Reports

Published on August 25th, 2014 | by Prof Teak

29

Rain, Sun, Rain: Australia’s Journey to Top Cut at Worlds

Australia was understandably an underdog at the World Championships this year, given our poor performance last year when we first joined the official circuit. Considering that, I was super pleased to take everyone by surprise and make Top Cut after having a very successful season back home. We had some great showings in the lower age divisions as well, coming very close to having a Top Cut in each one. It was a huge honour to get to play alongside so many people I’ve respected for a long time now, and all of us who made the trip over there had a great time.

For those who don’t know me, my name is Dayne O’Meara and I’ve been playing VGC since 2011 when I switched from playing Smogon’s OU ruleset. I was living in Thailand last year, so I missed out on our first season with a shot at Worlds. The only involvement in VGC ’13 I had was piloting my VGC ’12 team to victory in an Australia vs South Korea WiFi friendly (HP Fire Cloyster in the sun FTW). Since I plan on returning to university for postgraduate studies next year, I’ve been putting a lot of effort into VGC ’14 to make the most out of the last of my spare time. That doesn’t mean I won’t compete next year, but I certainly won’t be practising nearly as much.

I’d like to make a few notes about team selection, followed by an in-depth look at the team I settled on, and then I’ll try and remember some of what went down in the Swiss rounds based on my notes.

Teams to Choose From

I was planning on my Pokémon season finishing after Nationals in July and had been trying to get a lot of academic stuff done in my spare time instead of playing video games. With that in mind, I wasn’t too keen on starting from scratch to make a new team for Worlds. I therefore had a few main options to consider from my season so far:

This was the team I used to place 2^nd at the Melbourne Regionals. Not having to worry about winning a trip to Nationals (also held in Melbourne), I threw this team together thinking it would be fun to use but probably wouldn’t do too well. The idea is to do lots of defensive switching and chip damage, manoeuvring myself carefully into win conditions. Despite having somewhat gimmicky aspects to it, it ended up a lot more consistent and adaptable than I had anticipated. The event was best of three, single elimination and I had a pretty rough bracket, having to eliminate a few of our more seasoned players along the way such as Phil Nguyen (Boomguy), Emma Williams (Cobalte) and Chris Giagozoglou (The Batman).

I won the Australian Nationals with this sun team. After pretty standard teams showing up at Regionals, I figured it would be wise to prepare for Kangaskhan and Mawile going into Nationals. That didn’t end up being the case, with all sorts of crazy stuff cropping up and wrecking Top Cut chances for many of the favourites. Nonetheless, I managed to perform well with this team. This team is much more offensively inclined than my rain team, with Life Orb/Solar Power/STAB Hyper Beam threatening even the likes of Mega Venusaur.

Early in the season I had success running these guys on a team, exploiting the loads of people at the time who were running Safeguard Meowstic and were at that stage pretty ignorant of Infiltrator. If I was going to consider building a new team for Worlds it needed to start with something I was familiar with, and this would likely have been it. I still think SubSeed Jumpluff is really good. Similar to how Randy Kwa (R Inanimate) is known for playing Smeargle, the key to Jumpluff is that the threat of sleep is worse than the sleep itself. Besides Sleep Powder it has a fast Encore and is dangerous behind a Substitute. In the end though I decided I didn’t have enough time available to rework this into a team that was up to date with the current metagame.

The Team I Settled On

I chose to tweak my Regionals team and use that for Worlds. One big reason was that I was simply more comfortable with this team, having a lot more experience using it. Having practice using a team effectively in every possible situation is really important and it’s why copying completely someone else’s winning team at the last minute is never a good idea. Moreover, I figured at Worlds I would have to play a lot more cleverly to do well. My sun team has very limited switching options in a lot of situations, meaning I would often win or lose matches based on lead matchups after team preview. I decided having more defensive options and flexibility within the team was an important factor to consider.

The team fits my playstyle well in that it has a good blend of tricky mindgames to offer alongside stuff that simply dishes out damage. It drew inspiration from a couple of places. Part of that inspiration came from fellow Melbournian Cobalte who kicked my butt with an Assault Vest Lapras that got my attention while we were having practice matches leading up to Regionals. Then I lifted the Raichu/Staraptor VoltTurn core used to great success by Tony Cheung (Chinese Dood) at Washington Regionals, albeit without his Mega Gengar and its Disable shenanigans. All of this was tied together with rain, but the team doesn’t include Ludicolo or Kingdra, so it doesn’t really fit what comes to mind when you think “Rain Team.” Mostly I just tweaked EVs following Regionals, with the biggest change being to my Lucario set.

The Primary Core

Politoed @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Drizzle
EVs: 244 HP / 252 SpA / 12 SpD
Modest Nature
– Hydro Pump
– Ice Beam
– Surf
– Protect

The problem I’ve had with Assault Vest users in the past is that they really miss not having a Sitrus Berry. I thought I’d patch this up and give my behemoth a bit more offensive prowess at the same time by bringing Surf recovery plus rain. Politoed and Lapras together both threaten a lot of stuff simply by both surviving several hits from things used to beat them while constantly dishing out STAB and rain boosted attacks. Opponents tend to focus on taking out one of them at a time, so once I know what their response is I can wreak havoc with the other one. Politoed often becomes the priority since it’s giving HP to Lapras, so Protect is especially useful on Politoed in this role, even more than it would be usually.

The coverage is pretty good with just Ice/Water, though pretty harmless against Water-types (in which case it’s not dead weight due to its healing function). I wanted to include a second Water move in addition to Surf for when I have other stuff on the field with Politoed. Both of these moves tend to get used pretty equally. Scald was possibly an option over Hydro Pump of course, but I stuck with Hydro Pump largely because I was more comfortable with the damage calculations for this move.

The other noteworthy thing about how Politoed worked on my team was that I was able to quite easily switch it out and then in again on a single turn thanks to my VoltTurn core, making weather wars much more manageable.

EVs were adjusted after Regionals to add more power and less bulk. The most recent adjustment I made was to ensure that Sitrus Berry activated after a Super Fang. If I had won my top eight match, that may have been well worth it against Sejun and his Pachirisu the following round.

Lapras @ Assault Vest
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 204 HP / 60 Def / 172 SpA / 68 SpD / 4 Spe
Calm Nature
– Freeze-Dry
– Hydro Pump
– Ancient Power
– Sheer Cold

There are a lot of good Assault Vest users out there for those who are fond of playing bulky stuff, but Lapras is pretty special in that it has indirect access to recovery at the same time thanks to Water Absorb. This is why Ludicolo does well with Assault Vest as well, thanks to access to Giga Drain. Lapras also has pretty phenomenal coverage with just Freeze-Dry and Hydro Pump, meaning it can afford to run not one, but two highly situational moves as filler.

Hydro Pump in the rain packs quite a punch to most Pokémon. Freeze-Dry deals a lot of damage to or OHKO’s a lot of common Pokémon in the metagame, like Garchomp, Rotom-W, Salamence, Ludicolo and Kingdra, to name a few.

Ancient Power is for finishing things or in a pinch, trading blows with Charizard-Y in the sun. I’d obviously never use it over a smarter choice in the hope of getting the stat boost, but when everything falls into place and it just happens, it’s pretty game-changing.

Sheer Cold is sometimes an, “Oh no, I’m about to lose the game!” wildcard that can potentially make comebacks possible in dire situations. Frustrating as it is to lose to though, I don’t think it’s just a “noob” tactic that nobody serious about competitive play should ever use. Fissure Marowak would be ridiculous to run, but Sheer Cold Suicune was a thing in recent years also for example. Given that Lapras has a lot of bulk, and on this team, access to recovery, it can be more than a last ditch effort in some matchups. If I’m playing a team that I struggle to do a lot of damage to, but they also struggle to quickly deal a lot of damage to Lapras, I can quite easily fire off four or five Sheer Colds in a game without putting myself at more of a disadvantage than if I had done something else. One or two of those hitting then is not some ridiculous fluke. The icing on the cake then is that with this otherwise viable strategy, there’s also the chance that they’ll all hit.

I had played around with Whirpool over Sheer Cold — to go with Encore potentially — but I found Sheer Cold to be useful more frequently in testing. I was originally running a slightly more defensive EV spread, but with a few more bulky Garchomps running around these days I thought I should play it safe and run the extra Special Attack.

Raichu @ Focus Sash
Ability: Lightningrod
EVs: 36 HP / 220 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
– Fake Out
– Encore
– Volt Switch
– Protect

So with two Water-types on my team right from the get-go, I obviously needed a way to deal with Electric and Grass-type attacks. This gave me an excuse to try out this duo that I’ve been a fan of ever since seeing footage of Chinese Dood tearing it up at Washington Regionals. The key to using Raichu well is to use it as a support Pokémon. It can do alright on DisQuake teams as a Garchomp slayer, but otherwise I’ve found it to be not very good as a primary attacker.

Raichu is far more useful by not actually relying on getting Lightning Rod boosts. It hardly dishes out much damage even on +1, so I have no reservations about it switching out every time it attacks. Using this guy well is all about reading your opponent. You need to know when they’ll expect you to switch Raichu in or out and when they’re expecting you to Encore or not. As long as I predict well, Raichu frustrates my opponent to no end while my Water-types spam rain boosted attacks at the opposing team virtually undamaged a lot of the time. I just have to make sure I don’t back myself into a position where I have to Volt Switch into a teammate who will promptly get knocked out before it can do anything. This makes double Protects sometimes my best option. Raichu is certainly not a Pokémon to be used by inexperienced players.

The EV spread is to survive Sucker Punch from Kangaskhans. Not terribly common for Raichu to be hit by, but it was a pretty small investment, so I decided to make this change at the last minute. Since I was running Focus Sash, I didn’t see the need for any more bulk. My team thrives on chip damage, so the Special Attack EVs weren’t going to waste on this support Pokémon. Safety Goggles is certainly another option to consider, but I have more experience with Focus Sash, so that’s what I went with.

Staraptor @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 196 HP / 164 Atk / 148 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Brave Bird
– Close Combat
– U-turn
– Final Gambit

Also inspired by Chinese Dood’s Regionals team, this was a more offensively inclined support Pokémon that gave me a Grass resistance. Starring also on my Nationals sun team, I think Staraptor is possibly my favourite Pokémon in the format at the moment (and props to Ashton Cox for running a Banded variant with Reckless).

Staraptor can do a lot of different things depending on the situation. It can sit there dishing out huge chunks of damage with STAB Brave Birds, it can play switching shenanigans with Raichu using U-Turn/Volt Switch to abuse Intimidate, or it can sacrifice itself using the scarcely distributed move, Final Gambit. Close Combat was probably the least used move on the set, but it is occasionally handy for taking out Mega Kangaskhans after chip damage and is extremely useful for OHKOing Tyranitars.

I was initially running Speed EVs to outspeed Timid Mega Manectric, which was the fastest thing I ran into fairly often besides Aerodactyl. After realising that Randy’s Scarf Rotom with Discharge was very problematic for my team however, I added an extra eight EVs to outpace that at the cost of a little Attack. Notably, it can also outspeed Mega Tyranitar after a Dragon Dance and OHKO. The HP EVs are optimised for Final Gambit obviously. With this much HP I can always one-shot Garchomps with 12 HP EVs, and can safely one-shot anything with HP of base 78 or lower regardless of their HP investment (Florges and Charizard the most notable ones I suppose). The most common targets for this move are Garchomp, Rotom, Mega Manectric, Mega Mawile and Ferrothorn. I was ready to take down the Gothitelles that were pretty popular at Worlds, but I didn’t end up facing any. The rest of my EVs are dumped into Attack. The HP EVs come in handy outside of using Final Gambit by giving him more survivability as VoltTurn/Intimidate support.

One of the downfalls of this team is that though it is still very handy to force a 3v3 from turn one in a lot of cases, quickly taking out Garchomps and Rotoms is fairly redundant sometimes because this team deals with those two quite well already. Final Gambit would certainly be more useful on teams that struggle against those two Pokémon. Still, just the threat of Final Gambit can be useful to play off of. I find I actually gain a lot more momentum when I Final Gambit into a Protect and leave my opponent stressing about what to do about that next turn. Even if sacrificing Staraptor isn’t in my best interest, nobody likes to lose a Pokémon at the start of a match, so the presence of this threat gives me an element of control over the game as long as Staraptor is around.

The Other Two

The above four were the first to be put on the team and also happened to be the four that I brought most commonly to games after Team Preview if I wasn’t sure what to do. They covered each other’s weaknesses pretty well in most cases and allowed for some good switching options and combinations between them. There were a few things I still struggled with though. Obviously from purely a typing standpoint, I had no safe switch-ins to Rock or Fighting-type attacks, both of which are very common in the meta. That’s still probably my biggest weakness, though it is somewhat mitigated in certain situations by the teammates below.

The thing I wanted to reliably counter more easily though was opposing weather. Any half decent weather team can theoretically deal with opposing weather by well-played weather wars, but that can get pretty tense. I wanted another, safer solution. Mega Kangaskhan was also a potential problem, since I had nothing powerful enough to OHKO it. Venusaur/Mega Venusaur and Mega Charizard-Y were my biggest immediate concerns though, so I settled on these two.

Since Regionals, I actually use the rest of my team more effectively to deal with Charizards, and I’ve learned to integrate these two into the rest of the team a lot more smoothly just through lots of practice. So despite being separated out here based on how I originally built the team, they actually have ended up doing more than just patching up very specific weaknesses.

Talonflame @ Life Orb
Ability: Gale Wings
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 64 Def / 12 SpA / 176 Spe
Naughty Nature
– Brave Bird
– Overheat
– Taunt
– Protect

Talonflame is a Pokémon I’ve used quite a lot, and this is certainly my favourite version to run. Mainly it takes out Venusaur/Amoonguss and then goes down having fulfilled its purpose. Having two flying types with Brave Bird seemed redundant to me at first, but it’s been extremely useful. Brave Bird is the obvious counter to Amoonguss/Venusaur, so good players with those Pokémon will have very reliable Talonflame counters. It becomes far more difficult for them to manage the threat though if there’s a second bird U-turning around the place. The thing I like about this Talonflame though is that it is sometimes really clutch outside of using Brave Bird a lot.

I always hated running Flare Blitz earlier in the season due to all the extra recoil incurred by its most common target, Ferrothorn. Since it really doesn’t take a lot to knock out Ferrothorn with Fire attacks, I figured it would be worth going mixed to remove all the unnecessary recoil. Most of my other targets for this move are either frail or four times weak to Fire anyway. Because people expect physical, they sometimes think Intimidate will save their Mega Mawiles, and since my main attacking option is physical, I don’t mind the Special Attack drop that comes with Overheat. Obviously Overheat becomes rather useless while Politoed is around, but I often don’t bring Politoed to games where I bring Talonflame. Even if I do, Staraptor can Final Gambit Ferrothorn if it needs to. After trying both for a long time, I’m pretty confident that Overheat is the better move for Talonflame.

Taunt is mainly for dealing with Smeargle. Sometimes I Taunt Trick Room, but Politoed and Lapras aren’t really too phased by it. Smeargle on the other hand is something no team should be unprepared for. Between Taunt, Encore, Fake Out and a bunch of strong attackers, Smeargle is rarely a concern for me with this team. Taunt or Tailwind really comes down to what your team needs more, and in this case it’s Taunt. Protect is also something I never used to run on Talonflame, but it just results in it surviving so much longer, which is particularly valuable for something that people are used to getting rid of quite quickly.

The EVs are set up so that I can survive a Brave Bird from an opposing Life Orb Talonflame and then knock it out in return (mutually assured destruction obviously after recoil). Attack is maxed out and the Speed is to outpace Sucker Punches from Mega Kangaskhan. Leftover EVs are put into Special Attack to get a little more bang out of Overheat. Some more bulk could arguably be more useful so long as I had enough Speed to Overheat and Taunt a few specific things, but the recoil is what puts me down more often than not anyway, so I didn’t spend too long scratching my head over this.

Lucario @ Lucarionite
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 12 HP / 252 Atk / 244 Spe
Jolly Nature
– Close Combat
– Bullet Punch
– Substitute
– Protect

I sort of didn’t realise that I didn’t have a Mega on my team until this point. Since my team functioned pretty well without one of the standard ones and I needed to accomplish some fairly specific stuff, this gave me cause to use something slightly more obscure than Manectric, Mawile or Kangaskhan (but not as obscure as Absol or Banette). By the time I took this team to Worlds, Mega Lucario was actually a lot more standard, presumably for the same reasons I considered it when teambuilding in May.

The most crucial thing in my mind at this point was that I needed something that could outspeed and OHKO both Mega Kangaskhan and Mega Charizard-Y. My go-to for this role is usually Mienshao, but I figured since I had the Mega-slot to spare I might as well try out Mega Lucario, who also has a handy Steel STAB for hitting Fairies. I went for a primarily special set at Regionals to get the most out of my Steel attack and to be able to ignore Intimidates most of the time. In hindsight though, this was a bad idea considering the lack of physical attackers on the team and the ridiculous damage output that Adaptability Close Combat has.

Despite now running purely physical Lucario, I did drop Rock Slide now that I was more comfortable dealing with Charizards with my other team members. Substitute didn’t end up being very useful for me at Worlds, but in testing it was a very very useful move to have on Lucario. A case could be made for running Flash Cannon over Bullet Punch, both doing more or less to different common targets. I felt like I wanted Bullet Punch more frequently on this team. The extra priority is very handy as well, particularly against Aerodactyls (or Boomguy’s Carbink in Trick Room). The speed EVs are to outspeed base 110 after evolving. Speed ties with other Lucarios and turn one Kangaskhans arguably make max speed worth it I suppose, but I hate speed ties and avoid them at all costs anyway.

Swiss Rounds

Round 1: [AU] Tony Nguyen (Competny)

Win: 2-0

We were all super excited that there was going to be four Australian representatives in the Masters division at Worlds this year. We didn’t count on two of us getting paired up in round one though unfortunately… Early on in the season I racked up several losses to Tony on Battle Spot, but lately I’ve had much more success. I played Tony in the top four round of Australian Nationals in July, where I shut down his team with Charizard/Venusaur in games two and three after observing in game one that he didn’t have a Lum Berry on his Garchomp (that round was the only best of three match at our Nationals by the way). He brought pretty much the same team to Worlds, so I had an advantage going in since he had never played my Regionals/Worlds team before.

He surprised me a bit by pulling out Roar on his Zapdos, but it didn’t really worry me since my team likes switching often anyway. I just brought my main core of Raichu/Staraptor lead with Politoed and Lapras in the back for both games. I managed to play around him without too much trouble. After both games, Tony had brought all six of his Pokémon, but nothing could really seem to accomplish too much. It was a shame to have to give Team Australia a self-inflicted round one loss, but I was happy to have a convincing win under my belt at the start of the tournament.

Round 2: [JP] Ryota Otsubo

Win: 2-1

The first of several Japanese opponents for the day — a country I feel like I’m forever struggling against on Battle Spot. I don’t remember too much about this match except what little I have in my notes. Garchomp and Mawile made their way into all three games, with the rest of Ryota’s line-up being adjusted from game to game. I do recall a bit of pre-game bonding over the fact that we both had a Lapras on our team. Despite forgetting the details of each game, I do remember being pretty happy with how things played out in this matchup.

Round 3: [US] Jeudy Azzarelli (SoulSurvivor)

Win: 2-1

My claim to fame at Worlds this year I suppose is being Jeudy’s only loss that wasn’t at the hands of a Pachirisu. I actually don’t remember for certain whether this was three games or two, but I remember it being close, so it was probably three. Early on I got a lot of important information such as Tyranitar holding Choice Scarf, Salamence running Rock Tomb and Lucario not having a Focus Sash (the mega stone was not revealed at all). Garchomp and Rotom-Mow didn’t make an appearance at all, with dual weather being Jeudy’s approach to handling my team. I took a convincing lead in one game by resetting the weather on the turn of Drought activating thanks to switching out and Volt Switching back in. I wisely didn’t try my luck playing that trick again, which worked out well for me in another game when Jeudy held off mega evolving his Charizard in anticipation of it. I think I did pretty well keeping the weather in my favour in these games considering I was dealing with both sun and sand.

There was a bit of luck at an important moment when Heat Wave missed my Mega Lucario, which I needed to keep around to win the match. Fortunately it didn’t ruin Jeudy’s day, since he went on to make it to the final. I’m really glad I got the opportunity to play against someone who did so well. I’d say Jeudy’s team was one of my favourite ones from throughout the day. I never really considered running Follow Me on Mega Lucario before, but I think it was a good call for Jeudy to choose it.

Round 4: [ES] Miguel Marti de la Torre (Sekiam)

Win: 2-1

This was a match that could have gone either way very easily. Preserving Raichu was crucial to this matchup, but Miguel was a very good player and I realised quickly that he was pretty consistently playing around my Raichu very effectively. This left the rest of my team really struggling to maintain momentum. At this point I made a pretty bold adjustment to my strategy. I decided to commit to Sheer Cold as my win condition.

By not stressing so much about being clever with Raichu and just opting to spam Surf recovery and fire off Sheer Colds (particularly at Roosting Zapdos and Shield Forme Aegislash), I figured I’d have enough survivability to maybe get lucky. I missed a couple along the way, but the ones that really counted hit. I landed two Sheer Colds in one game and one in another. I stand by haphazardly spraying OHKO moves being my best strategy in this particular matchup, but still, I did feel kind of bad wrecking someone’s undefeated run under those circumstances. I’m glad that Miguel still managed to Top Cut despite this loss, because he was playing really well and had a solid team.

Round 5: [JP] Ryosuke Kosuge (gebebo)

Loss: 0-2

I was actually pretty confident with my matchup against this team. Mega Lucario threatened a lot of the team, as did Lapras and Politoed. So as long as I could keep control of the weather I would likely do alright. Game one got off to a terrible start though when I discovered in the worst way possible that Ryosuke was running a Garchomp with slightly more bulk than is standard. Using Final Gambit and getting nothing out of it but a very angry land-shark is not pleasant. It was downhill from there as I discovered just how good at this game Ryosuke is. It’s no surprise that he’s now top cut two World Championships in a row. Losing so hard to a team I thought I had a good matchup against was a very valuable learning experience for me.

Round 6: [JP] Yosuke Isagi (Tony)

Loss: 0-2

I was starting to get rather nervous at this point, realising how likely I was to make Top Cut. I got paired down this round though, so I was a little anxious about what the implications of that might be (I give myself a headache every time I try to figure out Swiss results in my head). Similar to last round, I was fairly confident with the matchup, but then got caught off guard by stuff which threw off my game.

One of the mistakes I made was to Fake Out what turned out to be an Inner Focus Kangaskhan. The other thing that messed me up was an unexpected Choice Scarf on Garchomp. I was still hopeful I could adjust for those things in the next couple of games, but Yosuke continued to outplay me from that point and took the second game as well.

Top Cut

People were saying a dozen different things about who was or wasn’t going to make Top Cut in between that last round and the results being posted. I told myself and everyone else at the start of the day that going 4-2 was my goal regardless of whether or not I top cut, but if I’m being honest, I was really really hoping to cut. Needless to say, I was pretty relieved when the results were posted and I had the 7^th seed. I was also pretty relieved I wouldn’t be playing Sejun right off the bat, or Lee Provost for that matter since his Discharge Zapdos had me worried.

Top 8: [US] Collin Heier (TheBattleRoom)

Loss: 1-2

I had a big audience over by the TV screen for this game and was getting extremely nervous being so close to potentially being the World Champion at my first Worlds attendance. Rusty took video of these games, so hopefully that can be linked at some stage once it’s edited and uploaded somewhere.

I decided not to chance weather wars to start with, opting for double birds and Lucario. It worked out pretty well in game one, outplaying Collin pretty nicely for a clean win. In game two I decided to go for pretty much the same approach. It would have worked beautifully. I manoeuvred myself into a position where I had a shot to KO both Mawile and Aegislash in the same turn with Bullet Punch/Overheat, leaving me to easily take out his Conkeldurr and move on to the top four. If Collin had predicted that move and saved one of his Pokémon (he didn’t), I still would have been in a pretty good position. Unfortunately, I overthought the turn and choked. I played an unnecessarily complex move and suffered for it because Collin had nothing to lose by playing hyper aggressively at that point. He made the right call and I didn’t. Well played, mate.

Game three was pretty intense, but didn’t end well for me. I changed things up this time by leading Politoed/Lapras. Thanks to Choice Scarf on Collin’s Tyranitar I was in a reasonably good position at the start. His Mega Mawile didn’t Protect or Sucker Punch on turn one, so I was all set to quickly take it out with a rain boosted Surf+Hydro Pump. The Surf damage on Tyranitar would have been pretty significant too. Unfortunately Politoed flinched from Rock Slide and Hydro Pump missed its mark. My good start all of a sudden turned into a terrible start. These things happen. I actually managed to play quite well from this point and nearly took the lead again. The last turn came down to a 50/50 prediction that would have maybe given me a shot at winning the match if it had gone my way. Maybe. Alas, it did not, and my Worlds run came to an abrupt end. A shame, as I would have really liked to have the honour of getting destroyed by Sejun the following round. There’s always next year.

Closing Thoughts

In closing, I’d obviously like to congratulate Sejun on his long deserved win which he was finally able to get this year. Personally, I’m really grateful to Nintendo and TPCi for supporting something that’s so incredible to be a part of. Huge props go to Nintendo Australia and Jamie Wilson for taking notice of our highly active grassroots scene and going out of their way to involve us in the World Championships at last.

Everyone would like to win of course, but I’m still really happy with having made it to Top Cut. Overall, I’m pretty pleased with how I played on the day, and it was cool to get to meet so many friendly people I usually just see posting as online entities. There are quite a few good players in Australia that don’t participate much in international stuff, and we have a huge amount of new players this year judging by our Nationals turnout. Hopefully we can continue making a splash in the years to come and you guys can get to know more of our players.

The most important thing about this game is community. Without places like Nugget Bridge or all the new friends I’ve made through this game in Melbourne over the past few years, I don’t think I would still be playing Pokémon at 25 years of age. I encourage everyone to practise with friends and not be afraid to share and discuss team ideas every step along the way if you want to improve your game.

On that note, I need to finish by thanking my fellow Delphox Cubs. If you were at Worlds this year then you may have seen Boomguy and I wearing our custom Delphox team shirts. “Team Delphox” didn’t start out as a team per se as far as the outside world was concerned. We were just a bunch of experienced VGC players from around Australia who shared ideas and trained together in a private Facebook chat. An inside joke and a pun led to us spontaneously ordering a bunch of custom T-shirts to wear to Regional events and then all of a sudden it was a thing. Having that group to collectively coach and motivate one another throughout the season (and remotely do damage calculations in the middle of tournaments from across the globe) was invaluable to our success this year.

About the Author

Prof Teak has been playing VGC since 2011 and has been heavily involved with his local Pokémon community, PokéMelbourne, since its inception. He has a degree in anthropology, and when he's not playing Pokémon, Prof Teak is teaching first year university students how to write essays and not be racist.

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