Articles

Published on January 10th, 2014 | by Scott

103

2014 North American Winter Regionals Preview Part 1: Virginia

After Fall Regionals continued with Black and White 2 for one last set of events, we finally have our first Pokémon X & Y events for Championship Points over the next three weekends. While we’ve gotten a taste for XY in tournaments from the Nintendo UK Winter Event series and some grassroots events, this weekend marks the first opportunity for players to progress in the circuit through Pokémon X & Y.

Every time I’m at home on an event weekend it drives me crazy, so with perhaps the most intriguing Regional tournament I can recall coming up on Sunday I definitely suggest that everyone who can attend does so. Virginia being the first Regional of Pokémon X & Y would be exciting on its own, but Virginia always seems to be the hardest Regional on the circuit due to the Winter Regionals being so spread out, which should be even tougher this year with attendance likely increased beyond what it would have normally obtained by being on an isolated weekend. The field of attendees is so deep that you could end up with a pretty respectable Nationals-size type cut, so seeing so many strong players competing in a brand new ruleset is really exciting for our game. There are a lot of really clever players who will be given a chance to showcase their viewpoints on what works in X & Y through the competition Sunday, so it should be exciting to see who is able to break the metagame that is currently establishing itself and to see which Pokémon are better and worse than their current perceptions. I think it is particularly exciting because as much as I’d have liked to see a ruleset with fewer Pokémon restricted, I think the format this year is dramatically improved over anything we saw during the BW and BW2 era due to some of the gameplay changes on XY. The more balanced gameplay will add some extra credibility to whatever results we get here. In spite of these events occurring very early in this format’s exploration, the winners of the upcoming Regionals will definitely deserve their placements, which has maybe not always been the case with the early events in some formats.

With this being the first tournament on XY for CP, it’s probably a good time for some quick reminders for our readers. The 3DS battery life is a little shorter than we might prefer for these events. Make sure you charge your 3DS before you leave your hotel room or home, because I am sure no Regional will have nearly enough charging stations for everyone. As a nice supplement, I am told these Nyko Power Paks will vastly increase your battery life and are something we should all probably be investing in. While I don’t know if Virginia is going to have any streamed matches, players looking to attend events that will have streams like St Louis’s Regional and APEX next week should keep in mind that you can’t move a digital copy of a game to a capture card to stream, so if at all possible it would probably be a really good idea for everyone to play on a physical copy of the game if you have access to one. Move those Pokémon over and start working on that Return happiness now!

Perhaps most importantly: Download the patch to update your game to version 1.2 before you go. You need your games updated to play.

Virginia Regional

Difficulty Rating:

/ 5

(Five powerful Mega Pokémon and a Regigigas that can’t get it going because of its Slow Start out of five)

Tournament Organizer: David Tuskey

Last Year’s Winner: Benjamin Rothman (Nightblade7000)

The Story

While all Regionals in the northeast tend to be full of VGC’s biggest names, Virginia’s place in the schedule and its proximity to APEX have made it the most intimidating Regional on the circuit. In 2013, Virginia was also perhaps the Regional that most made it seem like eight players was too small of a top cut for Regionals. Probably the hottest contested Regional of the 2013 season, the top 8 consisted of Ben7000, JiveTime, Andres Morales, TDS, plaid, wer, dtrain, and Dubulous, leaving out a chunk of 2013 worlds competitors in the cold because of their resistances, with Wolfe Glick at 10th, Ray Rizzo at 11, and Trista Medine at 14th, not to mention 2011 Worlds top 4/2012 Worlds top 8 finisher Matt Coyle at 12th. Expect things to be just as close this time, as most of those players will be contending for the top spots again and there are a gauntlet of other high end players trying to take the crown. One interesting change this year is that byes seem to have been quietly abolished, removing the advantage players who did well in Fall Regionals had last season, which led to some of those whiffs.

I tend to start these previews with the old guard because I think we’re still at the point where we old timers tend to be the favorites to top cut at most events, but especially as we move into a new generation, I don’t think that the reality is always going to match that expectation. Skill in this game tends to be somewhat universal regardless of ruleset, but the average player gets better every year and Pokémon is a game that requires a decent amount of specific knowledge about the available Pokémon to win at. Just like with generation four transitioning into generation five, I’d expect Pokémon XY and upcoming sixth generation titles will lead to some turnover toward the top. In 2011, the first year of Pokémon Black and White, we saw the rise of some players we take for granted as stars now like Wolfe Glick (Wolfey) and Aaron Zheng (Cybertron). For someone, the path to joining those names starts this January.

With that said, the northeast does feature the biggest chunk of people you’d probably want playing for you if you needed someone to win a Pokémon battle to save your life. All three of the biggest names in North America — 2010-2012 World Champion Ray Rizzo (Ray), 2011-12 US National Champion and 2012 Worlds runner-up Wolfe Glick, and 2011-12 Senior National Champion and 2013 Masters Worlds semifinalist Aaron Zheng — will be in attendance. It’s a little weird to be writing this, but things have sort of reversed themselves and now and Aaron is the one I’m concerned isn’t going to be taking the event seriously enough with his Worlds invitation already locked up, with Ray and Wolfe having a little more to play for after having their freebie invites last year. The former World Champion still doesn’t seem to be quite as practiced as he should be, but he’s still the best player our game has ever seen and should be a major threat to win the first Regional he’s actually needed to try in since 2010 in spite of being underprepared (please don’t use Torkoal). I think of the three players mentioned here, Wolfe is by far the most dangerous player at this event, as after a year where he could take things a little bit easier he’s put in like 300 games on the VGC ladder on Battle Spot already and will presumably be extremely prepared for this event.

What makes the northeast so intimidating is that there’s still a bunch of other former Worlds competitors to touch on before we even hit the normal favorites. Nationals runner-up and 6th place Worlds finisher Enosh Shachar (Human) was one of only a handful of players who cut three Regionals in 2013. After finally missing top cut at a Regional where he decided to use Charizard even though it was not yet time for Pokémon XY, he should do better now that Charizard can, in fact, Mega Evolve into something useful. Ben Rothman won this event last year after an impressive victory in APEX the previous week, culminating in one of the more impressive combined performances of the 2013 season, and after respectable performances at Nationals, Worlds, and the other Regionals he attended last season he’s solidified himself as one of the favorites at any event he attends. After a circuit with lower stakes last year after winning the 2012 Senior World Championships, Toler Webb (Dim) has quietly actually been very effective in his last two events, coming within inches of top cutting over Aaron Zheng in last year’s World Championships and finishing 2nd at the Texas Regional last Fall. He should definitely be one of the favorites in Virginia. The 2013 Worlds competitor I’m most curious to see the results of is Trista Medine (ryuzaki), because she seems to be in a similar spot to Ray where she hasn’t seemed to have had too much time to practice but is so good when she’s on that it might not matter very much. It’s hard to imagine any of the players in the last two paragraphs missing Worlds, so expect a giant chunk of the CP from Virginia to fall into their collective hands as they start charging toward DC.

As far as the bigger names that aren’t coming off of a Worlds invitation, Matt Coyle (PrettyLittleLiar) has sort of started flying under the radar a little after a 2013 season that wasn’t quite up to his usual standards, but he top cut Worlds two years in a row prior to last year for a reason. I’d probably lump him in with what I said about Trista and Ray, but you’ve got to figure the dice will land on the right numbers for him sooner or later (assuming he remembers to give his Pokémon items) and he did top cut his Fall Regional this cycle. His buddy 2011 Worlds competitor Simon Yip (TDS) had perhaps the most tragic season of 2013, missing out on a Worlds invitation only because of a couple Wi-Fi tournament disqualifications, but he is one player I know who actually has been playing XY pretty regularly, which should help him take a step towards some justice. Like Matt, Danny Zollner (Dan) also had a long series of Worlds invitations broken last year after having been invited every year since 2010, and while the 2011 US Nationals runner-up is unlikely to be using something as bizarre as Zebstrika this time, he seems much more comfortable than he has in the past couple of years and should be poised to make a comeback as a result. Matt Sybeldon (bearsfan092) had been kind of quiet since winning one of the first Regionals of 2013, but he went 8-0 in Swiss in Pennsylvania and he’s been working at XY on stream a bit. Hopefully, he will finally be using a team other than PM649’s, if only because if he complains about it any more it will become a meme and we definitely don’t need any more of those. While Michael Lanzano (JiveTime) never seems to end up in Worlds, he deserves a mention in this grouping of players because he has to be around top 5 for average Regionals finish of all Masters player over the last couple of years and already has a Regionals win this year, so history dictates he should do pretty well here, too. When I think about his Regionals history, it’s a little confusing to me as he never seems to make it at the end of the year, but the CP system has mostly started reversing those trends, so maybe this will be his year.

While most of the previously mentioned players were top finishers in a variety of events during the fifth generation of Pokémon, there was a large amount of turnover between 2010 and 2011 as we shifted into new games, and I would expect that we will similarly see some new stars rising with XY. While some of the people who seem to be working the hardest on XY are old stars — like Wolfe, for instance — there are definitely some other players who seem poised to jump the top. Jeudy Azzarelli (SoulSurvivor) recently won a local grassroots tournament that contained many of the bigger names who will be attending Virginia, including almost all of the former Worlds competitors, so in spite of not really having a notable body of work beyond that win his name has to jump up on the list as one of the better dark horse picks here. SoulSur and his pals Chuppa Cross (Chuppa) and the better known Angel Miranda (Sapphire Birch) have been spending a solid bit of time working on XY, and Chuppa is coming off a NB Live tournament win a week ago, so I think they should have a pretty good shot of cutting here. I will admit, however, that after Seel in Philadelphia I think I’m more interested in what Nugget Bridge’s favorite definitely-a-cute-girl-user Birch will be using than I am in how many matches he’s going to win. While Edward Fan (iss) spent the tournament SoulSur won being some sort of crazed real life bug catcher, he’s spent a lot of time playing and streaming XY and should come into this tournament more prepared than some of his better decorated competitors. In spite of not finally buying a 3DS until like a week ago or something, what I wrote about iss is true of William Hall (Biosci) as well (except for the fixation on weird Bug-types), who’ll look to increase his point total now that he finally gets a full season on the mainland. I’d be really surprised if either of these guys didn’t at least get close to top cut, and I think if you were to think of relative surprises that could end up with Worlds invites without going super deep at Nationals these two should both come to mind.

Even with several paragraphs of players being mentioned, I can’t help but feel like I’m leaving out some important names. Jonathan Hiller (MrFox) won Virginia last year in the Senior division and will be looking for his first top cut in Masters. Cameron Kicack (Stormfront), Adib Alam (honchkro13), David Mancuso (Mancuso), Alex Valente (avdc90), Patrick Brodarick (wer), Dan Levinson (dtrain), Tom Hull (TheGr8), and Tiago Maltez (CinderellaStory) all have at least one top cut in the last year under their belts and will be looking for another in Virginia. I’m sure I’m forgetting a decent chunk of obvious contenders even before the usual “every Regional has a couple players come out of nowhere and surprise us by making the top cut” caveat because the first XY Regional is overflowing with excellent players. There are a ton of players here who will deserve better fates than they end up with, but only eight players will finish in the top cut and the competition will be overwhelming. It should be incredibly exciting to see who comes out on top of a field as strong as this one, and many of them will be back in action again next week at APEX!

The Smart Money is on…: Frankly, the smart money isn’t on anyone this time — without any larger scale XY tournaments to speak of, any prediction seems as wise as the next. With that in mind, I guess I’m expected to pick someone, and if I were setting the betting odds for this event, my favorite would be Wolfe Glick. He’s proven he’s a contender for best in the world when he’s on his game, and of all of the players who have proven they’re among the world’s elite, Wolfe is perhaps the one who seems to be working the hardest right now, so I’ll side with him. He’s also the sort of player I think will be really good in the untested waters of a new metagame. Wolfe is someone who has shown he’s plenty comfortable innovating new strategies almost irrespective of metagame, which is perfect for a situation like what we have now where much of the metagame may be too unstable to rely on. The creative players tend to come out on top early in new formats, and as someone who is both creative and consistent, this should be Wolfe’s time to shine.

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

Photo by Doug M.

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!

Related Posts

New Mechanics Introduced in VGC 2016 →

VGC ’16 Pokémon Speed Tiers →

Hyper Offense Analysis – BadIntent’s Evil Thoughts →

Greener Grassy Terrain: A More Balanced Future For VGC? →