Complicated EV Spreads: Bulking Up!

Hey there Hat Lovers,

Today will be a follow-up to my “On developing Speed tiers throughout a metagame” article. This time around, I’ll be looking at examples of Pokemon that don’t set the speed bar first, and instead are interested in surviving important attacks. Specifically, I’ll talk about how players recognize what attacks are important, how that relates to the purpose of a Pokemon, and common themes amongst Pokemon that invest in bulk over maximizing their attack stat. My goal is to help players cue in on what they’ll need to prepare for in a developing metagame, and how they can go about doing that!

Table of contents

  1. What’s the real threat?
  2. What does your Pokemon do (and how can you help it fill that role)?
  3. What kinds of Pokemon use complicated spreads?
  4. In Conclusion

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Two Spooky: Victoria Premiere Challenge Double Report

Hello Hat Lovers!

I attended two Premiere Challenges in Victoria last weekend. Being in Victoria, these Premiere Challenges wouldn’t have as many players as the Vancouver PCs. On top of this I’m friends with everyone that was going so I knew everyone in Victoria and everyone that was making the trip from Vancouver. Because of this I had a good idea of what I was going to face.

Since I won the last Premiere Challenge in Vancouver and posted my team I was a little worried that someone would try and counter-team me. I hadn’t been playing much in the weeks between the events so I decided to stick with what I was confident in and change one of my Pokemon to deal with the local metagame.

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New ORAS Mega Evolution stats revealed

Hello Hat Lovers!

The Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire demo has been distributed around the world, and hackers have found some data regarding the new Mega Evolutions stat distribution (as well as OR/AS’s level up moves, egg moves, and tutor compatibility). For those of you that don’t want any spoilers for the new Mega Pokemon or their stats, I recommend you not to read any farther. For those who are always itching to learn more about the new games as their release date approaches, read on! I’ve given my thoughts on the new Megas and how I think they’ll fair next season.

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On Developing Speed Tiers Throughout a Metagame

Hey there Hat Lovers!

Today, I’m going to discuss a topic I’ve been thinking a fair bit about lately. One of the most common frustrations I see from people trying to learn the game is understanding how people come up with complicated EV spreads. It really isn’t obvious where the EV spread  92 HP / 4 Def / 252 Atk / 4 SpDef / 156 Spe for Adamant Mega Charizard X comes from. I’ve contemplated writing an article about coming up with complicated EV spreads, but realized many of them are generated first by speed requirements. In order for someone to understand where those requirements come from, we need to use a metagame approach.

For a really helpful article on the many speeds Pokemon can reach, see Scott’s Speed Tier article on Nuggetbridge.com!

Outline

  1. Don’t think in EVs, think in stats

  2. Base Speed vs. Max Speed Stat

  3. Centralizing Pokemon or Speed Stats

  4. Example: Adamant Mega Charizard X

  5. The Evolving Metagame

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Scrubbing Up – 1st Place Premeire Challenge Report

Hello Hat Lovers!

This weekend I replicated Mark’s success and won a Premiere Challenge in Vancouver. The tournament was happening at the same venue as TCG BC Regionals was, so I got to see Trevore, Chase and Josh while I was there. They’re still scrubbing up playing TCG, Chase won in Masters and Josh made top 4 in Seniors. Our tournament was supposed to start at 3PM once the Juniors were finished but they took much longer than expected and we ended up starting around 6 PM.

The team I used started out as the Raichu team seen before on VGC w/Hats, and has changed over to become what it is. I’ve been shaping this team for a few months now.This is a stark contrast between Mark, whom has been making his teams sometime between 3AM and when the tournament starts. I’ve been yo-yoing in the 1400-1600 range on Showdown as I’ve been testing changes and new party members. I realized that Showdown wasn’t a reliable indication of how I would do as I was facing the same players over and over again so the view of the metagame I was getting was biased. On top of that most of the best players in BC aren’t playing by the (current) metagame. I had a rough matchup against Tyranitar so I was hoping that I wouldn’t face very many. I tried a lot of different members on the team to deal with Tyranitar and while I don’t think I’ve managed to make the team favourable against it I gave the team enough outs to be able to defeat it.

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