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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ran into opponents who just spammed swagger from the get go.. and also 5 delphoxes lol
Someone please tell me why stupid grimer like spamming dark void and sheer cold smeargle and swagger on meowstic can win games. It takes literally zero skill and robs people who actually use their brains of well-deserved wins.
What a yamsing joke
My understanding is that the tournament began May 16 00:00 universal time and ends May 18 23:59 universal time. I live in central time zone, so I’m translating this to be:
Day 1: May 15 @ 8:00 PM to May 16 @ 7:59 PM
Day 2: May 16 @ 8:00 PM to May 17 @ 7:59 PM
Day 3: May 17 @ 8:00 PM to May 18 @ 7:59 PM
20 battles x 3 days= 60 battles total
Because if you can’t beat stupid grimer like dark void sheer cold and swagger you aren’t setting yourself up for victory.
Maybe try adjusting your team to be more consistent against these luck based teams instead of having your matchup against them will be luck – which will be in their favor. Everyone’s guilty of not preparing well enough for things they consider to just be luck based, hell I lost at Seattle because I didn’t have much for smeargle, but you have to be able to adjust your teams to avoid putting yourself in a position where bad luck loses you the game.
You could say that WiFi tourneys bring out the darkness in people.
;________________________________________________________;
Iirc, I’m currently on 21W/7L. Competition gets rough when you get closer to 1700, but I’m above 1650 for now. I decided I’ma try to beat what I did in the beta competition, but try not to use up all 60 matches. So anything that’s a little ways above 1700 is a good stopping spot, depending on the amount of matches I have left and how my matches go by the time I get there.
Rain teams and Gengar. My worst enemies.
I was at 16-1 in my first day, but I finish’d 16-4 losing one fight vs Shaman… ( I don’t know if that was you but GG Bro!)
How are the other Canadians doing?
Ending the day with 1766 Rating. 29-8
Pachirisu team 2 strong.
didnt know it was you…
had to dig deep for that match.. gg
I’m currently 15-13 :/ Started off fairly well, though I haven’t been playing as well as I could’ve in the last handful of matches. Rhydon’s managed to impress me, though… Tanking hits, KOing Mega-Khans, and being the last mon stanidng in a few cases…. >:3
Jumpluff Sleep Powder + Kingdra Muddy Water/Draco + Politoed Hydro/-500%Accuracy Sleep Move = Oktoberfest 2014, we so drunk up in here
28-12, sitting a little over 1700
Sitting at 12-6. I cannot believe I could’ve got wrecked by Lv. 7 Kangaskhan w/ Endeavor. The FEAR in that match is real but not what I expected. I also had the opportunity to see my first rage quitter on WiFi. Overall, this made me learn that I have a weak link in my team and it’s my mega.
Ended day 1 with a 14-6 record and 16XX rating due to my internet DCing during a couple games I was winning, played day 2 at a friend’s house and ended 27-9 and a 17XX rating.
I’ve seen Greninja on over 90% of the teams I faced so far, at first I thought I was stuck in bad team hell but even as my rating climbed into the 1700s I kept facing them. Has anyone else seen a lot of Greninja or I am just being preferentially paired against this Pokemon?
I nearly lost to white herb geomamcy baton pass smeargle fml that grimer cray
Day two was ugly for me. >_<
I broke nearly even both ways. 10W/10L (24W/16L overall), and a ranking score of 1602 going into my 40th battle. (Going into my 20th battle yesterday, my rank score was 1604)
I didn’t recognize any names today, but two things of note. One of my losses came while myself and my opponent were brining out our first Pokémon, and my internet blipped off. And second, there are “honorable” battlers still out there for sure.
I was battling a Japanese player, and with less than 2 minutes to go on the battle timer, it was 2-1, her way. I had my Gourgiest (at -2 Atk, and holding Leftovers), and they had both Ferrothorn (also at -2 Atk) and Rotom-W, both of which were burned, and Rotom-W was seeded. It was obvious I would have won without the timer being involved, but with the amount of time left, I wouldn’t have seen either of the opponents Pokémon being KO’d. However, my opponent decided to Run,and let me have the battle at arounf the 1:30 remaining mark.
im convinced that RNG god hates me…
i keep getting burned from scald..
i am at 30-10 now.. decent i guess… 1730ish
Ended up 23-17 and 1600 after a really ugly run today, but I expected this. Never a good thing to do stuff like this when you’re dead tired and I got beaten a lot by very obvous tactics and switches and I misclicked a lot…
I don’t think I’ll participate tomorrow, not much point in that as I’ve got a late-night shift today and Sunday = lay in the chair like a zombie all day because of that shift. Finding out that the 1600+ region is infested with Kangaskhan/Garchomp/Salamence teams doesn’t help much either as there’s nothing more lame than having 15/20 fights feature Khan and co. I want to have fun and this is too boring.
On a more positive note: anyone else going to the new Godzilla movie? Gonna watch it tomorrow and it’s gonna be awesome!
Anyway, I wish you guys the best of luck tomorrow!
this tournament is horrible.
– the level of people playing in this tournament is nowhere near as it was on battle spot special ladder before which
– when i was complaining about national teams being revealed people told me to wait for the ic because i would be able to see the meta then; guess what i know as much as i knew before because there is no meta except greninja which seems to be in almost every team (this isn’t a good practise for nationals)
– 60 battles maximum: especially with special ladder being different now they shouldn’t set a limit of 60 games, i got paired a lot with lower rated players which aren’t helping you, you will win about 5 points, lose about 15-20 and lose one of the 60 battles
– amount of hax is unbelieveable
– AND IT SEEMS LIKE PEOPLE CAN ACTUALLY DC WITHOUT LOSING POINTS
finished 28-12 which is quite decent, but again i probably have never been so much haxxed in my life
It works now, thanks!
I had an ugly day. It started really horrible with hax killing me when I should have won. Three turns of sleep when waking up would grant me the win, Double miss on RSlide with Talonflame and CharY, Ice Beam frozing a perfect switch and an encored Aegis that was able to be successful at THREE King’s Shield… Come on, Lady Luck. I hope tomorrow you are on my side. Anyways, I was sort of break even, going 10-10 to a 25-15 record, which means it will be quite impossible for me to get my objective of 15 to 20 defeats. Blimey, it’s my first tourney, so I just want to be over 1600 for now.
On another note, can anyone please explain me what happened here? PPEG-WWWW-WWW7-EPMT
It was my last battle of the day, I didn’t play as best as I could, but I guess it was ok. My doubt is, shouldn’t I get a loss? As far as I understood, if both players lose their Pokémon at the same time, the attacker team is granted the win. However, that was not what happened. I got attacked, both our Pokémon got out at the same time, but I was granted the win. Can anyone explain this to me, please?
I had an ugly day. It started really horrible with hax killing me when I should have won. Three turns of sleep when waking up would grant me the win, Double miss on RSlide with Talonflame and CharY, Ice Beam frozing a perfect switch and an encored Aegis that was able to be successful at THREE King’s Shield… Come on, Lady Luck. I hope tomorrow you are on my side. Anyways, I was sort of break even, going 10-10 to a 25-15 record, which means it will be quite impossible for me to get my objective of 15 to 20 defeats. Blimey, it’s my first tourney, so I just want to be over 1600 for now.
On another note, can anyone please explain me what happened here? PPEG-WWWW-WWW7-EPMT
It was my last battle of the day, I didn’t play as best as I could, but I guess it was ok. My doubt is, shouldn’t I get a loss? As far as I understood, if both players lose their Pokémon at the same time, the attacker team is granted the win. However, that was not what happened. I got attacked, both our Pokémon got out at the same time, but I was granted the win. Can anyone explain this to me, please?
I just dropped the IC because of this, and the fact that I don’t have any use for championship points.
same with me the hax is unbelievable made me drop 1670-1630 -ish
I agree that the level of opponents is quite varied, and the majority of people I’ve battled have had strange teams such as:
– Special Mega Charizard-X, with Flamethrower and Inferno (alongside with four eeveelutions in their team: Glaceon, Leafeon, Jolteon, and Sylveon)
– Double Hit Scizor (with no Bullet Punch apparently), Lucario without Bullet Punch, and Dragon Rush Hydreigon… all on the same team. If you don’t believe me, you can watch the Battle Video – 9YTG-WWWW-WWW7-EQJG
– Lum Berry Tyranitar is weird, I guess.
But you have to understand the difference here. These aren’t all people who do structured VGC events. A lot of these people see “oh, wow! An online tournament! This will be fun!” They play for the sole fact that they love playing Pokemon with other people, they aren’t in it to win it like a lot of us here on NuggetBridge. But for as many people that play only for love of the game and not the competition, there are just as many competitive players. You may not be battling against as many of them as you would like, but you have to understand that not everyone plays only when they’re going to try their hardest to win. They’ll try their hardest, sure, but they probably don’t put as much effort into making up their Pokemon’s movesets, items, cores, etc… that we do. That’s because we’re a competitive community.
TL;DR: There are weird teams, and normal teams. But not everyone puts in the amount of effort that you might.
Idunno. Some of those guys sound like R1s.
all of them are r1 tier
We were all R1 tier at some point or another. I would certainly like harder competition, because admittedly, probably half the matches I’ve played, they haven’t even been able to knock out one of my leads, but everyone has to start somewhere, and hopefully people learn that certain things don’t work, so they can adjust and prepare better for the next competition they partake in.
Hey you were my first opponent gg though, trying to trick me with CharX instead of Y huh lol