26 Pokémon in total including Megas are appearing in Regulation M-C. The Z Megas count as 3 out of the 26.
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Pokémon Champions - releasing April 8, 2026
- Thread starter Codraroll
- Start date
We have 5 announced locks, and I'd say the other 2 Galarian starters are near-locks (Cinderace and Inteleon), and then the remaining non-legendary, non-mythical Pokemon with Megas are close to locks (Golisopod, Tatsugiri) - if they count those 2 like the tweet counts Baxcalibur and its assumed Mega, then we're only at 9 mons now. We may as well assume the last XYORAS mega, Salamence, is in, so that's 10. Then Tatsugiri partners with Dondozo so well in the games, so that's 11.
No, I'm not a believer in Heatran making it into M-C, even with the blatant teaser. Note that the teaser is nonverbal, with no announcement on top saying that Heatran is definitely in, and Heatran being conspicuously absent from official Champions textual news announcements.
Alright, even if we assume Game Freak counts the semi-locks very generously and Heatran is in, we only bloat to 21 mons, so who wants to guess the other 5?
Heatran is not coming till December
Nintendo of America confirmed it's called Aura Guard
Main reason I don't count Heatran is is cause it's a Legendary.
They wouldn't add "just Heatran", but then you'd have to add several. I think the leges will come in their own dedicated regulation.
As for the other 5, i'm calling Indeede, Weezing, G-Weezing and Pincurchin. Adding Rillaboom makes me assume they will also add the other 3 terrain setters. (+ regular Weezing for consistency)
And then Amoongus just to piss off half of the player base that was enjoying its absence.
Pincurchin + Terrain Pulse Electric Lucario is gonna go STUPID. Outspeeds and owns all ur checks like Basc, Charizard Y, Pex, Gyarados, etc.
Blastoise also learns the move in Champions, I wonder if there's some weird shit people can cook with Mega Blastoise. Both Indeedee and Rilla should be pretty solid partners for it regardless so...
How are you getting 21 mons? Even by counting every Pokémon and its mega twice I'm getting to only 17 by including all the Galar starters, Golisopod, Tatsugiri, Salamence, Dondozo and Heatran.
If we get Rilla, I really hope we are getting other Terrains setters because otherwise all battles are going to be fought in Grassy Terrain with no contest. Pincurchin is probably gonna change nothing and even though I don't particularly care about hard Trick Room, Indeedee bringing Psychic Surge at least gives us another deterrent against Fake Out spam and Kingambit.
That's a whole paragraph to say that I want Misty Surge back because it means my boy Weezing is in and by extension I finally get to Neutralising Gas over my opponents again.
Not necessarily. Despite it taking a Mega slot, we have Mega Raichu X with its delayed Electric Terrain deployment. In the very likelihood Rillaboom becomes a dominant force in the metagame, I can see some teams deploying Xchu as a secondary Mega to stop Rilla's shenanigans. Basculegion teams, in particular, will like Xchu shielding the fish from Grassy Glide by activating Electric Surge.
I can definitely see Xchu being deployed as an anti-Grassy Glide option, but I would still hate to see Rilla's introduction without also introducing other Terrain setters. It would be like having Zard Y when the only other weather setter is Mega Froslass, and Pelipper/Politoed/Ttar/Atales no longer exists.
The 21-"mon" breakdown:
- 3 Z-Megas
- 3 Galar starters
- 2 for Golisopod and Mega Golisopod
- 6(!) for Tatsugiri-Curly, -Droopy, and -Stretchy with Mega Tatsugiri-Curly, Mega Tatsugiri-Droopy, and Mega Tatsugiri-Stretchy
- 2 for Baxcalibur and Mega Baxcalibur
- 2 for Salamence and Mega Salamence
- 2 for Heatran and Mega Heatran
- 1 for Dondozo
I feel like they wouldn't count the Pokemon with multiple forms multiple times. Tatsugiri, Golisopod, Baxcalibur, and Salamence probably only count as one.
Tatsugiri counts as one Pokémon. The different Megas are cosmetic. So the base form plus Mega count as two Pokémon
Probably anyway, for all we know they'll each have a different ability.
Any word on the others or is it wait and see? Still nice to see more megas.
That tweet from yesterday is all we have, otherwise there would probably have been more posted on the last page.
Seems like a good guess. Did the count the Mega separately previously? I cannot recall.
The original post got deleted from their Twitter lol
The initial tweet mentioned all 3 Z-Megas as separate Pokemon in the 26-mon count. Mega Baxcalibur did not show up in the trailer, so it is ambiguous whether the tweet treats Mega Baxcalibur as a separate mon or not.
So Onishi Hiroshi, second place worlds finisher just streamed his retrospective outlook at his loss to Takuma Yamazaki.
I’m going to skip over the first 2 games because everyone only remember the match decider game, but you can take a look on his YouTube Channel cona URL:
He believes that the deciding factor in his series was with Basculegion. Neither his nor Takuma’s Basculegion was max speed, but he heard that Takuma’s Basculegion was very bulky so he prepared with the assumption that his own was faster. It only occurred to him a while before he sleep that Takuma’s could be faster but he dismissed it and went to sleep.
He was surprised with Kingambit Dragonite lead game 3 but that’s not something he did not prepare for. He thought that if he KOed KG then his Basculegion would just kill everything else.
He built his team knowing that his Charizard could not KO some Kingambit, so he was not completely caught off guard when it survived at 1 HP. He found out later that it was a low roll on both Heat Wave and Rock Slide, but that he should have gone Weather Ball had he known that.
Dragonite Dragon Pulse OHKO was a roll in Takuma’s favour, Hiroshi was hoping for Chomp to survive which would win the game for him immediately. But he was fine with it because the resulting positiong of Basculegion Charizard vs Basculegion Dragonite, was something he thought was in his favour because he thought his Basc was faster.
He pointed out that Basc Dragonite both going for Protect was a big misplay which he considered since he could switch to Whimsicott and win the game, but he didn’t think Takuma would do it because it was an obvious misplay. After the Protect, he thought he won because now Takuma’s Basc no longer has a guaranteed Protect, but he was completely caught off guard when Takuma’s Basc went first and KOed his own, and here he was super flustered and made the mistake of going Moonblast Heat Wave when Heat Wave Protect would still allow him to win.
And then there's the Feint Aqua Jet turn. He thought he lost for sure because Aqua Jet plus either Feint or Dire Claw can be checkmate. He was aware of Feint at the moment and considered Moonblast Protect, but thought it was not in his favour because he thought Feint could trigger Poison Touch (it doesn’t) and KO Whimsicott anyway, so he might as well bank on Takuma to misplay with Fake Out (especially considering the Basc Nite Protect misplay from earlier). He also said that at the moment he thought it would be hype AF if Takuma made the Feint Aqua Jet play and since he has already lost, he was lowkey hoping that's the way he went out.
All the respect to him for his amazing sportsmanship. This guy was in a game where RNG rolled in his opponent’s favour for 2 turns in a row, and yet he’s genuinely happy for them. At the final turns of the match after he realise he lost, he was actively helping his opponent aura farm, and you can see him all smiles during the livestream during “the play”. Takuma Yamazaki has all the spotlight, but Onishi Hiroshi is genuinely a super skilled and pleasant guy and should not just be remembered as the guy who “ran boring B6 and was outsmarted by Dragonite and lost to Feint”.
I’m going to skip over the first 2 games because everyone only remember the match decider game, but you can take a look on his YouTube Channel cona URL:
He believes that the deciding factor in his series was with Basculegion. Neither his nor Takuma’s Basculegion was max speed, but he heard that Takuma’s Basculegion was very bulky so he prepared with the assumption that his own was faster. It only occurred to him a while before he sleep that Takuma’s could be faster but he dismissed it and went to sleep.
He was surprised with Kingambit Dragonite lead game 3 but that’s not something he did not prepare for. He thought that if he KOed KG then his Basculegion would just kill everything else.
He built his team knowing that his Charizard could not KO some Kingambit, so he was not completely caught off guard when it survived at 1 HP. He found out later that it was a low roll on both Heat Wave and Rock Slide, but that he should have gone Weather Ball had he known that.
Dragonite Dragon Pulse OHKO was a roll in Takuma’s favour, Hiroshi was hoping for Chomp to survive which would win the game for him immediately. But he was fine with it because the resulting positiong of Basculegion Charizard vs Basculegion Dragonite, was something he thought was in his favour because he thought his Basc was faster.
He pointed out that Basc Dragonite both going for Protect was a big misplay which he considered since he could switch to Whimsicott and win the game, but he didn’t think Takuma would do it because it was an obvious misplay. After the Protect, he thought he won because now Takuma’s Basc no longer has a guaranteed Protect, but he was completely caught off guard when Takuma’s Basc went first and KOed his own, and here he was super flustered and made the mistake of going Moonblast Heat Wave when Heat Wave Protect would still allow him to win.
And then there's the Feint Aqua Jet turn. He thought he lost for sure because Aqua Jet plus either Feint or Dire Claw can be checkmate. He was aware of Feint at the moment and considered Moonblast Protect, but thought it was not in his favour because he thought Feint could trigger Poison Touch (it doesn’t) and KO Whimsicott anyway, so he might as well bank on Takuma to misplay with Fake Out (especially considering the Basc Nite Protect misplay from earlier). He also said that at the moment he thought it would be hype AF if Takuma made the Feint Aqua Jet play and since he has already lost, he was lowkey hoping that's the way he went out.
All the respect to him for his amazing sportsmanship. This guy was in a game where RNG rolled in his opponent’s favour for 2 turns in a row, and yet he’s genuinely happy for them. At the final turns of the match after he realise he lost, he was actively helping his opponent aura farm, and you can see him all smiles during the livestream during “the play”. Takuma Yamazaki has all the spotlight, but Onishi Hiroshi is genuinely a super skilled and pleasant guy and should not just be remembered as the guy who “ran boring B6 and was outsmarted by Dragonite and lost to Feint”.
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Without Poison Touch, it was still not in his favor, though he had a non-negligible chance to win. Since we now know the spreads of both teams, Hiroshi’s win chance based on either getting a favorable Moonblast roll or critting one of the first two moonblasts is around 24%. Whimsicott has to encore twice, so barring high rolls and crits, Sneasler gets 5 Feints off, which at Whimsicott’s 72% HP just barely always KOs even with minimum roll on each.
But yeah after factoring the erroneous expectation of Poison Touch relevancy, it’s not surprising Hiroshi would think the chances are too slim to consider over banking on a Fake Out blunder.
Honestly, before I actually got to watch the match, I was already spoiled by the hype of the surprise Dragonite lead and Feint winning the game, and when I was watching the game that's also all that the commentators and co-streams were talking about.
But when I actually listened to Hiroshi's perspective did I realise that he actually gameplanned for it and turn 4 where his Basc was outsped and KOed was when the game actually went out of control for him. And that on turn 5 (Zard/Whim vs Basc/Nite) when everyone thought the game was effectively over, Hiroshi could be back in a leading position if he Protected Whim instead of going for the Moonblast.
Honestly insane how the 3 turns that nobody talked about (the aforementioned turn 4 & 5, as well as turn 3 where Takuma misplayed with TectTect), were actually the most vital turning points for the game.