Both the commentators and the community at large can be forgiven for thinking “Who the heck is this?” as I advanced through the Nugget Bridge Invitational (and Major). My name is Samuel East and I go by the appalling username Samuel996, in which I regret unreservedly the use of numbers. I’ve been a VGC player since 2011 and have spent those 4 years bubbling UK Nationals with remarkable consistency. My failure to achieve anything noteworthy at Nationals this year was particularly saddening, as in 2015 I may be forced to take a step back from the game while I apply to read history at various fine UK institutions. As such, I was delighted to close out my 2014 season with a deep run in the Nugget Bridge Invitational, landing 2nd place and earning $250. Some people have been asking me what I plan to do with my winnings, and after careful consideration I’ve decided that, since I live in Liverpool, I should be able to put down a deposit on a 4-bedroom house.
I did a shameful amount of preparation for this tournament. I felt that my heart wasn’t really in it after another lacklustre live season, and therefore many members of this Invitational team were patchwork veterans of earlier tournaments. As mentioned about 12 seconds ago, I love history and couldn’t resist a historical name-scheme in a tournament where nicknames are visible (sorry, all you anime lovers). And so I present to you possibly the only Pokémon team ever to be themed around Byzantine Emperors.
The Team
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Constantine (Kangaskhan) @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Return
- Power-Up Punch
- Sucker Punch
It would be very easy for me to flippantly type “Kangaskhan is Kangaskhan” (accompanied by poorly-executed lip-purse and a sassy head-shake) and move on, but it is important to bear in mind exactly what Kangaskhan does. First and foremost, aside from general utility, Fake Out combines well with several of my other team members. It allows Noivern to set up Tailwind or Taunt a threat while possibly preserving it’s sash. Both Garchomp and Azumarill also appreciate the facilitation that Fake out affords their Substitute and Belly Drum, respectively. Power-Up Punch is very much an opportunistic move. A Pokémon like Kangaskhan is fairly easy to manoeuvre into a situation where it can grab a quick +2, at which point everything is gravy (did I do that right?). Kangaskhan also found many opportunities to pull off the famous “self-PuP” in which I could hit members of my own team (like Azumarill and Noivern) on a predicted double Protect. Sometimes, in fact, it was just safer to use Power-Up Punch on my own partner regardless – for example if the opponent’s team held Ghost-type Pokémon — or Garchomp, Ferrothorn and Amoonguss, whose abilities or common items could take a huge chunk out of Kangaskhan’s health. Though many builds have followed a typically-meta trend and evolved to bulkier Adamant versions with less speed, maxing out Kangaskhan’s speed was very useful to me in the Invitational as it allowed me to outspeed and smack the four Specs Hydreigons I ran into during my five matches.
The Emperor Constantine is the earliest Emperor on my list, ruling in the early fourth century AD. Kangaskhan has been around forever in this meta, so that fit. Additionally, Constantine founded a city, creatively named Constantinople, that would arguably define and shape the next 1500 years. Given Kangaskhan’s hugely influential role in shaping this metagame, I made another tenuous connection there when nicknaming. Stay tuned for more outrageously laboured connections between Pokémon and Byzantine Emperors.
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Basil (Noivern) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Frisk
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Tailwind
- Taunt
- Protect
Ah, Noivern. Nowadays even you aren’t as niche as you were in February, when I first used you. Poor, poor, bog-standard me. Noivern’s speed and Focus Sash allowed me to kill Dragons with a high degree of reliability, while it’s Taunt – aside from the obvious utility of blocking moves like Trick Room and neutering Smeargle – combined very well with Kangaskhan. Taunt blocked Will-o-Wisps from various foes – mainly Rotom – while also forcing Aegislash to attack into Kangaskhan’s Sucker Punch (or else switch). Meanwhile, Tailwind made effective use of the common first-turn-double-Protect that many players employ when staring down a Kangaskhan lead. My Rotom build in particular – which is far frailer than the metagame’s standard Rotom – greatly appreciated the boost in speed as it likes to attack first, but Tailwind had benefits across the board except for Ferrothorn. In addition, the benefits of Frisk as an ability cannot go unmentioned. Frisk allowed me to avoid sticky situations – such as predicting the wrong kind of Charizard and suddenly facing down a +1/+1 Charizard-X – as well as fishing out various niche items like a surprise Choice Scarf or Rocky Helmet. Ultimately, knowing both enemy Pokémon’s items for certain allowed a greater degree of prediction in terms of their possible moveset – for example, being able to grab knockouts on a revealed Specs Hydreigon, where attacking blindly into a Protect would have been disastrous – and as such, allowed more informed decisions, and greater control, throughout the game. The utility of Frisk meant that Noivern was particularly valuable in game 1 of a best-of-3 set, but it had more than enough tricks up it’s proverbial and figurative sleeves to keep it resurfacing later in a set. Noivern’s unique combination of fast support, powerful (and relevant) STAB and convenient ability made it indispensible for my team, as surprises can be particularly devastating for the team’s mutual survivability (see the finals).
The 11th-century Emperor Basil II (“the Bulgar-slayer”) was a precise and successful military leader who won campaigns against threatening enemies. However, he was also a gifted administrator and his domestic policies inflated the Byzantine treasury to very high levels by the time of his death. I saw these traits in Noivern, whose only attacking move dealt with very specific threats (read: virtually every Dragon holding virtually any item) but also packed very valuable supporting options to benefit the team as a whole.
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Rotom (Rotom-Heat) @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 76 HP / 196 SAtk / 236 Spd
Modest Nature
- Overheat
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Protect
Life Orb Rotom-Heat is a beautiful, beautiful Pokémon. Picking up OHKOs on Aegislash, Amoonguss, Garchomp, Salamence, Talonflame, Aerodactyl, Gyarados, Blastoise, Charizard-Y, Ferrothorn, Mawile, Manectric, Azumarill, Venusaur, Greninja and quite possibly a whole host of other top-tier (not you, Greninja, you suck) threats that I’m forgetting, Rotom carved through teams with it’s phenomenal offensive coverage. I brought Rotom to 58 of my 60 games in the May International Challenge and 10 of my 11 games in the Invitational, which I think is testament to its great worth in many situations. In terms of EV spread – gosh, look, this one invests in more than 2 stats?!?! – I ran 196 Special Attack to ensure a OHKO on Garchomp. All the other threats listed above fell below that bracket. I spent months using Life Orb Rotom-H and slowly but surely added more speed to it. By the Invitational, it was positively zippy, hitting a speed stat of 136. This allowed me to outpace 252 Speed Adamant Gyarados and 252 Speed Jolly Bisharp by 2 points, to account for speed creeps. While a somewhat arbitrary benchmark, those Pokémon gave me some trouble, and in more general terms I found that a Rotom that hits hard also wants to go first, whereas a bulkier Will-o-Wisp Rotom holding a Sitrus Berry has less qualms about moving later in the turn. At any rate, I quite often tried to support Rotom with Tailwind, although it had enough inherent bulk that moving second wasn’t utterly devastating. This Pokémon, more than any other, has defined my participation in the 2014 meta and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed using it. I hope it manages to secure itself a niche in 2015, too.
This Rotom was nicknamed Rotom, because I got it from a trade, which is sad. If I could have nicknamed it, I would have called it Theodosios, because the Emperor Theodosios II invented the oven.*
*This is a lie.
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Herakleios (Garchomp) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake
- Substitute
- Protect
Garchomp, along with Ferrothorn, was drafted into my Invitational team largely untested to fill the shoes, scabbard and soil of Aegislash and Amoonguss. I’d found that Amoonguss was becoming increasingly hit-and-miss in the metagame and wanted to try a faster SubProtect user than Aegislash so Garchomp and Ferrothorn were crowbarred into the team with around 6 minutes to spare. Did I mention I hadn’t prepared much?
My lack of serious thought is evidenced by the usage of Substitute with a Lum Berry. Now, while there are certainly situations in which this could be a useful combination, such situations are few and far between. Certainly, in the vast majority of scenarios, putting up a Substitute – so rare on Garchomp in 2014 – could be damning enough to enemies like Amoonguss, Rotom and Smeargle that were fishing for their respective status conditions. A more useful item would have been a resist berry, and indeed running Yache Berry would have given me a much more stable ground from which to approach Baz Anderson’s troublesome Hidden Power Ice Raichu in the finals. While I have no regrets about Substitute – it really pulled its weight in my set against R Inanimate – I found myself pining ever so slightly for Rock Slide to deal better with the Aerodactyl and Talonflame that I encountered during the Invitational. In short, in the context of this team, Garchomp wasn’t terrible, but in the tournament itself the best I could say is that it was solidly unremarkable. 130 base Attack ain’t what it used to be, loser.
The 7th-century Emperor Herakleios, while regrettably not a shark dragon, ruled for a long period of some 30 years during which he effectively faced down various political crises, most notably the Muslim conquests (being viewed very favourably in Islamic scholarship), and compromised with schismatic subjects on matters of Christian doctrine. Garchomp’s consistently solid, effective, and long-lasting presence in metagames from 2012 to 2014 made him, in some ludicrously vague manner, worthy of this name.
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Phokas (Ferrothorn) @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 204 Atk / 52 SDef
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Power Whip
- Gyro Ball
- Leech Seed
- Protect
Ferrothorn is one of those Pokémon that inspires panic in an opponent. There are comparatively few good choices that will carry a Fire-type move in this generation, and as such it can sometimes be a relatively easy job to dispatch of the opponent’s one or two Fire-users before sweeping with Ferrothorn and it’s sackfuls of resistances. I built this Ferrothorn in January as a carbon copy of Ray Rizzo’s Virginia regional set, and have seen very little reason to change it aside from using Leftovers, which, in combination with Leech Seed, provides for powerful HP recovery potential. Unless it carries Occa Berry, there’s no real point in investing to survive Fire-type moves, so I was happy to use an amount of attack which would OHKO most Rotom-W and Azumarill, then throw “the rest” in HP and SpD.
Ultimately, the same virtue which makes Ferrothorn useful against many teams can become a curse against a better-prepared team. If there are many possible users of Fire-type moves on a team – or indeed, if I play Ferrothorn wrongly in the face of a Fire-user – Ferrothorn can be of limited use. This will become apparent upon watching videos of the finals – Ferrothorn, one of my possible win conditions, was needlessly squandered, putting the nail in my coffin earlier than need be. Ultimately, however, and in consideration of how well it performed in the rounds before the final, I’m far more pleased with my switch to Ferrothorn than my switch to Garchomp. On a team which is largely frail and can collapse if one component faints early, Ferrothorn was a vital pivot, and it’s role suited my playstyle more than Amoonguss did.
The 7th century Emperor Phokas was originally a military general in the Byzantine army, coming to power in 602AD in a ruthless coup that saw the head of his predecessor (and all his predecessor’s sons) paraded around the streets of Constantinople on long, pointy sticks. Phokas’ rule was met with opposition and he responded violently, with many perishing under his regime. It wasn’t all fun and games though, because Phokas himself was viciously and bloodily dispatched by the aforementioned Herakleios. Crikey. Anyway, I saw a little bit of Phokas’ ruthlessness in the sudden inclusion of Ferrothorn into this team and the havoc he wreaked against the ill-prepared. Honestly, I could just be making all of this up as I go along.
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Justinian (Azumarill) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 228 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SDef / 20 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Play Rough
- Belly Drum
- Protect
The Belly Drum set, so dominant for so long, is becoming increasingly difficult to execute effectively due in no small part to The Resistible Rise of Mega Venusaur. Nonetheless, Azumarill is a powerful force in the metagame. Along with an effective attack stat of 226 (a pathetic 904 after a Belly Drum) and STAB priority, Azumarill has a strong defensive typing which allows it to shrug off hits from some of the metagame’s big boys in Salamence and Hydreigon. While I found myself short of spots to effectively use Belly Drum in the Invitational itself – only firing it off once – the combination of Kangaskhan and Azumarill could, and did, tear holes in the teams of lower-to-middling players for several months. It was not uncommon to end up with a +2 Kangaskhan, having used Power-Up Punch on Azumarill, and a +6 Azumarill, having Belly Drummed. At this point, the combination was incredibly difficult to slow down. In the context of this tournament, Belly Drum saw little use; instead, I used the Sitrus Berry – which gave Azumarill an effective HP stat of 255 – to turn 2HKOs into 3HKOs and 3HKOs into 4HKOs. This relied on Azumarill’s naturally high Attack stat (which corresponds to around base 152) to deal damage, which it did so admirably. Azumarill was a valuable player in many of my battles where it often filled a role of pivoting in and out, relying on it’s bulk and typing, until it arrived in a position where it could land a strong hit.
In terms of EVs, I chose 228HP over the common 212 as it lands on a stat of 204, which, being divisible by 4, is more effective for a holder of a Sitrus Berry. After maximising Attack, I dropped 20 into speed to hopefully creep most other Azumarill. If you’ve seen a pattern here, I don’t blame you; across all 6 of my Pokémon, I invested only 628 – of a possible 3060 – EVs in HP, Defense and Special Defense, and even this was largely limited to just 2 members of the team. Outrageous.
The 6th-century Emperor Justinian was the last Emperor to be revered as “the Great”. With one of the most efficient and powerful war machines yet seen in history, Justinian conquered a territory that stretched from the Middle East to the Atlantic. Justinian had Huge Power, get it? Thanks for staying with me this far. I know these are awful.
Here’s the team again, at a glance.
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The Nugget Bridge Invitational
And so the Invitational arrived. Feeling a little like a lamb for slaughter, I hopped onto IRC and got ready for my first battle.
Top 32 vs TheBattleRoom
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TheBattleRoom has had a pretty great season in 2014, which daunted me right from the get-go. In team preview I saw Mawile rain with Zapdos and Hydreigon. As a fairly recent and newly-popular mode, I had little experience playing against this type of rain. This was not helped by a loss in the first game. I had little to deal with his strong Swagger/Thunder Wave Zapdos and my team were content to be paralyzed or to masochistically hit themselves in confusion. Why were they confused? Because I’d even got into the tournament? Because I hadn’t turned my DS on for two months? Because they all had ludicrously juxtaposed nicknames? It’s a mystery. Either way, it was sad. After winning out in game 2 at the expense of revealing many of my team’s tricks, I managed to predict well at the start of game 3 in order to kill the pesky Zapdos before it could begin spreading horror. I then received a boon as my Kangaskhan survived Choice Specs Hydreigon’s Draco Meteor with 1HP remaining to expedite the end of what was the closest match I would play during the tournament.
It was the beginning of what Scott would describe as a series of major upsets, which I’ve chosen to interpret as a compliment. Next up, I would play the Nuggetbridge Major champion, DarkAssassin.
Top 16 vs DarkAssassin
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DarkAssassin won a tournament in which I only reached the Top 8, so if you look at the mathematics of the situation, it must be fairly cut and dry, no? Thankfully, Pokémon isn’t all mathematics. What’s that; it is? Oh. Then never mind. A fairly procedural game one – in which Kangaskhan and Azumarill get set up and then never look back – was followed by a game 2 win that I probably didn’t deserve, due to a Rock Slide miss on his end. Both these games played out in a mere 6 turns, which is just how I like it when I play with this team. It’s designed to put itself on the front foot and stay there, and so the shorter the game, the better.
This victory pits me against one of the community’s celebrities in Lajo.
Top 8 vs Lajo
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If this match had been on stream, there would have been bloodhounds – or Ninetales – baying for my blood as I battled one of the community’s favourites. Lajo brought another excitingly original team to this tournament, and it required me to make some questionable plays, like in game 1, where I left Azumarill in against his Ferrothorn, and in game 2, where I left Rotom-H in against his +6 Azumarill. I also sacked my own full-health Ferrothorn just to kill his Lucario with Iron Barbs damage. I’m not proud of these risky plays, but I do believe that they were well-timed and in no way gratuitous. At this level of play, a player as good as Lajo is going to expect a switch from my Azumarill against his Ferrothorn, and so leaving it in can be a powerful play, as obtuse a move as it seems. This gutsiness was to backfire spectacularly on me in the finals, so we can call that poetic justice.
After the tournament ended, Lajo went into great detail with me in deconstructing how I could have beaten him faster in game 1. I’m not sure who benefitted from that, as I was too tired to think straight by that point in the night. I digress. Progressing onwards in the bracket, I’m matched up with Canada’s finest, R Inanimate.
Top 4 vs R Inanimate
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At this point we arrive at a lengthy delay, during which I’m hastily taught how to stream the semi-finals from my iPhone. The streams of both the semi-finals and the finals came from my phone, and as such, there were notable cameos in the archived stream footage. 10 points to those who manage to spot all three of:
- the note-taking pencil that I used as a stylus, which JFlynn was keen to draw attention to.
- the reflection of my pale, flabby forearm, which has been consistently complimented as my best body feature.
- the reflection of a large poster featuring a certain eccentrically-dressed queen of pop. Ooh la la.
Streaming was exciting for me and I’m considering investing in the necessary gizmos to perhaps do some proper streaming of my own in the next season. We’ll see how that goes. I manage to be obtuse and not tell anybody my team before the battle starts, so the commentators get to have fun working it out with the audience. Whoopsie!
Anyway, R Inanimate is sporting his tried and true partnership of Blastoise and Smeargle, surrounded by Talonflame, Tyranitar, Kangaskhan and Hydreigon. I’ve come equipped with a few anti-Smeargle techs, from Substitute Garchomp with Lum Berry to Taunt Noivern, so I’m less scared than most people are, but with Smeargle there’s a psychological baggage – especially where Moody is concerned. In game 1 I focus heavily on smacking Smeargle before it gets going, and manage to take a free Talonflame down with me as Kangaskhan falls to Blastoise, leaving me with an easy finishing turn. In game 2, Randy changes his leads to bring some Fake Out on his side, but I make an adjustment of my own and bring Garchomp to the show, where it, to my utter consternation, actually makes itself useful. Smeargle’s +4 evasion party was shut down before they even started serving drinks, and that was essentially all she wrote. The archived stream is above, which contains Scott’s excellent commentary. I appreciated in particular his dissection of my choice to use Tailwind with Noivern in game 1. It deconstructs my thought process perfectly and illustrates why he’s such a great commentator.
Final vs Baz Anderson
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Despite my mounting shock at having made the finals and been guaranteed $250, I had no time to rest; my stream moved straight onto the finals against my UK countryman, Baz Anderson, who I firmly believe to be one of the strongest players in the world currently. Although this is true of all my opponents, it was a special privilege for me to play him in the final stage of such a prestigious tournament.
Baz brought a very exciting team of Azumarill/Raichu/Tyranitar/Talonflame/Amoonguss/Aegislash, which had been mowing down some of the game’s greatest all day. Despite the seemingly advantageous matchup that my Ferrothorn had against him, I was far from optimistic. These fears were proven well-founded as I succumbed in the first game to my own “overprediction” if I may use that odious word — his Raichu’s Encore, and his Raichu’s Hidden Power Ice, which I had no prior knowledge of and failed to consider in my preparation for the game. I decided to lead into game 2 with Ferrothorn, but Baz made a powerful adjustment to bring his own Talonflame as a lead. Knowing my options were limited, I opted to leave Ferrothorn in and trust that it would be too obvious a play to attack. This worked for the first turn and Raichu was put out of action before it could start making a nuisance of itself. However, when I pushed my luck in the second turn, I was punished for it. I traded my Ferrothorn for his Talonflame while his Mega-Tyranitar boosted itself with Dragon Dance, and at this point, despite being 3-2 up, the game, the match, and the tournament were over. But how could I be upset? I’d gotten myself to an all-UK finals and taken home a very nice amount of money just for playing a game I love.
You can (and should) watch full footage of the finals, with commentary above.
A Vote of Thanks to:
- The 3/81 people who predicted me to make it past the top 32 (even if you chose your matchups by rolling dice) and a special shoutout to the user “num3r1cal” who predicted me for top 4. You are my inspiration and my guiding light.
- The generous benefactors and organizers of this tournament who are far too numerous to name, but who do tireless work for this amazing community which I am proud to be – finally – integrating into.
- The commentators – Scott, Duy and Justin – on the Invitational stream. I could practically hear you rustling your notes and shrugging your shoulders as you tried to find something, anything, to say about a complete unknown like myself, but you “pulled it off with aplomb,” and I shall endeavour in the future not to leave you out in the cold!
- All my opponents this year: from Manchester 6, from the Nugget Bridge Major, from UK Nationals, and from the Nugget Bridge Invitational. With precisely one exception, you were pleasant, curteous and a joy to play with.
- My powerful Nationals traveling partners of MY AUNT and MY GRANDMA. Bless them, they had no idea what was going on.
- My friends Jack and Adam who couldn’t play this year, but helped me build my teams all year and rudely demanded a shoutout as payment.
- The Purge: Anarchy, which I went to see on the Saturday afternoon before this tournament. I had been brainstorming a team which involved a combination of Swagger Cryogonal and Lum Berry Garchomp, and I daresay that because I was too late arriving home to breed and manifest this awful idea, I am $250 richer. It almost made The Purge worth watching, but not really. It was total pants.
Conclusion
I’ve been to UK Nationals for four years now and always put in hundreds of hours of practice and preparation only to come out a hair’s width from success. I went into the Nugget Bridge Invitational with about 10 minutes of preparation and after playing against a series of far better opponents than a typical run at Nationals, came out with easily my best tournament result to date. It’s one of life’s mysteries, and certainly not one I’m going to question. Thus my season ends on a high note, and regardless of how much I can participate in 2015 (I’m hoping it will be a lot), it’s been a privilege to take part in this year’s events and a delight to bring you this report.
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