Standard Ruleset for 2015 VGC Season Updated
The Standard Ruleset has been updated. All tournaments that are a part of the Pokémon Video Game Championships (VGC) will use these rules starting January 1st, 2015. As many have predicted, it will mirror the ruleset used in the ΩR/αS League Doubles ladder on Battle Spot. For those who need a refresher, that means:
Standard Ruleset
- All matches are played in the Doubles format.
- Pokémon 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 Pokémon after team preview.
- Pentagon Rule: All Pokémon must have the blue pentagon on their stats page indicating they were caught, bred, or received as an official gift in Pokémon X, Y, Omega Ruby, or Alpha Sapphire.
- Species Clause: No two Pokémon on your team can share the same Pokédex number.
- Item Clause: No two Pokémon on your team can hold the same held item.
- The following items are banned:
- Soul Dew
- The following moves are banned:
- none
- The following Pokémon are banned (all forms):
- Mewtwo
- Mew
- Lugia
- Ho-oh
- Celebi
- Kyogre
- Groudon
- Rayquaza
- Jirachi
- Deoxys
- Dialga
- Palkia
- Giratina
- Phione
- Manaphy
- Darkrai
- Shaymin
- Arceus
- Victini
- Reshiram
- Zekrom
- Kyurem
- Keldeo
- Meloetta
- Genesect
- Xerneas
- Yveltal
- Zygarde
- Diancie
For full rules, download the rules document here.
Additional Rule Clarifications
Headphones
You are allowed to use headphones while playing as long as they are wired and plugged into your 3DS. The cord must be visible.
Time Limits at Premier Challenges
Due to the longer than normal timers when using the Player Search System, Premier Challenges and other tournaments where you don’t have your Battle Box locked and rules downloaded at registration can have time limits enforced manually by a judge. Time limits may also be extended if the organizer sees fit. Changes should be communicated at the beginning of the tournament alongside the number of rounds and top cut size.
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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Yay!Not only did I predict right so 5 months training won’t go to waste, but I no longer have to think “Poor sap, he going to be torn apart,”everyone I see a post with VGC 2015 in the title 🙂
I lied, I really did know the ruleset and was sitting here hiding it and laughing my butt off for 10 days wondering when someone else would find it.
I found it by clicking the official links on Pokemon.com. If it wasn’t published or linked from there, it officially didn’t exist, even if it was on their webserver.
Can we all just agree to play nice and not use smeargle?
but Play Rough Smeargle is the play
While this is exactly the format I think everyone should have been expecting, I’m pleased. I think it’ll do a world of good to have the format playable on an in-game ladder all year. I also think VGC is a game that plays a lot better when as much of the cast is available as possible to be part of solutions to metagame problems that arise, so I think we’ll likely see a much more strategically diverse metagame and much more stable games in this format than we saw last year. A shame about Dark Void, obviously, but with it still being allowed on Battle Spot I figured we probably wouldn’t have much of a chance there.
Should be a good year!
Thank Arceus it isn’t Hoenn dex, that would’ve sucked. It isn’t a big suprise, but it’s nice to have some confirmation.
Yay, this clears up a butt ton of stuff for me. Thank you for posting this.
I’m quite pleased with this fomat. I suppose, however, we’ ll have to shift to complaining about the limiting nature of the meta to complaining about legendary pokemon and the horrible people that use them.
Yay, this clears up a butt ton of stuff for me. Thank you for posting this.
Yay 2013 rules
I cannot comprehend the stigma with people having legendary pokemon on their teams. Do people forget that they are still pokemon or believe that they are overpower/over centralize the meta game because a lot of other pokemon are far more guilty of that.
The format isn’t Hoenn dex, and Arceus would have been disallowed as a mythical Pokémon anyway. Unless it had been VGC10/Battle of Legends rules.
I would have preferred Hoenn Dex if GF had put some thought into it and extended it to maybe 300 carefully selected mons, without some common faces like Kang or Chomp. But with ORAS being such an effortless remake, National Dex was to be expected. Now let’s get to RNG’ing those genies anew.
Heatran Cresselia 2015?
Did you mean
Megahorn, Drill-run Escavalier?
Thank god now I don’t have to quit pokemon after starting off 16th in CP
Premiere Challenge timer updates secret nerf to Kamaal’s Premiere Challenge runs.
Ok, the rules are now released, but what are the changes from X/Y to ORAS?
Technically TOs weren’t supposed to enforce timer rules for the 2014 season at all. The game took care of that.
That’s pretty much it.
So nothing that’s not already obvious, lol..
This is exactly what I guessed it would be. Yay for me!
I’d like to go to the VGC so much, but no tournament in France… f***** smogon everywhere.
bidoof, it’s not 6v6 Magikarp ;_; FML
Well, this at least means I don’t have to slam my head into my desk every time I read “rate my 2015 VGC team!”
In all seriousness, this was no shocker at all, although I’ll admit that I was disappointed to see Dark Void Smeargle is still legal, but I guess we’ll just have to continue to adapt to it this season, and we have a much broader meta to find ways to counteract it as well. Regardless of Smeargle, this will definitely be a much better meta!
So, let’s pretend I been using Hyper Voice Sylveon…what outclasses it now since we can use National Dex?
Same with Aegislash…what is better than it now?
No.
Aegislash is unique as it always was. I don’t think anything outclasses hyper voice sylveon either.
I think Sylveon and Aegislash are probably the best at what they do. They’re both pretty unique.
You can only SR genies and friends though. There’s no RNG in Gen 6, and VGC 2015 requires the blue pentagon.
Can still get 6IV genies…right?