Registration Open for 2015 International Challenge April
Registration is open for the 2015 International Challenge — April! As the first online tournament to give out Championship Points this season, there will be a lot of interest going into this event. The tournament may very well decide the last few spots for the 2015 Pokémon World Championships. Players will play on the Competition ladder on Battle Spot from Friday, April 24, 2015, at 00:00 UTC to Sunday, April 26, 2015, at 23:59 UTC. There is a limit of 10 battles per day for a total of 30 battles in the tournament. The highest ranked players will receive Championship Points as follows in each age division. Championship Points will not be divided by region but instead will be awarded to the top 256 players.
| Placement | Championship Points |
| 1–2 | 12 |
| 3–4 | 10 |
| 5–8 | 8 |
| 9–16 | 6 |
| 17–32 | 4 |
| 33–64 | 3 |
| 65–128 | 2 |
| 129–256 | 1 |
Registration ends as soon as the tournament begins so be sure to get your entry in on the Global Link now. You don’t need to lock your Battle Box until just before your first match. To register, log in to the Pokémon Global Link and click on the Competitions link on the left hand navigation bar. You must have your Player ID linked to your Pokemon.com account that your game card is associated with before the competition begins to receive Championship Points. Results will be released on May 1st.
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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Finished 10-5 today, suffered 3 bad losses today, one because of a very poor match up and bad missplays on my end, one because I forgot to teach Charizard-Y Solar Beam and now it is locked with Smokescreen (which I refuse to use. Not that using it would increase my chances on winning, though.) and one because of two crits and a paralysis coming from a thunderbolt, which resulted in Char-Y being absolutely useless during that battle.
I won’t be able to play more games today because I have to study for uni. Anyway, I really noticed one thing: the para-spamm today was real. I faced so many Pokemon using t-wave today it really started bothering me.
Also: Fought someone using a Gengar with Black Sludge, Substitute, Thunder and Energy Ball in a Rain Team. It was… uhm amusing.
Finished the weekend 19-11 after a very rocky 5-5 Day 2. I filled out this https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lcYhO3QRTg26scwrDXEBv-4Yee8hEEX6XaHzuRn2o7U/edit?usp=sharing nifty spreadsheet regarding most of the teams I saw– pretty much what I expected for finishing ~1600, though, really.
Easy highlights of the weekend were losing to Ray Rizzo’s epic TR Gardevoir team– apparently not having an answer to Heatran can get a guy rekt pretty easily– and a sweet 1-3 -> 1-0 comeback with Mega Charizard Y versus Mega Gardevoir, Breloom, and Landorus-T against someone who may or may not have been JRank (JonnyRank?).
Great time for a first IC, learned a lot about how I need to clean up my team. Time to start testing out variations. Good luck to everyone who hasn’t finished their matches yet! :^)
I’m currently at 27-2 with a rating in the 1800s (was 1795 then I won). I have one game left of my 30 however, is there a rule that I have to play this game? I’d rather sit on my 1800 and not risk it is all
thanks for any answers
23-7 last two battles the hax really got to me and has me really hot right now.
I ended 26-4. I faced a lot of great players (R Inanimate, Massi, Wolfey and Jamespeed1, Havak) and had great games with most of them (Wolfey did destroy me completely though). Apart from one battle, I didn’t get haxed in the entire tournament so I’m pretty happy with my results.
So I just finished my matches 21-9. Went 8-2 first day, at end of 2nd day I’d dropped to 11-9, then went undefeated today to drag my sorry arceus to just under 1700.
(slightly disappointed my second to last match somehow dropped my rating by 5 points even though I won!!)
My son faired better than me in Juniors going 23-7. He went 9-1 first day, was 17-3 after 2nd day, and unfortunately lost 4 in a row today to drop from the 1724 he was at but pulled it back at the end to finish just under 1700 as well.
Ended 23-7, 1713. As mentioned on Twitter.
Surprisingly few matches really invovled luck factors for me, I’d say.
Had 2 losses that I could sort of say were due to Luck.
1 to me getting suckered by some After You Mega Lopunny + Sylveon plays.
2 to me running into a Protect at the end of a game.
and 2 where I can say I was outplayed (one Outplayed, and one “Outplayed”)
Was mostly an enjoyable experience for me, and got me some decent practice in with my team.
Was using the team I’ve displayed in my Regions Tourney matches. For reference it was:
Salamence, Kangaskhan, Clefairy, Rotom-W, Bisharp, Infernape
Notable players that I faced were: Sam, Awesome Platypus, and Kamaal.
Thank goodness I didn’t actually lose to that one guy I faced who used a Rapidash against me.
Finished 23-7
not bad I guess
Finished 21-5 (I think) with a rating of about 1730.
Played a very bo1 oriented team with some surprise options to cheese my opponents for a quick win, it was a lot of fun to use though. I even won a Premiere Challenge on Saturday with it, I managed to pilot it through the two bo3 top cut rounds we had at the event after a 3-1 Swiss run.
Didn’t face a lot of players whose names I recognized, I had fun games with Lajo, andykins, Massi and Boomguy (only lost to Massi).
The names I didn’t recognize had very standard teams more or less across the board, with I believe about 2-3 people who probably don’t play VGC a lot, resulting in very weird teams.
I had fun, and hopefully secured at least 1 CP, so it was a pretty enjoyable tournament overall. I am kind of glad we only had 30 battles available this time, considering I didn’t have a lot of time to actually play.
My record is not as great as I would like 20-10
I lost 8 of those matches for making terrible plays. I won some matches because hax was in my favour, never before have I’ve seen hax so aggresively o.o
I learned many things from this team, the players which 1 was a close game and 1 was destruction. Had great time!
Do you guys think people get angry if you forfeit on them right on the first turn of a battle? I just did that to my last 5 opponents in the challenge since I’m seriously not in the mood for playing so I decided to give free wins to the lucky ones that faced me.
Oh well, that’s it for me.
Angry is not the right word for how I feel right now. The amount of hax in my last two games could satisfy a family of four for a year. I’m talking double rock slide misses, crits, flinches, game changing misses where you’d win if you hit…sends shivers down your spine, you would not want to play those games again.
What annoys me the most is my 29th opponent, gets the double rock slide avoid and flinches my other mon and then a double protect. I manage to bring it to Lapras vs -6 Rotom-H (yes -6, he must’ve known I was WP) I basically win with HP….he stalls to the timer like a little baby.
Warning this post does containt major splashes of salt, but I just needed to get it out of my system. Sorry guys.
Finished 19-11 because y’know. I did lose some legit like against Sekiam who did outplay me.
Let’s get a few more statistics in here:
NOTHING I faced had more than 25% usage amongst opposing teams. At most I saw a Pokemon on a team on 7/30 games.
I faced 89 different species within 30 games.
Compare this to one of my 2014 ICs, where 7 Pokemon were used above 25%, and had Talonflame peaking over 40%, with 76 different species represented within 59 games.
19 Wins / 9 Losses
2 DC’s from day 2 still unaccounted for and i cannot play any more games. I had 2 DC’s today also but i was awarded wins for those.
Day 1, Shouldn’t have lost any. Bit of bad luck changed that though. Lost 2
Day 2 was super haxy not in my favour. Lost 4
Day 3 Deserved all 3 of my losses. Brung wrong mons to one and played too aggressive against some trick rooms, even though i knew exactly how to play around them.
Was 1626 before losing my last game so must be about 1600 now unless i get wins for those 2 dc’s. Should think i would have by now though so probably just been screwed out of those.
Unfortunately because of illness I ended up finishing 19-11, where I felt I could’ve worked out something better for myself if I wasn’t so out of it.
I have learned a few things however that weren’t just about my playing, for example Expert Belt on Swampert really is the way to go as a last minute switch to Sitrus just wasn’t cutting it, as I missed out on many clutch OHKO’s with it which cost me a couple of matches.
Also I really do want to switch Sylveon out for something else as there were much too many Mega Metagrosses, Heatrans, and Aegislashes out there as well as a couple of Ferrothorns here and there. Between a fairly ok amount of fighting and ice coverage I have on my team I probably don’t really need Sylveon around honestly.
I didn’t recognize too many people I battled but I do know I managed to have a battle with Jamesspeed1. I misclicked twice in it (my Aegislash targeted the wrong pokemon and I forgot to mega evolve my Gallade) but I still managed to win that battle! I’m glad I was able to take away a nice battle with him even if I embarrassed myself there ahaha.
i finished with an okay record of 23-7
Finished with 25 wins and 5 losses, that’s a big improvement from the February International Challenge. I also learned a lot, for starters always have a counter for Mega Venusaur (I learned that the hard way), two I’m using Mega Mawile for the rest of VGC 2015, and three so many people are unprepared for rain teams. I wish everyone else the best of luck! Also did anyone else see any in-game teams?
Decided to go with a somewhat standard team for this challenge. It landed me a solid 30-0 finishing record, so there’s really no room for improvement. About 36% of my wins came from disconnects during team preview, so I possibly could have just been lucky and played a handful with poor internet connection? That’s all I could think of for an explanation. There were a few close calls that probably would have resulted as losses if it weren’t for the Choice Scarf item, so I’m glad that’s what I went with. I had to make a few difficult predictions that would have decided the battle, namely reading the Lum Berry on a Terrakion resulting in me successfully double-Swaggering into that slot while its partner couldn’t really do much support-wise, so that was a nice solution.
Now, there are a few blatant counters to this team, one of them being the ability Own Tempo. Although this would completely shut the entire team down altogether with no possible way to win whatsoever, I’m beginning to think the ability is actually banned. I always saw players opting for Swift Swim and Moody on Ludicolo and Smeargle respectively, and it just downright confused me since there’s the possibility of facing such a team as this one where speed and extreme stat boosts don’t matter at all! The only logical conclusion I could draw from this observation was the ability becoming illegal in competitive play for the current format. I’m inclined to agree with the ruling as Own Tempo is simply OP. One other total counter to this team was Quick Guard. I wasn’t too worried, and it ended up working out. I never encountered a Quick Guard user the entire time and that’s because it’s simply an awful move that no one should use. Nothing to fret about while conceptualizing this team. If you’re wondering what the specific EVs were, I only had 252 in Speed to maximize the chances of firing off Swaggers one after another, so no other EVs were necessary at all and would have been, quite frankly, a waste of time training.
To conclude, the team performed flawlessly when I needed it most, and I hope to use something similar during the next set of regionals. I’m not comfortable with revealing a team online prior to events where I plan to use it, so I’m going to retire these six fairly earlier than I planned. Of course, I have to give a shoutout to my partner in crime!
A special thanks to Andykins for aiding with the team-building process. I couldn’t have come up with such a solid foundation to branch off of without you! You really supported the idea from the get go, and I’m sure you’ll be glad to know how much it flourished.
jk i went 21-9 with not this team because i’m bad at this game lol
I finished 21-9 with this team
I did write a report, and you can see details of all the battles I remember at the link below!
http://nuggetbridge.com/reports/wide-guarding-top-cut-st-louis-masters-undefeated-swiss-team-report/
Also went 21-9 with a trick room team of
Hammer Arm Kangaskhan
Colbur Jellicent
Resto Chesto Cress
Sashed Abomasnow
Safety Goggles Heatran
Life orb Sylveon
Didn’t really think about when this was ending, but didn’t expect it to be 9:00ADT (5pm local for me). Ach, I was 18-8 with 4 battles to go and feelin’ pretty decent about improving that record and breaking 1700 before the competition ended. Kicking myself
I wonder if ~1650 will be good for any CP?
Had a terrible finish, lost a battle thanks to an ice beam freeze and generally wasn’t on top of my game this morning trying to get as much in before the deadline as I could manage. Still fun to get some battle practice in, but a little disappointing to not play my best in the last few battles, and make sure I got no CP.
((Will edit in Battle Box when I figure out how to.))
Team: Politoed/Kingdra/Manectric/Terrakion/Ferrothorn/Talonflame
Used quite the autopilot Rain team. Mega Venusaur was quite annoying, even with Talonflame (thanks a lot, Cybertron >.>), as good Mega Venusaur teams had good checks to Talonflame. I ended somewhere in the high 1600s with the only notable player I faced being kingofmars.
I ended up modifying the team a bit for a PC today, using Swagger+T Wave Cress over Talonflame. I ended up winning the PC, so I’m grateful for the experience the IC has given me.
Went 22-8 with this team, not the best out of me but I also used a team that I found more fun than something I would bring to a high level tournament like Regionals or Nationals. It’s a team that I think suits me though, a generally standard team with a few small surprises here or there. One change I sort of wish I had kept was Light Screen over Protect on Clefable, I didn’t end up needing Protect as often as I had some free turns where Light Screen could have been set up and made my Pokemon stick around a bit longer. Screens in general I think are something that are a bit underused right now, but I’d expect to see more of them in the future. Had a good experience and played some great players like R Inanimate and won against most players I recognized, so definitely a good experience. Looking forward to the next one!
I forgot to mention that I basically used the same team as in this article — http://nuggetbridge.com/reports/woke-like-missouri-regionals-9-0-team-report/— but, I made one change: instead of Ludicolo, I used a Lapras with Freeze-Dry, Ice Shard, Protect, and Hydro Pump. Most of the time, Landorus — which was lent to me by Gentlefish, to whom I owe a lot of thanks — really came in handy. But, more importantly, I felt like I thought more clearly than before. I still suffered from hax in the matches I lost, or picked the wrong Pokemon, or even forgot what my Hydreigon was carrying. I won a few other matches by DC or when opponents forfeited too soon. Still, I feel like I did a lot better than before. I’m sure my ranking will be in the low-1600s, but I’m okay with that. With a record of 20-10, the encouragement I really needed, and a daily dose of St. John’s wort, I felt like I did a lot better than the last few times I competed.
Ended up going 21-8, missing the final battle of the day 5 minutes before the comp ended as ‘opponent could not be found’.
I was using a modified version of unreality’s team, and I found that it played quite well overall.
Frustratingly, I lost 3 matches due to disconnects on my end. Another loss was due to a move timeout resulting in landorus autoselecting EQ and taking out my +2 kangaskhan instead of rocksliding to take out the opponents mega mence.
Another loss was to a copy of major bowmans rain team, which this team struggles with.
Finished ~1680s but so dissapointed to have not cracked the
Finished 20-10 with this team:
A few comments/changes Id make:
– Mega Heracross is a ton of fun to use and has some potential, but in the future I’m definitely looking towards a PuP Kang. Missing Pin Missle was a drag since I missed out on KOs to Breloom and Cress, but I feel like the moves I used were more important.
– Chople Heatran was really underwhelming, the one time it did activate was when a Kang low kick’d me, to which he crit the first hit and still KO’d.
– A Tailwind option is a definite need. Hera could do really well if I had a Tailwind set-up option.
– Trick Room + Fake Out and Fake Out + Support combos absolutely wrecked this team. Fake Out on my part, perhaps from the future kang, would be a welcomed addition.
– Bisharp was more or less a means of scaring off intimidate from Team Preview; very underused, very underwhelming.
A few strengths of this team:
– This team handles a lot of common archetypes very well: Weather, the “Battlepot Special”, Tailwind-Centered, bulkier teams, and even faster goodstuffs teams.
– Seems to strike a great balance between bulk and damage output; switching was also a pleasure almost all the time.
– Gastrodon was a huge success. Being able to protect Lando and Heatran from water types, giving checks to crucial team weaknesses (Blaziken, Metagross) and providing spee control was invaluable. In the future I’d probably go for a more offensive set, but otherwise, I think Gastrodon was freakin’ great.
– Heracross did well in its spot. It’s CC is ridiculously underrated, and Bullet Seed does a fantastic job taking out bulky waters. It also was able to capitalize off of Guts in non-mega form in a game or two.
Overall I’m really satisfied with this team; most of my losses were because of my playing, either leading incorrectly or just making stupid plays. Good lessons learned with this team though and I think in the future I can get some success with an updated version of this team.
Went 26:4 in the Masters Division, with a rating around ~1775. I’m pretty pleased with the result since this was my first serious VGC tournament ever.
Won the last 12 battles in a row, but got paired a lot with low rated players that did not gave me a lot of points. The Winner of the tournament should be around ~1800.
double ice, double fire – the team. had quite a bit of fun with this team, ended up 21-9 and probably around 1640 rating, but i don’t really mind if i don’t get CP; i don’t foresee 1-2 CP mattering a lot in the asia pacific region where nats basically mean everything. shoutouts to all the cool people i fought, particularly lajo and huy. i think.
Managed to go 12-11 after not finishing my matches.
I found I was in this really strange state of flux. I was fine against opponents in the lower ladder, but when I got to the higher end of the ladder I was losing (mostly on very near misses). I think next time I’ll give myself more prep time, as I did enter this one having not gotten everything I needed on the game, and then having to rush like crazy to breed and obtain pokemon/ items. For example, I ended up having to go with a Close Combat Arcanine instead of Wild Charge, which is what I was after (it did net me some nice KOs though).
Edit: My team