Warning: Included screenshots and importables contain profanity and sexual innuendo

Introduction

Hello Hat Lovers!

My name is Scott Iwafuchi and I’m here to share my experience using one of my favorite Pokemon – Porygon2 (P2) – during VGC 2024’s Regulation F (Reg F) ruleset! This report will encompass the entire teambuilding process that led to each iteration of the team as well as my runs at the Portland, Charlotte, and Vancouver Regional Championships where I finished Top 128, Top 16, and Top 4, respectively. 

One of my best friends, Demitri, and I discovered the Tera Poison Porygon2 idea very early in our experimentation with the ruleset and I eventually committed to refining the team throughout Reg F. Not only did I think that P2 was an incredibly strong Pokemon, but it made the game feel comfortable and familiar to me despite some general gripes that I had with the format at large. There were moments where I doubted P2’s ability to hold up amidst shifts in the meta, but I ultimately chose to lean into my experience with the team and how well it weaponized my talents as a player, rather than try to develop something else. 

A common trend within Pokemon is the idea that teams have an inevitable expiration date and will need to be updated drastically, or scrapped entirely in order to keep abreast of meta developments. There are certain strategies, like Dondozo + Tatsugiri and Psyspam, whose rate of success rises and falls dramatically based on the kinds of teams that are popular within the field. While there is a lot of value in analyzing meta and usage trends to help construct teams, my perspective has always been: ‘Comfort is supreme’. After deciding that I would stick with P2, Incineroar, and Amoonguss, the goal was to perfect the last few slots and hone my ability to pilot the team. Let’s start by talking about the team’s origin story.

Disclaimer: The bulk of this report will be a narrative account of how I arrived at the team I brought to Vancouver. If you are looking for details about the spreads and my matchups guide, feel free to scroll to the bottom. If you are at all interested in how the team came about though, please read. I think it’s pretty fun and cool, and I worked really hard on it 🙂

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