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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started off facing Fonic Frog, which got me a game 1 loss, but managed to win every game so far and should be 8/9-1. However, I‘ve been getting kinda easy wins, which means the harder challenges are yet to come
Team nearly ready!! Will start battling soon. Gotta hurry my little boy along in his 20 matches too before the deadline passes for juniors!!
What poke do y’all plan to give your enigma berry to?
I just want it for my berry collection in all honesty. 6-1 !
I did all of my battles last night from 8:30 PM to 12 PM. probably shouldn’t have because I have nothing to do now and I made a couple stupid mistakes (shell smash cloyster sux D:). but I’m 16-4 right now with 165X as my rating.
Marathoned to 20 battles last evening. I’d usually report sooner, but kind of had to put my mind off from the IC after going 3 straight losses to close my day. Normally, I’d just play to recover my points, but I don’t get that luxury anymore. Ending 13-7, probably could have been closer to 15-5 preferably. The only thing I can think of that could have been worse would have been losing to Verlisify, ehich I nearly did.
Maybe now that I’ve had some time to sit and think, I’ll be able to think of a plan and stop bleeding points to Greninja/Talonflame aggro teams.
Playing 20 battles took just over 3 hours. I’m not sure how that really compares to the amount of battles I could play for 5th gen WiFi, but that was 20 battles in 3 hours where 2 of them involved me running a timer on the opponent. I’d say that’s pretty quick.
I still need to finish my first day of battles (only have done three so far). I’m Eric from Pennsylvania if anyone ends up battling me.
I should be 3-0, but I lost my first battle due to time. Literally one more turn, and I would have won, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
Apparently you need to publish it for others to see it…
External
Should work now.
Ended 15-5, notable matches were losses to LPFan and Joel.
Recap:
8-2. How do you guys motivate yourself to do 20 battles–
I haven’t fought a mega kanga at all.
I’ve fought
2 mega mawile
1 mega gyrados
2 char y
1 mega manectric
are those hockey pucks
15-5 with a low 1600 rating. I don´t know: I got some really strange stuff that my team wasn´t prepared well against/didn´t bring answers to because you expected something different: I got about 10 Charizard today, the majority being X, two Mega-Aerodactyl that both carried Fire Fang for some reason and Mega-Gengar where I expected a Mega-Tyranitar, jusging by the team structure. The fact that i could hardly lock any really safe wins made me realize that the team I´m using in this is probably pretty bad and prematurely used (I built it specifically for the competition with hardly any testing before due to time constraints and the fact that every Gardevoir I breed takes me at least 4 hours to get the right one when I don´t even care about the gender…)
Highlights:
-Being in a 2-4 position in one battle early on and turning the game to a narrow win
-2 Vivillon (one being Quiver Dance lol)
-Defeated every Mega-Kangaskhan so far with a team that could have trouble against it (only were like 3 so far, though)
-Lost to a team that featured Mega-Gengar but without Perish Trap (something I tried using in Bochum and worked reasonably well for me on the ladder – a great way to utilize Gengar´s strenghts but probably could have won had I not anticipated a Mega-Tyranitar)
-Lv.37 Talonflame WITH item xD
“Highlights”:
-Mega Zard X-usage > Mega Zard Y usage
-Lost to Focus Blast Exploud
-Fire Fang Mega-Aerodactyl is a thing apparently: 100% of Mega-Aero had it (well, I only faced two but still…), one even used it alongside a Fire Blast TTar and a Talonflame with it… Guess someone lost one time too many to Ferrothorn…^^
-Way too many Policy Aegislash. What happened to the Lefties?^^
-Opposing Aerodactyl have a suspiciously high flinch rate
-Got two games registered as losses due to communication errors (well, would have lost one of those games regardless though)
-Played some matches way below my capabilities
Well, I initially wanted to shoot for 1800 because that´s what all of my teams on the cartridge were able to achieve but that could be difficult if I don´t step up my game a little and keep having trouble with things that are a little off the standard sets…^^ We´ll see what tommorow brings, I guess.
I totally love all of your stories of bringing unviable Pokemon. It makes me feel better about myself for not using PP Ups on a 5 PP move and using special attackers without minimum attack
So far I have only seen one Mega Kangaskhan and one Rotom (wash), two Garchomps.
I have also seen Choice Scarf Lapras with Sheer Cold alongside Eviolite Gligar with Guillotine…
A lot of good matches, but the number of in-game teams has been pretty high compared to the original VGC Ladder.
Currently sitting at 11-2 presently and somewhere in the low 1600s. Its been a very weird block of matches thus far though, and not entirely sure I’ve hit any real big hitters as yet on the ladder, but I expect that to really become apparent come the next two days, and potentially when I do the final block of seven for this evening shortly.
I’ve seen a whole host of different megas, and the variety being implemented is somewhat refreshing. Whilst a large portion of the matches thus far has featured Kangaskhan as their mega, I’ve also hit a Tyranitar, Blastoise, Charizard Y, Mawile and three Abomasnow. I am relieved that I made the decision to place Taunt on one of my party, as it has been crucial in making Trick Room users much more aware of how much of a knife edge they are on, as well as having the satisfaction of putting all of the Meowstic and Klefki’s that I’ve seen come to a screeching halt.
One loss to a poor pokemon choice at the preview, the other more of a case of just laugh it off and ignore. I played a good lead matchup into a Khan-Artist pairing, and managed to Taunt the Smeargle to presumably cut its options out (notably Dark Void). What came next though was two consecutive Sheer Cold hits, which was totally unexpected.
Will probably update later once I’ve done the final matches of the day.
I’m a bad player. I’m like 1-5. Forever losing vs Aerodactyl and pranksters.
Taunt/quick guard is your best friend. I don’t know what to say about aerodactyl though as I use it on my team and it always gets its job done before dying.
Do you have to battle max 20 times every day or is it possible to battle like 15 today and 25 tomorrow?
As far as anyone knows, yes they will rollover to the next day.
Finished 17-3 for Day 1. Two of my losses were to playing poorly up and the third to terrible luck. Played Dimsun and Zach so far as for well-known players.
learn from it and adjust
13-7. Not too bad, except I’m back under 1600. I keep screwing up at Team Preview and bringing the wrong Mega. Oh well, hindsight is 20-20. Oh, and there were those three battles where Rotom and Mienshao couldn’t hit any Overheats/High Jump Kicks.
Do you get wins if your opponent disconnects at team selection? I’m starting to see disconnects there when teams have bad match ups, but I’m not getting any wins (that I can tell) which is a pretty huge oversight. Not that Game Freak knows how to build good online modes or anything.
Sitting at 14-4 and trying to get my last two matches in for day one, the amount of shenanigans is high so far. Missing a majority of my 70/75 accuracy moves and getting chain crit like nobodies business. Feeling very lucky to have a winning record at the moment.
Well, so that’ll be their loss in the future.
Players who consistently play in matches that are interrupted or disconnected may be restricted from future Online Competitions.
Feeling good at 16-4. One loss was extremely close but I definently got outplayed in the other 3.
Finished 14-6 playing most of my matches in the Australian night time. Mainly got Europeans and only a handful of Asian players.
Worst loss was to a Greek player that had a max speed Mega Gardevior with 4 attacking moves. Also lost to a Physical Aegislash with LO and I fed it swagger. These are good lessons againest lesser known players for my upcoming regionals.
I had a shameful time stalling win was against a Canadian player where it was my Full HP Aerodactyl vsing an Aegislash in a sub slowly restoring his HP and in the last turn he barely missed being full HP to cause a draw.
16-4, looks like I did get the win for the guy who disconnected at team select. Good. The day restriction rolls over at 5pm PST right? Trying to split this up so I do 10 at night, 10 in the afternoon.
Yeah, is a team preview/team building probably. Plus I’m blocked from Aerodactyl, I just can’t find the right way to play around him without getting wrecked by his partner.
Prankster swagger just irks me but I’m kinda sure that everyone dislikes it the same. Is just random, as someone with FG and Smash background it seems weird to me.
What was aero’s partner?
After adding taunt/quick guard to my team prankster was never a problem for me… Don’t you have those?
Right now I’m 16-4, so far so good! Hopefully I won’t run into many rain teams, that’s pretty much the only thing wrecking me so far. They’ve given me half of my losses, the other two were thanks to me being dumb enough to not taunt meowstic immediately and my bad internet connection.