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.
Related Posts
Nugget Bridge Update →
GS Cup Announced as Pokémon’s 2016 Ruleset →
2016 Pokémon World Championships Date & Location Surfaces →
Yeah I need to rebreed one of mine for a different nature, then ev that + another and level them and I’m still debating over what mega to use lol. I thought I’d have more time.
My thoughts pretty much, not to mention work means day 1 will be over before I can even play
Ended on 14-6, kinda gross to look at, probably wasn’t the best idea to use an official competition to test a new Pokemon on my team. Welp!
Oh. Is it just juniors that get the time limit thing?
Junior Division players will be limited to playing between the hours of 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. (local time).
My battles have been riddled with disconnections… currently going 6-6 and four of those losses I owe to the server/my own internet
Still I have no regrets, got to get some Nats practise in
I’m 1-3 (what I have played) What are those really random teams that I see online? LOL
Question: Due to a fight with Comcast, I only had my internet restored last night long after I needed to be in bed for work. I haven’t locked my battle box, etc; will the Day 1 battles carry over even if I wasn’t “in” Day 1?
I’ve had pretty bad luck so far, I have lost 3 matches that I could’ve won, but I got every way of hax possible against me.
I might be wrong, but I don’t think “day 1” is over until 8 PM eastern time.
It may be a silly question, but do you HAVE to play all 20 battles per day, or is 20 just the maximum? Phillip is only 7, and while he’s having fun in the tournament, he was ready to call it a night after 7 battles last night.
maximum.
you can play however many you want but 20 battles per day is the maximum, unless of course you didnt play out your full 20 from the day before, in which case you play all of them games too
17-3 for me.. Lost a game due to timer.. It was so close my opponents last Pokemon was at 100% hp while my last Pokemon was like 1hp off 100% and another one due to hax; missing rock slide 3 times in a row.
Just lost to a 1HKO team. gg no re
2-1 for me so far, the loss was from me not realizing it was a TR team and my mienshao losing a speed tie (I guess it had a scarf?)
#teamgeniuses
This is why I triple-checked my box before locking it. xD
Sucks that I can’t play on Sunday… I didn’t realize this was going to be so short.
5-1 so far, I’m pretty proud of myself tbh
ITS HAPPENING.
It amuses me that more people don’t realize something is suspicious when they get to this point of their sentence…
How do I get access to this, it’s saying I don’t have it, and I clicked the request button
Has anyone read anything official about battles carrying over? I really don’t have the time before 6PM Ceentral tonight.
Unless it was changed from the Friendly they do carry over.
My wireless card decided to be retarded and crash 3 matches in a row that I was certainly going to win. Ended up going 13-7 on the day with notable matches being a win against Stormfront and a loss against Mean.
I thought the team would do a lot better than it did, having gone 19-1 (to compare with the IC) on PS! in comparison to what should be 16-4.
I didn’t expect to see 8 Ferrothorns out of 20 teams which is what this current team is weakest to. It was also amusing to see how many people couldn’t beat Amoonguss Blastoise.
I found the experience to be much more relaxing than last year and it was harder to go full on tilt because the games forces you to stop after 20 matches. Maybe this is because there isn’t that much on the line for me this year.
PS. I still hate that these things exist after last year but you all know my story by now.
So I decided to start playing at midnight last night, and forgot a couple items… Megas are overrated anyway.
Kind of upset that I still got paired with sub 1500 players even after I was above 1700. I was expecting the rating Window to be a lot smaller for the opponents I was playing. Hopefully I will be able to play more this weekend.
About the game limits, I don’t see why this tournament has to be limited to 3 days. They could easily make it 10 days across 2 weekends to give all the players plenty of time to get some matches in. The way ELO is designed the more matches played the more accurate your rating will be.
Went 12-8. Not counting disconnects in games there was a 100% chance I would win I went 16-4 so whilst I’m still pleased, I highly doubt my World chances. Will keep trying though
I think the only pokemon I had problems with (once! I learned from that match) was malamar. I also faced an odd team where one of their pokemon was level 44 … and another where they didn’t have intimidate on scrafty. Will probably get in a few more battles later. But I honestly entered this for the berry (lol)
I’m 17-3 at the moment. I brought an un-EV’d salamence with me which made me under speed a mega venusaur :/
Went 16-4 day 1. I usually don’t look at the trainer names but I lost to Sejun.