Hello Hat Lovers!
Hayden McTavish here, new recruit for the VGC With Hats crew. I recently (well, recently when I started writing this report) made top 8 at US nationals, losing to fellow VGC With Hats member Raphael Bagara in top cut. What’s more interesting than how I did, though, was the team itself. It had some fascinating quirks in it, ones I think (because the team did do well) may warrant further examination. That said, I don’t want to present this team as a finished solution – I felt it had some dubious choices and there are definite areas for improvement. The Thundurus matchup in particular is less than ideal, and I had issues playing against Japan sand sometimes, if only because I need to make effective hard reads against salamence/tyranitar leads and it’s difficult to maneuver around bulky water + Aegislash. (actually I got some laughs when I told people I brought a Japan-sand weak team to nats, and while it likely was a poor meta call I don’t believe the matchup was altogether terrible, and the comfort factor of running this team far trumped that issue as I was pretty comfortable in the large majority of my other matchups)

But enough about the team’s flaws! here it is, with ev spreads bolded since they’re the only information players couldn’t have already accessed on pokemon.com:

(more…)

Hello hat lovers!

With this series of PCs likely over for me for the rest of the calendar year I decided to post the teams I’ve used so far this season. I cut 6/8 of the PCs I attended and currently have a BFL of 1/1/4/4/4/4. It could definitely be better given how I lost some of my games in top cut, but overall, I’m happy with my results so far. I’m looking to cut out the top 4s in future PCs.

(more…)

Hello hat lovers!

This past weekend I won my second PC of the season, doubling my total from last year already. I had very little practice with this team: I started testing the archetype two to three weeks ago and really liked it, but haven’t used it until the PC itself. I threw the team together the night and morning before the tournament because I wanted to try something other than Gardevoir, and I figured I could at least get carried by having good matchups. I noticed that locally, Charizard and Salamence were the most popular megas, and I assessed that Salamence / Rhyperior / Cresselia had a good matchup versus those teams. Unfortunately, Rushan and Hao, two people that use Charizard, were instead using different teams during the tournament. Hao wanted to use Gardevoir instead and Rushan forgot to bring his 3DS so he instead borrowed my Metagross rain team. Thankfully I never played Rushan because that team has an excellent matchup versus mine, and it would have just been cruel fate to lose to my own team.

Making last minute team decisions is a cardinal sin for me but I couldn’t get myself to keep using the same team when there are other options that I genuinely like, and I ended up getting incredibly lucky that this led to a win.

(more…)

Hello Hat Lovers!

When we make EV spreads more complex than the simple 4/252/252 we often have to make some interesting choices based on our goals. Today I bring to you an interesting situation I encountered. Recently I was making an Aegislash spread. I wanted a specially defensive Aegislash that could survive other Aegislash’s Life Orb Shadow Ball. I didn’t know how much speed I wanted to use, so I decided to dump the rest in special attack. My first thought was that I would need a Calm nature, here is the spread I came up with:

EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 172 SpA / 76 SpD / 4 Spe
Calm Nature

These are the stats Aegislash achieved (note that the special attack stat is in Blade form since you can never utilize it in shield form):

167 / 63 / 171 / 192 / 198 / 81

Out of curiosity I decided to make a Modest spread to see if I could achieve the same stats. I came up with the following:

EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 36 SpA /212 SpD / 4 Spe
Modest Nature

This spread reached the following stats:

167 / 63 / 171 / 192 / 197 / 81

At a cursory glance it appears that the Calm nature is superior to Modest, but the Modest spread is arguably the better spread. The reason for this is what these spreads do for Blade form. In Blade form the Calm set’s special defence stat is 88. The Modest spread reaches 97. Anyone who has played Aegislash before knows that while you always try to avoid taking hits in Blade form is does happen and you can still survive weaker hits. For this reason I consider the Modest nature to be better for this set. Calm nature still has merit for Aegislash, but not for what I was trying to do with it.

So when making an EV spread for Aegislash, keep in mind what stats it reaches in both of its forms.

~Max

Hello hat lovers!

With the NPA season now over for me, I’ve decided to write about the tournament. For those who don’t know what the NPA is, it was a tournament held by NuggetBridge in which the managers of the twelve teams would “bid” on the players who signed up. Each week, eight players from each team would play against each other.

This year I returned to the Castelia Cones after playing for them last season. I unfortunately didn’t do as well as I would have liked, only going 5-4 due to my lack of practice leading to poor team decisions and subpar playing, but I nonetheless held my own in a field against other high level players.

(more…)