Articles

Published on August 21st, 2014 | by Scott

34

What We Learned: 2014 Pokémon World Championships Edition

During every Pokémon event, we learn a little bit about the game of Pokémon and the community that surrounds it that is worth reflecting on. This Masters-centric column will appear following major events and highlight important trends and moments during the previous weekend’s events.

The 2014 World Championships are over and Worlds Pikachu has handed its sick title belt over to three powerful new World Champions. We all had an exciting weekend full of Pokémon battles, outrageously long walks to symphonies, and merchandise lines that spanned as far as the eye could see. Now it is time to look back on a fantastic weekend and see what lessons we can learn to improve our skills for next season. This time I’ll go over some of the stars of the World Championships like Pachirisu and Mowtom, look a little at how the delegation from each country did as a whole, try to figure out what happened to Kangaskhan, and take a look back at the VGC 2014 format.

Before I go any farther: congratulations to Kota Yamamoto, Nikolai Zielinski, Sejun Park, and all of the trainers who competed in the 2014 Pokémon World Championships.

Using the Right Pokémon: Pachirisu and Mow Rotom

Deservedly, the talk of the tournament was Sejun Park’s Pachirisu. One of the most common pieces of VGC advice players give is that to win, players should use the right Pokémon for their team, not the Pokémon that has the highest stats or that is the most common. One of the strengths of doubles as a format in general is that there are significantly more cases where less common Pokémon have chances to genuinely be the best option. I think Pachirisu and Mowtom from the teams in the finals are fantastic examples of that concept, so let’s take a look at both of these Pokémon.

The unlikely MVP of the 2014 World Championships, Pachirisu has more going for it than it was given credit for prior to last weekend. Pachirisu’s defensive stats are nothing to write home about, in spite of being core to its function: a poor base 60 HP, 70 Defense, and a surprisingly respectable base 90 Special Defense. However, Pachirisu’s typing and movepool give it some advantages over alternative forms of redirection support in the format, which subsidizes its stats enough for it to shine. Amoonguss is the main competition for Pachirisu as a redirector with its Rage Powder, but the VGC ’14 format also has Furret and Lucario with Follow Me and Jumpluff, Butterfree, Carnivine, Ariados, and Vivillon with Rage Powder available. So why Pachirisu?

• One big reason is a mechanics change in Pokémon X & Y to Rage Powder. Grass-type Pokémon and Pokémon holding the item Safety Goggles ignore Rage Powder, which was a big issue for Sejun’s Mega Pokémon, Gyarados. Grass-type Pokémon can hit it for super effective damage after it Mega Evolves, and nearly every Pokémon using Safety Goggles is an Electric-type Pokémon trying to get around Amoonguss to hit Azumarill that can hit Gyarados for super effective damage, as well. Since Sejun wanted reliable redirection with Electric-weak Pokémon like Gyarados and Talonflame on his team, Follow Me was the better option.
• While Pachirisu’s stats are super underwhelming, it is able to get more value out of them than some other Pokémon would be able to because of its movepool. Super Fang gives it better offensive output than any other source of redirection in this format other than Lucario. As Super Fang does its damage based on the target’s current HP, Pachirisu doesn’t need to waste EVs on offensive stats to provide offensive pressure. Sejun plans endgames better than most players do and is one of the best players at exploiting the opportunities he’s given, so I think Super Fang was a really good fit for him as a player. Super Fang helps him set up winning endgame situations and lets him land easy damage in the middle of games when Pachirisu has free turns as opponents try to deal with its more threatening teammates.
• Pachirisu’s typing provides some cool advantages over its Rage Powder-wielding counterparts. One of the most common ways to get around Amoonguss in VGC 2014 other than Safety Googles is to throw Talonflame’s Brave Bird at it, but Pachirisu resists Brave Bird, making opponents find other ways to remove it so they can target Gyarados. Pachirisu can also absorb Brave Bird for some of its frailer teammates, such as Gardevoir.
• Pachirisu’s Volt Absorb creates some fun mindgames. Two of Sejun’s main attackers, Talonflame and Gyarados, are weak to Electric-type attacks. However, with Pachirisu on the field, they will sometimes get to avoid being hit by Thunderbolts even when Pachirisu doesn’t use Follow Me because the opponent will be afraid of Pachirisu using the combination of Follow Me and Volt Absorb to heal. This combination also helps defend Sejun’s extremely fast team against the threat of the Speed-lowering Thunder Wave.
• With Ground being Pachirisu’s only weakness, it is actually very difficult to knock out in a single hit because of the damage reduction in doubles from spread moves like Earthquake. It can sometimes even survive Sejun’s Gyarados’ Earthquake at +1 Attack when at full health and heal up with its Sitrus Berry, which it showcased in one of the semifinal matches.
• While it would have been the best choice for redirection because of the other factors, Nuzzle doing some damage unlike Thunder Wave ices Pachirisu’s cake. The piddly damage on Nuzzle makes Pachirisu less vulnerable to Taunt than some of its counterparts, like Amoonguss and its Spore.

While not as cuddly as Pachirisu, Mow Rotom was also a very unexpected choice for the World Championships. While Wash and Heat Rotom had both been extremely popular for most of the season, Mowtom was almost completely unseen… much like in 2012 and 2013. While Heat Rotom got the most top cut appearances for a Rotom forme, Mow Rotom beat out Wash Rotom’s sick zero and was the only Rotom in the Master division finals. So why Mowtom?

• In a similar vein to Pachirisu, Mow Rotom is an adaptation to the metagame around redirection. Pokémon like Mow Rotom sneaking around Amoonguss are what forced Sejun into Pachirisu to begin with! Mowtom’s immunity to Rage Powder and Spore allows it to shut down the common Pokémon that would normally try to setup next to Amoonguss like Azumarill, Mega Tyranitar, and Mega Gyarados.
• While it didn’t end up making too much of an impact on the World Championships, Lightningrod had started to become more popular last month, particularly from Raichu. Unlike other Rotom formes or the more common Safety Goggles Zapdos, Mow Rotom is able to hit Azumarill hard enough to stop Belly Drum after Sitrus Berry activates even with a Lightningrod Pokémon on the field.
• Mowtom’s natural Grass-typing allows it to have the advantages of Safety Goggles while still holding a Sitrus Berry, a big edge on Zapdos, Wash Rotom, and Heat Rotom in a metagame where powders are important. Rotom is also a little too frail to be a solid defensive Pokémon without Sitrus Berry, so effectively having both items is a huge selling point over the other Rotom formes.
• Unlike Zapdos, the easiest Electric-type to equip with Safety Goggles, Rotom gets Will-O-Wisp. The combination of the previous two points gives Mowtom some strong defensive qualities no other available Pokemon could have at the same time.

Kangas-khan’t

The strongest individual Pokémon of the VGC 2014 format, Kangaskhan was the talk of the tournament before it started. I don’t think many people would have been surprised to hear Germany’s Markus Stadter would have the best finish with Kangaskhan at 2014 Worlds before the tournament. The fact he did becomes a lot more surprising when you remember he “only” finished 14th. It’s hard to imagine that there wasn’t a single Kangaskhan in the Masters top cut, but that is exactly what occurred. So what the heck happened to Kangaskhan in Masters Worlds?

I think the first thing to look at here is opportunity. In the last big western VGC tournament, US Nationals, Kangaskhan was on 20 of 46 teams that made it to day 2, giving it awfully good chances of making the top cut. At US Nationals, players had to get through a bunch of rounds of best-of-one. One of the ways that has been proven to be effective in best-of-one since the early days of 2008 and 2009 are fast and strong offensive Pokémon. The format of the World Championships was very different, since all players knew they would only be playing best-of-three, where they would have more room to outplay their opponents. They also knew that especially after US Nationals, everyone in the field would be trying to make life miserable for Kangaskhan players given its strength and popularity.

The result? Many fewer players with Kangaskhan. In a 61-player tournament, only 13 players used Kangaskhan in the data we have so far, and we likely aren’t missing more than one. Many of its counters were used instead as a result. Let’s look at one big problem for Kangaskhan in particular:

Notable uses: Collin Heier (3rd), Markus Liu (4th), Ryosuke Kosuge (5th), Miguel Marti de la Torre (6th), Lee Provost (7th), Wolfe Glick (9th), Markus Stadter (14th), Yuichi Sasaki (16th)

I was absolutely dumbfounded that more players weren’t running Mawile at US Nationals. I think most players would agree it has the best combination of power and a positive matchup with Kangaskhan of any Mega Pokémon available. Somehow at US Nationals, in spite of the knowledge Kangaskhan would be the most common Mega, Mawile didn’t even finish second. That honor instead went to Venusaur of all Mega Pokémon, a Pokémon that struggles with the Kangaskhan matchup..

The rest of the world helped pick up the slack here for the United States, finally. Eight of the top 16 teams in the World Championships featured Mawile, including the one team that also had Kangaskhan. Amusingly, neither of the Americans using Mawile on the above list made the cut of US Nationals, emphasizing the weirdness of that tournament (and perhaps emphasizing the different team strengths its format emphasized). Mawile ended up being the most common Mega Pokémon at the World Championships with 21 uses.

Here are some other Pokémon usage trends that weren’t very favorable for Kangaskhan at Worlds:

• Fifteen of the top sixteen teams featured at least one Intimidate user, and four featured two.
• Aegislash, the usual Kangaskhan check, was strangely scarce near the top, appearing only on two of the top sixteen teams.
• There was a surprising resurgence in Fighting-type Pokémon near the top. The top cut saw a Conkeldurr, a Machamp, and two Lucario to slow down Kangaskhan. Chesnaught, Scrafty, Sawk, and another Lucario showed up in the next eight teams on the standings.
• Garchomp, always one of the most common Kangaskhan checks due to its higher Speed, made five appearances in the top eight and eight in the top sixteen.
• A variety of other Pokémon Kangaskhan really doesn’t like were scattered among the top teams. The top 16 saw two Gothitelle, two Gengar, a Ferrothorn, two Amoonguss, Pachirisu, and seven Tyranitar.

Kangaskhan will probably dominate again in the North American Fall Regionals if the format is VGC 2014 as most of us are expecting, but Kangaskhan’s downfall at Worlds should be a lesson for players aspiring to deep runs in the World Championships in the future. No Pokémon with that big of a bulls-eye on it is ever going to see a favorable field at this level. Every player was planning against it, and it takes an awful lot of power to get around that. I don’t think anyone should take this as a sign that Kangaskhan was balanced well after all. Instead, take out of this that players will make the adjustments they need to in order to deal with anything if it wins long enough.

Bonus Pokémon Spotlight: Gothitelle and Charizard Y

I wanted to draw attention to a couple other Pokémon that players near the top chose to use I thought were especially clever that didn’t fit as well into the last two sections.

Notable uses: Jeudy Azzarelli (2nd), Ryosuke Kosuge (5th), Ashton Cox (13th), Yuichi Sasaki (16th)

Charizard’s usage had really plummeted since the beginning of VGC 2014, but these players brought it back at just the right time (or never stopped using it, in Ashton’s case). I think picking Charizard was an excellent case of reading the metagame, especially considering the second Megas used by Jeudy, Ryosuke, and Yuichi.

Players went into Worlds knowing Kangaskhan was going to be most players’ focus. Which Megas deal with that best? Well, probably Mawile, and maybe Lucario and Tyranitar. What beats Mawile and sort of Lucario? Charizard! We end up with Jeudy using Charizard+ Lucario as his Megas and Ryosuke and Yuichi doing the same sort of thing with Charizard + Mawile.

I think this is one of the simplest examples you can look at for how you make a winning plan for the World Championships. There are kind of three groups of Pokémon to consider from a metagame perspective. There are the Pokémon that have been great all year and are probably the most naturally powerful: that’s Kangaskhan in this example. Then there are the Pokémon that beat those Pokémon: Mawile and Lucario. Finally, the Pokémon getting brought to counter those counters: Charizard. All three groups need to be considered for a player to be really prepared, but it’s those first two groups that a savvy Worlds team needs to focus on defeating the most, and these guys all did that.

Double Mega teams didn’t do very well at US Nationals, but these players all had excellent gameplans featuring two Megas for the best-of-three play at Worlds centered around Charizard and put up really impressive performances with it. The double Mega teams really seem to shine in extended best-of-three play.

Notable uses: Sejun Park (1st), Wolfe Glick (9th), Aaron Zheng (18th), Baris Ackos (24th)

Gothitelle provides some neat tricks for teams centered around the excellent ability Shadow Tag. While Gothitelle itself is kind of mediocre, not being able to switch removes one of the most important options for Gothitelle’s opponents. Being unable to switch makes players much more predictable, especially after Protect is used. Gothitelle also has some other cool support options like Thunder Wave and Trick Room for Speed control, Tickle and Charm to weaken Pokémon it has trapped, and Light Screen and Reflect to support its team. Losing Helping Hand really hurt its offensive pressure, but Sejun found a cool way to let Gothitelle contribute to his offense using the combination of Tickle and Psyshock.

Players who plan their battles especially well tend to get the best out of Shadow Tag’s potential, which is part of why I like Sejun and Wolfe using it. Sejun, in spite of being known as one of the game’s more offensive players, isn’t one of those players who just looks for KOs recklessly. He is the best offensively-inclined player I’ve ever seen at staying patient and ending up in scenarios where he can close the game safely instead of just trading KOs all game. He often ends up with one or two remaining sweepers and a deficit in remaining Pokémon, but he still wins because he has the right Pokémon remaining and his opponent’s Pokémon are carefully weakened just enough for him to close the game out. Gothitelle restricting his opponents’ options allows him to setup win conditions more predictably, which is very dangerous with how well he plans games on the fly.

While Wolfe tends to play games much more conservatively than Sejun does, he has similarly shown an expertise at managing games. He is one of the best players at keeping his opponents in positions where they aren’t able to control pressure on the field as well as he can and at slowly winning defensive battles. Wolfe typically uses his board control to grind his opponents out rather than to start taking flashy KOs like Sejun might. In both cases, the players’ ability to plan games is enhanced by Gothitelle, putting a lot of pressure on their opponents not to send out Pokémon that can be exploited by Shadow Tag.

While Baris is the only 3-3 player I drew out for this section, I thought he was worth looking at because he was the only player who took a win off of Sejun in this tournament. I’m not sure if he chose to use Gothitelle heavily in that match or not, but I think it potentially helps show how good Gothitelle is: even for the World Champion, having your options restricted makes it much harder to win.

Results By Country

The World Championships crown a single champion at the end of the tournament, but one of the fun storylines of the tournament each year is how each country is doing as a whole. The international rivalries always make Worlds a little more exciting, so after Worlds I think it’s fun to look back on how each country did as a group. I don’t value opponent’s win percentage very highly outside of fringe cases, such as Dayne very much deserving his 7 seed due to his ridiculous schedule, so resistance isn’t in the equation here. I also won’t be including top cut record, since only a few players make it to that point and 6-3 shouldn’t be seen as worse than 6-2 in this context.

Listed for each country is the number of participants, the total record and win percentage of all players from each country combined, and how many players achieved each individual record. I put Kelly in Canada rather than Ireland since he’s, you know, Canadian. Countries are listed in order of win percentage.

* Australia’s Christopher Kan dropped at 1-3

This table has a few too many columns to read easily, but it helps show how the total record came to be for each country. The US, for instance, only had one more losing record than it had winning records. As you can see in that last 1-5s column, the US having almost all of the tournaments 1-5s tanked the cumulative win percentage pretty hard. Countries with larger amounts of players naturally tended to end up with win percentages within a few percentage points of 50% since 3-3 is the most common record, so Japan really stands out with its almost 62% win rate in spite of having seven players. South Korea, as most of us expected, ended up with the best record on total win percentage, though obviously the sample size there is small.

I thought it would also make the data a little easier to decipher if I split it up a little less specifically. The following table shows all winning records, all losing records, and all 3-3s for each country. I think most people consider 4-2 a successful Worlds and 2-4 a disappointment, so I figured it was probably a simpler benchmark to view overall performance. This table doesn’t explain the cumulative win percentages quite as well as the previous table, but combined the picture gets a little clearer. I also divided the number of winning records by the number of losing records to try to make a little more sense of how countries did as a whole.

This time, countries are ranked by the last column, winning records divided by losing records. The aforementioned stat works better for triangulating the success of the bigger countries than it does for the smaller ones, but I think this is probably a better way to eyeball the field than win percentage. The differences created by very good or bad records are reduced in this table.

South Korea, Japan, and Germany wind up being the only countries with more winning records than losing records, which I think is the best stat for group accomplishment. Spain and Italy wind up even, while the US, UK, Canada, and South Africa wind up at minus one through a variety of different ratios. While they aren’t on the bottom of this table thanks to Dayne’s excellent top cut run, Australia was the only country with significantly more losing records than winning records this year.

There are many ways to interpret the record data. The way I read it is that as most people expected, South Korea, Japan, and Germany had the most impressive runs in 2014. Meanwhile, the United States and Italy had particularly disappointing outings in spite of having the previous Masters World Champions in the field. Spain also did well this year, though with so few players it’s hard to draw too many conclusions from their run since it was basically just Miguel, as is the case with South Korea and Sejun.

An International Top Cut

While it’ll probably take a few years to see real parity in the cumulative records of countries, the strides made by the best players in each country this year were really exciting. It only takes one fantastic player to make a big splash for their country, and this year we saw an unprecedented seven different countries in the Masters VGC top cut. The only country with two players was the United States with two (and you’d hope so with 22 competitors…), with South Korea, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK, and Australia all adding one. Certainly, the most surprising story here was a player in the top cut from Australia, beating some countries who have been playing for years like Canada to the top eight.

I think it’s really exciting that we had such varied competitors in the top eight this year. The best part of the World Championships to me is that players from so many parts of the World are competing at the same game. They’re both getting to share a common interest and also a different way of playing the game with each other. Even though everyone plays the same format, some popular Pokémon and playstyles vary a bit depending on what part of the world you’re from and what your local metagame is like.

Every year, there is a little more parity in the field. After 2014, I think we can all say there’s a real shot someone from any of the participating countries could win it all next year. It’s an exciting time to be involved with VGC!

Savvy Seniors

While I tend to keep this Masters-centric column as Masters-centric as possible, I do want to touch on the other two finals for the World Championships edition.

I thought the Senior finals were a lot of fun even though it didn’t end up being a close series. The Senior division final really pleased me because, as all with all the tournament finals I’ve cast for the Senior division, it overcame a criticism I have of the division. The dynamic of Pokémon selection in three age divisions to me, in general, tends to be sort of cyclical. The Junior division has a bunch of “standard” influence from the players’ older friends and relatives, but they still use a few of their favorites that give their teams more variety and trip up their opponents a little. Then as Seniors, many of them kind of back off of that preference some and play very standard because they think they need to in order to win. Alternatively, they try to use teams that are way too rogue and end up with some weak teams that aren’t very successful. As Masters, they kind of start catching on that you need a few rogue picks to win the big ones mixed in with the proven threats and experiment more again, so the Senior stage in the middle tends to be a little boring to me.

I mention this because neither Nikolai or Mark fell into this trap, and I hope players take note of it. Nikolai’s team had a bunch of tricks in it, with Trick Room Gengar and Substitute Life Orb Garchomp standing out as his MVPs in the finals. He played a really exciting series and Mark was never really able to get comfortable against him, even once he had the team playing face-up. To Mark’s credit, his team was pretty exciting, too. Staraptor and Lapras livened the roster up and are both examples of Pokémon I think are pretty undervalued, so I think they’re both really good examples for aspiring Seniors. I do want to comment on Mark’s case that even though he had a rough go in the finals there, getting to the finals to begin with proves he had an excellent tournament. He is definitely someone next year’s Seniors should have their eye on.

If you look back to last year, Hayden winning with Machamp of all Pokémon is another fun example. You have to get some spice in there to win Worlds, and I hope that next year’s players were paying attention to the finals the last couple of years. Really cool stuff by both sides.

Junior Dynasties

I really love the narrative of the Junior division this year. The Junior champion, Kota Yamamoto, is the younger brother of Shota Yamamoto. Shota was the 2010 Junior World Champion. He made it all the way to the top four of the Senior World Championships the next year, where he lost to this unknown kid from first-year VGC nation South Korea no one had ever heard of called Sejun Park. He then won Japanese Nationals the next year as a Senior, so clearly the older Yamamoto is an excellent player. He seems to have passed that on to his brother, who played a really dominant set against London Sawn Swan. Kota’s championship was a huge win for Japan — Kota is their first World Champion since his brother Shota in 2010!

I love these brother acts in Juniors. We had another cool one last year, when former two-time Senior National Champion Aaron “CT Cybertron” Zheng found his true calling as a cheerleader in the crowd as his brother, Brendan Zheng, won Junior Worlds. I know some people look at the Junior division and don’t like the influence of the older players so much, but to me it really brings out a theme of what is cool about Pokémon as a competitive game. The age range of people who play this game competitively and enjoy Pokémon itself is outrageously large compared to pretty much every other game out there. I think it’s really cool when you have cases like the Zhengs and the Yamamotos where the older brothers — who in this case are both still pretty young themselves! — can kind of help pass on that love of Pokémon and their knowledge of the game and enjoy the competition together. There aren’t many games out there where you can see things like that happen. Pokémon is special.

Looking back on… the VGC 2014 Format

When the format for VGC 2014 was first announced, there were certainly a lot of players with strong opinions about it. While the 2014 World Championships will probably not be the last tournament featuring the VGC 2014 format, it is certainly the most important, so I think it is a good time to look back on the format for last season. After all, I think most players would agree that every format is the worst format while you’re playing it, so maybe we can look back at it a little more objectively now…

The Kalos Regional Pokedex

While I didn’t have to deal with it, I know friends who run lower level tournaments have informed me that we were correct in assuming the Regional Pokedex restriction would be confusing to younger and less hardcore players, especially considering the illegal Friend Safari Pokémon.

I think we were largely incorrect about how centralized the metagame would be. I still think using Regional Pokedexes for formats is a little gimmicky. However, I think if you look at the teams from Worlds (article coming soon TM) there was still a lot more room to experiment. Pachirisu winning Worlds last weekend and Raichu winning the Nugget Bridge Invitational a couple weeks prior are pretty good examples of that. I wouldn’t want to play more than a year of a restricted format, but they aren’t all Unova.

Also, if a terrible avalanche had blocked the entrance to that cave Kangaskhan is in, no one would have missed it.

Pentagram Pentagon

If there is any confusion, I am referring to the pentagon symbol in your Pokémon’s info that denotes it was bred on a generation six cart.

While the Kalos pentagon is another thing that adds confusion for newer players, I think it is a really important gameplay restriction. I’m not sure what the motivation for it was — I would expect it was mostly because of the easily hacked Pokémon of yesteryear — but I think there is an important competitive benefit to the pentagon.

No one ten years ago was thinking even the slightest bit about the impact having exclusive moves on Pokémon XD or Pokémon Ranger was going to have on events a decade in the future. No one was thinking about what the Hyper Voice tutor might be like in the future if Eevee got a new evolution or Gardevoir got a Mega Evolution that could exploit it with an ability that didn’t exist. Wiping that slate clean makes the game a lot easier to balance. Hopefully in the future we continue to see the pentagon and care is taken about which tutors and promotions are re-released.

Dark Void

“Thank you! I had a much more enjoyable VGC 2014 experience because Dark Void Smeargle was allowed than I would have if it was banned,” said no one ever. Certainly not something I think is overpowered in any way, but a really bad game mechanic that can be really oppressive to newer and younger players. There still isn’t adequate counterplay, especially with Wide Guard inexplicably not blocking it. Unbanning it was a mistake.

Parental Bond Hurts A Lot

In spite of that section above about how badly it did at Worlds, I think Kangaskhan is probably the strongest Pokémon that has ever existed in any VGC format, with the possible exception of 2010 Kyogre. I hope that it is looked at in the future and its power is reduced, but I think there is an interesting case study in Kangaskhan terrorizing this format. With no changes to the rules, Kangaskhan went from seeming like it was going to be on 5 or 6 of the teams in the Worlds top cut to zero because of a combination of players adapting and players fearing those adaptations. As a veteran of the dark days of Skarmory + Blissey and Curse Snorlax in competitive GSC, it warms my heart a little to see a format where players successfully adjusted to threats that weren’t balanced very well.

However, let’s never do it again.

Rain

After a relatively uneventful 2013 season and seeming not to be very powerful early in 2014, Rain wasn’t very high on many players’ radar until the National results in 2014 started rolling in. Korea, Europe, and North America all saw a National Champion using Rain, with several other players at each tournament using it as well. While Rain, like Kangaskhan, didn’t do very well in the end, it left its mark on the format.

If we end up with another format where some of the weather setters are missing, as Ninetales was this year, perhaps another season of midseason weather dominance is in the future.

Redirection is Pretty Good

I think the power of redirection is going to stay a theme. I think this story actually starts at 2013 Worlds, though you could bring it back as far as Togekiss + Kyogre on some teams in 2010.

In 2013, many of the game’s best offensive players had a decent chunk of redirection on their team. Randy Kwa was 3-0 with his Togekiss/Excadrill team before he lost to Sejun Park, who made it to 5th place using Eviolite Follow Me Magmar next to a bunch of frailer Pokémon. Ben Gould made the top four with a similar team to Sejun’s that had Rage Powder Volcarona instead of Magmar. While his team seemed to focus a little more on Speeds than conventional redirection, Arash Ommati’s winning team also featured Rage Powder, his from Amoonguss. Clearly, the more aggressive players benefited from redirection to keep their sweepers alive.

In a faster 2014 format where more players are forced to play more aggressively than they did in 2013, it then makes that we see a lot of teams using redirection well near the top. Sejun finally got his championship, this time not with Follow Me Magmar, but with Follow Me Pachirisu. Jeudy Azzarelli got second place with Follow Me Lucario, which was also very effective on Simon Yip’s 2014 Top 8 US Nationals team (which also featured Amoonguss). Amoonguss was one of the most effective format all year long, helping many Kangaskhan teams cheese their way into respectable CP.

It’s hard to guess what the future will hold, but if the next format is as offensive as this one wound up being, I think players should look toward the available forms of redirection a little more carefully next year. Redirection seems to be the answer to faster games that players haven’t figured out how to break through yet.

GOTTA GO FAST

If there’s one common quality to hone in on between the two Masters finalists teams it is that outside of their support Pokémon, their Pokémon were extremely fast. Both sides used Garchomp and a Choice Scarf on a mid-Speed Pokémon, Gardevoir for Sejun and Tyranitar for Jeudy. Jeudy ended his team with the base 100 Salamence and two fast Megas in Charizard Y and Lucario, while Sejun had Talonflame and Dragon Dance Mega Gyarados. With such limited ways to control Speed in this format, the most cohesive quick teams seemed to win. This will be another thing to keep an eye on next year if we get a limited format again: attacking first is a big advantage in a format where it is difficult to tank hits for long and Speed control doesn’t really exist.

See You Next Season

I hope you all enjoyed the 2014 World Championships, the stream if you couldn’t make it out, and the season. Let’s all work to make next year even better!

Finally, I’d like to leave you all with a quote from Evan: “I just interviewed a Korean. We eSports now.”

About the Author

Scott started playing VGC in 2011. He finished 17th at US Nationals, then lost in the final round of 2011 Worlds LCQ. He finished 10th in the 2012 World Championships and qualified for Worlds again in 2013 after going into US Nationals second in CP. Instead of playing, he commentated at US Nationals and the World Championships in 2013 and 2014. Follow him on Twitter @NBNostrom!

Related Posts

New Mechanics Introduced in VGC 2016 →

VGC ’16 Pokémon Speed Tiers →

Hyper Offense Analysis – BadIntent’s Evil Thoughts →

Greener Grassy Terrain: A More Balanced Future For VGC? →