Month: January 2015

No Sleep Until Clear: Victoria Premiere Challenge Report

Hello Hat Lovers!

I played in two Premiere Challenges this weekend in Victoria. These were the first tournaments I’ve played in since switching to the new format, and my goal was to win at least one of the tournaments. I’ve had a team I’ve been testing for a while now and while it has done well in practise (winning an online Smogon tournament the day before) I decided I didn’t want use it and would rather build a team focusing on Pokemon I knew would be good against the local metagame. I knew which Vancouver players would show up and what they used in the past, as well as what the Victoria players would use.

Since this tournament took up my afternoon and I went out on Friday I ended up getting home at 1AM without knowing what I wanted to run. There were a couple threats I needed to prepare for. I knew Rushan had used a Trick Room team with Slowbro and Gastrodon so I wanted a Grass type to make that match-up easier. Murray was likely to have a rain team, so a Grass type would pay dividends in that matchup as well. Hongyu was the one player I didn’t know was coming, but I wouldn’t have known what he was running anyways.

Day 1

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Metagame Trends – Speed Tiers

Hey there Hat Lovers,

After writing my article “On Developing Speed Tiers Throughout a Metagame,” I figured I would re-visit the concept with a bit of an application article on how VGC 2015 Speed Tiers are shaping up. Today I’ll look at some defining Pokemon for VGC 2015, what speed control is in the format, and how to plan around those two in combination. The group at Nuggetbridge has once again provided an invaluable Speed Tier list courtesy of “Level 51,” so be sure to thank him for this discussion!

Defining Pokemon of VGC 2015

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Terrakion & Bisharp

Hello Hat Lovers!

Today I’m here to talk about Terrakion and Bisharp as partners on a team. I’ve been using both on a lot of teams in testing and found they compliment each other fairly well.

I’ve been seeing these two show up together on a lot of high profile player’s teams. Aaron “Cybertron” Zheng and CT Mikoto Mikasa both used these two on their team to win Premiere Challenges. Both players used these two along with their Mega Salamence + Redirection combo.

I’ve found that these two can fit on most teams (I wouldn’t expect them to go well on a Trick Room team) and often were my safe leads against teams that I didn’t know what I wanted to do against.

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Thought Experiment: Hydreigon vs. Latios

Hey there Hat Lovers,

Today’s article is going to be a bit of commentary on metagame trends and reference to past formats. The history behind the comparison of these two Pokemon is rich. In both the 2012 and 2013 formats, Latios was the default choice for a strong, Specs-boosted Draco Meteor. However, in both seasons Hydreigon showed up later in the metagame, and by the World Championships seemed to be the favourite of the two. Why was that, and why is it that Hydreigon has started out so strong this year while Latios is so irrelevant? Does Latios have anything to offer to this metagame in place of Hydreigon? That will be the topic of the article today!

Thinking about Hydreigon

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