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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I’ve been busy and have only played 4 matches total. Does that mean I can grind it out and play 36 before day 2 is over?
You should be able to, from what I’m hearing they do carry over.
After this tournament, I’ll never use moves with less than 100% accuracy again.
yes you can
A guy got mad because I outplayed him (well, okay, his Play Rough miss helped) and quit at the end of the first turn. I don’t think I ever got rewarded, though I noticed my ranking seemed to go up a lot after the next battle, so maybe it just took a bit to be recorded.
It records after your next completed battle.
Oh, cool.
WHAT THE GRIMER
WHY IS MY ROTOM HOLDING A POWER LENS
I swear I gave it Safety Goggles… No WONDER it got outrun that one time.
I don’t know if anyone saw this, but it got me really confused. Can anyone explain me, please, what happened?
You can use your party if you’d like.
External
Winner in Special Cases
If a Pokémon’s Ability (such as Rough Skin, Aftermath, Liquid Ooze, or Iron Barbs) or held item (such as Rocky Helmet), results in both players’ final Pokémon fainting, the player whose Pokémon had the Ability or held item wins the game.
After yesterday’s DC filled debacle (thanks internet). I think I’ll head over to Starbucks and mooch off the wifi.
This challenge has turned out to be really frustrating, which is the opposite of what I need for a challenge where I need to grind out 60 battles.
Disconnects seem frequent and there’s no indication of if it’s my network, the opponent’s network, or Nintendo itself. There’s also no clear message about what the game’s outcome will be. Sometimes it doesn’t get recorded at all, sometimes I get a win, sometimes I get a loss.
I’ve literally never had a disconnect before this tournament, but just today I’ve had all 3 of my losses due to disconnects and other matches not even recorded. 60 matches is honestly a lot for me to fit into 3 days, but it looks like even that’s not sufficient since I’ve already played at least another 2 matches through several turns that just don’t count for anything. Not to mention that I should really take some time to cool off since playing while frustrated is definitely not a winning strategy.
I’ve literally played back to back to back matches tethered to my phone while riding in a car without disconnects; I have trouble believing these are all on my end.
Honestly I just feel really bad for anyone having the same experience as me that actually really cares about the CP. I was just doing this to hopefully get in some good matches so if my situation doesn’t improve I’ll just stop playing and get my enigma berry, whatever. But I can’t imagine how mad I would be at random losses if I was counting on this CP.
For my first ever competition, I think I’m going pretty well.
I lost 7/9 times on the first night (I was playing poorly all around thinking I was good when I was not). I battled 10 times, but one of them (a win) apparently didn’t count cause my opponent lost connection? I battled the next few and was not rewarded so oh well.
I felt pretty dang bad (see all my rage tweets) so stopped after roughly 10 battles to take a break for the night. Honestly it was so full of hax (double rock slide miss happened and costed me the game right there, Brave Bird got a crit and KOd my Scrafty I EV’d to live them, that sort of thing) that I felt cheated.
Today? Much better. Less hax all around (my first nights wins were also mainly due to hax cause Hammer Arm missed me twice in a row and such) and I’m actually making better choices. I can choose the correct threats and act accordingly more often. I’m bringing the correct guys to the battle. Sometimes I don’t bring my mega, sometimes I wait forever to mega evolve, and I’m thinking a couple turns ahead.
“Yes I may live the first one, but I should use this move instead to secure my place and not leave it to chance”
What I’ve learned:
One mistake can cost you the game. This has happened to me where I made ONE misplay, and lost the entire battle shortly afterwards.
Capitalize on your opponent’s mistakes, but don’t expect them to happen again.
Play for the long run. and play it safe if you can.
I’ve also noticed some people have really great teams, but use them all wrong. I saw a FANTASTIC Trick Room team, but they never bothered to TR even if they had PLENTY of time to get it up. I’ve also seen really great leads that end up being all out attacking and clearly have no defense to live hits. I’m in the “below 1500” area so that could be part of it. People may just be copying teams and not understanding their usage, or like me just getting used to them since it was a last minute sort of thing.
I personally started the IC taking it hard, and came out with a 19-4 after being haxed in 2 games. Now im taking it easy, just trying to have fun and meet any top player, as i do my best
Does anyone know what the highest ratings are looking like right now?
Well, after spending all day yesterday breeding a team, I finally managed to start battling earlier. I managed four games, losing only one of them (which isn’t too bad considering I haven’t played in about a month, although the one loss was through a series of silly mistakes I shouldn’t have made) before we had a power cut. Luckily it was between games, so I didn’t lose anything, and it has meant I had a chance to go outside and enjoy the fantastic weather we’ve been having, but it also means I’ve so far managed a total of four matches.
What do we reckon; Is it worth at this point going for a big binge on the remaining games tomorrow, or just play it at my own pace, treat it as VGC practice and not overly worry about things?
Oh man, if my internet didn’t act up I would be going 34-6 at least after today, I made some very bold plays in matches that cost me the two games but won me several more
As it is, the score sheet says 25-15 (nine disconnects right near the end game) so I doubt I’ll be getting my CP, but it’s still great practise for the event, even if the server keeps pitting me against lower ranked opponents
EDIT – Also (just realised due to reading my notes) I’ve had to do 25 battles today instead of 20 because of the server acting up so badly and not giving a win or a loss after a finished or disconnected battle… has anyone else had this problem?
I would say the latter, just play as many games as you feel necessary and treat it like you’re practising on the old special ladder
I’m actually curious, how do you know who disconnected during a disconnection? Is the message different for the person who caused the disconnection? I’m a bit worried since I’ve been disconnected on twice but I didn’t get kicked off the battle spot/3DS wi-fi.
It depends both on the message and what happens after the disconnect happens. If you stay on the server and online, it’s the opponent who’s disconnected. If you’re kicked off the tournament server and offline as well it’s you who’s disconnected
On top of this though, I’ve seen a couple of other error messages (one which happened straight after a victory) which took points away from me. As long as you stay online for the most part you’ll have gotten a win or at least a “draw”
If it says “Connection failed”, or it gives you a long error message, you disconnected. If it says “connection with the other trainer was interrupted”, or something like that, they disconnected.
DCs not counting as wins hasn’t been a problem for me though… The one time DCd it counted as a loss for me, and all my DCing opponents gave me a win. It doesn’t update right away on BattleSpot unlike standard games, maybe you guys are just impatient? lol
Well I’m done for the day at 23-17, had mixed fortunes with some really good wins followed by some awful losses lol.
My little boy is currently at 23-12 but has got the hump now after losing 3 in a row including one to Woopahking!! lol
After a promising day yesterday ive managed to rage quit two games in a row because of unbelievable grimer from almost untenable positions
maybe the grimer couldve been prevented by cleaner plays on my end but im probably going to end up either being DQd or snapping my 3ds if this grimer ensues :/
Man, this guy probably would have won if he’d used Sacred Sword on my Kangaskhan instead of Shadow Ball. I guess I understand if you weren’t expecting to survive the turn, but…
Anyway, sitting at 1,687 and feeling pretty good. Not sure what my win/loss is at the moment. It’s especially surprising since my Rotom is stuck with a Power Lens… I guess I should be glad I’m not meeting any Charizard/Venusaur leads; a non-existent pair of Safety Goggles is worse than a useless one.
Also, Lv.7 Endeavor Kangaskhan with Trick Room Gourgeist. Nice.
Oops. Double-post.
Convinced my little man to do a few more battles and he’s finished for the night at 27-12. Couldn’t do the last one as it’s past 11pm lol now I’ve gotta send him to bed!!
ohh jeez, this day was an utter disaster for me, ended up with a 10-10 record. with a 1690 rating or so
You should NEVER play all the 20 battles in a row. I feel so tired right now.
Now I know my team is weak to:
-Gyarados
-Aerodactyl
-Sashed Gengar (god I faced them in almost all the battles today)
-Sucker Punch abusers
Welp. I’m getting beat by bad players being bad.
made it into the 1700s around 2 today. Just got back from a little trip, and now back to finishing the 32 battles i still need to do. It’s honestly a good score for 6 rand mons i chucked together. Finally beat babytron too.
I have come to the conclusion that the rng is broken, as I have been haxed in some way or form literally every battle.
I played like… Well, I don’t know how many I played in a row, but it was a lot and I still thirst for blood.
And I had to end with something below 1663 because I hit the limit. Probably should’ve just quite while I was ahead at 1701… :C
Overprediction is every good player’s nightmare. xD “Aha! He’ll switch here! …Nope, I just Ice Beamed his Mawile. Wonderful.”
Think we battled. I’m Chica. Ggs