First Place in Missouri: At Least I’m Not Like All Those Other Old Guys
After unexpectedly winning the 2014 Missouri Winter Regional, I knew I wanted to post a report. I soon found out that, unlike many 2014 reports, I had a lot of matches recorded. I thought about posting a traditional writeup, but it looked really clunky with all those videos scattered throughout. So instead, here’s a video review. I hope you enjoy it!
I owe a huge amount of thanks to YouTuber Bullados for stream-recording all of these matches during the tournament and allowing me to use the videos. I also owe Wesley a ton of thanks for allowing me to use many of the pictures he and his awesome mom took at the tournament. Last, but not least, I’d like to thank pball0100, DrFidget, and YouTuber and kick-butt VGC player Squidtepig. I appreciate you guys for letting me use the videos you recorded, too. You guys are awesome! Thanks so much!
About the Author
mattj started playing VGC at the end of 2008. He enjoys reading the Bible, shooting guns, and voting for Republicans.
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53 Responses to First Place in Missouri: At Least I’m Not Like All Those Other Old Guys
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gratz on the win man – couldnt have gone to a more a ballsy team with only 1 protect
It’s really great to see you’re still competing Matt! The bits about the serebii forums at the start felt pretty nostalgic and the video felt really insightful. I’m glad you guys from back then are still doing well in the VGC scene! Especially you, Greysong and BadIntent. I should really keep up with things more, aha.
Love the video mattj, great job, good luck in future events!
Def a 10/10 team
I really respect the decision to stick with a team and modify it over time to cover its weaknesses
Looking forward to seeing what else you’re going to cook up
First off Congratulations on winning the Regional.
I really loved this, this vid was not only creative but gave a better sense of who are you are and how that relates to your play style.
You show a very humble approach and I respect you even more a player. You’ve shown me to stick with a Pokemon your comfortable with so i want to say thanks.
I’ll be at the Finals so hope to meet you in person. Respect!
Ashton. This kid is probably going to club a baby seal if you don’t post a warstory. For the love of baby seals please post a warstory. D:
I’m not able to post any neat, c/p’d damage calcs because I never use a damage calculator. When I began to test Kangaskhan +0, Jolly Return just barely wasn’t doing enough to stuff like bulky Garchomp and Rotom. I Heartscaled Double Edge back onto mine and that remedied the problem. There were several times in the tournament where the extra 18-27 base points made a noticable difference, such as my first battle with Wesley, when my Kangaskhan was going to die anyway, but Double Edge put his Garchomp into KO range from my Brave Bird. Had I not gotten Garchomp into KO range I couldn’t have imagined another way to win that match.
Hey, this was an awesome team report. I loved the video narration and it was cool to see someone use feint well! It is crazy to me that you could do so well with only one protect/detect. Look forward to hearing more about you in the future!
Fantastic report. You gave great insight into your very well picked strategic team and every choice made sense.
Congratulations on your win, and even more so, kudos to you for being so humble.
I thought this was a great way to do a report. I agree with the, “would be nice to see the team written out” comments but you provided that as well below. Fantastic job editing the video and I really enjoyed watching.
If you don’t like your day job you might have a future as a narrator/voice actor. Honestly I thought you did a fantastic job narrating the sound quality was excellent. I really like this form of report.
I have been waiting to see more Abomasnow for a while now, never considered that I would see many scarfed non-megas, but I really like the idea. I also like the team, I think new players, like myself, tend to try and over think team dynamics to try to come up with some ridiculous new strategy. While that is great if your able to pull it off, it can really get you in trouble and bog your team down.
Having a clear win condition really helps and I have to say that hearing you talk about using the same idea for years helps me a greatly.
I hope to do well in my first Regional and this write up has helped immensely! Hopefully I will have reason to do one some day.
-Huddrew
Just got around to watching this video, and it was actually really cool! I like the way you did this report in a complete opposite direction of the normal articles or warstories. I especially liked how you can analyze the game in the report while you’re actually watching it. Needless to say, I look forward to you making some more of these videos! Congrats on the win!
Haven’t gotten to watch the video, due to bad internet. But looking at your team, I like some of your choices. I guess the one Protect/Detect user is sort of like a high-risk/high-reward thing.
nice! I tend to stay away from moves that cause recoil damage as, due to some bad experiences in colleseum, i’ve been screwed royallly due to it. Makes me want to try it some time, but again good job and good luck in the future events you’re participating in.
How did you counter Talonflame?
Zapdos, Kangaskhan, and Rock Slide from Mienshao.
Thank you for such a great tournament report. As a new player to competitive VGC it really pays off to sit down with a pen and note-pad and write down all of the useful information given by someone with such a great understanding of the game. Nice job on the tournament win. We need more humble people like yourself to do well in tournaments in both VGC and TCG, which I am more familiar with.
Do you ever find yourself wishing you have ice shard on your abomasnow? It seems like it would come in handy more often than icy wind would, being that you already have a fair amount of speed control on your team anyway.
I’ll have to play you again sometime for sure, i have 5 teams that im working on that can all counter that silly tailwind Talonflame. all in all, probably the best loss i’ve ever had, plus, we were the first feature match!
ride that team far and far!
Oh definitely. If Chandelure didn’t absolutely require a Focus Sash to do what I do with it, Abomasnow would have it. I actually tested 252 HP Chandelure with a couple of different defensive items in order to give the sash to Abomasnow, but Sucker Punches and Earthquakes just kept killing it, so I gave it its sash back. :/
This was a great review, I loved it in video form. 😀 I live in Missouri and am just now trying out competitive battling. I believe was in that same venue back in the day for trading card game tournaments!
Really great video mattj!
I just had to ask, was there a reason to put Detect on Zapdos over Protect? They do the same thing right? Thanks.
Thanks. Its really rare but some people Imprison the move Protect. Plus, its already on it at Level 70.
It’s clear that Double Edge deals more damage than Return, but how much more..?
My calcs reveal that Return’s highest damage roll (non-crit, non boosted) is about or equal to Double Edge’s lowest damage roll.
Or simply, the strongest Return is the weakest Double Edge.
thanks but that was already answered for me haha, and in the nature of reiterating, thank you.