2014 International Challenge – June
The second and final International Challenge is coming up in a few weeks! As the final chance for European players to earn points before Worlds and North American players to earn points before Nationals, it’s going to be a very heated event! The Top 128 players in each age division from each of those two regions will receive Championship Points for their efforts.
The International Challenge is an online ladder-based tournament. You will be able to play up to 20 battles per day (unplayed games will roll over to the next day) from 00:00 UTC on Friday, June 20th, 2014 (5:00 PM PDT on Thursday, June 19th ) to 23:59 UTC on Sunday June 22nd, 2014 (4:59 PM PDT on Sunday June 22nd).
To register, you’ll need to have an account on Pokemon.com and register your game with the Global Link. Your game must be attached to the same account that has the player ID you use to play in Regionals, Nationals, and other events in the Play! Pokémon program if you want to receive Championship Points. You will be able to participate if you are one of the first 50,000 players to register on the Global Link for the event between 00:00 UTC on Thursday June 12th, 2014 (5:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, June 11th) and 23:59 UTC on Thursday, June 19th, 2014 (4:59 PM PDT on Thursday, June 19th).
The tournament will use the Standard ruleset and should prove to be the most competitive tournament yet with thousands of players worldwide playing to prove themselves and increase their chances at a World Championship invite! Championship Points will be awarded as follows:
| Placement | Points |
| 1 | 10 |
| 2–8 | 8 |
| 9–16 | 4 |
| 17–64 | 2 |
| 65–128 | 1 |
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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Ending Day 2 with 29-11 and in the low 1700s. Found out today my Rotom-H spread really sucks, couldn’t even KO a Raichu at 95% with Overheat. Defenitely gonna re-EV it after the tourney’s over.
I know this message was posted a while ago, but I know who it is – one of my Pokemon group buddies called James. Not sure if you know him, he’s not on Nugget Bridge
32-8 after day 2, I was 1798 before winning my last one so I should be 1800+ now!
Now for 1900?
I hope you saved some videos ~
14-7, kinda bummed out by those 5 losses but those were all missplays by me. should be slightly over 1600 though so I guess thats better then last month.
Also battled some Ashby dude that had the nuggetbridge.com thing up, so GG to him since I lost that one.
im curently 16-5 i lost one due to my entire team geting 3 turn sleep but i could have prevented that if i brought rotom in. Also lost one to 3 dark pulse flinches but in one game i won vs full hp kahn and 1/2 aegi with my azu in red and speedy aegi.
That happened to me! It was my first loss!
I’m 6-2 right now. Haven’t played too much.
Could be a case of me playing him before or seeing him at Manchester or something :3
Is it just me or is the ranking system ‘easier’ this challenge than the last? My win loss ratio is approximately the same, and yet I’ve gotten a better ranking this time round.
Also really disappointed to have battled a well known NB player, only to have them dc on me when they were about to loose. At first I thought their Internet connection was iffy, but after reading an earlier post in this thread that another player was also dc’ed upon by them when they were about to loose…yeah. Just glad the loss is still recorded in gen 6.
His NB name is TheAshAttack
Awful day for me all in all. Finished my 40 games despite being on a severe tilt at the end, mainly because I know I probably won’t get all my remaining games done tomorrow, but oh well, it was a laugh using Furfrou!
Went on a disgusting 8 or 9 game losing streak and was just relieved to stay in the 1600+ ratings after that.
I think the only player I recognised that I battled today was DaWoblefet, so gg!
Just play instead of whining and trying to indirectly expose someone. You still got your points and he/she still got a loss.
Then perhaps you should take your own advice and not whine about people whining.
Have only done 11 battles as it stands, I’m at 7-4 including the two wins I was robbed of thanks to my awful internet connection :’) had a 5-loss streak thanks to them yesterday, went on tilt pretty bad but am starting to claw my way back over 1500 haha. Just had a pretty great battle with a Michael from New York who was over 1600, made a really ridiculous misplay which cost me the game 3: (choice item + forgetting immunities = disaster~). Overall having fun and enjoying the practice now, most ‘interesting’ things I’ve seen are no-item Blast Burn Charizard, an evasion team (Double Team Goodra and Minimise Drifblim) that I beat 3-0 just as the timer ran out, and a TWave Mega Ttar which was rather intriguing.
May do a few more battles tomorrow, we’ll see! Wish I wasn’t so tired all the time, that’d help ;~; love my team though, Staraptor is working wonders <3
Only managed two matches today, both pretty good wins where I played pretty well. So I’m on 17-5 with tomorrow to do a bunch, let’s do this! I want to prove myself and having a good record is a good way to earn a reputation :3
Played far from my best today, probably due to lack of incentive but I can’t complain due to some of the matches I’m getting. Had a strange start playing in game teams before finding R Inanimate who gave me a good pasting and then Billa immediately afterwards using a very strange team that I started strong against then started playing like a complete fool and barely scraping the win. Currently 17-5 and hope to improve on that at some point on Sunday.
The highlight was coming back against a sun team with a mega Gyarados after getting unlucky and effectively starting 1-4. I have no idea how it pulled through but needless to say, that player will not sleep on a Gyarados again
Just took a bad loss to hax in a 1v2 situation where both opponents were seeded vs my m-venu.
Currently facing off with Randy! GL mate!
Edit: GG Randy T.T
Not doing as well as I hoped (11-10), but I at least feel more comfortable with this team than I did during the last International Challenge. Probably gonna replace a poke or two afterwards, still.
My record is 43-12 and my rating is around 1820s. Had a nice battle with TechnoZ earlier. Battle Vid: 3QTW-WWWW-WWW8-2TX6
Probably gonna stop for the rest of the tournament.
Should be around 1700 right now, gonna try to hit 1730 or so then stop.
But also have a fun battle code: JXVW-WWWW-WWW8-2TB5
I call it: “That’s what you get for using DV Smeargle with +6 Evasion”
I struggled at first but deffinelty playing a lot better now. Having much better matches than the past competition. My opponents generally seem far more competent. Only observation I can make is they there seems to be a whole lot more aerodytcal than I expected and far less meowstic(and swagger strategies in general). With that said I did face a murkrow+wobbofet perish song setup. Shut that down quickly though.
Taking a break sitting at 29-6 with a rating of 1800+. I’ll probably try to get 5 more matches done tonight, then see what the schedule calls for tomorrow since I have to work.
I’d like to give a nice shout out to Gengarboi who decided it was a good idea to spam double King Shield and wait out the timer every turn when the game was 100% lost for him.
What CP range do you guys reckon will land me a top 15 spot on the american/canadian rankings?
i have a good score currently.. but not enough time to play all. got like 20 more matches to play and i don’t know if i should stop.
Probably could have done without that 14 game stretch where I went 7-7, and a net change of -3 points.
But that gives me a few things to look at and see if I need to make some adjustments.
Currently, 36-15, 1780. 9 games left.
You will probably need to be close to 1800, if not a little over that.
yeah.. my score is pretty good.. around a healthy 1810 ish.. guess i should stop
Day 3 – Finished my last 20 battles impatiently. Salamence and Smeargle were surprisingly less common than I had expected. However, there were a lot more Swagger users this day, and they were quite successful against me. Charizard-Y’s are still invulnerable to Rock Slides – Game Freak please patch. Everything but my pokemon are invulnerable to Sleep Powders – Game Freak please patch. I battled two hail teams with Mega Abomasnow, both of which were pretty cool save the second one with Hi Jump Kick turning into Hi Jump Miss and me discovering that -speed natured Scrafty is slower than Quiet Aegislash. I had no random DC’s, which was good.
I battled a few more Showdown players, one of which was a rematch, but he was unfortunately the only one where I managed to get lucky against him rather than the opposite. Although I still had 1-sided matches on both ends for whatever reasons, I also had some good matches that were very close I had enjoyed participating in. I went 12-8, which was slightly better than yesterday, bringing my overall record to I believe 37-23 in the mid-low 1600 ratings, something I again was disappointed in compared to last month’s IC.
Before I and/or anyone else gets a lecture on complaining and blaming every game they lost on hax – I’m aware that hax is part of the game, and there were multiple instances where I still could have recovered and won the game and/or put myself in situations that put me at less risk of this opposing luck, plus there were multiple games where I admit that I was simply outplayed. I try not to complain about it, especially since there are instances when I get the advantage with RNG. However, since I had the RNG odds against me for far more matches than any laddering session I ever had, only this was the last big tournament I could participate in this season since I can’t go to nationals, I feel like I had to vent a little, even though it’s just a rated E game targeted at younger audiences.
My silly rant aside, let me actually post my team:
It’s basically the same team as before, except with the change of replacing Rhydon with Zapdos to beat Talonflame without being a sitting duck in every other situation, especially in rain (Thanks to Zach by the way for generously giving me a spare one at the last second). Mienshao and Venusaur have still proven to make generally solid support for my team; Pyroar was still fun to use and did large amounts of damage and KO’s to my opponents, especially with Mienshao supporting it. Azumarill was still good at sweeping teams after setting up a Belly Drum provided I didn’t get burned from a Scald or something like that, as well as letting my team handle dragons nicely. Aegislash with Wide Guard helped with Garchomp’s Earthquakes and Rock Slides and Charizard-Y’s Heat Waves, both of which my team wasn’t fond of. Zapdos did very nice amounts of damage, even when it wasn’t boosted by Expert Belt, and replacing Ancientpower with Thunder Wave at the last second proved to be the right call, as the speed control helped me win multiple games when it was out, especially against teams with rain or strong scarfers.
However, I discovered multiple problems I and my team had:
Mega Kangaskhan with Protect proved to be a huge problem against my team, as I usually played recklessly with Mienshao and HJK’d first turn predicting the Fake Out, which usually worked out in most situations. When the opponents that brought M-Kang later in the game, which is what you should generally do with it, I had usually failed to conserve Mienshao or my status inflictors properly, which in many scenarios allowed it to simply sweep my team. Granted, M-Kang is one strong mom that’s a problem with almost every team if played right.
Meowstic-M was surprisingly more problematic against my team than expected, mainly since I felt like I had used Quick Guard less frequently this IC than the last one. Because of that, I got punished with Swaggers and Thunder Waves, which with my luck this tournament let its partners wreck havoc against me.
Mega Charizard-Y was another huge problem, as like M-Kang was usually handled by Mienshao, but in this IC my Rock Slides were hitting every pokemon it was against BUT Charizard-Y. However, Rock Slide Mienshao being my only consistent offensive answer to it (I still had Zapdos, but it’s slower than Zard) is not the most reliable thing; the bulkier Zard-Y’s could actually live the Rock Slides, but that usually wasn’t a problem with me since Pyroar usually weakened it first with Hyper Voice. While I still had Wide Guard Aegislash and Thick Fat Mega Venusaur that could combat against it spamming Heat Wave, if Zard-Y had Overheat, then those quickly went down.
Ferrothorn and Aegislash were two bulky steels that were potentially very annoying to face if I made a bad lead matchup or my few checks/counters were not chosen or KO’d; if the latter happened, I would have to spend a large amount of time whittling their health down should I put myself in a dominating position.
Swagger was a luck-based annoyance I had to deal with, and with my Mienshao being the only way to combat that with Quick Guard, I felt I should have been able to play more defensively with it.
In my general losses apart from the RNG stuff, I made many more risks than I should have, such as randomly HJK’ing into Protects or switched ghost pokemon with Mienshao or using Belly Drum on Azumarill at the wrong times. I should learn to play less recklessly.
Despite some of my incredibly frustrating experiences with this IC, I still was able to have a good learning experience and fun matches. I hope to participate in more tournaments in the future next season, hopefully with more experience and less luck against me.
I am so done right now! im now 25-11 and under 1700 cause i kept getting matched with people at -1650! The gimmicks ive seen are so haxy and unreal I need some sleep 1 loss i was ok with the others were just like seriously! I have yet to be matched with anyone over 1750 besides the one korea rain guy at 1836! I wish the match ups were more accurate. I lost 40pts in one loss with a guy at 1630 who used lv1 smeargle (i take full blame for losing to this my tierd brain though standstrom would ohko) but only gained 5 from a win with a guy at the sameish rating. *rant end* imma gonna go sleep and hope ill be more alert tommrow. Also i relized my team is meh at best and im trying rain now.