlds, on 37 of the 57 day-two teams, so nothing about the top of the board is in question. Below it the order tightened: Sylveon, Basculegion, Sneasler, Charizard-Mega-Y and Incineroar are separated by less than three points of meta score. Sneasler is the clearest riser, up two places on the back of a strong Worlds showing. Staraptor-Mega comes into S at eighth. Garchomp drops to the top of A at 48.8%, which is the second time in three weeks it has crossed that line. Its usage stays high, and it appeared on seven of the Worlds top-16 teams, so the drop is about win rate rather than the field abandoning it.
S · #1 · 51.9% WRKingambit
DefiantNumber one on the board and the most-brought Pokémon at the World Championships, on 37 of 57 day-two teams and 15 of the top 16. Defiant punishes the Intimidate that the format leans on, Sucker Punch closes games, and it fits almost any shell. If you are building for Reg M-B, this is the safest single pick in the format.
The World Championships
The World Championships ran from August 28 to 30 in San Francisco, played on Pokémon Champions in Regulation Set M-B. 395 Masters players competed across 8 Swiss rounds on day one and 3 more on day two before the single-elimination cut. Takuma Yamazaki of Japan won the title and the $30,000 first prize on Floette-Mega, Dragonite-Mega, Garchomp, Basculegion, Sneasler and Kingambit. Japan took three of the top six.
Kingambit appeared on 15 of the 16 top-cut teams and 37 of the 57 teams that reached day two. Only Antonio Sánchez, who finished fifth, left it at home. That is the clearest single read on the format we have, and it matches the board putting Kingambit at number one.
| # | Player | Team |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Takuma Yamazaki (JP) |  Floette-Mega Dragonite-Mega GarchompBasculegionSneaslerKingambit |
| 2 | Hiroshi Onishi (JP) | Charizard-Mega-YFloette-MegaGarchomp WhimsicottBasculegionKingambit |
| 3 | Zachary Weed (US) |  Scovillain-Mega Froslass-Mega Lycanroc-DuskBasculegionSneaslerKingambit |
| 4 | João Felipe Leite (BR) | Scovillain-MegaFroslass-MegaLycanroc-DuskBasculegionSneaslerKingambit |
| 5 | Antonio Sánchez (ES) | Charizard-Mega-YIncineroarGarchomp VenusaurSylveon Toxapex |
| 6 | Yuya Wakasugi (JP) | Floette-MegaDragonite-MegaWhimsicottBasculegionSneaslerKingambit |
| 7 | Stefano Greppi (IT) | Charizard-Mega-Y Aerodactyl-MegaGarchompSylveon FarigirafKingambit |
| 8 | Giovanni Piscitelli (IT) | Charizard-Mega-YFloette-MegaGarchompWhimsicottBasculegionKingambit |
| 9 | Shohei Kimura (JP) | Charizard-Mega-YFloette-MegaGarchompWhimsicottBasculegionKingambit |
| 10 | Carson St Denis (US) | Charizard-Mega-YGarchompWhimsicottBasculegionSneaslerKingambit |
| 11 | Cary D'Ortona (US) | Staraptor-MegaRaichu-Mega-Y Arcanine-HisuiSylveonFarigirafKingambit |
| 12 | Emilio Forbes (US) | Aerodactyl-MegaRaichu-Mega-YSylveon TsareenaSneaslerKingambit |
| 13 | Navjit Joshi (CA) | Staraptor-MegaRaichu-Mega-YArcanine-HisuiWhimsicottSylveonKingambit |
| 14 | Justin Tang (US) |  Delphox-Mega Blastoise-MegaIncineroar SinistchaSneaslerKingambit |
| 15 | Filip Woźniak (PL) |  Blaziken-Mega TorkoalVenusaur PrimarinaFarigirafKingambit |
| 16 | Chloe Bourke (AU) |  Metagross-MegaRaichu-Mega-YWhimsicottBasculegion KleavorKingambit |
Zachary Weed and João Felipe Leite finished third and fourth on the same six Pokémon: Scovillain-Mega, Froslass-Mega, Lycanroc-Dusk, Basculegion, Sneasler and Kingambit. It is a snow team that uses Froslass-Mega for Aurora Veil and Scovillain-Mega as a second Mega threat, with Lycanroc-Dusk cleaning up under the screens. That shell is now the second most-played full team in the Reg M-B data and carries the best win rate of the top teams at 59.8%.
What the day-two field brought
| Pokémon | Day 2 teams | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Kingambit | 37 | 64.9% |
| Charizard-Mega-Y | 24 | 42.1% |
| Basculegion | 23 | 40.4% |
| Sylveon | 20 | 35.1% |
| Garchomp | 19 | 33.3% |
| Incineroar | 18 | 31.6% |
| Floette-Mega | 16 | 28.1% |
| Staraptor-Mega | 15 | 26.3% |
| Sneasler | 15 | 26.3% |
| Whimsicott | 15 | 26.3% |
| Venusaur | 15 | 26.3% |
| Farigiraf | 12 | 21.1% |
Standings and team sheets are the official Play! Pokémon results published on pokedata.ovh, ingested in full (394 of 395 Masters entries carried a published decklist). The usage figures here are counted from those sheets rather than copied from a summary.
What is winning tournaments
Worlds aside, the online circuit kept running through the window. Oscarbolt took the largest online event, the 201-player Open Champions League #4, on a Blastoise-Mega and Delphox-Mega redirection build, close to the team Justin Tang used to reach the Worlds top 16.
| Player | Event | Team |
|---|---|---|
| Takuma Yamazaki | World Championships (395p) | Floette-MegaDragonite-MegaGarchompBasculegionSneaslerKingambit |
| Oscarbolt | Open Champions League #4 (201p) | Blastoise-MegaDelphox-MegaSinistcha GrimmsnarlSneaslerArcanine-Hisui |
| EnryuVGC | Intimidators Champions Challenge #39 (67p) | Staraptor-MegaRaichu-Mega-YArcanine-HisuiSylveonFarigirafKingambit |
| PokeReplay | Champions Reg M-B (63p) | Charizard-Mega-YGarchompIncineroarVenusaurToxapexSylveon |
| FiganSG | Sketch Academy Sunday (46p) | Raichu-Mega-YStaraptor-MegaArcanine-HisuiFarigirafSylveonKingambit |
Two of those five are the same support shell: Staraptor-Mega and Raichu-Mega-Y with Arcanine-Hisui, Sylveon, Farigiraf and Kingambit. It is still the most-played full team in the format at 86 appearances, and Cary D'Ortona and Navjit Joshi took near-identical builds to 11th and 13th at Worlds. PokeReplay's winning team is also close to Antonio Sánchez's fifth-place Worlds team, the one that did without Kingambit entirely.
Cores that showed up
The core list shifted noticeably this week, because the snow shell that finished third and fourth at Worlds pulled its pieces up together.
- Kingambit + Lycanroc-Dusk: 103 appearances at 57.4%, the most-used pair in the window.
- Lycanroc-Dusk + Sneasler: 102 at 58.0%, the same shell from the other side.
- Basculegion + Lycanroc-Dusk: 101 at 58.5%.
- Basculegion + Scovillain-Mega: 94 at 58.7%, the second Mega on that snow team.
- Lycanroc-Dusk + Scovillain-Mega: 84 at 59.4%, the best win rate among the top pairs.
What to expect next
Reg M-C is expected next week with 26 new Pokémon, so treat this board as the closing picture of Reg M-B rather than a build order for the month. If you are still playing M-B, Kingambit and Basculegion remain the two safest picks and the Worlds snow shell is the strongest single team in the data. When M-C lands we will rebuild the board on the new roster as soon as the first qualifying events are in, and the tier list will be thin for a week while that data arrives.
This week's board sits at 8 S, 26 A, 14 B, 26 C and 32 D across 106 ranked Pokémon, from 32 tournaments and 2,005 entries.