Hello Hat Lovers!

Today I’m going to talk about the team I brought to Nationals. I was hoping to fill the front page with Nationals reports from more successful players but Rapha’s Nationals report is going on Nugget Bridge (sellout) and our new unannounced author hasn’t finished their report yet.

Before Nationals I wanted a new team. I didn’t think rain was going to be a good metagame choice for Nationals. I was very comfortable with Salamence & Aegislash and knew I wanted both on my team. I tested a couple different ideas but never found anything I really liked. About a week before Nationals I decided to play the same team I used at Regionals. Because Heatran was increasing in popularity I figured rain would be good. My attitude was that Nationals was going to be a free vacation and if I could make day two than that would be another free vacation at worlds.

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Man I love this .gif

Hey there Hat Lovers,

While I never check twitter, when an article gets as suddenly popular as “5 Reasons Why Milotic isn’t Bisharp,” it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow. There are some pretty inane comments it’s received, both on the site and on twitter. While the original tweeter and commenting crew later realized that the article was written in April, and thus not a current comment on Milotic, the wake of that negative press will take a couple days to cool off.

In the meantime, the attention has had me revisit the article. Looking at what I said back then and where Milotic sits now in the metagame, I was actually inspired to write a bit of extra discussion. (more…)

Hey there Hat Lovers, Mark here.

This Canada Day, with US Nationals only 3 days away, I thought I’d write up a fun little preview article to showcase the Canadians with a good shot at a World’s invite this year. The following list is a both a Top 10, and a clean cutoff for anyone with a minimum of 180 CP; that means if anyone on this list gets a Top 16 at US Nats, they’ll have >380 CP, which is the projected cutoff for a Worlds invite.

So who are the Canucks to look out for at US Nationals? (more…)

Hey there Hat Lovers,

Today’s post is short and sweet. I just wanted to give a shout out to Epic Games and More in Victoria BC for holding their first Pokemon 3DS tournament this past weekend! Despite being a local grassroots tournament, we had an attendance of 15 players; that’s only 2 below our last Premier Challenge at the same location! Epic Games will be holding monthly tournaments from here on out, so if you’re looking to play in the off-season, Epic Games is the place to be!

Yesterday’s tournament had cash prizes for first and second, and store credit for T4; they also had a couple giveaways of Nintendo Kirby plushies!

Epic Games is also thinking about getting a Capture Card for future events, and wants to stream events on Twitch with commentators if available. But first, they need to see that Pokemon will be a consistent event worth streaming. It’d be awesome to see Victoria’s Pokemon community rival that of Vancouver’s. The EG crew are also interested in looking into becoming a sanctioned organizer through Pokemon so they can start hosting sanctioned events including Premier Challenges! So spread the word if you aren’t already!

As far as the VGC with Hats crew did: the tournament was in Best-of-3 format with Top Cut. Max was playing a hail team he’s been toying with and I played Hyper Mode. Max and I finished Swiss at 4-0 and 3-1 respectively to make cut. We ended up facing in Top 4 in another one of our usual terrible amazing coin flips skill-offs. After that, I faced Ben in the finals winning 2-1 and taking the tourney. Also congrats to Ben and Calli for making Top Cut (and Theo for bubbling)!

Overall, super stoked to have played in a Victoria tournament; this was the first Victoria VGC tournament that I didn’t host, and the first I’d ever played in that wasn’t just a small event I ran alongside Pokemon Club at the university. It felt extremely weird to be wished “good luck” as I left the door to go to the event, but I guess that’s a thing now!

Cheers,
Crawdaunt out

Hello hat lovers!

This past weekend I was able to win the BC Invitational, a tournament that we detailed here. This was a tournament that I had been looking forward to for quite some time, and despite not being awarded any CP and the attendance being a little small compared to the amount of people that earned an invite, this was quite easily the most excited I’ve been over a tournament performance. The $350 prize for winning was quite nice, especially after missing out on a Nationals stipend, but the greater satisfaction was probably winning a tournament that was invite exclusive. I also managed to go 10-0 the entire tournament, winning five straight best-of-three sets without dropping a single game in those match ups.

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