Two weeks before regionals, I had a team that I had been testing alongside Collin (TheBattleRoom) for a while and I had gotten comfortable with it. Then, the Tuesday before the event, I decided to completely scrap the team and build a new one from scratch with Pokémon that I had in my box. I had been testing with Talonflame and Mega Lucario for a little bit and thought that could catch a few people off guard and give me some easy wins so I started with that core and built from there. The team that I made that day was the team that got me 5th place at the St. Louis Winter Regional Championships and here it is!

At A Glance

The Team

Orange Peel (Rotom-Wash) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 44 Def / 76 SAtk / 132 SDef / 4 Spd
Calm Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
- Protect

What a really creative and interesting way to start things off, right? This kind of Rotom-W is anything but exciting in the current metagame, but it gets the job done. Whenever I was building this team, I really wanted to use Rotom-W due to previous difficulties in beating it with my other teams. Rotom-W is one of those Pokémon that you just need to get rid of as soon as possible or else it’s going to start spreading status and chip damage across your entire team. This pressure is one of the main reasons for having Protect on it. Protect was a move that I never really used on Rotom-W due to its great movepool but as I was testing, I kept getting doubled up on and inevitably knocked out before I could do anything. Utilizing protect allowed me to stop those double targets and gain some momentum back with my ally by taking advantage of the free turn.

Rotom-W’s spread was a pretty tight spread that barely managed to work out. With the Special Defense investment, it can survive a Modest Mega Charizard Y’s Solarbeam 93.7% of the time and heal up with a Sitrus Berry. Keeping Rotom at full HP was really important if I were to bring it against any sun teams because any chip damage really messed up my calcs and could put me in a bad position as far as survivability goes. With the defensive investment, Rotom-W survives a Mawile’s Play Rough 100% of the time. I figured that this was something I might as well live through, even though I assumed most of the Mawiles I played could very possibly be bulkier to imitate the team that Ray was using in Virginia, but taking the hit was just a safety net for those “what if” situations. Finally, Rotom-W’s Special Attack allowed it to KO 4 HP Talonflame 100% of the time with Thunderbolt. Talonflame isn’t a Pokémon that my team was too fond of. I didn’t have huge issues with it, but it could cause issues if not handled properly, so I wanted to try to take it down as easily as possible.

Get Richard (Salamence) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Flamethrower
- Stone Edge
- Dragon Pulse

Since the rest of the team has a few issues with opposing dragons, I felt like I needed to add something to threaten them with high speeds and powerful attacks, and Salamence did just that. While there was a large spike in Choice Scarf Salamence around this time, I managed to only face two of them during the entire tournament which made my life easier. If my opponent didn’t have a faster dragon, I could typically use Salamence as a way to scare out and take out opposing dragons to clear the way for Rotom-W and my other Pokémon to get more damage off. Draco Meteor was needed to ensure that I could KO Garchomp, Hydreigon, and Salamence. Dragon Pulse was mainly only used in the late game when I had already severely damaged the opposing Pokémon to where a Dragon Pulse would be worth it. Dragon Pulse was also a good, safe move that I could use even on opposing dragons if I felt that a Draco Meteor miss was too high of a risk. Another big issue with this team was opposing Steel-types, most notably Mawile and Aegislash. My team just didn’t have much to really hit hard enough to get rid of them quickly. Flamethrower really helped with that weakness because it was consistant and I could always rely on it hitting compared to Fire Blast which, to me, seemed like a risky pick for this team. I needed the consistent, 100% accuracy damage on those opposing Steel-types to maintain pressure. It never actually knocked out any Steel Pokémon, but it could still easily knock them into double target range of just about anything. Stone Edge was a last-second move choice, but proved to be semi-helpful in the swiss rounds. The only issue I ran across with Stone Edge was that there was a chance that a -1 (Intimidated) Stone Edge would miss the KO on a Charizard-Y that had some bulk invested. The main cause of this wasn’t as much the Modest nature as much as it was the non-flawless Attack stat which would have prevented a certain bulky Charizard from surviving Stone Edge with 3 HP in swiss. Other than that, Stone Edge took out the Charizard every time.

The spread really doesn’t need much explanation. With Draco Meteor, Salamence had chances to miss KOs on Mega Manectric and a few other semi-frail Pokémon and I really didn’t want my chances to be any lower, so I felt like max Special Attack was necessary. I looked at the Speed investment like I would a 2013 Scarf Tyranitar. Sure, I could have taken some EVs out of speed to add a bit of bulk to guarantee surviving certain hits, but then I would always lose 1v1 against an opposing Modest Salamence. While I never actually kept Salamence in if I had to risk it, if a match ever came down to Scarf Salamence versus Scarf Salamence, I would rather have a 50% chance to win than a 0% chance to win, so the Speed stayed at max.

Overrated (Talonflame) @ Life Orb
Ability: Gale Wings
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Brave Bird
- Flare Blitz
- Quick Guard
- Protect

From the start of this format, I thought Talonflame was one of the worst Pokémon. Yet somehow, even though Talonflame didn’t always get big KOs, it still did way too much damage and forced me to play catch-up. I figured I would test it out but not so much for the Brave Birds, but rather for the Quick Guard support. I had been testing with Quick Guard Talonflame paired with Mega Lucario for a while and I was impressed with how they worked together. Lucario could get off huge hits and maybe miss a KO, then Talonflame could pick that KO up with priority Brave Birds. Talonflame was also a pretty important metagame call for my team. It was my thought to completely wipe out Venusaur which I felt would be more of an issue and more popular than it actually was during swiss. Flare Blitz from Talonflame did huge damage to Mawile, OHKOing with no Intimidate and putting it in the red with Intimidate. Even though it didn’t pick up the KO sometimes, it was important to be able to cripple Mawiles due to the massive offensive presence they had against my team. Finally, Protect let me stall out opposing Protects which would prevent me from KOing big threats to my team. The only issue I had with Talonflame was that I needed it for a good chunk of threats and that made me rely on it a bit too much. Relying on Talonflame too much paired with Talonflame’s major setback of practically KOing itself after 3 turns made my matches pretty difficult and made me think on my feet a majority of the time.

Talonflame’s spread was pretty straightforward. I had the same mentality about Talonflame that I had with Salamence: keep the damage rolls as high as possible and deal out damage as fast as possible. I found myself outspeeding a large amount of opposing Talonflame with mine, which proved how important my seemingly excessive Speed investment was.

PATRICE! (Florges) @ Leftovers
Ability: Flower Veil
EVs: 252 HP / 156 Def / 100 SAtk
Modest Nature
- Moonblast
- Psychic
- Calm Mind
- Protect

Florges was 100% inspired by Toler Webb (Dim) after his top 4 finish in Virginia a week prior to St. Louis regionals. After a bit of testing, I found that Florges was capable of taking on teams of three Pokémon all by itself, if set up properly. I typically used Florges as a checkmate similarly to how most players play Ferrothorn. When using Florges, I tried to get rid of the big threats like Mawile and Bisharp first and then tried use it from there on out. Honestly, Florges was one of my least used Pokémon due to bad matchups, making me a little reluctant to use it in most of my matches. Florges still had a good team matchup against the Garchomp / Salamence cores that seemed to be running around. I liked to keep Florges in the back for Pokémon like Chesnaught, Rotom-W, Gardevoir, Manectric, Dragon-types, and anything else that couldn’t take a huge chunk of Florges’ health with huge physical hits. Moonblast and Psychic did really well in terms of coverage. Florges really doesn’t need to hit that many things super effectively as long as it has a neutral hit available. I really liked using Psychic because it allowed me to hit Venusaur and Amoonguss for big damage and possibly KO them if I had enough Calm Minds set up. If I could get Florges into a good spot, it could easily wall an entire team.

The spread is somewhat simple and made sense for the team. The Special Attack EVs allow Florges to OHKO 4 HP Salamence 100% of the time with no boosts, while surviving an Adamant, max Attack Return from Mega Kangaskhan with the Defensive EV investment. When I wasn’t too concerned about making Florges sweep, I could easily switch out a Pokémon for Florges against Salamence, absorb the Draco Meteor, and KO the following turn. Florges was pretty niche but did well at what it needed to do.

Oscar (Lucario) @ Lucarionite
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- Rock Slide
- Bullet Punch
- Protect

Of the Lucarios that I’ve seen being used so far, I’ve pretty much only seen Follow Me sets. I figured I would try to branch out from that and use Lucario as a strong offensive presence that applies pressure as much as possible. With Lucario’s ability to Mega Evolve, Lucario gains the ability Adaptability which allows it to OHKO semi-bulky Kangaskhan (up to 164 HP), even at -1 Attack. If Lucario doesn’t get Intimidated, it OHKOs every possible Mega Kangaskhan without even needing an Adamant nature to boost its Attack. Rock Slide was really helpful for getting rid of Talonflame and Charizards. Lucario, while it might not seem like it, was actually a pretty reliable check to Talonflame barring critical hits and misses. While Talonflame has priority over Lucario, Lucario can take a Brave Bird and Rock Slide back. If Talonflame is Adamant and tries to Flare Blitz, Mega Lucario outspeeds and Rock Slides before it can even get off the attack. If supported by Quick Guard, Talonflame hardly gives Lucario any issues. The main reason I used Lucario is simply its sheer power. Garchomp, Mawile, and bulky Rotom all take 90-100% from Close Combat which leaves them in KO range from chip damage. If I ever got to a spot where Lucario had to get rid of a threat faster than it, it had access to a priority Adaptability-boosted Bullet Punch which is about the same damage output as a Scizor’s Bullet Punch with Technician.

Again, just like Salamence and Talonflame, I wanted Lucario to be as fast and powerful as possible. There are a few damage rolls that I could miss out on if I ran anything less than max Attack, which is something that I didn’t want to happen.

Shaniqua (Amoonguss) @ Black Sludge
Ability: Regenerator
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 84 Def / 172 SDef
Calm Nature
- Spore
- Giga Drain
- Rage Powder
- Protect

The majority of the Pokémon on my team are pretty frail and are not very good at absorbing hits when switched out, and Amoonguss was able to help out with that weakness. Whether it was switching Amoonguss in or Rage Powdering to prevent damage on the Pokémon switching in, Amoonguss helped support the team and messed with my opponent. Whenever I had a rough matchup, I could use Amoonguss to Spore the biggest threat which helped increase my momentum and try to get in a winning position. Amoonguss was also one of my best answers to Trick Room, even if he is honestly not that great of an answer. Trick Room is one of the biggest weaknesses to this team so I’m very fortunate that I didn’t have to face any teams that could abuse that kind of set up.

The spread was actually just a spread that I’ve been using since 2012. It was supposed to survive Metagross’ Zen Headbutt, but that is no longer an issue in this metagame. I really was too lazy to make a special spread but this one did just fine mainly because all I needed was for Amoonguss to take strong special hits. If there were any physical hits that I needed to take, I could support it with Will-O-Wisp or Intimidate.

Common Leads

Talonflame + Lucario

This was a common lead that I used if I saw a Kangaskhan in Team Preview. With Talonflame’s Quick Guard support, it allowed me to Quick Guard the Fake Out and go for the KO on Kangaskhan before it could get going. With this lead, my bulkier Pokémon were still in back so if I didn’t like my lead matchup I could easily switch out to take an Earthquake, Rock Slide, or Heat Wave. This lead was great for some of the lower level players that were weak to hyper offensive play, which helped secure wins in the early rounds of swiss.

Rotom-W + Salamence

This was an anti-Talonflame lead that worked pretty much every time. Salamence Intimidated any possible physical attackers and had great coverage to support Rotom-W and give it some breathing room. The biggest issue with this lead was if the opponent had a Salamence, then things could easily go south — especially if their Salamence was supported with Fake Out. This lead was primarily supposed to shut down physical attackers with Will-O-Wisp + Intimidate and it did a great job at doing that.

Amoonguss + Lucario

I only used this lead if I knew Lucario could sweep and if Amoonguss could redirect the super effective hits. This lead was pretty good for some of the better players if they didn’t quite know what Lucario did and didn’t have an immediate answer for Talonflame. If I saw Talonflame in Team Preview, I was very hesitant to lead this but sometimes it worked out.

Matches – Swiss

Round 1: Bye

There were over 250 players and only one random bye was given for round 1. Yeah, I guess I got a tad bit lucky. Having a bye was nice, but I felt like it put me at a bit of a disadvantage going into my next round. My opponent would already have a win under their belt  while I was just starting to get warmed up.

Record: 1-0

Round 2: Tiffany Stanley (Shiloh) [1-0]

Team: Manectric / Drifblim / Ferrothorn / Gardevoir / Gyarados / Tyranitar

She chose:

It took me a while to actually comprehend the person that I was paired up with. Shiloh is a good friend that I had practiced with for regionals, so going into this match was a bit frightening. Due to me practicing with her, I pretty much knew every nook and cranny about her team barring a few surprises. I actually changed my team from the last time we had practiced so I was at a large advantage going in, but I knew how consistent of a player Shiloh was so this round was going to be a tough one regardless.

She led Manectric / Tyranitar into my Lucario / Amoonguss and I knew I had an amazing advantage going into turn 1. Amoonguss easily redirected all of her attacks and allowed Lucario to get some easy KOs. Turn 1, I Protected Lucario and Spored her Manectric in an attempt to disable it long enough for Lucario to get some of the easier KOs even while Intimidated, but to my surprise she Flamethrowered into Lucario as expected and Taunts my Amoonguss with Tyranitar, which is not something I knew about. The Taunt really screwed up all of my plans due to Amoonguss not being able to Rage Powder the big hits directed at Lucario, so I had to double switch Amoonguss to Rotom-W and Lucario to Salamence the next turn. She goes for Flamethrower on Lucario and Protected Tyranitar. The match continued like this for the next ten or so turns; she would make a play that put me in a bad position and I would switch to reapply the pressure. Most of my switches were pretty good switches and never really got punished. By the end of the match, I had Amoonguss / Rotom-W out with Lucario / Salamence in the back (all in green health) against her Manectric at half and Ferrothorn at 75% as the time runs out. I won on time due to my side having four Pokémon left and her side only having two. If we had kept playing, Flamethrower would be able to KO both Ferrothorn and her Manectric at 50% health.

This was my toughest match of the day and made me think way harder than I wanted to so early in the day!

Record: 2-0

Round 3: Only person I don’t know the name of “Chatot-Mr. Mime guy” [2-0]

Team: Lucario / Rotom-W / Chatot / Gyarados / Talonflame / Mr. Mime

He chose:  

Oh hey, Chatot is legal now? I really didn’t know what to expect from this team except for an obvious Fake Out + Icy Wind combo from Mr. Mime. As expected, Mr. Mime uses Fake Out turn 1 and Icy Wind turn 2. What he did turn 3 though is what truly made me sweat. I figured I was safe with Amoonguss / Rotom-W against his Mr. Mime / Gyarados, but to my surprise he Teeter Dances with Mr. Mime making it really tough to get off some hits on him. He managed to set up a Dragon Dance with his Gyarados versus my Amoonguss and Rotom-W out on the field. He Mega Evolved Gyarados, which really scared me. The following turn I was able to regain the momentum by switching out Rotom-W to Salamence while Amoonguss Spored the Gyarados after it used Earthquake. As soon as the Gyarados went to sleep, I had control of the match. I slowly took out the Gyarados with Dragon Pulse and Giga Drain. Once Gyarados went down, I cleaned up with Lucario. It knocked out Mr. Mime with Bullet Punch, Rotom-W with Close Combat, and Chatot with Close Combat, giving me the win.

After a few more rounds of swiss, it was brought to my attention that this kid actually had quite a dirty strategy up his sleeve. He would Teeter Dance his Chatot, which would activate his Tangled Feet, raising his evasion by 2 stages. He would then have Chatot set up a Substitute and Nasty Plot, followed up with a Boom Burst next to his Soundproof Mr. Mime. It was a scary strategy, but required too much set up.

Record: 3-0

Round 4: Nathan Rollins (Truth Walker) [3-0]

Team: Rotom-H / Venusaur / Garchomp / Gyarados / Scrafty / Charizard

He chose:

I remember talking to Nathan a few days before the event because Chalkey had introduced him to me, so Nathan wasn’t a new face. I didn’t really know what to expect in this game because I was pretty scared of his team in Team Preview. I knew that Salamence was going to be essential to win this game, so I would have to keep it alive as long as possible. I sadly do not remember everything about this match but I do remember key points. My Salamence (at -1 Attack) went for a Stone Edge on his Charizard which, to my surprise, missed the knock out, leaving his Charizard with only 3 HP. The turn after, I used Stone Edge on Charizard for the KO as he Protected his Garchomp and attempted to go for a Solar Beam on my Rotom-W. Getting rid of his Charizard pretty much set up my Rotom-W to demolish the remainder of his team because he had not brought Venusaur into the match. Nothing exciting happened until his Rotom-H used Overheat when I switched in Rotom-W. The following turn I accurately predicted his switch to Gyarados and Thunderbolt knocks it out. He is left with Garchomp / Rotom-H against my Rotom-W / Florges / Salamence. I manage to nab a KO on Garchomp with Dragon Pulse and knock out Rotom-H with a Hydro Pump and Dragon Pulse.

Record: 4-0

Round 5: Kyle Epperson [4-0]

Team: Charizard / Amoonguss / Talonflame / Kangaskhan / Salamence / Rotom-W

He chose:

I lead Lucario / Talonflame into Talonflame / Amoonguss and it looks like a great lead for me. I Mega Evolve Lucario and use Protect while my Talonflame Brave Birds his Amoonguss (which switches into Salamence) and his Talonflame uses Protect. Brave Bird does over half to Salamence, so I go for the safe Brave Bird to knock out Salamence. Lucario uses Rock Slide to knock out Talonflame. He then brings out his last two Pokémon, which are Charizard and Amoonguss. I felt like he would Protect his Amoonguss here due to the threat of Brave Bird so I double up on Charizard with Brave Bird and Rock Slide to knock it out. The next turn I go for a Flare Blitz on Amoonguss and, thanks to the sun boost, easily knock it out.

Record: 5-0

Round 6: Brayden Glad (Styrofoameon) [5-0]

Team: Rotom-W / Talonflame / Mamoswine / Meowstic / Mawile / Salamence

He chose:

He leads Talonflame / Meowstic as I lead with Talonflame / Rotom-W. There really wasn’t anything that his Talonflame or Meowstic could do to me because I carry Quick Guard on my own Talonflame. He Protects Talonflame as I Quick Guard, which prevents his Meowstic from Swaggering my Rotom-W. I burn the Meowstic with Will-O-Wisp. From there on out, I continued to Quick Guard while he kept Swaggering into it. My Rotom was able to demolish his entire team. Brayden’s DS was blinking red towards the end of our match so he was making very fast and quick moves (which I kind of took advantage of) so I was able to make plays that perfectly counteracted the simple, safe plays he was making. It was a clean and easy win.

Record: 6-0

Round 7: David Kubiak [6-0]

Team: Rotom-W / Kangaskhan / Liepard / Conkeldurr / Garchomp / Talonflame

He chose:  

I lead with Lucario / Talonflame as he leads with Talonflame / Kangaskhan. I go for the slightly risky Quick Guard and Close Combat aimed at Kangaskhan as he double Protects. On turn 2, I go for Brave Bird on Kangaskhan which takes it down to about 50% health and Rock Slide for the KO on his Talonflame (which I can assume was attempting to Flare Blitz my Lucario). His Kangaskhan uses Return on Talonflame, knocking it out. From there on out, Lucario and Salamence are able to clean up the Rotom-W, Garchomp, and Kangaskhan. The rest of the match was really straightforward and overall another easy win.

Record: 7-0

Round 8: Keegan Beljanski (Darkeness) [7-0]

Before this round, the head judge comes up to me and notifies me that if I want to draw this round, I would be allowed to. I told Keegan about it and we talked it over and discovered that if we were to draw, we would both be guaranteed top cut. We did not know that a draw was not allowed in tournaments and honestly, even though we would have very likely made top cut without the draw, we didn’t want to risk the unpredictable 7-2 bloodbath for top cut, so we took the draw.

Record: 7-0-1

Round 9: Collin Heier (TheBattleRoom) [7-1]

Team: Gyarados / Aegislash / Hydreigon / Garchomp / Rotom-H / Kangaskhan

He chose:  

Collin was the only other person besides Shiloh who I absolutely did not want to play against this regional. Collin was someone who I have built teams with for over a year and we both knew each other’s teams inside and out. In fact, I was about to use his exact team for this event but chickened out a few days prior. Collin was on the verge of having to risk going 7-2 and possibly not making top cut. Luckily for Collin, my record allowed me to be able to forfeit to someone I deemed worthy of top cut. Our match was recorded which can be found above. I tried to make the match not look too bad, but the loss was intentional. I attempted to play seriously for the first few turns but failed at doing that properly. The turns following turn 2 were extremely nasty and honestly, Collin deserved that win even if I didn’t try to lose. He brought better Pokémon that game compared to my team of four and played much better than I did.

Record: 7-1-1

Matches – Top Cut

Top 16: Erick Herrera (Godofcloud9) [7-2 in swiss: 12th seed]

Team: Tyranitar / Manectric / Roserade / Azumarill / Scrafty / Delphox

I knew a few Pokémon on Erick’s team because we had stayed in the same hotel room. He had a couple tricks up his sleeve on one Pokémon, but it was the only Pokémon he did not bring into the match. I knew the Roserade was going to give me issues if it was the Hidden Power Ice / Focus Sash set that I thought it might be. I knew if I could keep my Salamance alive and handle his Roserade effectively that I should be able to take the win.

Game 1

He chose:

He leads with Manectric / Azumarill as I lead Rotom-W / Amoonguss with Lucario and Salamence in back. In turn 1, I gain a lot of momentum by Sporing his Manectric and Will-O-Wisping his Azumarill. I only take a Hidden Power Ice onto Amoonguss and a burned Play Rough from Azumarill onto Rotom-W. I switch to Lucario and Thunderbolt his Azumarill as he goes for another Play Rough on Rotom-W. From there on out, I’m able to Close Combat and Thunderbolt safely and get a somewhat easy win with mainly using those two moves. I figured out that his Roserade must be carrying a Choice Scarf, due to the fact that he used Hidden Power Ice on my Salamence but then switched it out when I brought in Rotom-W, which was really important information for the rest of our set of games.

Game Count: 1-0

Game 2

He chose:

I honestly can’t remember too much about this match. I know that I was able to predict that he would switch Roserade out for Manectric, so I made a risky play and Spored Roserade’s spot to put his Manectric to sleep. I managed to get his Roserade burned which helped knock it into Flamethrower range later on in the match. His Scrafty managed to take out my Amoonguss from about 40% with an Ice Punch that shocked me a bit. After I KO his Roserade with Salamence, I was able to get Lucario and Rotom-W in a winning spot against his Manectric and Azumarill. I still had Salamence in back, so I kept my focus on the Azumarill. On top of that, his Manectric was asleep for a while, which allowed me to focus Salamence on KOing the Roserade without worry of getting KOd by Manectric. Azumarill went down and I was able to take the match.

Win 2-0.

Top 8: Ashton Cox (linkyoshimario) [8-1 in swiss: 4th seed]

Team: Weavile / Garchomp / Clawitzer / Charizard / Diggersby / Chesnaught

To be completely honest, I went into this set feeling extremely cocky because I knew Ashton’s entire team, all the way down to the sets. The only thing I pretty much didn’t know were a few moves and spreads. I thought I had won before I even got behind the DS which ironically led to my defeat.

Game 1

He chose:

Every time I thought I had a way to take out one of his Pokémon, Ashton found a way to beat my Pokémon first. He made a good play of double switching when I double Protected on turn 1. Later on, he locked the win by Brick Breaking my Lucario switch from Rotom-w. I didn’t quite play like I should have.

Game Count: 0-1

Game 2

He chose:

What happened in game 1 pretty much repeated itself in game 2. Every time I had something to take out a big threat, he had something to take out my Pokémon before it could do anything to him. I didn’t bring Salamence, which was probably the biggest mistake I could have made due to its ability to OHKO his Diggersby with Draco Meteor and then clear the field for a possible Lucario / Talonflame sweep. Instead of bringing Salamence, I brought Florges which I felt could do well against his team due to it hitting nearly all of his physical attackers for super effective damage. While Florges did do decently well against half  of his team, Salamence could have taken out the Diggersby which was exponentially more important than taking out any of the other Pokémon. If I had brought Salamence, the set would have been different, but I was too arrogant and rushed into Team Preview without recognizing the win condition that Salamence could give me.

Loss 2-0.

Closing Thoughts

While I didn’t play my best and made poor choices in top 8, I was extremely satisfied with how I did overall. Getting top 8 at this event put me in the top 16 for the CP standings, which is far better than I could have imagined. I had an amazing time in St. Louis. It was a blast to see everybody once again. The tournament was really smooth and pairings were up quickly. Yeti Gaming did a great job by recording a match from each round and then posting them all online right after the tournament. I am glad I was able to get my feet in the water for this metagame and hopefully I can continue to do just as well in the future.

The post Maintaining Inner Focus: A 5th Place Missouri Regional Team Analysis appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

They are strong, they are aggressive, and they never shy away from the battle! These are the fighters of the Pokemon world! Fighting-type Pokemon are known for their high base Attack stats, useful support roles, and diverse movepools. Fighting-type Pokemon are threatening on their own and can also be used to counter opposing threats in the Pokemon Video Game Championships.

Offense

Offensively, the Fighting-type hits five different types for super-effective damage and hits seven other types for neutral damage. It boasts the ability to slam Normal-types for super-effective damage, but must be wary of Ghost-types, which are completely immune to Fighting-type attacks. Fighting-type moves are super-effective against Ice-types such as Mamoswine, Cloyster, and Abomasnow, and four times super-effective against Weavile, which are all popular checks to Flying- and Dragon-type Pokemon. If your team is struggling against these Pokemon, then you may want to consider adding a Fighting-type Pokemon to your roster in order to counter these potential threats. Fighting-types hit Rock-type Pokemon such as Rhyperior, Tyranitar, Aggron and the newly-added Tyrantrum for super-effective damage, with Tyranitar taking quadruple damage from its attacks. To round things off, Dark-types like Hydreigon, Krookodile, Liepard, Mega Gyarados, and Scrafty, and Steel-types like Bisharp, Lucario, and Ferrothorn also get smacked for twice the damage. As mentioned before, Fighting-types also hit Normal-type Pokemon super-effectively, most notably Mega Kangaskhan, Smeargle, and Snorlax. When you look at this list you can quickly understand why Fighting-types are useful in VGC due to the many threats that they can counter.

Defense

Defensively, Fighting-type Pokemon are resistant to Bug-, Rock- and Dark-type attacks, but are weak to Flying-, Psychic- and Fairy-type attacks. Many Fighting-type Pokemon come with mediocre Special Defense, and many powerful Psychic and Fairy-type moves hit on the special side of the spectrum. However, some Fighting-types like Lucario, Gallade, and Medicham have a second type that cancels out their Psychic weakness. Scrafty is even immune to Psychic due to its Dark-typing, but this immunity unfortunately comes with a 4x weakness to Fairy-type attacks. If you’re looking for a Fighting-type that only takes neutral damage from Fairy, Lucario and Toxicroak are the only VGC ’14 legal Pokemon with this trait.

Threats to the Fighting Type

Because most Fighting-type Pokemon hit on the physical side of the spectrum, your opponent will most likely implement several strategies to render your physical Fighting-types useless. Here are a few common countermeasures that players use in order to disrupt your fighters.

Will-O-Wisp

Will-O-Wisp is the most reliable move to inflict a status condition most physical attackers despise – Burn. In addition to chipping away at 1/8 of a Pokemon’s health per turn, burning a Pokemon also cuts its Attack stat in half. However, Pokemon with the Guts Ability actually benefit from having a burn; it will raise the Pokemon’s Attack stat by 50% instead of cutting it in half. With the release of Pokemon X and Y, Will-O-Wisp was given an increase in accuracy from 75% to 85%, which makes Will-O-Wisp a much more reliable move than in generations past. As a result, more teams are utilizing it. The move Safeguard will help protect you from this threat. Some of the most popular users of Safeguard are Meowstic and Klefki, who offer priority Safeguard with their Prankster Abilities. This move also protects your team from other status conditions, including paralysis, sleep, freeze, and confusion. If a Safeguard user does not work well for your team, try having your Pokemon hold a Lum Berry. This is another viable option,which cures the same status conditions as Safeguard but does not take up a move slot.

Intimidate

Gyarados, Mawile, Mega Manectric, Krookodile, Salamence, and Scrafty are all common Pokemon in the VGC ’14 metagame that can have Intimidate as their Ability. Intimidate will undoubtedly annoy your fighters when used by your opponent because it lowers the Attack of both opposing Pokemon by one stage when sent out. Unfortunately, Intimidate users do not share a common weakness. However, we can identify the ones that give our individual teams the most problems and take care of them. For example, Mega Manectric may be a dangerous threat to your physical sweepers. It can outspeed the majority of the metagame, Volt Switch out before it can be attacked, and chain Intimidates accordingly. If Mega Manectric is wreaking havoc on your team, make sure you have a Pokemon to counter it effectively. Never leave your Fighting-type in a position where it can constantly have its Attack lowered.

Talonflame

Base Stats: 78 HP / 81 Atk / 71 Def / 74 Sp. Atk / 69 Sp. Def / 126 Spd

Generation VI introduced a new Flying-type Pokemon with the ability to deal priority Flying-type attacks in the form of Talonflame, and there was nothing a Fighting-type trainer could do except watch in horror. Gale Wings Talonflame can dish out priority super-effective damage to your Fighting-type Pokemon. Thankfully, the Flying Gem is not available in VGC as of right now, or Talonflame would be even more powerful with a combination of Flying Gem and Acrobatics. Talonflame can even set up priority Tailwind which doubles the speed of all of Talonflame’s allies. Luckily, Pokemon X and Y gave a buff to the move Quick Guard, which blocks both members of your team from any priority attacks in Talonflame’s Flying-type arsenal. The great thing about Quick Guard this generation is that Quick Guard can now be used consecutively without fail unlike other blocking moves such as Protect and Detect. You may want to consider adding a partner that carries Quick Guard in order to preserve your Fighting-type Pokemon. Many Fighting-type Pokemon can learn Quick Guard themselves if you are opposed to having a teammate carry the move. Another option to counter Talonflame is to run a Pokemon with access to Rock Slide or Stone Edge. Rock Slide comes with 90% accuracy, hits both opposing Pokemon, and also comes with a 30% chance of causing the Pokemon it hits to flinch. Stone Edge comes with a less reliable 80% accuracy and hits just one Pokemon; however, it can be used if you are worried about Wide Guard users protecting opposing Talonflame or Mega Charizard Y from Rock Slides. Popular users of these moves are Garchomp, Tyranitar, Rhydon, and Rhyperior, among others. Many Fighting-type Pokemon have access to Rock Slide and Stone Edge as well. You can also consider having your Fighting-type Pokemon hold a Coba Berry which reduces the amount of damage taken by a foe’s super-effective Flying-type attack by 50%.

Now that we have analyzed the Fighting-type as a whole, let’s examine each individual VGC-legal Fighting-type option in order to discover which Pokemon can better serve your team.

The Fighters

Mega Heracross

Base Stats: 80 HP / 185 Atk / 115 Def / 40 Sp. Atk / 105 Sp. Def / 75 Spd

Pokémon X and Y has been very kind to Heracross. Through Heracross’ newly acquired Mega Evolution, both its Defense and its Special Defense stats increase, and Heracross’ already respectful 125 base Attack stat soars to an outrageous 185. That’s higher than Mega Tyranitar and Mega Garchomp! Mega Heracross’ new Skill Link Ability extends all two-to-five hit moves to the full five hits every time, which means it can laugh at Focus Sash, Substitutes, and resist Berries. Mega Heracross hits like an Abrams Tank, and does so repeatedly. When you look at the movepool that Mega Heracross has at its disposal, it gets some interesting moves to take advantage of its newly acquired Ability. Mega Heracross learns Pin Missile, which is a powerful STAB that can rip Meowstic apart. Although Mega Heracross gets Arm Thrust as a Fighting-type STAB, the move’s power is somewhat underwhelming compared to that of Close Combat, and doesn’t mean you take 5/8 of your HP as damage when attacking a Garchomp or Ferrothorn.

In terms of coverage moves, Mega Heracross gets Rock Blast as an Egg Move. While this might seem like a great way to check Mega Charizard Y and Talonflame, their respective Heat Waves and Brave Birds will OHKO you far before you have a chance to Rock Blast them back. Mega Heracross also learns Bullet Seed to get coverage over Water-, Rock-, and Ground-types. It is worthwhile to note that with any of these multi strike moves, you have a 5/16 chance of getting a critical hit, or a 31.25% chance. Sadly, Mega Heracross also has some distinct disadvantages as well. Even though it received greater bulk and got +60 base Attack in its Mega Evolution, it took a hit to its Speed stat placing it at an awkward base 75 Speed.

Mega Lucario

Base Stats: 70 HP / 145 Atk / 88 Def / 140 Sp. Atk / 70 Sp. Def / 112 Spd

Lucario’s Mega Evolution grants it a buff in both Attack and Special Attack, a huge jump in Speed, and a slightly buffed Defense stat. Mega Lucario has a unique presence as a Fighting-type because it is incredibly unpredictable. When another Fighting-type enters the battlefield, you can usually assume that it is a physical attacker. With Mega Lucario, this is not always the case. Mega Lucario can use a physical set utilizing Close Combat, Bullet Punch, Rock Slide or any other physical attack in its movepool, a special set using Vacuum Wave, Aura Sphere, and Flash Cannon, or even a supporting bulkier version with Follow Me, Quick Guard, or Heal Pulse. Other helpful moves in Mega Lucario’s arsenal include Crunch and Dark Pulse to hit Psychic- and Ghost-types for solid damage, Extreme Speed for powerful priority, and Final Gambit to OHKO things like Rotom at full HP. Because of Mega Lucario’s dual Fighting / Steel type, it carries eight resistances and an immunity to Poison. Mega Lucario’s increased Speed stat allows it to outspeed certain Pokemon it couldn’t before. With 164 Speed EVs and a Speed-boosting Nature, Mega Lucario can outspeed all base 100 Speed Pokemon. This includes Jolly Mega Kangaskhan and Timid Mega Charizard Y that you can OHKO with Close Combat / Aura Sphere and Rock Slide respectively. Lucario’s versatility means you can even run a mixed attacking set.

Even with all these cool tricks, Mega Lucario does come with some drawbacks. It is incredibly frail at times and can easily faint when hit by super-effective attacks, or even repetitive neutral damage. This can be remedied with a little prediction by Mega Lucario’s trainer. When you recognize that a threat to Mega Lucario is out on the field, you can switch out to something that resists an incoming Heat Wave or Earthquake if you feel you can’t remove that particular threat before it knocks out Mega Lucario. Mega Lucario also suffers a bit from four-moveslot syndrome; you more or less have to have a Fighting-type move and Protect, and those last two moveslots can be real tossups.

Mega Medicham

Base Stats: 60 HP / 100 Atk / 85 Def / 80 Sp. Atk / 85 Sp. Def / 100 Spd

Medicham also received a Mega Evolution this generation, and with it Medicham was granted a sharp increase in Attack and a buff in Defense, Special Defense, Speed, and Special Attack. Mega Medicham’s Pure Power Ability doubles its Attack stat. It essentially has the same effects as the Ability Huge Power, which makes Mega Medicham a very powerful Fighting-type Pokemon. You will probably want to use a Jolly Nature with Mega Medicham along with 252 Speed EVs in order to at least speed tie with other base 100 max speed Pokemon such as Jolly Mega Kangaskhan and OHKO with Drain Punch. Mega Medicham can learn a wide variety of attacking moves – Fire Punch, Thunder Punch, Ice Punch, Rock Slide, and High Jump Kick. It also has access to Bullet Punch for priority, Zen Headbutt for other Fighting-types, and Drain Punch for recovery. Mega Medicham also learns some support moves such as Quick Guard and Fake Out. The drawbacks to using Mega Medicham is that it is the definition of a glass cannon. In other words, it can dish out powerful attacks but has problems lasting many turns. Also, speed tying with other base 100 Speed Pokemon can be frustrating at times.

Mienshao

Base Stats: 65 HP / 125 Atk / 60 Def / 95 Sp. Atk / 60 Sp. Def / 105 Spd

Mienshao has always been a popular choice for trainers who seek a fast Fighting-type with access to Fake Out. It can have Regenerator, Inner Focus or Reckless as an Ability. Inner Focus helps to check Mega Kangaskhan, but in today’s metagame Reckless seems to be the better option. Reckless increases the base power of moves which cause recoil or crash damage by 20%. Moves like High Jump Kick get an attack boost when paired with this Ability. Mienshao is fast enough to outspeed Garchomp and the entire base 100 Speed crew. Mienshao can OHKO Mega Charizard Y with Rock Slide and OHKO Mega Kangaskhan with High Jump Kick. Mienshao also has access to some handy support moves such as Fake Out, Feint, Quick Guard, and Wide Guard. The downside to using Mienshao is that it is frail when left exposed to powerful attacks. A recent example of Mienshao’s VGC success can be found in Mathew Carter’s (mattj) first place Missouri Regional report found here.

Machamp

Base Stats: 90 HP / 130 Atk / 80 Def / 65 Sp. Atk / 85 Sp. Def / 55 Spd

Machamp is most often seen as a Trick Room Sweeper. Machamp’s low Speed stat makes it perform very well under the effects of Trick Room, although there are many other roles that Machamp can fill. Machamp has access to two useful Abilities, although No Guard is definitely the most popular. No Guard makes sure any move used by or against Machamp will hit 100% of the time. This allows Machamp to take full advantage of Dynamic Punch, a move that normally would not be used due to its terrible 50% accuracy. With No Guard, Dynamic Punch hits 100% of the time, and because of Dynamic Punch’s 100% chance to inflict confusion, even Pokemon that resist the attack aren’t safe, because they have to risk getting confused. No Guard also lets Machamp take advantage of attacks like Stone Edge to OHKO Pokemon that might be able to take a non-STAB Rock Slide. Another option would be to use the Guts + Flame/Toxic Orb combo like Hariyama or Conkeldurr, but never missing with No Guard is tough to pass up. As for other moves, Machamp has access to priority Bullet Punch, Earthquake, Superpower, all elemental punches, and a cool support move in Wide Guard.

Conkeldurr

Base Stats: 105 HP / 140 Atk / 95 Def / 55 Sp. Atk / 65 Sp. Def / 45 Spd

Conkeldurr has been one of the more popular Fighting-types since its release in Generation V, and for good reason. Conkeldurr has reasonable high HP, and a reliable Defense stat which allows it to be surprisingly bulky and stay in the battle longer, especially if you consider Drain Punch for recovery. Conkeldurr’s base Attack stat of 140 allows it to hit like a truck, dealing a ton of damage with its Fighting-type STAB attacks. While Conkeldurr is indeed strong, it lost the Ice Punch move tutor from last generation, which is disappointing because it means Conkeldurr can no longer brush Amoonguss and Dragon-type Pokemon aside like it could before. That being said, the Ability can actually be more of a tossup than it was last generation. Iron Fist boosts the power of Hammer Arm, Drain Punch, and Mach Punch, but leaves you susceptible to Will-o-Wisp. Guts + Toxic/Flame Orb prevents you from being hit with status conditions and boosts the damage output for all your moves, but can eat away at your health over time.

Chesnaught

Base Stats: 88 HP / 107 Atk / 122 Def / 74 Sp. Atk / 75 Sp. Def / 64 Spd

Chesnaught is an interesting Pokemon with its excellent dual Grass / Fighting type. It carries great physical bulk which is useful in today’s physically based metagame. Chesnaught has seen an increase in usage after Enosh Shachar used it during the 2014 Virginia Regional. During this Regional, Enosh used a Chesnaught with an Adamant Nature, 144 Attack EVs, and an Expert Belt. With this spread, Chesnaught becomes an effective counter to the extremely popular Mega Kangaskhan with its STAB Hammer Arm. It can also OHKO Rotom-Wash with Wood Hammer. Chestnaught has the unique Bulletproof Ability, which makes Chesnaught immune to ball and bomb moves such as Aura Sphere, Focus Blast, Gyro Ball, and Shadow Ball among others. Chesnaught also has some useful support moves at its disposal such as Spiky Shield, Leech Seed, Taunt, Feint, and Quick Guard. Chesnaught also has the advantage of catching an opponent by surprise with its lesser-used unpredictability factor. Chesnaught does come with its drawbacks; is that it does not hit many Pokemon for super-effective damage and is also weak to six different types, which makes it a very situational Pokemon to bring into battle. Enosh’s Chesnaught was so successful for him because it was a very specific choice for his team. Perhaps it can be for your team as well.

Toxicroak

Base Stats: 83 HP / 106 Atk / 65 Def / 86 Sp. Atk / 65 Sp. Def / 85 Spd

Toxicroak has mostly been a staple of teams utilizing rain in past VGC events. It comes with a useful typing that takes neutral damage from Fairy, resists Fighting-, Dark-, Rock-, and Grass-type moves, and is immune to Water-type attacks with its Dry Skin Ability. Dry Skin allows Toxicroak to heal 1/8 HP during rain, and can absorb Water-type attacks which recover 1/4 of its HP. This Ability also has some drawbacks. It causes 1/8 max HP in damage each turn during strong sunlight and increases damage from fire moves to 1.25x. The introduction of Mega Charizard Y and its Drought Ability to the metagame has made Toxicroak a less reliable option now than it has been in past VGC events. However, if you build a team that is dedicated to setting up the weather condition of rain, Toxicroak can still assist your team in a variety of ways. Toxicroak is most often utilized by having its partner use a rain-boosted Surf which heals Toxicroak’s HP while also damaging both opposing Pokemon. Toxicroak has some nice support options in its movepool such as Fake Out, Quick Guard, and Taunt. Toxicroak can also learn Drain Punch which, when combined with the held item Black Sludge, can make Toxicroak last a lot longer than you might expect. However, even with its good recovery options, Toxicroak is somewhat frail.

Hawlucha

Base Stats: 78 HP / 92 Atk / 77 Def / 74 Sp. Atk / 63 Sp. Def / 118 Spd

Somewhere in the Pokemon X and Y story mode you may have crossed paths with Hawlucha and did not give it a second thought. Hawlucha is rarely seen in the VGC metagame as of now, but it has plenty of things that can work in its favor. What separates Hawlucha from other Fighters is its incredible speed. Hawlucha is the fastest VGC-eligible Fighting-type Pokemon. Hawlucha’s speed can reach even further heights with Unburden as its Ability, which doubles its speed when a held item is used or lost. For example, an item such as a Lum Berry can allow Hawlucha to shake off any inflicted status condition, while also giving it an unexpected boost in speed. Hawlucha also carries a beneficial Flying-typing in order to hit other Fighting-types super-effectively. Hawlucha has a unique signature move, Flying Press, which deals both Fighting and Flying-type damage at the same time. Also, if Flying Press is used against a target that has used Minimize, it will never miss and its base power is doubled, which would allow you to laugh at Chansey (if it was VGC’14 legal). Other options in Hawlucha’s movepool include High Jump Kick, Low Sweep, Acrobatics, Stone Edge, Rock Slide, and U-turn. Hawlucha also has access to support moves such as Quick Guard, Swagger, Encore, and Feather Dance. It also has a Roost available as a recovery move. The drawback to running Hawlucha is its mediocre 92 base Attack stat. Hawlucha also has problems lasting more than a couple turns, especially with so many Talonflame around. Most Electric- and Ice-type attacks found in the VGC metagame also will cause Hawlucha to faint.

Hariyama

Base Stats: 144 HP / 120 Atk / 60 Def / 40 Sp. Atk / 60 Sp. Def / 50 Spd

Most Hariyama that are seen in the VGCs are primarily used as a means to assist a team with setting up Trick Room because of its low Speed, high Attack, and access to Fake Out. Hariyama also carries great bulk and has the highest HP stat of all VGC ’14 eligible Fighting-type Pokemon. When choosing an Ability for your Hariyama, there are some interesting choices you can make. The Guts Ability increases Hariyama’s attack by 1.5 times when affected by a status condition. Toxic Orb is the most optimal way to activate Guts, even though the most common choice is Flame Orb. Hariyama actually needs to stay on the field at least four turns or more in order for Toxic Orb to be worse than Flame Orb. Protect or Detect can help activate your Orb of choice, which also makes Hariyama immune to other status effects such as sleep, paralysis, and freeze. The Thick Fat Ability is another viable option, which helps Hariyama absorb Mega Charizard Y’s Heat Waves and Abomasnow’s Blizzards. Hariyama can learn Close Combat, Earthquake, Stone Edge, and Bullet Punch. Hariyama can also make great use of Belly Drum which cuts Hariyama’s HP in half while maximizing its Attack. Hariyama also has access to some great support options in Wide Guard and Helping Hand. The drawbacks to using Hariyama is its lackluster movepool, and the fact that it is often outclassed by other Trick Room supporting Pokemon such as Machamp or Scrafty.

Scrafty

Base Stats: 65 HP / 90 Atk / 115 Def / 45 Sp. Atk / 115 Sp. Def / 58 Spd

Scrafty has been a popular choice among VGC trainers ever since its introduction in Pokemon Black and White. What sets Scrafty apart from other Fighting-types is its valuable Intimidate Ability, which lowers both opposing Pokemon’s Attack stats by one stage when Scrafty is sent into battle. This can be very disruptive to an opposing player’s physical attackers. Scrafty is also the only Pokemon with access to both Intimidate and Fake Out on the same set. With Scrafty’s excellent 115 base Defense and Special Defense stats, it has great bulk and can take many attacks before fainting. Scrafty has access to STAB attacking moves in Drain Punch and Crunch which are only resisted by Fairy-types, Hawlucha, Heracross, and Toxicroak. Other moves in Scrafty’s movepool include Brick Break, High Jump Kick, Zen Headbutt, Rock Slide, Stone Edge and all elemental punches. Scrafty also gets some nice support moves including Fake Out and Quick Guard. Additionally, its low Speed stat allows it to function well in Trick Room. The two drawbacks to using Scrafty are its low damage output (due to a low 90 base Attack stat), and its 4x weakness to Fairy-type attacks.

Heracross

Base Stats: 80 HP / 125 Atk / 75 Def / 40 Sp Atk / 95 Sp Def / 85 Spd

Heracross is a Pokemon that was used in previous VGC formats as a reliable way to counter the very popular Cresselia. Heracross saw a rise in usage after Cassie used it with great success during the 2012 VGC season. Cresselia is not a problem this season because it is not a Pokemon that is allowed in the VGC ’14 format, but Heracross still becomes an effective sweeper with its high base 125 Attack stat and the Speed boost it receives when Heracross holds a Choice Scarf. What sets Heracross apart from its Mega Evolution is its Ability Guts, which increases Heracross’s Attack stat by 1.5 times when inflicted with a major status effect. If you choose to run Choice Scarf on your Heracross, you can have a partner Will-O-Wisp it in order to receive the stat boost, or smile when the opponent foolishly tries to burn it themselves. If you prefer to ditch the Choice Scarf and have free range of your move selection, you can have it hold a Toxic/Flame Orb and use Protect turn one in order to activate the status condition and also the Attack boost. While under a major status effect, Heracross becomes immune to other status conditions such as Paralysis, Freeze, and Sleep. With a Guts Attack boost, Heracross can even outdamage its Mega Evolution form, although its main STAB option does have decreased accuracy. Heracross has access to Close Combat, Megahorn, Rock Slide, Stone Edge, and Earthquake, just to name a few moves. The drawback to running Heracross is its incredible weakness to Flying-type attacks, especially from Talonflame. Sun-boosted attacks from Mega Charizard Y can cause Heracross problems as well, but this can be remedied with a Choice Scarf and your Rock-type move of choice.

Special thanks to Leonard Craft III (DaWoblefet) who was nice enough to proofread this article for me and offer suggestions before it was officially edited.

The post Getting Physical with Fighting Types appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Hello everyone! My name is Ty Power or TheBlooFoxx on Nugget Bridge and Pokémon Showdown. I’m relatively new to the VGC format (starting with X and Y) but have been playing competitively for a few years. This January I had the pleasure of being able to attend a fan-organized event in Melbourne, Australia. While it’s not formally organized like the US regionals, attendance hit 188 which was pretty huge for a not-so-big space and the staff did a fantastic job of keeping everyone happy making for a great day.

I rocked up to the event pretty early in the morning and was feeling a little off because I was there alone. It was my first competition of any sort, but luckily in the line for registration I managed to make some friends who I could hang with for the rest of the day. These guys were also new to VGC (as were most people really), which comforted me a little bit. We discussed strategies and breeding, and our shared fear of the rare and dreaded Dark Void Smeargle. The event took a while to start but in the interim there was a lot to do so no worries.

I think I’ll take this point in the story to discuss my team and thoughts going into the competition. X and Y was the first time I’d ever considered VGC mainly because of the ease of access to battles via battle spot. I started training by using favourites from last year and getting a feel for the format, but that wasn’t super successful for team building because of the huge changes this year. I then slowly got accustomed to the fast play style and different team building methods, but really I just had to put the hours in to learn everything I could for the competition.

The Team

FallIntoSky (Talonflame) @ Life Orb
Ability: Gale Wings
EVs: 36 HP / 252 Atk / 220 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Brave Bird
- Flare Blitz
- U-turn
- Protect

Talonflame was really Game Freak’s gift to players this year. Not only is it fantastic for breeding with Flame Body and Fly, but its hidden ability Gale Wings also gives it the strongest priority in the metagame making it a competitive monster. The speed EVs mean that its Brave Bird is faster priority than Prankster users, and the EVs were invested into HP. Attack is maxed out and I use Life Orb for maximum damage. The moveset is really standard. Dual STAB attacks threaten a lot of the metagame and U-turn helps keep momentum going and counters Perish Trap. My last choice was between Tailwind and Protect but I chose Protect because it helps aid predictions and control the flow of the game and to be honest I play weirdly when I have access to speed control.

Spectrum (Rotom-Wash) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Levitate EVs: 252 HP / 116 SAtk / 140 SDef
Modest Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Thunderbolt
- Will-O-Wisp
- Light Screen

Rotom-Wash was my second choice for so many reasons. Its typing is fantastic and its bulk means that it can be helpful in so many situations. Will-o-Wisp and Light Screen shut down the other team’s offensive threats handily, and as long as I predict well enough, I can make sure to put my team in a great offensive position. Hydro Pump and Thunderbolt have great STAB and ironically are able to hit all dragons except goodra neutrally. It also makes a fantastic Talonflame counter and deals with many other threats in the metagame. The EV spread ensures that no Timid Charizard Y’s Solarbeams will OHKO as well as surviving special hits in general to return with a decently powered attack or Light Screen.

StayTheNight (Amoonguss) @ Leftovers
Ability: Effect Spore
EVs: 252 HP / 84 Def / 172 SDef
Sassy Nature
- Giga Drain
- Spore
- Rage Powder
- Protect

Amoonguss was the last piece of my Fire, Water, Grass core and even with the nerf to Spore and Rage Powder, manages to be a strong defensive wall. The EVs allow Amoonguss to survive nearly every special hit that isn’t a fire move in the sun, and counter back with a Spore or Giga Drain. Rage Powder helps to redirect moves and give partner Pokémon more freedom to take out threats and control the field for my team. Amoonguss is a fantastic counter to threats like Blastoise and Rotom-W. I run Effect Spore instead of Regenerator in part to deal with Mega Kangaskhan, as Parental Bond gives it a double chance for me to nab a status condition onto it — something which helped numerous times on the day of the tournament.

Hourglass (Tyranitar) @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 204 HP / 132 SAtk / 52 Spd
Modest Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Fire Blast
- Ice Beam
- Protect

Tyranitar was a somewhat niche decision for the team, with a bit of creativity to surprise opponents. At this point I hadn’t yet seen Ray Rizzo’s tournament report, and I can definitely see the advantages it presents with Life Orb and Rock Slide, but if I had I still think I would have stuck with my own set. Dark Pulse helps with Pokémon like Chandelure and Meowstic, and also provides a strong special STAB. Weakness Policy was also a fantastic choice in my opinion, as Tyranitar’s wealth of weaknesses lead to getting boosts very often, and in return being able to OHKO. The EVs ensure Tyranitar outspeeds neutral Scizor and KOs with Fire Blast and the rest went into HP for general bulk. Fire Blast and Ice Beam are generally great coverage for dragons and steel types, and allow Tyranitar to take out plenty of threats providing he can survive a hit or outspeed. Most of my opponents were surprised to see it be special after burning it, which nabbed me plenty of KOs during the tournament.

Clarity (Mawile) @ Mawilite
Ability: Intimidate/Huge Power
EVs: 230 HP / 252 Atk / 28 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Protect

Mawile is easily my favorite mega this generation with Intimidate, very strong typing, priority Sucker Punch and overall cuteness. Once again, I hadn’t seen Ray’s set and in this case I think I definitely would have used it. This set lacked a bit of bulk but still put up very solid offensive pressure against common Pokémon like Tyranitar, Garchomp and Kangaskhan, whilst also crippling physical threats on switch in. The set is very standard, and my only point to add is that I would recommend only mega-evolving on the turn you attack, in order to preserve the Intimidate support. The EVs are straightforward really: max attack, a bit of speed to creep other Mawiles, and the rest in HP.

BreaknASweat (Mienshao) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 Atk / 4 SDef
Jolly Nature
- High Jump Kick
- Rock Slide
- Fake Out
- Quick Guard

Mienshao was the last Pokémon I put on the team. Opponents were surprised to see Quick Guard each time I revealed it which put me ahead in a few battles. It also leaves Prankster users stuck on their side of the field and usually keeps Talonflame at bay. High Jump Kick is there to ensure the OHKO on Mega Kangaskhan and Rock Slide to help with Talonflame and Charizard, provided I still had my sash intact to take a hit. Fake Out is self-explanatory as a way to put my team ahead for a turn and outspeeds the majority of other Fake Outs.

All in all this team was, in my opinion, solid and well-suited to my play style. This didnt really help boost my confidence though, as the prospect of my first competition was still rather daunting. Now, onto the matches:

Tournament

The Swiss rounds for the day were originally going to be 6 rounds, but ended up being only 4 due to time constraints. This was especially worrying, as even a single loss could have put you out of top cut, even with a solid win percentage.

Round 1: Dylan (didnt get his last name)

I brought: Talonflame, Mawile, Amoonguss, ???
He brought: Rotom-W, Noivern, Ditto, Heracross

So this was it, my debut to Pokémon competitions. I was very excited, but also rather nervous. I was matched up against someone who had experience at these sorts of events and seemed to have a very good handle on the game which was daunting, but also gave me some good competition for the first battle. The battle went in my favour pretty fantastically. Amoonguss was a clear MVP and luck was definitely on my side. I don’t remember exactly how it played out, but I know that the pairing of Mawile and Amoonguss pretty much won me the game. I led with Talonflame and Mawile and after a lot of early game Protecting, it ended up with my full hp Amoonguss and Mawile at about 70% vs his Ditto (transformed into Mega Mawile) and sleeping Rotom-W. Amoonguss Rage Powdered away the Iron Head from my Mawile, and Effect Spore scored a paralysis, meaning I would outspeed the Ditto. In the next few turns I was able to KO the Ditto and the Rotom so only his Heracross and Noivern remained. I was 4-2 here so I was pretty confident, but to add insult to injury, when Heracross attacked Amoonguss, Effect Spore activated yet again, putting him to sleep. I Play Roughed on the Heracross and Brave Birded the Noivern for the KO and came out of the battle with a comfortable 3-0.

Win Record: 1-0

After the first round I was feeling pretty good, but I tried my best not to get too confident. I went back to see my new friends and they had all won their 1st rounds, with one of them even winning 4-0.

Round 2: Phil Nyugen

I brought: Mawile, Rotom-W, Talonflame, Tyranitar
He brought: Aerodactyl, Salamence, Chesnaught, Rotom-H

Seeing the matchup for this round, I was actually pretty nervous. I recognized my opponents name and thought that I had seen him on YouTube or Nugget Bridge or something, which instantly made me think he was a pro. This fear was calmed a bit when I realized I just knew him from Showdown, but I still had to proceed with caution.

I led off this match with the combo of Mawile and Rotom and he did with Salamence and Aerodactyl. The first turn was made useless by a Hydro Pump miss on the incoming Chesnaught, and Mawile protecting while he Fire Blasted. I then brought in Tyranitar to take the Fire Blast while he KOed Rotom with Wood Hammer. The game got pretty rough from there. Poor predictions lost me my Talonflame when I Brave Birded into a Spiky Shield and was KOed by Aerodactyl’s Rock Slide. Luckily Tyranitar could deal out solid damage to his Rotom and Aerodactyl with Dark Pulse and Ice Beam, while he continued to focus on my other Pokémon. Sandstorm ended up taking out Rotom and left the game with Aerodactyl + Chesnaught vs Tyranitar + Mawile. Aerodactyl missed a fire fang (which would have done decent damage but not KOed) and fell to an Iron Head from Mawile while low sweep from Chesnaught failed to KO the small fairy type. This left me with Tyranitar and Mawile vs Chesnaught which was easy as both could OHKO. Chesnaught KOd Tyranitar and Mawile cleaned up with a Play Rough to net me a close 1-0 victory.

Win Record: 2-0

Round 3: Ben Veltmeyer

I brought: Mienshao, Rotom, Tyranitar, Amoonguss
He brought: Smeargle, Kangaskhan, Ferrothorn, Rotom-W

I led off the match with Mienshao and Rotom while he lead with Smeargle and Kangaskhan. On the first turn I Faked Out his Smeargle, scared of the Dark Void, and attacked into his Spiky Shield which didn;t really bother me. I think he faked me out with Kangaskhan after, and then revealed the Dark Void on his Moody Smeargle. Luckily, after repeated Dark Voids, I was able to dwindle down the HP of his Pokémon and finally took out his Smeargle with a fortunate High Jump Kick on Mienshao’s wake up. I don’t remember much else, other than getting his Kangaskhan poisoned with Effect Spore, and having it faint to a combination of that and sandstorm damage. The battle came down to a one-on-one between Tyranitar and Ferrothorn and I nabbed the KO with Fire Blast. Yet another close 1-0.

Win Record: 3-0

Round 4: Jamie Wilson

I brought: Mawile, Rotom-W, Tyranitar, Amoonguss
He brought: Rotom-W, Garchomp, Mawile, Talonflame

At this point I was feeling pretty good and honestly I probably let it get to me a bit. I remember coming into this game confident because I knew the common sets for most of his Pokémon. He was a good player, but his team was very standard and the knowledge I’d gained in the countless games I had racked up on Showdown helped me immensely. He led off with Talonflame and Mawile vs my Rotom and Mawile which was a great start. I got off a burn on Mawile while I switched into Amoonguss and him to his Garchomp. He ran a banded Garchomp which I’d seen Aaron Zheng (Cybertron) outline on YouTube before and locked himself into Outrage which Rotom took pretty well. At this point I Spore the Garchomp to make sure that both of his Pokémon were crippled. He sends out Talonflame and I Rage Powder, losing my Amoonguss but making sure I can KO with Rotom. Garchomp finally wakes up and Earthquakes but just in case I Protect with mawile anyway to ensure the KO on his Rotom with my own’s Thunderbolt. This leaves me with a 3-1, Rotom + Tyranitar + Mawile vs Garchomp. Here is where my confidence nearly got the best of me. Wanting to save the 2-0 at least, I make some questionable plays. I have a Hydro Pump miss and wait for Mawile and Rotom to KO, but it falls short. I send out Tyranitar trying to preserve the 2-0. But Garchomp double protects to get sandstorm to KO Rotom. It’s then Tyranitar+Mawile vs -1Atk Garchomp. He Earthquakes and takes out Mawile and I finish it with an Ice Beam from Tyranitar. I came out of it feeling so dumb, because my arrogance in trying to win with a good score put me in a situation where I could have lost to a critical hit. Luckily I didn’t, and pulled off a closer-than-it-should-have-been 1-0.

Win Record: 4-0

At this point it had been announced that there would only be 4 rounds in swiss which was small, but meant that my position in top cut was guaranteed. I even managed to be tied 1st seed because I went undefeated. There was a top 16 to deal with the huge number of people and the small number of rounds. Unfortunately my friends both missed out on top cut by a single loss each, and I was left to go alone into the next rounds.

Top 16 vs Paul Eugenio

I brought: Mienshao, Rotom, Talonflame, Tyranitar
He brought: Klefki, Talonflame, Venusaur, Greninja

This battle was pretty tense just like the others. He had a team of all shinies and referred to himself as a collector which was interesting. I lead with Mienshao and Rotom vs his Klefki and Talonflame. I Fake Out Klefki and Thunderbolt Talonflame, but he switches Talonflame for Venusaur. Thunderbolt connects and I actually manage to pull a paralysis which was lucky for me. Fortunately it didn’t really seem to matter as much as I thought it would as he mega evolves and shows himself to be a bulky set. Turn 2 I switch in Talonflame to a Sleep Powder as Klefki paralyses Mienshao. A few turns go by with Klefki setting up screens and Venusaur throwing out Sludge Bombs. I switch out my Mienshao and sleeping Talonflame for Rotom and Tyranitar in an attempt to turn the game a bit more in my favour. Sandstorm and Dark Pulse begin to wear out Venusaur until I take it out and Rotom repeatedly Hydro Pumps Klefki to break its subs. He throws out Greninja and uses Grass Knot allowing him to resist Thunderbolt. Klefki then uses Dazzling Gleam and Tyranitar survives with 1HP! Weakness Policy is activated as I take out Klefki with Tyranitar, who dies to poison damage right after. The game’s final pairings then come in and I really had no idea how it would go. It was my paralyzed Mienshao + Rotom vs his Greninja + Talonflame. I Quick Guard with Mienshao to block Brave Bird, and take out Talonflame with Thunderbolt while he Grass Knots Mienshao. Now it’s 2 vs 1 with Rotom and paralyzed Mienshao against Greninja. He Dark Pulses Rotom for the KO and I manage to break through paralysis and the low accuracy to hit the High Jump Kick and win with a narrow 1-0

Top 8 vs Luke Bradley

I brought: Rotom-W, Mawile, Amoonguss, Tyranitar
He brought: Greninja, Klefki, Chandelure, Mawile

At this point I’d had an unbeaten run through the competition due to a fair amount of luck and good team matchups. I went to this match happy, nervous and excited. I led off with Rotom and Mawile while he led with Greninja and Klefki. He uses Mat Block and sets up screens while I set up my own Light Screen with Rotom. He swaggers Rotom and U-turns with Grenjnja into his own Mawile. Rotom hits itself in confusion and I Play Rough into the new Mawile. Next turn Mawile is paralyzed and can’t move, while I Hydro Pump Mawile. He switches into Greninja and Mat Blocks again, while I Protect against Mawile’s Iron Head. Next turn I Protect with Tyranitar as Grenjnja takes out Amoonguss with Ice Beam. Past this point, his switching is getting the better of me. He whittles down my Pokémon, but after a few turns of trading blows and protecting, I manage to take out Mawile and Klefki with Tyranitar’s Fire Blast and Rotom’s Thunderbolt. Things were looking better now, but unfortunately Mawile was paralyzed and missed its KO on Greninja. Next turn Tyranitar was KOed and to add insult to injury Mawile was paralyzed again, then KOd, leaving me at a 2-0 loss.

There was a time when I would have been angry at the “hax” that I faced, but it’s a part of the game, and is really my fault for not bringing Safeguard or Quick Guard to protect from status. Even if the game had gone in my favour, from the other games I saw him play I knew he was a better player than me so it didn’t really bother me. Luke ended up winning the competition and I stayed to watch his last two battles which were both pretty great.

All in all the day was great! Overall finishing top 8 was pretty sweet for it being my first competition. Shoutouts to everyone that I played against and the guys that I hung out with on the day, as well as all of the staff helping to organize the event. As I’ve said, I’m pretty new to Nugget Bridge, so let me know if anyone I’ve mentioned has accounts here!

The post World War Zedd: A Melbourne Fan-Event Report appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Seiet gegrüßt! It has been a while since I introduced you to this neat offensive Hail Room concept that, honestly to my surprise, still hasn’t been forgotten. In fact, I may have even played a major part in it still being existent in people’s minds, when there are people popping up every now and then who seek to build teams that follow a similar idea, when exactly those people are often linked to my old report, when other people copy my original team and then put their own spin on it, and — most strikingly — when people specifically prepare for facing it in tournament play. Naturally, the story of the team wasn’t quite written to the end with that original report.

This report features several upgrades and alternatives to the original build, discussing advantages and disadvantages and also features tournament experiences with some of them. To keep me from repeating things more than absolutely necessary, it is highly recommended that you know the contents of the original report.

Before I get into the actual topic, though, I would like to make a late addition to the old report: the battle videos, which I didn’t get around to include back then. You may very well already know them if you subscribed to Nugget Bridge’s YouTube.

• vs. bulky offense
• vs. double Prankster
• vs. high-BST sand
• vs. Murkrow and friends
• vs. the bulkiest Lapras I have ever seen (this one is most likely not a quality game but it’s there!)

I. Cobamoonguss

Double Ghost, double Trick Room — just as before.

This is actually not the first change I made to the known team; I just put it here first for you to get a better feeling about its development. There’s in fact only a trivial change and I have already foreshadowed it in the original report: the Coba Berry to mitigate the team’s issues with strong STAB Flying-type moves. With Tornadus rising in usage thanks to Defiant, it pretty much became a necessity. Oh, right, and I changed Effect Spore to Regenerator, of course, as there was no reason not to do that eventually.

I thought this was the team’s best build for a long time. Its roles are cleanly distributed, it has optimally different ways to set up the Trick Room it so desires, and it has also a good offensive game outside of it, should the need arise. Maybe it still is the best build in some people’s opinions — most notably those who love to play Amoonguss, whereas I probably hate it even more than before. Here’s why: It has no valuable damage output, sleep adds more randomness that rather works out in my opponent’s favor more than mine, and thanks to its skyrocketed popularity in tournament play, people are obviously even better prepared for it! And to hammer the final nail into its coffin: I have brought this variant to the recent Nugget Bridge Major and a few Live Tournaments proximal to it, and I believe I didn’t win a single match with it. The only time that Amoonguss’s Coba Berry ever activated, it came to nought, as a timely critical hit literally blew that improvement away. It was all cursed.

Speaking of hammers …

II. Hammertime

Triple Ghost, Explosion — those were the days.

The Idea

All right, from now on I present the teams in the same order as they have been created and used. This wacky looking one emerged somewhere around the start of the second NBC season, where I decided that I wanted to play Trick Room all season long. Not really because I thought I would have super great chances with that, but — having dominated the German Wi-Fi tournaments throughout the 2011/12 season and looking for a new challenge — I wanted to finally play internationally again, and do so preferably without revealing too much of my plans for the real tournaments. (Or, to put it disgustingly bluntly, I was pretty much sandbagging, because I still believed I had a shot at Worlds, but I thought there was no way this team would take me there.)

One of the articles that were published around that time was Cassie’s Hail Room article. With my style of running Hail Room pretty much set in stone, I probably didn’t gain too much insight from the bare lecture, but that Sableye part towards the end of it instantly sparked my interest. There are only few things in this generation of Pokémon that I hate as much as fighting against Sableye, yet for some reason it never crossed my mind that this puny bling-bling zombie had very well some form of utilizable synergy with my team, more so than those random ideas that I spouted in the original report. Again, I believed the team with Amoonguss and Hydreigon was pretty much perfect for what it was, so I also believed it would be very hard for me to improve it no matter what. There was only that personal flaw concerning Amoonguss, and if I just could somehow get my hands on an alternative support Pokémon that can do more than pestering disposable opponents. If there ever was a way forward for this team, it had to be Sableye!

So, my first step then was to simply take the old core (Chandelure, Hariyama, Jellicent and Abomasnow, for the forgetful ones), add a Sableye to them and finally look for a sixth member, may be a new one as well. I would have been totally fine with keeping Hydreigon and thus basically just replacing Amoonguss, but that triad of Ghosts was simply too appealing not to have something else go boom on them, just for the heck of it. I was allowed to try and fail it, right?

The Team Magnified

Moveset and item. Fake Out can obviously be used to help the Trick Room setup or buy time, nothing too surprising. Taunt made the set because I had to face many Amoongusses and those games were often decided by how long my Pokémon would sleep, when I gave them an opening to fire off Spores. The rest is dedicated to what is inarguably Sableye’s best asset: to make foes’ lives a misery. I can’t imagine running Sableye without Will-O-Wisp at all, so it’s there, and people have to think twice whether they want to expose their valuable physical attackers to a 75% chance of having their damage output halved forever or just let their special attackers or support Pokémon chew on 1/8 residual damage per turn instead. Last but not least, the combination of Trick and Full Incense (it’s the same as Lagging Tail — I just had no idea where to get one in-game and the Incense is so much classier anyway) has proved to be very powerful in practice. Aside from stealing possibly important items from the foes, it provides another method of speed control for the various situations where putting all eggs in the one Trick Room basket may not be enough. Precisely, Full Incense moves the holder right to the bottom of the priority bracket so that, for example, a Dragon Pokémon becomes easy pickings for Abomasnow even outside of Trick Room, or an Amoonguss forever loses its ability to Spore my attackers before they move in Trick Room. So, if I get the Full Incense onto the one Pokémon that my opponent definitely needs to keep me in check, it can be totally devastating.

Numbers. I gave my Sableye some arbitrary speed to try to outspeed other Sableyes and Taunt them before they Taunt her, the rest is exactly how you would expect it. With Will-O-Wisp, there is no real need for further physical investment, and this spread exactly enables Sableye to withstand a Draco Meteor after Tricking off the boosting item, as well as an unboosted Meteor Mash, and she will have enough HP left to endure at least one round of hailstorm.

Options. Initially, I had Feint in the slot of Taunt. Both are very situational moves and it’s exactly Amoonguss’s presence and my practical experience of actually using Feint too rarely that led me to remove it. There are some more options, but since I considered them in a mostly different team layout, I’d rather discuss them there.

Moveset and item. “Metagrosses without Meteor Mash are impure beings and have no right to live” — I can’t see myself ever using one like that, it’s the clearly the best STAB and non-STAB lacks damage output when not hitting for weakness. I use Life Orb to receive meaningful boosts on all attacks instead of just one and Meteor Mash does fit well with that idea, rivaling bulkier Choice Band builds in sheer power. Protect is there for the sake of just having it available. Explosion, again, for turning the friendship with a total of three Ghosts into some immediate value. Usually, people would Protect with one Pokémon to have the other Explode with controlled risk, but since Ghosts are perfectly immune to it, they can attack in the same turn and thus make up for the loss of power that Explosion has experienced through the generational transition as well as using Life Orb instead of Normal Gem. Being immune to Intimidate thanks to Clear Body is especially nice for that purpose as well. Hammer Arm, finally, can be used to make Metagross faster (and thus more threatening) under Trick Room and it achieves neutral coverage with the other moves, except for a few certain Ghosts that I’m ironically using myself.

Numbers. This odd speed makes my Metagross faster than popular 14-IV variants that are likely used together with minimum speed Cresselias outside of Trick Room and it gets to underspeed minimum speed Scrafty after one use of Hammer Arm. The triviality in the EV spread is justified by the fact that Life Orb and hailstorm chip damage would most likely ruin any attempt of taking hits anyway, so I just basically just want to hit them first and hit them hard. Thus, the attack is enough to OHKO a standard Latios with Meteor Mash and the HP number (187) is not perfect but good enough to keep the residual damage as small as necessary, and if I’m not mistaken, it maximizes the overall bulk as well.

Options. While the stars would need to align for me to remove Meteor Mash, I acknowledge that a Life-Orb boosted Bullet Punch might sometimes be very useful. I didn’t get around to trying it or anything else, but if I had the chance, I would get rid of Protect for it so that I wouldn’t ruin the other good aspects of the set. Zen Headbutt and Ice Punch should generally also combo well with Life Orb — I just didn’t use any of them because they would mess with my (STAB-focused) neutral coverage for sure, and I had no strong idea about what I would particularly like to hit.

Unsurprisingly, the other four Pokémon I kept unchanged. For convenience, here they are again:

Evaluation and Findings

This team was essentially an experiment in multiple ways. The main focus was testing out Sableye and other than that, since I wasn’t (and still am not) sure what stance to take in those recurring scouting discussions, I also wanted to find out how I perform with this team when the majority of it is straight available to my opponents thanks to Nugget Bridge. I will also discuss in how far I consider this build better or worse than the previous one.

Sableye. She was not absolutely perfect but a clear success nonetheless. And by “not perfect” I mean, there were simply some matchups or opponents that managed to turn her into a liability — by no means worse than Amoonguss though. Let’s start with the positive things: Usually, Sableye was a very welcome leading Pokémon and supporter, doing the things she does. Most notably, she improved my game outside of Trick Room: With the old build, there were only few matches where I did more work outside of Trick Room than the other way around, mostly needing Trick Room exactly two times to win a battle, but with Sableye, my amount of games won with only one use of Trick Room increased dramatically. Therefore, Sableye gave me a feeling of mobility that I hadn’t really experienced before. Now to the other side of things, Sableye obviously has no offensive presence with a moveset like that, and one of the main selling points of the full team is, well, its offensive presence! Sableye forced me to have more turns with only one attacking Pokémon on the field and this was only good as long as Sableye was effective in shutting down the opponent’s team. An easy practical scenario of turning the use of Sableye against me would be to start with Tyranitar and a (preferably non-physical) partner that can OHKO Chandelure as well, so I have to sacrifice Chandelure early and then I’m stuck with only two attackers against a completely unharmed team.

Transparency. It’s hard to evaluate that. Matches have been affected for sure in some way, as there are people who have admitted to special preparations against me and this matchup, and there are some more who still are much afraid of having to play it. From that information coupled with my performances that were still not too bad, we can deduce that the team really must be kind of strong and that I am maybe a worthy player behind it. Still, there is no denying that the public knowledge did harm me to an extent — could have been much more if I were “someone great” for most of Nugget Bridge, not just a random old one-hit wonder, so I better draw no big conclusions from that.

The Team. Sableye granted me more mobility in the way of conducting battles, but the loss of Amoonguss and Hydreigon took away from my mobility in starting them off. The team preview basically screamed Fake Out + Trick Room, and I’m certain there were not more than three games where I led with something not fitting that description. I could only cover that up by not actually going for that Fake Out + Trick Room play instantly a lot of times and instead attack right off the bat or do something else. Ultimately, people would be able to discern that façade and then, I believe, I would be left with a team that is mostly worse than the old one. Metagross plays a notable part in that as well, because it is somewhat selfish, if you will. It contributes nothing to the setup, it contributes nothing to the pace, its resistances and bulk mean little with the layout of itself and the team overall, and the only thing it really does is to attack. Another one of the main selling points of the team used to be the great synergy within it and it seems like Metagross strayed away from that — certainly not as badly as Glaceon in the early stages of team development, but quite in a similar way.

Online Tournament Experiences

I used Sableye/Metagross variants for most of our own live tournaments and also the most recent Hydreigon/Amoonguss build for the major and a few lives as well. At the end of the season, I was at 495 points, 9th place, with a a buffer of 137 points to non-qualification — only 60 of those points I’ve gained using teams other than these, so I can rightfully claim that I’ve made it to the invitational using Hail Room “exclusively”. I didn’t expect to make it this far at the beginning of the season but a good start made it very possible, being the first player to win two lives as early as week 6. However, that was also my last win, and then it was mostly my seeding that still racked up some small points for poor performances, and possibly also a lot of people slacking off that could have easily knocked me out of the top 16. Anyway, I have compiled a few interesting games against great players — all of them made Worlds later! — on my way, and here they are for you to watch:

So much for the good stuff, on to some oddities. Here are my chronologically ordered records with both teams, not counting inactivity wins: 1-1, 5-0, 1-1, 5-0, 0-1, 1-1, 3-2 + 2-1 (4-2 swiss bubbled into cut, made the grand final), 1-1, 0-1, 0-1, 0-1, 0-1, 4-1, 0-1, 0-1, 2-3 in the lives, and 1-2 in the major, which makes for a total record of… a measly 25-18, close to losing half of my games. The first part of the season looks like just what seems realistic, very “extremish” with those wins and pretty much meaningless performances back to back. Then, the other part, well, I hate to say it, but my luck was horrible almost every week. I fully know and accept that a mostly Trick Room reliant team magically draws in bad luck, if you will, but I feel like pretty much every successful team right now has some very promising ways of getting unlucky as well. Thus, I don’t see the fault on my side at all, but because I am cynical enough for all of this, I did get some good entertainment out of that peculiar taste of humor that the RNG gods unleashed on me then. Never forget to accept them as your saviors. Oh, and to a lesser extent, I also may have played badly a few times, with my personal worst Nationals performance ever lying right in there, though I was far away from using any the teams in this report in them — if justifiably or not, that is now but void conjecture.

Having explained that, I am still surprised that it was enough for the invitational, because except for maybe one 3rd place my second-half run was: absolutely useless. People had every right to think of me as a fluke, with my only consistency being in losing. I do even think of myself as a fluke because I doubt I would have made it if even half of all those world-class (read: better-than-I) players around here would have put more effort towards the NBC. However, online tournaments without notable prize support and with a faulty connection system are just what they are and what they should be at the most. End of story: silly Mathias is possibly a legit player in his own living room but if you take him more than an hour-drive away from home, better place your bets on someone else unless you’re too generous for this world.

That said, I did eventually get back on track and that’s when this team finally was developed further.

III. Meet in the Middle

Triple Ghost, double Dark and long overdue.

Somewhere in July and with my qualification in the bag, we all were waiting for the second Nugget Bridge Invitational to be announced, and my feelings about what team to use there changed pretty much every day — drastically, even. I was again playing around with all sorts of things to see if I liked them enough and, you see, that didn’t quite work out. At the same time, Human made it all the way to the US finals with another Hail Room team — I was most surprised, having forsaken my own with respect to official premier events and seeing how he just got “matchup’d” in the finals, I can’t even say I was wrong with my worries. Anyway, my coldest team was probably the one I could pilot most flawlessly and it would no doubt deserve the honor to maybe fish for a prestigious match on stream. So, after convincing myself once more that Amoonguss simply doesn’t suit me, I finally just tried to play Sableye with Hydreigon, and it felt in fact better, it became the new “best version” for me.

However good it may have been though, it didn’t quite solve one major problem that has become very apparent to me during both the Nugget Bridge Live tournaments and my personal testing: Tyranitar, especially bulky variants. You might remember, I have always taken special precautions with this team against Tyranitar, but they just turned out too weak in the end. Jellicent and Abomasnow can underspeed Tyranitar by a million points if they so will, but they still lack the means to remove it most of the time, and then it will retaliate hard! Sableye was my only way of weakening its damage output but wasn’t too best of a pick in Tyranitar matchups, since they would often take the 4-3 lead turn 1, narrowing down my resources significantly. And games where I didn’t bring Sableye usually came down to whether they could keep Tyranitar and an arbitrary favorable partner healthy enough till Hariyama went down, and wearing down Hariyama obviously wasn’t the hardest task in the world. It’s intriguing how it took me so long to see that loophole, but I think people have just become overall smarter in using Tyranitar and friends over the course of the season — better late than never.

IV. Make Ice Colder: Add More Fire

Triple Ghost, triple Dark — get on my level.

With all that talk about Human’s outstanding performance and my own issues with that very archetype that has ultimately stopped him cold (yeah, bad puns ftw), I obviously had to question whether this fully offensive approach that I’ve followed with the team in every day of its existence was really the only way to do it. In fact, I did some more defensive drafts long before that but then just shunned them, because every one of them gave me that feeling: “stop it, you will be lacking damage output and it will be no feat for anyone that doesn’t have the same problem themselves to capitalize on that.” Human’s team, however, was built differently. He still kept the setup at a rational minimum, using the defensive parts mostly to shut down the physical sides of his opponents. That would force them to mainly use their special attackers but those happen to be easier to take down for the team thanks to striking weaknesses (for example: Latios and Thundurus to Ice, Volcarona to Rock) or inherently negligible damage output (Cresselia, defensive Thundurus, etc.). With the inaccuracy of Will-O-Wisp and the elevated susceptibility to well-timed critical hits, I definitely wasn’t immediately sold on the strategy, but it was worth trying it out nonetheless.

So what did I do then? I basically took the build from the previous section and changed various details about it to turn a formerly offensive team into one with a bit less offense but much more hostility to physical attackers. The dreaded Tyranitar is apparently a very big one of them and since a Fighting-type glass cannon and some minor tricks simply weren’t enough to handle it, might as well try to ruin its day with Intimidate and a barrage of Will-O-Wisp and work from there. The need for Intimidate obviously forced Hariyama right out of the team — would have to bend the layout much more if using a Flying-type Intimidator. Jellicent received an entirely new and significantly more annoying set. On the other Pokémon I tried different things at some point as well — I’m just keeping this a minor and undetailed section because I sadly didn’t manage to come up with a really convincing build of those quite intriguing looking six. (How often does it happen that someone builds a strong team with triple Ghost and triple Dark?)

The main reason for this lineup not quite succeeding was none other than the most apparent new element, Scrafty. It may be possible that my Scrafty was just badly designed, or maybe I’m just no good Scrafty player at all. I was never fond of its limited damage output and its durability isn’t the greatest either, especially with hailstorm damage and surroundings that need Scrafty to help get Trick Room up in the crossfire, rather than protecting it from early damage. Naturally, Scrafty ended up getting knocked out too easily and getting too few damage on the board in exchange for that. What left me really speechless, however, was this: People started to switch in their physical attackers right before Scrafty’s face to try to sneak around Intimidate, and some of them were exactly those that Scrafty was supposed to counter, namely Excadrill and Tyranitar! So here we have Tyranitar switching into Scrafty, taking hardly damage from Drain Punch thanks to Chople Berry and very lopsided stats among them and thus being able to pester my remaining team without much fear of retaliation (especially when I miss Will-O-Wisp trying to counteract that)! This felt by no means better than having to conserve Hariyama, by no means at all.

In a nutshell, the concept in itself had legitimate potential, but the balance in the actual team was off. Scrafty isn’t the only Fighting-type Intimidator, so…

V. Enter the Magical Girl

Back to triple Ghost and double Dark, now with snowflakes in deep purple shades.

The Idea

There you have it in plain sight: good old Hitmontop is the savior. Compared to the failed Scrafty, he/she/whatever keeps the Fake Out and Intimidate support and trades those hardly useful other attributes of Scrafty for some raw power again. I feel like having two defensive Pokémon in Sableye and Jellicent is enough; with four offensive ones I have to pick at least two per battle and those are the ones that make the most use of incapacitated foe Pokémon, after all.

So, besides the old and simple offensive approach, which is still very well possible with that new layout, this new team can also quickly rack up chip damage via burns and weather as an alternative. People usually engineer their Pokémon’s EV spreads against strong attacks like featured in this team, but if we join those strong attacks and accumulating chip damage together, those sophisticated EV spreads become useless. Even not very effective hits play a huge part in spoiling calculations, since — thanks to the offensive nature of most Pokémon in the team — those can be treated as “particularly big chip damage”. If people for example try to waste Hitmontop’s Fighting Gem with Thundurus, it might do them no good in the long run, as this hit does easily set up an unboosted Blizzard knockout for later, whereas Scizor tends to take that Ice Gem Blizzard a lot just to be worn down easier afterwards, and so on, you get the idea. That’s actually not new at all — it has just become easier to force situations like that, and I now have better answers to some matchups that used to be unfavorable.

The Team Magnified

Moveset and item. Trick Room and Recover are already known from the old set, and they serve the same purpose in this one — getting Trick Room up easily and survive long enough to control the flow of battle till the very end, if need be. Will-O-Wisp I tend to input a lot, because that is probably the best that this entirely defensive Jellicent can do when she doesn’t need to twist the dimensions or heal up. Scald is that one arbitrary STAB that is reliable at least in hitting — my burn luck with it, on the other hand, is rather lowly, and 75% are better than 30%, which I don’t even believe in, anyway. With all ways of burning the opposition as well as Cursed Body involving the RNG gods’ mercy, this very Jellicent is probably even more luck-dependent (not: based) than the whole Trick Room concept in itself. However, assuming Jellicent doesn’t go down early, odds are in my favor. Leftovers, finally, simply help her longevity the best.

Numbers. The new EV spread takes some points away from the physical side to make the special side a bit safer against strong attacks, since surviving Tyranitar’s Crunch has just become easier thanks to Intimidate and the overall idea of crippling physical attackers while there is absolutely nothing in the team that ever weakens special attacks. In the actual numbers, this spread (and remotely also the moveset) is inspired by Zach‘s Jellicent from the 2012 Fall Regionals.

Options. Old Water Spout, if anything. I decided against using it this time because people tend to find ways to keep my old Jellicent’s HP low (and get lucky via Cursed Body not activating in time *cough*) once they know what they are in for, and then Water Spout can grow so weak that it can’t even break a Heatran’s Substitute. Additionally, I wasn’t in the mood for raising yet another Jellicent, that was already more advanced to breed due to the shininess, to level 69, so I chose Scald and never regretted it.

Moveset and item. Actually, I hate to use Hitmontop. But this is not “Hitmontop”, this is Feintmontop! Whenever I was happy with using some spinning guy, he always knew Feint. Always. Ok, so in all seriousness now, while Feint failed me on Sableye earlier, it’s an amazing move to use on Hitmontop in a team with a time-constrained setup. Hitmontop along with another attacking partner makes for some offensive pressure, which entices people to use Protect to stall, and then Feint followed by a fitting attack gets a cheap knockout. And then there’s also the possibility to simply pick off mortally weakened targets, of course. Fake Out, Close Combat and Fighting Gem are the general go-to picks for Hitmontop and this fully offensive one certainly makes no difference there. Stone Edge was chosen to keep the Rock move that the slot formerly occupied by Hariyama contained, for Volcarona is always very threatening and I think the Rock coverage — assuming it eventually hits, you know — is generally helpful enough in this team to forsake the stronger priority that Sucker Punch would provide.

Numbers. It’s a trivial spread, and it was already prominently featured in Flash‘s 2012 Worlds semifinalist team — I simply wanted the highest damage output I can get (apart from Stone Edge outdamaging Rock Slide, it’s still overall inferior to the mighty Hariyama who just wrecked stuff all day) and not having to care about speed much, I already get reasonable bulk from pouring all the rest into the HP, nothing more I need. The special speed enables Hitmontop to underspeed regular Careful or Adamant Scrafties and minimum speed Chandelures, and not going straight to zero enables me to scout for speeds in that medium-slow quantile with less guesswork via ability activation, while the rest of the team does excellent work in keeping the respective Pokémon in check whether Trick Room is active or not.

Options. Helping Hand, Sucker Punch and even Detect would all be interesting moves to have — it’s just that space is painfully lacking. The four that I have right now perform so well that I don’t feel like changing them up any time soon without possible other modifications triggering something here.

Moveset and item. Old set is old! It’s new that I now can fuel Flash Fire with my own Will-O-Wisp, I guess, but usually my opponents beat me to that (they even dare use Sunny Day against me — well, thanks for the boosts??). Oh well, on we move!

Numbers. Also changed nothing here. One day, I actually thought about making her fast enough to outspeed Calm Cresselias without speed investment but quickly decided not to. It’s not of much use to do that in this team and especially in Japan, there’s that trend of mostly running Cresselia either slow or fast but not too often simply at 31/neutral/0, and waiting for that to carry over to our metagames one day, I simply see no point in speed racing there. As things are right now, my Chandelure outspeeds slow Cresselias (presumably Trick Room variants) and underspeeds pretty much all that are not slow (might or might not have Trick Room in set). That position right in between is probably the best to seize control of the flow of battle against them.

Options. Having Intimidate at my disposal, using a Gem or even Life Orb would have less drawbacks compared to before, and from people who have been inspired by my Chandelure build, I’ve noticed that they sometimes prefer not to run Focus Sash for some reason. I, however, am still not comfortable with not using Focus Sash. Strong purely special leads like Latios + Therian Thundurus, Hydreigon + Chandelure (hey, I like to go with that duo myself!) or Rage Powder Volcarona + something would simply maul that. And you’re bound to run into them, period. If I had my own Follow Me or Rage Powder, it may have been a different story.

Moveset and item. And here’s another old set, but it has grown terrifyingly more effective! Dinodora VI isn’t simply a sixth Pokémon of the team anymore but a major damage dealer besides the usual difference-maker of yore. She can so easily punish people for liking to sacrifice their offensive capabilities to withstand a Timid Latios’s Draco Meteor with not only being slightly stronger but also having more support available via a bigger focus on chip damage and generally better partners. If you somehow want to know how black snow exists, bring my most beloved beast something yummy and she might tell you.

Numbers. Same as before again. I definitely wouldn’t join the speed race with all those Timid Hydreigons and what have you, simply because I like the power more than anything else, and ultimately ending up at speed ties? — thanks, but no thanks. Would rather go slower because “who uses Timid Chandelure?” but you never know. I definitely can’t complain about getting the jump on Pokémon that are not designed to outspeed Timid Chandelures though.

Options. I would like Flamethrower for matchups involving Scizor or Breloom, but again, space. Earth Power, Draco Meteor and Protect are entirely sealed and I would probably long for Dark Pulse if I didn’t have it. It makes Hydreigon my main answer to other Chandelures that isn’t my own Chandelure and it’s one out of only two moves in the team that hit Cresselia super effectively — I strongly need that one when I’m up against a rare Rest Cresselia.

Moveset and item. It’s already in this exact report you’re reading right now.

Numbers. Word count +3.

Options. All right, getting there. Someone that I suspect is not active here has suggested Gravity as a way of removing some potential for bad luck with a few terrible accuracies as well as counter-weather Blizzards and I’ve tried it — to no real success, for a few reasons. Having Sableye use Gravity usually means a turn of Sableye not disrupting anything, which can be easily punished if Sableye’s partner doesn’t take care of whatever might happen immediately. That is — similarly to the Scrafty draft — probably an ill-fated cross-dependency, at least it seemed so in my hands. And what to really get out of Gravity is hard to tell, because it just temporarily disables some miss chances, while there is no powerful Ground Pokémon in my team to shatter some fliers and I give my opponents the increased accuracy as well. Other than that, I’ve run Mental Herb then, and that is definitely a good item, with Sableye being a popular target for Taunts. There might be some merits to running Recover simply to annoy the hell out of every matchup that fails to get rid of Sableye fast, but I didn’t yet get around to thoroughly testing that — I only know that Trick + Full Incense is still very, very powerful, and in some battles I just wanted Sableye to fall at some point to get some offensive momentum going. (If she had access to Lunar Dance, I would totally try that.)

Moveset and item. And the final set is also a recycled one; the changes are rather in my head than somewhere else. Remember, Abomasnow used to be simply a strong attacker under Trick Room and the Pokémon that enabled Jellicent to fire off perfectly accurate Blizzards at the same time. Now, the second Blizzard is gone and other tricks have joined the group, so Abomasnow is still a quality attacker under Trick Room, and thanks to the Full Incense Trick now even outside of Trick Room as well. Additionally, Abomasnow’s weather that damages pretty much everything in the metagame except himself enables our ghostly friends to spread burn across whole teams to, along with some Protects, effectively whittle their health away passively, if need be. Finally, I want to present a small gimmick that I’ve just stumbled upon during refining the team: If I get to counter Tyranitar’s Sand Stream (and thus negate its special defense boost), Hydreigon’s boosted Draco Meteor does 92.75 to 109.17% damage to 252/0 variants — can’t survive two turns of hailstorm on top of that and they need to get lucky to survive after the first one.

Numbers. Again, same as before, but more Scizor-proof than back then. This Abomasnow was originally designed to survive an unboosted Bullet Punch, which degenerated into a mostly useless feature with Steel Gem and Swords Dance becoming so popular — now there’s Intimidate as an answer to the former and in case Scizor gets burned way too soon, you can probably figure out what that means to Abomasnow on your own.

Options. None really. I do find Human’s Substitute interesting and would love to run it if I had a fifth slot, but there you have it. Protect and the strong STABs are not to be replaced and Ice Shard running off that high physical attack investment is simply to good with the team, has clutched me a lot of games throughout the team’s development.

So this is it in its full glory, the version of my signature team that I have brought to the Nugget Bridge Invitational. I could add a lot more of theorymon without issues, but I doubt a lot of you still want to read that, so here’s some recapped tournament action instead!

The Invitational

Top 16: vs. dingram

So, I’m starting my final tournament of this season off against the new US Senior runner-up, and I’m the immediate underdog with his strong showing at Nationals still fresh in people’s minds. Anyhow, I feel good about the matchup, having already beaten him in a similar one (which is right in the video way above, by the way) with somewhat less favorable preconditions (Hariyama, why are you not in my team this time?). Playing the straight Trick Room game may be difficult against Scrafty and Rhyperior that can both potentially underspeed my whole team and outside of it I need to watch out for Volcarona and Raikou. The key to the matchup would be to have the right Pokémon on the field most of the time and then have them outdamage his overall rather defensively oriented ones.

Game 1. I don’t want to blow my more specific but also risky tricks as early as game 1 while my basic four feel pretty comfortable — Chandytop lead and Jellisnow back it is. He starts with Raikou and Scrafty and eventually shows Gyarados and Volcarona in the back, trying to disrupt me all battle long, possibly for a Volcarona cleanup at the end. I’d love to retell it turn by turn, but unfortunately I’m bad at memorizing games where a lot is going on and my notes are of limited use as always. So, some attacking, Protecting and switching during the initial turns without significant damage on any side and then I’m tempted to completely expose Hitmontop to Raikou and Gyarados: I want to set up Trick Room to deal with Raikou and Volcarona at some point but I don’t remember if Gyarados has Taunt, so I’d prefer to just get rid of it and thus try to get in some chip damage with a -1 Stone Edge that also gives Abomasnow an easy target for putting on Blizzard pressure. It doesn’t happen as planned however, as Raikou’s Thunderbolt takes about half HP from Hitmontop and Gyarados’s Waterfall critical hits him back into his Poké Ball. Then, I just start pushing the dreaded Blizzard button and get to freeze the incoming Scrafty with it. Freezes are usually really nice to help me win games but this one forces me to gamble: Because I need it against all the rest of his team, I set up Trick Room right in Scrafty’s face, making it a huger threat than expected. I have already lost Hitmontop and since freeze duration is impossible to predict, it’s very hard for me now to burn it (and thus halve its attack) after only one move. Just like various Cresselias and Steel types already fallen to the power of Abomasnow, though, Scrafty never thaws and I can’t remember ever losing a game to one dead slot on the field.

To my surprise, he didn’t bring Rhyperior at all, and because his selection and game was actually solid enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t change much. I decide to give Chandelure some rest in order to deal major damage with Hydreigon this time, figuring Jellicent would easily be enough to control the pace and Hydreigon would protect her well from Gyarados. With that change made, however, I can’t afford to lose Hitmontop this early again.

Game 2. I open with Hitmontop and Hydreigon against Raikou and Volcarona. I expect him not to double Protect in fear of Feint + Draco Meteor and rather Snarl and/or Bug Buzz to prevent that, but he does double Protect while I also Protect Hydreigon and finally get to reveal Hitmontop’s Stone Edge for no numerical effect at all. I then replace Hydreigon with Jellicent to render Volcarona ineffective and aim Close Combat at Raikou, expecting him not to expose Volcarona to Stone Edge and also to smooth Jellicent’s path, obviously. He does predict half of it, as he hits Jellicent with Bug Buzz unpunished and wastes my Fighting Gem with Gyarados — a good position for Jellicent though, since both his Pokémon can’t touch her now. Still not knowing Gyarados’s moveset other than Waterfall and Protect, I hit Scald into Volcarona’s slot and do whatever with Hitmontop’s slot, welcome back hazy memory! That Scald hits his last Pokémon Scrafty entering the field, does it even critically and, the inarguably sweetest part of it, it burns! I do appreciate that a lot, since I have historically bad luck using Scald.

I get Hydreigon back into the arena somehow against those two and threaten a knockout against any one of them with Draco Meteor. I just don’t actually click it because I want to conserve the Gem or just my special attack for some reason (might be the Volcarona, I don’t remember for sure but I think its Protect came out slower than Hydreigon’s in turn 1), also not fearing what a defensive Gyarados and a burned Scrafty could possibly do. But lo and behold, I end up losing Hydreigon at the end of this turn thanks to Ice Fang, Drain Punch and maybe also little damage from switching in already on her. So she just got around to Dark Pulse Gyarados for some chip damage (good enough for Abomasnow to capitalize on, at least) and mitigated Scrafty’s crippled attack a bit in her last breath through Moxie.

Anyhow, his team got prepared well enough for me to wear it down, so I’m still comfortable with this 3-4 as long as no outstanding things happen. I go for Blizzard power play outside of Trick Room again, disposing of Scrafty along the way and try to bring up the Trick Room once that happens, only to have it denied by Thunder Wave followed by instant full paralysis. Still, that’s not enough at all to ruin my advantageous board position and in the end, a Feint + Blizzard play that sticks, more Feint threats and an unweakened Ice Shard succeed to take out his Pokémon one by one for me to emerge victorious again.

Top 8: vs. Baz Anderson

Interesting. I actually expected to have to deal with that pesky Liepard + Breloom lead that he has deployed against me all season again, along with that dangerous bulky Quiver Dance Volcarona. So my mental preparation before the event is basically useless now, but unless that’s an Imprison Chandelure, I actually am sort of relieved. Almost every single one of those nigh uncountable Liepard + Breloom matches eventually boiled down to whether my Pokémon would sleep for too long or too short, and not to forget, I usually had Hariyama to help me there. Against what I am facing now, however, I see no reason to feel unhappy with Hitmontop.

Game 1. His new team looks terribly Trick Room weak (aside from those STAB priority moves super effective against Abomasnow), so I just pick basic Chandytop + Jellisnow again and see where they take me. He leads off with Terrakion and his own Chandelure. If he doesn’t have Imprison nor Taunt on Chandelure, I can just Fake Out + Trick Room and work from there — and if he does have it, I have just earned me a nice auto-loss. Turns out he has only Ghost Gem Shadow Ball, burns it on my own Chandelure’s Focus Sash while Terrakion Protects away the Fake Out chip damage (or it just gets switched out for Cresselia, again I don’t remember for sure). In any case, I’m in the driver’s seat now, with up to 4 turns to wreak as much havoc as possible. As Chandelure just got knocked down to 1 HP, I trade her in for a big Shadow Ball against Cresselia, essentially removing the possibility of him reversing Trick Room and getting rid of my slot soon to be dead once Abomasnow is unleashed. In the remaining turns of Trick Room, he loses Cresselia and Chandelure. When Trick Room ends, it’s 3-2 with Hitmontop and Abomasnow against Terrakion and Breloom. I get in an Ice Shard for about half damage on Breloom (might come in handy later to know that calc), Hitmontop gets Spored and Terrakion beats Abomasnow with Close Combat. In comes Jellicent, ready to be Spored as well and it’s just over. I forfeit at 2-2 to keep my new Jellicent set secret, for it’s one that he doesn’t know yet.

Incredible. I had the edge 5 turns long and then it all collapsed like a house of cards. I actually experience scenarios like that a lot when people get lucky with double Protects or something in that direction, but in this game, I recall that there was absolutely no chance involved — only masterful resource management by Baz (and possibly good evidence for why he has qualified for Vancouver while I wasn’t even close). My matchup against his team can be however good it desires, but since bad luck is pretty much bound to come around, this very clean surprise loss hurts a lot. I decide to stick with the exact same Pokémon in the same order for game 2 and try again; it must be winnable somehow. (About changing my selection up: Hydreigon doesn’t enjoy having to deal with Terrakion and double priority and she also wishes she had Flamethrower for this particular matchup, while Sableye may be too defensive and will most notably be of very limited use if he decides to bring Thundurus with Taunt.)

Game 2. I saved this one and this all must already be lengthy enough, so just watch how it went. It was basically the same cat-and-mouse game as before and ultimately I’ve entered that infamous double Trick Room play at the wrong time and paid with the match. Sometimes you become a hero, when it works out perfectly, but sometimes you just make a tragicomic fool out of yourself.

That ends this Nugget Bridge Circuit for me, and the core part of the report with it. Good games everyone, see you whenever.

Closing

This team was originally created as a fun experiment and I have reworked it for our live tournaments to have fun again. At the same time, I had more “success” with it than with anything else. Then, Human made the US finals with another Hail Room team and, a few weeks later, Sejun made the whole world’s top 8 with yet another one. Having worked hard on my own one to improve it right between these two testimonials of great success, my confidence and faith in it, as well as my abilities in operating it, are stronger than ever before. I hope I’ve managed to shed some more light onto this still rather obscure archetype — or at least on my own way(s) of interpreting it.

Pokémon have many experiences in their lives, just like we do. I, too, have seen and suffered much in my life. Since I am your elder, let me show you what I mean. I have been with Pokémon since before you were born. I do not lose easily. I, the winter trainer, shall demonstrate my power!

The post Schwarzer Schnee der Frühe – Nugget Bridge Circuit 2 Top 8 Report and Team Analysis appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Like last year, Japan’s National Championships for the VGC ’14 season will be invite-only with the players decided by an online tournament. Japan Cup 2014 will run from the evening of Friday May 2nd to the morning of Monday May 5th, 2014. Registration will last from April 23rd to a few hours before the start of the tournament.

Players will be split into the three age divisions and only play others in the same age division. They’ll access the tournament in the same way as the Beta Competition earlier this year and play under the Standard ruleset. Also like the Beta Competition, there will be a maximum amount of battles allowed to be played.

This is actually the first online tournament of Pokémon X & Y that has been announced as part of the Pokémon Video Game Championships so we look forward to seeing what other news comes out for the season!

The post Japan Cup 2014 Announced as Qualifier for Japan National Championship appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

The start of Japan’s official VGC/World Championship Series 14 circuit may still be months away, but the Japanese tournament scene has been far from inactive! Among the numerous grassroots offline tournaments, or off-kai, which have already taken place or are scheduled to take place soon, a particularly noteworthy series of events stand out. We have already brought you team reports from some of these events, but for those unfamilliar, these events combined are known as the Battle Road Gloria, a nationwide circuit of off-kais using the current Standard rules and culminating in a National Finals in Osaka on March 23 (this Sunday). All the qualifying events besides the Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ) have been successfully concluded, and the stage is set for the showdown this weekend to determine who goes home with the glory!

So strap yourselves in for the weekend (there will most likely be a stream and organiser @masaVAmpharos will tweet the details) and LET’S GLORIA!

Circuit and Tournament Structure

The circuit comprises of eight events: 6 regional qualifiers, an LCQ on the eve of the finals, and the finals itself. The events and the number of players who advanced through them are:

• 18 Jan – Arena Off – Tokyo (Kanto Region) – Top 4 advance
• 1 Feb – Bibu Off - Hiroshima (Chu-shikoku Region) – Top 2 advance
• 9 Feb – Ganyu Off – Fukuoka (Kyushu Region), Top 2 advance
• 23 Feb – Shade Off – Osaka (Kansai Region), Top 2 advance
• 8 Mar – Hokuriku Off – Ishikawa (Hokuriku Region), Top 2 advance
• 15 Mar – Touhoku Off – Miyagi (Touhoku Region), Top 2 advance
• 22 Mar – Last Chance Qualifier  – Osaka, Top 6 advance
• 23 Mar – National Finals – Osaka

Unlike the standard best-of-1 Swiss rounds leading to single elimination best-of-3 top cut format that official VGC events have adopted, Japan’s off-kais do things a little differently and these events are no exception. The ~60-80 players are broken up into 8 groups/blocks, and a best-of-1 Round Robin (everyone plays everyone else in the group once) takes place. The top two players from each group advance to a top 16 cut, where the final placings are determined by single elimination best-of-1. Advancement from the groups is determined by, in order of priority:

1. Win-Loss Rate
2. Number of Completed Matches
3. Tiebreaker Match
4. Combined Opponents’ Win-Loss Rate
5. Rock-Paper-Scissors

The National Finals is set to follow the same format, except that the 20 participants will be divided into 4 groups from which the top 8 players will advance.

All battles are played in person on actual consoles, and use the standard VGC ’14 rules except for the timer which follows the default local multiplayer settings.

Qualified Players

Through their outstanding performances at the qualifying events, these players have succesfully advanced to the next leg of their glorious journey! They and their qualifying teams are:

Arena Off (18 Jan, Tokyo, Kanto Region Qualifier, 114 Players)

Champion: Viera

Runner-up: Yuuichi

3rd place: Suraimu

4th place: Rasuku

Bibu Off (1 Feb, Hiroshima, Chu-shikoku Region Qualifier, 47 Players)

Champion: Takasazo

Runner-up: Hashidam

Ganyu Off (9 Feb, Fukuoka, Kyushu Region Qualifier, 65 Players)

Champion: see_miruo (translated team report)

Runner-up: Tony

Shade Off (23 Feb, Osaka, Kansai Region Qualifier, 86 Players)

Champion: Gonbe

Runner-up: Mouhu

Hokuriku Off (8 Mar, Ishikawa, Hokuriku Region Qualifier, 67 Players)

Champion: Rei

Runner-up: Fukunyan

Touhoku Off (15 Mar, Miyagi, Touhoku Region Qualifier, 64 Players)

Champion: Alcana

Runner-up: masa

Usage Statistics and Team Details of All Players

We move on to the details of the rest of the players. The tournament organisers have done an extremely thorough job of collating this data, and have already made them public on various Japanese blogs. My job was mostly to translate Pokémon names, though I took the opportunity to do some compiling and create some statistics.

The complete data, including all usage statistics and (almost) every player’s team can be found here. I will not present all the information in this article because the quantity of it is simply staggering.

With that out of the way, I shall explain an important term in Japanese tournament usage statistics which is used in these statistics as well: the Kaburi Point (KP). The Kaburi Point of a particular species of Pokemon is simply the number of players that used it in the tournament. Since each player brings 6 Pokemon, the species clause then ensures that the sum of the KP of all Pokemon is equal to the tournament attendance multiplied by 6. Going further, the Japanese also define the KP of a player’s team to be equal to the sum of the KP of its constituent Pokemon, so a team with high KP would be full of popular Pokemon, wheras one with low KP would be full of unique choices. Since KP depends on the tournament attendance, raw KP numbers cannot be compared across tournaments with different attendance and must be divided by the attendance to obtain the percentage of players who used a particular Pokemon. I have sorted all the data presented in this article and in spreadsheets attached to this article by KP, from top to bottom and left to right in descending order. In other words, you can expect to see all the more unique Pokemon picks, such as miruo’s Pyroar and Gonbe’s Hippowdon, clustered towards the right.

Firstly, the various Pokemon used by average % usage for all the 6 qualifiers:

(to see the pie charts for individual tournaments: Arena Bibu Ganyu Shade Hokuriku Touhoku)

Next, a look at the top 10 Pokemon by by average % usage across the 6 qualifiers:

Top 16 teams from each qualifier

Finally, I leave you with the teams that got past the preliminary round robin stages for all the qualifier tournaments. Qualifying teams already listed above have been omitted. In addition, you may notice certain strong players who attended multiple events and managed to top cut multiple times!

Arena off (18 Jan, Tokyo, Kanto region qualifier, 114 players)

Top 4: Qualified and listed above

Top 8: Ryokucha

Top 8: Secchan

Top 8: Mikoto

Top 8: R Justice

Top 16: Uiww

Top 16: MAS

Top 16: Miyako

Top 16: Itou

Top 16: Huuuryu

Top 16: Masahiro

Top 16: YT

Top 16: Yasumatsu

Bibu Off (1 Feb, Hiroshima, Chu-shikoku region qualifier, 47 Players)

Top 2: Qualified and listed above

3rd place: Kaede

4th place: Arue (translated team report)

Top 8: Denjiha

Top 8: Shien

Top 8: Marou

Top 8: Nikoru

Top 16: Surairi

Top 16: Tony

Top 16: masa

Top 16: Hashimura

Top 16: Miyanoakemi

Top 16: Torun

Top 16: Abi

Top 16: Rai

Ganyu Off (9 Feb, Fukuoka, Kyushu region qualifier, 65 Players)

Top 2: Qualified and listed above

3rd place: Chikuha

4th place: Sana

Top 8: Shichikin

Top 8: Bandoru

Top 8: Torun

Top 8: YT

Top 16: Tomoya

Top 16: Hashidam

Top 16: Fuoru

Top 16: Zaha

Top 16: Viera

Top 16: Aroe

Top 16: Gincho

Top 16: imP

Shade Off (23 Feb, Osaka, Kansai region qualifier, 86 Players)

Top 2: Qualified and listed above

3rd place: Nemuru

4th place: YT

Top 8: Kousuke

Top 8: Kande

Top 8: Bunbun

Top 8: Right

Top 16: Gacha

Top 16: Sunlight

Top 16: Yamacha

Top 16: Viera

Top 16: haru

Top 16: Moudameda

Top 16: Tsubasa

Top 16: see_miruo

Hokuriku Off (8 Mar, Ishikawa, Hokuriku region qualifier, 67 Players)

Top 2: Qualified and listed above

3rd place: Rurito

4th place: Mopi

Top 8: Zunda

Top 8: Leon

Top 8: Kandachibe

Top 8: Moudameda

Top 16: Sena

Top 16: Pentagon

Top 16: Bicho

Top 16: Gacha

Top 16: Tsunku

Top 16: Yura

Top 16: Beko

Top 16: Yukikage

Touhoku Off (15 Mar, Miyagi, Touhoku region qualifier, 64 Players)

Top 2: Qualified and listed above

3rd place: Roto

4th place: Miya

Top 8: Nako

Top 8: Doru

Top 8: HAL

Top 8: Seravi

Top 16: Suraimu

Top 16: At least an E Cup

Top 16: Kaede

Top 16: Rasu

Top 16: Sukiru

Top 16: Pippi

Top 16: Zecchan

Top 16: Tsuzuli

The post Japan’s Battle Road Gloria Circuit Qualifiers – Complete Team Details and Usage Statistics appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Have you tried to capture a usable Zapdos, Articuno, or Moltres on your X or Y game yet?  Based on previous generation game mechanics, one might reasonably assume it would be mathematically impossible (or at least impractical) to capture a flawless IV, specific nature, usable Hidden Power Kanto legendary bird solely through resetting.  Luckily, this isn’t past generations.  If you set things up to be as efficient as possible it shouldn’t take you more than a few days to get your own VGC-legal bird.  I’ve done it twice now; here’s how you can do it, too!

For those of you who would like this info in list form:

Repeatedly Encountering Your Roamer

1. Purchase 10-20 Max Repels.
2. Put a high, but sub-level-70 Pokémon in the lead spot of your party.
3. Bring along any Pokémon that knows Fly.
4. Fly to any town that has access to multiple routes.
5. Check your roamer’s Pokedex entry.
6. If it’s not near, keep flying to your same location and checking your roamer’s Pokedex entry until it is.
7. If it’s near, walk, skate, or bike to that route, but do not fly.
8. Check your roamer’s Pokedex entry every time you change areas.
9. Use a max repel and run around in the grass until your roamer pops out.
10. Repeat the flying and checking and biking part around 11 times till your roamer’s Pokedex entry shows that it’s at Sea Spirit’s Den.

Preparing to Capture Your Roamer

1. Figure out what Nature, Hidden Power, and IVs you want.
2. Head to somewhere like Pokémon Showdown to figure out what its stats should be at level 70 and write them down.
3. Obtain a Masterball.
4. Obtain a synchronizer with the nature you want your roamer to be, knock it out, and put it in the first spot in your party.
5. Put any Pokémon that knows Surf and any Pokémon that knows Fly in your party.
6. Fill out your roamer’s Pokedex entry by either Pokebanking an old gen one, or having a friend touch trade you one.
7. Put in the second spot in your party any Pokémon with an ability that announces itself at the beginning of the battle, (preferably Pressure but definitely not Unnerve), that happens to be EXACTLY one speed point below your roamer’s expected speed stat.
8. Surf to Sea Spirit’s Den.
9. Enter the cave, then STOP, and save one step away from that dark circle right in front of you.
10. Get out those stats you wrote down.

Resetting Your Roamer

1. Step forward to activate the battle.
2. If your roamer’s ability does not announce itself first, reset immediately and try again.
3. If your roamer’s ability does announce itself first, masterball it and mash B to get through the nick name screen.
4. If your roamer’s HP on the Pokemon select screen isn’t what it should be, reset immediately and try again.
5. If your roamer’s HP on the Pokemon select screen is what its supposed to be, check all the rest of its stats.
6. If its stats are not what they’re supposed to be, reset immediately and try again.
7. If its stats are what they’re supposed to be, fly to Anistar city and check its Hidden Power.
8. If its Hidden Power isn’t something you could live with, reset immediately and try again.
9. If its Hidden Power is something you could live with, fly to Kiloude City and check its IVs.
10. Go to Metalkid’s IV checker and put all the info in to determine your roamer’s IVs.
11. If its IVs aren’t close enough to what you’re looking for, reset immediately and try again.

Do. Not. Settle.

If you keep trying you WILL soon capture exactly what you’re looking for.

I owe a big thanks to both lucariojr for supplying the Master Ball for this project and DaWoblefet for reminding me to use a “one-under” lead.  I couldn’t have done this without you two.  Thanks!

The post Efficiently Capturing Your Roamer in Pokémon X and Y appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Late next month, we’ll see an expansion to the Pokémon Video Game Championship Series with a pilot program at a very local level in North America. Select tournament organizers who have been active in running sanctioned video game tournaments have received the opportunity to run up to two VGC ’14 Premier Challenge events between April 21st and June 23rd. They will have a Best Finish Limit of 2 and award Championship Points. Prizes as well as entry fees will vary as they will be up to the organizer’s discretion but the yet to be announced Championship Point payout will be standard.

Over the next month, you’ll find events coming up on the Event Locator on Pokemon.com as well as our brand new sub-forum for Pokémon Premier Challenges. Check back frequently as organizers get their tournaments approved after locking down venues and dates.

Keep in mind that this is a pilot program, much like the TCG’s League Challenge program this season. This means only a few dozen tournament organizers will be allowed to run these events in the VGC ’14 season. This pool of organizers was determined by organizers who were proactive in holding sanctioned Pokémon X & Y tournaments. Based on its success, we should see an expansion of the program in North America, Europe, and then other countries in the Play! Pokémon program.

Helpful Tips to Players

• Remember your Player IDs as you would for a Regional event. If you don’t have one yet, you can get one online to save time during registration!
• Fill out a team sheet before heading to the event and double check it. We’ll have these available for download and printing before the events begin.

Many players have been hoping for events closer to home than a Regional that are a part of the official Video Game Championship Series and these Premier Challenges will be a first step to a strong local scene for the video game much like the one that currently exists for the TCG. Even if your local area hasn’t had enough sanctioned tournaments to earn a Premier Challenge yet, please do work with your local organizers to hold sanctioned events so that it may get one in the future!

The post Introducing VGC ’14 Premier Challenges appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

After 8 grueling weeks of Swiss rounds, the Nugget Bridge Major Top Cut is here. A big congratulations to every player who made it this far, 62 of the best players will now duke it out in a single elimination format. As detailed before the prizes for winning this Major will be substantial, so everyone will need to bring their best to capture the glory of being Nugget Bridge Major Champion.

You can find the Top Cut bracket here. There you can not only see the matchups for the entire tournament, but make predictions on how you think the Major will shake out. The best Nugget Bridge Major Madness prediction will win an eShop code for the new 3DS game Pokémon Battle Trozei!

The staff here at Nugget Bridge wants to extend a major thanks to everyone who participated and completed their matches. Good luck in the future and hopefully this was good practice for those of you who plan on playing in Regionals in the Spring.

The post Nugget Bridge Major 3 Top Cut Is Set appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Under The Bridge moves to the end of the month, and with good reason: it’s almost time for Spring Regionals. Listen as hosts Alan Sutterlin (Dubulous) and Matt Sybeldon (bearsfan092) provide a comprehensive preview no matter what Regional you’re planning on attending. Find out what new threats are out there to prepare for, and hear who we think will earn those last few byes in the first round of Nationals still up for grabs. Also, we talk about the ongoing Nugget Bridge Major, and give predictions about who will be moving on to the later rounds (Spoiler: not Dubs). Plus, there’s yet another chance to win a fantastic VGC-caliber Pokémon as they read the trivia question for March’s Monthly ‘Mon.

You can download an MP3 version of the show here. Keep tabs on the hosts by following them on Twitter at @DubsNB and @bearsfan092. Send us your questions and comments!

The post [NBR] Under The Bridge 008: Spring Regionals Preview & Nugget Bridge Major appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

On Sunday, the 23rd of March, Japanese Pokémon players gathered in Osaka to watch the culmination of the biggest grassroots tournament circuit in the country with the VGC ’14 ruleset: the Battle Road Gloria National Finals. Following intense competition over the past two months, where players duked it out in the various regional qualifiers for an invite to the finals, as well as a Last Chance Qualifier the day before, the field of competitors was finally thinned to a final 20 players. Thus, the showdown to determine who would be crowned as the No. 1 Trainer of Japan began.

With the tournament over, hardworking host @masaVAmpharos has once again publicised the team details and usage statistics. Combined with the information from the qualifiers, we are finally in a position to look back on the series of live competitions that have shaped the metagame in Japan and even influenced the playstyles of players all over the world.

Finalist Teams

First up, we have the team details of all the participants of the Battle Road Gloria National Finals, starting with none other than:

1. Gloria Champion: See_miruo!

Qualified through: Ganyu Off (Kyushu) Champion

(Awesome team portrait courtesy of Yudetama (@yudeyude123), go to her Pixiv for the WIP and other artworks!)

Runner up: Rei

Qualified through: Hokuriku Off (Hokuriku) Champion

3rd Place: Fukunyan

Qualified through: Hokuriku Off (Hokuriku) Runner-up

4th Place: Gonbe

Qualified through: Shade Off (Kansai) Champion

(Note: I’m unable to verify the exact Megas used from here on so I will list them as their base forms)

Top 8: Viera

Qualified through: Arena Off (Kanto) Champion

Top 8: Yasumatsu

Qualified through: LCQ

Top 8: Hashidam

Qualified through: Bibu Off (Chushikoku) Runner-up

Top 8: Ryuzaki

Qualified through: LCQ

Tony

Qualified through: Ganyu Off (Kyushu) Runner-up

Takumi

Qualified through: LCQ

Takasazo

Qualified through: Bibu Off (Chushikoku) Champion

Denjiha

Qualified through: LCQ

Yuuichi

Qualified through: Arena Off (Kanto) Runner-up

Alcana

Qualified through: Touhoku Off (Touhoku) Champion

Mouhu

Qualified through: Shade Off (Kansai) Runner-up

masa

Qualified through: Touhoku Off (Touhoku) Runner-up

Rasuku

Qualified through: Arena Off (Kanto) 4th place

Suraimu

Qualified through: Arena Off (Kanto) 3rd place

Haochii

Qualified through: LCQ

San

Qualified through: LCQ

Battle Videos

The most important battles of the National Finals and LCQ have also been recorded by various people and are avaliable for your viewing pleasure.

National Finals

Courtesy of the Eggy Emporium team. Recorded from the Nico Nico livestream timeshift by Hibiki, subtitled by myself and Ryokon, and uploaded to Youtube with organiser Masa’s permisison.

• Grand Finals: See_miruo (front) VS Rei (back)
• 3rd Place playoffs: Fukunyan (front) VS Gonbe (back)
• Semi-final A: See_miruo (front) VS Fukunyan (back)
• Semi-final B: Rei (front) VS Gonbe (back)

LCQ

Recorded and livestreamed on Twitcast by organiser Masa

• Flight A Finals: San (front) VS Haochii (back)
• Flight A 3rd Place playoffs: Kamendaburu (front) VS Ryuzaki (back)
• Flight B Finals: Denjiha (front) VS Takumi (back)
• Flight B 3rd Place playoffs: Yasumatsu (front) VS Suraili (back)

Usage Statistics

Next, the usage statistics for the finals as well as the LCQ held during the day before (for reference, here are the statistics for the previous qualifiers combined):

Finally, if anyone wishes to see the complete team details of all the participants in the LCQ as well as the raw KP numbers, they can be found in this file. Remember, the KP of a Pokémon is defined as the number of players who used it in the tournament, while the KP of a team is the sum of the KP of its constituent Pokémon.

Points of Interest

I’m probably not good enough of a player to write a particularly solid dissertation similar to Scott’s ‘What We Learned’ articles after each season of events in the American VGC circuit, but seeing as I picked up a little knowledge of the Japanese scene through following this series of events and there are issues which I think are worth highlighting so I’ll take a stab at it.

Aqua Jetting Up the Rankings

Scanning for changes in the usage statistics between the LCQ plus Finals and the previous tournaments, the Pokémon that immediately demands attention is Azumarill, which surged all the way from a respectable 14th position in the qualifier rankings to a commanding 5th/6th in the LCQ and finals respectively — kicking its fellow Huge Power Fairy-type wielder Mawile out of the Top 10 in the process. I’d personally put this down to Azumarill having advantageous matchups against all the pseudolegendaries legal in the format (Garchomp, Salamence, Tyranitar, Hydreigon, Dragonite), who — aside from Dragonite — account for a large chunk of usage. Azumarill hits them with painful STAB super effective attacks and resists their primary STABs and even quite a few of their coverage moves. Even better, it doesn’t need to take up a Mega slot to do it unlike Mawile, which reduces its competition. With both the Belly Drum and Choice Band sets able to bring ample amounts of hurt, it certainly looks as if players are starting to discover its potential, possibly cementing its place in the metagame for the rest of the season.

Other less noticable but significant usage changes include a slight reshuffling of the Grass type pecking order, with Ferrothorn almost completely falling off the radar from 14% to 4% and Venusaur and Amoonguss picking up the slack and jumping from 8% to 16% and 12% to 18% respectively. My personal experience with Ferrothorn is one of giving up on it, as useful as its Grass/Steel typing was, after having had to Protect it ever so often to stop it from getting taken out by every random fire move under and not under the Sun without nearly enough success. It therefore wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if the Japanese players have wisened up to its consistency issues and stopped using it as often. In contrast, Venusaur and Amoonguss are able to fill the bulky grass defensive niche and provide solid support options to the rest of the team without bringing a crippling weakness along. Also, could the fact that their Grass/Poison typing shuts down the abovementioned Water/Fairy Azumarill completely have anything to do with their increase? The numbers aren’t strong enough to say for sure, but I guess time will tell.

Top 4 Mega Madness

While good old Kangaskhan, Charizard Y and Mawile still have their iron grip on the top 3 Mega spots, the top 4 was a hotbed of innovation with the semifinalists’ and finalists’ Mega Pokémon choices departing from the norm in various ways. Champion see_miruo’s Kangaskhan, unlike other members of its brethren, chose to eschew the highly contested 100 base speed tier and take it slow, even underspeeding Runner up Rei’s Bisharp in Trick Room and taking it out with Hammer Arm, then using the subsequent speed drop to underspeed and KO Rotom-W on the next turn.

In a metagame where almost every Charizard chooses to evolve into Mega Charizard Y, Rei’s signature Mega Charizard X returned once again from his Hokuriku regional qualifier winning team to carry him to second place. 3rd place Fukunyan’s Mega Mawile is a slightly more ordinary all out Trick Room attacker, though its moveset does reflect a nowadays increasing tendency for Mawile to forgo their reliable STAB 100% accurate Iron Head in exchange for coverage moves — in this case Rock Slide.

Finally, double Mega combinations are not unheard of, but mostly restricted to combinations of the top 3. 4th placed Gonbe however put an extremely unorthodox spin on the concept by choosing to run Mega Tyranitar and Mega Venusaur on the same team. Even more unusual was Mega Tyranitar’s moveset of Dragon Dance, Rock Slide, Ice Fang and Earthquake.

I’m not someone who particularly champions originality for originality’s sake, but I find the variety displayed by the top-performing players heartening. It indicates that there is quite some untapped potential out there awaiting exploration even among the Mega Pokémon that define this year’s ruleset so. Many important metagame breakthroughs in the past such as bulky Thundurus, offensive Cresselia and Pyroar have been spearheaded by pioneers achieving success with them and changing perceptions from “Why would you even do that?” to “Why didn’t anyone think of doing that?”. I think that in this regard, a metagame that requires players to have the basics down yet provides ample potential for and rewards experimenting is healthy for competitive Pokémon.

The “Fantasy Core” is Very Real

It’s not hard to see why the triangle of Dragon, Fairy and Steel types is at the forefront of the metagame. Garchomp and Salamence, with the utility and reliability bestowed upon them by their superior base stats, abilities and typing, are just too good not to consider for inclusion on any team. The Fairies have great offensive and defensive coverage too, with the bonus ability of being able to maul the popular dragons, although unlike the dragons they aren’t as blessed in the BST department. And finally Steel, the only type in the game that resists both of them and even gets to hit the Fairies back hard.

Even though it is pretty evident from the usage statistics how ubiquitous Garchomp, Aegislash and Salamence are, I decided to delve further into the statistics to explore their correlation and wasn’t disappointed.

(Raw data here)

As you can see, an overwhelming number of Japanese players have decided that having a Dragon and Steel type on their team was in their best interests, with the percentage only increasing as the sample size was cut to the better-achieving players, to the point where pretty much all the finalists were running a Dragon-Steel duo. It’s harder to read a definite trend into the Dragon-Steel-Fairy numbers, but they look healthy enough to be a mainstay of the metagame. The American metagame of the Winter Regionals season, in contrast, was decidedly iron-deficient in comparison, but the metagame has had time to evolve now and perhaps the Spring Regionals will show us a different picture.

The LCQ Pilgrimage…in Reverse!

With Japan never seeming to get a proportionate number of places in the official World Championships, scenes of them descending on the Last Chance Qualifier and grinding in the hard way have become a yearly occurrence. This time, however, it was German player Rebecca “San” Wolf (13th place Masters, Worlds 2011) that made the trip to the Orient, took 2nd place in the LCQ’s A flight and very nearly made it to the top cut of the National Finals itself (more on this later)!

There’s nothing much more to point out beyond the unprecedented nature of this (congratulations to Rebecca for her achievement, though). I didn’t look closely enough to see how Japanese players reacted to the presence of a foreigner in a tournament to “determine the No. 1 in Japan.” However, it did make me wonder how things would be like if the World Championships ever goes to the birthplace of the franchise and it becomes the Western world’s turn to mount LCQ expeditions instead.

Round Robin Rumblings

As I’ve mentioned in my previous article on the regional qualifiers, the Japanese grassroots tournament scene does not use the Swiss format Americans and Europeans are familiar with through official VGC events. Instead, they break players up into blocks right from the start and have everyone in the block play everyone else, with the top 2 from each block by win-loss score advancing to a Top (usually) 16 single elimination best-of-1 cut. This usually doesn’t give too much problems and the Japanese seem to be perfectly happy with the status quo. However, the format resulted in a very sticky situation in the D block of the National Finals (containing both Champion See_miruo and the just-mentioned foreign LCQer Rebecca Wolf), where all five players in the block went 2-2, and a lottery had to be used to decide that See and Ryuzaki would advance to the Top cut of 8. (Even more seemingly ludicrously, the initial method proposed to break the deadlock was Round Robin Rock-Paper-Scissors!)

Such rare occurrences aside, my impression of the format is that it does seem to increase the element of luck in matchups a tad. If you had a strong win ratio in Swiss, you would be guaranteed to play similarly accomplished opponents, whereas in Round Robin groups you might land in a group of lesser opponents by luck of the draw and coast to an easy top cut. Other considerations include avoiding bad matchups; A 3rd place qualifier report I translated had a team with a rather evident Rotom-W-shaped hole in it, yet the player himself mentioned that managing to avoid playing most of his bad matchups was instrumental in his final placing. Various other problems with Round Robin, such as players dropping midway, come to mind. If I had to pick, I’d definitely go for a Swiss format. Of course, I don’t have the influence to change anything that goes on over there, but nevertheless it would be interesting to see what the rest of the world thinks.

Where are the Japanese Players We Know?

Perhaps as a testament of how little we outsiders are exposed to the Japanese scene, when asked to name strong Japanese players most of us would probably come up with a rather limited list along the lines of Gebebo, Huuuryu, R_Justice, Shota Yamamoto, Jumpei Yamamoto, Osamu Shinomoto… i.e. those few players who have shown up on the LCQ/Worlds stage or in International Friendlies. And yet, searching through the placings, these names pop up sporadically and at most correspond to a few top 16 placings here and there, while other previously-unheard-of-outside-Japan players like See and Viera frequent the top spots. The known players probably have their own individual reasons for their decline; Gebebo, for instance, has mentioned that he doesn’t like the Kalos Doubles ruleset much and has been playing National Dex Doubles and GS Cup instead, probably intending to take most of the season out like Ray did when he already had his Worlds invites locked up. Overall though, it’s evident that the Japanese scene remains largely a mystery to the outside world, and hopefully that begins to change soon. I’ll be keeping up my translation work, but TPC could really help by implementing a better official VGC circuit in Japan and perhaps actually give them a proportionate amount of representation in Worlds itself.

Foreign Influences

We learn a lot from Japanese players, but what do they take back from us? Trawling through the various Japanese team reports, influences from Ray’s Virginia Regionals-winning team caught my eye, and there was a remodelled version of Human’s Runner-up team from the same event, but not much else. I had a conversation with Taroimo, the go-to person for English -> Japanese VGC content translations, and the discussion threw up a few interesting points.

According to Taroimo, he’s mostly the only translator in the field, and Japanese Pokémon players mostly don’t go out of their way to proactively machine translate foreign content and read them (the exception being their RNG researchers i.e. Omega Donut, Kaphotics, Slashmolder et al’s Japanese counterparts). As a result, most of the foreign VGC content flowing into Japan goes through him. Right now, the VGC ’14 content he has produced Japanese translations of include Ray’s, Human’s and Wolfe’s team reports as well as Wolfe’s commentary on the usage stats of the various Gloria qualifier tournaments. And according to him, the viewcount on Ray’s report far outstrips that of the rest.

It seems that in the end, as of the moment, between the bottlenecking of information through their only translator, the limited number and Japanese players playing on simulators and the limited amount of foreign players on Battle Spot (compared to the number of Japanese players), and the underdeveloped nature of Japan’s official VGC circuit, Japan doesn’t really want or need information from the outside world most of the time, and who can blame them? Their grassroots scene is well-developed enough for their players to experience fierce competition and earn lots of recognition without ever needing to play foreigners. If TPC continues to be stingy with Japanese representation at Worlds, I don’t see any compelling reason for them to suddenly work up the motivation to pay attention to the rest of the world — which might be a loss for them, but my feeling is that its as much of, if not even more of, a loss for us.

With the above points, I end my recap of the Battle Road Gloria circuit. Of course, there are still team reports to come, and the Asia Cup just concluded today with See_miruo conquering the other countries from his throne in Japan, so look out for more exciting content from my side of the world! TanZYinG, out.

The post Japan’s Battle Road Gloria National Finals: Results, Team Details, Statistics and Review appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

2014 has brought in a new generation, and with it a new set of rules for VGC. The Salem, OR Regionals were the first Regionals with the new ruleset that I had the opportunity to play in. In a situation where players needed to go 6-1 in order to reach the Top 8 Cut, I ended up with a 5-2 record, and missed out on the Top Cut along with a large handful of other known players.

The team I ran is a team that I had been using for the last month or two before the Regional. I had a core of four Pokemon that were already decided on, and two other Pokemon that I kind of shuffled around with to try to fill in the gaps. While I wasn’t super confident in my match up against certain strategies or Pokemon, I felt that they wouldn’t be common enough at the moment for me to dedicate too much effort into trying to have a solid answer, and just decided to improvise if I ever fell into such a situation.

As always, my Pokemon are nicknamed, even if you can’t see them. All of my Pokemon are named after characters from the Monogatari Light Novel/Anime Series. So let’s start the story:

Team:

Politoed (M) @ Choice Scarf ***Araragi
Ability: Drizzle
IVs: 31/xx/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Hypnosis

I’m not sure if this is necessarily where my story starts, but it does provide the setting. Politoed provides a way for my team to summon the Rain. Since Politoed has lost supportive moves in Helping Hand and Perish Song, and has also lost the accessibility of Water Gem, I went back to my Rain team roots of 2012 and ran a Choice Scarf Politoed. Hydro Pump and Surf take advantage of the Rain boost, and give my Politoed an option of either a spread move or a high-power single target attack. Ice Beam was for coverage, and Hypnosis was a desperation move. Historically, when I’ve run Scarf Politoed, I’ve tried using Focus Blast or Psychic on the moveset, but the situations where either move is useful are few and far between.

Ludicolo (M) @ Life Orb ***Oshino
Ability: Swift Swim
IV: 31/31/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 68 Def / 236 SpAtk / 4 SpDef / 196 Spd
Modest Nature
- Energy Ball
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Fake Out

What’s a Rain team without a Pokemon with Swift Swim? Perhaps this is where my story starts. Politoed could use some help, and Ludicolo provides it. Originally, I ran Choice Specs Ludicolo, with the goal of OHKOing Rotom-W. However, that plan was scrapped as Calm Rotom-W gained in popularity, and people started Speed creeping up their Speed EVs on the washer. My old Ludicolo would end up getting the KO on 252 HP / 148 SpDef Calm Rotom-W about 75% of the time, and was Speed tied with Rotoms that had 20 Speed EVs. It was no longer a reliable option, so in the end I scrapped the old idea entirely and switched to a Life Orb Ludicolo instead. While I enjoyed the power boost from holding Choice Specs, being able to choose moves flexibly was more important for Ludicolo when faced against stronger opponents.

The moveset is pretty standard for an offensive Ludicolo, but let’s talk about its EVs. 196 Speed EVs translate to a Speed stat of 115, doubled in Rain to 230. This allows Ludicolo to outspeed base 100 neutral-Natured Choice Scarf Pokemon in the Rain. 236 Special Attack EVs were to hit  astat of 154 Special Attack for the extra stat point. The remainder of the EVs were placed into Defense rather than HP in order to reduce the chance of being OHKO’d by a +1 Mega Kangaskhan Sucker Punch (~5/256 chance, barring a critical hit), or similarly, a +1 Bisharp Sucker Punch (1/16 chance KO).

Crobat (M) @ Lum Berry ***Kaiki
Ability: Inner Focus
IVs: 31/31/31/xx/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpDef / 244 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Brave Bird
- Protect
- Rain Dance
- Hypnosis

Crobat is like a fake Talonflame. But in some cases, it has the ability to surpass the function of the real thing. Crobat’s EV spread is nothing special, essentially being a 252/252 EV spread, but trading a point of Speed to gain a point in both Defenses. 181 Speed still allows Crobat to outspeed 252 Speed EV Jolly Mega Lucario. The moveset used is about as far I can differentiate Crobat from a Talonflame. Both Rain Dance and Hypnosis were pretty key supportive moves on my team. The former allowed me to have a much better matchup against the ever popular Charizard-Y, deceiving them into thinking they have the weather advantage and taking it away from them. The latter provided a bit of a surprise to the opponent in situations where Crobat was unable to do much from an offensive standpoint. Since Hypnosis’s Accuracy is at a shaky 60%, I usually only tried it when Crobat had nothing left it could do, or if the opponent wouldn’t be able to punish me that hard if I missed.

However, if there is one advantage that Crobat clearly has over Talonflame, it’s that Crobat cannot be flinched. If there is one thing I’m reminded about from early play testing in XY, it’s that I really, really hate not being able to punish the usage of Fake Out. Trying to play guessing games as to which Pokemon the opponent will use Fake Out on is a lot more difficult with the likes of Mega Kangaskhan around. Mega Kangaskhan isn’t easily threatened by much, and also does a lot of damage if you predict wrong. Crobat doesn’t care about Fake Out at all due to its Inner Focus, which allows me to move more freely on Turn 1. This was important in that it would allow me to not lose early momentum in a battle.

Manectric (F) @ Manectite ***Shinobu
Ability: Lightning Rod
IVs: 31/e/30/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpAtk / 12 SpDef / 236 Spd
Timid Nature
IVs: 30 Def
- Thunderbolt
- Overheat
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Protect

The only Mega Pokemon on my Team. There isn’t too much to say for Manectric, since it’s a fairly straight-forward Pokemon. While some people like to use Volt Switch on Manectric in order to jump around and harass the opponent’s team with Intimidate, I felt that my team wasn’t really set up to make good use of this, nor was it a strategy that fit my style of play. So instead, my Manectric is just a simple special sweeper Pokemon. I lowered Manectric’s Speed by a small amount and added it into its Special Defense. This reduces the chances that Mega Manectric will be OHKO’d by Modest Choice Scarf Salamence’s Draco Meteor to a 3/16 Chance. These EVs give Manectric a 170 Speed stat before Mega Evolution, and a 203 Speed stat as Mega Manectric. The former Speed allows it to outspeed Jolly Garchomp, while the latter allows it to outspeed Choice Scarf Politoed and Tyrantrum, as well as Adamant Mega Aerodactyl.

Salamence (F) @ Choice Specs ***Kagenui
Ability: Intimidate
IVs: 31/29/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Flamethrower
- Hydro Pump
- Dragon Pulse

I felt that my team needed an additional Intimidate Pokemon on my team aside from Mega Manectric. I originally had a Choice Band Gyarados in this spot of my team, but with 3 Water Types, and 3 Pokemon weak to Electric, I didn’t feel very comfortable with that set up, even if I did have Lightning Rod Support from regular Manectric. Instead, I went with a Choice Specs Salamence. Since Salamence is stuck in a massive tie at Base 100 Speed, I felt that I should run a Timid Salamence, especially as more people started to use Adamant Mega Kangaskhan or Modest Mega Charizard. The moveset isn’t particularly outstanding. Dragon Pulse and Flamethrower were added to the set to provide myself a few more reliable attacking options. I had a choice between Rock Slide and Hydro Pump, but settled for Hydro Pump in the end, since I did have the Rain to boost it.

Ferrothorn (F) @ Leftovers ***Ononoki
Ability: Iron Barbs
IVs: 31/31/31/xx/31/00
EVs: 252 HP / 68 Def / 192 SpDef
Relaxed Nature
- Power Whip
- Iron Head
- Leech Seed
- Protect

Ferrothorn wraps up the team as my sixth member. While many players have been using more offensively-oriented Ferrothorn as of late, I decided to just stick to a more classic defensive EV spread, with Leftovers as my item. Ferrothorn is sort of the utility “cover some team gaps” Pokemon on the team, as it is able to handle with a number of Pokemon I didn’t particularly enjoy fighting against. While Gyro Ball is usually the better move, I wanted to use Iron Head to improve my match up against Mega Abomasnow.

Overall:

It’s a Rain team. With the exception of Crobat, it’s probably about as bog standard looking as a hard Rain team can get from Team Preview. I seem to have a bad habit of making my teams be hyper offensive trainwrecks that are only held together by a thin thread known as a player’s skill. A lot of times during practice, I felt like my team was always a step or two away from losing at all times, yet I would also feel like I was in full control of the battle. The team doesn’t really try to do anything too fancy, and was pretty enjoyable for me to use, and that’s what counts.

Rain teams always have an issue involving the use of inaccurate moves. My team has nine moves in total with imperfect accuracy, so it was important to assess the situations I was in and see whether I needed my inaccurate moves for me to win or not. Hydro Pump is a powerful move, but a lot of the time I didn’t have to use it in order to win my battles.

As the team commits hard to a single strategy, a lot of the trouble Pokemon I needed to have an answer to were well defined. As such, it was often easy to predict some of the Pokemon my opponent would bring to a battle.

Things I do not like fighting against:

Dark Void Smeargle

It’s not very easy to determine whether a player is going to run Choice Scarf or Focus Sash Dark Void Smeargle, and the strategy used to deal with Smeargle is different depending on what item is run. I really didn’t want to run into Dark Void Smeargle, since Choice Scarf versions would outrun my own Scarf user, and my only Pokemon with a Lum Berry is Crobat. This is a case where I was glad that Pokebank got delayed, since the delay meant that the only people who would have access to Dark Void Smeargle would also be the people who would find it not consistent enough of a strategy to bring to a Regional.

Choice Scarf Salamence

I don’t really have very good switch options against Scarf Draco Meteors. Fortunately, all of my Pokemon except my own Salamence can survive a Draco Meteor from Modest Salamence. I decided that one of my best ways to handle this was to try to survive a Draco Meteor with Mega Manectric (13/16 chance) and KO back with Hidden Power Ice. Fortunately, I didn’t have to play such a risky move.

Gothitelle

My team is pretty fast and frail, so I do rely on switches a lot to get where I need to be. Gothitelle blocks me from doing that, and makes this worse for me by setting up Trick Room on my fast and frail team. Gothitelle is surprisingly uncommon though, so I tried not to worry too much about it.

Trick Room

A team with 5 fast Pokemon is vulnerable to Trick Room? I’m shocked! It was really rare, but if I ever ran into Mega Abomasnow, I’d probably be in serious trouble.

Ferrothorn

Ferrothorn walls two thirds of my team, and for the most part, I’d have to take out everything else on the opponent’s team before I could get a clean shot at Ferrothorn. I quite literally came up with a plan where I could win against opponent Ferrothorn by not defeating it, instead trying to force a one vs one of Ferrothorn vs Ferrothorn. Since mine has Leftovers, and the HP totals of my Pokemon aren’t particularly high, I’d win by the 2nd tie breaker.

Mega Venusaur

Mega Venusaur is like Ferrothorn, but without the quadruple weakness I can take advantage of. However, it is usually a bit more aggressive with staying in against my team, giving me a few more opportunities to take it out if I play things right. My Ferrothorn could defeat Mega Venusaur one on one.

Assault Vests

My team being heavy on Special Attackers meant that I can avoid being harassed by Intimidate and Will-o-Wisps, but in return I’d have trouble with Pokemon that hold Assault Vests. Goodra is used for this example, since word was that the two finalists of Salem, OR brought Assault Vest Goodra in order to counter my rain team.

Talonflame

Talonflame is probably one of the least of my worries, but it still is something I don’t like fighting much. Talonflame is able to KO Ludicolo before it can move, and do a large amount of damage to many of my other Pokemon, so if it shows up at the wrong time, I can be put in a really bad spot. Oh, and Choice Band Talonflame has about a 50% chance to flat out OHKO both Crobat and Politoed.

Battles

While I could go into detail, turn for turn, for each of my battles, there wasn’t really too much of note that happened. The one match of interest I had all day was a match that was streamed anyways. As such, I’ll go over a few thoughts I had during my matches, and maybe a few key turns. For the team previews in this article, for Pokemon that Mega Evolved in my battles, if applicable, are indicated. While some cases were pretty obvious what Pokemon would Mega Evolve, this does not necessarily mean I knew what was going to Mega Evolve on every team I faced just from seeing the Team Preview.

R1: Andreo Quiles

Double Prankster. Not the most pleasant thing to wake up to for the first round of the morning. I couldn’t really see any reason not to do so, so I led with my usual set up of Crobat, Manectric, Politoed, and Ludicolo.

My opponent led double Prankster, but I was fortunate enough that he didn’t seem to have Swagger. He Thunder Waved into Lightning Rod Manectric, and that made this match a quick and easy win for me as I plowed through his team, not caring at all about his opening move of Reflect + Light Screen or caring much about his Mega Garchomp and Ancient Power Tyranitar he had in the back.

1-0

R2: Frederick Marcos

My opponent had some fast Pokemon on this team, but no weather changers. Normally, this would be a good time to go straight for Politoed and Ludicolo, but Ditto made me think twice about using that lead. Instead, I went for Crobat and Politoed leads, with Manectric and Ludicolo in the back.

My opponent made a bit of a silly play at the beginning of the battle. He lead with Noivern and Clawitzer, Frisked my Politoed’s Choice Scarf, then left Noivern in to get OHKO’d by Ice Beam. Clawitzer KOed Crobat, but not before taking a Brave Bird making it 3-3. I send out Manectric first, as I was worried about Ditto.

Ditto was indeed sent out, and transformed into Manectric. This led to a situation where his Ditto could not attack with Electric moves due to my Manectric’s Lightning Rod, and his Overheat was weakened by Rain. I pretty much spent the remainder of the battle picking off his Ditto’s partner before finishing off Ditto itself.

2-0

R3: Darshan Braverman

A bit more Prankster. I had to watch out for Ferrothorn, and also felt as though Politoed and Ludicolo wouldn’t fare too well against this team. As a result, I brought Crobat, Manectric, Salamence, and Ferrothorn.

My opponent lead with Mawile and Sableye. He tried to Sucker Punch Crobat on Turn 1 with Mega Mawile as I tried to Hypnosis, which missed. Fortunately for me, he forgot that Manectric could learn Overheat, so his Sableye went for a Confuse Ray on Crobat and let me get an early KO on Mega Mawile. He then proceeded to miss Will-o-Wisp twice in a row, giving me enough space to easily maneuver around and safely KO his remaining Pokemon. He was pretty frustrated with the multiple missed attacks he had, but it isn’t something I can really prevent from happening, and I felt that it probably wouldn’t have made up the lost ground from losing Mawile so early in the battle.

3-0

R4: Tony Cheung (Chinese Dood)

This match was streamed.

I had a pretty bad matchup against Mega Venusaur. Ferrothorn is good against it, but I convinced myself not to bring Ferrothorn. I somehow thought that Zapdos would be able to take it out with Heat Wave, and I knew Rotom-H and Conkeldurr would be able to deal heavy amounts of damage to it. Instead, I stuck with Manectric, Crobat, Salamence, Ludicolo.

Thinking back, I felt that I misplayed the first couple of turns, and could have played those turns a lot more aggressively. I ran out of time deciding a move for Crobat on Turn 3, since I wasn’t actually sure if my Crobat could survive a -1 Bullet Punch. In the end, it didn’t matter too much, since his Scizor landed a critical hit, making me a bit glad I didn’t actually switch to Salamence on that turn. However, even if I was more confident in the calculation, the critical hit did well in hiding the fact that Tony’s Scizor was running a Choice Band.

I was able to start making a comeback in the battle, and thought I had the battle won when it came down to my Ludicolo and Salamence, against his Mega Venusaur and Scizor. But then Scizor manages to finish off my Ludicolo with Bullet Punch, allowing Tony to win in the end with his Scizor at 8HP. I wasn’t too sure of the calculation, but after getting access to a damage calculator, my Ludicolo had a 5/8 chance to survive the Bullet Punch, critical hits aside. The match’s outcome was even closer than I had realized.

3-1

R5: Sean Webb

I wasn’t really sure what to make out of my opponent’s team. Since he had no weather changer, I felt that my Rain Pokemon would do well, but since he had a number of Pokemon that could be faster than my Crobat, I decided to go with Politoed, Manectric, Salamence and Ludicolo.

I think my play in this battle was a little bit sloppy, but it did its job, for the most part. There was a bit of a scare for me when his Talonflame KO’d my 1/2 HP Salamence but didn’t take LO damage, since I was worried that it may have had a Choice Band. The Talonflame did not have a Choice Band after all, though, and my Politoed was able to survive a Brave Bird and finish it off.

In the final turn of the battle, I had a Ludicolo against a 60% HP Scizor, with Rain and Light Screen on the field.  I declare “okay, it looks like I’ll have to roll some dice” and, naturally, I miss my attack. Scizor takes the time to cut my Ludicolo down, and with it my chance to top cut.

3-2

R6: Coleby Calzaretta

I was… very confused on what my opponent’s team was supposed to do. I think Shuckle was probably the Pokemon I was most worried about, and saw that the team couldn’t do much to Ferrothorn. I brought Politoed, Ludicolo, Ferrothorn, and Salamence.

My opponent led with Skuntank and Gengar, so I switched my Ludicolo out to Ferrothorn in case he tried to Sludge Bomb it, or used Explosion with Skuntank. Instead I got hit by Dazzling Gleam, and my Ferrothorn blocked a Toxic. I wiped out his leads on the next turn, then took my time finishing off a Double Team, Rest, Sleep Talk Snorlax, and a Sing Altaria. The battle ended with me landing a Critical Hit Hydro Pump on Snorlax through about four or five Double Teams. In fact, I don’t think any of my attacks missed against Snorlax.

4-2

R7: Calvin Bauer

Of all the teams I faced in the Regionals, I think this team was the one that looked the most normal. It only took the whole day, but it eventually happened. I had a few combinations of Pokemon that I thought of bringing to this match, but eventually I decided on bringing Crobat, Manectric, Politoed, and Ferrothorn. Rotom-H and Talonflame were big threats to Ferrothorn, but if I could take both of those threats out, I could probably cruise to a victory.

My opponent led Talonflame and Gyarados, a favourable matchup for me. He let me take out Talonflame on turn 1, while getting off a Brave Bird on Crobat for half its HP. I go for Hypnosis on Gyarados this turn, but end up missing as he Mega Evolves and goes for an Earthquake. My opponent ends up being a bit unlucky on his next turn. His Amoonguss switch in uses Rage Powder, drawing in my Crobat’s Brave Bird, and he manages to KO his own Amoonguss with a Critical Hit from Mega Gyarados’ Earthquake, while my Manectric tags out for Ferrothorn. His last Pokemon is Tyranitar, which I sort of try to scout out whether it had Special attacks or not before really going in for the KO on my opponent. I essentially got to cruise through this battle based on the starting positions of our lead matchups.

5-2, 21st Place

Thoughts and Conclusion

I went 5-2, left with a bit of a hollow feeling from my performance. With the exception of my battle with Tony, my matches felt like they got one-sided really fast, and yet I end up dropping one of those battles anyway. It didn’t feel like I got put into any situations where I needed to play creatively to win a battle. I just ended up playing Rain, crushing opponents, and likely missed cut due to to an accuracy check. Truly a “Rain Story”.

Following up the comment about my opponent schedule, it’s difficult for me to gauge whether 45 seconds was sufficient enough time for my battles. Most of my battles being one-sided meant that I probably spent more time logging down the actions of each turn of a battle than really focusing on what move choice I was going to make. I ran out of time once against Tony, because the timer doesn’t give any warning when it gets low and I was trying to calculate in my head whether or not Bullet Punch would get a KO. However, that turn didn’t cause me to lose very much in the long run.

Looking back at the tourney, I was very surprised at just how many people brought Prankster Pokemon to Salem. I was expecting to face one or two teams with Pranksters. I faced three in seven battles, and just about anyone else I talked to also faced two or three teams that had a Pokemon with Prankster. Even more surprising to me was the fact that none of the Prankster Pokemon I faced used Swagger. I also faced no Mega Kangaskhan and no Mega Charizard-Y throughout the entire tourney.

Overall, even though I didn’t do as well as I had expected or hoped to, it’s always nice to meet people in the community gathered from around the area to hang out during the Regionals time. Hopefully I can come up with something else new for the next Regionals that I attend.

The post Rain Story: An Oregon Regional Report appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

For the first time ever, the 2014 Pokémon US Video Game National Championships will be a three day event. The structure of the competition was revealed today and it’s quite a change from what players may be used to before. We’ll walk through the schedule below. Keep in mind that this is only for the North American competition in Indianapolis, IN, USA. We will have more information on the three National Championships in Europe as well as the newly confirmed National Championships in Australia (run by Nintendo Australia) soon.

Age Divisions are as follows:

• Junior Division: Born in 2003 or later
• Senior Division: Born in 1999, 2000, 2001, or 2002
• Masters Division: Born in 1998 or earlier

Any player regardless of residency is allowed to play at the VGC ’14 US National Championships as long as they are not on the Play! Pokémon banned player list. This is an open tournament with no other qualifying requirement.

Thursday, July 3rd, 2014

Masters Division

• Check-in for VG Masters Division players will be from 7 to 8 p.m. Battle Boxes will be locked when players check in.

Friday, July 4th, 2014

Side events will occur throughout the day. The full schedule will be released at a later date.

Masters Division

• Last-minute check-in for VG Masters Division players will be from 7 to 7:30 a.m.
• Masters Division players will compete in Swiss rounds in two flights beginning at 8 a.m.
• Swiss rounds on Friday will be single game matches.
• Attendance permitting, the top 16 or top 32 players from each flight will advance to play on Saturday.
  • Top 32 (16×2) is planned for attendance up to 820 players.
  • Top 64 (32×2) is planned for attendance above 820 total players

Junior & Senior Divisions

• Registration for Junior and Senior Division VG players will take place Friday evening from 5 to 6 p.m. Battle Boxes will be locked when players register.

Saturday, July 5th, 2014

Side events will occur throughout the day. The full schedule will be released at a later date.

Masters Division

• Day 2 of Masters Division Swiss rounds will begin at 8 a.m. The top 32 or 64 players (based on the previous day’s results and attendance) will compete in five or six rounds of best-of-three matches.
• A Top 8 cut will be taken at the end of Swiss rounds. The single-elimination Top 8 will be played late Saturday afternoon.

Junior and Senior Division

• Last-minute registration will take place from 8 to 8:30 a.m.
• Player meeting will commence at 9:30 a.m.
• Swiss rounds will begin at 10 a.m.
• Swiss rounds will be single game matches.
• A Top 16 cut will be taken at the end of Swiss rounds, attendance permitting. The single-elimination Top 16 will be played on Sunday.

Sunday, July 6th, 2014

• Side events will occur throughout the day. The full schedule will be released at a later date.
• Single-elimination rounds (Top 16, Junior and Senior Divisions) will be played.
  • ALL players must be checked in and ready to play by 10 a.m., or they will forfeit their first game. Players not in their seats by 10:10 a.m. will forfeit their second game, and thereby, the match.
• Junior, Senior, and Masters Division finals (top 2) will occur sequentially beginning at 2 p.m.

Prizes

Prizing is done separately for each age division.

1st Place

• A Pokémon VG National Championships First-Place Trophy
• 480 Championship Points
• A Nintendo Wii U 32GB Deluxe Set
• A combination of 72 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
• Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!

2nd Place

• A Pokémon VG National Championships Second-Place Trophy
• 440 Championship Points
• A Nintendo 3DS XL system
• A combination of 72 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
• Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!

3rd & 4th Place

• A Pokémon VG National Championships Semi-Finalist Trophy
• 360 Championship Points
• A Nintendo 3DS XL system
• A combination of 36 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
• Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!

5th through 8th Place

• 210 Championship Points
• A combination of 36 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions

9th through 16th Place

• 150 Championship Points
• A combination of 18 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions

17th through 32nd Place

• 90 Championship Points
• A combination of 8 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions

33rd through 64th Place

• 30 Championship Points (if division attendance is 128 or greater)
• A combination of 4 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions

65th through 128th Place

• 15 Championship Points (if division attendance is 256 or greater)

The post VGC ’14 US National Championship Moves to 3 Day Event appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Over the past week we’ve finally received information on how Pokémon Video Game Championship Series events in South Korea and Australia will be handled. Both will see vastly improved systems, one due to a quadrupled number of invites and the other because players are finding out they’ll have events more than two days in advance.

South Korea

South Korean players will need to qualify for a closed National Championships just as they did last year. However, unlike last year, only 50% of the slots at the 32 person Korean National Championships will be determined from a WiFi event. The other 16 players will be selected from two local qualifiers that will send 8 players each to Nationals.

Nationals itself will be a single elimination tournament with best of one rounds up until the quarter finals. From the top 8 onwards, the rounds will be best of 3 sets. For the first time, South Korea will award four invites to the 2014 Pokémon World Championships per age division. On top of the invite, the first place finishers will receive a free flight and hotel stay for two at the World Championships. Second place finishers will receive a free flight while third and fourth place finishers will only receive the free hotel stay. Those in the Top 8 will receive Pokémon merchandise.

The WiFi qualifiers as well as the offline qualifier events will be held later this month with the National Championships at an unannounced date.

Australia & New Zealand

With PAX Australia, the site of the 2013 Australian National Championship, happening in the fall this year, there were many questions about whether or not Australia would see a return to this year’s VGC competition circuit. Nintendo Australia and New Zealand has announced that there will not only be a National Championship but also Regional Championships in both countries they represent. Regionals will be held in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, and Auckland. There will be travel awards at stake at these Regional Championships so players can go to the National Championships which will award invites and trips to the 2014 Pokémon World Championships.

We expect to hear more on these tournaments in the very near future.

The post First Details for Korea, Australia, and New Zealand Pokémon VGC ’14 Events appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Hey everybody! After the great success of the IdM 2014, which was the largest WiFi Live Tournament of all time (over 300 participants), the German forum BisaBoard decided to give those two day events another shot. Right in time for your preparation for European Nationals, BisaBoard will host the 2014 Spring Open! We expect to see about as many people as if it was an official National Championship in Europe and we’re going to try Swiss in such a large live event for the first time! Those two factors combined will make Spring Open the perfect tournament to test your team for the upcoming 2014 Pokémon National Championships in Bochum, Manchester and Milan.

Registration and Schedule

The date for the tournament is April 12th and 13th, 2014. On Saturday we will play an undetermined number of Swiss rounds (most likely 8 or 9) to get a 16 or 32 player Top Cut that will take place on Sunday. In order to be able to play, you should make sure to have enough time on both days from 11 AM to 6 PM CET (GMT+1). You’ll need both an account on BisaBoard as well as an account on the brand new eSports tournament management website Battlefy, where the pairings will be posted. Registration is open now on the tournament page. Click the Join button to join the tournament. Starting  one hour before the tournament begins, you’ll be able to check in to the tournament by clicking the check in button on the tournament page. Please join the chat room for the tournament before it begins and stay in it for the duration of the tournament. If you have your own IRC client, you can connect to it at #bisaboard.de on irc.massivegamesnet.net.

This tournament is mostly aimed at people from Europe, but if you aren’t bothered by waking up early (or staying up late), feel free to play from North America or any other part of the world, too!

Prizing

As for prizes, the winner will get a brand new 2DS system as well as any 3DS game, sponsored by Nintendo Germany. 2nd and 3rd place will also receive a 3DS game of their choice! This is also the largest prizepool any live event in Pokemon, so make sure not to miss this event!

You can find the German announcement here. If you have any questions ask them in the comments section below or thread!

The post Bisafans Spring Open 2014 Registration Open appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

The Pokémon Company International is looking for more commentators who can support Evan (plaid), Scott, Josue (Crimz) and Josh (TheJWittz) as commentators at large events like the Pokémon National and World Championships! They’re holding open auditions for US residents allowing players above the age of 18 to send in an audition video via YouTube for either Pokémon X & Y or the Pokémon Trading Card Game.

You can submit your video as either solo or with a partner. You should title it on YouTube as Play! Pokémon Commentary Audition: [YOUR NAME]. Once you do, send an email to auditions[at]pokemon.com with the following info:

Subject: Commentary Audition for [YOUR NAME]

Name:
TCG or Video Game:
Audition YouTube link:
Pokémon event experience:
Additional comments:

Send your video no later than April 21st, 2014 and remember that this is an audition, not a contest. TPCi reserves the right not to select anyone from the pool of entrants. Commentators will be judged based on variety of factors, including (but not limited to) appearance, announcing eloquence, composure, brand knowledge, and play knowledge. You will need to be available the weekends of both the US National Championships and World Championships to be eligible, though if selected your travel costs will be covered.

Good luck players to everyone who auditions and share your audition tapes with us as well in the comments below!

The post Pokémon Holding Open Auditions for Commentators appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

This weekend there are some Regionals. Hooray! Who is going to those Regionals, you ask? More importantly, who do you not have to worry about because I accidentally placed some weird internet curse on them by predicting to win? Read on to find out!

Massachusetts Regional

Difficulty Rating:

 / 5

(The Wigglytoughest event of the spring season out of five)

Last Year’s Winner: Aaron Zheng (Cybertron)

The Story

I feel like everyone must be very sick of me repeating how tough the Northeast claims to be, but I’m expecting this set of Regionals will definitely be one case where the Northeast actually is the toughest. I was surprised at how weak the TCG attendance seems to have been today, because with the way the events are spread out in this group of Regionals, Massachusetts is pretty isolated, and the Northeast tends to be a bit of a gauntlet even when it isn’t.

The first XY Regional in the Northeast led to one of the most terrifying looking top cuts I’ve ever seen. We ended with two previous World Champions facing off in the final four and we were a game away from having an Enosh Shachar vs. Wolfe Glick match in the other semifinal bracket, perhaps the two most decorated American players who haven’t won World Championships. While two of those players won’t be attending this time, it’s hard to start anywhere other than the two 2012 Worlds finalists, Wolfe Glick (Wolfey) and Ray Rizzo (Ray), when looking at players likely to win the event. Wolfe has been finishing a little bit lower than I would have anticipated based on his skill level and the amount of practice he seems to be putting in this season at the XY Regionals so far, with a top 8 finish in Virginia and a missed cut in Florida. I think his lack of results (by his standards) so far is a bit of a fluke — I’d be very surprised if he isn’t in at least the top four of this event. While Wolfe is among the harder working players, Ray is perhaps one of the most… hands-off. His ability to navigate a metagame is almost inhuman, however, which allowed him to win Virginia on very little practice, and by virtue of being himself I’m sure he’ll do well again at this one. It’ll be interesting to see exactly what he brings this time, since I’ve heard he’s been having a tuff time coming up with ideas.

Of course, with this being the event it is, there’s no shortage of other elite threats. Ashton Cox (linkyoshimario) was a bit of an unknown prior to this season, but he’s actually ahead of both Ray and Wolfe on the CP rankings right now in a cool third place. I think he’s probably still not a favorite — the perception of many players is that he’s leaned a little too hard on the Rock Slide button — and he needs a top 8 finish to increase his CP total as he already has points from three events, which adds to the pressure for this one. I think more so than gaining CP, this event could be a big deal for his reputation, for what that means to him: if he does well again, it’s going to become harder and harder for people to continue overlooking his success. The next players according to CP I know are attending are Matt Coyle (PrettyLittleLiar) and Michael Lanzano (JiveTime), who I think are both particularly interesting players to watch this time. In a just world, perhaps they would both have finished much higher than they did in Virginia. Both had run-ins with Ray Rizzo during Swiss, with Ray knocking Michael out in an elimination game in the last round of Swiss after dropping a game to Matt, and with Matt losing in the first round of top cut to Enosh Shachar, who, being the reigning Nationals runner-up and 6th place Worlds finisher, wasn’t much of a reward for an 8-1 record. Assuming there are enough players for another 16-man top cut, I’d expect both of these guys to make it far enough to get a shot at redemption, even if Matt seems to be experiencing Ray-levels of team confusion….

I’d normally transition into kind of the second tier of big threats here, but that’d be a little disingenuous in this tournament. While she’s been a little off this year, it’s strange to be this far down without having mentioned Trista Medine (ryuzaki). She’s at a point in the season where she really, really needs to pick up a decent chunk of points if she wants to make Worlds without an insane run at Nationals (which she’s plenty capable of), but I think this is probably the time. Many of the more defensive players struggled a little adapting to XY, which tends to be a little faster paced due to the ridiculous lack of available control moves on good Pokemon and some flaws in defensive coverage the format has created, and to compound that she was a little busy going into the last Regional, which led to her falling behind in CP a little. She’s been strong at the grassroots events in the Northeast since then, and I think it’s probably her time. Speaking of girls, Angel Miranda (Sapphire Birch) will evidently actually be playing this time since the TCG had like 12 people sign up or something. I actually think s/he’s incredibly dangerous: I probably wasn’t the only one who underestimated him/her because I think s/he had eyes only for anime and card games, but after winning the most recent NYC event, no one should be sleeping on Angel. This tsundere may seem like s/he’s not that into VGC, but you just don’t understand. Baka.

Angel’s finals opponent in that event was Patrick Donegan (Pd0nZ), who is one of those players that is much better than his current CP total of 40 would indicate. One would assume he’s more than capable of picking up some serious points in XY based off of that tournament, but there are an awful lot of underachievers in the CP events this year. Of course, no one could hope to match the consistent underachieving Aaron Zheng (Cybertron) has exhibited this season with three top 32 finishes. While Aaron is one of those players I would normally say is too good to keep finishing this way, I think more hysterical losses to Cryogonal are probably in his near future, with him focusing more on other parts of his life and being some sort of YouTube celebrity right now. Expect him to enter a cocoon soon and emerge a as a deadly Pokemon-playing butterfly shortly before the circuit gets serious at Nationals(unless you hit him with Swagger while he’s in the cocoon, then he’d probably get stuck in it forever, like that Sky Drop glitch or something). Another player who has been consistently strong in grassroots events and conspicuously missing otherwise is Chuppa Cross (Chuppa). Again, a player you’d think would end up in the top cut this time, but there’s only so many spots to go around… Perhaps my favorite case of someone who has underperformed this year is Simon Yip (Simon), because I blame it 100% on AlphaZealot crushing his spirit with the CP system last year and Wi-Fi disqualifications and all that noise. He’s still alive in the NB Major, though, so that’s good. I actually think he’ll do really well here as long as he doesn’t get stuck in any airports. I notice he thinks he’s an anime girl now also, but I think that’s Angel’s fault and not AZ’s.

I could write about another 50 paragraphs about the seasons the players in this area are having but let’s lighting round most of the remaining noteworthy players in convenient, easy to digest labels:

Underachieving former senior division players: Edward Fan (iss), Aaron Traylor (Unreality), Jonathan Hiller (MrFox)

People who were undefeated in Virginia Swiss: Tommy Cooleen (Tman)

People who have had sick top cut finishes in the past: David Mancuso (Mancuso), Tiago Maltez (CinderellaStory), Adib Alam (honchkro13)

People who have had sick top cut finishes in the past, but should probably be commentating: Oliver Valenti (Smith), Alan Sutterlin (Dubulous)

People who have had sick top cut finishes in the past and live in this general area but didn’t post in the thread so I don’t know if they’re coming: Ryan Gadea (The Knights of Wario Land), Daniel Litvin (TalkingLion)

People who have to have breakout events that count for CP eventually: Caleb Ryor (BlitznBurst), Jeudy Azzarelli (SoulSurvivor)

People who name their Pokemon after hockey players: Patrick Brodarick (wer)

The Smart Money is on…: I PICK TRISTA BECAUSE SHE’S ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT USING WIGGLYTUFF.

Attending this event? Join your fellow competitors in discussion on our forum.

VGC ’14 Georgia Regional

Difficulty Rating:

  / 5

(Some birds migrating north maybe? out of five)

Last Year’s Winner: Jerry Woods III (Sabaku)

The Story: The Southeast part of the country is one of those weird areas where there isn’t much depth in elite players, but where there are just enough elite players who go to events (sometimes they only say they’re going to go) that anyone looking for free CP is likely to face a rude awakening. Last year’s winner, Sabaku, kind of came out of nowhere and then sort of faded away again after a weak Nationals performance other than some consistently high Pokemon Showdown! ratings. It’ll be interesting to see if he can repeat history this year, though I suspect it’ll be some of the bigger names that come out on top this year and dethrone him.

Harrison Saylor (Crow) has the strange distinction of being the consensus best American player who has never played in Worlds after barely missing out on trips with deep Nationals runs both of the last two years. If he has his annual top 8 Nationals run this year it’s likely to be enough, but it’d sure be nice to see him get some bigger Regionals CP to help out. Here’s hoping he doesn’t have any surprise exams, or outbreaks of cholera, or alien abductions or whatever preventing him from attending this time. Every year in VGC there are a few graduating Senior division players who immediately become favorites in Masters in spite of most of the incumbent players seeming to underestimate them, and DeVon Ingram (dingram) is definitely one of those players. He opened a lot of eyes at Nationals last year with some really amazing play in a losing effort in the finals (thanks for switching to sequential finals so people actually saw this, TPCI), and as one of the players currently tied 10 points out of a trip to Nationals, this will be a very important event for him. It worries me a little bit that he doesn’t seem to have much variety in the teams he could play, but I think we learned from people like Randy Kwa, Ryosuke Kosuge, and Baz Anderson last year that playing similar teams repeatedly works if you can play them well enough. Another clinically underrated Senior graduate is Toler Webb (Dim). I don’t know how anyone could possibly overlook a former World Champion (it’s because of Kamz, isn’t it?), but Toler is the real deal. At least from my view as a commentator/competitor/tryhard, there’s always that elite group of players on top in this game that seem to be able to do at least decently in any metagame because they have an elite understanding of the game that can’t easily be taught, and Toler is one of a handful of younger guys I would put in that group… which is fortunate, because he seems to be Raying it on the practice a little this season.

One of the more interesting threats here is Cameron Kicak (Stormfront). Many people seem to overlook him in the Northeastern events in favor of bigger names (understandable), but he always seems to be one of the guys in top cut. With sort-of-but-not-actually-Atlanta being a much shallower event, it’ll be interesting to see if he can bust out his first super deep Regionals performance. He has a top 8 and top 16 finish already, so if he can take advantage of a weaker field and even finish in the semifinals, it would put him in a very strong CP position. Don’t be surprised if this happens. Another easy name to overlook here is Greg Johnson (bgt). I can’t claim to have much information on him as a player, but at 130 CP he’s actually had one of the best seasons of anyone who will be at the event, so logically you’d expect him to have one of the better sets of odds here. Another interesting mention is Joshua Edwards (General Josh), who I know only as the guy who denied me the opportunity to fangirl over a Ray vs. Toler and Wolfe vs. Enosh top 4 in Virginia by knocking Wolfe out in the round of 8.

There are a lot of other players who stand out as people I know are at least above average, but I’m going to cut the namedrops here to go a different direction instead of giving a bunch of half-hearted commendations. Last year, this was an event where a player broke out  made a name for himself by winning. I wouldn’t be surprised for that to happen again here with someone I wouldn’t mention even if I reached with some the obscure mentions, and at the very least, I’d be surprised if there aren’t several big unknowns in the top cut this time. This is an event with a lot of upset potential…

The Smart Money is on…:  I’m going with Dingram this time. Perhaps I think being kicked/muted on Showdown repeatedly is like training in one of those gravity chambers from DBZ. Maybe I associate the south with sun. I don’t know. I’m feelin’ it. There are several people here that it would be cool to see win, though.

Attending this event? Join your fellow competitors in discussion on our forum.

VGC ’14 Kansas Regional

Difficulty Rating:

/ 5

(A Pokemon that looks sort of like a Jayhawk but is mostly really bad out of five)

Last Year’s Winner: N/A

The Story

Ah yes, the inexplicable Kansas Regional…

But no time to complain about how silly I think that Regional is now! I think this one is actually really interesting from a prediction standpoint because it’s full of people who I mostly would mention right after the favorites as “other threats”, I guess. However, someone must become the first Kansas VGC champion…

Matthew Carter (mattj) is coming off a somewhat shocking Regional win in St. Louis. While I will admit the idea of mattj taking one of the sixteen NA Worlds invites seems a little strange to put it lightly, after commentating the finals there I do want to remind everyone that he actually played a pretty strong series there against a player I think most of do expect to make Worlds in 2010 National Champion Wesley Morioka (Wesley), fortunate game 1 critical hit or no. I would expect to see mattj in the cut again. Speaking of Wesley, I’m not sure if he’s coming as well, because until I guilt bearsfan into asking the Moriokas where they’re going on Facebook, and before I do they are like leprechauns that don’t really exist to me(and I forgot to go through that process this time so I have no idea where either of them are going), but if he is coming, he’ll be a big favorite too. I’ve really enjoyed the juxtaposition of some of the really strong younger players breaking out and the return of some of the old guard this year, and these guys have both kind of helped lead that.

As far as people I’m not sure if I associate with the younger or older crowd go, apparently Benji Irons (benjitheGREAT) is actually going to play in this one after taking the Winter off. He has 110 CP in spite of only having only gotten CP from one event(this is why we don’t get DQed), so a decent finish here would really help to put him in striking distance at Nationals. Benji is one of the more underappreciated players in the North American scene, as he’s had some really consistently solid finishes over the last year and a half or so, but always seems to fly a little under the radar regardless. I’m not sure if card game converts really count as being newer or older guard, but Matt Souerby (matt) gets next mention for being the player with most CP I actually know is going to attend at 190. He’ll need at least a top 8 finish if he hopes to add to his total, which will be important as he’s close enough to the top 16 line right now that he’ll likely need a minor increase if he wants the free trip to Nationals and the first round bye it brings.

Most of the remaining big threats are players who cut in St. Louis. Keegan Beljanski (Darkeness) lost a strange top 16 series after going undefeated* in Swiss. He’s one of those players who’s been on a pretty obvious upward trajectory over the course of the lat few events, so it’ll be interesting to see if he can keep improving his finishes like I expect he will here. Perhaps his most notable opponent* in St. Louis was Blake Hopper (Mrbopper), another player who had a great Swiss run and then fell a little shorter in top cut than I would have expected him to based on his bracket (not that top 8 isn’t a strong finish in its own right). I know a lot of people felt like their finishes were a little karmic after the ID, but I’m personally hoping they both get farther this time. Another player who had a great Swiss run into a short run in top cut was Jonathan Rankin (JRank), who ended up hitting me in the round of 16 with a team matchup that didn’t lead to a whole lot of influence on the game’s result by either of the players. Hopefully, he’ll draw matchups that are a little more even this time and have a better chance to show his skill. Another favorite based on St. Louis is Greyson Garren (GreySong), who is coming off a top 4 finish. Collin Heier (TheBattleRoom) also finally made it in to the cut in St. Louis. He’s always been one of those players where there was sort of a big disparity between the results some people expected him to get and what was actually happening. I haven’t seen him play much outside of running into him a couple times on Battle Spot before St. Louis, so I don’t have a very strong opinion about what I think will happen with him either way, but his is a story I think is interesting to watch.

Aaron Grubbs (LPFan) missed the cut in St. Louis in sort of bizarre fashion, which should definitely be surprising to people after some solid finishes in online events. I would expect him to end up in the cut this time, though it’s really difficult to predict how deep he’ll be able to go without having seen him in that position before. Ryan Booker (lolfailsnail) is one of those people who seem to have OmegaDonut syndrome where they could tank their own normally solid odds with strange team choices at any moment, but he finished in the top 4 of the Spring Regional he attended last year with a team that was pretty normal, so maybe it’s like a seasonal thing for him? I had one of my favorite live XY matches against Matt Siebert (El Scorcho) in a 6-2 game that decided which of us would cut in St. Louis, so I think there’s a good shot he’ll make it in this time after being just that close last time.  Other players to watch include Clayton Lusk (Zubat), who I am personally entrusting to defend America’s points, and Tom Vehlewald (TeeJay), who I expect to dominate the field with the power of fatherhood.

The Smart Money is on…: This is one event where it could really be on just about anyone. I’d like to pick Benji, but I’ve never seen him play XY, and I think I’m done cursing Mrbopper now, so I’ll go with Darkeness, who I think has already cursed himself, allowing me to avoid blame.

Attending this event? Join your fellow competitors in discussion on our forum.

VGC ’14 Washington Regional

Difficulty Rating: 

 / 5

(Contractually obligated former duck ducks-in-Seattle joke out of five)

Last Year’s Winner: N/A

The Story

The most important story is obviously that reigning US National Champion Gavin Michaels (kingofmars)’s hair should soon be no more. After losing a bet to fellow Seattle competitor Zach Droegkamp (Zach) about Zach winning Florida Regionals, it is time for the shaving, proving once and for all the Pokemon makes children into compulsive gamblers. Amusingly, it might be Gavin himself who has the best chance of stopping Zach this time, which will fortunately not save his hair as far as I know. Gavin himself is 2nd in overall CP while Zach is 7th, and both have a weaker finish they’ll be looking to replace here to increase the odds they’ll be able to cruise into Worlds. While both of them have a big lead in CP right now over most of the field, I wouldn’t expect either to get overconfident here — Zach proved last year he knows to keep it rolling at Regionals with a lead after getting like a billion Regionals CP or something during the 2013 season, and Gavin should have gotten all of his Regionals choking out of the way last year and have only solid performances left.

The other interesting story to me is that this is the only Regional close enough to Vancouver I would expect more casual fans to make the trip. After having Worlds there last year, I think we had high expectations the local community there would grow some, but the somewhat surprising removal of the local Regional’s VGC event after hosting Worlds has delayed the chance to see if there was any impact on our side of the game. It’ll be interesting to see if the Worlds effect can boost Seattle’s attendance appreciably beyond Oregon’s this year or Vancouver’s last year. If not, at least Vancouver will be sending its share of established players down. Aryana Welch (feathers) will draw some pictures of her Pokemon attacking other Pokemon and hope that counts for wins in Swiss or something, and we’ll see if Rushan Shekar (Firestorm) can return to his inexplicable CP gaining ways after coming down to Earth again a bit in the first XY event. The most interesting Vancouverite might be Jason Wynja (Arti), who managed a top 8 finish in Oregon. He’s one of those guys who’s always brought a lot of creativity to the game, which can both be really helpful and really difficult to overcome. It’ll be interesting to see what he brings to his return to an event where he once lost to Focus Sash Golem.

The bigger name Vancouverites, of course, join Zach and Fidget as the biggest threats. Randy Kwa (R Inanimate) has very little to show for this season so far, but I’d say he’s pretty obviously at least one of the best ten or so players in the region, so it’s a little painful to see him with so little CP. He’s usually pretty clutch, so we’ll see if he can get things rolling in the right direction in his last real chance before Nationals. He has a rival of sorts in Tony Cheung (Chinese Dood), who bested him last time with a top four finish in Oregon. It’s hard to write too much about either of them that hasn’t been written already: Randy is one of the game’s more popular players because of his well-defined perspective on the game and how open he’s been with the community about his teams and strategies, while Tony has always kind of kept to himself and seems to consistently surprise everyone by how well he does at events… which seems to happen to a surprisingly large amount of consistent-but-reclusive players, now that I think about it. April Hooge (Phenac), the last e-famous Vancouverite, finished in the top 8 of her first Masters event, but fell a little short in Oregon, so it’ll be interesting to see if she can have her first big XY finish here.

To go along with the Psyduck difficulty rating, Huy Ha (Huy), Duy Ha (Duy), and Len Deuel (Alaka) will be joining their friends from Vancouver in making a pilgrimage to their homeland. While the last time they battled their they were in the glory days of their Pokemon youth, they are now older and feebler and possibly only have three Pokemon left. I think one of Huy’s three Pokemon is Carbink, so for him it’s more like two. All three of them have had some great finishes in the past, but they’ve mostly fallen off in XY, with Duy, the other member of that cursed 13th place CP tie, seeming to have been relegated mostly full time to commentating. In spite of that, Duy still has 130 CP, so if he’s spent some time with XY since his last Regionals appearance, he’s still in striking distance. Huy is actually due to breakout this year, since as this is an even numbered year, he should end up in Worlds eventually. I’m not sure what to say for Len, though — he is one of many players Pokemon and college hasn’t mixed very well for. He does have one top four finish this year, though, and with two Regionals left this cycle he could still end up with a solid Regionals season. Other than Huy, who bubbled at 7-2 in California, all of these guys seem to need to spend a little more time with XY. Admittedly, Len was 8-1 in Swiss, but how do you get smashed in top cut by Mr. Mime?

I wish I had more to say about some of the other players, but this is sort of the one region where I feel like distance has caused my information to be a little cloudy. Kacey Traver (KTween) finished in the top 4 at Vancouver and will possibly be motivated by my out of five joke. Sam Haarsma (DrFidget) has returned to the shadows, but I do feel like it’s worth remembering he was 2nd in CP at this time last season. I’m not sure if a bunch of relatively local players like Alex Stempe (Stempe), Alex Ogloza (Evan Falco), and Stephen Morioka (Stephen) are coming (actually, now that I think of it I don’t actually know Tony is coming, either…), but if they do come, they’ll be big threats. The latter two both have three events toward the BFL already, so if they do show up, it’s only going to be worth something if they do well. I initially forgot Thomas Mifflin (PBB) was going to this event as well, but he’s both going and only 20 points out of a Worlds trip right now. I’m not sure if he’s been playing XY, but I don’t think he really played BW2 either, so I don’t expect things like “playing the game” to stand in his way.

The Smart Money is on…: JUSTICE! Which in this case, to me, means R Inanimate. (But not R Justice, because that’s a different person). Please make Worlds, Randy. Canada needs you

Attending this event? Join your fellow competitors in discussion on our forum.

The post 2014 North American Spring Regionals Preview Part 1 appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

Unfortunately without the ability to save battle videos during live competitions we’ve been seeing far fewer battles archived from Regionals. However, much like in the fall, we were able to stream a Regional Championship this weekend and have quite a few battles between some amazing players (with quite the teams) for you today!

• Finals: Tony C (Chinese Dood) vs Randy K (R Inanimate) – Commentary by Alaka & OmegaDonut
• Top 4: Randy K (R Inanimate) vs Thomas M (PBB) – Commentary by Alaka & Duy
• Top 8: Jason W (Arti) vs Tony C (Chinese Dood) – Commentary by Alaka & Duy
• Top 16: Gavin M (kingofmars) vs Randy K (R Inanimate) – Commentary by Alaka & Duy
• Round 8: Jason W (Arti) vs Carter P (FlacidPanda) – Commentary by DrFidget & Zach
• Round 7: Thomas M (PBB) vs Mike S. (OmegaDonut)  – Commentary by DrFidget & Zach
• Round 5: Duy H (Duy) vs Huy H (Huy) – Commentary by DrFidget & The Machampion
• Round 4: April H. (Phenac) vs Lane T.
• Round 3: Tony S vs Gavin M (kingofmars)
• Round 2: Mike S. (OmegaDonut) vs Brandon D. (Branflakes)
• Round 1: Duy H. (Duy) vs Max D. (starmetroid)

The post Stream Archive from the VGC ’14 Washington Regional appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

We have the teams of the 32 participants of last week’s Asia Cup finals! The best players from Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Phillipines, Indonesia, and Malaysia faced off in a Wi-Fi tournament to see who would be crowned the best player in Asia. Congrats to all the participants!

1. See [JP]

2. Nu [JP]

3. Bicho [JP]

4. Kantona [JP]

5. Siu Fo [HK]

6. Taruto [JP]

7. Rei [JP]

8. O. Jason [ID]

9. Keewan [KR]

10. Muraba [JP]

11. Hashidam [JP]

12. Jaryl Chan [SG]

13. Ama Bon [ID]

14. Ryuzaki [JP]

15. Xiao Yong [TW]

16. Yasumatsu [JP]

17. Cheng [HK]

18. Moyomoto [JP]

19. Fukunyan [JP]

20. Nelson Lim [SG]

21. Zero [KR]

22. Sepia [KR]

23. Viera [JP]

24. Siu Lu [HK]

25. Nim Sook [KR]

26. John P. [PH]

27. Kasutera [JP]

28. Gombe [JP]

29. Max Goh [SG]

30. Alvin R. [PH]

31. Hitsuhi [JP]

32. Julian Ali [MY]

Special thanks to Soon and everyone else who made Asia Cup a smashing success! Find out more about the Asia cup here.

The post Teams from the 2014 Asia Cup appeared first on Nugget Bridge.

I’m still exhausted from the weekend at Massachusetts Regionals so I’m only going to post a team report this time rather than a “warstory” like I posted after Virginia.

Salamence @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Fire Blast
- Stone Edge
- Sleep Talk

Standard Scarf Salamence. Not much to say about it, though I’ll go over the slight differences from my Virginia Scarf Salamence. With Pokemon Bank out, I was finally able to get one with a 31 Atk IV, so I could switch from Hydro Pump to Stone Edge. Also, with Pokemon Bank released Dark Void Smeargle is seen somewhat frequently, so I added Sleep Talk to help deal with that.

Rotom-Heat @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 244 HP / 36 Def / 140 SAtk / 4 SDef / 84 Spd
Modest Nature
- Overheat
- Thunderbolt
- Will-O-Wisp
- Protect

Another standard set for Rotom-H. I don’t really like Rotom-H much at all, but I wanted a defensive Fire-type. The Special Attack EVs let it OHKO the Mawile I used in Virginia, the Speed EVs let it speed creep neutral-natured 252 Speed Tyranitar and Rotom-Ws aiming to creep Tyranitar. 244 HP gives it an even numbered HP for Sitrus Berry, since a few people use Super Fang Noivern. I just put the leftover EVs in the defenses.

Aegislash @ Leftovers
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SAtk / 4 SDef
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Shadow Ball
- Flash Cannon
- Substitute
- King’s Shield

I used 0 Speed IV to get the Shadow Ball off on other Aegislash after they attacked, which would let me KO them, as well as to let me stay in Shield Forme longer. I opted for Flash Cannon instead of Sacred Sword because they do the same exact thing except one is better vs some Tyranitar and Bisharp, while the other is better vs Mamoswine, Aromatisse, and when Intimidated or Burned. I prefer the advantages of Flash Cannon. Another aspect of Flash Cannon that I prefer is that it makes it harder to switch in on Aegislash. Many times you’ll be in a situation where both Shadow Ball and Flash Cannon will do the same damage. When Aegislash is in a threatening position in one of those situations (for example, when facing a Gardevoir that may opt to switch out), you choose which move based on potential switch-ins. If the opponent for example has no Pokemon that resist Steel and one that resists Ghost, Flash Cannon becomes the easy move to make. That way you punish the opponent no matter whether they stay in or switch out. This situation is a lot more frequent than it may seem.

Amoonguss @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 188 Def / 68 Spd
Bold Nature
- Giga Drain
- Rage Powder
- Spore
- Protect

This set is probably a little different from most Amoonguss. Many Amoonguss choose to use the minimum speed possible in order to counter Trick Room teams better, but I didn’t feel that was necessary for my team, since I liked my match-up vs Trick Room teams even without a minimum speed Amoonguss. Instead, I opted to use enough Speed EVs to outspeed minimum Speed Aegislash (which has become extremely common in America compared to neutral speed Aegislash) in order to Spore them before they set up a Substitute. Rocky Helmet was to help with Kangaskhan. I chose Regenerator over Effect Spore because I like to switch out a lot and it’s a more reliable ability, since sometimes Effect Spore can backfire when trying to Spore or Will-o-Wisp with Rotom-H. The rest of the set is standard, there are many physical threats in the metagame, so I focused all of the EVs on Defense rather than Special Defense or a mix of both.

Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Return
- Power-Up Punch
- Sucker Punch
- Fake Out

Standard Kangaskhan. Since a lot of American players are switching to slower, bulky Kangaskhan and Charizard I decided on max Speed to take advantage of that, since I lack any speed control and my team is for the most part really slow. Kangaskhan was the focal point of my team and I based my team and play within each battle to enable it to run through teams. One of the key supporters for it is…..

Wigglytuff @ Assault Vest
Ability: Competitive
EVs: 4 HP / 188 Def / 236 SAtk / 12 SDef / 68 Spd
Modest Nature
- Dazzling Gleam
- Fire Blast
- Thunderbolt
- Hyper Beam

I was originally testing Bisharp in this role instead, but found it extremely underwhelming if the opponent didn’t bring Intimidate, and even if they did it had quite a few flaws. I knew some of the Korean players were in love with Wigglytuff and Scott told me he was being terrorized by it and losing against it every time, so I thought why not, I’ll test it instead of Bisharp. It’ll be equally useless if they don’t have Intimidate but at least it can take hits. It gets amazing coverage and a STAB spread move as well. Assault Vest was to increase its Special bulk, which helped a lot, and the Defense EVs were there so it could take neutral physical attacks better (like when the opponent leads Salamence/Garchomp). The Speed EVs let it outspeed my Virginia Mawile, and the Special Attack EVs let it OHKO my Virginia Ferrothorn with Fire Blast at +0, my Virginia Mawile with Fire Blast at +2, and Salamence/Garchomp with Dazzling Gleam at +2. Since I had Assault Vest, I couldn’t use Protect as the 4th move and needed to find a solid filler move. There were pretty much no good choices. I considered Psychic for Gengar, but not many people use that in the US. I decided on Hyper Beam since at +2 it OHKOs almost everything, and gives me something to hit Rotoms hard with, since Kangaskhan doesn’t like getting burned. I really only used it when Wigglytuff was about to faint so I wouldn’t care about the recharge turn, but it was a pretty useful move to have the option of using.

—

As of now, the only video I have of my team from the tournament is Game 2 of my Top 4 match vs Trista “The Machine” Medine (also known as ryuzaki)

My Top 8 match was recorded and should be up within the next few days. I think the finals were recorded as well, but I’m not totally sure. If they were recorded, those games should also be up within the next few days. The videos will be edited in here, posted my blog, and on Twitter (Follow me @RayRizzoPKMN ) when they get uploaded, so keep an eye out for them as well!

Thanks for reading guys, hope you enjoyed it. Now that I’m most likely qualified for Worlds without having to play Nationals, I may try and make some strategy posts/guides on my blog and maybe get into the whole YouTube thing like my man Aaron Zheng is doing, so keep an eye out for that as well.

The post WigglyTough is Tough Enough! – A Massachusetts 1st Place Report appeared first on Nugget Bridge.