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.
Related Posts
Nugget Bridge Update →
GS Cup Announced as Pokémon’s 2016 Ruleset →
2016 Pokémon World Championships Date & Location Surfaces →
I am ending after 42 battles – ten more than last time, so that’s an improvement on my patience I suppose.
Finished with a 34 win – 8 loss record (two disconnections from my side), which I am pretty pleased with.
This season has gone horribly for me, so I am quite pleased I finally have a team I am happy and fairly confident with.
One team member will be altering its EVs slightly, so this tournament has been like a fine comb for the team – it feels pretty optimal now.
IF I make it to Worlds, the LCQ is mine!
Well, I think if anyone is using one of those Moody Dark Void Smeargles, should not apologize or complain about luck. Somehow you are playing around it (more than the opponent) since the moment you use that Pokemon xd
10 more games left and at 34-16. Absolutely no way I’m getting CP from this, but I’m at least getting good mental and team playing practice. Got Smeargle’d hard for the first time today and cemented more that I need to drop WoW, because the first time I used it in like 30 games it missed and I should’ve just Overheated the Amoonguss anyways. Ah well.
Highest rating today was around 1818. Thought I could battle some more, but I should have stopped while I was ahead. Ending somewhere around 1780+. Managed to take a good look at what the meta sort of looks right now, and that’s all that matters.
As i said on twitter im not bothered at all with that game because im not playing for CP and wouldve forfeited if i was in a winning position because that was my final game and i would rather you had the points. Also, that was certainly not the first time that ive faced a -1 accuracy smeargle this IC that has had a 100% hit rate on its dark voids. Would you not consider running non moody smeargle or does moody help more often than not?
I think I’m gonna stop at 48 games, not in the mood to do 12 more. Overall good experience though, 33-15 with a 1717 rating isn’t anything to laugh at. In retrospect, playing without sleep was bad but I can’t change that. Also had quite a few internet drops (and one where I reached for “B” but hit the power button instead). Hoping to snag 1 CP from this and call it good.
A few thoughts on my team:
Gardevoir: Great as always, very consistent and brought it about 90% of my matches. Psyshock over Psychic was a toss up, but I find it helps more in taking out Rotom’s and other threats.
Aegislash: Had a ton of fun with Aegislash. Wide Guard is excellent on him and a great win condition against Garchomp, being able to completely shut it down against Gardevoir. Brought to about 75% of my matches.
Rotom-H: While I need to rework the EV spread, Rotom is consistent as always and helps patch the holes in this team. Great Pokemon, and very happy wiht its performance. Brought to about 40% of matches.
Kang: While on surface level this looks standard, the spread is something I’m rather proud of and helped me win a ton of matches. There’s a reason its the Queen of VGC this season, so I’m glad I got to use it fairly well. Brought to all but one match against a mono-fighting team.
Dragonite: Taking Dragonite off the team now. While he was certainly fun to use and helped my Smeargle match up with E-speed (which, if my speed is higher, does out-prioritize Follow Me which won me a match) I wouldn’t use him again simply because he was hard to use and didn’t bring a ton to the table. Brought to about 5% of matches.
Lucario: I was very on the fence about using Scarf Lucario, but in the end I was happy with it. Fun to use, and offered a lot of support that I needed. In the future I would most likely use some other form of coverage than Bullet Punch, but it did help with Aerodactyl once which was fun. All in all, it surpassed all my expectations I had for it. Brought to about 85% of matches.
Finished in the high 1700’s. Peeked 1793 with 18 games to go before tilting and losing the next 6 of 7. Was really disappointed because I wanted to hit at least 1850. There were some ridiculous “hax” moves that happened like Scarf Gardevoir Thunderbolt Para Full Para on Blastoise to win, Ferrothorn missing Power Whip 3 times in a row, but I don’t you guy don’t want to read stuff about that. I was pretty convinced that this was the team I wanted to bring to nats, but this IC showed me other wise. There were too many flaws and I either need to scrap the idea completely and do a massive overhaul.
Notable players I played include: (Sorry if I missed you, I probably played a couple more of you but didn’t recognize your trainer name)
TKOWL-Win
Cybertron-Win
Amarillo-Win and a Loss
KingofMars- Intentional Draw, ended up stealing 3 points for him.
Shaman-Loss
Dozz-Win
Metabou-Win
SoulofAtherym-Loss
Gengarboi-Win
Some things I learned
Every Megatar has Earthquake
Everyone has one random gimmick to beat Ferrothorn
People don’t learn and keep Thunderbolting into Follow Me Pachirisu
Modest Salamence does so much more damage than Timid
I went 12-8 all three days for the 36-24 record. I learned a few weaknesses so I can shore those up before Nats. A little discouraged though, obviously playing .600 just won’t cut it. Not too much hax really, gotta say barring 1 or 2 games that I felt I got hosed, I either deserved the win or loss.
I went 12-8 all three days for the 36-24 record. I learned a few weaknesses so I can shore those up before Nats. A little discouraged though, obviously playing .600 just won’t cut it. Not too much hax really, gotta say barring 1 or 2 games that I felt I got hosed, I either deserved the win or loss.
Sorry for double post. bidoof phone
For me, Moody feels like it has a 20% chance of getting an opening boost that can allow me to rob people from a win, +2 speed is obviously the big one, but things like +acc and +evade are always pretty solid, +def/spdef can be situational. That’s pretty scary. I think the number of battles in the IC where I can say that Moody pretty much bailed me out of a tough situation, or turned a close match into a on sided slaughter would be at least 6 or 7 games in 59. Where as I can probably say that the times it might have directly been the cause of my loss (due to -speed) would be 1 game, 2 tops.
Would I consider non-moody? Sure. It does mean that I can screw around with praknsters who try to use Swagger, as Smeargle isn’t affected. Also, if I’m planning to use a Transform Smeargle, as Smeargle’s moody boosts are lost after Transforming. But I think for the team I play, Moody is the ability of choice.
This is the team I ran (the same team I used at Manchester but replacing Druddigon with Gigalith, so the report I decided to write will cover most of this team in more detail if anyone is that interested).
Ended up 36-24, starting pretty well in the first day before losing form over the next couple of days in a sort of rush to play all 60 games.
Finished at a rating of 1803 most likely, with a record of 41-18. I hit past 1800 with one game left, but didn’t want to play it out. I’ll just hope that my feeling that the competition was tougher this time was actually true, and that 1803 is enough for 4 points. While I can say that I could have done better, as I had a number of battles where I choked away a win, my record is what it is and I’ll just need to look forward and make adjustments for Nationals if needed. I think I had relatively few battles where I lost due to luck factors, for better or worse.
I ran the same team as before, Blastoise Smeargle, so I’ll spare you the details of the team. I hadn’t really touched the team in a month, so it was nice to know that the team’s still got it in it.
I faced quite a number of players I could recognize the names of this time, compared to last time. People I faced include:
Baz Anderson, seasickness, matt, PM649, keewan, SHINE, see miruo, Lati, and melevin9
I’ll probably make another post in this topic with a spreadsheet link later with a bit of statistics on what I used/what I faced.
Ended with a 44win-16loss finish almost with 1800 points.
The team I played was pretty fun, I worked on it a bit after testing its first version in a friendly vs Spain where I played Deku with it, and I have to say this version isn´t exactly what I would call an Improvement:
My core four was Rhydon, Charizard, Trevenant and Scrafty. I know I would need a fairy or Steel type to deal with dragons, but Mawile as second mega did not do me any favors in dealing with Chandelure and Sun teams, so I tried Azumarill.
Azumarril with Assault Vest was pretty cool. Surviving Solar Beam and retaliate with Waterfall was game changing chip damage to win me games, and I also used Superpower and Waterfall quite often. In fact, it helped me in dealing with Chandelures with ease. I used a spread that allowed me to outspeed Garchomp under Tailwind and was quite happy with that choice since it won me two or 3 games.
Aerodactyl, my second choice, was to deal with Rock slide users and give me a fast mode. I also used it to deal with sun teams and Smeargle, which worked out quite often. The Taunt also helped me in shutting down Rotom-Heat completely in combination with Rhydon. In hindsight, I would try Protect>Taunt or rocky helmet on it though, since almost always my Aerodactyl got fake´d out and I couldn´t use the focus sash at all.
Rhydon+Charizard was boss and won me so many games. Rotom-Heat got quite popular and this team really appreciated it, and the core of Amoonguss-Rotom-H-Azumarril stood no chance against it(in a hax-free game).
Trevenant helped quite a lot, too in dealing with Kangaskhan and Perish Trap.
However, I struggled against strong opponents who were aware of Rhydon in the back and played very cautiously.
Mega Tyranitar in special was a big Problem, since its often paired with Amoonguss and I have only charizard to deal with that little Mushroom in short time. Not Only Amoonguss, Grass types in general were a bit problematic, since I had to be very careful with Charizard here.
Having Charizard as only special attacker seems to make me vulnarable to intimidate, but in fact it didn´t. The bigger issue would be to play Charizard in the best way- with Options like Trick Room, Tailwind, Taunt, Wide Guard, Quick guard and Fake out and Lightningrod I have so many support options I often found myself in a situation where I´d like to pick at least 5 of my members and its hard to decide which one not to bring.
So all in all, this team was very tricky to play, but was quite fun to use
Since everyone else is posting their team in picture form, I’ll join in (Standard abilities BTW):
The team idea came from when I was looking at this banner:
“I think I’ll make a team using these three Pokemon for fun!” I went with Scarf Aurorus because I felt it wouldn’t have worked very well otherwise and went with LO Ttar because I liked the coverage.
I then decided to use Azumarill as my 4th pick. I was originally going to go with CB but decided to go with BD instead. Looking back, CB might have worked significantly better. I was originally going to go with Aegislash and Rotom-H for my last two. However, I didn’t want Aegislash’s ground weakness so I went with Skarmory instead. As for Rotom-H, I was worried about the water weakness. I then thought of Rotom-W, but then 4 members of my team would be weak to grass. So I went with Mega Manectric and then proceeded to forget to put Volt Switch on it. Oops.
Then I didn’t realize until after I had my team locked in that I had forgotten to give Garchomp EQ. That hurt a lot and I ended up basically having a 5 Pokemon team. I also wish I had given Aurorus Nature Power over Icy Wind. That would’ve helped quite a few times, but Aurorus was still probably the most useful Pokemon on my team.
Things I struggled with:
-Aegislash.
-BB Pikachu/Raichu, though that’s my fault for not thinking things through when playing
-Safeguard Swagger spam, though that’s probably entirely my fault for not using Skarmory right.
-Zard X. There’s probably some “D’OH!” way to deal with it with this team though.
-Keeping Aurorus away from its 4x weaknesses. I was embarrassingly bad at this in quite a few matches.
-This Florges + Gogoat Lead. I knew exactly what they were going to do, too, since I had thought of that combo before*, but I still played that very badly. I lacked Nature Power on Aurorus so I tried to Hyper Beam Gogoat. Ran into a Protect once and then missed twice. I then tilted hardcore.
-Espeon
-Multiscale Dragonite
-EQ Kanga
-Scarf Iron Head Garchomp
-Gengar
-Stuff I didn’t expect in general
Ended at 14-13, 1499. Shout-out to the 1117. For the upcoming HGSS Cup-style tourney I’ll probably take what I’ve learned here and try to make a serious team. And maybe actually double-check my moves. That would be nice.
42-18 here. Should be at 1770~
This was a weird IC. I got a lot of hax in my favor and some painfull hax against me. I’m happy, tho, that the most important matches for me were the ones I didn’t get that much hax (in my favor).
I’d like to say GG to everyone I faced, namely: TKOWL; KingOfMars (twice); Steven Morioka; LPROX.
I’m having some issues with Paint, so I won’t be posting that Battle Box picture, but I can tell that I was using Megatar; Amoonguss; Rotom-H; Salamence; Aegislash; Garchomp.
I’m kinda sad bc I reached 1810 and derped on my last 2 battles, but I don’t think my record is that bad.
Ended up bellow 1600 with a record of 28-18.
Look at it. Isn’t it disgusting? I think I’m gonna puke.
Similar to MrEobo, my swift swim user was absolute crap.
However, missing isn’t the only reason why rain is absolute grimer.
1. If I don’t bring ferrothorn, I rely on hitting hydro pump to KO kanga. Even though there are some rain teams that don’t have this problem, having the double water limits my options causing me to have fewer kanga checks than possible.
2. Lack of defensive switches into Kangaskhan and dragons. Again, without a steal type these mons can get a free 70+ percent on any pokemon on the team. Since rain focuses on hitting first with frail, fast, powerful attackers, if you don’t lead correctly you often have to sack something.
3. Repeated coverage. If using ludicolo and not using mawile, you are almost forced to use ferrothorn as a kanga counter. this makes ludicolo absolutely useless due to it not giving any extra coverage that I don’t need. On the flipside, it often makes me think ferrothorn isn’t needed when I see rotom-w.
4. Talonflame craps all over rain. I have no way to deal with talonflame.
At least this made me realize how bad rain is. I was about to bring this to nats before the IC.
^ To be fair…where’s your Kindra at? =/
Guess I’m stopping with 1784 (29-6) with 1 win not counting apparently. With only 35 matches done I think that’s good enough for proof I’ll make worlds one day. Played a fair few NB’ers most notably Baz and Timo which both were close. Team was:
-Mega Kanga with Crunch
-Choice Specs Gardevoir with HP Fire
-Amoonguss with dat Helmet and Effect Spore
-Rotom-H with le Goggles
-My Lapras special (best served cold)
-Smeargle thinking it’s an Autobot
Smeargle was in for Salamence from UK Nats and really provided a better option for the team, no it’s not a moody painter :3
I’m pretty disgusting at these tournaments but I had a bit of fun wasting my day doing this o/
I only played a couple of games on Friday before picking this up again today
I can’t remember the exact numbers but I think I ended up at just under 1700 with 35ishW/12ishL, I wish I could’ve brought myself to use something more gimmicky but I guess I like winning idk haha
(((hydra, aegi and chomp were shiny oo fancy)))
notes:
-Scarf Hydra is really good, while it loses to Mence it’s better almost everywhere else
-Fire Blast missed once for me the whole tourney and it didn’t even matter since I had already won the game at that point yay
-TAUNT GARDEVOIR IS GREAT
-NO REALLY TAUNT IS REALLY GREAT
-Venu/Kanga is nice to use, Venu can win games on its own sometimes and Kanga wrecks anyone unprepared which is always fun
-Despite Kanga wrecking anyone unprepared, a lot of people were prepared for Kanga. This is a turn for the better I guess, I’m actually starting to think Kanga is kinda weak now
-Sleep Powder is a disgusting move urgh
-apparently I haven’t seen enough VERY speedy Aegislash and Sash Salamence in my life
-TAUNT GARDEVOIR IS REALLY REALLY GREAT
-I lost to more than one Dazzling Gleam Gengar
-YZard + Ice type is scary
-The chlorophyll part of mega venu really did save me a couple of times
-notable dudes played that I recognise: linkyoshimario, lprox, ryuzaki, see, koryo
-I crit Fire Blast through Trista’s Occa Ferro oops
Overall is was pretty fun to waste my Sunday playing in this thing, congrats to anyone who won at least 1 game I guess idk!!
Had one of the biggest crash and burns.
From 34-7 to 40-20 (approx)
Went from mid 1800s to low 1700s.
Notable Opponents
Keewan (Win)
Dim (Loss)
Yoshi (Win)
My team:
Mixed feelings for this IC. After getting DQed for like 6 unintentional DCs the last time, I wanted to get a ranking this time. Unfortunately I had a really bad WIFI connection the first two days and started 1-5 due to disconnecting before a match even started. After some time I tried again today and finally played some matches. Quite exhausting to play 50+ matches a day, can’t believe how you all did it last year.
I’m ending at a rating of 1708 after 50 games with 34W-16L. Most of these losses were due to dumb misplays on my part, about two were DCs. My opponents tended to DC quite often when they had already lost, which hopefully doesn’t count to my overall DCs and gets me DQed another time.
I had some great games once again. One was against Paul Chua (if it was him, just a Paul from the US so maybe not), where Quick Guard turned a game I would have lost otherwise. I also battled EnFuego, which I believe is PrettyLittleLiar on here. I got unlucky with a paralysis first turn, which might have made the battle more even, but from how he played he definitely deserves the win. The last honorable mention would “Ben xD” with a team like SuperIntegration’s UK Nats one who completely ate me alive with his Sableye/Kanga lead (big misplay on my part first turn and then I had no chance, this shows me where I stand as a player).
All in all I’m pretty happy with my finish. I suppose I’m a decent player with a decent team who got a decent rating. I guess that fits perfectly. I didn’t face hax at all (if at all it was me haxing my opponents). Just a bit bitter because of my Internet connection scoring about 8 losses. I think I could have placed above 1750 with more time and battles, but I’m not competing for the CP anyways, so whatever.
I also got my revenge against german player Yanzin (who apparently swaggers first turn) where I was in a good position and I DCed. Half an hour later we battled again and I won quite handily, but he probably couldn’t endure the pain which made him DC before the Loss message appeared. GG, I guess..
Now I’m hoping that my rating is enough to get top4 in Austria.
So uh i finished with a rating of 176X iirc after bouncing in and out of the low 1800s and high 1700s all day. All in all im fairly pleased with my performance this IC considering that i used a pretty standard team which i always knew had a rating roof of low 1800s. In theory, using a standard team allowed me to beat the greninja army pretty easily whilst also giving me versatile match ups vs the 1700s who would mostly be running standard stuff as well. I think its fair to say that my theory was spot on seeing as i only lost to 5 1700s during the last 2 days (iirc), where 3 of the losses came from Cybertron and Randy who both finished above 1800. The other 2 were vs japenese players who completely outplayed me. I observed that in order to achieve a rating of above 1800 you should probably be running an anti-meta team or be a very competent player. I feel like ive been rambling on too much so here is the team:
The theory behind running mega charizard Y alongslide kangaskhan was that charizard could easily blast away anything that kangaskhan would naturally struggle with. I found during the tournament that charizard was particularly difficult to bring into most games, even when it had a positive match up, because it so bidoof hard to use well without either significant practice using cahrizard or a team built entirely to support it. The main thing i learnt from this IC was that the core of kangaskhan/salamence/aegislash/rotom-wash/garchomp is incredibly strong and will give you a good chance to win almost every game as long as you can play it well enough. For all of you guys who are preparing for the US nationals and still aren’t sure about what team to bring I would wholly recommend using a team that either consists of the aforementioned core or counters it. I think that i outplayed every single kind-of-mirror match up I faced over the last 2 days besides one japenese guy and albert from USA who completely outplayed but somehow i beat him 4-0 (will-o-wisp missed a lot). My main source of losses were to 1600s during all 3 days. Swagger happened. A lot.
I dont want this post to become a huge wall of text so im just going to bullet-point the rest of the things i learned this time around:
Finished my run in the competition now, as I just don’t fancy playing any more matches, but I’ll have finished somewhere just over a 1650 rating, so pretty average really.
Looking back, I was incredibly inconsistent throughout the tournament. For example, winning around 80% of my games across day 1 and the earlier parts of day 2, that was followed by a span of 17 games, in which I only managed to win 3 or 4, bringing around one of the biggest losing streaks I’ve ever had. I did manage to pull it back a little bit today after getting my head together, when I thought at one point I would fail to even finish with 1600.
I could’ve played a lot better in most of my matches, and I really let the losing streak get to me. There were also plenty of flaws with my team too, as it was thrown together quite quickly after having a blast using it on showdown!
I recommend Furfrou to anyone as it’s so fun to use. With charm, snarl and thunder wave it can really start annoying people if they don’t deal with it fast enough
Well, I was all ready to break 1800 when I run into the likes of a Smeargle that Role Played my Sableye’s Prankster (you can probably guess what happened next), Facade Kangaskan, and Talonflame… TALONFLAME.
So I’ll end up with a rating in the mid 1700’s. It would be a little bit higher, but one of the wins I got from a DC’r on my first day got removed by the second day but still got counted towards my battle limit. So only 59 of my 60 battles are being counted.
What I learned from this months IC:
1. Don’t play mons past 1am you think sand can ohko lv1 smeargle
2. My uncles wifi sucks
3. Ttar is trash
4. Round is a threat when it comes off I assume specs sylveon
5. Extreme speed on mega luke can really screw you up
6. TR is actually not dead
7. Rockslide misses more often than hypnosis
8. RAIN OP!!!
Kingdra doesn’t really remedy any of the problem he had. Still gets donked by talonflame, still relies on miss-moves to take out kangaskhan, gives him even less manoeuvrability if has a bad lead match up and worsens the rotom-w match up. If anything it just makes his switches in to dragons even worse and his fairy match up pretty nasty too.
Here’s my team for the June International Challenge. Finished the tourney 35-25 with a rating of 1600. I reached the 1700s after winning 10 straight to start day 2. However, I then lost 10 straight to drop to 1530. Talk about your highs and lows. Now about the team itself.
This was my first competition/tourney with Meowstic and I loved it. Brought it to 59/60 matches. Charm, Twave, and Quick Guard were all great moves to shut down Mega Kanga. I decided on thunderbolt since it hits many things for neutral damage.
I used Rotom-W in regionals and it did hardcore work for me then and it didn’t disappoint this time. I often lead with it in order to scout with volt switch. So many people lead with Talonflame or Politoed or some Pokemon weak to electric, trying to bait me into using thunderbolt while they switch in Manectric. However, I usually saw right through this and just OHKO’d Manectric with Hydro Pump. Wish i had HP ice over Shadow Ball since it OHKO’s all major dragons minus Hydreigon but I didn’t have the time or Pokemon to breed for it.
I decided on Assault Vest over Expert Belt or Life Orb because I loved the added bulk. Ice shard cleaned up a lot of games for me and Rock Slide was great for Char-y and Tflame. Really pleased with Mamo and plan on keeping it on my team.
My two megas: Char X and Venusaur. Char X was my main mega. I love the raw power that it brings to the table. Plus the typing is great, especially for a physical attacker since it can’t get burned. The speed control and Charm that Meowstic brought to the table was crucial in shutting down Charizards biggest threats like Chomp, Sala, Hydreigon, Aero, and Kanga. Venusaur saw a lot more action for me during the June IC as compared to the May IC due to the insane amount of rain teams I saw (I saw 16 rain teams and went 15-1 against them). Mega Venu is so bulky and with leech seed, it has great survivability. I took out a lot of Pokemon 2v1 and actually won a 3v1 with Mega Venu. I love my megas and don’t plan on replacing them. In case you’re wondering, I breed them to be shinies. I got the Venusaur in 21 eggs and the Charizard in 65.
Now for my final Pokemon: Salamence. It was the deadweight of my team honestly. I actually had a couple matches where I 4-0 with a Meowstic/Sala lead but I wish I had something else. It’s a good Pokemon but I just don’t feel that it fit my team right.
Overall, I had a great experience in the IC and saw some cool combos. I actually saw a lot of Kangas with Crunch which threw me off when expecting sucker punch. I wish they there was a July IC since I can’t make it to nationals but I’ll just try to do more NB tournies.
What I’ve learnt is that I am a very average and inconsistent player. Teams that I should win against comfortably, I will lose 50% of the time. I need to develop a better foresight into what my opponent’s options are compared to what mine are alone.
I finished with a ~1707 rating and while it’s probably lower than a lot of yours, I’m quite happy with it, especially for how brutally I started. Also, I post on here almost exclusively from my phone and oh my god is it ever awkward trying to navigate on my laptop haha
some notes regarding the Pokemon…
– I was kinda pulled out of my comfort zone in this tournament because in all my practice leading up to this tourney I had been using Modest Manectric, because I prefered to have the ability to OHKO Garchomp than to outspeed a minimal (and normally, fairly irrelevant) group of Pokemon. For whatever reason though, people really love their Greninjas and Talonflames (especially together, so I couldn’t use Venusaur to counter Greninja), so I had to have an extra option to beat those two. It didn’t matter all too much but I did notice that my damage output wasn’t as big as I wanted it to.
– In this tourney Venusaur was almost completely dead weight. This team is really similar to the one DarkAssasin used, except with a few different EV, move, and item choices, and Venusaur over Amoonguss as a Grass/Poison type. I didn’t really like that though, because while Rage Powder is really nice on the team, it kinda heightened my Rotom-H weakness and left me with very options against Gardevoir and Ludicolo. Sunny Day was only really there because I have so few options with dealing with Mawile on Rain teams (I generally prefer Leech Seed in that slot on Mega Venusaur, but the pace that that strategy ran at didn’t really fit with the team). Still, though, I don’t regret going with Venusaur. I would have been much better off with something else but Venusaur did what I needed it to when I did bring it (like, all three times!) and I didn’t feel so weak to Rain by having it. Speaking of which, unlike you guys, I ran into zero Rain teams after I got out of the badlands that is the 1500s. Very weird.
– I ran 84 Spd on Azumarill in order to protect Tyranitar and Hydreigon from Scrafty, which I thought glued together the team quite a bit better. In practice and in the tourney that plan worked out exactly how I wanted it to: Azumarill applies offensive pressure on Scrafty (which is a hard counter to Tyranitar and Hydreigon), which gave my two Dark types the safety to either set up or fire off Choice Specs boosted attacks. While running speed helped with synergy, it also didn’t help Azumarill be self serving. The drop in Attack wasn’t a big deal but a few times I did notice that Azumarill wasn’t hitting as hard as it normally does, especially after setting up Belly Drum.
– Hydreigon is insane. Like, really, wow is it ever incredible, and I honestly feel like it might be the best meta game call right now. Mindless Draco spamming is still pretty ridiculous if you can realize its limitations, and I had enough support for it to run through teams. Mawile and Garchomp don’t even beat it 1v1, so Hydreigon’s counters only really came down to Azumarill and Gardevoir, the latter of which I didn’t see too many of while the former is shut down by Manectric/Aegislash. The only bad part is that I don’t run max speed so opposing Hydreigons, especially those in similar teams, were kinda awkward to play around with.
– Dragon Dance Tyranitar is really good. It allows Tyranitar to beat some of its usual counters like Rotom-W, and gave me a key win condition a few times. Only problem, though, is that in practice I mainly used Tyranitar to combat Sun, which I only remember facing once in the whole tournament. It also didn’t fit well with this specific team. Like Venusaur, I didn’t bring it a lot, but Tyranitar did what I needed it to when I did. Also, I don’t think Lum Berry ever activated once, which is weird.
– I REALLY should have gone with Sacred Sword on Aegislash, as I can’t counter the number of times I left Kangaskhan with a sliver of health when I doubles up on it. Other than that, it’s really standard, though like Leech Seed Venusaur I felt Aegislash was a bit of a momentum killer on this team (though I really hate to use the term “momentum”). Saying that though kinda reminds me that I should really stop using such brain dead offensive blitz teams. This one wasn’t so bad because the Pokemon were pretty bulky for the most part as well. Just a general thought.
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thoughts on the tournament in general:
– Where did all the weather go? I only remember seeing one Sun team and didn’t see a single Rain team used by a higher rated player.
– I saw more Trick Room than normal. Which was a good thing. I had a pretty solid lead match up against the archetype in general, so much so that it gave Azumarill a free Belly Drum a couple times, Yes, please take your time setting up Trick Room. I don’t mind lol
– I absolutely labored getting to even 1600. It was pretty crazy and I don’t ever remember it being that difficult when I played when the Special Ladder was still VGC. After 32 battles I still hadn’t broken passed it, though in the last session I had it wasn’t so bad anymore.
– Pretty disappointed that I didn’t recognize anyone I faced, though this was definitely because I only played during the middle of the night (Any of you face Raphael from Canada? This was probably me). It lead to a pretty funny looking spread sheet (I’ll probably post this once I clean it up) where a lot of the Japanese players I faced simply had “Japanese Name” under IGN lol. Speaking of which, how come when Japanese players have non Japanese characters they spell it out like “F r e d” with the spaces and all? Something I’ve been curious about once I realized it.
– I can’t remember ever having a team where the the approach was pretty much the same every single battle. I brought Manectric/Azumarill/Hydreigon/Aegislash to almost all my matches, and I lead Manectric/Hydreigon in well over half of them. Also, Manectric + Hydreigon is really cool. They cover each other pretty well.
Overall, it was a pretty fun tournament to wrap up my first year of playing VGC. I thought the team was pretty solid, and I also know exactly what to change to fix its weaknesses, which is nice. Also, I actually got a lot of battles in unlike in May. Good luck to all of you competing in Nats and Worlds, and I’ll probably see you all in the circuit next season.