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Published on January 17th, 2014 | by Scott

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2014 Apex and North American Winter Regionals Preview Part 2

As expected, the first Pokémon X & Y Regional showed us greater total Pokémon choice diversity than probably any VGC event has ever seen while also highlighting a few favorites who are the metagame’s safe picks. With three Regionals and the VGC’s most anticipated grassroots events this weekend, we’ll likely get a clearer picture of which metagame threats rise above the obvious four or so on top and a better idea of which of the many, many one-use Pokémon from Virginia’s top cut are likely to stick around. Equally interesting will be the trends in player success. Last week, we saw a top four with three of the game’s most consistent players and very nearly saw a fourth. It’ll be interesting to see if the top of the standings continue to be dominated largely by the more experienced players or if we see more turnover with the new format.

The other really interesting thing last week was that Virginia was one of the few Regionals to have 9 rounds of Swiss play and the first to have a top 16 cut. While I know people are a little confused because the TCG’s format never falls for a top 16 cut in any situation anymore and VGC doesn’t actually seem to have protocol published anywhere anymore, I think 16 was a pretty savvy choice as far as balancing having as large of a cut as is reasonable with the time constraints presented by an event that takes place only on a single day. I have to admit I’m now a little confused about where that leaves the rest of the country’s Regionals, but I think it definitely helped out last weekend in the Regional that is likely to be the biggest, allowing a bunch of deserving players into top cut (notably finalists Ray Rizzo and Enosh Shachar). Like basically all cuts that aren’t based exclusively on record, it also left a bunch of players who were probably equally deserving out based on the always abysmal opponent win % tiebreak, but I think it was definitely better than an eight player cut. Still, some of us were chatting about the format a bit on Twitter and I wish we’d wind up with a solution more like the one discussed there.

As with last week, I should probably remind people to download the version 1.2 patch on your games, as you will need to do so to play. If you have the option, I would also strongly suggest everyone to play on a physical copy of the cart rather than a downloaded one. The reason for this is that for the first time this season, it looks like all four events this weekend will be streaming at least some part of their tournaments and you need a physical copy of the game to use a capture card. APEX and St Louis will be streaming some time on Saturday and we’ll be streaming parts of Oregon and SoCal on Sunday, so if you’re at home either of those days tune in to watch some great matches!

Southern California Regional

Difficulty Rating:

/ 5

(Three Pokémon that are not experiencing the blistering cold out of five)

Tournament Organizer: Karl Batdorff

Stream: Top Cut Planned on nuggetbridge2

Last Year’s Winner: Jacob Burrows (Noobly9730)

The Story

The Californian events always seem to have the strangest flow of players in and out of any area in the country. Gone are last year’s 2nd and 3rd place finishers (Biosci and Human, who will both be at APEX). Gone are last Fall’s Northern California Regional winner PBB (not playing) and 5th place finisher Phenac (going to Oregon). There don’t seem to be too many travelling players coming to replace them this time, so it is likely the players who have done well in previous Californian events will do well again here.

Jacob Burrows won the event last time and has apparently been tactically avoiding practice since his last Regional win. He’s one of those players that surprised us with a Regional win out of nowhere and then kinda went back into the shadows some, but like all good Californian players, he is part of a brother duo. The only such duo that will be intact and have both brothers in the Masters division this year is the Has, with Duy Ha (Duy) looking to build on his 120 CP and finally get back into Worlds after falling a game short four times in the three last years. His brother Huy Ha (Huy) is poised to return to the greatness he can now only achieve in even-numbered years. One of the event’s three probable attendees who played in 2013 Worlds is Alan Schambers (Metabou), who, importantly in California, is also part of a brother duo, though apparently we won’t be getting any Deagle tips this time.

The more decorated of the two remaining 2013 Worlds players is Gavin Michaels (kingofmars), who is the reigning National Champion. He traditionally hadn’t done very well at Regionals but a third place finish in Phoenix has him sitting at 3rd in overall CP going into the Winter events. With 2nd place Thomas Mifflin (PBB) idle, Gavin and 1st place Omari Travis (BadIntent) will look to continue pulling away from the field. Omari kind of fell off the face of the earth for a couple of seasons, but he immediately started dominating the field again in the fall, racking up a nearly insurmountable lead with 230 CP over three events in spite of a drop. The last 2013 Worlds competitor is Demitri, who qualified with his 2013 Nationals top 4 finish. His buddy Kamran Jahadi (kamz) will be in attendance as well. The 2011 Seniors World Champion didn’t really do anything after winning his first Masters Regional last year, but he’s always a threat when he has his hands on a strong enough team. Many of the players mentioned so far — Omari, the Has, Metabou, Gavin, and Kamz stand out — should be really interesting players to watch at this event because they’ve all proven they can be successful in vastly different formats in the past, so you’d expect an early event in a new format to favor players who’ve shown they can adapt.

Several other players attending this event are near the top of the CP standings after the Fall. Paul Hornak (makiri) and Matt Souerby (matt) are part of the giant tie for 4th with 120 CP after doing pretty well in NorCal and Phoenix (and actually facing off in the round of 8 in NorCal). The always innovative former National Champion Mike Suleski (OmegaDonut) is part of that group as well, so this will be a pretty important event for all of them to try to pull ahead of each other with 9 of the 15 Regionals down after this weekend. After playing in what feels like all nine of those Regionals (it’ll actually only be four) Len Deuel (Alaka) is “only” sitting at 90 CP, so he’s definitely hitting the point where it’s going to be important to start finding bigger finishes to make the investment worth it. Hayden Morrison (hakemo) finished fourth last year, but is starting this year a little behind the 8-ball with a late start. Natalie Kaspszak (maski) finished 7th in Arizona, proving that contrary to what I wrote last Fall, she actually wasn’t less likely to make top cut than her father, Dadski. Shreyas Chanchi Radhakrishna (Shreyas) and Sam Johnson (RastaCharmander) were two surprise top cuts in the last Californian event, so it should be interesting to see if they can repeat the performances. Finally, Alec Wild (Pokemaster649) was one of the first players to start showing a lot of success online in XY and was one of those early adopters that started getting emulated, so it’ll be interesting to see if he can turn that into some CP or if he peaked a little too early.

The Smart Money is on… Omari Travis. While it’d be fun to be super bold and predict someone like PM649, it’s tough to go against Omari given his season so far. I was a little surprised at how well he did to start the season, since I figured it’d be the transition into XY where he’d be able to turn it on and use the skills he’d used to do well early in the older format to rack up some points. Instead, he dominated right out of the gate even though he had some catching up to do with the previous metagame. It’s hard to imagine his motivation is at the same level as some of the other players given that he basically only needs one more mediocre finish to make Worlds already, but I’m not betting against him.

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

Missouri Regional

Difficulty Rating:

/ 5

(A snowstorm, a Lapras that inexplicably makes it to the finals here every year, and two cold-looking Pokémon out of five)

Tournament Organizer: Vincent Krekeler

Stream: Swiss and Top Cut planned on bullados

Last Year’s Winner: Kamaal Harris (FonicFrog)

The Story

In many ways, St Louis’ roster feels like a repeat of the Ft Wayne Regional in the fall. The Midwest tends to see a pretty reliable mix of players, and that should stay true here, with six of the eight players who cut the most recent Regional returning. Both Ft Wayne finalists, winner Wesley Morioka and runner-up Kamaal Harris, will be back. Wesley sort of flew under the radar for a while after seeming to get busier with some real life stuff since his 2010 National Championship win, but he came back in a big way winning Ft Wayne last fall. Kamaal seems to be alternating up-and-down events, finishing 6-3 last weekend after the 2nd place finish in Ft Wayne and having a three loss performance before that one. He propelled himself into the 2013 World Championships by doing well in the final two Regionals of 2013, including winning St Louis last year, so we’ll see if he can repeat the cycle here (since he’s apparently due to top cut, anyway).

The semifinalists in Ft Wayne were Andrew Burley (Andykins) and Tyler Hagan (Tyler), both of whom are also attending. Andykins sort of had his first breakout performance in Ft Wayne after being the lone 7-0 in Swiss. Tyler seems to make it to exactly the semifinals of every Regional he attends, having done so three times in a row now. Two of the other top cut finishers from Ft Wayne should be showing up as well: David Mancuso (Mancuso), who had his first top cut finish in Ft Wayne and went 6-3 last week in Virginia, and Scott Glaza (Scott), the only 2013 Worlds qualifier I believe is attending other than Kamaal. A good chunk of the other 5-2s from Ft Wayne will be showing up as well, hoping to pick up an extra win or better resistance this time to end up in the cut. Notables include Collin Heier (TheBattleRoom), Chris Wiley (IceKingz), Andy Himes (Amarillo), Keegan Beljanski (Darkeness), Matthew Carter (mattj), and Jonathan McMillan (MrEobo).

There are also a solid grouping of players who did not play in Ft Wayne’s Regional last Fall. Tiffany Stanley (Shiloh) and Blake Hopper (Mrbopper) were the semifinalists of the Fall Houston Regionals, and they’ll be among the most likely contenders to get chunks of CP here. Shiloh always seems to be one of the players who have among the best performances over the course of the season according to CP, but never seems to end up in Worlds. Maybe the extra North American spots this year will change her luck. I feel like Mrbopper wasn’t someone anyone had very high expectations for until after Nationals last year, but he’s sort of come into the limelight through online performances, has been a regular Battle Spot player, and finally has a big chunk of CP to start the season. Nico Villalobos (Calm Lava), Jonathan Rankin (JRank), and Greyson Garren (GreySong) all top cut in St Louis in 2013, finishing 2nd, 6th, and 8th, respectively. Aaron Grubbs (LPFan) is another one of the players who has seemed stronger in XY, so it’ll be interesting to see how he does in this event. The last notable as far as previous top cut finishes is probably Kevin Fisher (Uncle Taint), who finished 16th at US Nationals last year.

The Smart Money is on… Going with Blake Hopper (Mrbopper) on this one. While I tend to go with the “safer” picks with more established players, as much as the top cut in Virginia would indicate otherwise, I still think XY is going to lead to some upheaval in the ranks and this is one of the events where I think it is more likely to occur. I think this is a particularly difficult event to call, though: St Louis is absolutely full of players who have been on the cusp of greatness, but who mostly never took that last step, with the exceptions of Kamaal and Wesley. This event should come down to whoever is the most prepared in XY… the results will likely be vastly different than what they would have been in an BW2 Regional with the same players. Expect some surprises here.

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

Oregon Regional

Difficulty Rating:

/ 5

(Some Pokémon I saw in Vancouver out of five)

Tournament Organizer: Chris Clanton

Stream: Planned on nuggetbridge

Last Year’s Winner: Randy Kwa (R Inanimate)

The Story

The northwestern Regionals always tend to be a little shallow, evident in Vancouver being removed from the VGC circuit, but it looks like it’ll be at least a little bit deeper this year. The favorite in this part of North America is usually Randy Kwa, Canada’s best player, this event’s defending champion, and one of three 2013 Masters Worlds players who will be attending the event. He should be facing a much stiffer challenge than last year, however. The only year Canada ever had a VGC Nationals, Randy was defeated by Tony Cheung (Chinese Dood) — who also knocked Randy out of the Regional he played in but didn’t win last year in the semifinals. Another ghost of Randy’s past who will be attending is fellow Worlds competitor Stephen Morioka (Stephen), who Randy beat in the top 8 of US Nationals last year, but lost to in US Nationals Swiss and more importantly, the last round of Worlds Swiss, stopping Randy from becoming the first Canadian to make it to the VGC top cut and allowed eventual finalist Ryosuke Kosuge in instead. Hopefully, we’ll see some of these rivalries renewed this weekend!

The other player from last year’s Pokémon World Championships attending is Zach Droegkamp (Zach). While his first two Regionals in 2014 have only netted him a comparably pedestrian 100 CP, Zach won three Regionals in a row spanning the 2012 and 2013 seasons and top cut another, so it’s hard to think of someone more dangerous in a Regional than Zach. One of the Regionals he won featured a semifinal victory over Sam Haarsma (DrFidget) and his un-EVed Beartic last winter in Florida. Fidget will also be attending and looking to start stockpiling CP after falling off in 2013 after a strong start to the season. The runner-up in Oregon last year was Alex Stempe (Stump), who is another player who had a pretty steady flow of strong finishes last year but didn’t quite make it to Worlds. Alex Ogloza (Evan Falco) is in a similar boat, and I feel like he’s bubbled out of about 60 Regionals this season already, too. The last conventional favorite is graduated Senior April Hooge (Phenac), who surprised the field with some unconventional team choices and a top cut finish last fall in NorCal.

Last year’s Swiss undefeated was another surprise, Aryana Welch (feathers), who will be looking for another solid finish this year. To continue with the theme of inexplicable respectable finishes by Nugget Bridge staff members, Rushan Shekar (Firestorm) will somehow be looking to build on the 100 CP no one is quite sure how he acquired in a field where he should confusingly end up getting at least a little more. Perhaps they and Randy will be motivated to avenge their fallen Regional (RIP Vancouver). Another Vancouver native those guys seem to be high on is Max Douglas (starmetroid), who top cut Oregon last year. Most of the other 2013 Oregon top cut names are not people I know very much about, so it should be interesting to see if they can continue to build names for themselves or if this will be a chance for some new players to break in.

The Smart Money is on… Zach Droegkamp. I’m sure he’d like to have the last few events of the BW2 format back, but it’s a Regional, predict Zach. Next.

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

And now for some bonus coverage!

Apex Pokémon Tournament

Difficulty Rating:

/ 5

(Now only four powerful Mega Pokémon but this time for sure a Regigigas that won’t get it going because of its Slow Start out of five)

Tournament Organizer: Angel Miranda (Sapphire Birch)

Stream: Finals planned on clashtournaments

Last Year’s Winner: Benjamin Rothman (Nightblade7000)

The Story

While we encourage people to host and attend them, most grassroots Pokémon tournaments don’t get too much coverage here. Apex is an important exception, and should easily be the most prestigious grassroots Pokémon event we’ve seen, offering greater cash prizes than an individual Regional and having a pretty respectable attendance of around 100 players this year. Apex is split up into eight double elimination pools, with the top two players of each pool making it into a top cut where they will try to win SO much money. Without the usual randomness of Swiss it should be a little easier to break down what is likely to happen at this event than usual, allowing me to go through by pool rather than to just rattle off a bunch of names. One thing that does continue to make things difficult to predict is late entrants, since some players who aren’t currently listed in a pool could vastly change the difficulty of some of the pools if they show up. As such, keep in mind that the pools are subject to change. I’ll look at the pools as we we have them for now, which can be found here. We’re actually missing a decent chunk of the players who were mentioned for Virginia’s Regional in this column last week, so hopefully a few of them will decide to come after all…

The first pool features last year’s runner-up Aaron Zheng (Cybertron) and a handful of players who are very interesting, but who wouldn’t be favorites in most pools. While Aaron has looked a little shaky lately, this should be a pretty easily pool for him. Other known players here mostly consist of Geoff Hamilton (PROFESSORLABCOAT), who made it into the top cut of Nationals last year, and Caleb Ryor (BlitznBurst). The most interesting player in the pool is definitely not any of those three and instead VG Tournament Planner Chris Brown (AlphaZealot). I’m not really sure what to expect from him as a player, but I’m pretty excited that someone in his position is… you know… actually playing the game, so hopefully he’ll get a few rounds in and get to get some tournament experience with XY to help guide his future decisions. With a round one win Chris would face off with Aaron round 2, with Aaron finally getting the chance to get revenge for his top 4 video not being uploaded to YouTube for approximately eight million years. Caleb and Geoff would run into each other in round 3 if they both make it, with the loser of that match facing off with the loser of Aaron/Chris in Round 4 of the loser’s bracket. Look for those matches to be exciting points in the pool in addition to the loser’s finals, though Aaron and Geoff are probably heavy favorites in this pool. However, it has recently been brought to my attention that Geoff’s team sounds like it might be a little too Geoff. So this one is pretty open.

Pool 2 is the Trista Medine (ryuzaki) quadrant, and like most other top seeds, one would expect her to have a fairly easy route to the winner’s finals. The best part of this pool is definitely the 3 seed being Shofu, because I’m pretty sure we could all die happy after watching Trista battle a YouTube/Twitch celeb. Unfortunately for that dream, the 2 seed Jiovaine Neita (jio) has a pretty good chance of blocking Shofu out of that situation. I think Trista and Jio are pretty heavy favorites here, but it should be interesting to see what happens and if some of us are underestimating Shofu.

Pool 3 is the dreaded Ray Rizzo (Ray) pool, fresh off of a Regional victory. While he’ll Stop at Nothing for another World Championship, I know he’s eager to get back in front of the camera instead, so I’m not sure he’ll be going hard if he has a shot at some face time. The 2 and 3 seeds in this bracket are top 4 NYC Elite 4 tournament finisher Ryokon and Virginia top 8 finisher Patrick Brodarick (wer). The mostly inevitable face-off between the 2/3 seeds should be particularly interesting in this pool, especially because I’d expect it to occur again in the loser’s final, but think Ryokon will be the one to make it out of the pool.

The fourth pool’s top seed is the defending champion, Ben Rothman (Ben7000). While he had an underwhelming Regionals performance, like most other one seeds I’d expect him to cruise through this pool. While Chuppa Cross (Chuppa) didn’t cut Regionals, he’s probably one of the stronger 2 seeds and I’d expect him to pose a serious threat to knock Ben into the loser’s bracket, somewhere he should be very comfortable after winning from it last year. The three seed in this pool is Codios, who had sort of a rough draw in this one.

Pool 5 is by far the most interesting of the groups so far. Enosh Shachar (Human) is a heavy favorite like all other one seeds after making it to the finals of Virginia, but he should actually be tested as early as round 3 of the winner’s bracket. At that point he could run into Solomon Croffie (Sol64), who stands out here as one of the few non-Americans in the tournament. He was 30th in European CP last year, which makes this the only pool that had more than one player with a Worlds invitation last year in it. The bottom half of the bracket features Tommy Cooleen (Tman), the undefeated from Virginia Swiss, and Jun Tumaneng (Cypher), who finished 14th at US Nationals last year. I think this is by far the most open bracket and one of the few cases where it’s actually realistic for the top seed not to make it without anything crazy happening or someone very good being added to the field through late registration, but it’s hard not to expect Human and Tman to make it through after last week.

Pool 6 is definitely most interesting for featuring the player who flew to Apex from Australia but only signed up for Pokémon, Van Gank. This is the extent of the information I have about this person, but hopefully he is ready to put up a great performance, because that sure seems crazy from the outside. The better known players in this pool are top seed Jeudy Azzarelli (SoulSurvivor), Adib Alam (honchkro13), and Tom Hull (TheGr8). SoulSur was one of a lot of people’s hipster picks to win last week, but he sort of had an off event, and honchkro looked weaker than he would have been expected from his finishes in the latter half of the BW2 format tournaments as well. I haven’t really seen much of TheGr8’s XY play either, so this may be a pool where there’s some opportunity for an upset. I’d expect Soulsur and TheGr8 to come out of it, though.

The seventh pool is another that seems a little weak based on recent performances, but it has the potential to be one of the more interesting pools. This is may be the only pool where I think the favorite may be someone other than the one seed, as it’s actually three seed Mosquito who has had the best recent tournament experience (though none in XY). I would expect the other spot in the pool to be contested by the top two seeds in the pool, Edward Fan (iss) and Luke Swenson (theamericandream38), who also faced off in the later stages of last year’s Apex tournament. Luke won that time — you may remember the hilariously overdone celebration if you watched last year’s stream — so hopefully iss will be planeing some revenge. iss is still the top rated American VGC ladder player on Battle Spot right now, so you’d think he’s the favorite for the other spot.

The final pool’s seeds feature William Hall (Biosci), Danny Zollner (Dan), and Chris Semp (pookar). In spite of being the 2 seed, Danny’s resume is by far the strongest of anyone in the pool, with three Worlds appearances between 2010-2012. He also had a solid 7-2 performance last week in Virginia. Biosci took last week off, but has looked pretty solid online. While I’m rooting for pookar to hilariously dunk Danny, pookar’s 3-5 finish in Virginia would indicate Dan and Biosci are heavy favorites here.

With Cybertron seemingly rocky lately and ryuzaki seemingly a little too busy to become as dangerous as she’ll be later in the season, I’d expect the top threats in the top cut to be the other established top seeds like Ray, Enosh, Ben7000 (who also had a rough tournament in Virginia) and some of the up-and-comers who are likely to make it into top cut like SoulSur and Chuppa. There’s a decent amount of cash on the line here, so I’d expect everyone to take it pretty seriously. With that in mind, I’d say…

The Smart Money is on… Enosh Shachar. Hard predicting this one: Ray’s heart doesn’t seem to be in it and he’s DTD with cholera or something, most of the other experienced players seem like they haven’t quite caught up to XY yet, and I’m not confident enough in any of the less established guys to risk a prediction here. The tougher pool makes this choice a little dangerous, but I think Enosh’s individual odds are the best even though this is one of those events where no one should feel like a favorite.

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

About the Author

Scott started playing VGC in 2011. He finished 17th at US Nationals, then lost in the final round of 2011 Worlds LCQ. He finished 10th in the 2012 World Championships and qualified for Worlds again in 2013 after going into US Nationals second in CP. Instead of playing, he commentated at US Nationals and the World Championships in 2013 and 2014. Follow him on Twitter @NBNostrom!

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