Reports

Published on November 10th, 2014 | by Agus

8

You Got Mud on Your Face: An Argentinian Premier Challenge Finalist Report

Hey there, folks! I’m Agustín Bordel, a VGC player from Argentina and an avid reader of Nugget Bridge, and I’m here to tell you about my second place finish at our country’s first Premier Challenge.

But first, a bit of history. (I’ll be brief!) Even though official sanctioned play started less than two months ago in Argentina, a VGC scene has existed here for several years, thanks to a couple of leagues and groups of players dedicated to spreading love for the competitive side of Pokémon. Now that TPCi has finally noticed us and we finally have the chance to compete in an official environment to earn some tasty Championship Points, I think a “thank you” to everyone here who has worked hard organizing tournaments, writing articles, and being good sports overall is in order. So, thank you!

Back to the tournament. This Premier Challenge was held simultaneously with another one at a different location, so I guess both have the honor of being the first Premier event here. We were a bit bummed about not being able to attend both tournaments, but were told that this was the only time such a situation would happen. In the end we didn’t care, as we were too excited. At least I was!

After analyzing the local metagame, I decided that nothing could go wrong if I played a rain team and made sure I kept the weather in my favor. As such, Politoed and Ludicolo were in, as was Mega Manectric since I loved the flexibility it brought. However, Trick Room and Mega Venusaur were quite popular over here, so I added Amoonguss and Talonflame as deterrents. Eagle-eyed readers might notice that I ended up with a team that was almost identical to Keewan’s Asia Cup team. I moved even further towards that similarity by switching Ludicolo for Kingdra. I wanted to minimize the chances of Talonflame being a major threat, and Azumarill wasn’t a Pokemon I was worried about at all. In the end, the spread damage that Kingdra brought ended up mattering a lot.

The Team

Politoed @ Eject Button – “Sprote”
Nature: Bold
Ability: Drizzle
EVs: 228 HP / 172 Def / 108 SpD
– Scald
– Ice Beam
– Perish Song
– Protect

Using a rain team demands the appearance of this cute Pokémon , but I really disliked its lack of offensive presence. I opted for some Eject Button shenanigans to get around this. Volt Switch and U-Turn on my other Pokémon combined with Politoed’s bulk really allowed this item to shine, letting me set up a beautiful second turn on unsuspecting opponents. When creating a defensive Politoed set, players often struggle with its fourth move: some choose Encore and others pick Hypnosis, but I instead chose Perish Song since it gave me a win condition after I took two KOs.

I gave it this name because my girlfriend once mispronounced “Sprite”, and it was funny.

Kingdra @ Choice Specs – “La Pistola”
Nature: Modest
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
– Muddy Water
– Hydro Pump
– Dragon Pulse
– Draco Meteor

To take advantage of the rain, I had initially chosen Ludicolo since I absolutely loved its looks and its ability to take hits (it was mostly the looks though). I later realized that I needed more raw power than Ludicolo could give me, so I switched to Kingdra since I was not expecting many Azumarill. Muddy Water provided good, risk-free spread damage as well as a chance to drop accuracy, which happened quite often in my battles and ended up being clutch in my first Top Cut match. Hydro Pump was there in case I urgently needed to focus an opposing Pokémon, and I also had both Dragon-type moves so I could pick whichever suited the situation best (I considered Sleep Talk, but I was rather inexperienced with the move). I struggled with the item choice for Kingdra, but settled on Choice Specs so Talonflame could hold Life Orb.

“Pistola” means “gun” in Spanish and Kingdra kind of looks like a gun. The name is also based on a scene in “The Simpsons”, which is insanely popular in my country; the characters are revered as demigods. Now you know.

Manectric @ Manectite – “Shakira”
Nature: Timid
Ability: Lightning Rod
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
– Volt Switch
– Thunder
– Hidden Power Ice
– Protect

Manectric was chosen due to its access to Volt Switch and Intimidate, as well as its synergy with Eject Button. If Politoed had been using any other item, I probably would have used Kangaskhan instead. Hidden Power Ice finished off Dragon-types after they took chip damage from Kingdra (Goodra being the exception), while Thunder gave me a stronger STAB attack, and proved quite useful with its paralysis chance. Lightning Rod helped keep Politoed and Talonflame safe before I Mega Evolved, and allowed for interesting mindgames against opposing Electric-types. The ability’s main use, however, was shielding Kingdra from devastating Thunder Waves. I would occasionally keep Manectric in the back and switch it in beside Kingdra when I predicted a Thunder Wave.

I named her Shakira because she’s blonde and flexible.

Talonflame @ Life Orb – “Pet Shop”
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Gale Wings
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
– Brave Bird
– Flare Blitz
– U-turn
– Protect

Unlike Manectric, I believe that Talonflame is mandatory on rain teams. It is necessary to deal with Ludicolo, Amoonguss, and Venusaur, among others, that attempt to rain (ha, ha) on your parade. U-turn, just like Volt Switch, allowed Politoed to switch out and come back onto the field in a single turn, giving me a way to keep rain up despite a switched-in or Mega Evolved weather setter. There’s nothing more to say; what’d you expect? It’s Talonflame.

Pet Shop is the name of a “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” character that’s a murderous hawk. It also shoots ice, just like Talonflame.

Bisharp @ Focus Sash – “Black RX”
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
– Sucker Punch
– Assurance
– Iron Head
– Protect

I think Bisharp is a great Pokemon, but sadly it didn’t have a chance to shine in the tournament. I used it in practice to punish Intimidate users, especially Mawile. Bisharp was useful for hitting Aegislash and most Trick Room setters quite hard. In spite of its Speed investment, it was usually the slowest of my Pokémon, so I chose Assurance instead of Night Slash.

It is nicknamed after my favorite iteration of Kamen Rider, known in America as Masked Rider.

Amoonguss @ Rocky Helmet – “Rick Astley”
Nature: Sassy
Ability: Regenerator
EVs:  204 HP / 124 Def / 188 SpD
– Spore
– Rage Powder
– Giga Drain
– Protect

Amoonguss did for my team what it does best: it made the opponent think twice about setting up Trick Room and sent them to slumberland if they decided to do so anyway. I don’t think there’s much to be said about Amoonguss’s moves at this point; it’s was there to protect the other members of the team with Rage Powder, something it did even better in rain. Rocky Helmet helped me to pick up chip damage on opposing physical attackers, who would then be in the KO range of Kingdra’s Muddy Water. I chose Regenerator over Effect Spore because this team is all about switching, and there’s nothing worse than poisoning a Pokémon I wanted to put to sleep.

The name was chosen by my friend Waru in a fit of rage caused by my indecision in coming up with a name for it. I guess you could say both Rick and Amoonguss are equally annoying!

The Tournament

Five swiss rounds were played before Top 8.

Round 1: vs Axel Suarez

It’s always nice to face someone you don’t know in the first round. Alex was pretty nervous since this was his first tournament. He started the battle with his shiny Mega Charizard Y nicknamed Toothless (an extremely appropriate name indeed), but my Eject Button play worked perfectly and made it impossible for him to maintain sun. Kingdra then proceeded to defeat all of the opposing Pokémon by throwing mud in their faces. I was surprised when Jolteon took a Muddy Water hit without fainting, but it turns out it has 95 Special Defense; silly me. I won the match, but even while being nervous due to his tournament debut, Alex was able to reach top cut. Good job!

Round 2: vs Alex Proulx

This guy, who had an awesome surname, pronounced the names of the Pokémon in perfect English, which is rather uncommon around these parts—I found it rather cool. I later learned that he had been in the United States for a long time, which explained that oddity. During the battle he left both of his Dragon-types in their Poké Balls and instead went on the offensive with Tyranitar and Mega Mawile. It was a tough battle, and I almost lost due to some effective switching by my opponent and a couple of untimely Muddy Water misses (it was bound to happen). Ferrothorn was a real nuisance, but Talonflame was able to take it out and secure the win.

Round 3: vs Gonzalo “Void” Nieto

The first battle of the day against someone I actually knew! Not really a good thing, actually. I knew that Void was a well-versed player so I tried hard to concentrate on the battle, which wasn’t all that easy at the time since I had a song stuck in my head (this may sound silly, but is actually something that happens to me quite often). In this case, the song was “Mass Destruction” from the Persona 3 OST. But I digress. Unlike Alex, Void brought both of his Dragon-types to the battle, but left his Fairy-types at home. I led with Amoonguss, and Void launched an all-out attack against it with his Hydreigon and Rotom, targeting it with Dragon Pulse and Overheat. However, he was unable to knock it out thanks to Politoed switching in beside Amoonguss and summoning the rain. When Mega Kangaskhan came in, I was unsure whether to double Protect or not, since I feared that he would use Power-Up Punch on his own teammate. I decided to Protect anyway, and got away with it since he attempted to use Fake Out. Amoonguss carried me to victory in this match by redirecting attacks towards its Rocky Helmet—you can see why Void wanted to take it out as soon as possible.

Round 4: vs Manuel “Waru” Brignole

I don’t remember if Waru was the one who convinced me to play in this tournament or if I was the one who convinced him to play. The important thing is that he’s a good friend of mine and since he doesn’t usually play VGC, he told me he’d breed and train a team for himself the week before the tournament. Then he told me he’d do it the day before. Then it was the night before. Needless to say, I ended up lending him one of my teams. One of my favorite teams (for casual play, at least) too: perish trap. I was surprised upon being told I had to play him Round 4 because I didn’t expect him to do so well with that team; but here he was, with a 3-0 record too—the same as me. In our match, he opted not to use the Perish Trap aspect of the team—maybe he was trying out something new, maybe he was going easy on me, or maybe he realized that Volt Switch and U-turn were serious problems for perish trap (if this was the case, props for figuring it out on the first day using the team!). Anyway, the battle wasn’t easy at all! Ludicolo tanked at least four hits and heavily damaged most of my team, but I managed to win in the end. You’re so amazing, Ludicolo. I’m sorry I picked this ugly blue thing instead of you.

Round 5: vs Daniel Fau

During the tournament, I had heard of a guy nobody could beat. It was Daniel, and it turned out I had to play him in the fifth round. I’d never seen him before, so I was quite intrigued; our competitive scene isn’t big, so we tend to know each other. We were about to start when somebody pointed out that, since we both had perfect records, we should play it safe with an intentional draw. I knew Daniel was using Mega Charizard Y and I was eager to keep my Eject Button a secret from him due to the possibility of playing him in Top Cut, so it sounded like a good idea to me. We talked about it for a minute, asked the judge if we could do it, and he said we could, so we did. A week or so later, I decided to investigate online and found out that this practice isn’t only frowned upon by the community, it’s also not allowed—oh boy. This was our first Premier VGC event, but we’ve had TCG events for years, so both players and judges were used to the TCG rules. I’ve spread the information and now we know this isn’t allowed. Hey, we learned something already! We’re growing and stuff!

Top Cut

The top cut matches were best of three, something quite unusual around here that had almost never been done in local tournaments. Playing so many games is really tiring! I admire anyone who’s gotten used to it and look forward to getting used to it myself. Instead of writing about each game, I’ll give a summary of my experience against each of my top cut opponents. I think I could’ve played these matches much better than I did; I definitely need to practice and hone my best of three skills. Anyway, lots of surprises occurred: I ended up in the first place after the swiss rounds, yay! Waru made Top Cut—which was unbelievable, as this was the second time he had played VGC in his life. Axel, my first round opponent, also made it! And my friend Blake barely made the cut in eighth place. Wait, eighth place? Oh snap, that means…

Top 8: vs Mariano “Blake” Jar

Feast your eyes on these unorthodox choices! I knew sooner or later I’d be playing against Blake, who I considered to be one of the best local players. When I was teambuilding for the event, this matchup was the one I was most worried about. I thought he would be using Malamar with Trick Room, but I was only partially correct, as he brought Malamar but never set up Trick Room in any of our battles. I was pretty sure Malamar would be a nuisance, so I focused on using Talonflame’s U-turn to bring it down. Blake won the first battle and I won the second one. During the second game, we were quite surprised when my Amoonguss Spored his Mega Ampharos before it could move—turns out there was a speed tie. In the third game, I got a bit lucky when my Pokémon landed some critical hits and avoided some attacks due to Muddy Water (coincidentally, his Blastoise was also using the attack). I guess that’s just the game we play. Hey, I’ve always wanted to write that phrase in a Nugget Bridge article, and now I have!

Top 4: vs Fernando Soraires

Fernando is a very special guy who I already knew. We had teamed together in a Multi Battle tournament (we were randomly paired together) and reached the finals before losing due to a technicality: we both used our Mawile in the same battle—I didn’t know we weren’t allowed to do that (psh, what a joke). Anyway, the only thing I knew about Fernando’s performance at this tournament was that he’d been terrorized by Waru’s perish trap during the swiss rounds. In team preview, I recognized his team from the Multi Battle tournament. I won’t lie, I went into these battles feeling much more confident than I should have and was taken by surprise by an opponent who made smart switches and put me in complex situations. I barely won the first battle, and he completely destroyed me in the second thanks to his Gardevoir who was sporting a Choice Scarf that I really didn’t expect. I really hated playing against his Assault Vest Goodra, who could practically ignore the attacks of nearly all of my Pokémon. Our third game was my favorite battle from the entire tournament. At the end, I was able to isolate his -6 Special Attack Goodra and slowly whittle it down. Great games, Soraires, and I’m looking forward to our future battles.

Finals: vs Daniel Fau

Finally, the time had come. I knew nothing about Daniel—who he was, where he was from, nor what his style of play was. This created a great atmosphere for the final. What didn’t contribute to this tense atmosphere, however, was that it was very late and the owner of the pub we were playing at was politely trying to kick us out. The core of his team was Mega Charizard Y, Rhydon and Lapras, who covered each others’ weaknesses perfectly and gave me a ton of trouble. Charizard left me without rain, Lapras was a pain with Water Absorb, and Rhydon shielded the aforementioned duo with Lightning Rod. I won the first battle, but quickly ran out of gas and was unable to win the final two games. During the third battle I tried to knock Rhydon out with my Politoed’s Scald (for the third time in the set) since I knew I had a good chance of picking up the OHKO, but not only did it survive with a sliver of HP, it counterattacked with… Metal Burst?! That was it; at that point I knew I wouldn’t be able to win. Congratulations to Daniel, and thank you for the great battles!

Closing Thoughts

I had a lot of fun meeting both old and new friends and duking it out with them at this tournament. My only regret was the lack of time I spent building my rather standard team, but the truth was that I was so comfortable with it and had such a high win rate while practicing that I thought it would be a shame not to bring it. Switching Ludicolo for Kingdra was a big improvement: I noticed that it improved my chances to win against local players a great deal, but it did have the downside of making my team identical to Keewan’s. I’ve always thought that creativity shouldn’t be taken into account when building a team, especially in a “young” metagame like this one, and in the end I didn’t mind too much. I’m retiring this team for now though, so it’s time for some serious teambuilding work from me.

The most exciting thing about this tournament is that it’s only the beginning. Even though we’ve been playing VGC for a long time, the advent of our first Premier season is sure to encourage local players to give this format a chance. It’ll also bring new players to our competitive scene, which I’m sure will soon look better than ever!

As I said before, I’d like to thank LAP (Liga Argentina de Pokémon) and Liga Fancross Pokémon for their efforts in promoting the competitive aspect of Pokémon in Argentina, as well as the other groups across Argentina that support our scene. I’d also like to thank my fellow Argentinian trainers, mainly my sparring partners Lucas Hafner (who placed first in the other Premier Challenge!), Alan Collia, and the beautiful Iara Torres for their support and efforts in making this game fun—it’s already lots of fun, but they make it even more fun. Thanks to Ezequiel Fierro, who made the amazing drawing that adorns this article. Oh, and thank you, too, for reading it. See you around!

About the Author

Agus

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