Only Pokémon from the Kalos Pokédex to be Usable in VGC ’14 Winter Regionals?
We’ve recently learned that there is a very high possibility that the ruleset for the upcoming set of Regional Championships will only allow Pokémon attainable in the Kalos Pokédex. This may sound familiar to those of you who played in 2011 where only Pokémon in the Unova Pokédex were allowed in order to promote the recently released Pokémon Black Version and Pokémon White Version.
Unlike the 2011 ruleset however, a Kalos-only tournament with Pokémon X and Y would have some very important differences. Most obviously, the Kalos Pokédex includes Pokémon from many different generations rather than just the ones introduced in Kalos. Though this allows for more teambuilding options, it may create a harder to understand ruleset for newer players. To add to the confusion, many Pokémon that can be caught in Kiloude City’s Friend Safari are not actually a part of the Kalos Pokédex even though they can be caught in Pokémon X & Y, which would ban them from use.
It’s important to note that there is no way to practice a Kalos-only ruleset in the game at the moment. The ladder allows all Pokémon but certain legendary Pokémon, and one of the single most used Pokémon is currently Togekiss, which would not be allowed come January if this ruleset turns out to be the one we play under. To give you an idea of what wouldn’t be allowed, we have a list of some of the more metagame-relevant Pokémon not in the Kalos Pokédex below:
- Arcanine
- Bronzong
- Chansey
- Cresselia
- Dusclops
- Electabuzz
- Empoleon
- Excadrill
- Gastrodon
- Grotle
- Heatran
- Hitmontop
- Infernape
- Jellicent
- Landorus
- Latias
- Latios
- Magmar
- Metagross
- Misdreavus
- Musharna
- Ninetales
- Porygon2
- Porygon-Z
- Raikou
- Registeel
- Stoutland
- Suicune
- Swampert
- Terrakion
- Thundurus
- Togekiss
- Tornadus
- Virizion
- Volcarona
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.
Related Posts
Nugget Bridge Update →
GS Cup Announced as Pokémon’s 2016 Ruleset →
2016 Pokémon World Championships Date & Location Surfaces →
Also re: comments about the ladder. I’ve been (mostly) keeping track of what Pokemon 1700+ players are using the past day or so to try to start getting a less subjective view on Pokemon usage. I’m at 20 teams right now (a few are actually teams Unreality and skarm ran into), so I bothered to color code the illegal Kalosdex Pokemon and the Kalosdex legal teams.
4 Kalosdex legal teams in 20 games and Pokemon Bank isn’t even out yet to give people Pokemon like Tornadus, Cresselia, Latios, and Heatran that will likely to be extremely common. Togekiss alone shows up six times (once mislabeled as Togetic), and Arcanine, Breloom, Hitmontop, Excadrill, and Volcarona all end up with a couple appearances each. It’s worth noting I didn’t even record the final two Pokemon for one of the legal teams and that all of the legal teams are just barely over the bar I set for the minimum to record… and most of them weren’t very competitive as a result.
The ladder already feels useless if I want to test Kalosdex-only, assuming that is what VGC ends up being, and I expect it will get much worse after December if there isn’t a ladder that reflects the ruleset. Would prefer to play in-game, but can’t imagine why I would if this is how it’s going to look all season.
When I first talked to AZ he never specifically said “Kalos Dex”, he said “region locked”. I took this to mean Kalos dex because at the time I didn’t know that friend safari Pokemon were not in the Kalos dex. I haven’t really explained this further because AZ said everything in our original conversation was unconfirmed and I shouldn’t treat anything he said as if it was. Plus, the rules document will be out soon enough. However, he was clear that that you won’t be able to use anything caught in BW2 or before and the game can tell if a Pokemon came from Pokemon Bank or not.
Since Technoz brought it up, I just wanted to clarify that we don’t actually know anything, except that there is about a 95% chance (depending on whether Japan agrees or not) that you MUST obtain your Pokemon in X or Y.
While I normally make a point of not relaying our chats, since this stuff is pretty in the open anyway the terms “Kalosdex” and “the three Pokedexes” were definitely used when I talked to him.
Promoting competitive play in XY by discouraging people from purchasing and playing previous games. Sounds like a solid business strategy.
Im not too upset about the current usage statistics given that there is no official announcement regarding the ruleset, but I hope after the rules are announced, more people will start playing on the in-game ladder by those rules (whatever they may be). However, given that people are often seen laddering both online and ingame with strategies that would never work in a real tournament (ex minimize chansey, and let’s not forget the period of time when unreleased DW abilities were allowed on PO and everyone and their grandma was using lightningod zapdos and abusing the acrobatics technician bug) I don’t have high hopes that people will be considerate of others’ time and effort spent assembling tournament-legal teams =(
What in the yams is the point of launching the bank if it can’t be utilized for competitive play? This punishes players who have invested time/money to gain mons from previous generations and goes against the whole spirit of the game (trading to obtain strong mons to poon the noobs with). I can understand implimenting a limited ruleset, although arbitrary, but completely restricting the use of mons caught in previous gens that exist inside the current ruleset (assuming it’s Kalos only)? What’s the point of that besides trying to satisfy the babies who will complain about buying BW2 to get move tutor mons, which really only gets TPC more revenue since they’ll end up buying them to remain competitively relevant anyways. I don’t mind not being able to use cress/thun/heatran/togekiss, but I find it really bothersome that I’m going to have to chain breed everything I’ve already previously RNG’d and probably not have a ladder to practice the format on. How backwards could you get?
Lol, the competitive community is such a tiny fraction of people who would want to transfer over their Pokemon. Banning Pokemon from older generations will have exactly zero effect on Pokebank sales. It doesn’t punish anyone, it creates a way for DS games to be compatible with 3DS games. Putting in the effort to get your Pokemon is something that you shouldn’t be complaining about, and you will have to do in order to stay competitively relevant, I’m sorry that this time a little bit of effort will have to be made. Also, we just got a ladder for you to practice on up and running yesterday on PO main server. Your Welcome.
Promoting competitive play in XY is not discouraging people from buying past games, how many people are not going to get Pokemon Bank because you can’t use Pokemon from past games in VGC? Not many of you? If there are a hundred competitive players that can’t justify getting Pokemon Bank because they “might” not be able to use older mons, (Which by the way isn’t true anyway, you can still use your past RNG’d mons as perfect breeding parents with all the egg moves you need) Then they lost 100 customers out of millions.
Limiting the Bank’s actual use is the bigger issue here because of move tutor moves. Some Kalos-dex only Pokemon can’t even be used to their fullest extent without move tutor moves from past generations. For example, Scizor wouldn’t be as great without Bug Bite from 4th and 5th gen. If TPCi bans the use of any Pokemon from the Bank, they would cut down on the number of options we’d have available as players. Banning Bank mons would impose an unnecesary limit on an already limited metagame. More options means more room for creative teams. If TPCi wants to encourage competitive play with as much creativity as possible, this isn’t the way to do it.
Blah blah blah…
What’s the point in spreading unconfirmed rumors and basing your arguments on speculation? I just hope Chris Brown releases the document as soon as possible so we have something definitive to talk about…
Any idea on when he should be releasing something? I want to know if my time spent in the Friend Safari is worth it.
Honestly I find this metagame fun, and it does not limit creativity. This is not vgc 11 where there was only 150(?) pokemon in the dex. Kalos has near triple the number of pokemon than unova, and I like to look at Rinanimate and Unreality 2011 team(s). They were both really creative and effective in a metagame where only less than 10 Pokemon, who all ran the c/p same sets were used. Banning bank for the first set of regionals won’t be bad at all seeing as it releases near regionals. Then the next set of regionals can have pokemon bank and it would add more diversity with things like ice punch Conkeldurr coming, HH gardevoir and other mons who benefitted from tutors. I already stated how I feel about people complaining about a “stale” metagame earlier
</br>
</br>While I am fine with any pokedex, the only evident problem I had prior to the making of kalos vgc dex on PO was play testing on Battle Spot with kalos only was terrible. Especially when heavy hitters that I don’t need to account for are running free like Volc, Hitmontop, Excadrill, Breloom, Togekiss, Musharna(one of the better tr setters) and other mons I cannot name from the top of my head. I run into non kalos dex teams 6/10 times on a average RM session. If we get a kalos dex ladder I see no other complaints besides tpci clearly explaining the ban list. Also on the whole pokebank thing, vgc is a very small community compared to the Pokemon community as a whole so yeah I find it dumb using that as a argument on the whole pokebank subject.
Arguably the lack of Bug Bite would force you to be creative since it’s a given if available.
But then we’d end up in a Smogon-like discussion so I’ll leave it there, I’m fine whatever.
The lack of Bug Bite would force you to use X-Scissor. That’s not creative, that’s strictly inferior.
Scizor have no move tutors and gems is very restrict if they wouldn’t available. Occa berry, Mega stone or life orb are viable items for Scizor.
Ugh the likelihood of this ruleset is really annoying me as I’m trying to convince a local gaming restaurant to do some tournaments in the official format but the reception of players who just wanna have some fun is unlikely to be positive when a bunch of their favorite Pokemon are just banned for no good reason.
That isn’t the case with the usual VGC format?
Yeah, my main point was that Bug Bite has nothing to do with creativity in the first place.
I guess you haven’t played since 2011, but yes for the past two years it has been a fairly simple list. All cover legendaries + the pixie event legendaries. Basically, the Pokemon created soley as promotional Pokemon without any thought to their balance as they weren’t meant for competitive play. You might notice they’re also banned in the Battle Maison and online rated battles.
Thats a cool point but your complaint was that the reception of people who just want to have fun is unlikely to be positive because a bunch of their favorite pokemon are banned for no good reason. How is that different from every year so far? Are you saying we’ve been given good reasons for not being able to use fan favorites like Mew and Celebi? If it isn’t significantly different than any previous year how is it a valid argument against the proposed format.
If you compare a Kalos dex only rule set which has >264 Pokemon banned to VGC 13 where there was only 26, which one is more likely to not include a casual players favorite pokemon?
I would expect that more players are likely to accept “you can’t use your favorite Pokémon because it’s overpowered/hard to get” than “you can’t use your favorite Pokémon because they arbitrarily didn’t include it in the Kalos dex.”
More likely than before or not they’ve been banning popular pokemon since the beginning. If that wasn’t a problem in the past why is it a problem with this format?
And I’m not sure “You can’t use Groudon because it has too high of a BST” is going to placate anyone when we’ll probably be able to use Mega Tyranitar.
First of all, we have no rules on Megas yet (or official rules yet), so let’s not try that comparison. Even looking past that attempt, the ubers did have BST that significantly set them apart from other Pokemon, so their banning was logical. Should Megas be allowed, they’d be more balanced (at least more so than the ubers) since they effectively don’t have an item.
The banning of the event Pokemon was/is an issue of availability and opportunity equity between players. This means that people who couldn’t attend an event or download from wifi (a small fraction, but my argument still stands) aren’t necessarily working from a smaller pool of Pokemon. Event pokemon are also among the most hacked, so removing them also removes some of the hacking (I will not tolerate a “hacking in VGC” rebuttal here).
I think of all the off-shoot discussions of this topic you guys could have ended up on, this one is the worst
Especially because I have no idea how anyone can honestly believe what mattj is trying to argue right now
@Bears: They’ve allowed countless event pokemon since the beginning. If possible availability issues are reasonable justification for banning Mew why aren’t they reasonable justification for banning L50 Dragonite? I’m not even suggesting that we be allowed to use Mew, etc. But I don’t see how anyone can complain about baning Cresselia because some people will want to use it, but not complain about banning Mew even though many people will want to use it.
@ Scott: Other than “lol@matt” I have no clue what you’re trying to say. Are you honestly agreeing with Firestorm that the possibility that some casual players will be upset that they won’t be able to use their favorite pokemon is reason enough to avoid Kalos only? Maybe you have an answer. If that wasn’t a problem in ’09-’13, why should it be a problem in ’14? That specific argument sounds like a weak argument to me.
but yeah “lol matt”
I’m pretty sure literally everyone who posted after you in this thread made it obvious they thought your stance was ridiculous but decided to be polite about it because we expect this from you.
I didn’t.
A handful of Pokemon that have been banned every year other than 2011, which was a universally hated ruleset for the most part, and 2010, which was intentionally more inclusive, being removed from play is expected for anyone who has had any exposure to competitive play at all and is very easy to explain. People expect cover legendaries and event legendaries to be unavailable. Judging by places like Reddit and YouTube where there tend to be way more “casual” players, most of the people who would fall under that label tend to find the rules too lenient in regard to legendaries, not too restrictive. I imagine that most of those people would be significantly less receptive to their favorite non-legendaries not being allowed, especially when they can be caught in XY.
It’s lolmatt because as usual, your stance is ridiculous.
I already answered your question in your last post. I’m not sure why you’re trying to argue that explaining why Togepi isn’t allowed is somehow as easy as explaining that Mew or Manaphy isn’t allowed? I’ll repeat what I said last time if it helps:
I want to make sure it’s clear I am not making any judgements on whether or not these Pokemon would be balanced / not. I’m just saying their balance likely just wasn’t taken into account as they’re always banned. They exist outside the format and were always meant to exist outside the format.
I wouldn’t say that 2011 was such a horrible ruleset looking back on it, I think that everyone just kind of sucked at it. Ray won worlds with a team that only had one option: counter what’s popular, he even used one pokemon just to counter wolfe. Now why did we all suck at 2011? I would say that the number one reason was that there were no japanese players kicking our ass on the gbu ladder in order to force us to adapt and adopt new strategies. While this is mostly due to the japanese not being able to play in 2011, not having a ladder for whatever the vgc meta is probably isn’t helping the japanese community get more involved, considering that, as a nation, they play way way more on gbu than simulator.
The only reason that they would ever consider doing something so arbitrary is if they feel they’re forced to. In this case, the factor is pokebank not coming out til 3 weeks before regionals. However, I’m pretty certain that at this point it’s probably better just to suck it up for that one set of regionals than have everyone complain about the ruleset for an entire year.
How long until we know for sure what pokemon will be allowed to be used?
@Scott To be fair, if the more “casual” crowd would rather see more legendaries banned, “Kalos Only” would likely be something they would enjoy due to the absence of ANY legendaries except Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres. (Assuming XYZ and Mewtwo are banned, a fair assumption) I feel that this would even out the frustration stemming from not being able to use their favorites. I can’t use my favorites, Latios and Arcanine, but the change in pace is something I would openly welcome. Despite that, they NEED to make a Kalos-only ladder on Battle Spot if they go with that.