Reports

Published on July 24th, 2012 | by Luke S.

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Top 8 Tournament Trial: United States Nationals Report

After winning the Ft. Wayne regional in November 2011,  I took a break from practicing Pokémon for a while and focused on other things. However, I soon got the itch to practice again for the Apex tournament in January. Unfortunately I didn’t have a team prepared in time, so I was forced to use my Fall Regionals team again and didn’t perform as well as I would have liked.  I put off practicing again until after Spring Regionals, but by the time I resumed practicing I had reignited my fire. Committed to succeeding at Nationals, I put countless hours and into testing on on Pokémon Online, perfecting every aspect of my team.

I started with two of the same building blocks I had used for my Fall Regionals team: Gyarados and Ferrothorn. The movesets and EV spreads were almost the exact same — the only change was using Taunt on Gyarados over Roar. These two Pokémon had served me well in many battles, and I was confident they would continue to work at Nationals. While I had used a very slow, defensive oriented team at my Regionals, I felt like I wanted to be a bit more offensive at Nationals. I wanted to be able to apply more pressure on my opponent and force them to react defensively. Because of this, Ferrothorn became more of a supporting actor and less of a lead, though it was still an important part of the team. I also knew going into the teambuilding process that I wanted to use unconventional movesets to catch my opponents off guard.

The Team:

gyarados
Maher Jr. (Gyarados) (F) @ Wacan Berry
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 52 Atk / 140 Def / 20 SDef / 44 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
– Waterfall
– Thunder Wave
– Taunt
– Protect

Like at Regionals, Gyarados provides Intimidate and Thunder Wave support for the team while also hitting some common threats hard with Waterfall. Slowing the opposing Pokemon is less important for this team than it was for my Regionals team, as I actually had a fair number of fast Pokémon of my own this time, but the chance to fully paralyze a Pokémon is never a bad thing. Gyarados’ Intimidate supports the team by weakening physical attackers like Hitmontop or Terrakion who would otherwise be able to threaten Ferrothorn or Tyranitar in addition to making Gyarados itself more difficult to take down. The only real change from the Gyarados on my Regionals’ team is the use of Taunt over Roar. I switched from Roar to Taunt because I would no longer have Taunt on Tyranitar and still wanted the utility that Taunt provides against Pokémon such as Amoonguss or Sableye, effectively shutting them down and preventing them from disrupting my team. This EV spread allows Gyarados to OHKO Volcarona, Infernape, and Excadrill with Waterfall if they do not invest a significant amount of EVs in HP or Defense. Waterfall can also 2HKO all but the bulkiest of Tyranitars, as well as several other common Pokémon but with enough defenses allow to Gyarados to survive a Zapdos Thunderbolt (with Wacan Berry) and tank physical attacks well after Intimidate.

sableye
LSV (Sableye) (F) @ Lagging Tail
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SDef
Careful Nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
– Fake Out
– Trick
– Will-O-Wisp
– Recover

Sableye was an idea originally introduced to me by Dan, who gave me this moveset. Huy and Cassie used a different set to great success, but I prefer the longevity Recover gives Sableye and the versatility of Trick to their Captivate version. I won a number of battles on Pokémon Online simply by Tricking my opponent’s items around and ruining their strategy completely. While the obvious and primary use of Trick here is to give your opponent a Lagging Tail, effectively crippling that Pokémon, another neat trick with Trick (pun intended) that I use is Tricking a Pokémon that might be holding a Mental Herb and then Taunting it with Gyarados on the same turn, preventing them from setting up Trick Room, Spore, Safeguard, or whatever they may have wanted to do. Will-o-Wisp allows Sableye to completely shut down physical attackers like Hitmontop, Tyranitar, Metagross, and others. While the 75% accuracy is a pain at times, the risk is definitely worth the reward. Sableye is a very powerful support Pokémon, but can occasionally become dead weight once its job has been completed. I try to avoid this by letting it die after its job is done, but there are some situations where I will not bring Sableye to battle if I feel that it can’t do enough to affect the outcome of the battle or I needed more attacking power for that particular matchup.

tyranitar
Nassif (Tyranitar) (F) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
– Crunch
– Rock Slide
– Low Kick
– Earthquake

Choice Scarf Tyranitar was an idea that I had scoffed at during my practice for Regionals. However, after trying it out for a few games, I came to love its ability to catch Latios off guard and OHKO with Crunch, as well as firing off fast Rock Slides into fliers like Zapdos and Thundurus. As a bonus, it also fit in perfectly with my goal to be more offensive and keep my opponent on the wrong footing. Low Kick allows Tyranitar to KO other Ttars before they can move and also hits several other common threats such as Hydregion, Abomasnow, and Ferrothorn hard. The fourth moveslot almost assuredly should have been Fire Punch instead of Earthquake, but I didn’t think about that until it was too late. I never used Earthquake during the tournament, but its certainly possible that I may have used Fire Punch if I had it.

landorus
PVDDR (Landorus) (M) @ Yache Berry
Trait: Sand Force
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
– Earth Power
– Grass Knot
– Hidden Power [Rock]
– Protect

Special Landorus was an idea that Sapphire Birch introduced to me. His original moveset utilized Smack Down and Hidden Power Flying instead of Grass Knot and HP Rock (a similar set was used by Nationals runner-up sandman), but after numerous test battles I decided that I preferred this set.  Earth Power is obviously the most commonly used attack on the set, but the others had their uses as well. Grass Knot allows me to score important KOs against Pokémon that cause this team some trouble such as Gastrodon and Rhyperior, and Hidden Power Rock hits Flying-types like Zapdos, Tornadus, and Thundurus as well as Ice-types like Abomasnow and his friends. Landorus’ glaring weakness is of course his 4x weakness to Ice, and that was often the reason I cited when leaving Landorus on the sidelines. Yache Berry allows it to survive one Ice-type attack from most threats, but with several common Pokémon carrying Ice Shard, there were times when I felt that Landorus was basically a dead Pokémon slot. When the opponent didn’t have many bulky Ice or Water types, however, Landorus could single-handedly win me the battle.

zapdos
Finkel (Zapdos) @ Sitrus Berry
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 96 SAtk / 132 SDef / 28 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
– Hidden Power [Ice]
– Thunderbolt
– Heat Wave
– Detect

Very much the standard Zapdos. The EV spread allows it to survive Latios Dragon Gem Draco Meteors, while tanking lesser special attacks very effectively. I decided to use Hidden Power Ice because I desperately needed an Ice-type attack on my team and could not spare the slot on another Pokémon. I also already had Thunder Wave support and Sableye’s Lagging Tail, so I was not terribly concerned with needing to win Speed wars via Tailwind. Heat Wave was also very welcome as I did not have any other Fire-type attacks on my team and needed a reliable way to handle opposing Ferrothorn and Abomasnow. I chose Zapdos over Thundurus because I already had access to Thunder Wave, I wanted the extra bulk, and I also wanted access to Heat Wave.

ferrothorn
Budde (Ferrothorn) (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 148 Def / 108 SDef
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
– Gyro Ball
– Leech Seed
– Power Whip
– Protect

My pride and joy, Ferrothorn served me well in Regionals and continued to do excellent work at Nationals. This is the same spread and set that I used in Regionals, although with his new partners Ferrothorn can accomplish some things he previously had difficulty with. With the help of priority burn from Sableye and Intimidate support from Gyarados, Ferrothorn is no longer afraid of Fighting-type attacks from Hitmontop, Terrakion, and others like them. Ferrothorn also enjoys Lagging Tail support from Sableye which gives it the rare thrill of moving before an opponent’s Pokémon outside of Trick Room. This tactic could be very useful in a situation where a fast Pokémon presented a threat to Ferrothorn, but could be KO’d by one of my other Pokémon after receiving the Lagging Tail while Ferrothorn went about his merry business, slowly sapping the enemy Pokémon’s HP and restoring his own.

As I said before, this team was not nearly as focused on setting up Ferrothorn to sweep as my Regionals team was. This was much more of a common “goodstuff” team, and simply tried to present the opponent with threats while disrupting the opponent’s strategy as much as possible. I tried to achieve the widest type coverage possible with every team combination and made sure to have multiple strong answers to common metagame choices in case something went wrong or a unique Pokémon threw off my normal counter strategy.

The Battles:

I took notes during every battle, but some were more detailed than others. I will try my best to recall the exact details of every match, but I will make no promises. I started the event with 2 byes due to my Regionals victory, so I got to rest a bit until round 3. Some people have said they believed this was a disadvantage because others had time to warm up and those with byes did not, but I felt that the powerful tiebreakers provided by the byes more than made up for any sloppy play errors made due to lack of concentration.

Round 3: Scott Glaza (Scott)

My first round I had to go up against one of the toughest opponents I would play in the entire tournament, my good friend Scott. I had no idea what team he was running, but I didn’t know much about anyone’s team so I just went into the battle as I normally would. His team (bold indicates that I saw it in the battle):

Volcarona/Hitmontop/Metagross/Zapdos/Gastrodon/Cresselia

I chose to lead with Tyranitar and Sableye and bring Landorus and Zapdos in the back. Tyranitar was very good against 3 of his Pokemon, very weak to Hitmontop and Metagross, and could beat Gastrodon with help. Sableye is my team’s best answer to Metagross (other than Ferrothorn, which I couldn’t bring myself to bring because both Zapdos and Volcarona were present as well as Hitmontop), and I had a sneaking suspicion that Scott may be trying some of the Japanese tactics of Swagger+Lum/Persim, which Trick is very effective against. Landorus helped deal with Metagross and Gastrodon, while Zapdos was not weak against anything in particular on his team except Gastrodon.

He ended up leading with Zapdos and Cresselia, so I was not expecting Trick Room off the start. After some thought, I elected to Fake Out his Zapdos and Crunch his Cresselia. In hindsight, I should have just used Rock Slide, but I was expecting him to switch Zapdos and wanted to get some good damage in on Cress. Crunch also fares better if he switches Cress to any Pokémon except Volcarona, especially if Zapdos uses Protect. In the end, he swapped Cress for Top and Zapdos took the Fake Out. I proceeded to swap my Landorus in, while Sableye was taken low enough by Thunderbolt from Zapdos to faint from Sandstorm damage. This should have clued me in to the fact that he had Choice Specs, but I wasn’t sure on the exact calculations, which would end up costing me. I also made the mistake of not Tricking my Lagging Tail onto his Zapdos, instead opting to burn his Hitmontop. After that, Scott’s Zapdos very easily defeated mine, and Landorus died to Cresselia. I lost quite easily and there was absolutely no luck involved, Scott simply outplayed me and had a superb team. I had full confidence in him going forward, so I was very disappointed when he missed top cut on tiebreakers at the end of the day. Overall I felt like this battle was a good reality check that got me into the proper mindset for the day. I felt much better about the quality of my play in the subsequent battles, and I would like to think that this defeat played a large part in that. Overall Record: 2-1

(For another look at this battle, check out Scott’s Tournament Report from the same tournament: Nationals with the Bubble King.)

Round 4: Peter Belmonte (Wild Eep)

Again, I was paired up with a friend. He brought his Ferrothorn plushie along with him, on which I complimented him. I had a feeling his team would be Trick Room just from looking at the team preview:

Ferrothorn/Slowking/Hariyama/Togekiss/Chandelure/Rhyperior

I decided to lead with my standard anti-Trick Room lead pairing: Sableye and Gyarados. My plan was to Trick the Pokémon using Trick Room to remove any possible Mental Herbs and then Taunt it with Gyarados. Gyarados also matched up well against a number of his Pokémon, and Sableye could be very useful for burning his physical attackers and messing with his items. In the back I brought Zapdos and Landorus. After looking at his team again, I think Tyranitar would have fared well in this battle, but it does have a poor matchup against Hariyama and Ferrothorn (Ferrothorn very easily survives Low Kick and KOs with Power Whip) and the fact that mine is holding Choice Scarf would be a great disadvantage against Trick Room.

He lead with Togekiss and Chandelure, so my Trick and Taunt were redirected to Togekiss by Follow Me, giving me a Lum Berry while he set up TR. I don’t remember the exact sequence of events, but I KO’d his Chandelure with Gyarados and damaged Togekiss a little (I think I burned it with Will-o-Wisp). I managed to KO Hariyama without it ever getting an attack off, though I don’t remember how I managed that. At the end of the battle, it came down to his 60%ish Togekiss and full HP Rhyperior against my Landorus and Zapdos, with no Trick Room up. I chose to Grass Knot Rhyperior, then heavily considered what to do with Zapdos. Eventually I decided that I should Thunderbolt Togekiss, completely blanking on the fact that Rhyperior gets Lightningrod as an ability. As I chose my move, I realized my mistake and exclaimed out loud at my stupidity, but to my surprise it did not matter as Grass Knot OHKO’d Rhyperior and Thunderbolt KO’d Togekiss for the win. Eep told me after that match that his Rhyperior did not in fact have Lightningrod but had Solid Rock instead, which made me feel better about my decision. He also told me that if he were to use Follow Me while Lightningrod was on the field, Follow Me overrides the redirect from Lightningrod, which I did not know previously. Glad to have escaped with a victory, I moved on to my next battle. Overall Record: 3-1

Round 5: Nico Villalobos (Calm Lava)

Another familiar face, I had played against Nico many times while practicing on Pokémon Online. As it turned out, he used a very similar team to the one he had been testing online, but that didn’t stop me from making a dumb mistake…

Thundurus/Rhyperior/Latios/Cresselia/Tyranitar/Metagross

I lead with Sableye and Tyranitar, as Ttar could handle every mon on his team except for Metagross quite well, and Sableye would be very useful against everything except Thundurus. I know I brought Ferrothorn in the back, and I believe my last was Landorus. His team had no major threats to Ferrothorn, so my main plan was to remove any obstacles so that Ferrothorn could set up and sweep. I don’t have many notes from this game, but I remember that I was able to KO Thundurus and Metagross easily enough with Tyranitar and Landorus, respectively. Ferrothorn ate a Meteor Mash meant for Tyranitar on a switch and proceeded to sweep the rest of the team, though there was a scary moment when his Tyranitar used Fire Blast on it (which I knew he had because I had played against him online), but thankfully it missed (doesn’t OHKO anyway though) and it was smooth sailing from there. Overall Record: 4-1

Round 6: Elmo Harris

Elmo was the first opponent that I did not recognize, but he had a solid record at this point so I knew I could not afford to underestimate him. His team:

Tyranitar/Landorus/Cresselia/Rhyperior/Metagross/Tornadus

Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of this battle, but I do know that it lasted quite a long time (for a VGC battle), as both Trick Room (set by his Cresselia near the end of the battle) and Tailwind (set by his Tornadus at the beginning of the battle) came and went on the battlefield. I remember that after I missed a Leech Seed on his Cresselia, I joked that it must have Brightpowder, only to Trick it a turn later and find out that indeed it did have Brightpowder! Ferrothorn fared very well against his team, as did Sableye. Elmo played very well but I definitely had a team advantage as he did not have many good answers to Ferrothorn. Slowly but surely I whittled down his team and pulled out the victory. Overall Record: 5-1

Round 7: Jesse Minchey (Pikabuddy)

I did not know the online identity of my opponent, and I did not think to ask him before the battle,  but someone told me later that he is Pikabuddy online. Regardless, I wasn’t going to underestimate any opponent at this point, so I approached the battle as I normally would. His team was full of pretty standard Pokemon, but had a nice mix that wasn’t quite as common.

Amoonguss/Zapdos/Tyranitar/Chandelure/Hitmontop/Metagross

Looking at his team, I knew Ferrothorn would not be very useful in this battle as it only countered Tyranitar and Metagross, and outright lost to Chandelure and Zapdos. I know that I used Sabeleye, Gyarados, and Landorus this battle, but I don’t recall what my 4th Pokémon was. One thing that I noticed as soon as the battle began was that his Htimontop had Technician as opposed to Intimidiate, which I was not sure was intentional as he did use Sucker Punch at one point in the battle. Amoonguss caused me a lot of problems this battle, even though I was able to steal away it’s Mental Herb and Taunt it with Gyarados for a few turns. I don’t remember everything that happened in the battle, but I do remember that his Zapdos moved ahead of my Landorus which was quite surprising. The battle was quite close, but in the end Jesse won on the back of my lack of Lum/Chesto Berry =[ Overall Record: 5-2

Round 8: Sean Timmers (Capri_Trein)

Coming into this battle, I knew I was on the bubble and had to win to make Top Cut. I knew a number of other people in my flight who were also sitting at 5-2, and all I could do was pray desperately that I would not be matched up against any of them. Thankfully, when the pairings went up, I did not recognize the name across from my own. I knew that I couldn’t underestimate any opponent at this level, but at least I didn’t have to play against a close friend for a spot in the Top Cut. Sean and I chatted a bit before the match, and I learned that he was part of the Capris. His team had some standard mons but also some interesting ones (that were familiar to me, coincidentally):

Zapdos/Garchomp/Chandelure/Ludicolo/Scizor/Porygon-Z

Having used Porygon-Z on my Regionals team, I was familiar with what it was capable of and would not underestimate it. However, I also knew its weakenesses, which I was able to exploit to some extent in this battle. I Tricked his Choice Scarf away from Porgyon-Z early on in the battle, and managed to give it to Ludicolo later in the battle. I also crippled Garchomp with a burn, and the battle was smooth sailing from there. I believe I brought Landorus, Zapdos, Sableye, and Tyranitar, though I’m not sure on the last one. Sean played well throughout the battle but I managed to stay one step ahead of him and my previous experiences with Porygon-Z helped me to claim the victory I needed to make Top Cut. Overall Record: 6-2

I placed 9th in my flight thanks to my tiebreakers, so I was set to play against the 8 seed from the other flight in the top 32 the next day. After that, we had no clue how the pairings would work, so we just crossed our fingers and prepared for the worst.

Round 9 (Round of 32): Chris Warden

I recognized my opponent from the Madison Regionals, where he placed quite well. He is friends with Jhud, and I knew from previous experience that he is a strong battler as well as a good teambuilder. His team was the first I had seen of it’s kind all tournament, but it proved to be a great challenge throughout our best of 3 matches.

Game 1: Abomasnow/Lapras/Hitmontop/Kingdra/Jellicent/Politoed

I could tell he probably wanted to set up Trick Room from the team preview, but he had enough Pokémon that could potentially be fast (Kingdra, Hitmontop, one of Politoed/Abomasnow) that I couldn’t risk bringing Gyarados solely to stop TR, especially considering only one Pokémon on his team didn’t resist Waterfall. I knew I wanted to bring Tyranitar, but because mine had Choice Scarf I did not want to lead with it. I’m fairly certain I ended up leading with Zapdos and Sableye in all 3 games, with Tyranitar and Ferrothorn in  the back. Landorus was simply too much of a liability against his team full of Water- and Ice-type attacks.

Game 1 did not go very well for me, but it did provide me with a lot of significant information about his team. It confirmed my suspicions that Jellicent was there to set up Trick Room, and that Hitmontop was there to help set up. I also saw Hitmontop reveal Wide Guard, and Jellicent, Lapras, and Abomasnow all revealed Blizzard as well as Ice Shard from Abomasnow and Surf from Lapras. Lapras was holding Life Orb as it’s original item, though I did Trick it Lagging Tail in this game. Throughout the match, Chris hit me with about 10 Blizzards in total, and I was very lucky to not be frozen on a single one. He did get 2 or 3 critical hits that changed the math on some things, but nothing was too critical that swung the outcome of an otherwise decided game. I ended up losing Game 1 after taking out Jellicent and one of his other Pokemon. I fared much better in game 2, as I had become used to Chris’ playstyle and was able to make a few key predictions that helped put me in a commanding lead. I confirmed that Abomasnow’s item was Focus Sash in this game, as well as the amount of damage that Low Kick from Tyranitar would deal. I pulled out the victory in Game 2 fairly decisively, just as Chris had in Game 1. I saved the Battle Video for Game 3, so I will let that do most of the talking:

Leads: Sableye/Tyranitar vs Jellicent/Kingdra

Turn 1: He switches Jellicent for Abomasnow, looking to get a big Blizzard off, but I fake out Kingdra and Crunch Abomasnow (originally Jellicent).

Turn 2: I swap Tyranitar for Ferrothorn to better take the incoming attacks and to allow me to set up Sand again if need be. I also Trick Lagging Tail onto Kingdra, hoping to cripple it by removing a Gem, but instead get a surprise when I receive an Absorb Bulb. Kingdra hits both my mons with Blizzard, critting Ferrothorn into yellow life. Abomasnow finishes the turn by using Giga Drain on Sableye, returning it to 80% health or so.

Turn 3: I switch Sableye out for Tyranitar because Sableye’s job is done, and I want Sand back up. Both Ferrothorn and Abomasnow Protect while Kingdra hits Tyranitar with Blizzard for just 20%.

Turn 4: Chris switches out Abomasnow for Jellicent, while I Rock Slide and Power Whip Kingdra for the KO. Jellicent ends the turn at about 60% HP, and Ferrothorn is back above 50% due to Leftovers. Chris reveals his last Pokemon to be Hitmontop.

Turn 5:  Even though I am Intimidated, I decide to allow Chris to KO one of my Pokemon with Hitmontop and stay in. I use Rock Slide with Tyranitar and attempt to Power Whip with Ferrothorn, but it is KO’d by Fighting Gem Close Combat. In review, it would have been wiser to Protect with Ferrothorn, but I was not certain that Chris would target Ferrothorn and I did not want to risk anything. Jellicent sets up Trick Room in the mean time, avoiding the flinch. I send in Zapdos to replace Ferrothorn.

Turn 6: Chris swaps out Hitmontop for Abomasnow while Jellicent uses Blizzard to hit both my mons. Zapdos Thunderbolts Jellicent for the KO and Tyranitar uses Rock Slide again as I accurately predicted the switch, but fails to KO Abomasnow by the slimmest of margins.He sends out Hitmontop once again to threaten Fake Out and Intimidate my Tyranitar down to -2.

Turn 7: I now have a very important decision to make. I can switch Tyranitar (71 hp) out for Sableye to reset Sandstorm and get it’s Attack stat back to normal, but that risks Sableye taking a bunch of unecessary damage from a Blizzard. I am reasonably certain that he will use Blizzard to KO Zapdos or that he will at the very least use Fake Out, so I Detect with Zapdos and Rock Slide again with Tyranitar to sacrifice it. He ends up predicting my play perfectly, Sucker Punching with Hitmontop and using Giga Drain on Tyranitar with Abomasnow to save it from Fake Out KO range and KO Tyranitar. I obviously would have won the game outright if I had used Heat Wave or Thunderbolt on Abomasnow, but Chris had the guts to make the right call and it worked out.

Turn 8: I see the game clock winding down, and with Trick Room on its 4th turn (counting this one) I knew I would not have the chance to stall it out. I see my out and play to win the game, so I Fake Out Abomasnow to ensure Zapdos’ safety and use Thunderbolt to try to KO it. Unfortunately, Chris sees my plan and Protects with Abomasnow while Sucker Punching my Zapdos down to 70 HP after Hail damage.

Turn 9: On the final turn of the game, I gamble that I will have more HP than Chris and use Recover with Sableye to restore it to 108 HP while Zapdos Detects, protecting itself from Ice Shard and Sucker Punch. My 58 HP Zapdos and 108 Sableye end up with more HP than his red HP Abomasnow and 50% HP Hitmontop, and I win the game as time expires.

 

It’s not certain that I would have lost if time had not run out, as I could have burned Abomasnow and then Hitmontop with Sableye while using Recover to maintain high HP. Hitmontop was completely unable to damage Sableye, and Abomasnow would have fainted after two turns of burn damage (possibly only one), but I would also lose if I was hit by a critical hit from Giga Drain or Blizzard, or frozen by Blizzard. Regardless, Chris played a superb game, and I felt very lucky to have pulled out the victory. I congratulated Chris on his accomplishments, wished him luck in the future, and moved on to my next battle against a relatively unknown opponent.

Round 10 (Round of 16): Simon Ammanuel

I knew that my opponent was a friend of a mutual friend Milan Patel, but I did not know much about his team. I was left in the dark and forced to play as I would on PO, which I was perfectly comfortable with. His lineup didn’t disappoint:

Tornadus/Thundurus/Gastrodon/Tyranitar/Cresselia/Hitmontop

He used the 4 bolded mons for Game 1 and swapped Cresselia in for Gastrodon in Game 2. I saw that his team did not have a very good way to deal with Ferrothorn outside of Hitmontop, so I made sure to include it in my 4 and build around it. Gyarados did not seem strong against his team, as I had heard he was using a Special Tornadus and thus it would only be useful against Tyranitar and Hitmontop. I lead with Tyranitar, but I don’t remember the ally I chose for it. I know I used Sableye in Game 2, but I don’t remember if I used the same team in Game 1.

I don’t remember too many of the details from this battle, but I do recall that I was able to KO his Thundurus early in both games with Rock Slide, as he did not have Charti Berry. His Tornadus did deal some good damage to my team, and I recall that his Gastrodon was a source of worry in Game 1. I managed to KO it with Ferrothorn eventually and pulled out the victory. He changed up his team slightly with Cresselia in Game 2 and set about using Thunder Wave on several of my Pokemon. I managed to Trick Lagging Tail onto his Tornadus, which helped immensely as it was no longer able to flinch any of my Pokemon with Air Slash. His  Tyranitar did not have Choice Scarf like min, so I was able to outspeed it and KO it, as it did not have Low Kick either. I managed to avoid being fully paralyzed at any important moments in the battles, and I was able to pull out the win against Simon relatively cleanly. Once again, I congratulated him and moved on to the next round, knowing I would have to play a tough opponent. I was able to rest a bit in between battles after this round, but that mostly served to make me nervous as I knew I would be playing for a trip to Hawaii in the next round.

Round 11 (Round of 8): Manoj Sunny (MangoSol)

Manoj politely asked (and I obliged, of course) that I discard my notes on the battle if I lost this match, so I do not have any written record of our battles. However, I remember that his team was Zapdos/Hitmontop/Tyranitar/Cresselia/Garchomp/Scizor. His Tyranitar had Dark Gem and his Garchomp had Brightpowder, which would play a key role in his victory in Game 1. I was afraid to bring my own Tyranitar, as it would serve very poorly against his Hitmontop, Garchomp, and Scizor, but it would be superb against his Cresselia, Zapdos, and Chople/Sash-less Tyranitar. I did not believe Ferrothorn would be very useful against his team because I knew Garchomp had Swords Dance (allowing it to beat Ferrothorn) and Hitmontop and Zapdos were significant threats to Ferrothorn as well.

I believe I lead with Gyarados and Sableye in Game 1 while he lead with Hitmontop and Garchomp. I missed my Fake Out on Garchomp (no Sand), which set the tone for the match. He set up with Swords Dance and avoided two Will-o-Wisps while I switched around and got destroyed by Garchomp, and the battle was never very close. Frustrated that I lost so decisively in Game 1, I didn’t realize that it would be wise to bring Tyranitar and take the risk of missing Garchomp a few times. Manoj had brought all 3 of the Pokemon that were weak to my Tyranitar in the first battle, and I had no reason to believe that he would do anything different in Game 2. Unfortunately for me, I was frustrated and did not play well at all in Game 2. Manoj made several nice predictions in consecutive turns and although I did manage to get him a few times, he won Game 2 fairly easily as well.

 The End:

Although I was immensely disappointed with myself and frustrated after I lost, I congratulated Manoj on his victory and wished him luck in the rest of the tournament as well as at Worlds. While he did get somewhat lucky during our battle, I can’t say that I outplayed him or “deserved” to win at all, and I am certain that he will represent the United States well in Hawaii. I can only hope that I will be able to make it through the Last Chance Qualifier and earn the chance to represent the country alongside him. This was the first Nationals event that I was actually able to compete in (failed to qualify in 2009-2011), so making Top 8 with a 8-3 match record (10-5 in games) was a pretty nice accomplishment, even though it didn’t earn me any significant prizes. I am looking forward to playing in the LCQ at Worlds and hopefully improving on my perfomance this year in future seasons of VGC.


About the Author

started playing in VGC tournaments in 2009, but had his breakout success in 2011 at the World Championships. He qualified via the Last Chance Qualifier and finished 19th in the main event. He then went on to secure a 1st place finish at the Fort Wayne Regional Championships 3 months later. Outside of Pokemon, Luke attends school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison majoring in Philosophy. He enjoys playing other competitive video games such as League of Legends as well as single player games, and also plays physical games such as Magic: the Gathering and Chess. Regardless of the activity, Luke is highly competitive and always strives to be the best.



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