2014 International Challenge — May
The first International Challenge of the VGC ’14 season has been officially announced and with it comes news that the Top 128 players in North America and Europe in each age division will receive Championship Points for their efforts. As there is no guarantee that there will be another International Challenge before the World Championships, it will be an incredibly important part of players’ seasons as they chase that elusive Worlds invite. This will especially be the case for European players who will not receive Premier Challenges until next season at the earliest making this their only chance of breaking ties between players who end up at the same number of points after Nationals.
The International Challenge is an online ladder-based tournament. You will be able to play up to 20 battles per day (which if past tournaments are any indication, will roll unplayed games over to the next day though we make no guarantees) from 00:00 UTC on Friday May 16th, 2014(5:00 PM PDT on Thursday, May 15th ) to 23:59 UTC on Sunday May 18th, 2014 (4:59 PM UTC on Sunday May 18th).
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 May 8th, 2014 (5:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, May 7th) and 23:59 UTC on Thursday, May 15th, 2014 (4:59 PM PDT on Thursday, May 15th).
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! All participants who play at least one match and don’t get disqualified will receive an Enigma Berry. Championship Points will be awarded as follows:
| Placement | Points |
| 1 | 10 |
| 2–8 | 8 |
| 9–16 | 4 |
| 17–64 | 2 |
| 65–128 | 1 |
With the Special Ladder on Battle Spot switching from Standard to Inverse Battles on May 12th, this will be the only chance afterwards that we know of to practice with other players online in-game under the same ruleset you’ll be using at the National and World Championships.
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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Oh, wow. I didn’t expect this to reward Championship Points. That is a nice surprise and could make a bit of difference in the European Worlds invites.
Well that minor bit can help, though it’s odd in a way that Premier challenges are worth more despite the latter being in a “test program” phase.
I wonder how the single digit CP gains from this will affect the Invite CP Bar this time.
I’m sort of intersted to see how well I can do in rating here now that people won’t get arbitrarily DQ’d for facing D/Cers, and D/Cers can’t get away with trying to inflate their rating. Having a max of 60 battles will probably be a bit unsatisfying for me when I usually play about 100-150 in these though.
Is 10 points a lot or a little?
I wasn’t going to compete when it said 1k pokemiles (serebii), but I might as well give it a go now since CP will be awarded and I need practice anyway.
10 CP overall isn’t a lot but 1 more CP than anyone else you’re competing with for an invite is a lot.
While I am similarly unsatisfied with only being able to play 60 games (and will likely opt out of Play! so I don’t get CP anyway) I’m actually super excited about this. I’ve really missed the Wi-Fi tournaments. I think last year even playing so many games against super weak opponents they were valuable practice for a lot of us, and with better matchmaking this year they should actually be the best practice we could hope for.Getting more chances to compete is always fun, this should be a good time. Also, not constantly worrying that people are gonna get me DQed by DCing on me will be a nice change of pace, even though the DQ never came for me last year.
Super pumped.
Gonna go out and defend the 60 game limit, since I do think it’s a really good idea.
Stops people from no-lifing, and means the scores come out more accurate, since everyone making an effort has played the same amount of games). I definitely don’t miss compulsively spending a whole weekend on the sofa playing Pokémon.
Are match ups completely random or is there a rating Window (+/-X elo) of opponents you could face? Otherwise it would hurt you to play games earlier
In my experience even Battle Spot tries to do this (since I struck 1800 on Wi-Fi, I’ve only been paired with people over 1800 for a while which is very nice). Obviously, if the only available game is someone much lower / higher, maybe they would rather pair you with them than no game at all, but I can’t say for certain.
It’s mostly latter Matt. I don’t know exactly what the parameters are but it works the same as the Battle Spot later does: it tries to match you with closer rated opponents first.
Also speaking from experience, the longer it searches for an opponent, the higher the chance of a big gap between your ratings. Sometimes it will match you with someone almost immediately, and that opponent is usually around your rating then.
The existence of this makes me want to take baby Meowsticks and shove them into a pouch of a Mama Kangaskhan until her pouch breaks and she can’t carry her baby around.
Overall I’ve found that Ferroseed tend to be more effective for that purpose, but you would definitely get more of a kick out of it with Meowstic.
This is my experience from the wifi friendly: There is about a 10 second window that it chooses your opponent. If in those 10 seconds it finds an opponent within 100 maybe 150? points of you, it will pair you with that person. If 10 seconds pass and there isn’t anyone searching who is close to you then it will pair you with someone random. Once I hit an 1800 ELO I never faced anyone below 1730 for the rest of the tournament.
why do all CP events for europe take place around may-early june? Its the main exams time for us
I am finally not going to get disqualified from one of these. So exciting.
Worst part about the maximum of 60 games is that we cannot take the top places from one another during the last night.
This is pretty cool. I don’t think the CP should make too much of a difference, although it would be really sad to miss a worlds invite because of a couple points.
I’ll definitely be playing in this, if only because it’ll be the last official chance for me to practice before I go to Worlds this summer.
Will this lock the Battle Box? I’m wondering if it will interfere with a Premier Challenge Im looking to attend.
I’m probably going to suck but: Free Enigma Berry? My OCD demands this for my berrydex completion… I guess I’ll have to throw together a team.
Yeah, it almost certainly will require a locked battle box to play in the wifi tourney.
Although, you could always just use the team you are using on WiFi in the premier challenge anyways, unless you feel like the team hasn’t been working out.
Yes the enigma berry…now I won’t have to grind the battle maison >: )
Right now in the US Masters 10 points is the difference between 16th and 22nd place.
10 points means most in Europe. Top 16 get paid trips, there are 3 nationals. That equals probably 11-12 spots taken up by top 4. You get top 8 with points, it’s pretty much a guarantee to get a paid trip also. Same with an invite for top 32, top 24 will be in, then 8 spots left for grabs if you made top 16 to be determined by CP.
Over mothers day? c’mon nintendo…
is may challenge inverse as well or just in the special battle spot?
This is the first official online tourney I’m competing in, so I’m sorry if this is dumb. I just wanted to know if the battle box gets locked at registration or the first day of battles, because I may need to do some last minute adjustments.
These wifi tournaments typically do lock the battle box.
Considering Kangaskhan is the most popular mega, it seems like the right move