Hello Hat Lovers!

It’s been a very exciting past few weeks to play VGC as players have been scrambling to quickly learn the new format that was announced at the World Championships just a month ago. Last week the first major tournament using the Sun Series rules took place in the outskirts of Philadelphia, it was there that I managed to win with a team that iMagikarp built and also placed top 8 with. Since it was nearly complete when Justin came to me with the team, I don’t have much insight as to how the team was put together, but I’m happy to share the sets and how they interact together from my own perspective.

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Hello Hat Lovers!

It’s been a while since my last team report due to various circumstances, but that’s finally changed! I won the Seattle Regional, one of the final regionals in North America for the 2017 season, with a team that Rapha had been working on since February and used to place 9th at the Oregon Regional back in March.  Initially I was set on bringing something else to the tournament, but on the Wednesday before the tournament I decided that this was the best team I could take. I didn’t practice too much with it before then, but I had guidelines written by Rapha on using the team and I had watched my friends use this team on Showdown for weeks.

Here is a QR Code for the team.
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Hello Hat Lovers!

For those who may not know me, my name is Justin Burns and go by Spurrific online. I’ve been playing VGC since the fall of 2014 where I placed in the top 8 at the first regional I attended. For the rest of the 2015 season I never advanced that far in a big tournament, but I earned enough decent results to receive an invite to the World Championships in Boston, where Max added me to the VGC with Hats crew.

Following a 1-5 performance in Day 1 of the World Championships, I spent most of September trying to find a strong team I could play comfortably with. For a few weeks I was using Mega Gardevoir, but when October rolled around I had switched to trying out Kangaskhan.

The team was very standard, but it originally had some interesting quirks, such as Explosion Choice Band Landorus and Life Orb Thundurus. Although I dislike Choice Scarf Landorus, I switched my set to that because I felt like I was lacking in speed and needed a way to deal with faster threats I might see at regionals such as Weavile or Terrakion. The team was starting to win at a greater frequency, but I still felt like something was missing. I was keeping my options open during the week leading up to the Lancaster Regional, but ultimately I decided that I needed to take this team if I wanted to do well. After testing quite a bit and making some changes, here is what I came up with.

The Team

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