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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Introducing best of 3 swiss at regionals/nationals would be a compelling prospect but even then I wish they wouldn’t do it in stages like that. At this point in time we’re basically losing time for little gain (not pissing off impatient tournament players I guess? finishing tournaments earlier maybe? everywhere that’s not the east coast is usually done by 5 anyway so it’s whatever). It really makes this season more of a “test year” than it needs to be. Plus I still think the classic bo3 rounds (top cut regionals/nationals, all of worlds) should remain 60s/20m because those are more high-stakes. I can tell you right now if worlds this year is 45 seconds we’re going to have timer issues, almost regardless of who gets invited. There’s a lot more pressure at that level and each individual decision is so important that that extra time is going to be necessary for pretty much everyone at some point.
A couple of thoughts:
– I didn’t really care about which ruleset we’d get for the year on a personal level, but I’m actually really excited to play Kalos-dex. While centralization around strong Pokemon will always happen, I think it’s refreshing to just have a year without Cresselia/Thundurus/Landorus-T/etc. I don’t complain when Pokemon are really good — I happened to use all of those three on my teams in the last two years, but it’s kind of neat that I’ll be forced to use new stuff now. I honestly expect them to go with all Pokemon in the 2014 season, so I don’t mind having Kalos-dex for just one season, especially since X/Y just came out.
– I’m a fan of the native rule, despite the fact it makes getting teams together slightly less accessible. Combined with Kalos-dex only, we’ll be seeing a lot fewer shiny/legendary Pokemon in broadcasted VGC matches. Obviously you can still get shiny Pokemon if you really want to go through the effort of it, but I know that in 2011-2013, I didn’t even think about whether I wanted my Pokemon shiny or not (because of RNG) whereas I probably will just go with all non-shiny Pokemon this year because it’s not worth the effort. It’s also nice that the breeding I’ve put into the game since it came out will actually help me since I’ve trained a couple of legal Pokemon already. It’s easier to get a team than ever now, especially since the less competitive players don’t have to worry about finding a good legal legendary for their team anymore, which I am a fan of.
– There’s been a lot of talk about appealing to the casual/non-VGC players who watch our matches, and I think this is really important. With this year’s ruleset I expect fewer dumb comments (of course, this is the internet we’re talking about so there will still be plenty) about shinies/legendaries. Ray made a super good point about sleep though, I’m not too happy about Dark Void being brought back because a ton of competitive non-VGC players are too used to sleep clause and think that sleep spam is dumb, deterring them away from playing. I think with the new rules though they’re moving in the right direction. There were way too many dumb comments about shinies and legendaries in the 2013 Worlds videos.
– Kalos-dex not having an official ladder kind of stinks, but a lot more for others than for this community. I never played on GBU in 2012 or 2013, but got a ton of practice in solely through NB’s tournament circuit (shameless plug!), the Wi-Fi tournaments, and asking friends for battles. Now, I’m not sure how many of you regularly laddered in the last two years, but I just never chose to (mainly because of scouting reasons), and I still got some really quality practice/preparation for tournaments. I don’t think this is too big of a deal for US, where we have weekly tournaments with some of the best players in this community. It however is not good for less competitive players, but that’s what my next point is about.
– I really expect them to change the Special rules on Battle Spot to Kalos-dex (seems like the most obvious solution to me) for the rest of the season, otherwise I’ll be fairly disappointed since I actually love playing in-game this generation. It’s hardest on the casual players who are trying to get into the game, but let’s not forget that there are still ways to play with the ruleset in-game (especially for this community), just not always at the time you want. Wi-Fi tournaments should be great practice like always, and are a lot less frustrating now with no more DCs/quicker games. It’s not a good ruleset to help the game grow, but I’d hope they change the Special rules to eradicate this problem.
– I am not a fan of the 45 second timer change. I range from move selections (literally 1 to 60 seconds), and I’ve timed out a couple of times in tournaments. X/Y’s timer doesn’t turn red anymore when you have little time left like it did in Gen. 5 (unless I’m missing something, because I’ve timed out so many times already on Battle Spot), which makes it even harder. I think I’ll be able to adapt on a personal level but I don’t think this is my favorite decision, especially when it screws over players like Kamaal. My games on Battle Spot have been really quick so far (not a single time out), I feel like this will be the trend in this year’s format. Maybe we’ll see an adjustment back to a minute later on in the season? Doubtful, but fingers are crossed.
– The timer change from 60s/20m to 45s/15m also only has one realistic explanation that I can think of; to incorporate b2o3 play into Regionals/Nationals. I’m not sure how happy I’d be to see bo1 completely removed from Swiss because I think it takes a certain type of skill/teambuilding ability to do well at those two tournaments, at least that’s been the case for me on a personal level for the past few years. I’d much rather see a Top 16 cut at Regionals than play b2o3 each round. This is definitely not the popular opinion, especially for less competitive players who will probably be really happy to play multiple games each round, but I’ve really liked the idea of just one game for swiss. It also allows you to use some pretty funky stuff that only really works in a bo1 format. I really hope to see 60s/20m at Worlds, there’s no point in speeding up that tournament other than for streaming coverage, but it worked out pretty well in 2013.
Overall I actually really approve of TPCi’s decision this year, even though the majority of the community doesn’t seem to. The timer change is probably my biggest issue, but we’ll see how that comes into play once we actually start having tournaments.
People who think that we can’t get Shinies anymore have not done their research into http://nuggetbridge.com/forums/topic/2793-instacheck-hotspot-a-fast-pok%C3%A9mon-checker-for-xy/. With over External and growing, it’s not very hard to hatch Shinies native to Kalos.
Passive aggressive much? It’s easy but your IVs aren’t guaranteed and you actually have to go through the effort of getting someone to hatch it for you. I am not going to breed boxes of eggs to try and get shiny Pokemon when I can get a flawless one in a couple of eggs. Not nearly as convenient as getting a shiny RNG from my friend. Only reason I’d use a shiny now is because I lucked out while breeding and got a flawless breed that matches someone’s SV, otherwise I’ll take a flawless Pokemon over a shiny any day.
How are the IVs not guaranteed? Instacheck shows you the eggs IVs in its interface. Then you match your SV to someone and try and get it hatched.
He means that the one with the flawless IVs isn’t guaranteed to have a match. Basically what it comes down to is shinies aren’t worth the extra effort for many players as they’re usually uglier than the original.
That makes more sense.
As a person who really liked the bw2 format I must say the XY format, although seen as arbitrary by some, will be fun. I mean that’s why everyone plays the game right? Because in the end, it’s simply fun. The only thing that changed are the means of playing. Some people might rejoice that there will be no powerhouse pseudolegendary available to anyone at tournaments now, but honestly, this just makes room for different really strong, if not outright broken, pokemon to dominate the metagame (I’m looking at you, rotom-w), therefore nothing will change really, the people who complained last year will complain this year, and every other serious player will either opt to play with those pokemon or try to counter them. After playing some XY games I can say that even w/out the ~300 pokemon (or more specifically the ~50 relevant ones), I was having a blast on the ladder. The only problem as already stated many times before is a lack of an actuall vgc14 ruleset ladder, if they don’t add it (simply patching the game with one is sufficient and imo easy enough to do, w/out needing to restrict the special battle spot) people will be forced to either practice on the sim of their choice (which I’m not a fan of) or with a suitable testing partner/group (although that will skew the versatility of teams to test against).
Also cybertron mentioned the use of Bo3 in regionals – as in the TCG this year I’d like this change also incorporated. Simply put, if you’re a good player then Bo3 just eliminates the chances of you losing the round due to a random thing in the game (such as sleep or a bad critical hit etc), therefore every good player should want to play Bo3s in every tournament. Round time shouldn’t be a huge issue as the games don’t usually last over 30 turns per player like they do on some forced smogon rulesets. Additionally this prevents gimmicky strats of succeeding, as usually in my experience from other games, strategies that work perfectly in a Bo1 format tend to do bad enough in Bo3 so that bad players don’t usually finish high enough.
I play for fun. It will be a lot of fun to see how many people I can make quit competitive pokemon forever with a cheese dark void strategy.
If “good” players cannot make the correct moves under tournament pressure in 45 seconds, they aren’t very good. Being able to make critical decisions quickly is a skill that should be required for competitive play.
Wait, can you have two Pokemon with the same ability? I was always under the impression that you can’t. Agh, I will always be a noob.
only use pokemon you catch/breed in x and y. CHALLANGE ACCEPTED. but seriously this rule change seems to take a lot of our time into use. lets hope its worth it.
Yes. The only things you can’t have more than one of are item and species.
Unless other changes are made, going to best 2 of 3 in Swiss at regionals would not be a welcome change for good players or their parents as the case may be who have to drive some distance to get home afterwards. Regionals usually occur during school season. The card folks can do 2 of 3 easily because they can do their swiss Saturday and have their top cut on Sunday. They can drive in after school on Friday and drive home no later than Noon Sunday. Unfortunately, unless the powers that be are willing to pay for bigger venues, and have the staff there to run 6 swiss tournaments at the same time or run VGC on completely separate dates and/or at separate locations, VGC doesn’t have that luxury. Going to 2 out of 3 under current time rules would add 30 minutes to each round. Most games would be done before. But there are always those one or two games per round that go the full distance. That’s 4 hours added to the length of an 8 round swiss. For someone that has to drive 4-6 hours or so to get home for school or work the next day, 4 more hours means the difference between getting home late, and driving through the night. And for the longer trips, it can mean the difference between driving through the night and it being impossible to get back in time.
You’d think that your Lum Berries and Prankster Safeguards will save you from the void…
You haven’t seen my Wide Lens Assist Dark Void Liepard, accompanied by Unnerve Tyranitar yet.
Maybe we should get rid of Dark Void again, unless we want to face a new era of assist cats (Void Cats).
No it is totally balanced, they invented wide guard and quick guard to counteract how dumb sleep mechanic is. Dark void isn’t overpowered as long as you have 2 counters on the field at all times
-Unnerve Tyranitar, + Unnerve Feint Persian.
Feint doesn’t get called up by Assist. Also adds to the team’s style points by adding another Cat. Thanks for the team feedback. Your only options now are Sleep Talk, Insomnia/Vital Spirit and Slurpuff.
The second anyone sees Smeargle in Team Preview you’re going to have to be ready to defend against it. I personally would be using Quick Guard turn 1 against Liepard anyway in that situation, so really, any sort of DV strategy that I know of is very telegraphed and therefore quite manageable as long as your team is prepared. I have no problem with it being in format, honestly.
As for the Persian thing… well, that’s a bit more unsettling, though I don’t really see where your team would go with it after putting them to sleep… Persian and Liepard on their own probably aren’t going to be able to do a whole lot, and priority DV means that your guaranteed first turn of sleep is going to get used up, ultimately leaving it up to chance. I really like the creativity though, don’t get me wrong, I just can’t help but prepare myself for the day when more people try stuff like that… not something I’d be happy with myself for losing to
Maybe I’m not getting how Assist works, but Safeguard still beats it? Or is it more because Prankster Liepard is faster than the current Prankster Safeguard users that are allowed? In which case I’ll raise you a…uh…Scarf Klefki with Trick? /shrug
I think the part of this people are missing is that instead of picking Smeargle they can instead just pick stuff that beats your predictable counters you almost have to pick to not lose to DV and you probably lose anyway. That’s the power in a team preview environment.
Prankster Liepard is faster than Meowstic unless you use a Scarf or something.
Meowstic’s base speed is 104. Liepard is 106. It will get the Dark Void off before the Safeguard.
You can’t even Mach Punch to KO the Liepard, since it will go first and Dark Void you there too.
You could do something like Crafty Shield, or Quick Guard, but then Houndoom will just use Feint and break it.
The team probably has very little damage output in its current form, but that doesn’t stop it from being potentially run, and being a serious turn off for casual players should the run into this sort of awful team.
But hey, who knows… maybe Gamefreak thought this far ahead and Dark Void can’t be called by assist.
I agree it does sound pretty fun, I always thought Divecats was such a funny concept, Voidcat sounds equally fun on paper.
External, with more specifics to be released at a later date.
Thanks! While I’m still not in love with the Pokemon restrictions this is definitely enough that we have what we need, only minor complaints now. Appreciate that being taken care of
now if you could just reduce the move timer to about 10 seconds until we get a patch we’d be golden
I retract my past complaints.
I like this guy
AlphaZealot, thank you so much for listening and being reasonable and fair when you can make it happen. That is fantastic news!
We got a ladder we got a ladder WE GOT A LADDER !
Thank you.
So what i’m still confused on, is that I’ve been hearing a lot of hissing and moaning towards there being “illegal” moves. But I read no clause saying that the egg moves learned from pokes knowing past gen moves isn’t illegal. For instance, I’ve been breeding Dratinis that have aqua jet and extreme speed. From reading this rule set at face value, with all of its vagueness, I deduce that those moves will be permitted as they have been passed on as egg moves. Am i wrong? And if on the rare occurance that I am wrong, where would I go to see what moves are and are not banned?
Egg Moves are legal. Past gen tutor moves are illegal.
TPCI doesn’t like making it fair for every player, so the only way to breed these moves without cheating is to know/trade with one of the Japanese players who managed to get pokebank.