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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Ended off 15-5 on day 2, 31-9 overall, and 176X. Had 3 unfortunate losses all in one hour, stopping me from getting to 1800. Tomorrow I’ll need to get a ridiculously good streak to get into mid-high 1800’s.
Also had a great game with Lati, which I was able to win by power up punching my own rotom-heat in the face of a possible KO. then I had to sucker punch the other pokemon in the face of that KO again as it tried to KO for double protect. gg.
Really regretting now using a rain team. there are too many people completely unprepared for rain in this tournament.
That is strange it gave me a win and points when someone DC’d…
Anyway I am 34-6 somewhere in the 1800s
Sooooo I’m 8-8, lost to everyone above 1500 afair and…yeah…this team ain’t working. For the premier challenges though, can I use a different team and place them in my party? Or can I cancel participation and still get the Enigma berry? I just want to swap teams but don’t want to lose the participation reward.
@Raghav GG but the flinch mattered I think as I was going to set up DD and sweep.
Start day 2 4-1, now i’m 167X, i see a choice scarf garchomp, a scolipede and a power-up punch azumarill,also i battle only 3-4 japanese player
Just beat Shinon64 who was at 1848.(before his 40 games were done)
I think this win puts me over 1800 with pachirisu :3
At the start of the day, I was 9-3 and sitting in the high 1500s. Now I’m 10-6 and utterly disgusted. If I had kept that one guy’s 1649 rating in mind while battling him… well, then I’d be at 11-5 and still sucking.
I feel you, I was like 8-2, then ended up as 13-10
Disconnects are still happening (three at the end of matches that I had certainly won as I could have done the finishing blow with 100% accurate moves) but thankfully they’re nowhere near as bad. My score is 20-13, only one actual loss today to an Outrage Charizard X and Attract Klefki ;_;
Ouch. xD I know how that goes.
Both of those sound painful… One time I ran into a Klefki that, instead of running Swagplay, threw itself away spreading paralysis. Paralysis! The funny thing is, I’m pretty sure he suffered from my Thunder Waves more than I suffered from his.
You should Cancel Participation and use a different team in your Battle Box. You gotta do what you gotta do to win, man. I don’t think you’ll be allowed to compete with your party box. Besides, even if you don’t get an Enigma berry from this tournament, you can just ask someone who’s planted and harvested their Enigma berry in the future for a spare berry (like me
I’ve only gone 5 W – 1 DC – 3 L since I started last night. I had some bad luck here or there but considering that I’m only half serious about using my half-baked, last-minute team, it’s about what I was expecting, I guess. I’ll try playing later today if the rain lets up–my DC rate usually goes up in bad weather. It doesn’t help that I’m trapped in my room in the weakest wifi signal area because of my cat allergies (long story). I’ll probably only play a small amount this tourney because I’d rather not get banned from future competitions because of shaky wifi. Good luck, everyone!
I need to find a sure way to beat kanga in my team. He just steamsroll over my party, even bulky pokemon get hit super hard. He’s kinda unfair, that damage is sick.
Did I read that right?
yes :3
I’m confused about pachirisu please explain this to me
He is playing it so he has a more or less legitimate reason to nickname one of his Pokémon Last Order
Being a clone of the worst girl means she is automatically also in the worst girl club.
wow rot. Pachi is god. Mikoto is god, Last order is god.
Mugino a grimer.
I can only guess it makes pokemon faint from a large overdose of cuteness…
So, finished another set of 10 matches, and went 8-2 to bring me up to 23-7 and I think a 1700 rating (give or take a few points). Had a thumping loss to a Mega Lucario team, albeit I think my chosen four were more the cause of the loss, so my fault. The other I can’t remember but again, I think it was a poor judgement in terms of move selection. There were a couple more games I had close wins, and need to really keep my head around certain pokemon in general, but thankfully its given me more information on what a couple of my partners can live against when it matters.
Had one DCer today too at the death of the match, but I’ve gotten the win and rating points from it so I’m satisfied with that. But I also want to apologise and applaud a Japanese player who I pretty much had a ridiculous luck streak against. I got two Ice Beam freezes, and despite this, they gamely played the match to a conclusion despite being in an impossible situation. I know occasionally you get slices of luck, but I think I took a pretty hefty wedge of it there.
Can’t hear you over the cries of 10.000 clones biting the dust because they couldn’t git gud
Dear Nintendo,
You know I can’t beat these teams. Give me something fair pls
19-8. 1636.
Almost lost to wide lens guillotine Gliscor. Luck isn’t on my side this tour.
Heh. Some dude just DC’d because he tried to Sucker Punch my Rotom twice while it just used Will-O-Wisp. In the meantime my Garchomp EQ’d his Klefki (which missed Play Rough on the first turn) and Bisharp.
Those were his leads, too.
Right, so… 14-9 with 1570- wait. How did it not count his DC as a loss..?
Oh apparently this guy DC’d on me and it didnt get recorded(the match happened over 8 hours ago)
He was:
Nahh from Mexico(1602 rating at the time)
Team: Manetric/Rotom-H/Klefki/Amoongus/Garchomp/Aerodactyl
Ugh.
I was under the impression that wide lens didn’t affect Guillotine (much like hone claws and gravity don’t) because it works of a level-based accuracy system (i.e., in a match where user and target are the same level, the accuracy is 30%). Is this not true?
7-10 right now. Got a late start due to IRL stuff yesterday.
Just finished a battle against an Austrian player who had Shedinja on her team. Her other Pokemon managed to finish off the only ones on my team that had fire or flying type attacks, and I managed to finish off all but the Shedinja so I forfeited.
Double post, please excuse me
I’m really surprised people are able to DC without any consequences since you couldn’t even get away with that as far as I know in the battle spot special ladder the last two seasons. At least I always seemed to record wins whenever I got dced against. It’s really irritating.
Austria strong
That’s happened to me a lot (even if it’s on their end), really annoying that the server pretends that the battle didn’t happen at all :S
I haven’t started playing yet, but I’ve experienced this in battlespot too. My rank doesn’t go down, but I don’t get their points either. I’ve had them DC before team preview, at team preview, and even the last turn. Has anyone else experienced this during this tournament?