Hey there Hat Lovers,

I wouldn’t consider myself an elite player by any means, but I do think the topic of today’s article is something I can weigh in on. Since my two articles on maximizing your EVs (Developing Speed Tiers and Bulking Up), I’ve been wanting to add a disclaimer of sorts. A recent topic on the Nuggetbridge.com forums has inspired me to finally sit down and write this thing.

Doing well at VGC requires a combination of skills. First and foremost is an understanding of the game and the Pokemon you expect to play against. After that comes the ability to build a coherent team that accomplishes your goal of winning games. Last is the subtle development of player skill through experience; this impacts your success at all levels of play. Individual player skill is also something that increases as you have an understanding of the game, and is able to develop better when you have a coherent team and have the option of making winning decisions every game.

The most important part of your development as a player is to take these steps in order. It is really damaging for a player to avoid playing because they don’t understand how to do well. Today I’ll argue that the most important thing you can do is to just play, but hopefully I can guide players in how to learn better from their testing experience.

1. Developing a base understanding (studying)

2. Building a team

3. Gaining experience

4. Conclusion

For your development as a player, it’s best to take these steps in order. It is really damaging for a player to avoid playing because they don’t understand how to do well. (more…)

Hey there Hat Lovers,

VGC with Hats has another author to get excited about! Joining the VGC with Hats crew is Raphael “Rapha” Bagara, a local player from BC. Despite a short VGC career, Rapha is the proud owner of a toque, and has started 2015 with 158 Championship Points in a very competitive area for Premier Challenges, filling his Best Finish Limit with a 2nd, 4th, 4th, 4th and 16th. He also has 40 Championship Points from bubbling out of Oregon Regionals at 9th place, for a Top 16 finish.

Despite often settling on the same team, Max and I usually take a different approach to VGC with Hats. Max tends to write about his testing results, while I like to post about concepts in my approach to the game. With a third author, the content on this blog can only improve as a new perspective is brought to the front page.

Plus, he uses Togekiss.
#TogekissNation

Cheers,

The VGC with Hats team

p.s. There is an Azumarill in Rapha’s box that hasn’t seen battle since 2014

Hey there Hat Lovers,

Round 3 of the National Collegiate Pokemon Association (NCPA) is starting next week! If you’ve missed out on the action so far, check out Mark’s Round 3 preview highlighting every team and their members. Here’s a sample to pique your interest:

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University of Victoria (UVIC)
2-0

UVic started off with a close 3-2 win over Oklahoma State, and followed it up with a victory over CSULB, 4-1. The team changed things up a bit between rounds one and two, swapping out John Westwood and Robert Call for Jason Wynja and Wesley Anderson. That move seems to have worked well for UVic as both subbed players took their sets in round two, and Wesley currently tops the NCPA in KO ratio (8.00).

The ACEs for rounds one and two have been vgcwithhats.com writers Mark Hanson (142 Championship Points) and Max Douglas (266 Championship Points), with Jason Wynja (176 Championship Points) and John Westwood (122 Championship Points) in non-ACE slots. While Wesley may lead the team in W% (100%) and KO ratio, it’s hard to ignore Max Douglas who is coming off a 2nd place Regionals finish.

Fun fact: UVic also has a Premier event-studded team; every member has at least 20 CP from this 2015 VGC season.

Captain’s Call: “Max, please don’t use Beedrill.”

Next opponents: UC Berkeley proved their worth in round one, sweeping TAMU 5-0. They emerged 3-2 after taking on Oklahoma State. As UVic took a close 3-2 series against OSU themselves, this should make for an interesting butting of heads in the western conference.

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Feel free to check out the NCPA 2015 Season Player Statistics as well! You can also follow the NCPA on Twitter!

Cheers,

Crawdaunt out

Hey there Hat Lovers,

Today’s article is going to be a further discussion on Speed in the ORAS metagame. There are many things that aren’t 100% in Pokemon; you have inaccurate moves, flinch chances, critical hits and more. The best players look for ways to either give themselves consistently favourable RNG rolls, or avoid random chance altogether. The former is a discussion I briefly brought up a long while back in my article “The Blame Game.” Today I’m going to focus on an aspect of the latter: ways to avoid random chance altogether. And possibly the most predictable thing in Pokemon is not move accuracy, not flinches, not crits, not random burns or freezes, but Speed.

Why you should think about Speed

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Hello Hat Lovers!

With ORAS coming out this week we’ll be saying goodbye to the VGC 2014 format as we knew it. Move tutors from ORAS will available for use in the current format, meaning we’ll have a slightly modified metagame for the rest of the year. On that note We’d like to take a look back on the 2014 format and reflect upon the last year.

History as Players:

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