What We Learned: 2014 US Nationals Edition

During every Pokémon event, we learn a little bit about the game of Pokémon and the community that surrounds it that is worth reflecting on. This Masters-centric column will appear following major events and highlight important trends and moments during the previous weekend’s events.

What a weekend! We witnessed the biggest National VGC tournament so far last weekend at US Nationals, and the improved size came with a tournament format that was vastly improved as well. We saw the continued domination of Kangaskhan, the rise of Rain, and some standout performances from a bunch of Pokémon I don’t think many people were expecting to put up positive records on Day 2. We now know the players who will be representing North America, which includes both some of the game’s biggest names and some big surprises. We also learned quite a bit about what was successful in the most extended best-of-three play we’ve seen in the VGC 2014 format, so I’ll take some time to go over some important trends in Pokémon use, item use, and how many and which Mega Pokémon teams were using. There are certainly no shortage of topics to touch on after last weekend, but I think the scale of the tournament is the best place to start. I’ll move on to the items focusing on gameplay afterward.

Bigger & Better

While we didn’t end up with quite the amount of players who preregistered, the Masters division alone ending up around 500 players was still pretty amazing considering it only saw around 330 the year before. US Nationals was the first real three day tournament we’ve had in VGC, so all eyes were on how efficiently the tournament would run and how well the new tournament format would send the most deserving players toward the end. I think we were all shocked by how quickly the tournament ran: there was a lunch break of longer than an hour on Friday and play still ended at around 3:30. Saturday ended up finishing on schedule in spite of a lunch break as well, which was even more impressive when you consider Saturday at Worlds last year used the same format, had no lunch break, and ended significantly later. We were all pretty impressed by how quickly the tournament ran.

The tournament ended with a top 8 that featured eight players who had teams that were built very intelligently and were played very optimally. That is exciting because it is something that can’t always be honestly said even for National-level tournaments in Pokémon. It was very obvious that the people who got near the end knew exactly how to run their teams in the environment they were in, and the tournament ended with a very deserving top 8 as a result. Certainly, the world learned that some strategies players didn’t consider to be very effective were stronger than their perceptions after seeing what succeeded at US Nationals.

The only really strange note as far as the progression of the tournament goes was that TOM was absolutely brutal to some players, especially in round 9 of Day 1 Swiss. There were several matches that round between a pair of really established players and it was unfortunate in those cases one player had to lose, but I think in just as many looking at the pairings, the less heralded players simply earned a lot of upsets against the bigger names that round. I think some of the surprises as far as which players made it to day 2 were cool. Sometimes in Pokémon you just have to embrace the volatility a little. The people who whiffed making it to Day 2 probably know they needed to be better, while a lot of other players had a fantastic weekend getting to play a little later than they may have expected to. If there’s something I think has been really cool about this format, it’s that I feel like many more players than normal are exceeding their expectations with some deep runs, and it was good to see that trend continue this weekend as we ended up with an interesting mix of about half big names and half players having breakout performances making it to Saturday. The players who were the best in the field last weekend got where they deserved to be eventually, and maybe some players who are capable of being among the best but weren’t will step up their game a little more next time.

A Stream? At Nationals??

In addition the tournament itself growing, perhaps the biggest addition to US Nationals this year was the stream. Pokémon’s Twitch covered eight matches of VGC over the course of the tournament, featuring rounds 4, 5, and 6 of Masters Day 2 Swiss, one game in all three rounds of Masters top cut, and the Junior and Senior finals. We ended up seeing a cool variety of teams on stream this time, with the tournament ending with the expected Kangaskhan mirror but starting with some crazy Pokémon like Huy Ha’s Audino and Ashton Cox’s … well, Ashton’s entire team. The fans always want more, and I’ve certainly read online frequently that some people would have liked shorter gaps between matches and more of the top cut being streamed, but I think the stream offered an impressive variety of matches considering it was the first year of US Nationals being streamed and that the stream had to work into the tournament’s format rather than having matches being held to be streamed. It was a huge step to both stream Nationals and to stream so much of it. The top cut of Worlds being streamed last year was potentially a huge turning point for Pokémon as a competitive game. It got a lot of people’s eyes on Pokémon who wouldn’t normally have been looking at Pokémon as a competitive game. Adding US Nationals this year was another big step. Doing an event once a year is not frequent enough to keep a captive audience no matter how good that event becomes, so seeing Worlds get built on this year with US Nationals is a big, big deal. Hopefully things keep growing from here, and hopefully on the fan end we can keep doing our part to help promote the game when there aren’t massive events going on.

Speaking of the fan end end: this is probably a good time for a reminder that the commentators (well, except Dylan) are not actually TPCi employees, as I’ve seen some parts of the internet confused by this. None of the VGC commentators are TPCi employees, we’re just some schmucks trying to help promote the game (Evan, obviously, is the schmuckiest). With that said, it was an honor to get to help try and grow the game by commentating on the stream again, and hopefully the stream will be even better next time. As with last year, it was a cool leap of faith on Pokémon’s end to be willing to pull people from the community to help out with the event, so hopefully our commentary helped make the matches more enjoyable for everyone watching. It was a pleasure to work with everyone again, and I’d like to say thanks to the players for cooperating with us when we needed it as well. I know some of the players really like the attention of being on stream and some players really hate it, but everyone was good about coming on stream and giving the commentators the information we needed before the matches, so thanks for that. Everyone who ended up on stream put on a great show, so thanks for showing such a great variety of strategies last weekend. You all made the game look fun. Special shout out to Ashton there… he definitely earned his moment under the sun on the stream.

Pokemon.com and @Pokemon

To hit one last bit of coverage news before I move on to the games themselves a little more, how about Pokémon’s online coverage of the event? We were all excited for the stream, but there was an awful lot more than that this year. I know a lot of people at the event didn’t catch as much of what was going on online as they may have liked to because they were busy, so I want to highlight some features the attendees may have missed because pokemon.com was actually a really good resource for Nationals this year.

While naturally I prefer people looking for news about VGC events to come here, I want to draw attention to TPCi’s coverage of Nationals. No matter how big we get on Nugget Bridge, we will always be small time here as a fan site compared to what pokemon.com can do, and boy did they knock it out of the park at US Nationals this year. While pokemon.com typically does relatively little related to VGC, there was bunch of really cool content on their Nationals hub this time. The top four teams from the Junior, Senior, and Masters divisions were all posted, as well as some other miscellaneous teams featuring more obscure Pokémon. I think a lot of the less standard teams that made it to Day 2 looked pretty entertaining, such as the teams used by Brian Jens, Huy Ha, and Nicholas Seman. Hopefully some aspiring players see whichever of the trickier teams and the more successful teams that seem more their style and they get inspired to play in some events next year. The website also lists the standings like it has for Worlds in the past, which I am super excited about as someone who has to keep going back to track past finishes of players. I make a lot of use out of the Worlds equivalents, and preserved matchup data is pretty much impossible to get if TPCi isn’t providing it for us. There is also the usual page on the winners and a very good interview with Omari Travis. I know there were a few slip-ups with information being posted too early and some errors in the teams at points, but for the first time of something of this scale being done for Nationals it was absolutely amazing. Having more content related to competitive play on pokemon.com is really important for game growth because they simply have reach that no one else can provide, and they nailed it this time for the most part.

The website improvements were backed up very nicely by social media, as well, which is really important to get the word out about events in this age. It’s hard for me to miss what’s going on with Twitter since I have to wait for Evan to beg everyone he meets to follow him @nbplaid, but I wouldn’t have had to look too far for actual content this time! There were a lot of timely updates on when matches were occurring on the stream, which hopefully helped get more people to the stream, and there were a lot of cool pictures between rounds that made the event look fun and exciting. The #PlayPokemon tracker thing on pokemon.com was pretty awesome too, and I’m sure the fans enjoyed getting to get involved a little bit. The pictures left on the Nationals hub (scroll down a bit and load more) include pictures Tweeted in at well and are pretty cool to look back on now, it really brings me back to the event to look at them. It was pretty amazing how much was done considering how recently Pokémon even got an official Twitter. I can’t mention enough how much it matters to players to get the shout out from @Pokemon when they’re playing on stream. There are a lot of players who have been playing well for a long time and haven’t gotten much attention for it, so I think the way Nationals was handled stood out in a positive way for a lot of players.

I know I’m going pretty long about stuff I’m not sure most of our readers care about as much as I do, but fundamentally what we all want to do here is help grow this game, and Pokémon did some serious work in that direction last weekend. I have to admit, for a long time I felt like I was just following @Pokemon because it seemed like I should, and I almost never used pokemon.com for anything other than checking CP standings or when I was copy and pasting prizes for tournaments, but they actually came out with a lot of content that appeals to us competitive types here the team info and the pictures this time. It’s cool to see how much Pokémon has surged forward into the information age recently and I’m excited to see where they go next. It was really heartening to see VGC and its players get so much attention last weekend.

Mega Pokémon Breakdown

Alright, enough about the event itself: let’s move on to actual VGC play, the subject you’re probably actually reading this website to find out about. Let’s take a look at the usage of the Mega Evolutions from the players who made it to Saturday last weekend.

Note that numbers here will vary slightly from the table on the Teams article because not all of the Pokémon capable of Mega Evolving held their Mega Stones..

Kangaskhan is far and away the most common choice, surprising no one. What stands out to me here is the difference between US Nationals and Japanese Nationals, as Mega Tyranitar was nearly as common as Mega Kangaskhan there, where here in North America Kangaskhan is predictably far and above the most common Pokémon and Mega Tyranitar is almost unplayed. It’s worth noting the table I linked to doesn’t separate Mega Tyranitar and Mega Kangaskhan, so Kangaskhan was the most common Mega in Japan, too, but the difference between regions is pretty astounding.

Other than Florian Wurdack winning in Germany with Charizard X + Venusaur, every Masters-level National tournament to this point has been won by Mawile or Kangaskhan, though Albert Baneres’ UK winning team included both Manectric and Mawile. The big surprise in the US was Venusaur seeming very strong at US Nationals, overtaking Mawile as the second most common Mega. I think Pokémon like Mega Tyranitar and Mega Venusaur, who are more generally strong and bulky but don’t offer as much in specific matchups except against weather teams, would be more popular in a format without Kangaskhan. Since Kangaskhan remains dominant, however, most teams have to trade general strength for power in that matchup, which is probably contributing to a lot of the problems some players have had with being consistent in this format compared to others. As a result of the importance of that matchup, I am surprised to see Mawile not be the second most common Mega in either region. As long as Kangaskhan isn’t running Hammer Arm Tyranitar can at least get rolling a little bit against Kangaskhan, but Venusaur does pretty poorly in that matchup beyond being able to Sleep Powder through Amoonguss protection. I would expect these events will be its peak usage of both Mega Tyranitar and Mega Venusaur, in Japan and the US respectively, a result of the importance of that Kangaskhan matchup, with a likely surge of Mawile and a rise of some more rogue Megas that deal with Kangaskhan better at Worlds.

The other interesting stat on this table to me is that teams used an average of about 1.2 Mega Pokémon per team, meaning that only about a fifth of the teams on Saturday used a second Mega Pokémon.

One Mega vs. Two Megas

One of the great debates of this format, which will probably continue to wage for the rest of time in VGC, is how many Megas should be on a team. Some players prefer only one no matter what to never waste the item slot, especially when using the stronger Megas who are easier to pick into a high percentage of games. Other players prefer carrying two Megas for matchup flexibility, even though it creates limitations if they run into matchups where they’d like to pick both Pokémon holding Mega Stones, so that in other matchups they can always pick at least one Mega with a decent matchup.

This time of the 16 teams who went 4-2 or better on Day 2, only four teams used two Megas instead of one. Interestingly, Venusaur was a part of all but one duo, with Gavin Michaels finishing 8th with Venusaur+Lucario, Randy Kwa finishing 10th with Venusaur+Blastoise, and Jonathan Rankin finishing 10th with Venusaur+Kangaskhan, which was also the winning duo in the Senior division. The one exception was Jon Hu’s Mawile + Gengar mega duo in the top four, though I’d be curious to hear how much he actually ended up using the Mawile. Toler Webb was the only player who went 3-3 and used two Megas but not Venusaur, as his 17th place finish featured the Mega Charizard Y + Mawile duo. Fellow Charizard Y player Rushan Shekar finished 27th with the classic Venusaur+Charizard duo, Alec Rubin finished 19th with Venusaur+Tyranitar, and Brian Jens rounds out the 3-3 or better double Mega teams with Venusaur+Kangaskhan.

Only 1/4 of the top cut and of the players with winning records on Day 2 and 8 of the 30 3-3 or better players on Day 2 used two Megas. This is probably a sign that the single Mega method seems to be doing better at this point, in spite of the first National tournament this year having been won by Kangaskhan+Mawile. The Mega count on teams is another trend to keep watching at Worlds, though the case may be closed on this one.

Preview Pokémon Update

In the Nationals preview article, I listed a few Pokémon I thought would have telling results at US Nationals. I would say for better or worse, all of them did have interesting stories worth checking back in on.

Here are some “fun” Kangaskhan stats from US Nationals:

• All three finals at US Nationals featured Mega Kangaskhan.
• Only the Junior division avoided a Kangaskhan team winning it all, and even then Kangaskhan finished 2nd and 3rd.
• Kangaskhan finished 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in Masters.
• Kangaskhan was used in 20 of the 46 teams that made Day 2 in Masters, the most of any Pokémon in spite of being a Mega Pokémon, and thus limited to 1 or 2 per team.
• The second most common Mega Pokémon after Kangaskhan was used 10 times, only half as frequently.
• Kangaskhan’s most troublesome matchups with other Mega Pokémon were comparatively unpopular: only 9 Mega Mawile, 1 Mega Gengar, and 3 Mega Lucario made it to Saturday.
• The two most common non-Mega Pokémon, Aegislash and Garchomp, are both used in large part because of their ability to help deal with Kangaskhan.

I don’t think I need to expand too much on the idea that Kangaskhan is obviously the best Pokémon in the format, that the format is fairly centralized around it, and that people are going to exploit both its power and the metagame it has built. I expected Kangaskhan usage would probably end up around 35-45% or so, and while it ended up toward the higher extreme, it is about what I expected. What I did not expect was how much room people would give it. Mawile being on less than a fifth of teams that made it to Day 2 is really shocking given its positive matchup with Kangaskhan, its general power, and that the idea that Kangaskhan would be on at least a third of teams was expected by everyone.

Perhaps more surprising is how much of a non-factor one of its hyped counters was in Mega Lucario. Outside of Gavin Michaels’ team, which much of the field had already seen in the USA vs. Germany showmatch, there was very little splash from Mega Lucario on the teams threatening for top 8 Sunday. Two of the other four Lucario weren’t Megas, and the two other Megas finished near the bottom of the pack. I’m curious if the read we should make there is that too few people were running Kangaskhan’s counters, that the metagame at Nationals dealt with Kangaskhan’s counters extremely well and kept many people trying to counter it out of top cut, or if Kangaskhan is just this good that it doesn’t really matter what else is used. I don’t think the flood of Mega Venusaur, Mega Blastoise, and Rain did Mega Lucario any favors, since fighting against spread moves and redirection is really bad for it and Venusaur is one of the few Megas it can’t easily remove. A surprising amount of those Mega Venusaur were running Sleep Powder, which led to a greater than expected amount of Kangaskhan’s other nemesis, Mawile, losing to the other big Mega matchup it normally comes out on top of against Venusaur. Venusaur itself, on the other hand, is pretty easy Kangaskhan bait, so that surge in usage probably helped Kangaskhan out.

The Megas in the top 8 did include one Mawile, one Lucario, and one Gengar on top of the four Kangaskhan, so at least the teams near the top were clearly trying to play against that metagame some. Strangely, the remaining Mega was a Blastoise, who gets the prize for most effective rogue Mega for the weekend.

I’d be really surprised if there isn’t more of an effort to anti-metagame against Kangaskhan at Worlds throughout the entire field instead of just at the top, but I’m really surprised it didn’t happen here, too, so who knows anymore?

Mega Charizard Y largely didn’t do very well, at least in the sense of its descent from being debated as the best Pokémon in the game in January to barely making an appearance in July. I actually think it did about as well as it could have been expected to given a more realistic assessment of its strength right now, with Ashton Cox taking it to 11th place at 4-2 and Toler Webb and Rushan Shekar getting 3-3 finishes with it. With only four making it to Day 2, three finishing at least .500 is solid, but that is awfully poor total representation. The rise of Pokémon like Heat Rotom, Garchomp, pretty much anything with Choice Scarf or Assault Vest, and even Kangaskhan and Talonflame have been pretty rough on Charizard. Unfortunately for the Kanto starter style points, I can’t imagine it recovering its usage much unless we get a favorable format change for it in a future season. The people who used it for the most part were pretty telling — there’s super offensive rogue Pokemon player Ashton Cox, who Mega Charizard Y really seems to fit in beautifully with conceptually, and Rushan Shekar, who was still using a team from back when people thought Charizard was good. Toler Webb playing it to 3-3 is the big wild card here for me, but I guess Toler got his Worlds invite, so Charizard got the job done for him.

Smeargle was awfully interesting at Nationals last weekend. I literally don’t know of any established players who opted to use it other than Andy Himes and Randy Kwa, both of whom I probably could have told you were going to use Smeargle in January. In spite of that, they both made Day 2, with Andy being the field’s one 9-0. He fell off a bit in Day 2 and finished 3-3, in part ironically because the crowd cheering for Smeargle(?) led to him continuing to bring it in a series where he probably shouldn’t have. Regardless, he certainly got close enough to prove Kangaskhan/Smeargle can work in even an event like this one. While our other Smeargle player plays Blastoise and Venusaur instead of Kangaskhan with his Smeargle, Randy Kwa ended up going 7-2 and 4-2, which was good enough to get him and his Smeargle to Worlds. In many ways, I feel like Dark Void would be perfectly manageable if Kangaskhan didn’t exist to help exploit it, but since it does, it’ll be interesting once again to see if people slow down their Pokémon for Worlds, expecting Smeargle not to appear, or if players keep the Smeargle matchup close to the vest.

The answer to the question of whether or not Talonflame could hack it at the highest level is a resounding yes based on US Nationals. I was never quite as far on the Talonflame hate train as, say, Ray Rizzo is, but I’m still pretty shocked by how important it was to the tournament overall. All four Masters top 8 matches had a Talonflame on one side, though only eventual champion Alex Ogloza’s Talonflame was able to make it beyond that point. Eight more Talonflame appeared on Day 2, making it the fifth most common Pokémon on Day 2 and tied for the most common Pokémon in the top 8 with Kangaskhan. I wonder if Talonflame’s success can’t be traced some to the other metagame shifts last weekend: while the two Rotom formes combined to make it on 26 teams, only one of those teams made it to top cut, so the top of the field was a little more clear for Talonflame to dominate than the bottom. Tyranitar only appearing on five teams in total was a big deal for Talonflame as well, as it is the best natural counter to it as the format’s best Rock-type. Meanwhile, Venusaur was one of the most common Megas, and destroying Venusaur is perhaps the most important reason to use Talonflame right now. Regardless of why it happened, Talonflame was one of the more important Pokémon at US Nationals. It will be interesting to see if it can repeat that performance in a tighter field at Worlds.

The funniest thing to me about Talonflame is seeing how many people who don’t normally play VGC seemed to think it was overpowered. I’m not sure if it was a product of Evan’s win button comment or what, but it was pretty funny to read the “Talonflame is OP” hype given how much we argue about whether Talonflame is either “only decent” or “horrifically terrible” here.

vs.

Hydreigon uses on Day 2: 9

Salamence uses on Day 2: 11

Hydreigon didn’t blow past Salamence in usage the way some people may have expected it to, but the top teams shows Hydreigon is just as big of a part of the metagame as Salamence is now. Three teams in the top eight were using Hydreigon compared to two using Salamence, though all three of the Hydreigon teams were also running Rain, where Hydreigon was always a more traditional part of the core. The rest of the 4-2s add one Hydreigon and two Salamence, evening things out.

Unlike Latios in the past, there are more than a few teams where Salamence will still wind up being the better option than Hydreigon for because of the scarcity of Intimidate. The change in popularity between the two Dragons can be attributed at least partially to the Pokémon players are trying to counter with their Dragons, since Salamence and its Intimidate focuses more on dealing with Kangaskhan, while Hydreigon’s Dark-typing lets it deal with Aegislash better, which is finally as popular in North America as the rest of the world. I expect Hydreigon to continue to gain in relative popularity because I think more and more players are trying to get more power and less utility from that slot on the team, where Hydreigon is a vastly superior option, and also because players seem to be finding Pokémon other than the special Dragons do a better job of helping to shut Kangaskhan down. Hydreigon, for its part, trades not being able to switch in on Kangaskhan most of the time for the ability to OHKO frail variants, which is a rare trait in this format. The jump in the popularity of Venusaur and Aegislash staying at par will likely contribute to further Hydreigon use, as it does much better against both of those Pokémon than Salamence does. Particularly interesting was Alex Ogloza’s use of Earth Power Hydreigon, which was almost unseen this season. Perhaps it should have been used more, as it is a brilliant coverage option on Hydreigon that helps deal with the Mawile matchup in particular due to the reduction in damage of the Fire-type coverage move because of Rain.

Trick Room

What the heck is a “Trick Room”?

While it didn’t do exceptionally, and few players even gave it a shot last weekend, at least a few people tried. As far standouts, Omari Travis and Huy Ha both had really cool teams with Trick Room options and they both could easily have finished better than their 3-3s if the day had played out a little differently for either of them. Trick Room still seems to be down in this format, but I wouldn’t give up on it yet. Someone will try it at Worlds, but they might need to improve on the plans from Nationals a little. To go back a couple Pokémon, I do wonder how much the threat of Smeargle has hurt the viability harder Trick Room teams, as not having a fast mode makes you really, really vulnerable to getting locked down by Dark Void.

Rain is Falling on The Field!

One big trend I didn’t preview, but a trend I probably should have previewed, is the return of Rain. It’s something I’d talked to a lot of people about before the tournament and most people seemed to agree that Rain was a strong option, but no one seemed quite sure how it would perform in extended best-of-three play. Apparently based on the streamed matches the solution is “never ever actually bring a Rain mode in best-of-threes,” but I don’t think it’s too surprising to see the return of Rain. Ludicolo is an awfully good Pokémon in this format completely irrespective to the idea of a Rain mode if the rest of the team can handle Kangaskhan and other big physical attackers well, functioning well on its own as a specially tanky Pokémon that offers Fake Out support and strong coverage. The metagame shifting to Ludicolo on Rain and Assault Vest being created makes XY’s Rain teams a lot more versatile in best-of-three play than in previous formats. Even the Choice Scarf Politoed used by all three of the Rain players in top 8 makes Politoed a pretty useful when separated from Ludicolo. The Choice Scarf allows it to finish off low HP targets, makes it a big threat to Garchomp, and it still has Drizzle to disrupt enemy weather even without Ludicolo there to exploit it. Players looking to run Rain always need to find ways to make Politoed useful enough as something other than a Drizzlebot to make the archetype work. In 2012, it was mostly the ability to swat Metagross in Trick Room with Water Gem-boosted Hydro Pump. In 2013, it was focusing more on support with Helping Hand, and Choice Scarf seems to be enough this year. The Rain teams in top cut could all easily use Politoed+three others, Ludicolo+three others, the four non-Rain Pokémon, or Politoed+Ludicolo+two others without losing a step, which is mandatory for Rain to function well in a major tournament.

Rain was shockingly effective in the National tournament portion of the season in general, not just at US nationals. Sejun Park won with Rain in Korea, Albert Baneres won with Rain in the UK, and Alex Ogloza won with Rain in the US. Ray’s top 8 team was very similar to what Sejun used as well, and Jeudy Azzarelli’s top 8 team used Rain with similar Pokémon to Alex, though the builds of his Pokémon were very different from the others. Strangely, the few high profile Rain players before the National tournament portion of the season in Keewan and R Justice seem like the only ones who didn’t make it to Worlds of the Rain players. I would expect we’ll see a lot less Rain in the World Championships as the outrageous success of Rain throughout the world is going to be too much for opposing players to ignore, but perhaps we’ll see a resurgence if we’re stuck on this format for another set of Regionals here in North America. The way players choose to counter Rain in DC will be telling. Adib losing to Rain on stream twice in spite of how many anti-Rain Pokémon he had should serve as a good reminder to players that having Pokémon who counter the Rain portion of the team, but that do not counter the other attackers that typically appear with Politoed and Ludicolo, does not lead to a very positive matchup against Rain. Rain creates a lot of matchup problems in this format, and I think many players underestimated it this time. 

Assault Vest and Safety Goggles

US Nationals was a surprising showcase of the game’s two main new competitive items, Assault Vest and Safety Goggles. In the case of Assault Vest many players knew it was powerful and had attempted to use it a little throughout the year, but it really stood out at US Nationals. Both finalists used Assault Vest, with Alex Ogloza’s Ludicolo and Adib Alam’s Goodra sporting stylish vests. In both cases they show off the ideal use of Assault Vest. Both Goodra and Ludicolo are naturally specially bulky, have naturally good coverage, and are able to provide support with a damaging move so that the Assault Vest doesn’t send them into full 1990s in-game only damage mode. Ludicolo’s Fake Out allows it to support its teammates in spite of the Assault Vest’s restrictions, and since Feint has a trivial damage component attached to the effect, Goodra can use it with Assault Vest and offer some support as well. Semi-finalist Jon Hu also used Assault Vest, in his case on Lapras, a build that had been gaining some momentum before the tournament due to the increased bulk allowing Lapras to actually survive long enough to use some STAB-boosted Ice-type attacks, though Jon’s team made much better use of Lapras’ Water Absorb than anything I’d seen before. Assault Vest was also used by two of the quarterfinalists, including Ray Rizzo’s Ludicolo and Simon Yip’s Tyranitar, the latter of which becoming monstrously specially bulky with boost from both the Assault Vest and the Special Defense boost from Sandstream. I think the four Pokémon shown off here are probably the four best users of Assault Vest in this format, but it’s definitely viable on some other Pokémon like Scrafty. Assault Vest certainly looked like an item all teams should be considering last weekend.

Safety Goggles was less dominant — I believe it was only used on Adib Alam’s Gyarados and Ray Rizzo’s Zapdos in the top eight — but for something that is definitely a more niche item, it is proving its worth. Adib’s use of it was particularly interesting in the sense that Gyarados isn’t very bothered by Amoonguss, the main reason to use Safety Googles, from a damage perspective. In spite of that lack of offensive threat, Amoonguss can waste Gyarados’ turns with Rage Powder and Spore until Gyarados is defeated by its teammates pretty easily ordinarily. Safety Goggles on Gyarados seemed like a pretty strange choice on the surface, but when you consider Amoonguss and Venusaur were both on about a fifth of teams, I’m sure it helped his Gyarados more than a Lum Berry would have, especially given that it freed the Berry up for one of his other Pokémon and let him keep using his Dragon Dance-boosted attacks on the right targets. Ray’s use of Safety Goggles was a little more traditional on Zapdos, as it seems to be the standard item for the bird. Safety Goggles similarly allows Zapdos to avoid Spore from Amoonguss, who it similarly doesn’t damage very well, and more importantly allows it to bypass Rage Powder and prevent Azumarill from setting up a Belly Drum next to Amoonguss, which is otherwise pretty problematic for some of the other Pokémon he was running like Hydreigon and Politoed.

Rogue Strategies Near The Top

It just wouldn’t be US Nationals without a few teams finishing near the top that were pretty shocking. I think to a lot of players, the success of Rain qualifies here, but I thought some of the other surprising strategies near the top are worth a closer look.

Jon Hu’s Sableye + Gengar

Jon’s application of Gengar was really clever. Before Nationals, most players had an understanding that the optimal way to use Mega Gengar seemed to be to try to use Shadow Tag to exploit the support moves of Gengar’s teammates while threatening more damage, and thus pressure, than something like Gothitelle does. We’d seen this applied in a few ways. The most common use of Mega Gengar is to support Perish Trap, though we’d also other types of Mega Gengar teams, for instance Tony Cheung’s Regionals team, that focus more on the trap element of Mega Gengar combined with disruptive moves like Encore and Disable. Jon’s application of Gengar was in a similar vein to the latter idea, this time completely removing the Perish Song option to focus on exploiting trapped Pokémon. One big way his team was able to do this was with the often overlooked Sableye, who provides Fake Out support to waste turns and help Gengar Substitute on top of bringing Will-o-Wisp and Confuse Ray. While we didn’t see them on stream, his team also had the options of Mega Mawile and Choice Specs Gardevoir to apply offensive pressure. In a tournament where few players seemed to really understand the importance of dealing with Kangaskhan, Jon brought Mega Gengar, Will-o-Wisp, Garchomp and Mega Mawile. I know a lot of players were a little flustered by this team because all they could see was Confuse Ray, but he had a good plan for the metagame at US Nationals, played what he had extremely well, and clearly put more thought into how to deal with big threats in a way that was both effective and uncomfortable to play against than perhaps anyone else in the field.

Ashton Cox’s Team

While he didn’t end up making top cut, Ashton once again turned a lot of heads, with more than half of his team being used by no one other than him in the top 46. One thing I think players underestimate about Ashton is that he doesn’t strike me as one of those players who uses eccentric Pokémon for no reason. His Sawk, for instance, was a pretty clever solution to Kangaskhan. The combination of Choice Scarf, Inner Focus, and STAB-boosted Close Combat allowed it to make fairly easy work of Kangaskhan… again, showing that the players who actually took the time to plan something for that matchup did well. Weavile has been a trademark Pokémon of his. If you can defend them, Ice-type Pokémon continue to have one of the best STABs for this metagame, and the combination of its damage output and the disruption Weavile brought with Fake Out and Fling stopped a lot of players. Heliolisk was another cool choice, and while this is one case where I imagine being rogue helped him a lot because most of the people I talked to didn’t even know what type Heliolisk was, Heliolisk’s damage output was pretty impressive and it is faster than many common Pokémon. Espeon has several similar qualities, and we did see it create a lot of pressure with Calm Mind on one of the TV matches. Ashton is clearly not a player that is afraid of using frail Pokémon, and he protected them well enough to achieve an excellent tournament finish last weekend. Gigalith was perhaps the most interesting choice – Wide Guard is something I don’t think many players realized it could learn, and walking into that once is the sort of thing that instantly loses games. The combination of Charizard and Gigalith was surprisingly effective, so once again I think we have to tip our hats some — he found some really bizarre solutions to the metagame, but they worked for him.

Simon Yip’s Blastoise Team

My favorite team was Simon’s, and in his case it’s a little easier to follow the line of logic as far as why he made the decisions he did on his team. Blastoise is pretty rogue, but it’s capable of pretty much best-in-format offensive output if it can get uninhibited Water Spouts off, on top of having Aura Sphere and Ice Beam to chunk popular Pokémon in the metagame like Kangaskhan and the Dragons. Simon’s team had a lot of focus on freeing up Blastoise to attack, with both Follow Me Lucario and Rage Powder Amoonguss supporting it. He also had a quick Intimidate from Choice Scarf Salamence to help deal with faster threats and Tailwind on Talonflame, giving an option for easy Water Spouts against teams with no priority, as well as removing Venusaur for Blastoise. Speaking of removing Venusaur, I think all of us in the crowd were a little shocked in the second round to see Simon’s Lucario Final Gambit Venusaur and remove it for Blastoise that way, but that was sort of the magic of watching Simon’s team: he had really awesome solutions for the problems Blastoise has. Simon’s team, to me, is the perfect example of a good rogue team in VGC. He identified a Pokémon that could be powerful enough to win against anything in the format if supported well, correctly identified the Pokémon’s weaknesses, and surrounded it with the right teammates to overcome them.

What If Records Didn’t Reset After Day 1?

Time for a hypothetical! One of the big discussions around VGC leading up to US Nationals was the idea of whether or not it would be better to drop Day 1 records when starting the second day of Swiss, since weighing best-of-three and single game matches equally didn’t make much sense to most players. Records did end up dropping after the first day, causing the first day to function as more of a qualification stage, which I think was probably the best play due to how much more reliable the results in best-of-three play tend to be. Now that the event is over, let’s take a quick look at what might have happened if records had stuck after the first day!

I’ve made no attempt to tiebreak players with the same record here, but obviously carryover would have changed the top cut a little. Somewhat bizarrely, it only changes the players in top cut by removing the two eventual finalists, with Ashton Cox and Andy Himes replacing Adib Alam and Alex Ogloza. They both end up in a tie at 11-4 with seven other players who also went 7-2 and 4-2 in Manoj Sunny, Jonathan Rankin, Andrew Cavanah, Evan Bates, Michael Lanzano, Tiffany Stanley, Randy Kwa, as well as four players who went 8-1 and 3-3 in Omari Travis, Brian Jens, Rushan Shekar, and Erik Holmstrom. I guess it isn’t so surprising that the top cut doesn’t change much since there were so many more possible records on Day 2 (6-0, 5-1. etc.), whereas to make it to past Day 1, players could only have gone 9-0, 8-1, or 7-2, so Day 2 is naturally weighted highly.

It’s an interesting thought to look at this, but I think the system used rewards the right part of the tournament, as nice as this way would have worked out as far as not involving Opponent’s Win % to decide who cut.

Worlds Qualifiers

While I’d imagine most people are rooting for their friends to make it to the World Championships above all else, looking at the list of qualified players, we have some very interesting storylines going into the season’s final event.

Half of North America’s 16 players will be playing in their first World Championship, which is always exciting. These players include Nationals runner-up Adib Alam, Michael Lanzano, Jon Hu, Ashton Cox, Logan Castro, Tifany Stanley, Collin Heier, and Jeudy Azzarelli. Michael and Tiffany are both cool cases in the sense they’ve been close many times before. Michael is a player I think of in that group of those super consistent players who typically do well at every event and make Worlds most years, so the fact he hasn’t actually qualified before this year is pretty bizarre, to say the least. We should all be able to feel good about him finally making it. Tiffany doesn’t have the same level of renown he does, but she finished 15th in 2013 CP after a tough loss to Stephen Morioka in the round of 16 at Nationals last year and she top cut Nationals in 2012 also, so this is a long time coming for her, too.

Several of the other players have had breakout seasons this year. While Collin didn’t have the Nationals he was expecting to have, he showed this spring he’s capable of playing at an awfully high level, and I’m eager to see what he brings to Worlds, as he’s one of the few players this year who have been really successful playing slightly off-metagame. Speaking of not playing metagame… how about Ashton Cox? He won over a lot of people last weekend, myself included. When you go 8-1 in Nationals Day 1 Swiss and then 4-2 in Nationals Day 2 best-of-three play, at some point everyone else has to accept that what you’re doing works regardless of their notions of what should work in a format. He’s done well at every level this year, and I think a lot of us have to admit he is a stronger player than we gave him credit for. It is pretty surprising to see Jon, Logan, and Adib make Worlds because they all needed the top 4 finish at US Nationals to get there, but I think with the format this year we knew that whoever went deep would deserve their Worlds slots. I don’t find Jeudy as surprising as some of the others — I had him in my short list of people who had a real shot at the top cut finish they needed for a reason — but a lot of people seemed more surprised than I was, and I think all four of these last guys will probably continue to surprise by taking advantage of the experience they just got with all the best-of-three at US Nationals.

The players returning to Worlds are a pretty illustrious group, consisting of Alex Ogloza, Ray Rizzo, Gavin Michaels, Omari Travis, Enosh Shachar, Randy Kwa, Toler Webb, and DeVon Ingram. The past Worlds appearances and performances this group has put up has definitely put all of them in the top group of established players in VGC. Alex hasn’t played in Worlds since his initial season in 2010, where he put up a pretty shocking 4-2 as a new player, but he’s been excellent ever since the CP system was implemented in VGC and I’m glad to see him in Worlds, especially since he would likely have made it last year if he was around for Nationals. There’s not much to be said about Ray Rizzo that hasn’t been said already: he won three World Championships in a row between 2010 and 2012, won two of the three Regionals he attended this year, and was a Draco Meteor hit away from eliminating Alex in top 8 of Nationals this year. Gavin was our 2013 US National Champion, and he’ll be joined by his 2013 finals opponent and eventual Worlds top 8 finisher Enosh Shachar. Omari Travis got 350 of the possible 360 points from Regionals this year and he made a solid splash with a solid 20th place finish at Nationals. Having his Worlds invitation locked in January was a little odd, but he put up a good finish last weekend that should help him transition into putting out a good Worlds finish as well after a few months of not needing to do much. Canada’s most famous player managed to avoid getting his country denied a Worlds invitation a year after it hosted Worlds, as Randy Kwa managed to squeak in on only two Regionals and Nationals and will look to improve on his 3-3 finish from last year at Worlds. Finally, we have two of the game’s most promising younger players, with 2012 Senior World Champion Toler Webb and 2013 Senior US Nationals runner-up DeVon Ingram. While they didn’t qualify last weekend, North America’s Masters roster will also include Aaron Zheng because of his 2013 Masters Worlds top 4 finish, and the two 2013 Senior Worlds finalists, Hayden McTavish and Ben Hickey.

Congratulations to all the players who survived a challenging North American circuit this year, and good luck to all of them in the World Championships. Their prize will be facing probably the toughest field we’ve seen in the history VGC. We’ll be seeing a return of both the finalists from last year’s World Championships, Italy’s Arash Ommati and Japan’s Ryosuke Kosuge. The favorite to win it all last year, Korea’s Sejun Park, will be back, and Ryosuke and Sejun will have more countrymen than in the past, with both Japan and Korea several more invitations than they did last year. Europe will also be sending some awfully strong players compared to some of the past years, such as the undefeated champion of Germany, Markus Stadter. Worlds has also expanded to some new countries in recent years, so perhaps we’ll see some surprises from countries like Australia and South Africa, and who knows who the LCQ will add to the field? US Nationals was a blast, but remember, the World Championships are only five weeks away on August 16th-17th!

The post What We Learned: 2014 US Nationals Edition appeared first on Nugget Bridge.