Month: March 2015

Dropping Raindrops & Rocks: 1st Place Premiere Challenge Report

Hello Hat Lovers!

I played in another Premiere Challenge in Victoria this weekend. I didn’t expect to see many faces from Vancouver, but we got a couple players come over to play. I needed to reach the finals in order to get CP from this event and I needed to win in order really make it worth it.

The Team:

After the last set of Premiere Challenges in Victoria I decided I want my team to be ready for each event before the day of the actual event so I decided on my team two days in advance and assembled it the night before. I decided I wanted to use Terrakion and Thundurus as I could stack the odds in my favour with Rock Slide and Thunder Wave. Thundurus can also use Swagger on Terrakion to power it up, which is an idea I’ve been wanting to use all season but never made a team to do it with.

Me and Mark originally had Rotom-W and Weavile on this team. I found that these two Pokemon weren’t working out as well as I would’ve liked so I dropped them and added the rain duo to help out against Pokemon like Terrakion, Landorus and Heatran.

The team was stacked with fast Pokemon, but every member of the team had a respectable amount of bulk. When Terrakion’s 91/90/90 defences make it the frailest Pokemon on the team you’re doing something right.

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Early Metagame Rage: Tales of Gardemoth

I guess as an author for this site now I’m obligated to open like this, so greetings hat lovers!

This is the team I used for much of January. The team revolved around the use of Mega Gardevoir and Rage Powder Volcarona, with Imprison being tech’d onto Gardevoir to lock down Sylveon and some variants of Salamence. I thought the team concept was fun overall, because Gardevoir and bulky Volcarona are quite rare and it gave me an advantage over unprepared opponents. The only tournament I took this team to was a NuggetBridge Live, where I entered Top Cut as the #1 seed before losing in Top 8.

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The Dream: 4th Place Premiere Challenge Team Analysis

Hello Hat Lovers!

Last weekend all of us at VGC w/Hats played in a pair of Premiere Challenges in Vancouver. Since improving my best finish limit was difficult I was looking at test out a new team we came up with. The week before the Premiere Challenge Mark faced a team on Pokemon Showdown using Mega Gengar and Whimsicott with Fake Tears. Mark won the battle handily but was intrigued by the idea. He sent me a message about wanting to build a team around the duo. A few minutes later I came up with a draft that seemed promising.

I started with M-Gengar, Whimsicott, Terrakion, M-Salamence, Suicune and Thundurus-T. Salamence was quickly scrapped as the only reason for using it was to have an alternate mega evolution. We tried out Charizard for a bit but then decided it didn’t help against the Pokemon Gengar had trouble with. We then decided on using Metagross as it could function without mega evolving.

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How to learn to play Pokémon

Hey there Hat Lovers,

I wouldn’t consider myself an elite player by any means, but I do think the topic of today’s article is something I can weigh in on. Since my two articles on maximizing your EVs (Developing Speed Tiers and Bulking Up), I’ve been wanting to add a disclaimer of sorts. A recent topic on the Nuggetbridge.com forums has inspired me to finally sit down and write this thing.

Doing well at VGC requires a combination of skills. First and foremost is an understanding of the game and the Pokemon you expect to play against. After that comes the ability to build a coherent team that accomplishes your goal of winning games. Last is the subtle development of player skill through experience; this impacts your success at all levels of play. Individual player skill is also something that increases as you have an understanding of the game, and is able to develop better when you have a coherent team and have the option of making winning decisions every game.

The most important part of your development as a player is to take these steps in order. It is really damaging for a player to avoid playing because they don’t understand how to do well. Today I’ll argue that the most important thing you can do is to just play, but hopefully I can guide players in how to learn better from their testing experience.

  1. Developing a base understanding (studying)

  2. Building a team

  3. Gaining experience

  4. Conclusion

For your development as a player, it’s best to take these steps in order. It is really damaging for a player to avoid playing because they don’t understand how to do well. (more…)