GS Cup Announced as Pokémon’s 2016 Ruleset
Today, Pokémon announced the ruleset we’ll see in place for the 2016 World Championships as well as all events after January 1st, 2016. The GS Cup ruleset is one that should be familiar to anyone who played in 2010 as well as those who played in the Generation Showdown tournament late last year.
If you’d like an analysis on the format, make sure you check out the first part of this great guide at Pokémon’s strategy site. Don’t forget to also check out the stats from the Generation Showdown for ideas or cool teams from 2010 for inspiration.
Simplified Ruleset – 2016
- All matches are played in the Doubles format.
- Time Limit: 90 seconds for Team Preview, 45 seconds for each turn, 15 minutes for the match for all tournaments at Regionals-level or higher.
- Players choose 4 of their 6 registered Pokémon after team preview.
- Pentagon Rule: All Pokémon must have the blue pentagon on their stats page indicating they were caught, bred, or received as an official gift in Pokémon X, Y, Omega Ruby, or Alpha Sapphire.
- Species Clause: No two Pokémon on your team can share the same Pokédex number.
- Item Clause: No two Pokémon on your team can hold the same held item.
- The following items are banned:
- Soul Dew
- The following Pokémon are banned (all forms):
- Mew
- Celebi
- Jirachi
- Deoxys
- Phione
- Manaphy
- Darkrai
- Shaymin
- Arceus
- Victini
- Keldeo
- Meloetta
- Genesect
- Diancie
- Hoopa
- You may have up to two of the following Pokémon in your Battle Box:
- Mewtwo
- Lugia
- Ho-oh
- Kyogre
- Groudon
- Rayquaza
- Dialga
- Palkia
- Giratina
- Reshiram
- Zekrom
- Kyurem
- Xerneas
- Yveltal
- Zygarde
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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They probably are going to add them to battle spot, because thats always followed VGC rules…im on the fence about this, on one hand it will convince my sister to play VGC and you get Legends, on the other hand it kinda sucks! I mean, MegaRay+Xerneas is going to be sooo OP!
Well, good luck to everyone teambuilding!
Welcome in VGC Mega Ray
Yeah, this metagame is going to be even worse than VGC 2015. People complained about M-Kang and the Genies? Get ready for M-Rayquaza. Now most of us will have to restart our games and work around a metagame that is, imo, going to be even more centralized than recent years. This is just going to be awful and I’m not looking foward to having to build my teams around even stronger pokemon than M-Kang. Not to mention the atrocious amounts of SRing I’m gonna have to go through just to make a strong team!
If they’re gonna have these rules, they can at least grace us with putting these rules into a BS format. You know, so we can actually practice a format that’s going to generate a vastly different metagame.
Good luck to all of you as this will be a struggle to adjust to.
I wonder how the Metagame will shift to this! Ugh, I have to scrap all my ideas and tea build around this. I wonder what Worlds will be like…
Rayquaza and Primals, Rayquaza and Primals everywhere. And maybe Xerneas.
Speaking of team building, the concept I’ve had for a few months is completely trashed now.
Time to start collecting the new Pokemon for the format
You are completely right.
Time to scrape my EV training and begin anew…
I was thinking more of a Life Orb set with Draco, ice beam, earth power and protect
I meant by Battle Spot, but either one works lol.
Okay, show of hands. Who expected this? Anyone? Anyone? Okay…
Here we were, speculating “will they remove megas?; Will they allow non-pentagon?; Will they somehow download a patch for stats?; Will they have a banlist?”…. No. Instead of “fixing” the game, they broke it.
“If it’s broken, break it ’till it’s fixed!”
-Brawl-Minus
throwback to my first year of VGC <3 super excited for this format
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Of course that got changed. But let’s be honest. There’s going to be more complaining about the Primals and Mega Rayquaza
I played in VGC ’10, and it was a mess. This, this will be a disaster. On one hand, TopOgre isn’t to bad now. On the other hand… Mega Rayquaza?
This will be a gigantic mess for the first few months before the meta stabilizes.
Also, Kang now bows down to something
252 Atk Life Orb Mega Rayquaza Dragon Ascent vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Mega Kangaskhan: 172-203 (95 – 112.1%) — 68.8% chance to OHKO
EDIT: Thinking about it, since it is a limit of 2 to a team (Instead of ’10, where you could have up to 4, but only use 2 in battle) This adds a lot of intricacies to team building, deciding specifically what Ubers you want, and how to cover for them. Time to build a million teams
There are a lot of people in this thread who have never played or read up on the format posting opinions on what they think is broken.
I played a little bit of Smogon Doubles OU and seen Ubers in the same format and seen how they play. Kyruem-B will be a threat since it gets Ice Beam to handle the genies, Earth Power for Heatran, and Draco Meteor for the metagame. It neutrally hits the entire format. I also advise checking out the article on Pokemon.com
Ok, except for mega ray, legends have cute use in doubles. Xern and yveltal have aura traits, xerneas for example can boost sylveon and Gardevoir hyper voice, plus xerneas can run geomancy + dazzling gleam. Primals got double target moves with oras, pretty cool. Dragon creation brothers have telepathy as trait, so i think a Dialga that can don’t mind about an earthquake from a partner is cool.
Very sad for Ho-oh and lugia that won’t have an usage in this cuz they can’t have their dw ability. Reshiram and zekrom suck.
EDIT: Oh, kyurems. well, i think scarf Kyurem-W is a cool solution for rayquaza, this before that people will use yache berry on rayquaza.
Heh, I can see that, people that will use dd megaquaza + transform smeargle.
Yeah, mg probably will be a grimer, but well, i like the idea of legends.
I’m going to run Scarf Imposter Ditto and try to make it my goal to have 2 Mega Rayquaza on the field at all times…
LO Kyurem-B will drown among the flood of Groudon+Kang+Xerneas teams, which is gonna be the go-to standard setup for anyone trying to have a solid core to play with.
Edit: This is also the reason why I believe people are hyping up Rayquaza way too much. Delta Stream being the same type of weather as Primal weathers, and the fact that you lose Kangaskhan if you use Mega Rayquaza make it a lot less exciting.
It’s not always about raw stats or unique traits, you have to put it into context.
Wait, I just thought of something…
Is Mega Altaria viable? Before ME she has cloud nine, she could come in against Primals and clound nine them away, then hit them w/hyper voice or draco meteor on the switch-in…just a thought.
EDIT: Not to mention that Levitate Rotom-H/-W could be viable against Groudon and MegaQuaza….
I’m really happy with this metagame, i mean now’ve got a big metagame : THAT’s LEGENDARY. Except for the Soft reset thing…maybe we can help each other out in the breeding section ( i’m counting on you guys). Anyway it’s time to prepare for trouble. Good luck guys
If you’re going to run Special Kyurem-B, why not just use Kyurem-W?
Not exactly what I would’ve liked to see to come back to, but curious to see how it all plays out.
Not very optimistic about defensive play as of now, which is more of a personal problem. Wish there was a way to practice in game and possibly more limits on power creep instead of 2 ubers + a mega.
As someone who has never played VGC 2010 or GS cup seriously, I’d really like to hear the opinions of those who have. Are the metas fun? Is it competitive, enjoyable? Why? Would enjoy reading the thoughts of anyone who seriously played those metas.
As a newbie VGC player this is intimidating. I know that I am gonna have to restart games for sure now. I have a feeling primals and M-ray are gonna be the biggest thing for the whole season. I wanna use Mewtwo though for nostalgia reasons. {I am trash}
I don’t look forward to it, because now I will have to convince my child to use a legendary. The good news is some of them look scary so yay?
I feel like some of the same threats of this year will carry over though. Double genies will still work, but because of groudon I’m sure that heatran will drop to low numbers. Yveltal might threaten cress a bit, but she’s still the best bulk so I think she will still be around. I’m not too sure of m-kang’s position of top mega, I’m sure that m-ray will be top for a while until things settle down.
Now I’m gonna have to do some research into primal weather though.
This year will be so chaotic at first but I’m really looking forward to it.
Time to party like it’s…2010?
Whelp no more testing hailroom for me, time to SR some legendaries that I didn’t get yet and replay again for the ones I did (granted I didn’t catch the worst ones out there since I tried SRing for a bit for ok ones, but they can always be better).
Power Herb Geomancy Xerneas with 252 SpAtk. / 252 Spe Moonblast/Hidden Power Ice=1HKO M-Ray and most of metagame
A) Totally called it last August, just sayin’
B) there goes the team I was building
C)Time for the return of Hawlucha…muhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahh
D) I am now glad I made at least a halfhearted effort to SR my legends.
This is going to be a blast. Diancie would have been nice though :/