Champions League Yokohama 2027: Mega Excadrill ex wins through a Dragapult-packed Top 16

Keiyo Watanabe won the Masters Division of Champions League 2027 Yokohama with Mega Excadrill ex, and his was the only Mega Excadrill ex deck among the Top 32 lists on Limitless TCG. Everyone else was busy playing Dragapult: nine of the Top 16 players used it, according to Limitless TCG. Watanabe had built his deck to beat it.

It was also the event that almost didn’t happen. Typhoon No. 25 wiped out the middle day, September 21, and the tournament was finished on September 20 and 22.

How Mega Excadrill ex beat the Dragapult field

In his winner’s interview on the official Japanese Pokémon Card Game site, Watanabe explained that the matchup was the whole point:

“It’s strong against Dragapult ex, which is popular right now. Mega Excadrill ex can just barely survive Dragapult ex’s Phantom Dive plus Dusknoir’s Cursed Blast, and then knock out Dragapult ex in one hit.”

He’d played the deck ever since Mega Excadrill ex came out, liking that it pairs high HP with a big attack that doesn’t make it discard Energy, so it can keep swinging turn after turn. The final push came from practice. In sessions with friends before the event he went 18–1 over 19 games, and decided not to overthink it.

His build choice is worth copying. Watanabe says Mega Excadrill ex lists usually split two ways:

• Precious Trolley as the ACE SPEC: explosive when you draw it on your first turn, weak when you don’t;
• Hero’s Cape as the ACE SPEC, with more Buddy-Buddy Poffin: steadier, but with less upside.

He took the steadier Poffin-heavy build and swapped Hero’s Cape for Precious Trolley, to get the best of both. On stream, he opened with Precious Trolley in hand twice. He admits that was luck.

It wasn’t all smooth. In his first Top 8 match, his Precious Trolley was stuck in his Prize cards, and his opponent’s Mega Kangaskhan ex hit heads on Rapid-Fire Combo to knock out his Genesect ex in one attack. He came back with Metagross holding the line, a win he says showed that the deck is more than just Excadrill.

The Top 8

#	Player	Deck
1	Keiyo Watanabe	Mega Excadrill ex
2	Takumi Okubo	Clefairy / Ogerpon
3	Gaku Nakashima	Slowking
4	Shuto Itagaki	Dragapult / Dudunsparce
5	Akinori Arakawa	Dragapult / Blaziken
6	Kosuke Yoshii	Slowking
7	Ryo Nishikawa	Raging Bolt / Ogerpon
8	Tomori Sugiyama	Dragapult

Dragapult took three Top 8 spots and six more places in the Top 16, the same pattern we saw at the Baltimore Regional: the most popular deck, but not the winner. A Clefairy and Ogerpon deck finished second here after winning Baltimore the same weekend.

The other division winners were Ikkyu Ando in Seniors, with N’s Zoroark ex, and Taisei Shiba in Juniors, with Mega Diancie ex.

The typhoon that cut a day

The event was planned for three days, September 20 to 22, with a planned capacity of 10,000 players, according to Limitless. On September 20, the official site cancelled the September 21 session as Typhoon No. 25 approached, citing bad weather, likely transport disruption and the safety of players and staff. The final day went ahead as planned. Only players from the first qualifying day could advance, and Limitless puts the final field at about 5,000.

Players who lost their September 21 slot aren’t completely out of luck. Priority-entry players carry their priority over to Champions League 2027 Chiba. General-lottery entrants don’t, but the cancelled day counts as an unsuccessful draw, which puts them into the lottery chance system from Chiba onward.

More Worlds invites for Masters

Just before the event, on September 18, the official site changed the rules: the Top 8 in Masters at Champions League 2027 events now earn an invite to the 2027 World Championships, up from the Top 4. Juniors, Seniors and Open stay at Top 4.

Why this matters for players in the Philippines

Japan’s card pool and release schedule run ahead of ours, so Yokohama isn’t a direct preview of what you’ll face at a local Gym Battle. But put it together with Baltimore and one lesson is clear: Dragapult is the deck to beat everywhere, and the winners were the players who came prepared for it. Mega Excadrill ex is already legal in English (20 players took it into Baltimore’s second phase), so Watanabe’s reasoning is worth studying if you’re looking for an answer to Dragapult.

The next Champions League is in Chiba on November 22–23, 2026.