Pokémon Announces Standard Format for VGC ’14 Season
The official rules document for the VGC ’14 season has been updated by The Pokémon Company International and is more or less what we reported on a few weeks back.
Standard Ruleset (VGC ’14)
- All matches are played in Doubles format
- Pokemon above Level 50 will be brought down to 50 for the match while those below 50 will stay as-is
- Players choose 4 of their 6 registered Pokemon after team preview
- Pokémon must meet all three of the following conditions to be eligible for use:
- Pokémon must be found in the Coastal Kalos, Central Kalos, or Mountain Kalos Pokédex (Full list can be found here)
- Pokémon must have been obtained in Pokémon X or Y (identifiable by a blue pentagon on the stats screen)
- Mewtwo, Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde are banned
- Species Clause: No two Pokémon can share the same Pokédex number.
- Item Clause: No two Pokémon can hold the same held item.
You can find the full rules document here with the key bits taken out for you below:
Pokémon Organized Play supports several tournament formats for sanctioned play of the Pokémon video games. This document covers each of the approved formats and their variations. Tournaments that do not use one of the formats described here may not be sanctioned.
7. Standard Format Style
All sanctioned Pokémon video game tournaments require players to assemble a team of Pokémon, with items, prior to the start of the event. The standard format style for all Play! Pokémon tournaments is Double Battle.
7.1. Double Battle
In Double Battles, each player selects four Pokémon from his or her party of six to battle with. At the start of the battle, players send out the first two Pokémon in their party, making a total of four Pokémon on the battlefield. Game play continues until a player makes all four of his or her opponent’s Pokémon faint.
8. Standard Team Construction Rules
- When building a team for a Play! Pokémon tournament, all players must adhere to these standard construction rules.
- A player’s team cannot contain two Pokémon with the same Pokédex number.
- Each Pokémon on a player’s team can hold an item, though no two Pokémon may hold the same item.
- A player’s team cannot contain two Pokémon with the same nickname.
- A player’s team cannot contain a Pokémon nicknamed with the name of another Pokémon (for example, an Unfezant named “Pidove”).
- Pokémon may only use moves that have been learned through one of the following methods:
- By leveling up
- By TM or HM
- As an Egg Move, through breeding
- From a character in the game
- A move already known by a Pokémon received at an official Pokémon event or promotion
9. Sanctioned Format
Pokémon Organized Play supports one format for sanctioned play: Standard. Sanctioned events are listed on the POP website, and the results are reported to POP after the event concludes.
9.1. Standard Format
The Standard format is the standard tournament format for Play! Pokémon video game events. This format will be used at all premier events unless specified otherwise. The Standard format for the 2014 season will use the following restrictions:
- Only Pokémon X and Pokémon Y Game Cards or downloadable versions are permitted for use.
- Players may use Pokémon from the Central Kalos Pokédex from #001 to #150, Coastal Kalos Pokédex from #001 to #153, or Mountain Kalos Pokédex from #001 to #147.
- Pokémon must be placed in the Battle Box.
- Pokémon are allowed to Mega Evolve.
- Pokémon above Level 50 are permitted, but they are auto-leveled down to 50 for the duration of battle.
- Players may use Pokémon with Hidden Abilities.
- Players may use items that have been officially released via Pokémon X, Pokémon Y, the Pokémon Global Link, or an official event or promotion.
9.2. Kalos Native
Pokémon used in the Standard Format must be native to the Kalos region in Pokémon X or Pokémon Y. A native Pokémon is a Pokémon that is hatched or caught in Pokémon X or Pokémon Y. Pokémon that have been transferred to Pokémon X or Pokémon Y via Pokémon Bank or Poké Transporter are not native.
The primary difference (aside from everything that comes with using Pokémon X and Y of course) from the last season is that there will be a restriction on the Pokémon used based on Pokédex much like there was in the VGC ’11 season. Using Veekun’s filter, you can get a full list of Pokémon allowed (minus Xerneas, Yveltal, Zygarde, and Mewtwo). Additionally, the moves Sky Drop and Dark Void are no longer banned from use and we once again lose move tutor moves from previous generations.
As far as time goes, you will be allowed to take notes at any time during the match rather than just after you’ve taken your move. You will have 45 seconds to make your move as opposed to 60 seconds last season and we will return to a 15 minute time limit for each match like in the VGC ’12 season rather than 20 minutes.
4. Time Limits
Tournament staff is responsible for running a timely event. To assist in this effort, POP has established guidelines for time limits during various portions of the event. Players may take notes at any time during their match but must begin each match with a blank sheet.
4.1. Pre-game Time Limit
Players will have 90 seconds to view their opponent’s team and select their Pokémon.
4.2. Mid-game Time Limit
Any mid-game effects, such as selecting a move or retreating Pokémon, are to take place within the 45 seconds allocated per turn.
4.3. Match Time Limits
Single-game matches will be 15 minutes. For best-of-three matches, each game in the match will be 15 minutes.
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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As someone who has played VGC since 2009, I used to care about what the rule sets were. I’d always complain about the rule sets and how I couldn’t use my favorite mons or whatever was convenient for me. I see people complaining about how they can’t use Iron Head Steelix and how they decided not to breed a Tyranitar in XY; THIS IS NOT HOW IT WORKS, PEOPLE DON’T MAKE RULES JUST FOR YOU. THE WORLD DOESN’T REVOLVE AROUND YOU. We even had the rules for the Dragon Cup or whatever in Japan and it blatantly stated how the Pentagon system works. Did you honestly not think TPCi would utilize this for us too?
Then I had a break out season in 2011 where I used a team full of Pokemon I didn’t really care for. These days I honestly don’t care what the rules are. I’ve gotten over the fact that TPCi chooses whatever rules they see fit and they honestly don’t need to justify any of it. If you don’t like the rules, go play OU, UU or whatever made up metagame suits you. I realized that in order to win in competitive Pokemon you need to get your head out of your butt and use whatever is GOOD regardless of how much you hate something or how much you wanted to use something you can’t. So stop yamsing complaining about something you can’t change and go build your teams.
And for the people who were actually surprised that the ruleset is Kalosdex only. Do you honestly think Firestorm would publish something based off of a rumor?
If you’re ignorant of the situation, it’s usually better not to make stupid general statements. I think 5 seconds on IRC or watching a stream would have helped understand you were completely off-base.
I know and have known for a very long time that battle spot is not kalosdex only…. If that’s what you are talking about…
In Scott’s post all he said was “battle spot”
The rest of your post is pretty over the top but I actually like this theoretically, albeit for different reasons. I don’t think, for instance, that it was a good thing one of the breakout Pokemon from Worlds last year is only available from a game released 8 years and two consoles ago. Ruby and Sapphire came out in 2003, and nearly every game between then and Black/White 2 had a couple unique tutors or promotional Pokemon. That’s an awful lot for people to try to keep up with, especially given that anything before Gen 5 tended to be hacked. I think wiping the slate clean on that stuff is fine, but I wish they’d replaced some of what they eliminated a little faster. I’m sure, for instance, the next time we release a game we’ll get an Icy Wind tutor back, but waiting a season or two for what is a pretty necessary mechanic seems a little silly. Idea is good here, sort of sketchy execution.
Assuming we’re still not going to be allowed to use Pokemon that aren’t Kalos natives in the future, since that seems to be a RNG/hacking regulation thing, I would expect this to be a good feature over the course of the generation as new tutors and such are gradually introduced over future releases.
So here are my thoughts on the subject. I think that making it kalos dex only makes sense when you think about the fact that winter reg starts 2 weeks after the release of the pokebank. If you are a newer player who isn’t as connected as some of us and has never heard of a simulator two weeks is a pretty short amount of time to make a team for a meta that included the pokebank stuff. So while I would like to have access to everything, I miss icy wind and I think quick guard terrakion would be a badass now that it blocks prankster, I think these rules make sense. I would like to have a ladder for this in game and I would also like them to let us use everything for the spring reg since nobody has an excuse to not have a team by then. I don’t really think either of those things will happen but life goes on.
Call me crazy but I don’t remember seeing anyone complain about not being able to use Iron Head Steelix, which is a pretty silly thing to do in the first place given how many offensive options it naturally has.
The main reason I don’t like move tutors being banned is because of how some of the new Pokemon/Megas introduced in XY that I’m interested in trying out–like Mega Venusaur and Mega Aggron–get some cool niche options only from 4th and 5th gen, which we’re banned from using. It’s really weird to hype up new Pokemon/Megas and then restrict us on how we can use them. And I’m not just talking about just pure offensive “perfect coverage”, though I do see where you’re coming from on that angle.
Oh well, maybe next year…
Will Pokemon Online create a tier for this soon? Will Skarmbliss still be the place to practice?
Random rules + no gbu ladder that enforces said rules to practice
Lol
Pokemon Online main server has a tier for it already
has everyone forgotten practising 2011 on the GBU, skarmbliss specials and PO syndrome?
who cares if there’s a few extra mons on the ingame server, just treat them as extra challenge. If this is the official format, people will be using it on the official servers. If your team’s good, you can win anyway. I topped the NB ladder a few months ago with my 2011 team, even. simulators, in all their metagametastic team-warping glory, are just no good.
You’d probably be right up until bank goes live and you have to play against Lati twins (which no one will be EVing to survive), cress (which no one will be team building to counter), Thund, torn, eruptran, etc etc. Then a few mons turn into playing against national dex.
The one thing that I really like about this ruleset is that, as someone who has become more interested in competitive play after messing around in xy, I’m happy that all of my teambuilding/preparation can take place in xy. I don’t have to breed and tutor Pokemon in previous games or rng legends from two gens ago and transfer them up. The exclusion of friend safari Pokemon is weird, but at the same time understandable — the ruleset might be a bit messy as a result and it could be disheartening to people who didn’t understand that certain Pokemon were only in the friend safari.
I have no real opinion on whatever metagame is most desirable, but I do really appreciate that for the first time in attempting to play Pokemon competitively, I’m not turned off by the almost requirement of large effort external to the game in order to acquire the basic means of competition (meaning rng’ing instead of breeding, getting cloned mons for those with weird event moves, etc). Breeding on the cart for perfect Pokemon is easier than ever, and obtaining usable legends is also easier. It just feels nice that I don’t have to abuse the game a bit in order to keep up with competition.
how are you supposed to ladder if both simulators are full of bugs? ofc course you can try ingame but most of time you will face non kalos pokemon
This is the hell we deal with.
On a random side note, just remembered that last time we saw DV Smeargle, sleep lasted longer. Wondering how much the reduced sleep turns affects the viability of Smeargle.
People seem to be really concerned about practice space, and I know there are the lovely weekend tournaments, but would it be feasible to establish “battle blocks” throughout the week for people who want to practice on a cart? As in, there are designated blocks of time established every day / couple days, with each major section of our playerbase (Pacific Coast, East Coast, GMT) getting their own block to ensure that enough people from each region are there to practice during that time. You could even make the different blocks overlap to allow some people to battle for longer periods of time and against more people. The structure would not necessarily be a tournament, more just like a manual ladder, where there are a group of people just asking each other for battles…or is that already the established practice for IRC?
Given that for the forseeable future we do not have an in-game ladder, it just seems like a shame that there are not more opportunities to practice on a cart within the community, especially since the Find-A-Battle thread doesn’t work (or maybe I am just unaware of these resources).
gosh, i gotta say…i am really loving the updated time limits ^_^”
* i have always had a problem with this, at VGC tournaments *
for some reason, i seem to always get paired up with indecisive trainers…or people who stall for time.
now it might just be the tournament pressure…but it always puzzles me why my opponents needed a minute, each turn, to make a play.
anyhow, i am very happy with this format and i plan to see everyone at worlds next year !!
1. There is no cancel button on a real game.
2. In Swiss, you can really only take one loss with certainty. Two losses generally isn’t in your favor. One bad move causes a loss. I’d take all that time too if I needed it.
3. Good players generally have teams that have more than one option (why bog standard rain will never win it all). It takes time to calculate every option.
One thing to point out is that you can bring over HA pokemon that are found in Kalos Dex but do not have a way to get the HA in XY to breed for usage in VGC. This means that Iron Fist Conkeldurr is still legal, which may be a fairly big deal even without Ice Punch.
Between the removal of Move Tutors and the removal of gems, there are a lot of things to have to rethink when team building for the next season, and having it limited to Kalos Dex only will help reduce the amount of variables, making it more accessible for newer players.
Because I have ADD and I actually need a full minute to make a decision I’m confident in sometimes, even if you apparently never do.
Heck, there would be times when I did practice games with Wolfey in BW2 and I would make some really crazy (accurate) prediction that required a ton of awareness of the battle state to pull off, and I would always mention that I would never be able to pull it off in an actual tournament because I would have timed out several times over in the time it took me to come up with it (I’m talking 2+ minutes just to think it out). Even when the timer was 60 seconds it was already a stretch for me to work under it.
I know right? They should just press the button immediately and not think about it XDD
Mega Evolutions would be prominent in the game regardless of ruleset. I didn’t say BadIntent was wrong that they would want to emphasize their new products, but that this ruleset makes no impact on it.
As far as TCGs go, the reason that the Pokémon TCG needs to follow a block format is because they need to continually sell new paper product. If they didn’t have a block format, they’d need to do what Yu-Gi-Oh does which is create new incredibly powerful cards that make all the old cards irrelevant and then start banning old cards because they become broken with the new mechanics. It makes for a very confusing and frustrating format imo. By rotating out older cards, you can slow down the power creep significantly and keep players buying new cards and removing incredibly hard to obtain older cards from play.
A digital game doesn’t have the same problems aside from obscure move tutor moves which which I agree were a problem (though easily fixed by putting move tutors in the newer game). Game mechanics are easily tweaked in a video game whereas with a TCG you would need to issue mass erratas that are hard to keep track of. For example, Game Freak tweaked a ton of moves and even base stats going into this generation.
While I think the 15s difference is definitely something players can realistically adapt to with some practice and I am optimistic about some of the opportunities it could create for tournament formats by reducing maximum game time, I think it’s a little silly to act like this isn’t going to matter at all. The turns that were taking people 60 seconds before were often deciding their tournament fates, and while I think people can learn to work out their best move faster given that the current constraint isn’t really that restrictive — I think in many of these cases, players simply take all of their time when it matters because taking all of the time is the smart thing to do on an important turn — it’ll definitely take people time to get used to. If you don’t understand why it might take someone 60 or 45 seconds to make a move it’s probably time to practice a little bit more…
I’m mostly posting because I wanted to comment on one other thing that the Kalosdex restriction does well. I don’t think this was the best way to accomplish this goal, but in a similar way to how I tend to whine a lot about people using shinies (particularly the 90%+ of shinies that are uglier than the originals) because I don’t like the perception it gives people who aren’t involved with the competitive end of the game in a similar way to spamming Sleep, Legendaries are another thing that falls under that umbrella I think it’s cool Kalosdex essentially removes. Zapdos will still see some use, but I can’t imagine Moltres and Articuno will see any use, so it’s pretty likely most or all of the streamed matches from big tournaments this year will be legend-free. I am curious if that will help the perception of the game at all: I definitely wouldn’t mind just seeing a blanket clause on legendaries if it’d make people more interested in competitive play even though there’s no competitive basis for it at all with the psuedolegendaries and Megas having better stats. It’ll be interesting to see if it actually matters to anyone or (more likely) people just find something else to complain about.
Wait I’m confused now, which ruleset appears to casual players: Allowing everything or not allowing any legendaries or shinies?
Or is casual referring to the market of people who play the game for fun in one case and referring to people who suck at the game in another?
There has to be a better name than ‘casual players’ and ‘shitty youtube comments’
He’s talking about making the competitive side of the game appealing to the mass market because currently the brand sends the message the Legendary and Mythical Pokemon are ultra powerful but then only backs it up with the actual stats, typing, abilities, and movepools to pull it off some of the time. I think the problem with that is that while appealing to “Articuno is cheap” crowd it also turns off the “Why do they ban Phione?” crowd which is about as annoying! I don’t think there’s much winning here though if they keep it to obtained in Kalos going forward, it could be interesting because as Scott said it effectively bans all the Legendary Pokémon aside from Zapdos, Articuno, and Moltres without actually making a “No Legendary” rule — which of course means no Thundurus, Cresselia, Heatran, etc. which is what we’d see a lot of in high level play.
Well I’ve been living under a rock and finally got to read through this thread. I don’t know how i feel about the rules, but it was expected. I agree with TDS’ over the top response. Looking forward to see this metagame develop and really hoping battle spot doubles mirrors this ruleset, or we get it somehow.
Funnily enough, that’s not the problem. I once responded to a YouTube post where this guy said “It bugs me how they use legendaries”. I explained him that most legendaries don’t have uber stats, but he replied “still, it would be nice if they didn’t use legendaries at all”.
Some people seem to think that using them is cheap not because of their actual stats, but because they (probably) think legendaries are supernatural beings or something, so using them is sacrilegious, which I think is quite bizarre.
If this is the kind of mentality we have to deal with, I would rather ban legendaries altogether.
The only real reason to complain about legendaries, for me, is the barrier to entry. If I screw up my Kangaskhan, I can breed another one. If I screw up my Zapdos, I have to beat the game again. That barrier is part and parcel of Pokemon, of course, since the competitive side conflicts with the collectible side, but legendaries are the most extreme example.
I agree with this. I’m fine with the view to make the game more accessible, and legendaries really aren’t.
The previous two poster did bring up an excellent point, especially given that TPCI seems to be trying to phase out RNGed mons from the newer games. For the new format at least, it’s almost punishing yourself to use one of the birds, considering both their relative strength compared to the rest of the metagame and how much harder it is to get a “quality” bird, especially for Zapdos, which due to its less than stellar movepool still probably wants Hidden Power despite the nerf. Even if you do get something usable from soft resetting your bird, the metagame will shift over the course of the season, and as Sprite said one can’t just rebreed their Zapdos.
For the format as a whole, I do approve. It sucks that some favorites have been banned (especially for me, considering I can only apparently build a decent team when Breloom and Togekiss or Volcarona is on it), but it makes sense from TCPI’s point of view. Not to suggest http://nuggetbridge.com/forums/topic/1951-what-is-pokemon-without-tiers-vgc-2013-edition/, but looking at these threats of 2013, only one of three “S Tier” Pokemon and eight of sixteen “A Tier” Pokemon made it into the format, with quite a few of the ones that made it in lacking some of the tools that made them more effective in last year’s metagame. I don’t know how much influence the competitive game had on the establishment of the new Kalos Pokedexes, but at first glance it seems like certain Pokemon were seen as too centralizing or powerful and thus excluded. It is interesting that there are only three legendaries permitted under this format too, which might have been an attempt to cater to the “ENTEI IS TOO POWERFUL!!!” group.
As others have repeated, though, it seems like a massive oversight by TCPI or Nintendo to not have some sort of in-game ladder support for this format. As it stands now, people wishing to practice in this format will have to deal with threats like Hitmontop and Volcarona that they might not necessarily keep in mind when teambuilding. This will be even worse with the advent of Pokebank, where we’ll start seeing most of the other Pokemon that were “banned” and aren’t yet available (such as Cresselia, the genies, and the Lati twins). Hopefully Nintendo will add this year’s VGC rules to the special ladder after Pokebank comes out. It would be a shame to see people flock to simulators when so many of the obstacles to playing VGC have been made easier to deal with in this generation.
The one other change that I feel needs addressing is the timer change. As a mid-tier player, this doesn’t affect me all that much, since I could probably have counted the games last season where I had to use all 60 seconds to make my move on one hand. I do understand that the world’s best players do often need those extra 15 seconds to consider which move is their best on that turn, but I would be willing to bet that those people make up less than 10% of an average tournament population. At the very least, this and the decision to reduce matches to 15 minutes in length should make tournaments run much more smoothly (and who knows, maybe an East Coast regional will actually get time for a lunch break for once).
All in all, I feel like this is a good change for a game that can’t be patched or tweaked like other competitive online games can. The best players seem to be adapting already, as is expected. As of the time of this writing, the top three ranks of the US Doubles wifi ladder are occupied by players from this site that have had success at VGC in the past, with another Worlds-caliber player in the top 10 as well. I’m excited for how this metagame will play out.
Better watch what you say, wer, Sacred Fire Entei is waiting for you next season.
Now that I’ve actually started teambuilding in this 2014 meta, I’ve warmed up much more to this format. I know I made a big deal about losing move tutors from past gens, and while I still miss them, I’m actually surprised by how much fun I’m still having theorymonning with all the new mechanics changes. There are a lot of Pokemon available in this format, and manual breeding is at least tolerable now (though still too slow imo). The only real “issue” with this format is the current lack of an in-game ladder to play on, but like mattj and Zog mentioned, we’ll eventually battle VGC 2014 teams amidst all the Cresselias that’ll be back in a month. With only a relatively small amount of Pokemon banned, I wouldn’t be surprised if good Kalos-dex only teams can at least hold their own against 2013-style teams on Battle Spot.
As for the timer: as long as I can still feasibly timer-stall parafusion as an absolute last resort again, I don’t care >_>