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On Banning Dark Void

Hello hat lovers! Rapha here.

If you are active on Twitter you may know of the recent arguments that have arisen regarding Dark Void, unquestionably everyone’s favorite aspect of VGC. If not, to recap, some people have called for the move to be banned whereas people on the other side of the issue see the clamoring as nothing other than a symptom of a lazy team builder.

On some level this is true, but I’m really not a fan of the cherry picked targeting towards the poorly thought out arguments made by a fraction of people that happen to share a common opinion, and using that as a way to dismiss the idea. Unfortunately with a platform like Twitter, the people who are best heard aren’t those with the most compelling arguments, but rather who shouts the loudest, which is unfortunate because there are valid reasons as to why VGC would benefit from a banning of Dark Void.

This is a problem: discussions should be about whether or not Dark Void is beneficial for the game, not whether or not those who want a change from the status quo should be labelled as idiots or if they’re actually worth listening to. There’s responsibility on both sides to keep this civil and actually informative, but it often devolves into wah-wah-wah on one hand and shaming on the other, and the targeting of the people on the extremes only escalates the problem.

I’m going to do my best here not to come across as being whiny, entitled, or misinformed about how to approach problems posed during team building. Admittedly, I have also not played the VGC 2016 format yet, and my opinion on Dark Void will be on how it affects the game as a whole, not how it pertains to this rule set specifically.

I would be in favor of a Dark Void ban – Just because I share an opinion with several of the whiny people you may have seen on Twitter it doesn’t mean I represent or advocate that approach to an issue. Dark Void has issues that extend beyond just the problems with a player, and I’ll do my best quell some anti-ban arguments.

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VGC 2016 Worlds Information Announced

Hey there Hat Lovers,

Pokemon.com just put up the 2016 Worlds information! I wrote about the new Play! Pokemon format and what we might expect a Worlds CP bar to be set at back when the new Championship Points structure was announced. Well, we now know that bar, and holy moly is it low. Way lower than I expected, even granting the possibility that they’d lower it significantly. The 2016 World Championships CP bar for the Masters division is 350 CP. Given how accessible CP are now, with the introduction of Midseason Showdowns, and an increase in the CP payout, it’s incredible that they’ve lowered the bar this much. I’ll be talking about the US and Canada for the rest of the article, but the details for other regions can be found in that Pokemon.com link.

What does this mean for the players? (more…)

VGC 2016: A look at what’s in the format

This article is literally just a collection of images from Bulbapedia to better visualize Pokemon that have been added to the format. If you’re like me, you’re not at all used to using Legendaries, and you have little idea of what some of their competitive niches are (especially for Doubles). So hopefully this wall of sprites can help you team-build by reminding you what is in the format, and what you’ll have to watch out for. The idea for this post comes from our VGC cube draft deck.

For some great insight into these new legendaries check out this Pokemon.com post announcing the new ruleset, and going over some of the strengths and weaknesses of these legendaries.

This post will be a work in progress and I’ll update this randomly whenever I’m team-building and trying to prepare for changes in the format. I’ll be adding relevant Mega evolutions and top Pokemon as they’re brought up in conversation. With these legendaries roaming about, I’d imagine some viable Pokemon will be hoisted into the limelight as great checks/counters to the centralizing power of the new legendary-based teams.

New legendaries

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