2014 Germany National Preview
The first European National tournament of the season takes place this weekend in Bochum, Germany. Due to no Wi-Fi events taking place this time, this year no player will have a first round bye. This tournament will almost solely decide who has a bye in the United Kingdom National tournament toward the end of May. Every player attending will be eager to get some Championship Points on the board as I feel that this year, more than ever, there are a lot of players travelling to multiple tournaments. The European circuit is finally developing into just that, and players are going to have to start venturing out to other events if they want to secure a place at Worlds. Thankfully after a little confusion, this event will now run at least eight rounds of swiss and a top 16 cut. While that’s not the level of improvement everyone was hoping for, it is still an improvement on the previous year.
Players to Watch
The tournament seems rather star-studded already, with a whole host of previous Worlds competitors in attendance along with the usual big names. This makes the event very open, as a couple of tough swiss round opponents early on can make all the difference for anyone’s run. I actually feel that we’re finally getting to a point in Europe where the number of participants at each event will be densely populated with players of a very high skill level. I’ll be surprised if we see ‘unknown’ players top cutting these events, but of course anything can happen!
Germany
Lots of German players are doing well this season, so in their home National tournament more than the rest, I expect them to have a very good showing. 13Yoshi37 top cut the Nugget Bridge Major and made the final of the IDM 2014. He’s also continually been among the highest ranked players on Battle Spot and has top cut the BisaBoard Major, so he is a clear favourite. DaFlo top cut the Nugget Bridge Major and has been performing well in the German online scene. Massi is a very strong player who managed to cut the Nugget Bridge Major (and knocked me out of it), while drug_duck is also seeming very up for it this time around after winning the Spring Open tournament on Bisaboards (along with cutting another online Major). Fatum made a top eight finish in the NB Major, which is very impressive. and countkroeterich went a step further than that, so both will fancy their chances to cut this weekend. Michilele is a player I’ve seen less of this season, but he has cut 4/4 Nationals in the past. so he will be looking to make sure that run continues. The other Major I’ve mentioned is the BisaBoard Major, which FastLustigerLega was seeded first in after swiss, going unbeaten. He also cut the UK National last year, so he will be a big threat. Then, we come to Lajo, who I think more-so than the rest has the ability to use something a little more outrageous and still come out on top (similar to things we’ve seen Ray and Wolfey do in the past with their teams). That’s not to say that other players can’t do this, but I believe Lajo is the best example. He also cut the Major, but with the Germans it seems better to ask who didn’t? I also need to mention Picollo and Billa as other great players who will be trying to claim the crown in their home country. I would expect all of these players to have a great chance to make the top 16.
United Kingdom
It’s hard to say if any of the UK players going to this event are having a good season, despite Nintendo UK hosting two separate VGC-style series already which will have no doubt been great practise. However, due to the sheer number of players from the UK travelling to this tournament, I would expect a few to make the cut. The only players who I would say have had notable success so far are El Fenomeno and WhiteAfroKing92 who both managed to reach the top four in the annual Manchester Pokémon Tournament. There’s also NidoRich who finished fifth in that tournament, losing out to the UK player who’s probably having the best of it so far this season in Zog (who isn’t going to Germany as far as I know, Europe can only take so much Zog a year) and Koryo, who managed a top eight finish at the Nintendo UK Winter Event last year. However, if we go back to last year, El Fenomeno and NidoRich finished 17th and 18th after swiss repsectively, while Koryo top cut two Nationals and finished 17th in the other. The rest of the top players are more name-drops than anything, but any of these guys can turn it on if they want to and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them top cut, so here’s the list (most of whom played at Worlds last year): Kyriakou (reigning UK National champion), Baz Anderson (undoubtedly only ever misses the good stuff by one place), Osirus (spends too much time playing in silly bands compared to on his 3DS), SuperIntegration (will wear a suit to VGC), SeanSymphony, Lord Gatr, SqishyRina, SPEevee and I guess Havak too. There are plenty of other British players coming, so I hope they can make a name for themselves. Also, who knows, maybe we can expect more than just a cameo appearance from gec, Ant, and tblakey89?
Other Countries
Normally I’d roll with sections for Spain, Italy, France… However, the tournament seems to have less players from these countries, and it’s hard to find too much information on all of them. I know that we’ve got Matty and BraindeadPrimeape travelling over from Italy, along with mprox and of course current World Champion Mean! All of whom I expect to put in a strong showing. The only Spanish player who I know that has announced their attendance is Arbol Deku, but I’m sure the Spanish army will be there in some force. As for France, do they even play any more? Even Poland has Szymoninho, with LolNub representing the Netherlands on his own!
Who will win?
There are a lot of players capable of winning this tournament, so I’ll leave that question for you guys to answer. No, really, post in the comments and tell me because I have no idea. Good luck to everyone attending! May the #BANTZ commence.
About the Author
Havak has competed in the VGC series since 2009 when it was first introduced to Europe, qualifying for the World Championships in 2011. Since 2009, he has also been a big influence in the United Kingdom's competitive scene by helping run local tournaments.
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such a strong showing, it’s insane
I look forward to seeing how the tourney unfolds!
also lajo2win
With me that’d make only 2 players from the Netherlands attending the National? Are there really so few of us? O.O
Offended.
I can see the IP you’re posting from.
Road to Worlds has begun! Good luck to all of you participating in Germany!
Great write up mate its going to be a amazing tournament full of top class players.
Make that 3. I guess there might me a few more, but not really that much. I guess that’s the reason there is no National in the Netherlands for VGC.
kine sorge vin da
Cant see anything besides a gini win here
Cant see anything besides a gini win herefoodking to win
i even dont deserve a mention here, this years metagame seems to me like a big random hole
Make that 5 already. I go with 2 friends of mine, one is also on this forums (MrMarc). Really excited for my second nationals, let’s hope I don’t leave to early this year, so I won’t regret it again for the whole year.
Pretty anxious to see how this one turns out. With only three live events, each tournament in Europe is so important, but especially this one because Germany looks like it might be the strongest country outside of Japan in this format. I like Germany’s National being first in that regard, since this should be a particularly challenging tournament and the people who end up with byes in the others because of it are likely to be very deserving. The odds for each individual player in this one are really rough, though: winning this one is going to mean a lot for whoever does it. As far as predictions, while picking against Matty in these tournaments always seems like a bad plan, I think I’m expecting someone like Yoshi, Massi, Lajo, or drug duck to take it for Germany in this one. I’m sure a lot of players have been practicing hard this year, but it’s a little easier to predict the Germans since they’ve been practicing more where I can see, lol.
There’s a ton of individual players I’m really eager to see perform here because I’m curious if they can live up to their 2013 finishes. I think it takes a couple years in a row of consistently good play to end up in that group of players we just expect to be in Worlds every year. With so much new blood playing for European countries in Vancouver last year, I’m curious who will be able to follow it up with another good year and who won’t. Tyvyr and lprox in particular will be fun to watch after the Worlds top cuts last year — I haven’t seen either of them play nearly enough to have strong opinions about them, so I’m hoping to learn about more about their skill level by how they do in the next month since they’re likely to make Worlds again with the bonus CP from 2013. Michilele and Baz are a couple other players I’m really eager to see the performances of after how consistent they were last year. There’s a ton of players I think have proven they’re already in that elite group like Kyriakou and the Ginis who I’m interested to see the teams of more than anything — always cool to see what the top players think about the metagame through their team choices. I’ll be curious to see how seriously Mean takes this too — Ray never seemed to be hurt much by taking entire years off, but I think that’s a bad plan for most people, so hopefully Arash will at least playtest something serious a little.
I think qualifying repeatedly in the CP system means a lot. There’s a lot of players I think are really good online I would be hesitant to predict to do well because they don’t have consistently good finishes in the real life events. There are also a lot of players with question marks next to their names for me here, either because they have a small tournament history, because they’ve put up some weak events in the past, or because they seem to have not been playing XY much… I’m very interested to see who comes on top of this one. I feel like a lot of people could either do really well or really poorly, but I think the people who come out on top of this one should be early favorites to do very well at Worlds.
I should also note I’m also curious if Havak will be right in his assertion there’ll be few/no unknown players in the top cut. The trend in the US was mostly the opposite this year — we have our group of elite players, sure, but there were way more people making a name for themselves than usual this year Perhaps because of a combination of XY bringing more players into the competitive fold (which might not happen as much for Europe starting so far after the release of XY) and perhaps some of it is this format allowing for it a little more than some of the previous ones. I’m kind of hoping for some surprises in top cut either way: I think it’s good for the health of the game when there’s a decent bit of new blood breaking in. It seems like Europe has significantly fewer higher rated Battle Spot players that aren’t already established names (I guess Hibiki probably deserves a shoutout in that regard) than the US did, which accounted for a lot of our surprise finishes.
Good luck to all the competitors and I hope you all have a fantastic time!.
its worlds or bust for us dutchies anyway, Regardless, good luck to this weekends participants, lets see who comes out on top
Well, there goes my beautiful difficulty rating, RIP.
Departing in a few hours and had not a single game of Pokémon in the last week. That may be a good thing because the practice just before that caused me nothing but frustration, but I don’t know, haha.
Predicting I go 5-4 / 5-3. Or I just finally put in the good performance and top cut and go from there
Wow, that’s quite a line up. Good Luck all !
Afro to win! Excited to see how this turns out and I hope it’s going to be streamed
Come on MSK!!! Do it for our separate areas of England combined =P
I’m so excited!
Too bad I couldn’t attend this year to represent Denmark in the most mediocre of ways (it was originally planned, but I had to ultimately decide not to attend due to economical issues).
Best of fun to everyone playing! I hope to see some reports and whatnot after this weekend!
Maybe some replays too?
Lajo for Worlds!
Massi ftw, bring it home to Deutschland.!
Gonna be an extremely difficult tournament tomorrow with so much strong competition. I’d consider myself lucky to come out of this with a decent amount of CP but looking forward to it nonetheless. Need to get some sleep now though, it’s coming up to 48 hours without any sleep!
Guys your writing off your highest threat even mean is scared of me its the one the only foodking and when i win tormerw i will do a lap of honour around the outside of the venue and then get drunk
Will there be some sort of streaming for the event?
I think so, might only be on Sunday though. External
Also, forgot to say that I’ll donate a nice German beer to everyone who contributes to me making Sunday by resistance with a record of 5-3 or better. No one in their right mind wants to drop on me! :3
No stream, according to AZ on Twitter
Screw germany, it’s time for some more Italian Domination #IdreamofGini
Also yes I am still mad at all of the germans for ruining my major bracket in some form or another
What about one of the current NB Major finalists Bjart? I thought he was from Germany x)