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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Hawlucha? Really? Explain.
I gotta reset. I started in VGC 14 late into the season so I never SRed any of those legends. Heck if they weren’t VGC legal I didn’t really bother SRing either. I have made mistake. ;-;
Pretty much this. They shouldn’t allow weather types that can’t be removed and completely eliminate an entire attacking type unless you’re running one of three pokemon. Way to make the game even less diverse..
Only Detroit knows what’s so bad about Soul Dew that it still needs to be banned.
Only Detroit also knows how we are supposed to do Premier Challenges, or — outside of the USA –, Regionals and sometimes even Nationals. If we don’t see a miracle by Jan 1, VGC is kinda dead.
Old team I ran last year with Mega Camerupt. Take out the camel, insert conitinent-creating monster. Hawlucha was a support on that team. So hype.
Confused about one thing… I thought GS Cup only had event Pokemon on the banned list? Probably wouldn’t see much use, but since Deoxys is available in regular game play now, shouldn’t it be legal?
Can you train it in Battle Spot??
No, the rules state Deoxys is not allowed.
I have just made a request in light of this new rule. Well, two requests in the same thread.
If you can’t train here where?
Glad I’ve been using Mega Mawile.
I wonder how NB Live tournaments will work seeing as we can’t do flat battles and some of these legends might learn moves after level 50. Is there a way to restrict levels and selection and allow these pokemon?
Well we should’ve seen this coming. It’s one of the few ways Pokemon can change up the format due to the lack of new games (thus far) for this year and the next.
Still not happy about Mega Rayquaza being a thing. Ah well, that’s Pokemon battles, there’s a lot of stuff that we don’t like.
That is a LOT of SRing to do for those of us without access to friends who clone stuff…so slightly upsetting. Other than that, this looks like a really fun and interesting formula, and im excited to see how it evolves!
First I was horrified
Then I was excited
Then I realized that since I never had time for this game BEFORE everything required endurance dice-rolling to get, none of this matters
Hopefully I can still get to the winter regional since it’s basically next door to me. I wish there was a way to get another legitimate Groudon without restarting my game, though…
Can please tell me if you can train VGC 2016 in battle spot?
this is gonna be crazy ! I wonder… how many top players will continue being top with this
on BS I´m afraid you can´t , however “free battle” would be the solution
on BS I´m afraid you can´t , however “free battle” would be the solution
mega rayquaza
primals
xerneas + kanga
oh god
i want to think positivies instead of negatives but cant do that…atleast something new but its just mega ray all over
and i were planning to make a return to vgc. rip
also where in heck i fart those mons when i already caught groudon and ray
Are PC’s going to be vgc16 now? I have a PC next week and the following week, would it still follow vgc15 since I don’t think I can SR legends in just a week?
mega mewtwo, highest attack/special attack in the game depending on format
Not currently, maybe next month. We don’t know for sure yet. Stick to Showdown for now.
Thanks!
Well, this’ll be one heck of an adjustment period for me. VGC 2015 was definitely an enjoyable format for me despite all the hate it got for being boring.
It’ll be interesting to see how things are. The primals and Mega Rayquaza being legal are going to be a huge pain to deal with. I already see stuff being just as OP and it won’t be very long before things eventually end up getting worse.
On the contrary, I think a lot of the other legendaries have loads of potential to be used and I totally agree with the limit of 2. Teambuilding for this format is going to be a learning curve for sure, but I like to think that once people get the hang of it, this format won’t be so bad. My biggest question with this format though, is whether adding these legendaries will make the format more enjoyable as a whole in terms of seeing new and different stuff be successful, or will it fall short of expectations while we wait for a new game?
Besides, VGC 2010 existed with these Ubers. If we’ve dealt with it once, we sure as Detroit can do it again. RIP PS4 time since it’ll have to be spent soft resetting for these new mons.
Probably Normal Rules. Sets all mons to 50 and allows everything. Only cons are that players will have to select only 4 mons manually and that you can’t purposefully use mons below level 50, so it doesn’t quite simulate a tourney environment, but it’s better than the alternatives and is overall close enough.
I imagine that that is what AZ is going to tell PCs to use anyways.
In theory, it’ll put everyone on equal footing, but in actuality, I don’t believe everyone is really soft re-setting a few hundred times to get usable legendaries. If some are still able to RNG for perfect legendaries (or manipulate in some other way), then they’ll have an advantage (plus their friends if they’re cloning). Pentagon-only disadvantages those who have no means to capture perfect legendaries with perfect hidden powers. Still, I won’t re-open the pentagon argument, as that ship has left, but why doesn’t Pokemon take control of the manipulation/cloning/etc. problem by creating a means for VGC players to engineer or borrow Pokemon with the needed stats for battling? The equal footing thing is a myth that assumes we got rid of RNG manipulation, etc. with the pentagon . . .
Does running out of time at team preview end up selecting all 6 in Normal Rules? That could be an issue.
I want to kwon who is really sad or angry about this decision. In the last year the 95% of competitive teams are using Thundurus Landourus Cresselia and Heatran. Can you you really call a game a platform in which every player use the same team? This is shit, not a game. And not funny et all, becouse you play always the same game against different players, Nintendo to solve this problem had two choise: ban all leggendary, unban the other. The are trying the second one and this is really the best decision ever made. Now There will be a lot of variability across team and this game can finally be funny as was before Genius.
Dunno, didn’t check that. But there would probably be a penalty or something for people that don’t choose 4 and I would imagine that would apply then, too, if that’s the case.