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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2016 Pokémon World Championships Date & Location Surfaces →
I ended up finishing with a record of 42-14 and a final rating of 1826, hopefully good enough for a T8 finish in North America. I decided to take this one a bit seriously since I’m kind of over the whole “washed up” phase and would love to make it to day 2 at US Nationals this year. It was definitely a great means of practice and I was especially impressed by the matchmaking ability: my last 18 games were ALL against 1700+ rated opponents, which is kind of crazy even as I look back at my notes. It also made sense for why my win ratio dipped a bit after finishing day 32-8.
I had a ton of great battles, running into a lot of notable players along the way with wins against PM649, Luvier, Melevin9, Lati, SP67, and Wolfey and a loss against Simon. It also seemed like the majority of my day 3 opponents were Japanese (11/16 to be exactly), which makes sense given the matchmaking setup. Huge shoutout to Massi/Yosh/Scott/bearsfan092 for streaming too, I know I watched all of them at some point and it was really enjoyable.
Overall, I’m still surprised by how much better these tournaments are than the Gen 5. Wi-Fi ones. I know I enjoyed both of the ones this season and this one was a great warm up before US Nationals.
Took 22 losses in this, very disappointed in myself. I made the mistake of playing later at night and on tilt, and I also forgot to check my team prior, leaving me with a fully defensive (maybe 4 sp. atk?) Rotom-H with Discharge and Rest that I didn’t bring to more than 5 matches after doing poorly trying to use it in my first 10. It ended up serving as a niche counter to Ferrothorn and an answer to Aegislash Amoonguss teams. While I’m disappointed, and I’m clearly one of the worst performers in this in relation to this thread, I’m optimistic about Nationals and hope that I’ll remember to check my team and focus a little more to end with a better finish. It’s been odd after Wisconsin though. I just can’t get what was said about me out of my head. It’s haunting. Regardless of that, i have to keep moving forward if I want to do well, so I need to keep believing in myself… I wonder where I’ll find that energy? I’m hoping that I do.
Reading all of you guys’ mini reports makes me jealous as I was unable to participate in this International due to some RL obligations. However, it was enjoyable on its own to read on your progresses throughout the weekend. Who knows, maybe if I did participate I’d meet many of you seasoned players and give you more losses
On another note, I learned a lot about battling playstyles from this thread more than any report I’ve ever read. It’s nice seeing small battles from different personalities and it definitely opens up the idea of potential plays. I know this is more like a “show-off” thread than anything else, but to me I saw it as a clash of POV’s that opened up a realm of possibilities.
Had a great run landing somewhere in the 1700s. Sitrus Berry on my Gyarados won me quite a few games.
That is the opposite of fair. Did you read my “team report”???
Well, I did better than the last time. Out of 30 matches, I finished with a record of 17-13, with a rating in the mid-1550s. (I can’t remember the exact number.) Certainly better than last time, but if there’s one thing I learned from a bunch of the matches I lost, it’s this: have a Tailwind user! I lost at least half those matches because of Tailwind. X| Not to mention one other opponent I lost to had Rain Dance with two Swift Swim Pokemon — Kingdra and Ludicolo. That, and I wish I could get a rating as good as anyone else’s here. The highest rating I’ve ever reached was over 1,650.
The Pokemon I used were as follows:
Garchomp (F) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Rough Skin
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 6 Def / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
– Dragon Claw
– Earthquake
– Protect
– Rock Slide
Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy
Level: 50
EVs: 60 HP / 4 Atk / 230 Def / 36 SDef / 180 Spd
Jolly Nature
– Return
– Protect
– Sucker Punch
– Power-Up Punch
Meowstic (M) @ Mental Herb
Ability: Prankster
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 2 Atk / 108 Def / 108 SDef / 40 Spd
Bold Nature
– Quick Guard
– Safeguard
– Swagger
– Charm
Rotom-Heat @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SAtk / 4 SDef
Modest Nature
– Overheat
– Hidden Power [Ice]
– Thunderbolt
– Protect
Scizor (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Technician
Level: 50
EVs: 130 HP / 252 Atk / 128 SDef
Adamant Nature
– Bullet Punch
– Protect
– Roost
– U-turn
Salamence (M) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 SAtk / 6 SDef / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
– Dragon Pulse
– Flamethrower
– Rock Slide
– Protect
Finished 18-5 somewhere in the high 1600s maybe low 1700s.
Between my mom’s birthday and povertyball hype, I didn’t get many games in, but I think I got enough in to get an accurate gauge of my team’s strengths and weaknesses before nationals
For the record, my junior had the exact same problem. Seems like “the region your game was registered in” (or however they worded it) is definitely being interpreted as “EST for USA”, which is ridiculous.
Anyone recognize their name?
The highest rated player I battled was Hazel at 1805. There’s a few epic battle videos up there from late in the competition that my opponents uploaded. I’d put my team up, but I would rather write out a whole report on it and don’t want to be repeating myself too much later. I do have some some notes on my battles in this IC though
–STAB Foul Play is awesome. I’ve tried a couple different moves in my Sableye’s fourth slot: Fake Out, Taunt, Protect, etc. but Foul Play is easily the best. Kangaskan, Aegislash, Aerodactyl, Gardevoir, and Mawile (after a Swagger on the last two); it hits all of them really hard and can nab some easy KO’s since most people tend to ignore Sableye after taunting it. It also punishes Aerodactyl’s that think they can Sky Drop me to subdue Sableye..
–Trick Room is harder to deal with. I usually use Meowstic to Imprison TR and keep out of action long enough to KO the setter. If they have a Fake Out user, no problem, I just have Sableye use it’s own Fake Out… Oh, right, its Foul Play now. I run a generally speedy team so being stuck in TR is no good, leaving me trying to reverse it and pray Meowstic lives long enough to do so. On the plus side, Sableye can somewhat take advantage of TR and deal out damage with Foul Play. Also…
–I need a better way to handle Chandy. It’s typing makes it hard for most of my team to land heavy hits, it’s going to be Sashed anyways, and if I try to Imprision it; Meowstic eats a Shadow Ball.
–Greninja’s, Greninja’s everywhere. This wasn’t too much of a problem for me, my team handles them pretty well, but there was a lot of them in this tourney.
–I do better against higher end opponents. I’ve always known in these competitions you have to break out of the 1500’s fast or you’re not breaking out. I only did 10 battles on the first day and was on the cusp of 1600. By the next day the only people left in my matchmaking range where people that used standard-ish mons, but with random EV’s so they survive things you wouldn’t expect, and they make more unpredictable, nonsensical moves. You’ll cruise through most of them, but it makes it easier for something to go very wrong, very fast and all it takes is one bad loss to tear a large chunk out of your rating. All the the second day was a battle to reach the lower 1600’s. From the mid 1600’s everything started to look a lot more like the upper Showdown! ladder and that made for clear sailing on my third day. Anyone in the 1700’s and higher I was able to handle with relative ease.
–Take more breaks. Something I seem to have forgotten from my BW wifi days is to take breaks often and after every intense battle. While I didn’t nosedive into a losing streak death spiral like I did on the second day of the May IC, after cramming 30 battles into a few hours yesterday, I realized I was pretty jaded afterwards and I can’t help but wonder if I would have performed better if I had taken a few breaks every once and awhile. While the intensity is part of the fun, it’s also stressful and can leave you mentally drained, irritable, paranoid, and frustrated. Throw in some hax and bad matchups, and before long you start thinking crazy things like that the game is working against you or something.
–The game is working against you. Reading through this thread I keep seeing people bringing up all these rain teams they came across and how much trouble they gave them. You know how many rain teams I came across? 1. I swiftly 4-0’d it and never saw another. My team handles rain easily, and I would have loved to have seen even a quarter of these rain teams described. What I did see were a whole lot of Delphox’s and Sylveon’s bogging me down, two pokemon who’s typing can cut through my team and are irritatingly difficult for it to take out. I’ve always suspected that the game likes to match people against teams that specifically counter their own, and unless there was some Delphox-Sylveon core trend I missed out on, this competition pretty much confirmed it.
–Hawlucha’s still a beast. Ok, not so much an observation as it is just stating fact.
I managed one more match unfortunately, but that was a win, so I ended 27 matches with 17-10 as a record. Not shabby
I really need a decent way to fight Rotom W, that was by far and wide my biggest weakness in this tourney. I also need another form of speed control, or some faster Pokemon. Noivern was the only Pokemon with over 100 base speed, and Im not running Trick Room! (However, I did murder the two Trick Room teams I faced due to this, so…its not all bad).
Ended up somewhere around 1650 with 30 something wins to twenty something losses. I haven’t tried playing in quite a long time and am just getting back into things so I’m pretty satisfied. A good chunk of those losses got out of my hands with some clutch misses and flinches, but that’s fine I mean where there’s games with bad luck there are games with good luck.
The team came from Hera who I really wanted to try to use and branched off from there. Sometimes I would use Aero to get that delicious wind up and pair him with who would perform best against the opposing team and transfer over to some hefty damage from Hera himself, but the lead I should have trusted a lot more was Pachi and Hera. Originally Pachi was going to be Amoongus to take the heat off of Hera, but the shared weakness did absolutely nothing for him and that led me to Pachi with its godsend of a flying resist for Talonflame which was pretty easy to get out of the way usually thanks to that guy. Sometimes I could protect with Hera who usually threatened opponents enough to focus on him and get a nuzzle off on an important enemy. Pachi was way more valuable than I trusted it to be. Again I should have trusted in its performance more.
The rest of the team was mostly trying to cover weaknesses and pokemon I thought I had a hard time with, but I super left myself open to water in the end. The first change I would make is to include washtom instead of heat. The amount of times that would have saved me is ridiculous. I really overcompensated for Charizard/Taonflame, but at the same time I didnt have problems for them so there’s that. I really need to figure out what to do with Venusaur-M and Azumarill if I was going to continue with this team. The lack of protect on Garchomp probably wasn’t worth it either since it limited the plays I could make.
Still happy I decided to compete again and at least do *ok*. Really fun seeing how many things Hera could one shot and how much abuse it could take if I only used close combat when needed.
Ahh, where should I start? I never know know how to do it because to be honest, these ICs are kind of a mixed bag for me: There are times where you can´t stop playing, others where you could just throw your DS against the nearest wall and others where all you can do is laugh about what you´re put through… I never really know what to make of the experience but at the end of the day, I can look back at it and call it “fun”… for the most part.
I guess I´ll start with the team: My Worlds invite is pretty much locked so I didn´t feel the need to bring something dead-serious to a torunament like this. That being said, I still didn´t want to run something really bad, though because I´ve kinda gotten too proud for that.^^ I decided to build around something that has intrigued me for a while now and always wanted to see how it would fare if I tried to use it: Round. After some testing, the initial six changed and eventually gave way to this team (Sorry for the random German but I couldn´t change my PGL-page to English for some reason. Oh well, I heard a lot of you guys dig German Pokemon names so i guess it´s not all bad… xD) :
As you can see, the core was the duo of Electrode/Mega-Gardy. Electrode´s base 140 speed ensured that I could outspeed everything outside of TW and Scarfmence which is more than enough for me because Scarfmence is no real issue with this team. Mega Gardevoir´s damage output is ridiculous: Almost everything is KO´d by a double-target with Round, even non-bulky Mega-Tyranitar and every common variant of non-AV regular Tyranitar in the sand. Thanks to its bulk, it would still be a decent Pokemon even outside of the Round mode which also proved helpful on several occasions, especially against Trick Room and Mega-Venu teams.
I ended with a score of 1803 with a couple of games left. I don´t really know about my W/L-ratio but I do recall it is much better than my horrible one last month. Overall, I´m really content with how everything went. What i liked about this team is that I did not completly need to rely on Round to win games and could switch it up if I had to but since a lot of threats are supposed to be checked with Round, you kinda have limited space for variation in picking against certain matchups (most notably “standard” Kanga-teams) which makes this team an overall poor choice for Bo3s. It still fares decently in them, though, but you sometimes need to play a little risky due to the double-target heavy nature of Round which is also something I generally would like to stay away from… Still, I feel like I learned quite a bit about my team:
-As you might have seen, this team is kinda weak to Kangaskhan. You can´t expect to be able to pick Ferrothorn all the time and it not being there kinda limits my switch-ins…^^ I either have to get creative with Intimidate or outright go for the KO early on with Round. Thankfully, the latter was made easier in a Bo1-environment due to the surprise factor of this team so this flaw was kinda forgiveable for an IC team. I would lie if I said that I didn´t lose at least one game because of that, though..
-Azumarill is in a similar boat as Kangaskhan if Ferro can´t be around but I at least have 2 checks so it is usually manageable.
-Bisharp can be a really annoying Pokemon… I need to dispose of it early on, otherwise my team is toast.^^
-Mega-Blastoise in TW paired with Talonflame almost equals an instant win against me. Met one japanese guy and bidoof, this guy walked all over my team…
-Khan/Artist is annoying as always but manageable with Ferrothorn/Electrode… until you meet that one guy with freaking Mental Herb Smeargle. >.<
-Gardevoir tracing Soundproof was limiting but not as annoying as I believed it to be at first, mainly because I could still hit it with Tbolt and Shadow Ball.
Noteable players I faced are Melevin9, Cybertron, R Inanimate, Greysong, Ryuzaki, some guy named Denny with a plug to NB in his trainer description, and some guy named Sohaib who seems to have an account here, too. (Oh, and just saw that Decretum ran a team that I think I recognize…^^) The games were really good and tended to be close for the most part.^^ Oh, and I also got Sekiam when a wild R1 DC appeared but we are planning on repeating the match in private since he´s been curious about Electrode. Can´t blame him for that. xD Looking forward to the match.^^
All that´s left to do is closing with what I came to call “IC moments”:
-One guy leading Charizard/Smeargle against my Electrode/Salamence: From preview, I expected Choice Scarf but also targeted Smeargle with Taunt in case that turns out to be wrong. This next turn was… strange: He FO´d my Electrode for some reason, Draco connects as it turned out to be a Sash Smeargle and the Charizard… HP Ices. The turn after that was even better: I switched in Rotom-Heat only for him to reveal what? The Ancientpower… with the boost included. The boost froced me to double-protect with Rotom to still have a shot at winning and luckily, I got it…
-Quash Murkrow paired with bulky sleep powder Roserade
-Small insight in the Signaporean VGC scene: Facade Kanga paired with Mental Herb Smeargle and Flamethrower Sitrus Berry Salamence…
-After losing to a lot of Charizard X in the last tournament, I´m proud to say that none of them got me this time around. xD Same with rain but I needed a liiittle bit of luck against one team…^^
-SD Aegislash will apparently never fully die out even though it really should in VGC…
-Mega-Gardevoir living a random Poison Jab from Garchomp and retaliating with Round <3
-One guy who not only screwed up my unboosted Round calc against Garchomp by mega-evolving, he also ran Focus Blast Gengar… yet I still somehow won because AV Ttar is a boss.
-Weakened Tyranitar and Mega-Gardevoir up against a weakened Life Orb Salamence that only revealed Rock Slide so far: I´m thinking “Okay, there´s no way to lose this.” and guess what? My friend runs physical Life Orb with Earthquake… ._.
-A japanese player´s attempt on what could be called a “Stall team”: Mega-Manectric, Ferrothorn, Rotom-W paired with Confide/WoW Sableye… Absolutely disgusting but realtively easy to play around.^^
While I would love to post some of the Battle Videos I saved, I won´t do so because many of the players I faced could run the teams they used here at Nationals so i don´t want to be the source of possible Mock Battle scouting material. Hope you can forgive me that.^^
I remember facing the team and not even realising Electrode could get Taunt so I think (I say think because I can’t remember the details) it played out like most games I end up being taunted turn one and going for trick room. was a good game though and Round was too nasty
May as well post my team too! Doubt any of you guys will have battled me, I only did 14 battles, had an awful DC – loss – tilt mode – loss x2 – DC streak on the Friday, stopped playing then picked it back up on the Saturday and barely managed to get into the 1500s due to a combination of large rank difference matchups, not being too bothered about playing loads of battles, being out most of Saturday and wanting to end on a high (which after a particularly good battle/satisfying win on Sunday afternoon I did).
9 wins (two I got DC’d from :c), 4 losses, plus one battle that I got DC’d from in turn 3 and barely anything had happened so I can’t say if I’d have won or not. Was the aforementioned Florges/Gogoat Grassy Terrain lead that PreyingShark battled, actually!
Been working on this team in various incarnations since before the format was announced, trying to build the perfect Trick Room team for Mega Heracross, a bit sad that I didn’t do it justice because I really believe I’ve got the team setup exactly how it needs to be now. This IC was mainly to test how Staraptor fitted in and to get some practice using him, was rather successful!
Surprisingly small amount of hax happened to me, I was pretty lucky in that my only Will-O-Wisp used didn’t miss the Kanga and I got a few helpful crits (though not too many, 5-6 maybe in 14 battles).
Highlights:
– Staraptor being an absolute babe / getting off my first ever Final Gambit (on a Rotom-W). Man, that was satisfying. Finally found my 6th team member!
– Assault Vest Ludi being my MVP. So, so glad I switched from Life Orb… I mean, occasionally I missed out on a KO, but nothing too serious, and his special-tankiness saved me at least 3 games.
– Beating a much higher-ranked player with a scary team (and would’ve beaten another if not for the Gambit thing). <3
– Turning a match around where I had brought no counter to Tflame and had two ‘mons very weak to it thanks to some quick thinking!
– Battling a hilarious Evasion(-stall?) team. The Goodra was there the whole match just Double Team/Curse/Resting away…
– Watching Xeno casually stroll in with a Mono Water team for fun, and get a lot of wins with it (Absorb Bulb strats are pretty funny to watch).
Low Points:
– Being DC’d twice and losing 3 times in one massive tilt streak on the Friday. Wow that was bad.
– Pooping myself against the Evasion team when the much-Minimised Drifblim BP’d into Azu (one of my nightmares, can never get around that thing dammit). Luckily they +6 Aqua Jetted my Ludicolo, doing under/around a third iirc, and the Giga Drain hit.
– Opponent with three Steel-types. They brought all three, I did a stupid and lost Rotom-H way too early meaning I couldn’t do a lot to get around them easily ):
– Getting low-ranked opponents when I was trying to fight my way back into the 1500s. Then constantly dipping in & out of the 1500s once I got there ;~;
– Thinking that Final Gambiting an Aegislash would work I a moment of pure I don’t even
Best Battles:
– YYBG-WWWW-WWW8-2NKC: That Evasion team. I realised when watching it back that I autopiloted at one point and started spamming Giga Drain to save Ice Beam PP without noticing the Goodra was Sap Sipper. Welp! (24 turns)
– PKKG-WWWW-WWW8-2ZY5: Game vs a rank 1604 (I was @1503 at this point). The one where pretty much everything was in my favour until the Gambit misplay xD (7 turns)
– KSKG-WWWW-WWW8-39RD: Made a few initial misplays, got a Moonblast Sp.Atk drop on the Aegi which then never switched out, took out Tflame beautifully. Ended with aforementioned Aegi timer-stalling me to 0 (forgetting number of mons left > HP % perhaps?) and A.Vest Ludi showing how glorious it is~ (13 turns)
– Beating a rank 1620 (had dropped to 1494) who had Mega Gengar which is something I worry about. A lot. Predictably, it manhandled Aromatisse, I lost Staraptor early and then Ludi & Hera brought the game back despite TR never being set up xD. Ludi especially, that duck was my MVP <3 (7 turns)
I really think that, as a player, I’ve improved a hell of a lot- this IC seems to have activated something, haha. I’m making much better plays, analysing better, and Judging matchups more accurately. Maybe I’ll actually do something notable in the VGC’15 season!
8-6. Four of those losses were due to my own disconnects, and of course only in battles where I was winning >
All of the disconnects made me feel very unmotivated to do any more battles
+ Manectric had an absolute field day with all the greninjas and talonflames around
+ AV on azumarill helped a ton since I had nothing to absorb special attacks on the switch in, and the AV let it survive some tbolts and energy balls/giga drains that otherwise would’ve killed it
+ Apparently everyone forgets that azumarill has access to superpower
+ Shadow sneak on aegi helped a lot — there were two occasions where me and the opponent were both at low health and I was at +2, and without shadow sneak being there I would’ve lost them
+ Taunt on talonflame was useful… when I brought it
+ Really glad I went with flamethrower on manectric instead of overheat. I often found myself needing to use it multiple turns in a row and I wouldn’t be able to do that with overheat
+ Charm on meowstic was useful but I really wish I carried burn on something else instead. Getting kanga to -4 is fun and all but not when it just switches out and hides until meowstic’s gone.
+ Multiple opponents not paying attention to whether safeguard had ended yet or not
– Talonflame basically lived one turn to do something and then immediately died. I might be using it wrong but I’m not terribly happy with it
– Overestimating manectric’s bulk and playing too recklessly with it when I started tilting
– Overestimating aegislash’s bulk. No, it can’t survive a mega garchomp’s EQ
– Rain-boosted mega-blastoise water spouts absolutely destroyed my team twice
– http://nuggetbridge.com/forums/topic/6803-2014-international-challenge-%E2%80%93-june/page-3#entry110530
– Bringing two things weak to burn and no safeguard and other exciting team preview cock-ups
If I was to use this team again I’d put wow on talonflame over quick guard, and give meowstic quick guard over charm. Maybe.
really wish togekiss was vgc legal ;__;
You’re Sol64? We had the near-mirror rain teams where our Manectrics only used Hidden Power for five rounds or so. bidoof you for critting me three times in a row. But you still lost in the end.
I think the only team difference was your benched Hydreigon vs. me having Toxicroak.
How did you finish?
I also met a guy on /vp/ who I had a pretty cool game with. First taunting his Aegislash, then using Feint + Brave Bird to break through a Machamp’s Quick Guard. Nice stuff.
No im not Sol64 I was Blues (you know Protoman`s jap name) yeah rain was brutal but allot of stuff is brutal when you play mons at 1 am like round and lv1 smeargle but I faced 2 rain teams and got 4-0ed by one and idk the other one. I did pretty good 22-6 until my late night session that gave me 4 wins but 6 loses.
Taken from my team report from last year’s US Nats. Obviously this is Octillery using Water Spout and it has different needs than Smeargle. But when you do the analysis Moody is definitely a boost. You’re more likely to have something go wrong from enemy status.
“Moody is a controversial choice that may seem to conflict with my 100% accuracy goal. Statistically things will go my way the longer Octillery is on the field. Of the seven attributes that can change, only one really hurts me (Special Attack). Another one (accuracy) can be a nuisance but is not a deal-breaker. The odds of getting an accuracy drop and missing a subsequent 100% attack are very slim – 3.6%. I am more worried about rock slide flinches and other status the opponent may throw at me. Contrast these potential issues with the potential benefits: +2 Special Attack, Defense, Special Defense, or Evasion. The chance I will see one of these rise on the first turn is 57%. To me, the good tradeoffs significantly outweighed the bad.”
Edit: Meant to quote the original question, not Randy.
Ah, I see. That’s some pretty similar nicks you got there.
I ended up with 20-8 myself.
Your fault for relying on Muddy Water over Surf. I actually had some good experiences with Wide Lens Kingdra, though this was mostly in triples (WiFi and Maison). Bumps the accuracy of Muddy Water and Draco Meteor quite a bit, which means a lot there.
I used Ludicolo instead of Kingdra on my rain team this challenge though.
Looking back at my opponents, here is a list of really cool stuff I faced:
-Iron ball Fling Tyrannitar on TR team – such a nostalgic VGC’13 team!
-4 Gliscors – all of them were benched though so I never found out their sets, but seriously 4 GLISCOR TEAMS IN 31 BATTLES?
-Me First Mienshao
-Special Megakahn XD
-Choice specs hyper beam Sylveon
-Choice scarf water spout Blastoise on rain team
-Focus energy Kingdra spamming Draco Meteor
-HP ground Greninja rendering my Rotom’s tbolt useless
-Fling greninja >: (
Also underestimated how deadly Zapdos could be. Its Thunder dealt around 60% damage to my Aegislash, and since it didn’t take LO damage I therefore thought it was choiced. Switched in Garchomp. HP Ice. Boom. Dead Garchomp.
Did some calculations later on. That Zapdos must’ve been modest max SpA holding a Zap Plate. Wow.
Believe me, I seriously know the only one to blame here is myself. I actually realized Wide Lens would have been fantastic during battle number 7 or so. I’m probably just going to end up dropping rain.
Well, this challenge went considerably worse than May where I got 1,823 points, this month I was only able to reach 1,79x due to a very bad Saturday in which I went on tilt (playing quite badly haha) after some outstanding hax… Sunday was amazing though and I recovered from mid-1,600s 24-16 to go 41-18 1,79x, however, when I wanted to fight my last match to potentially get into the 1,800s, the game told me my challenge was done, no more battles, which is a lousy glitch… sigh.
I wasn’t expecting much anyway since I used the exact same team as last time, but it just… works :], hopefully I’ll have gotten top16 in Europe but I doubt it since ratings have gone up I think from May.
BTW my IGN is Luthraim sooo if you’ve battled me, gg! xD
Finished at around 1635, 32-20. My Trainer name was Ygritte (with the message “You know nothing”). I’m pretty disappointed with my performance. I played like grimer throughout the tournament, and my team was not bulky or consistent enough to make up for the mistakes I’d made. I did manage to defeat my eternal rival Huy, but I lost to every other competitive VGC player I recognized (Lati, Angel, drug duck). Most of my losses were in streaks as well, but I found that walking away for a bit and coming back helped break those streaks.
Thoughts on the team:
I’d like to go a little more in-depth about my last Pokemon, one I feel is extremely fun to use and was absolutely monster in most of my matches: Heliolisk.
All in all, I’m pretty disappointed with the team as a whole, but I liked the individual parts. I do wish I’d had some better switch-in options, and I’m wondering if I’d have done better with Assault Vest on Ludicolo over Life Orb. I’ll likely go back to the drawing board when it comes time to make my LCQ team, but this team was pretty fun when I wasn’t making horrible plays.
As always, my nicknames were hockey themed puns:
…uh…I didn’t because you aren’t joej m?
I think I did alright, got 15-3 with a 168x rating. I could have done all 60 battles and do really well, however I didn’t want to risk decreasing my points by a lot, plus the fact that top 128 in the World in Juniors/Seniors will so me, as I couldn’t attend Nats in UK this year due to revision for my exams and stuff.
I beat Babbytron though, so at least there’s something to brag about! My story in/at Internationals was also very interesting, but idk if I would be allowed to write a report on it. 
Well, both his Ludicolo and my Kingdra are in big, big trouble.
North American Masters that have reported a score over 1775:
Cybertron – 1826 (42-14)
Shaman – 1810
R Inanimate – 1803 (41-18)
GreySong – 1780
Anyone else?
Don’t worry about it man. I was essentially on an alt all tournament. Watching the game again it was quite close, though you definitely outplayed me on a turn where I expected Tyranitar to switch out rather than Ferrothorn. GG! I’d love to post the video once the results thread goes up, if that’s ok with you.
Alright, I finished all 60 matches and ended with a rating of 1840- North America Seniors. Good games to everyone that I played!
m at 1828 now.. decided to get a few more games in last minute