The 2025PokemonNorth American International Championships have concluded, with a lucky few players able to win their respective events. This competition covered bothPokemonvideo games and theTCG, among others, and there are new winners across the board.
Following this year’s competition, a lucky few players have become the2025PokemonNAIC winners. One such player is Isaiah Bradner, a TCG Master who finally broke through this year and won the category. Game Rant was able to catch up with Bradner after the game, with Bradner speaking about what the victory means to him and his overall views on the competitive scene.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Pokemon TCG Masters Winner Talks Taking Home The Gold
Q: This is obviously very emotional for you. What does it mean to break through in this way?
A:Yeah, I don’t know, it’s hard to put into words! It’s very fulfilling. I put a lot of time into playingPokemonand I really love playing the game, so it’s really fulfilling.
It’s relieving somewhat—I’ve been trying to win a major for a long time—but I think that it’s more fulfilling excitement. I get to look back and see a tournament that I’ve won, and I get to look back at when I started playing.I started playingPokemonand I wanted to become the best player—that was my goal, so now, every time I win a tournament, I get closer and closer to that goal.
Honestly, I’m still a little bit in shock just looking back on the whole weekend. I’m honored and excited to be here. I know that I’m a great player, but you’re able to never take these things for granted. You never know how many international finals you get to play. So, happy plus fulfilled. I think that’s what I’d say.
The Gardevoir Deck
Q: When it comes to the deck you were piloting, this is only your third or fourth event really piloting Gardevoir. Did you feel that the deck kind of played into the field with all the new cards and rivals? Did you see anything that was more of a struggle than you thought going in?
A:I think that we had a pretty good grasp on the meta game going in. The thing is,Gardevoir is just so good. It’s a ridiculously good deck, and it has the unique ability to adapt to whatever your opponent’s playing, right? That’s really the thing that makes it so attractive to some of the best players: no matter what your opponent’s playing, no matter if you start from behind or what kind of lines they take, Gardevoir always has the potential to come back. Munkidori also allows you to manipulate any mistakes with damage your opponents have. It allows you to not take knockouts and to activate key cards like Fezandipiti.
Going in, there are very few decks that someone could make that would be scary for us because our deck can just counter almost everything. Grimmsnarl was definitely a scary matchup, but we felt like it was slightly favored in our direction, so we weren’t too worried about it. I had to beat that in the top 8, and I think that was the match I was most scared of going in with. Other than that, there was nothing too tricky. Well, my round one was actually against my worst possible imaginable matchup, and it was terrible! The guy told me it was his first tournament then he destroyed me, like he played reasonably well, but that matchup was really bad. Any deck with Pidgey out was also bad for us, but otherwise, there was nothing too crazy. Obviously, it worked out. I was able to win.
Q: Do you think people will see the results here and look for ways to more reliably counter that deck?
A:The problem with Gardevoiris that you may’t counter everything that Gardevoir could play, so our list for this weekend was built very specifically. We didn’t play Driftloon, which lets us do a lot of damage as we didn’t feel like we needed to, but some decks can take advantage of that. For example, we had the worst Gholdengo matchup, and we had a really bad Charizard-Pidgey matchup.
Going forward, if those decks pick up in play, then you’ll need to Driftloon back in or maybe a TM Devo or something. The hard thing about Gardevoir is that you never know what they’ll have in their deck, and how they build their deck really decides what they have a good or bad matchup against. It might be the case thatGholdengo decksget really popular then we have to switch back to playing Driftloon or play some tech card to beat that matchup, but I think that it’s going to be very hard to find a deck that beats all versions of Gardevoir very consistently.
The Winning Moments At TCG Masters
Q: Can you walk us through that moment when you realized you were going to get the final turn?
A:Yeah, so I’m sitting there, I’m waiting, I passed over at that point. I didn’t know exactly how much time was left, so I was kind of debating between whether to attempt to rush through it a lot or to try and take 5 extra seconds at the end of my turn or something, right?
Then I decided, ‘All right, I’m just going to play at a normal pace.’ I pass it over to my opponent and I see the judges keep glancing at the clock, so I know it’s soon. I can see my watch and it says 34, and I know that 35 is when the match ends. I’m just staring at that 4 and just praying it would turn into a 5. With every action he took, I knew it would take a little bit longer. Whenever he played Secret Box, I was so happy because that’s a lot of decisions, and that’s 4 cards you have to take out—you have to shuffle your deck. He played Research, he drew 7 cards, and it’s a lot more decisions. You have to see his hands, and every card that he played made him see more cards. I was happy about that.
When he went to attack, they said that was time. I was so relieved, right? I knew that I had a huge advantage at that moment. He would get one less turn in the game, and I would get one to close it out. It’s really unfortunate that that’s how time works; obviously, you have to have some limit on the match. I think I was still in a really good spot to win if time wasn’t called, but I wish that Riley and I had been able to play out the full match and see who the winner was that way. Luckily, time favored me, and I was able to get there. It was just a lot of relief at the moment and then immediately thinking, ‘OK, is there any way that I can lose? Can I make sure I can close it down in 2 turns?’
Q: For us watching, it seemed like things were going back and forth. When did you sort of realize that you’d won?
A:On the second-to-final turn, I knew that it was going to be really hard for him to win the game. He had 4 prize cards, I’m pretty sure, and I was going down to 4 myself. We were going to be tied at that point. The only way that he could take 2 is if he killed my Mew, and there were only 2 ways that he could do that. The first way was usingScream Tail, and if you use Scream Tail, then I could double Munkidori and knock it out. If you use Gardevoir, then I knew that I could one-shot the Gardevoir or try and counter-cut her around it. I knew that I was in a decent spot to close the game, I just had to execute.
Then, on the very final turn, he made a play where he left his Active open to get killed by a triple Adrena-Brain. That kind of shifted what I was trying to do to win. I was initially trying to go for a double Adrena-Brain on the Ralts, but whenever he moved the 30 off, I had to kill his Active. I saw my cards, I saw a Vessel and an Ultra Ball, and I was pretty sure that I was going to win. I had a plan going into the turn, which was Vessel–Ultra Ball for Fez, and then I top decked Fez. I was pretty sure I had a way to win. I knew that I could Ultra Ball for Gardevoir, but I was having trouble finding out how to get the last 40 damage because I put both energy on the Active. Then I put the energy on the bench, I got the advantage on all the damage, and then I was able to get there. There was a moment when I was looking through my deck where I realized ‘OK, I win doing this’ and then I was able to execute that last play.
Q: When you’re playing someone that you know is as good as you at a matchup or close enough to get that far, how is it managing those super high-level mirror matches?
A:I think the biggest thing is just knowing your deck really well. You have to know what the weaknesses of your deck are because you can take advantage of those and know the potential of your opponent’s deck. For example, in the first game, I knew that he didn’t have Counter Catcher. I was able to really aggressively go for my 2 prize cards to basically set up a checkmate. In the last game, I knew that he could only use 2 Munkidori in one turn. One big thing in the mirror is bench space, right? If he fills up his bench, he only has a limited amount of Munkidori, so I can use that to my advantage. It’s just knowing your deck really well and then using that knowledge to find out, ‘OK, what can my opponent do?’ Then it’s trying to predict, a few turns down the line, how you can come out ahead.
