Author: raphaelbagara

Song and Dance: Top 16 Melbourne Challenge Report

G’day hat lovers!

I recently participated in an online grassroots tournament hosted by Sam Pandelis, with a $1500 cash prize for the winner to go to the Melbourne International. I managed to top cut, and while there was no prize for my finish, I still felt it was worth writing about.

This team of course, was taken from San Jose regional runner up Enosh, who I owe a big thank you for helping me and letting me use his team. I ended up changing a lot of details he had from San Jose, but the team remained fundamentally the same, and much of the changes I made were simply some personal preferences. Yejiang (@Yejiang_CHN) also topped the BattleSpot ladder with a similar structure, and I took some inspiration from watching some of his replays as well.

In other words: I am a team thief but I combined different ideas from different people to make it look a little less obvious that I am a team thief. I am a big fan of the team because I think its suits my playstyle well, and after playing 2016, I am so so so glad to again be able to use a team that has no attacks with imperfect accuracy (well, I had Guillotine, but that move is used far differently from the others)

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2017 Season Information: Format, Rental Pokemon, Live Competitions, Timer Rules

Hello hat lovers!

We had several big changes announced for the 2017 season, everything from official confirmation of the format, new features, and changes to old systems. Much of this is overwhelmingly positive in my opinion and I’m very glad to see the progression that this game is taking in Sun&Moon to make VGC a greater experience. I will be posting the most important news in regards to VGC and my thoughts on them. I will be leaving some stuff out though that I believe are less important, so to see the entire everything that was announced, be sure to visit http://www.pokemon-sunmoon.com/en-us/new-pokemon-global-link-features/

(also, evolutions for the starters were released. The Rowlet line is still the best)

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Rapha’s World Cup of Pokemon Report

Hello hat lovers!

This past month I took part in the World Cup of Pokemon, a NuggetBridge tournament that featured country and region based teams. I played for team Canada along with fellow VGC With Hats members Kelvin (lyingliepard) and Max (starmetroid), and the team was captained by Randy (R Inanimate). Other members of the team include 2015 senior national champion Ben Piercy (qertyk), 2016 senior worlds quarter finalist Daravone Souphommanychanh (Lilsquinty08), Tyson Gernack (Firefly), Myles Krystalovich (drakon), Dan McSorely (DONGSONG), Shingo Fukuyado (Uwaki Shin), and Curtis Cousins (Blaazin14). Unfortunately we were left short handed by the fact that our only day 2 worlds competitors in masters Hongyu (fivepointstars) and Hao (…Hao) chose to back out from the tournament, and our admittedly thin roster didn’t allow us to advance. Regardless, the World Cup was a lot of fun because I got to play the 2015 format all three weeks, and unlike the NPA, I had already been acquainted with most of my teammates in real life.

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BattleSpot Doubles Team (Peaked 1954 Rating)

Greetings hat lovers!

This isn’t VGC anymore technically, but I’ve taken a mini break from worlds practice to ladder on BattleSpot doubles. Beyond the intro, the post will be shorter than usual because I know non-Japanese readers don’t care for the format anymore, and truth be told, the team is fairly standard and I’m just posting this as an archive of sorts.

The biggest deviation from the standard with this team is the use of both Mega Gardevoir and Mega Kangaskhan. As strange as it is to say after having played 2016 for so long now, double mega teams aren’t overly common on BattleSpot doubles, but I believe having both makes the team better than the alternatives. The idea came about from having alternated between my nationals / worlds team and CHALK-T whenever I take a casual stroll through the format. As much as I love Scrafty, the version of the team that had it was overly weak to Milotic, Charizard teams, and Heatran among other things, whereas CHALK+T had a very difficult time with rain, Perish Trap, and in general, lacked valuable Fairy coverage. I took the best of both worlds from Scrafty + Gardevoir and Kangaskhan + Cresselia, and while they don’t cover their respective weaknesses perfectly, it complements the other four Pokemon very well and gives me more options versus their poor match ups. The biggest downside I’ve found with having both Gardevoir and Kangaskhan is that I lose the Fake Out + Trick Room option that the other two versions had. I’ve considered swapping out Trick Room on Gardevoir for this reason; however, I find other alternatives to be more situational, and without Trick Room, I lose any speed control option versus Ground types.

I haven’t done a comprehensive count, but if I had to guess, I bring Gardevoir about 70% of the time, compared to 30% for Kangaskhan. I honestly believe Gardevoir was the best mega from 2015 despite whatever biased conclusions people may draw from 2015 worlds results. Generally speaking, I bring Kangaskhan versus Charizard teams, Milotic teams, teams that are weak to Heatran (more on that later), and Gardevoir versus most others, because Kangaskhan, I feel, is too weak against Amoonguss and Intimidate to justify bringing it against teams that have them.

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Surf N’ Turf Update

Hello hat lovers!

I recently won back to back PCs in Victoria, putting my best finish limit at 1/1/1/1/1/16E. I used virtually the same team as the one in this article so this post will be shorter than usual. I’ll detail some of the slight changes I made regarding the team, and how those changes affect certain match ups.

Also, big thanks to Max once again for letting me and Hao stay at his place for the weekend!