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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Any advice to not get time stalled? I feel so helpless against those players. I’ve gotten time stalled 4 times now and yes I understand it’s part of the game.
Oic….just to be sure…..the tournament ends after 60 matches right?
Yes.
Is anyone else getting a large amount of disconnections? I’m sitting right by my router and I have been online this whole time. Something strange is going on.
My challenge just came to an end. My overall W/L record is an abysmal 27W/33L.
I did get a higher than expected rating though. Going into my final battle, my score was 1617, and I finished with a win.
That final win made me feel good though. It was versus the highest ranked battler I met in the entire three days. It was a Japanese battler that had a rank of 1783.
That was my curse throughout the whole challenge. I could somehow beat most of the people with a higher rank, but then loose versus the lower ranked teams. >_<
I’ve only had about 6 battles so far. After each one, I think “Wow, that was the weirdest battle so far”.
Of course, every battle after that trumps it.
My latest battle included substitute CharY, Heliolisk with 3/3 full turn paralyzes, and of course the standard Solar Power Normal Gem Hyper Beam.
I’m glad to see what wonders await
It’s not about not being time stalled, it’s about recognizing games that have a higher than normal probability to end on time and maneuvering yourself into winning positions at the end. Some games are gonna go to clock, just have to try to make them work for you and not the other guy. Expect around 15 turns, try to end the game at a point where you have an HP advantage even if you have to play in a way that you wouldn’t win the game if it was untimed, milk timer when it is advantageous to do so. Just have to figure out how to make long games work for whatever team you’re running. It’s just another aspect of planning your endgame in the longer matches. Taunt helps a lot if you have it since a lot of the more defensive teams have a lot of healing moves.
Well after a not-so-great Day 2 and a good Day 3, I think I’m going to go ahead and call it quits. I still have a couple of matches left, but I won’t have time to battle tomorrow, plus I need some sleep. X_X Finished at 1730, so that should at least net me some Championship Points based on the ratings I’ve seen so far while battling.
Great game Stats. Came down to the wire.
beat Sejun who was sitting around 1849. I think my record is solid enough now so I’m going to sit on it.
HOPEFULLY PACHIRISU GETS TOP 8
Does IGN #fonsi❤️ from somewhere in Europe (Germany IIRC) by any chance post here, or does anyone know if he/she does? I hope his/her high enough rating means this person is on NuggetBridge haha because omg holy crap that was the most insane match I’ve ever had. Replay doesn’t even do it justice.
Well when you play with inaccurate moves that’s what happens…
Edit; my mobile must show old replies. Woops. If i cancel participation will I still get the berry when it’s officially over?
<3 Pachirisu, that thing is fun to use to redirect annoying electric junk. And I’m assuming Electric Hyper Beam via Ion Deluge, that could be pretty fun also.
Anyways I just started finally…lotta mega Blastoise seemingly at the lower levels (only did like 4 battles before calling it for the night).
Now we need to now Pachisiru’s EV spread xD
Currently 23-10, i’m going to play 27 battles today….
I don’t really remember any of my battles, nor do I know my record, but I feel I should apologize to anyone who watched my stream. Unless you ran Sheer Cold Smeargle, then you can eat a hot bowl of em’.
Thinking of switching out azumarill for gardevoir but here’s my team (l0l). At least I tried. Since I changed my team around I’ve noticed I never bring azumarill. Don’t judge my movesets pls. I feel like I should never play in the morning because people use really weird stuff. All these crits tho. Should’ve stopped at 8-2, I’m at 14-14, gonna quit right there and maybe try later. My main problem is that I keep picking the wrong four, I might end up switching a few things around.
Just fought against an amazing electric terrain team; Lanturn and Heliolisk lead, using soak, electric terrain, discharge and volt absorb. Just barely made it through by spamming an Earthquake that was no longer STAB…
Only just had a chance to get started, 1620ish after 19 matches isn’t too bad I guess.
I’m done, the RNG hates me. For some reason, after all the bad luck I’ve had so far, something/someone decides that it might be fun to pair me up against some guy who spams Minimize and Dark Void.
Fonsi is Daflo if i am correct
To me it seemed like the in-game teams and incredibly luck-based teams had disappeared today compared to the first two days. I had some really good battles today, and think I have finished with 167X after 25 battles or so.
Too bad we only had three days to get the battles done, but I suppose it’s to make it fair, so that people who really need the CP will get their battles done over the course of three days, while those who just play for fun (like myself) will end up with fewer battles completed and have a much smaller chance of stealing CP we don’t need.
Also, despite being in located in Europe I only fought one other European from France…
Ugh, something clearly doesn’t want me to participate in this event. I haven’t been able to get a consistent connection all day. There’s nothing wrong with the internet my end, all my other devices work fine, it’s just my 3DS can’t seem to maintain a connection; I’ve been trying it with Mario Kart and there’s the same problem, and it even struggled getting onto the eshop. Is anyone else having similar problems? If not I guess I’ll start checking router settings and such, see if anything’s changed in the last 24 hours (maybe the power cut yesterday did something to it?).
So I decided to stop now cause my massive losing streak probably caused me any chance of having a 18xx finish.
I peaked at 1822 with 5 games left but I eased up and managed to choke hard and drop to somewhere near 1680-1710 (I don’t want to check my score, its embarrassing how bad I slipped in the last 5 games)
Heres my team:
External
Some notes from this wifi tournament:
– Assault Vest Lanturn was clutch for me and I used it in almost every battle. It might not have high attacking stats (its literally one point above Cress in sp. atk) but its coverage was excellent and more often than not, it can out damage an opponent while not receiving too much in return (this was against stuff like Rotoms that are not Cutter, Gengar, Gardevoir.) Volt Absorb was also useful cause my two other pokemon with electric attacks (Rotom w/ Discharge and Miltank w/ Thunder Wave) were faster so that helped in a pinch. You can say AV Goodra is better (it probably is) but my team already had two dragons.
– Miltank was slightly subar for me. Its not that its a bad pokemon as the couple of times I used it, it was real useful, but I probably could’ve found a better pokemon for that slot in my team.
– If you’re wondering why I had Sleep Talk on a non choice Salamence, I was expecting a lot of Smeargles due to me being in the same timezone as Japan. I didn’t end up facing any Smeargle, but Sleep Talk did end up helping a lot against Amoongus. Protect would’ve been useless anyway cause I can switch out to any of the 4 pokemon in my team that resisted ice or the 2 (and AV Lanturn) that resisted fairy.
– Aside from the 7-8 games I lost due to wifi and one of the loses in my last minute choke job, I honestly don’t think I lost to a team that used Kangaskhan as one of the four pokemon in battle. This was mostly due to the fact that I over prepared for it with WoW Rotom-h, Rocky Helmet Impish Miltank, Rough Skin Garchomp, Intimidate Salamence and Mawile. Talk about meta game defining pokemon.
– Although I mostly agree with the 60 battles and 20 per day rule, one disadvantage of this is that I kept on getting paired up with 15xx players and almost never played someone higher than me. I’m not sure if this was just my bad luck and timing, but I assume that most of the players that were nearer to my ranking either reached their daily quota of games or were finished with the tournament, leading me to go against WAY lower ranked players that only gave a few points per win and made me lose a huge chunk of points per lose (which is bound to happen at least once if you keep facing lower ranked players.)
– I don’t think I played anyone from this site except for Lajo (good games btw), who I ironically beat and then two games later lost to someone using his same exact team.
Just finished with a 34-26 record,. My final rating is about 1620, but i had fun playing with this team. Games certainly got harder as the challenge progressed. I started with a 9-1 record after 10 battles, giving me some hope that i could finish with a decent record. But that changed fast. Atleast i won more games than i lost.
Top 5 most used pokemon against me:
Talonflame 14x
Rotom-W 11x (5x Rotom-H)
Kangaskhan 10x
Mawile 9x
Garchomp 9x
That was me. GG.
Ended up with 48 Wins and 12 Losses. And around 1810-1820 rating.
How often did you use Feint on Scizor? I was always torn about that move; love it in theory, but was never very good at using it in practice. I imagine it could be nice on Scizor, though.
I’m done with this at 1810 with a record of 36-10. Don’t really want to risk losing my rating due to poor luck, silly plays, or to bad matchups. I might actually change my mind and play again if I feel confident to, but right now I don’t want to go through that phase like last year’s fest and end up wasting time. Good luck to the rest of you guys on the final day.
Finished at 179x after playing until 3 in the morning so I could get the matches done, as I’m busy all day today. 43-17. This tournament has basically informed me that Charizard-Y is far too risky to use in an actual tournament, perhaps along with Aero. Random scarf mons/heat wave and overheat did not treat me well, so it’s clear that I need a stronger Kanga counter than playing my opponent into taking an Overheat and I probably need to not play at 3 in the morning. All the plays I made were super safe when I should have been calling things. One thing I noticed was that almost every Japanese person I played (I played about 30 or 35) who was using Aegislash was using Wide Guard, which gives Charizard Mamo a ton of trouble. Perhaps Charizard is popular over there because it deals with Aegi? I really don’t know. Regardless, the practice is useful even if I performed suboptimally. I don’t want to say staying up until 3 trying to get CP while relying on 90% accurate moves was fun, but it totally was and I extend a hearty congratulations to whoever comes out victorious.
I don´t even know what my current rating or standing is, nor do I care. All I know is that I have 3 games left and I´ll most likely use these to gamble with my rating right now because after how things went for me today, I know that what I have point-wise isn´t worth anything so I probably won´t lose much by “risking” it. Come to think of it, why would I even call it a “gamble”, then? Oh well…
I wish I could say this tournament was good practice, but in my eyes, it wasn´t: What I´ve seen in this challenge greatly differs from what i´ve seen on Battle Spot and PS even and usually, the sets they ran either were pretty situational or were pretty far from what I´ve come to call “standard” which I hardly faced at all during the tournament. The IC Metagame (for me) was, in example, invested with Charizard X, Tailwind (sometimes Tailwind+Charizard X to my dismay), Rain and the occasional hardcore-TR teams with some standard or carbon-copy of a team analysis thrown in: Most of these things I believe either weren´t really touched at all throughout the season or just plainly died out pretty early and as a result, I came completly unprepared in many matches because I haven´t accounted for these matchups. Many of my losses I can safely blame on matchup troubles and being thrown off by really strange sets but most of them came from the tilt I went in after experiencing some bad luck or said surprises: Looking back at some of the “plays” I made, I can comfortably say that most of my losses were deserved and I could have come back had I just been in a calmer mood regardless of some “hax” happening.
So, all in all I learned:
–Bringing a well-rounded team is the most important thing: The fact that I had so many bad matchups with my team and that it was usually thrown off by a strange item choice, mega choice, set or team-archetype just indactes that the team isn´t really well-built: I thought I´d be fine if I just cover the most common things since I didn´t expect such a high amount of strange stuff because I assumed the metagame would be similar to what I´ve seen on Battle Spot which wasn´t at all the case: I willingly risked bad matchups against archetypes and Pokemon I have hardly seen in the past only to be burned badly for it. I don´t know what was the cause for the sudden rise of what I came to call “fossils of the early season” and the drop of the general skill level of my opponents (some of them really made some questionable plays like Rock Sliding with Garchomp on a Rotom/Bisharp lead turn 1… Tell me whatever you want, but “predicting the Aerodactyl” early-game doesn´t really pay off when you risk your Chomp getting burned for me or a possible Dark-Move on his partner Aegislash. The same guy also ran Outrage on the same set combined with physical Aegislash so I highly doubt he wanted to make a pro-level play…) but for all I know is: It happened and I wasn´t prepared for it. The next time I´m participating in one of these challenges, I´m gonna build a team that can hold its ground even against things I considered dead or that it at least has a plan against them.
-Bringing a freshly-built team into this isn´t a good idea: This kinda overlaps with what has been written above but most of the time when you occasionally run into strange stuff on the ladder and lose to it, you start planning against them and think through your options against that matchup a little more: If the team works against the regular standard and the general synergy isn´t disrupted by it, I usually make a change that would let me win against similar archetypes (for example, a loss to rain might make me consider including a Ferrothorn or Azumarill if they´re not in the team already). My Bochum team was better built in that regard and could have won against most of these strange sets and teams that I was confronted with easier than the team I ran in this challenge could because of my experience and before-mentioned adjustments I made during testing – a factor that this team obviously lacked. I did like 6 battles with it before because I was pretty busy with studying for exams and as a result, played with a hastily built team that could on paper win against most common stuff but probably failed against more unorthodox teams. I was literally thrown off early on by the difference between what I prepared this team against and what I actually faced. Probably could have handled these situations better if I was more comfortable with the team and most importantly, made some adjustments against flaws I´d see during testing, so for the next time, I´ll keep that in mind.
-Even though that 1500 guy just robbed you 30 points for whatever reason, you probably shouldn´t play on if you´re not able to make good plays: These tournaments always had a high rage factor for me: While there were no DC rates to worry about this time around, I was occasionally faced with random DCs that were registered as losses on my part even though my Internet worked fine (I was in the Internet with my phone at the same time while also having the router in eye´s reach so I would have noticed if the connection troubles came from my end), streaks and small moments of bad luck and obscure sets and plays. All these things have a tendency to get on my nerves especially if the set is situational (meaning it wouldn´t work without a certain surprise factor) or when the luck was pretty crucial: While I can handle this for like 3 or 4 battles, I kept getting thrown into strange sets (I never saw this many Wide Guard Aegislash with Sacred Sword, or such a high amount of Sacred Sword on Aegislash (or fast Aegislash in general) or stuff like bulky WoW/Roost Talonflame or random coverage like Fire Fang on Aerodactyl… I have a little collection but I don´t feel like bringing that up more than I need to now), people making obscure or really risky plays when they in fact had no reason to risk anything at all and yeah, the occasional Rock Slide flinches, misses and so on. Yeah, it´s part of the game but there´s only so much you can take. This is not meant to be a rant or anything, I just listed it to show how easily things I haven´t accounted for affect me: And as a consequence to that, I should just call it quits before I let things like that affect my playing. Unfortunately, I was pretty eager to get back what I lost so I made the mistake of playing on but that in turn made me do really dumb plays where I occasionally actually needed luck in my favor to turn things around even though I could won easily in a calmer state of mind. I was never made for long, grindy tournaments like these and it´s for that reason that I should know when to quit or at least take a break before playing on because as much as I like to tell myself otherwise, nothing good will come of it.^^
I don´t know: This was probably the most awful run I ever had in a VGC´14-tournament and I can´t recall how much I was on the verge of clicking the mental Outrage-button in real life because of the dumb plays I made, the strange stuff I faced and other things. I wish I could say I got some good practice for Manchester but unfortunately, I have to disagree to that but I also have to say that part of the reason this is the case is because of my bad and hastily-made team and subpar plays as results from the points stated above. While I haven´t really learned many new things about the format, I learned a great deal about my team, its troubles and, most importantly, the VGC´14-IC meta that I´ll prepare myself against in a better way the next time around.^^