My haitus from competitive Pokemon and closure of the Brisbane Buzzwoles discord

Hi everyone, I'm making this post today to announce that I'm closing down the Brisbane Buzzwoles discord and taking a break from live VGC events (aside from the occasional PC/MSS) indefinitely. This has been a hard decision for me to make, as I have so many great memories in that discord but I feel like it has long since outgrown its usefulness and there are other more prominent Australian VGC communities around now (i.e. the Aus VGC discord) which players would be better off joining instead. The discord has not been active for a long time, and I don't really have the time nor energy to change that nowadays. If you are reading this, I have privated all channels and replaced the announcements with a link to the Aus VGC discord, which you can also join here. If you need anything from the Buzzwoles discord, please feel free to ask me - I will be keeping the contents of the server for at least the next twelve months.

As for my own participation in VGC, I know I recently said that I was planning on continuing playing. However, I've since come to accept that the level of stress VGC puts me through isn't really worth it anymore, and I don't really want to feel like I have to commit my weekends every time a local event pops up. I still love playing doubles and teambuilding, so I will try to play the occasional local event but I am currently not intending to play at regional level or higher events in the future (at least for any extent further than just getting the entry prizes).

As for my VGC / other web apps, I am planning to continue maintaining these when new updates drop for the forseeable future.

Thanks everyone for reading, I've had many great years of playing with you all and I hope that my motivation to compete one day will return. Otherwise, I'll see you around :)

Version Control and Pokemon

Version Control and Pokemon

How you can use systems such as Git and Github to preserve your teams online
By Damon Murdoch

Introduction

For as long as I’ve been playing competitive Pokemon, Pokemon Showdown has been the primary platform for players to build and test teams before using them in tournaments, IRL or otherwise. The platform has an incredible built-in team builder which provides a filterable list of all Pokemon, moves and items and even does a validity check for you before letting you hop onto the ladder and play. However all teams created are hosted in your browser’s local storage, meaning that if you (or your automated system processes) do a cleanup all of your teams will be lost! This means that you will want to use Showdown’s built-in import/export feature frequently or risk losing your work. However, what is the best way of backing up your teams? There are a number of solutions to this problem, the most obvious of which will be briefly discussed below. In addition to this, I've taken the time to develop an application and process which I believe greatly enhances the readability and maintainability of Pokemon teams when storing them online.

Standard Solutions

The following sections will briefly discuss several different methods for storing teams online, and the pros and cons towards each discussed method.

1. Pokepaste / Pastebin / Cryptobin via Email

• Very quick and easy
• Accessible from anywhere
• Can share via forwarding

• Gets messy
• Hard to track changes
• Hard to navigate / maintain
• No real-time collaboration
• Pokepaste / Pastebin not secured, others may see your pastes
  

2. Raw Text Upload to Google Drive / Docs

• Quick and easy
• Accessible from anywhere
• Can add other users to collaborate / view
• Can track changes using google documents history

• Hard to navigate / maintain

3. Raw Text Upload using Github / Gitlab

• Relatively simple - Can be achieved using web interface or command line
• Accessible from anywhere
• Can add other users to collaborate / view
• Can track changes using commit history
• Provide comments on changes using commit messages

• Hard to navigate / maintain

My Solution

The above solutions are most commonly used and are in most use cases, fine - however I disliked how hard it is to navigate and find teams in the single file format. As a result of this, I seeked to develop my own solution.

Introducing PSManage

[Repository][Download]

PSManage is an application I wrote which takes a given showdown export file and converts it to a folder structure of formats, showdown folders and teams stored in plain text files. For example, it would convert this:

[Example Pokepaste]

To this:

[Example Teams Repository on Github]

Which can be converted back into text and imported just as easily. This allows you to easily navigate and browse your teams after exporting them, as well as tracking changes between individual files (teams) much easier. This is achieved by using the following commands with the application.

To create / update a new folder structure, from a paste:

psmanage export [path-to-text-file] [path-to-folder]

To create / update a Pastebin, from a folder structure:

psmanage import [path-to-folder] [path-to-text-file]

This requires more effort than the other methods, however it is  actually pretty simple to follow once you get used to it and the end results are, in my opinion, worth the extra effort.

Installing PSManage

The executable can be downloaded from the GitHub releases page [link] or you are free to compile it from source yourself. The executable should be either left in a location added to your PATH variable (on Windows) or in the same directory as you plan on keeping your team file and folder.

Using PSManage

The following set of instructions is how I use the application personally, and are for use on Windows. Usage should be similar on other Go-compatible platforms.

Requirements

• Git (Command Line Preferred) [Link]
• A GitHub / GitLab / Other account
• PSManage (Self-compiled or from releases) [Link]

Instructions

Exporting teams from a paste

1. Open a command line window (PowerShell / CMD) at the folder you plan on saving your teams (e.g. C:/users/(your profile)/teams
2. Create a new text file in that folder using your favorite text editor, and paste an export of your showdown teams in it
3. Using your command line window, run PSManage on the text file using the following command:

psmanage export [path-to-text-file] [path-to-folder]

Ensuring that the path to the text file is the file you created containing the export and the path to the folder is where you would like the teams folder to be created.

      4. If this is your first export, you should see a new folder use been created. Move into it 

cd teams 

And create a new git repository.

git init .

      5. Create a new empty repository on your choice of hosting platform (in this tutorial we use GitHub) and add it as a remote location for your repository

• Ensure that your new repository is private otherwise anybody will have the ability to view (but not edit) your teams!

Git remote add origin (link to github / gitlab repository)

      6. Add all of the content into the new Repository 

git add .

And commit it with a message.

git commit -m "Initial commit!"

Then, push it to the master branch.

git push origin master

      7. Congratulations, you've successfully created your first commit! You should now be able to browse the files online in your GitHub repository, and share them with other users via adding collaborators online.

Accessing your repository from another computer / accessing a repository you have been added to

1. Open a command line window (PowerShell / CMD) at the folder you plan on saving your teams (e.g. C:/users/(your profile)/teams/
2. If you have not done so yet, place the psmanage exe file in this folder.
3. Clone the repository you have been granted access to
4. Congratulations, you now can fully access the repository from this computer!

Importing teams from a paste

1. Open a command line window (PowerShell / CMD) at the folder where your teams are stored

(E.g. C:/users/(your profile)/teams/teams)

      2. Ensure you have the latest working version of the teams

Git pull origin master

      3. Move to the parent folder where the text file should be imported 

cd ..

      4. Using your command line window, run PSManage on the text file using the following command:

psmanage import [path-to-folder] [path-to-text-file]

Ensuring that the path to the text file is the file the import should be dumped to and the path to the folder is where your teams are currently stored.

      5. Using your favorite text editor, open up the imported file and paste the contents into your Pokemon Showdown teambuilder.

      6. Congratulations, you've now successfully re-imported your teams!

Automation Scripts

If you get tired of the manual process of using the command line, it’s not too hard to write scripts to automate the process. I’ve created example scripts in my repository in the ‘scripts’ directory.

Automate pulling from the repository

The below script checks for any updates in the git repository, then opens up a new VS Code window 

[Example Script]

Automate pushing to and updating the repository

The below script opens a VS Code window on the file ‘teams.sd’, which you can paste your showdown export into. Once done, you can close the window and hit enter in the terminal and it will run the export, create a new repository (if required), add the remote github repository (if one is not present) and push the latest changes to the remote repository.

[Example Script]

Support

If you have any problems, or encounter bugs in the application you can report them as a problem on GitHub here, or contact me on twitter here.

Conclusion

While my solution may require more setup than any other method, I believe it to be a worthwhile investment for the long-term maintainability for large team libraries. However, basically any solution aside from raw pastebins via email / instant messaging provides the same level of security and access control as any other method, and is the recommended method of storage for overall simplicity and security. I hope that this has been useful for you, and that you find it easier to store and maintain your team libraries in the future. Thanks for reading!

SirScrubbington's VGC 2019 Moon and Worlds Ultra Report

Introduction

Hey guys! It’s been about three months since I posted anything here, and I felt like after worlds and my draft leagues had finished it was time to upload my moon and ultra series team report. After a strong Sun Series showing, my Moon and Ultra series results are not nearly as impressive. However, I still earned my worlds invite and worked hard to earn the best results I could at the tournaments I played, and had a lot of fun teambuilding for both formats. This article will go through all of the tournaments I played since the start of Moon series, through to Ultra Series and up to the Pokemon World Championships in Washington DC, which was held on the 16th to the 18th of September, 2019.

Tournaments

Moon Series

January 12th, 2019 - Neo Tokyo Premier Challenge - 1st Place

->

[Team Paste]

This was my first moon series tournament of the year, and I honestly had very little idea of what I wanted to use. On the drive to the tournament, I decided to use the Zygarde Solgaleo core which was popular late in Sun Series for two reasons - It looked like a fun team that I could play defensively, and it was a team I was sure people wouldn’t expect from me and prepare for. I had used nothing but Xerneas or a single Yveltal centric team up to this point un Sun Series, so I felt that I was safe to use a different archetype and not be counterteamed. I opted to use the fighting Z-Move on Solgaleo rather than Solganium at this point in the metagame as I wanted to test a bulky Solgaleo which could still OHKO Incineroar without needing a Life Orb or Expert Belt, and I felt that avoidng the attack and defense drop was a good justification for running Fightinium Z. I also opted to run Nature’s Madness over Light Screen on Tapu Fini, as I preferred the chip pressure Tapu Fini would provide against my opponent’s team. The only matchup I was concerned with was choice specs Kyogre + Lunala, which I had a feeling Graham (@AmedeeGraham) may use but he did not use the team at that tournament, and we did not face as he lost in Top 4. I did not drop a set all day with the team, however I dropped a game to a variant of Graham’s Xerneas Groudon team in swiss and Lochlan Janke (@MudcrabV)’s Kyogre Yveltal team in finals. Overall I felt the team was extremely strong, and I absolutely loved playing it. It quickly became one of my favorite archetypes to play around with in Moon Series. The only change I really felt was necessary after the tournament was changing Venusaur to a more useful Pokemon, as I had teched it on for Groudon matchups and did not even find that I could bring it versus that core. 

January 28th, 2019 - Fastbreak Sports Premier Challenge - 2nd Place

[Team Paste]

After the last tournament I won with Zygarde, I felt like moving back to a more standard Lunala Xerneas team. This team was built on the same engine as the specs Koko Toxicroak team, but I adusted it to have a more defensive core in Assault Vest Tapu Koko and Amoonguss to offer redirection for my restricteds. Kommo-o was teched on as I saw it was getting used on quite a lot of Xerneas Lunala teams at the time, and liked its utility versus archetypes such as Yveltal Groudon or Yveltal Kyogre. It also allowed the team to automatically win versus any teams built around Dragon-Type restricteds such as Palkia. In theory, it helped with my Zygarde matchup as well however I was not able to break through Henry Rich (@HobbitVGC)’s Zygarde team, which was my singular loss in the entire tournament both in round two of swiss and in finals. Overall, I felt like this team was strong however I feel like it was a little bit rough around the edges in places and needed work before I would be comfortable using it at a major.

February 24th, 2019 - Fastbreak Sports Premier Challenge - (1-2 Finish)

[Team Paste]

This was a very small tournament, and also the first time I tested one of my favorite Moon Series teams. I go into more detail about this team in a later section, where the team was improved upon for a later event however at this tournament I lost to Lachlan How (@BattleDolphin) who beat me pretty convincingly in three games with a Mono-Steel team which was actually pretty hard for my core to break. In hindsight, I realised that there were gameplans I could have taken which allowed me to win vs. the team consistently however that is on me for not realising how to play the matchup in the moment.

March 16th, 2019 - Neo Tokyo Midseason Showdown - 2nd Place

[Team Paste]

I built this team after James Katsaros’s (@ChosenFutureVGC) performance at Oceania Internationals, where he made Top 4 with the exact same team but with Volcarona instead of Landorus. I chose to use Landorus-Therian for my tournament as I was worried about playing against Stakataka, and could not figure out how to break it with James’ version of the team. I lost to Lochlan twice in this tournament, both in the last round of swiss and in finals in very close sets, however it was extremely difficult for me to win the matchup if luck favours him. Between both sets he did not miss a single grasswhistle despite never setting up gravity, however I believe in most situations he made the best play available to him and I respected that. This team felt very strong, and I really enjoyed piloting it. Yveltal and Xerneas in Sun and Moon series had extremely good synergy, with very few matchups that both of these Pokemon fail to handle and it is relatively easy to handle most of these threats (Such as Stakataka) with good supporting Pokemon such as Landorus. Incineroar, Tapu Fini and Amoonguss round out the team with a very strong defensive core which allow you to play safe and set up your gameplan consistently. 

March 16th, 2019 - Neo Tokyo Best of One Premier Challenge - Top 4

[Team Paste]

My second time using this team at a live event, this team was originally built as a Psych-Up Kyogre team with Xerneas however after testing I found that the team was far better with just using Xerneas to set up early and then clicking Choice Scarf Water Spout to clean up threats. This team had a lot of options I really appreciated, however I feel that overall the trick room matchup was weaker than I may have liked. This was a much more aggressive, hard setup version of the Kyogre Xerneas core than the Amoonguss Kartana version, however I felt that having Smeargle and Toxicroak improved the mirror matchup as you had a redirection user which worked on grass types. Follow Me + Tailwind was also good versus faster Groudon teams, as you could then bring in Kyogre and click Role Play and this was essential for early Moon Series events in Brisbane. I ended up losing to Malcolm's Solgaleo Yveltal KokoChu team at this premier challenge, which I felt was a reasonably poor matchup but I could win if I played perfectly. I felt like this team was very strong for this time in the metagame, I felt comfortable piloting it and given the chance I most likely would have used it if I were able to attend the Oceania International Championships. 

March 30th, 2019 - Fastbreak Sports Midseason Showdown - 2nd Place

->

[Team Paste]

I was feeling a little bit of pressure going into this tournament, as I knew that if I were able to make at least finals I would achieve my first worlds invite since 2016. I really wanted to make worlds this year, so I was very determined to put on my best performance possible and clutch out my worlds invite. I decided to go back to the Zygarde Solgaleo core, as I hadn’t used it for awhile and felt that people would mostly not prepare for it. This team was a more standard version of the team than my previous team, which featured Light Screen Tapu Fini and Solganium Z Solgaleo. I also switched out Venusaur for Firium Z Volcarona, which provided a means of redirection for the team and still performed Venusaur’s role of cleaning up opposing Groudon. This team was extremely good, and I did not lose a single set the whole tournament against anyone but Graham, who 2-0’d me twice. The matchup vs. Graham’s team was extremely difficult for me to play, and was almost unwinnable as my Volcarona was unable to live his Accelgor’s Final Gambit. My one regret about teambuilding for this tournament is not ensuring Volcarona could take this hit, as it is possible with the right HP investment. Regardless, finals at this tournament was all I needed to achieve my second worlds invite, and I was very happy with the result! 

Ultra Series

April 13, 2019 - Fastbreak Sports Premier Challenge (Top 4)

->

[Team Paste]

For my first Ultra Series tournament, we had a small 8-player tournament at Fastbreak Sports with a finals only top cut. I decided to use a team I had been experimenting with revolving around using the disruptive power of Incineroar, Amoonguss Fini and Manectric to support my two setup restricteds in Calm Mind Dusk Mane Ultra Necrozma and Xerneas. This team was relatively strong in most matchups I played, however I had no Ground resists so it was difficult to switch into Primal Groudon. I ended up losing in the second round to Graham at this event, as his Lunala Kyogre core was able to overwhelm my team as I did not have a form of speed control which was fast enough to overpower his and I was knocked out of contention for finals. This team was fun to play, however it had a lot of very glaring weaknesses so I decided to bench it for the moment after playing at this tournament.

May 6th, 2019 - Fastbreak Sports Midseason Showdown - (2-2 Finish)

[Team Paste]

This was my second Ultra Series tournament, which I did not have too much time to prepare for so I decided to use a standard Groudon Xern Fini team. However, I decided to run Mega Kangaskhan as a secondary mega to better handle Lunala. Overall I felt the team handled itself relatively well, however I lost to both Graham and Paulo (@Mastodon_Swoles) in swiss. Both teams were difficult matchups for me to play against, however if I made a few plays differently I could have won both of the game threes that I lost in these sets. Overall, I felt that I couldn’t complain too much as I had lost both sets to my own mistakes and focused on trying to fix up the team and myself for the following premier challenge.

May 6th, 2019 - Best of One Fastbreak Sports Premier Challenge - 2nd Place

[Team Paste]

This team was modified to go back to Payapa amoonguss, as the previous team had Coba (and the only flying move I took was a banded dragon ascent, which it dropped to) and fixed the HP stat on my Tapu Fini so that it would activate the super sitrus berry on taking a Guardian of Alola Z-Move. I had much better luck with this version of the team, where I played the entire tournament losing only to Malcolm twice, both in the last round of swiss and in finals. I felt like my matchup to Mogar’s team was unfavourable, however it was on me that I did not realise a lot of key information about the Pokemon on his team until it was already too late for me to capitalise on it.

May 24th, 2019 - International Challenge May - Top 512

[Team Paste]

A little different from most of the teams I’ve used this year, I don’t generally enjoy playing online tournaments but I though I would use this one to practise a little bit with an archetype I had seen picking up recently - Soft Perish Trap Groudon Fini Incineroar + secondary restricted. The original team I got the inspiration for my version from was Case Bongirne’s (@CasedVictory)’s Groudon Rayquaza variant, however I opted to use Yveltal as I felt that the team had an awkward Lunala matchup. I had a very good day one with the team, going 13-2 in sets however I started struggling to continue with a better than neutral win-loss in matches once I broke through to the mid 1600s, and I end my tournament run there. I felt that overall the team was very fun, however I think core always had glaring unfavourable matchups somewhere depending on the secondary restricted used (Xerneas, Rayquaza, Yveltal etc.) and this discouraged me from using the archetype further. I also felt that my version of the team was suboptimal, as I chose to use a Super Sitrus berrry on Amoonguss rather than the almost optimal Focus Sash item for this point in the metagame which would have greatly helped my Rayquaza matchup.

June 16th, 2019 - Fastbreak Sports Premier Challenge - (1-2 Finish)

[Team Paste]

For the last ever VGC tournament held at Fastbreak sports before it closed permanently, I decided I wanted to practise using a variant of Pado’s (@PadoVGC) standard Rayquaza Xerneas team which had not too long before won the European International Championship in Berlin, Germany. I opted to use Stakataka over the standard team’s Nihilego as I felt it was a good Pokemon for handling the mirror matchup and I wanted to be able to handle trick room teams more effectively. I felt that Wide Guard was also a strong option offered to the team by Stakataka, and it also served as a Xerneas answer which is one of the main purposes of Nihilego on the standard build. In this tournament I lost to local player Teagan Stiga (@KaraikouVGC) piloting a Kyogre Solgaleo team as she played very well to prevent me from breaking her Solgaleo, which I felt that this team struggled with greatly.

Pokemon World Championships Preparation

I had a reasonably long drought of events between my last premier challenge and worlds, so I went through a lot of different team iterations before deciding on what I wanted to use at the tournament. I’ll go into each of those teams a little bit below, then over what I actually decided to use and my tournament run itself.

[Team Paste]

The first team I built, I felt pretty comfortable using this team and really liked playing it however I didn’t spend enough time practising with it before the tournament to feel confident piloting it at worlds. I decided to run Gengar on this team over the standard Nihilego as I wanted an answer to common pokemon such as Lunala, and felt that the team autolost to a well-played Solgaleo without it. Ghostium Z was my item of choice on Gengar as it was able to clean up both of these Pokemon and also offered a similar role to Nihilego in pressuring Xerneas with Sludge Bomb and somewhat Groudon with Destiny Bond.

[Team Paste]

Heavily inspired by Graham's US Internationals finalist team, the next team I built was a Xernala team which used the offensive engine of Mega Medicham and physical Tapu Koko to break down the defenses of opposing teams. I was fully intending on using this team at worlds up until about a week and a half before the tournament, as early on in testing it was performing very well for me on ladder and I was winning most common matchups consistently. However, I felt the team really struggled with the Shedinja matchup as well as the Lunala mirror and as Lunala Rayquaza became a common archetype I felt that I could no longer rely on this team for worlds.

August 16th, 2019 - Pokemon World Championships - Day One - (4-5 Finish)

Not my team, can't paste this one. Sorry!

In the end, I decided on using Calvin’s (@CalvonixVG)’s which he sent to me in the week before the tournament, after we discussed what we expected to be common at worlds and that my Lunala Xerneas team really just wasn’t performing consistently enough for me to feel comfortable using it at worlds. Calvin had recently used this team to win two online Nintendo Switch invitational tournaments, and it met all of the requirements for a team I was comfortable using going into worlds - I just wanted to use a team which had Incineroar, Amoonguss and Xerneas as I felt I was best practised with those Pokemon and could play with them more consistently than any other core. I spent the week before the tournament practising with this team as much as possible, as well as interacting with the discord where I could to learn how to play the team before the world championships. 

When it came to the actual tournament, I had a really good start, beating a Japanese XernDon player and then winning against @Redo_VGC who was piloting Xerneas Yveltal Metagross. In round three, I played versus Hippolyte Bernard (@RedSilverVGC) who was piloting XernDon Torn Kang, which was a favourable matchup for the team however I got very unlucky in games one and three to lose the set. From then on, my luck didn’t get a whole lot better where I lost to Zhengle Tu’s Haze Light Screen Madness Tapu Fini on XernDon, which I was not able to break with the core and then @UncleLouPKMN’s Rayquaza Lunala team after missing a single target Origin Pulse on his Stakataka game three for the set. From then on I did my best to win out, as I did not want to drop from my first world championships and was chasing the x-3 run however I lost again to LunaDon and XernDon in rounds 5 and 9 respectively.

I felt that Calvin’s team was really good, and by no means regretted using it however I felt that after my initail loss, a lot of things which I couldn’t control went against me to lose out of the tournament. It’s always possible to look back and think that there were things I could have done differently to prevent it, and in this case there was at least one play I could have made which would have changed a game I lost. However, for the most part I felt that I played the best I could have given my circumstances in the tournament. For my first worlds, it was an eye-opening experience to the calibre of play I should come to expect from a high level tournament such as worlds, and showed me that I still have room to improve if I want to become a top level player.

August 17th, 2019 - Washington DC Open - (1-2 Drop)

[Team Paste]

For the open, after playing Day One I regretted registering for this tournament a little bit as I wanted to spend the day checking out the venue and hanging out with friends but I didn’t want to waste my registration so I decided to sign up with a fun team I hadn’t had the chance to use yet. I didn’t stick in this tournament for very long, as my round one and round three matches were very unfavourable matchups which I were able to play to a game three scenario, where I choked the mindgames in the endgame and called the 50-50 wrong both times. This frustrated me immensely, as both sets had been very difficult and I had played well to get to that point and losing it all that way really bothered me. After this, I decided that it was better for me to just drop from the tournament and spend time hanging out with friends rather than keep worrying about it.

Overall outside of my underwhelming tournament performances, the worlds run was amazing! I got to meet a lot of absolutely amazing people for the first time at the event, such as one of my close friends Nils Dunlop (@Invicnati) who I’ve known online and practised with for over three years now but never had the chance to meet in person. I had a lot of fun meeting people who I both had and hadn’t interacted with before, and overall it was just an amazing experience! I didn’t have too many expectations heading into the event, as it was my first time attending and I was really excited for a lot of the thing I hadn’t experienced before such as the popup Pokemon Centre, and the Competitor Kit with both made me extremely happy.

Conclusion

I wasn’t planning on returning to worlds next year if it was held in America again, as I was considering putting Pokemon aside for a bit to focus on other priorities. However, worlds in London has me really excited and I absolutely want to attend and compete again. This year was my first time travelling to America (Or outside of Asia Pacific, for that matter) and it was an amazing experience overall and I’d really love to experience Europe too. There are also a couple of European Pokemon players who I was unable to meet at worlds this year, who I’d love to meet next year! 

While this year definitely wasn’t my best year for Pokemon after Sun Series, I’m really proud of how I’ve worked on improving my tournament mindset this year. I’ve been able to stop myself from tilting after losing a game in most situations, which has been a major issue for me in the past as I often felt that after losing a game I would lose confidence in my ability to take the set. This has become much less of an issue for me after really focusing on improving my attitude towards playing the game and the way losing affects me mentally. Overall, I think this has been a great year for my development as a player, and I don’t regret any of it. Thankyou so much for reading this, and I really hope you enjoyed it! 

SirScrubbington's VGC 2016 Format Report

SirScrubbington's VGC 2016 Format Report

Foreword

Hey all, I’ve recently discovered this report which I had almost written and published to my blog back in 2016 however it was forgotten and never uploaded. Unfortunately many pastebins have been lost in the past three years, so I've attempted to recover as many as possible without recreating them unauthentically. In additon to this, I’ve tried to more or less leave it as it was as it’s an interesting reflection of my mindset as a player back when it was written. However, I’ve had to rewrite the regionals and nationals sections as they pointed towards a Nugget Bridge report I wrote using the blog system that is no longer accessible. Regardless, I hope you can find some interest in this report and I'd like it to be seen as a kind of time capsule for my development as a player in the later sections, potentially for the format itself.

Introduction

Hey guys! 2016 has been an incredibly big year for me as a Pokemon player, I’ve met a lot of amazing players at events, completely outperformed my expectations and I’ve honestly had a pretty fantastic time playing the 2016 format, which is something I would have never  expected to say during the first few months of the format. 2016 was my first full year playing VGC, as I started in around March of 2015 and was also my first year attending the National Championships in Melbourne - Which had really been a huge goal for me since I’d started playing. In this report I’ll be going through my tournament season, as well as a few teams I made on the side which never got to see play at a tournament. Thanks for reading, and I hope you all enjoy the report!

Early Season Testing

The 2016 format was announced early on in November 2015, which gave me about 3 weeks to prepare teams before the Nuggetbridge Summer Scramble was announced. My first impression of this format was that Shadow Tag was really good, so I attempted to use Gothitelle to make a Dual Primal trick room team.

NB Summer Scramble (1-x)

My general gameplan was to use either Kyogre or Groudon depending on which primal my opponent was using, or both in certain matchups. I based the team off Scar’s Team in the Battle of Legends, as I used the same 5 pokemon as him with Gothitelle over Cresselia. My version of the team was really awful, and I ended up doing really badly in the scramble but I feel this tournament and my performance helped me get used to the format and the kind of play required to be successful in 2016.

Aus V Malaysia Qualifier (0-1)

In preparation for the Aus v Malaysia qualifier, I prepared a Xerneas Kyogre team, which I really enjoyed using on ladder on Showdown. However, I had very few answers to the Xerneas Smeargle lead which became clear to me during the qualifier for the Australia vs Malaysia Qualifier - Where I lost in the first round to Saamid (Yourf) who was able to flowchart me easily.

Looking back at this team, I see that Bronzong would have been a fantastic Pokemon choice over Gothitelle, but at the time I simply had Gothitelle because I wasn’t sure what else I wanted and Bronzong hadn’t really picked up in the metagame yet. It would have made the team better in so many matchups and I truly regret not trying it.

International Challenge January (Top 10 Australia)

After losing so easily I was pretty demoralised, so Luke Brown convinced me to try a more standard team with Scarfed smeargle and Quick Guard Talonflame.

I ended up using this team in the International Challenge, and just barely made 10th in Australia. Early in the metagame these teams were decent, but more or less relied entirely on hitting dark void and getting good sleep turns to position yourself, which I considered to be very inconsistent and unreliable in the long run. I hated relying on that to win games so I changed this team pretty quickly after the tournament.

Nugget Bridge Major (4-5)

Unfortunately it is impossible for me to retrieve my team and matchup combinations due to the Nugget Bridge forums deletion, I can give a basic rundown of the opponents I faced and how I fared in the tournament. For most of the tournament I used fairly standard Big Six variants, teching in new moves and Pokemon occasionally but for the most part my team remained the same each week.

Round 1 - ReuvenVGC (win)

Round 2 - CYGC (loss)

Round 3 - KingWill53 (loss)

Round 4 - davethebrave (loss)

Round 5 - LithiumAcid (opponent drop)

Round 6 - TheChaz (opponent drop)

Round 7 - LPFanVGC (loss)

Round 8 - HaxnandezTH (win)

Round 9 - PephanVGC (loss)

Finishing the Nugget Bridge Major with a negative record was a little bit demoralising, however it was only early on during the season and I can recognise that most of the opponents which I lost to were skilled players. Regardless of my performance, it was a good opportunity to learn more about the format and improve my skill level against international opponents.

Brisbane Premier Challenge #1 (2-3)

This was the first live event of the format for me, and I used a modified version of my international challenge team which dropped the scarf on smeargle for Sash, and I actually ran feint as a tech move for beating opposing smeargles.

My justification for this was that feint + Brave Bird would be able to KO any opposing smeargles, although I found that Smeargle + Talonflame was a very passive lead against any team that did not lead smeargle themselves. I also used Flamethrower + Eruption special Groudon, which was good in some matchups but during the event I got paired against a Ho-Oh team piloted by Mastodon - Which fairly well destroyed me. He also managed to sheer cold my Geo’d Xerneas on the first attempt which did a pretty good job at tilting me going into the next round, where I lost to Boomguy’s RayOgre team with Roar Zapdos after a double dark void miss.

Brisbane Premier Challenge #2 (Top 4)

This tournament I used practically the exact same team, as I’d been testing a lot of teams online but I wasn’t really satisfied with any of them. The only massive difference I can remember between them was that in this tournament my Primal Groudon had rock slide - literally just because I didn’t want to lose to Mastodon’s Ho-Oh again.

I made the horrible decision of using a special defence reducing nature, which made my Groudon get easily 2hkod by Salamence and realised the day after the event that Groudon actually got Ancient Power which I could have used instead. I also discovered a few weeks after the event that I wasn’t actually running max happiness on my return Kangaskhan - I was starting to wonder why my return wasn’t even strong enough to kill Talonflame at neutral. I lost in Top 4 to Boomguy, who was using a Cresselia Big 6 team which I really liked the look of and began testing with after the event.

Brisbane Premier Challenge #3 (Winner)

I had planned on bringing a RayOgre team to this tournament, but after testing and refining the Trick Room Big 6 Cresselia online, I found I really enjoyed using it and decided to bring it to the PC.

The team proved really consistent in swiss, and I felt like I had answers for pretty much everything I faced during the day. I played against Luke Milligan (Pidgey) in the finals, who was one of my swiss losses but after careful consideration of my game plan I was able to take the finals set 2-0. This was also the first tournament where I met Malcolm (MogarVGC), a skilled VGC player who has become a good friend of mine since the event.

Brisbane Regionals (Top 8)

For this event, I don’t think there was ever very much doubt in my mind that I was going to bring Cresselia Big 6. The team provided strong neutral matchups across the board, and having a trick room mode with slow Groudon ensured that I would have a playable matchup against other trick room primal teams.

This was a best of one swiss regional with a best of three top cut, and I felt like this was of benefit to a less standard Xerneas Groudon team as my opponents may not have a specific gameplan. In this event I went 7-1 in swiss, which was absolutely necessary for me to top cut as I had the worst resistance of any other player in the top cut of that event. This is due to the fact that I lost my games extremely early, and my round one opponent dropped round two, forfieting to me after winning. This was not something I did not nor would ask for, and felt really uncomfortable about it for the rest of the event but I guess in the end, it determined me to play strong into top cut so to that much I am thankful for.

I lost to Mitch Kendrick (@MitchVGC) in Top 8, as I didn’t have a well defined gameplan against Kyogre Xerneas. Game one, I lead in such a way that allowed me to be susceptible to the Smeargle Xerneas flowchart, which was regrettable as I did not predict the lead as I should have. Game two I switched up my leads to provide a stronger matchup, and my Groudon win condition took a critical hit which cost me any chance of taking the match.

Australian Nationals (Top 8)

Australian nationals was held the week after my first semester at University ended - So I was extremely busy with work and didn’t really have any time to test new teams for the tournament as I would have liked to. Up until the night before the main event started, I had every intention of playing the tournament using a slightly modified version of my regionals team, with a more offensive, slower Xerneas EV spread and a few more optimised EV spreads elsewhere.

 

The Xerneas EV spread change was due to the general increase in bulk on opposing Xerneas in this point in the metagame, as my low investment and neutral nature on my regionals Xerneas meant that I was no longer picking up non-Geo’d Xerneas with Moonblast. When this became an issue, there was no way I could keep using my current spread. However, after testing this team on Battle Spot the night before the event, I was unsatisfied with my losses and felt that I was playing a number of teams which I was incapable of beating consistently, so I cut Cresselia for Salamence and switched to fast Groudon.

[Pastebin]

This is the standard, full Big Six team which I felt was experienced enough with to play most matchups and at least understand my win conditions, especially in a best of three set. The main problem with using a team like this at regionals or other smaller events in my mind was that it was easily understood by my opponents, and weak to being teched against in best of one. However, I felt that in a best of three scenario I could play around most techs as they are revealed and using a team with consistent neutral to favourable matchups was acceptable.

I ended up going 7-2 in swiss at this national with my team, taking losses to Sam Hughes (@Sammy_Slug) in round four and Mitch Kendrick (@MitchVGC) in round six. Sam was using Rayquaza Kyogre Ferrothorn, which is a difficult matchup for my team and he outplayed me convincingly in game three, and Mitch Kendrick was using Xerneas Groudon Bronzong, and his Smeargle worked well to make the set difficult for me to play. Another memorable match I played this day was Bailey Owen (@BargensVGC) in round three, which was one of the toughest sets I played all day, against who was at the time one of the strongest VGC players in Melbourne. He outplayed me extremely convincingly game one, however I was able to make a comeback in game two. Game three was an extremely close game, which I was able to bring into a winnable position by making a number of extremely aggressive plays and winning a Groudon speed tie.

This national was a two-day swiss event, where rounds eight and nine were played on day two, so going into day two with an x-2 record was probably one of the most nervewracking experiences of my life. However, on day two I was able to take wins against Jimmy Farrujia (@jfaybzplays) and Bailey Gabell (@BaileyGabell) who were both skilled players who forced me to play for my chances at top cut.

Jimmy was playing an extremely interesting archetype in Xerneas Yveltal, which was something I did not have matchup experience with and lost game two pretty convincingly, however I was able to take game three with the team weaknesses I had learned in games one and two. Bailey Gabell was piloting Rayquaza Kyogre, which was a difficult matchup however it was a more standard variant than Sam Hughes’ version so I had a better understanding of the matchup and won 2-0. After going x-2 early, I was very nervous that my resistance would not hold up enough to get me a top cut spot, however I was lucky enough to make the Top 16 cut at 13th!

My top 16 opponent was Bailey Owen again, who was one of my most difficult games day one and I felt like his Crobat made the matchup a little bit unfavourable. After losing game one I made a punishable play in game two for which I was rewarded for with a critical hit and for him this was tilting enough for me to win game three without too much competition.

In top 8 my opponent was Sam Pandelis, a well-known Australian VGC player and a multiple time Australian regional champion. Due to the unfavourable setup of the invite structure in 2016, the low number of events in Australia made it extremely difficult for Australians to achieve travel awards to the World Championships, even with numerous good regional placings. As a result of this, myself (and a number of other people) threw matches in top cut of this national to ensure that those of us that could would get their paid invites. It was quite difficult for the stream team to show games, as for example in top eight there was only one set which was actually played.

This is something which for me was extremely dissapointing as it was an anticlimactic conclusion to one of my proudest achievements as a VGC player after a poor pre-season performance however the Top 4 placing was far more important to Sam than it was for me, as he needed it for his worlds invite and I had no chance of getting paid even with a win. Regardless of this, I was still very proud of my achievement and it felt amazing to make top cut at my first national and prove myself as a player in the Australian VGC scene.

Australian Pokemon League (3-1)

The Australian Pokemon League, or APL was one of the best experiences which I could have asked for as an early Australian VGC player, and it’s something which I really hope comes back for future formats. I think it’s an extremely useful tool for introducing new players to high level competitive play, and providing an opportunity for players to learn the value of group teambuilding and discussion despite the nature of Pokemon as an inherently one-versus-one game in terms of offical competitive formats.

I played almost every week for the Lumiose Mimes, which was an APL team captained by Phil Nguyen (@Aussie_Phil_N). At the start I was incredibly nervous, as I have trouble under pressure especially when there are more people than just myself relying on my results, which was something I was not used to I had an amazing team which I was happy to play for, and I think having the opportunity was a priceless experience for me. When playing in the APL, my matchups were as follows:

Week 1: Didn’t Play

Unfortunately I had an assignment due this week which had to take priority over playing, but I promised Phil I’d play in the next week in whichever slot he preferred.

Week 2: (VGC16’) - Rhydian Cowley

Me:

Rhydian:

This was actually a really fun set, and was our highlighted set for this week of the APL. Game one I was able to Smeargle Xerneas flowchart pretty safely, and game two I mixed up a little bit, however lategame I made a prediction based upon a move which Rhydian did not have so I ended up losing. Game three, I was able to get the fake out swords dance off freely, and through some faily shaky mindgames in the midsection I was able to close the game out with Groudon.

Week 3: (VGC16’) - Jay Tyrrel

Me:

Jay:

This was the week after Australian nationals, and as we were playing against Bargens’ team I felt pretty certain they were just going to counterteam big six. The strongest big six counterteams are generally dual primal teams, so I felt like they were just going to abuse that matchup. As a result of this, I put together a powerful Rayquaza Kyogre team which in theory has an extremely favourable dual primal matchup and through a little bit of luck in game two I was able to take this set 2-0.

Week 4: (VGC15’) - Sam Pandelis

Me: 

[Pastebin]

Sam:

Sam is a good player, so this was an extremely stressful set to prepare for. I wasn’t expecting him to counterteam me, as I wasn’t particularly well known as a VGC15’ player at this point in time so my tendency to use Gardevoir CHALK was most likely not known to him. On the other hand, I was expecting him to use a very offensive team so I had to prepare myself for the possibility of playing some pretty heavy mindgames. I got pretty heavily rolled over in game one, however in games two and three I was able to navigate through the onslaught of mindgames and take the set.

Week 5: (VGC15’) - Jerikho Bulandi

Me:

[Pastebin]

Jerikho:

I didn’t know too much about Jerikho, however I knew that Dawg had spent a good amount of money drafting him onto his team so I wasn’t underestimating him. I decided against using my Gardevoir team again, as the other games which had been played already that week were mostly played using counterteams - so I decided to use a more experimental archetype in Charizard Y Gengar Whimsicott. It never really had a big performance at live events, but it popped up a little in the late season as a powerful Japanese Battle Spot archetype so I decided to give it a shot, as it had a reasonable matchup to standard teams. Overall I felt like I got a little unlucky in the set, but Jerikho played really well with a strong team so he won 2-0 pretty safely.

BSPL

The BSPL, or Battle Spot Premier League was another draft league I signed up for which was based around Generation five and six Battle Spot Formats - Including Battle Spot Doubles, otherwise known as VGC2015. This meant that a lot of VGC players wanting a break from the power-heavy format of VGC2016 signed up to have a chance to play for the doubles matches. I played for the Viridian Rhydons, which was a really fun team to play on which also featured my good friend, Brendan  Webb (@FloristTheBudew) as another doubles player. This league, while similar in structure was a very different experience for me than the APL, as I was placed on a team of Pokemon players from all over the world, all involved with different Pokemon formats - Including Battle Spot Singles, and even GBU Singles! It was a really great opportunity for me to play some really great matches, which were as follows.

Week 1: Bailey Owen (@BargensVGC)

Me:

[Pastebin]

Bailey:

As you’ve probably seen from elsewhere in this report, Bailey and I played quite a lot of times this year so I felt like he’d know me pretty well and decide to counter my standard Gardevour CHALK team. As a result of this, I was a little bit lost on which team choice to pick so I ended up going with a HyperOffense team which I built in mid 2015 after a practise set with Jack Buckley (@Arahpthos) renewed my confidence in it. My team had an extremely favourable matchup to his self-admitted Gardevoir counterteam, so I was able to win two fairly clean games, with game two being a little bit messier after a scald burn on his end and a high low kick roll on mine.

Week 2: Kimo Nishimira (@TapuKimo)

Me:

[Pastebin]

Kimo:

After the success of the team last week, I decided I’d try using the same team this week as well. While I am more of a defensive player generally, as it allows you to make safer plays and still win I felt that this team allowed me to take games off highly skilled players if I were able to predict them accurately. However, Iost this set 2-0 from Kimo as he played extremely well, and despite the fact I was able to make the correct read and eliminate his Thundurus both times he was able to win the war of attrition and take both games.

Week 3: Matame

Me:

[Pastebin]

Matame:

Playing hyper aggressively didn’t pay off for me the previous week, so I decided to go back to my comfort zone and play with my Gardevoir CHALK team. He ended up using a fairly standard kangaskhan team, with a few interesting choices such as Milotic for the water slot, Volcarona over Heatran and then Aegislash over Cresselia. He played far more aggressively than I was prepared to deal with for my team, knocking out my Amoonguss on the switch-in turn one game one with Hidden Power Ice and Double-Edge and I didn’t have the offensive pressure to deal with his team after that. Game two I wasn’t able to keep things together and ended up losing, in what I think was at least a somewhat unfavourable matchup. However Matame played really well, and gave me a new appreciation to the skill of high level Smogon Doubles players.

Week 4: MiltankMilk

Me: 

[Pastebin]

Miltank:

After losing the last two weeks, I thought I’d experiment a little with a somewhat unusual team, based off a relatively standard but less common archetype. I kept the scarf Tyranitar set, but decided to use a mixed timid set with Ice Beam, Flamethrower and Dark Pulse in order to catch my opponent off guard and put pressure on intimidate switch-ins. My Salamence was bulky dragon dance to compliment this, and provided for a strong setup support combination with Azumarill and Amoonguss. With the right plays and a pretty favourable matchup, I was able to take this set in two games.

Week 5: Didn’t Play

We were already out of contention of making playoffs, so we decided to let the people who hadn’t had many opportunities to play have a chance this round. As a result of this, Pyritie and Quixxter took the Battle Spot Doubles slots this week.

Ladder Hero Meme Dream: Shedinja

Outside of VGC tournaments and online competitions, one thing which myself, Jack Buckley (@Arahpthos) and Paulo Amedee (@Mastodon_Swoles) played around with on ladder quite a lot was a Shedinja team, which saw many variations over several months of playing.

[Pastebin]

[Pastebin]

The team abused the fact that in VGC2016, very few teams had any way to hit a soaked Shedinja so in many games you could simply lead Smeargle Xerneas, switch your Xerneas to Shedinja, click soak and call it a day. Of course, the game didn’t always end there - Often you’d get to play out twenty to thirty turns of your opponents abusing you, but honestly that was at least a good part of the fun. The most variable slot on the team was the Amoonguss, which overwent a number of changes including Bronzong, Golduck and Mega Kangaskhan.

Additional Pastebins

While many of my teams were lost, there are a number which I have been able to recover. They don't fit into any other section, so I'll be going into them a little bit here.

Xerneas Kyogre

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Dual Primals

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Rayquaza Kyogre

[Pastebin]

[Pastebin]

Rayquaza Xerneas

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Groudon Kyurem

[Pastebin]

Dialga Kyogre

[Pastebin]

Zekrom Kyogre

[Pastebin]

Yveltal Kyogre

[Pastebin]

Conclusion

While my season started incredibly poorly, I think overall this was an extremely important format for my development as a player and helped me learn some key skills about playing video games competitively at any level - And this lead to my two breakout performances, at Brisbane regionals and Australian nationals. It was also the year where I got to meet a number of interstate and international friends for the first time, which has really helped me keep involved with the game since. Competition has only gotten harder since 2016, as the general player skill level has increased and the skill level of Australian top players has increased immensely. As the competiton improves, you have to improve as well and I think this has been an exciting time for Australian VGC and our standings as a country in terms of global player skill. In addition this, I feel very privileged to have been able to represent the Lumiose Mimes in the APL and the Virdian Rhydons for BSPL and both teams helped me improve immensely as a player, and tought me new things about Pokemon - VGC and otherwise. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this report, and look forward to sharing more Pokemon content with you all!

SirScrubbington's VGC 2018 Teams Writeup

Hey guys! I’m back again with another writeup, this time about the teams I used in the VGC2018 format. Despite my lack of results, I really enjoyed playing in this format for the most part and found teambuilding to be really interesting. It reminded me a lot of my first VGC format, 2015 but it also had major differences which set it apart from other formats. While it was not without its problems, including fun factors such as Ally Switch and broken Z-Moves I felt it was an enjoyable format and I’m writing this report to document some of the teams which I made for and used during the 2018 season. I won't be able to provide dates for each of these events as it is difficult to pinpoint due to my lack of twitter activity for most of the season and Facebook deleting old event pages after awhile. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Pre-Season

During the pre-season for this format, I spent a lot of time playing with Kangaskhan based setup teams, as well as Calm Mind Cresselia. My first main team was built around sweeping with Volcarona, which at the time I felt was an extremely strong Pokemon especially with buginium Z. I used several other Kangaskhan based setup teams, including side-swagger Tapu Fini + CHALK, which I also felt was a pretty strong team but I never ended up using it at a live event.

Kangaskhan Volcarona Team

[Team Paste]

During the early format I was very convinced that Calm Mind Cresselia was extremely good, and was theorying it for the Australian International Championship which I was testing for in April. This team underwent many transformations, almost all of which made the team significantly worse than the previous iteration so I’ll post the version of the team which I was most satisfied with (and probably the earliest version) here.

Calm Mind Cresselia Team

[Team Paste]

EUIC Zelda Challenge 18’: Top 16

[Team  Paste]

Nils and I built this team extremely early on in the format, and afterwards it picked up for a little while on ladder. We felt that the team was very strong, so we decided I should use it for this online tournament, in an attempt to win a stipend to the European IC. I went 7-1 in swiss, losing to finalist Zeen in top 16. The matchup for the team was pretty difficult, but I did my best to take the set to two close games which I eventually lost, the second on a 50-50. The match was pretty highly viewed, and some people in the chat were a little less than kind to me because of some of the plays I made but I felt like I did the best I could given the circumstances. Overall I felt like the team was very strong, and in the time since then this has proven to be true with variants of the team performing well at several regional-level live events throughout the world.

Fastbreak PC: Outside Cut

[Team Paste]

For my first event of the season, I thought I’d try using a team which I really liked - a variant of Ketchupplant’s Perish Trap team. At the time, I felt like when it was played well the archetype was strong, and it didn’t force you to play ally switch mind games which were extremely common at this point in the metagame. I ended up going 2-3 at this event, after winning two very difficult games and then losing to three extremely unfavourable matchups and after this I decided against using the archetype again. Unfortunately, standard perish trap teams just weren’t that good in this format overall as they struggled to play defensively against Tapu Lele, big Z-moves, Kommo-o and early meta rain teams. By the end of the season, semi-perish teams were quite popular (and very good) after the introduction of Intimidate Incineroar however I don’t think I ever really ended up picking up that archetype properly.

Fastbreak PC: Finalist

[Team Paste]

I felt like this archetype was extremely strong going into the AUIC, so I felt like practising using it was a good idea at this event. I ended up using a slightly modified version of this team at Oceania, but I maybe feel that this version of the team was better as it has more of an offensive presence. I lost to @AmedeeGraham in finals of this event, who played very well using the standard @MrGX_VGC Kangaskhan Goodstuffs team which I felt was a very unfavourable matchup, given that at this event most if his Pokemon were faster than mine.

2018 Oceania International: 4-4

[Team Paste]

I honestly don’t really have too many excuses for my poor performance at this event, I felt like my play was decent but I had trouble applying enough pressure to my opponents with the way my team was constructed. I had prepared the team to be extremely versatile defensively, but I felt like in most of the matchups I played I was simply unable to pick up the knockouts I needed to win games. My defensive benchmarks were very strong, however and I spent a lot of time developing them, which can be seen here. I learned a pretty major lesson from this event, which I plan to carry with me for the rest of my VGC career - Just because you can make a Pokemon live something, doesn’t mean you should. I focused all of my EV spreads on taking hits, and ended up losing out on massive KOs which really ended up costing me at this event. While I was overall dissapointed with my performance, I took the opportunity of being in Sydney to travel into the city with some of my close friends and purchased my first anime figure - which honestly in my eyes, made the trip worth it and I had an incredible time meeting international Pokemon friends who I had wanted to meet for a very long time.

Fig. 1: Best $80 I’ve ever spent

Fastbreak PC: Outside Cut

[Team Paste]

This event was held shortly after Intimidate Incineroar was released, so I decided to use a team which I had been waiting to use for a long time - Gothlax, with Incineroar support. I knew this team was going to be extremely strong once Incineroar was able to use intimidate, so I decided to test my first version of this team at this event. I ended up going 2-2, after losing to extremely poor luck round one and a strong player in Brian Amedee round three which was dissapointing however I felt like the archetype felt powerful to use, once I was used to piloting it.

Fastbreak MSS: 1st Place

[Team Paste]

After a pretty long haitus, and a lot of time to think about how I needed to change myself and my teams to improve my play I came to this event with the intention of taking home the title. I decided to use the powerful Kommo-o archetype which had been picking up in popularity as I felt it was extremely strong with intimidate Incineroar, and Kommo-o was a Pokemon which I felt was highly underrepresented (and resultingly under-prepared for) at Queensland events. I opted to run Dragon Pulse Kommo-o as it is a generally good single target STAB move, and allows for you to KO opposing Kommo-o without needing a partner Pokemon. Despite playing some extremely tough matches, I only officially dropped a set to @MogarVGC, who I forfieted to ensure he’d cut and get the CP he needed for his worlds invite. I played against @HobbitVGC in round one and in finals, which were both very fun games but overall his matchup seemed unfavourable so I was able to clinch the win. I had a lot of fun using this team, and ended up using it for my remaining games in the Trainer Tower Open - Where I finished 6-3, going 2-1 with that team. When building this team, I had a lot of help from @AvengedWerehog, who worked with me to refine my EV spreads (Gengar especially) and overall optimise the team.

I remember back in the day, I had quite a few people message me on twitter asking me for the paste of this team. Kept you waiting, huh?

Melbourne Regionals 2018: Top 16 (5-2)

After its relative success at Latin America, I found new faith in the Mimikyu Snorlax archetype which carried me through the latter half of 2017 and primarily built using it for the remainder of 2018. Going into this event, there were several teams which I had built which I felt were strong, however I was primarily focused upon using a Charizard-Y Mimilax team which can be seen below.

[Team Paste]

While I felt that this team was strong, before the event a number of teams started picking up in popularity such as the Braviary Togedemaru Charizard-Y team which I felt were very unfavourable matchups so we decided to switch to a safer team archetype practically the night before the event. We ended up deciding on a Mimikyu Snorlax team built upon the Gothlax archetype, but with Mimikyu over the Gothitelle slot.

[Team Paste]

The majority of my Mimikyu-Snorlax teams use Special Mimikyu, which was extremely popular towards the end of 2017 but much rarer seen during the 2018 format. However, I much preferred special Mimikyu on almost all of my teams as it had a favourable chance to OHKO opposing Mega Metagross and Mega Gengar without having to factor in intimidate. Overall this team was very strong, and I found that I really enjoyed piloting it however I lost to @ludicolopatrol who played extremely well while getting a little lucky and @HobbitVGC who played well and made the correct call during our set in game three. I built the team and optimised the EV spreads with @Avengedwerehog, who used the same team as I during the event and went x-3. While finishing at 9th was a little disheartening, I felt like my play was starting to reach a level that I was satisfied with once more and overall felt optimistic going onto the next format.

Post-Format

After all of my events for the year were finished, I spent a lot of time continuing to play the format while helping my good friend @Invicnati prepare for the world championships in Nashville, USA. We had both been working on variants of the Mimikyu Snorlax team, and eventually decided on two versions of the the team which we felt were the strongest - Metagross Koko Mimilax, which he preferred and Metagross Fini Mimilax, which I preferred. Overall I felt that the Fini version of the team was suited to my defensive playstyle better, and I would have most likely used it at worlds had I earned my invite and been able to attend. While I can unfortunately not share with you the Koko variant of the team and the spreads Nils had used as they are not my own, the Fini variant of the team I constructed can be seen here.

[Team Paste]

Conclusion

This year I also played in a number of online competitions, official and otherwise however as they were so great in number I decided against featuring them as it would become an extremely cumbersome task for teams I may or may not have actually taken seriously when building. I hope you understand! Thankyou very much for reading this far, and I really hope you enjoyed my writeup or otherwise found it interesting. I’ll be trying to keep up with writing these, going into future VGC formats specifically VGC 2019 Moon and Ultra series so if you’re interested, be sure to keep an eye out!

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VGC2019 Sun Series Teams Writeup

Introduction

Hey guys! My name is Damon Murdoch, also known as SirScrubbington and I’m a VGC player from Queensland, Australia. I’ve earned 190/300 points of my worlds invite in the Sun Series for VGC2019, and wanted to take this opportunity to write a little about the teams which had carried me through the format and some of my thoughts on the format in general. At first I was a little unsure about how I felt about the format, however after playing through the entire season I felt that the format was extremely fun, and I’m hoping that moon and ultra series continue to be enjoyable VGC formats as well. I don’t necessarily think any of this is a massive achievement, and I could totally understand if you don’t think many of the results below are worth documenting however I like writing about teams and I personally think it is important to preserve the past of VGC, and making writeups like this is a very good way to do that. Thanks for checking out my report, I hope you find it interesting or useful!

The Teams

Pre-Season

Dusk Mane Kyogre Semiroom

[Team Paste]

This team was built around the idea of having both a very fast and slow mode for the team and had many different Pokemon in the last slot, primarily Tsareena or Lurantis. Life Orb Modest Tapu Koko was actually pretty strong early on during the metagame, however nowadays you would most likely just opt for sash on this kind of team if you were to use it at all. I actually quite liked this team, but I disliked the Yveltal matchup which you more or less entirely rely on Tapu Koko to win. The justification for Snorlax on the team was that it lacked a setup sweeper like Xerneas teams, and it was extremely powerful under Trick Room if it were given the opportunity to abuse it. I’m a little sad I never got to use this archetype of team at an event, but I really just couldn’t justify using it at tournaments where it was extremely likely to face Yveltal and Lunala archetypes consistently.

September 29th - Fastbreak PC #1: 1st Place

[Team Paste]

This team was a pretty hot take for my first event of the season, but in the past Brisbane events have had a pretty strong tendency to hard counter the meta so I was expecting to see a lot of Necrozma Dusk-Mane or Solgaleo. Rather, I ended up playing a lot of Xerneas matchups however Koko + Crobat were very good at answering most of those teams at this point in the metagame. I ended up winning this event, despite some unfavourable matchups (I only just barely managed to beat Scarf Ogre + Lugia) although in hindsight I feel I was pretty lucky to not face Masto’s Yveltal Xerneas team, for which I had very little matchup. The finals match of this tournament was pretty wild, as my opponent was a local player named Francesco who had no restricteds! I saw a lot of people talking about how his team made finals after it happened, but Francesco is actually a very good player who just likes using wierd teams like that. The finals match was actually really difficult, and I had to play pretty perfectly to take the win. Overall I had a really great time at this event, and it felt good to win the first event of a season for the first time in my VGC career.

October 13th - Neo Tokyo PC #1: Top 4

[Team Paste]

This event was pretty soon after Memphis regionals, which had just been taken out by Ashton Cox (@Linkyoshimario) and Jeremy Rodriguez (@SerapisVGC) making double finals of the event using the same six Pokemon, and the same incorrect Lunala EV spread. I felt like this was a pretty good indicator the team was solid so I decided to play with the archetype myself, only using a Lunala with special attack EVs. In the end it turns out my rendition of the team was a little unauthentic, however the moves I used were pretty useful against what I ended up playing at this event. In the last round I played @Mastodon_Swoles and discovered that I didn't know how to beat his Yveltal Xerneas team with this archetype, and I don’t think I touched this archetype again for awhile as it was a team that you should pretty commonly expect to face at Australian events, especially at a regional level. Overall I liked the team, but I felt like I needed something a little different for the midseason showdown at Fastbreak the next day.

October 14th - Fastbreak MSS #1: 1st Place

[Team Paste]

I ended up building this team when I got home, and I’d been theorying the archetype for awhile but I decided to build it properly after watching @theflyingbird14’s livestream where they built a similar version of the archetype. I ended up deciding on icy wind Ludicolo on the train ride to the venue, as I originally felt like Ice Beam was a superior move choice however after taking a moment to consider, Icy Wind Ludicolo is actually extremely good and gives the team a second mode of speed control which can be really important in some matchups. After making this adjustment, I also modified my Groudon from minimum speed to be an adamant variant, with enough speed investment to outspeed nature boosted base-100 pokemon after a single turn of Icy Wind. Overall I actually loved this team, and I feel like it’s probably the best team I personally built during the time I played this format, at least for this point in the metagame. Bronzong was actually extremely good, and I feel like it will continue to be good in moon series and especially so in ultra series. While I did win this event, it was not without playing some very difficult matches! I lost to @Arahpthos in swiss, using a team very similar to mine (Only with a much more stylish fire type Fake Out supporter in Infernape) and I felt pretty lucky to have not had to face him again, as I’m not too sure if I would have been able to win the matchup. I also had a very tough set against @PhilBoomyNguyen, with his interesting Reshiram Zekrom team that really caught me by surprise and forced me to play my absolute best during the set to take the win. Overall, I was very satisfied with how the team worked at this event and while I didn’t end up using it again, I'm confident that the team was actually pretty good.

October 27th - Fastbreak PC #2: 1st Place

[Team Paste]

I built this team basically on the train to the event, and decided on it because I wanted to try out the Yveltal Xerneas archetype which was becoming extremely popular in Australia. Rather than using the standard six, I opted to use Ludicolo instead of Tapu Fini because I felt that rain was extremely threatening and I was very likely to play it at a Brisbane event, where the players tend to use that archetype often. I also used Payapa Amoonguss over the Rocky Helmet item which is usually used on these teams, as I didn’t have terrain control but still needed to have an answer to Tapu Lele + x leads. At this event I used @AvengedWerehog’s Yveltal EV spread, which worked well however in modern Yveltal Xerneas teams I would have to suggest that running max speed is important. Overall I felt like the team worked well, and I was pretty happy with it but I played some really tough games, losing a set to Joey Schooth and facing a very strong opponent in @MogarVGC twice, in swiss and in finals.

November 23rd - Neo Tokyo PC #2: Finalist

[Team Paste]

At this event, I used a carbon copy of the Riley Factura (@GENGARboi_) regional champion team which is documented in his team report here. I decided to use the team as I had rarely played using the team and I wanted to better understand the archetype. Overall I felt like the team was extremely good, and you could play very safe in most matchups however I lost in finals to what I feel in hindsight was a very bad matchup of the team, coupled with a skilled player in @Mastodon_Swoles. Overall I felt satisfied with the team, and felt like I could use it at the event the next day and play well with it.

November 24th - Fastbreak PC #3: 1st Place

[Team Paste]

This team was just a modified version of the team I had used the previous day, with the nature of my Xerneas and Kyogre swapped. I decided to use modest Xerneas and timid Kyogre as the power boost Xerneas gets from modest can help you take some extremely important knockouts on Pokemon such as bulky Incineroar, and fast Kyogre means you can usually attack first safely against opposing Groudon or Kyogre when you have your weather control and outspeeding opposing Modest Xerneas with my Kyogre before they could set up is extremely useful for getting good damage off in those matchups. I was able to win this event with the team, only dropping a set to local player Joey Schooth who I think is a very good player so I felt okay with that. In finals, I played against @AmedeeGraham, and I felt like the matchup was pretty unfavourable at face value so I had to make some pretty aggressive plays to take the set. It was a very difficult final, and Graham really made me play for it. Overall, I had a great time at this event and was satisfied with the way the team performed.

December 1st - Brisbane Regionals: Top 16

Going into this event, I had two archetypes which I felt were the best in the format - Lunala Xerneas and Kyogre Xerneas. Originally I was pretty convinced that Lunala Xerneas had the best neutral matchups all around of any archetype, and had every intention of bringing it to the event. The first team I built using the archetype was based on the standard Australian Yveltal Xerneas team, because I felt like the standard Ashton team struggled a little against trick room which I was expecting to face quite a bit.

[Team Paste]

I felt like this team was pretty strong when I built it, however after Ashton won Latin America his variant of the team picked up dramatically, and I found it extremely difficult to win the mirror match against that team. As a result of that, and several other matchups which were getting harder as a result of the teams popularity I decided to drop it and try using the standard Ashton version myself.

[Team Paste]

This team was extremely good, however I felt after using it for several weeks there were matchups I were expecting to face at Brisbane which were extremely unfavourable for the team such as Lunala Kyogre and Yveltal Kyogre so I decided to drop it for Kyogre Xerneas, which I found comfortable to play and had used it successfully at my two events in the previous week.

[Team Paste]

As with my other Kyogre Xerneas teams, this team was heavily based off the team built by Riley Factura and is documented in his team report which can be found here. I decided to stick with the modest Xerneas and timid Kyogre I had used the previous week, as the power boost Xerneas gets from modest can help you take some extremely important knockouts on Pokemon such as bulky Incineroar, and fast Kyogre means you can usually attack first safely against opposing Groudon or Kyogre when you have your weather control and outspeeding opposing Modest Xerneas with my Kyogre before they could set up is extremely useful for getting good damage off in those matchups.

I decided on dropping focus sash on Tornadus because I felt like after using the team, I didn’t need focus sash and could afford to use Safety Goggles to offset my awkward Amoonguss matchup. Overall, I rarely brought Tornadus (And I never procced Safety Goggles) so having Focus Sash or Mental Herb may have been better, but I feel like the adjustment was reasonable in theory and worked well in testing. Tornadus’s bulk was invested to live Modest 252+ Moonblast from Xerneas at neutral, and Kartana simply used Riley’s EV spread with points taken from attack to reach max speed, as I felt like winning the mirror matchup was extremely important for this team. My incineroar EV spread for this team was a little different than the one in the paste, but I don’t really feel too comfortable revealing my speed stat at this stage as I don’t want to risk setting a benchmark. Sorry!

I ended up going 4-2 at this event, losing to the eventual regional champion @ChosenFutureVGC round one in an extremely close, fun set on the big screen and @MitchVGC in round six which came down to making a defensive play in game 3 which I was punished heavily for. I ended up finishing at 9th place, which was a little disheartening for my second regional level event in a row however I felt like I played as best as I could and I was overall satisfied with getting another 80CP towards my worlds invite. In additon to this, it was also amazing getting to see all of my interstate friends again, including my good friend and training buddy @AvengedWerehog who helped me test most of my teams and ended up using the same six Pokemon in the event. Thankyou to everyone for making the event a great experience!

Conclusion

Overall, I had a lot of fun playing in VGC 2019 Sun Series events, and while Xerneas and Incineroar have an extremely dominating presence in the format I enjoyed what I felt was a format which rewarded good defensive play and board positioning. At the moment, It's not looking like I'll be able to attend Oceanic Internationals due to my graduate job starting a week beforehand so I'll most likely be relying on points purely from local events or if necessary, attending a regional or special event later in the year. However, if possible I'm going to do my absolute best to get my invite and make it to the world championships this year. I hope to see you all there! Thankyou very much for reading all this way through my writeup, I really appreciate it and I hope you enjoyed it!

Learn to Play VGC: A Basic Introduction

Introduction

Hi! I’m Damon, also known as SirScrubbington in the Pokemon community. VGC, or the Pokemon Video Game Championships is the official competitive format for Pokemon and has official live events held frequently around the world.

VGC is one of the most exciting aspects of Pokemon, as it plays very differently to other eSports and live events are a fun opportunity to meet up with friends, play some games and maybe even win some prize money or a trip to the world championships! However,  competitive Pokemon (Especially VGC) has a high barrier for entry, with respect to having to memorise and learn a lot of complicated game related mechanics, learnsets and stats.

This article is here to make that job a little bit easier, and will discuss the most common things you'll need to know to get playing as soon as possible as well as a lot of teams to help you learn the metagame of Pokemon VGC.

The Circuit

For the past few years the VGC circuit has been built around championship points, which are earned for competing in and placing at official live VGC events as well as select online competitions which use the VGC format. The lowest level VGC tournament is a Premier Challenge, which is a small live event which is worth 15CP for first, then followed by Midseason Showdowns which award 50 CP for first place. Regionals and Special Events are worth 200 CP, and International Championships are worth a whopping 500 CP for first place. Premier Challenges and Midseason Showdowns are common, however higher level events are rarer and are normally announced well ahead of time, as people often like to travel to them.

There are four international championships held each year in Europe, Oceania, South America and North America. The top players in championship points for each region get paid trips to the next international championship, and eventually paid trips and garuanteed Day Two invites to the world championships in the USA. If you want to see the details of the championship point system, you can find the circuit information for 2018 here. 

The Rules

• All battles will be Double Battles played in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon
• All Pokémon in the National Pokédex are allowed, with the following restrictions:
• Pokémon must have the Alola symbol showing they were caught in the Alola region
• Mythical Pokémon, some Legendary Pokémon, and Ash-Greninja are not allowed
• Duplicate Pokémon are not allowed
• All items are allowed, but duplicate items are not allowed
• All Pokémon are set to Lv. 50, including Pokémon below Lv. 50
• Players have 45 seconds each turn to make their move
• Player time is 5 minutes

Transitioning from Singles to VGC Doubles

There are a lot of important differences between singles and doubles formats, especially VGC. I’ll be talking a bit about the key differences here.

Bring-6 Pick 6 vs Bring 6 Pick 4

In VGC, both players have a team of six Pokemon but you only ever bring four Pokemon to each game. This adds an additional layer of complexity to team preview which doesn’t really exist to the same extent in 6v6 formats. The general strategy for picking the right Pokemon in team preview is taking a good look over your opponent’s team and identifying which of your Pokemon best cover what your opponent has on their team.

You often won’t be able to cover everything with just 4 Pokemon, and in those cases you have to try and predict a bit more which Pokemon your opponent is likely to bring against you and counterpick that. In a best of three, if you lose game one to a Pokemon you didn’t prepare for you have games two and three to adjust to your opponent and pick differently although your opponent may predict this!

Item Clause

You can’t use more than one item of a kind on a team. This is implemented so people don’t have to obtain multiple of each item in-game, which is generally difficult in previous generations but not as much so here. It’s kind of arbitrary, but it makes team building more difficult and interesting! Another thing to note, items which are unavailable in-game such as custap berry as well as all of the elemental gems except for normal cannot be used in VGC.

All Pokemon Locked to Level 50

Every Pokemon used in a game of VGC, even those which are a lower level are set to level 50 for the match. This means that somewhat gimmicky strategies such as level one Smeargle and Aron are unusable, as well as running level 49 min-speed Pokemon just to underspeed level 50 min speed mirrors.

Make the most of ‘Your Time’!

In a VGC match, each player has 45 seconds to make their move each turn. In addition to this, each player has a five minute game timer called ‘your time’, which ticks down while you are making your move. If you run out of ‘your time’ during a match, unless you win the game during the last turn you selected for you lose the match as soon as the next turn starts! Be mindful of your game time as you play, and try not to waste too much of it in longer games, as it is very possible for you to run out of time.

Doubles General Strategies!

There are a lot of moves or abilities that are pretty useless in singles, but really good in doubles! I’m going to run through all of the relevant ones here, to explain the key main differences between singles and doubles metagames.

Spread Moves

Pokemon has a lot of moves which provide spread damage in doubles formats such as Earthquake, Heat Wave and Rock Slide. Spread moves are extremely useful in doubles as they allow you to bypass redirection moves such as Follow Me and Rage Powder and lets you ensure you will still get damage off onto at least one Pokemon if one of your opponents Pokemon uses Protect. When used against two targets, spread damage moves recieve a 25% damage reduction against both targets, and this reduction still takes place even if one opposing Pokemon protects or dodges the attack. If there is only one Pokemon on your opponents field, it will take the full damage of the attack.

Protect

Protect and detect are extremely rarely used on Pokemon which are not stall reliant in singles, however it is probably the objective best move in doubles formats. This is because it allows you to protect a Pokemon which is threatened by your opponent’s Pokemon, and then attack with your partner Pokemon to remove a threat or switch to a different Pokemon to put you in a more advantageous position. When you can only bring four Pokemon to each game, it is extremely important to preserve the ones you have - and protect allows you to do that as much as possible!

Fake Out

This move is often used for free chip damage in singles, however it has a much more consistent and powerful purpose in doubles. Disrupting your opponent by flinching one of their Pokemon is extremely good and can often allow your Pokemon to get off an attack uninterrupted, or even use a powerful setup move such as dragon dance or quiver dance. You can attempt to go for a second Protect on the same Pokemon the next turn, however for each consecutive protect you get you have a lower chance of getting the next one. The first protect is garuanteed, however the next consecutive protect has only a 1/3 chance of succeeding, and if that Protect succeeds the next one has only a 1/9 chance.

You need to be careful with the new Psychic Terrain though! All priority moves are blocked while it is active, and this includes moves such as Fake Out and Feint. Getting a flinch on an opposing Pokemon is incredibly good, but if your opponent calls this and brings in Tapu Lele you have essentially wasted a turn, and this can put you on the back foot very quickly.

Follow Me

Redirection is completely useless in singles, however it is extremely useful for helping partner Pokemon set up in doubles. Amoonguss is one of the best support Pokemon in the history of VGC, thanks to its ability to use rage powder and spore to both disrupt the opposing team and support your own team. There are many powerful setup sweepers in VGC that benefit from redirection support, and often it is difficult to stop these Pokemon without making unfavourable trades once they are set up!

You need to be careful with rage powder though, as it is ignored by grass type Pokemon. Follow Me! Is a better move overall, but it has worse distribution and the Pokemon which use it are less useful in other situations than Amoonguss. However, Follow Me is more reliable redirection and is often used when the redirection is absolutely necessary just for that purpose.

Follow Me is also useless against spread moves, so be sure that you’ll be getting value out of follow me before you click it. If you have Clefairy Eevee versus Landorus Charizard, it may be time to think of other options!

Wide Guard

Another useless move in singles, Wide Guard is a strong move in doubles for preventing common powerful spread moves such as Earthquake, Heat Wave and Muddy Water. Unlike Protect, Wide Guard can be used consecutively without faining, however if you go for Protect after using Wide Guard, it will likely fail as it treats each Wide Guard like a consecutive Protect - So after one wide guard you have 1/3 chance of getting a Protect. 1/9 chance after two Wide Guards, and so on. Aegislash is the most prominent Wide Guard user, as it has excellent defensive typing and fantastic bulk to support it.

While wide guard is a reliable answer to spread moves, you have to be extremely careful that your opponents don’t call the wide guard and go for a single target attack on your Pokemon instead, if they have one available. This would mean you pretty much wasted a turn, and can be disastrous if they are able to KO the Pokemon you were trying to keep alive without getting anything in return!

Ally Switch

Ally switch isn't a move which is new to Pokemon, but it got a reasonable buff in generation 7 giving it a higher priority bracket (3 from 2) and another massive buff granting it greater distribution as a tutor move, giving it to powerful support Pokemon such as Cresselia, Porygon2 and Gothitelle. This allows for obnoxious combinations such as Cresselia + Snorlax, which revolves around abusing the defensive synergy between Cresselia and Snorlax to allow Snorlax to set up a Belly Brum and sweep the opposing team.

Ally Switch is very similar to moves such as Rage Powder and Follow Me, in that they are used to aid setup for powerful setup Pokemon although ally switch is more of a move which has high risk, high reward. If your opponent calls the ally switch and targets the correct slots, it can often cause you to lose the game. Spread moves also work well against ally switch. 

Spotlight

Spotlight is a move which really isn't very common in VGC at all, but you should be aware that it exists and of how its mechanics work. Spotlight is a move which redirects the attack of your partner towards the Pokemon you target, which ignores the effects of moves your opponents use such as Follow me or Rage Powder. It can also be used to redirect attacks towards your partner Pokemon, and this can be abused in combination with moves such as destiny bond to get a knockout. This sounds pretty good in theory, but unfortunately the pool of Pokemon which learn the move is small and mostly involves support Pokemon with either better moves or just no value to the team outside of spotlight. Hopefully in future generations the move gets greater distribution so that it can actually be used efectively!

Perish Song

Perish Song is the kind of move that would be broken in singles if all of the good Pokemon or abilities which could abuse it weren't banned. However, in VGC Shadow Tag and Mega Gengar are completely legal so you have to deal with Perish Trap in its full glory. Hard perish trap faces a lot of issues in this format with Pokemon like Tapu Lele and Koko existing, however when played well it can be an extremely difficult archetype to beat. 

You can normally tell a perish trap team from team preview if they have a combination of Pokemon such as Gengar, Scrafty, Politoed, Dewgong, Gothitelle and Hitmontop. The teams are built around using perish song and shadow tag to lock in the opposing Pokemon so they cannot switch, and stall turns using protect, fake out and defensive switching until the opposing Pokemon faint to perish song. 

As stated previously, it's pretty weak to hyper offensive Pokemon in this format, especially Tapu Lele and its psychic terrain. Perish Song is a very strong move by itself however, and is an excellent wincon for closing out games when your opponent only has two Pokemon left. 

Instruct

Instruct is a new move introduced in Generation 7 as the signature move of Oranguru and makes the targeted Pokemon use the same move it last used in battle again. If the move is targeted towards a Pokemon which has not moved yet since being on the field, the move fails. Instruct is powerful on trick room teams to let powerful attackers like Mega Camerupt and Torkoal attack twice in a single turn with spread move such as Heat Wave or Eruption. 

Instruct is countered by redirection such as rage powder or follow me, and its poor distribution (only Oranguru and Smeargle) means you'll generally know then this move is likely to be clicked. However even if you know it is going to happen, under trick room it is extremely difficult to stop regardless, as the most common redirection in Amoonguss Pokemon loses to Torkoal and Mega Camerupt by itself anyway.

Skill Swap

Skill Swap is a move which switches the abilities of the target and the user, and brings to light some really interesting mechanics in VGC. It's relatively rare in all formats except for VGC 2016, where it was almost required to win the insane weather wars which were present in that format however it can still be very useful to take immunities away from Pokemon such as Heatran or to punish Pokemon with obnoxious trapping abilities such as Shadow Tag. 

The Format

Common Pokemon

Pokemon Global Link Usage Stats

Smogon Stats

Landorus-T 

Common Items: Choice Scarf, Assault Vest, Groundium Z, Flyinium Z

Common Moves: Earthquake, Rock Slide, Knock Off, Superpower, U-Turn, Protect

Common Abilities: Intimidate

Tapu Fini

Common Items: Fiwam Berries, Choice Specs, Waterium Z

Common Moves: Moonblast, Muddy Water, Calm Mind, Protect, Dazzling Gleam, Scald

Common Abilities: Misty Surge

Tapu Koko

Common Items: Electrium Z, Life Orb, Choice Specs

Common Moves: Thunderbolt, Volt Switch, Dazzling Gleam, Taunt, Protect

Common Abilities: Electric Surge

Charizard 

Common Items: Charizardite Y, Charizardite X

Common Moves (Y): Heat Wave, Flamethrower, Tailwind, Solar Beam, Overheat, Protect, Hidden Power Ground, Focus Blast

Common Moves (X): Dragon Dance, Flare Blitz, Brick Break, Thunder Punch

Common Abilities: Blaze -> Drought (Y) -> Tough Claws (X)

Tapu Lele

Common Items: Psychium Z, Choice Scarf, Life Orb

Common Moves: Psychic, Moonblast, Taunt, Dazzling Gleam, Thunderbolt, Psyshock, Protect

Common Abilities: Psychic Surge

Cresselia

Common Items: Fiwam Berries, Psychium Z

Common Moves: Trick Room, Helping Hand, Ally Switch, Ice Beam, Psychic, Icy Wind

Common Abilities: Levitate

Tyranitar

Common Items: Tyranitarite, Weakness Policy, Darkinium Z, Choice Scarf, Life Orb

Common Moves: Rock Slide, Crunch, Dragon Dance, Low Kick, Ice Punch, Protect

Common Abilities: Sand Stream

Metagross

Common Items: Metagrossite

Common Moves: Iron Head, Zen Headbutt, Stomping Tantrum, Ice Punch, Protect

Common Abilities: Clear Body -> Tough Claws

Zapdos

Common Items: Psychic / Misty Seed, Fiwam Berry, Sitrus Berry, Firium Z, Electrium Z

Common Moves: Tailwind, Thunderbolt, Heat Wave, Hidden Power Ice, Protect, Roost

Common Abilities: Pressure

Aegislash

Common items:Ghostium Z, Weakness Policy, Leftovers, Life Orb

Common Moves: Shadow Ball, Flash Cannon, Wide Guard, Substitute, King’s Shield, Toxic

Common Abilities: Stance Change

Snorlax

Common Items: Fiwam Berries

Common Moves: Belly Drum, Curse, Recycle, Frustration, Double-Edge, High Horsepower, Earthquake

Common Abilities: Gluttony

Tapu Bulu

Common Items: Choice Scarf, Grassium Z, Assault Vest, Fiwam Berries

Common Moves: Wood Hammer, Horn Leech, Superpower, Protect, Rock Slide

Common Abilities: Grassy Surge

Incineroar

Common Items: Assault Vest, Incinium Z, Fiwam Berries

Common Moves: Flare Blitz, Fake Out, Knock Off, Low Kick, Darkest Lariat, Protect

Common Abilities: Blaze

Kangaskhan

Common Items: Kangaskhanite

Common Moves: Fake Out, Double-Edge, Low Kick, Ice PUnch, Sucker Punch, Protect

Common Abilities: Scrappy, Inner Focus

Salamence

Common Items: Salamencite

Common Moves: Double-Edge, Hyper Voice, Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, Tailwind, Roost, Protect

Common Abilities: Intimidate

Kommo-o

Common Items: Kommoium Z

Common Moves: Clanging Scales, Protect, Flamethrower, Focus Blast, CLose COmbat, Drain Punch, Poison Jab

Amoonguss

Common Items:

Common Moves: Rage Powder, Spore, Protect, Clear SMog, Sludge Bomb, Giga Drain, Energy Ball

Common Abilities: Soundproof

Kartana

Common Items: Focus Sash, Grassium Z, Fightinium Z, Choice Scarf, Flyinium Z

Common Moves: Leaf Blade, Sacred Sword, Detect, Tailwind, Smart Strike, protect, Knock Off

Cmmon Abilities: Beast Boost

Heatran

Common Items: Shuca Berry, Firium Z, Leftovers, Choice Scarf, Grassium Z

Common Moves: Earth Power, Protect, Heat Wave, Substitute, Flash Cannon, Overheat, Hidden Power, Flamethrower

Common Abilities: Flash Fire

Celesteela

Common Items: Leftovers, Misty / Psychic Seed, Fiwam Berries, Assault Vest

Common Moves: Leech Seed, Protect, Heavy SLam, Wide Guard, Flamethrower, Acrobatics

Common Abilities: Beast Boost

Whimsicott

Common Items: Focus Sash, Normalium Z

Common Moves: Tailwind, Encore, Fake Tears, Protect, Beat Up, Sunny Day, Moonblast, Taunt, Nature Power, Endeavour

Common Abilities: Prankster

Gengar

Common Items: Gengarite

Common Moves: Protect, Shadow Ball, Sludge Bomb, Disable, Perish Song, Icy Wind, Taunt

Common Abilities: Cursed Body -> Shadow Tag

Scrafty

Common Items: Assault Vest, Eject Button, Fiwam Berries

Common Moves: Fake Out, Knock Off, Drain Punch, Ice Punch, Low Kick, Foul Play, Rock Tomb, Stone Edge, Detect

Common Abilities: Intimidate

Ludicolo

Common Items: Waterium Z, Assault Vest

Common Moves: Fake Out, Ice Beam, Hydro Pump, Giga Drain, Energy Ball, Scald, Protect

Common Abilities: Swift Swim

Ferrothorn

Common Items: Choice Band, Leftovers, Fiwam Berries

Common Moves: Gyro Ball, Power Whip, Protect, Knock Off, Leech Seed, Iron Head, Bullet Seed

Common Abilities: Iron Barbs

Porygon2

Common Items: Eviolite

Common Moves: Trick Room, Recover, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, Icy Wind, Foul Play, Ally Switch

Common Abilities: Download, Trace, Analytic

Gothitelle

Common Items: Fiwam Berries, Mental Herb

Common Moves: Trick Room, Protect, Heal Pulse, Psychic, Helping Hand, Psyshock, Ally Switch, Charm, Taunt

Common Abilities: Shadow Tag

Mawile

Common Items: Mawilite

Common Moves: Iron Head, Sucker Punch, Play Rough, Fire Fang, Rock Slide, Swords Dance

Common Abilities: Intimidate

Pelipper

Common Items: Focus Sash, Damp Rock

Common Moves: Hurricane, Tailwind, Protect, Scald, Brine, Surf, Rain Dance

Common Abilities: Drizzle

Volcarona

Common Items: Firium Z, Choice Scarf, Fiwam Berries

Common Moves: Protect, Quiver Dance, Giga Drain, Flamethrower, heat Wave, Bug Buzz, Fiery Dance, Overheat

Common Abilities: Flame Body, Swarm

Important Items

Choice Scarf

Common users: Tapu Lele, Landorus-Therian, Tapu Bulu, Staraptor, Tyranitar

• 50% extra speed, but forces you to only use the same move after attacking (until you switch out)

• Good for making Pokemon which are usually slow outspeed and KO things which threaten them or their partners
• Especially effective on Pokemon which can pivot such as Landorus-T or Staraptor with U-Turn
• Have to play carefully to ensure you don’t get trapped into an undesirable move

Life Orb

Common Users: Tapu Lele, Tyranitar, Stakataka, Tapu Koko

• 30% attack damage boost, lose 10% of HP after each attack

• Good for giving strong Pokemon consistent damage boosts instead of a one-time massive damage boost like Z Moves, at the cost of 10% of HP each turn
• Typically used on Pokemon with heavy offensive investment at the expense of bulk, as you are reducing your bulk every time you attack anyway

Assault Vest

Common Users: Landorus-Therian, Scrafty, Ludicolo, Incineroar

• 50% Special Defense boost, can only use attacking moves
• Good for Pokemon with solid bulk that don’t need to run setup or supporting moves and benefit from being able to take special hits better to stick around longer
• Synergises well with pivot moves like U-Turn or Volt Switch, as well as utility attacks such as Fake Out and Knock Off and recovery such as Drain Punch or Giga Drain

Sitrus & Fiwam Berries

Common Users:
Sitrus Berry: Azumarill, Zapdos
Fiwam Berry: Cresselia, Tapu Fini, Zapdos, Snorlax, Any Bulky Pokemon

• Fiwam Berry: Figy, Iapapa, Wiki, Aguav, Mago
• Fiwam Berry: Restores 50% health when a Pokemon drops below 25% health
• Sitrus Berry: Restores 25% health when a Pokemon drops below 50% health
• Sitrus Berries provide more consistent recovery, but less of it whereas Fiwam berries restore more health but it is harder to trigger
• Fiwam Berry Pokemon are typically trained specifically to ensure the Fiwam berries proc after taking specific hits
• Used over leftovers typically because VGC games are much shorter, and you can't depend on your Pokemon to live long enough to recover more HP than you would with berries

Focus Sash

Common Users:

Kartana, Whimsicott, Pelipper, Weavile

• Ensures a Pokemon lives a single hit when attacked at 100% health
• Good to ensure that Pokemon with poor bulk survive at least one attack, and potentially get a second turn to move

Leftovers

Common Users:

Celesteela, Ferrothorn, Aegislash. Heatran

• Restores 1/16th of the Pokemon’s HP each turn
• Good for Pokemon which want to sit on the field for a long time and spam recovery
• Aegislash and Heatran which carry leftovers almost always run Substitute, and Aegislash will also typically run toxic
• Ferrothorn and Celesteela will typically run secondary recovery such as leech seed

Terrain Seeds    

Common Users:

Zapdos, Celesteela, Accelgor, Hawlucha, Drifblim

• Electric Seed and Grassy Seed: +1 stage of Defense (50% increase) to the holder if the respective terrain is active
• Psychic Seed and Misty Seed: +1 stage of Special Defense (50% increase) to the holder if the respective terrain is active
• The required terrain does not need to stay the active, the effect works if the terrain triggers once while that Pokemon is in Play, but is consumed after the first time
• Good for Pokemon which appreciate additional bulk but need to run support moves so they can’t use Assault Vest, and bulky Pokemon that aren’t likely to switch out
• Synergises well with Pokemon with Unburden and Acrobatics

Eviolite

Common Users:

Porygon2, Clefairy

• 50% boost to Defense and Special Defense for Pokemon which are not fully evolved
• Useful for non-fully evolved Pokemon which still have strong bulk, and can be used effectively as support Pokemon

Z - Moves

• Good for Pokemon which have good offensive stats, or benefit from a particular terrain / weather and are almost able to ensure a KO when they attack into a slot that doesn’t protect or resist their Z Move
• Also good to pick up surprise KOs on unsuspecting Pokemon such as Firium Z Zapdos onto Mega Metagross, although this is typically stronger in Best of One scenarios

Common Z Moves:

 Electrium Z: Tapu Koko  Zapdos Xurkitree Thundurus

 Psychium Z: Tapu Lele Cresselia

 Fightinium Z: PheromosaThundurusTapu LeleKartana

 Groundium Z: Landorus-TherianExcadrill

 Darkinium Z: Tyranitar
 Ghostium Z: Aegislash

 Grassium Z: Tapu BuluKartanaHeatran

 Normalium Z: Whimsicott

 Waterium Z: LudicoloKingdra Tapu Fini 

 Firium Z: IncineroarHeatran Volcarona Zapdos

 Incinium Z: Incineroar

 Mimikium Z: Mimikyu

 Flyinium Z: Landorus-Therian

 Kommonium Z: Kommo-o

• Spread base 195 Power exclusive Z-Move that provides +1 to all stats after it is used
• If the move hits at least one Pokemon, the boosts are provided
• Fails if both opposing Pokemon are Fairy type or have the soundproof ability

Important Abilities

Intimidate

Common Users:

• When a Pokemon with intimidate hits the field, both opposing Pokemon have their attack stat dropped by one stage
• Good for defensive play

Terrain Surge Abilities

• Psychic Surge: Tapu Lele
• Summons Psychic Terrain on Switch-in
• Psychic Terrain blocks priority attacks targeted towards opposing grounded Pokemon and gives a 50% damage boost from grounded Pokemon using psychic type moves

• Misty Surge: Tapu Fini 
• Summons Misty Terrain on Switch-in
• Misty Terrain reduces the damage of grounded dragon type moves by 50% and prevents all status affects targeted towards grounded Pokemon

• Electric Surge: Tapu Koko
• Summons Electric Terrain on Switch-in
• Electric Terrain prevents grounded Pokemon from being put to sleep and provides a 50% damage boost to grounded electric type moves

• Grassy Surge: Tapu Bulu
• Summons Grassy Terrain on Switch-in
• Grassy Terrain makes all grounded Pokemon recover 1/16th of their health at the end of each turn and provides a 50% damage boost to grounded grass types

• One of the best sets of abilities in the game by far, Pokemon which are able to abuse terrains such as Tapus provide immense offensive output (outside of Tapu Fini, which does not get any type of damage boost from its terrain) and terrain control is extremely useful when trying to abuse (or prevent) status conditions from Pokemon such as Amoonguss’s spore.

Weather Summoning Abilities

• Drought: Charizard-Y  Torkoal
• Summons Harsh Sunlight on Switch-in
• Harsh sunlight weather condition provides a 50% damage boost to all fire type moves, reduces water type moves damage by 50%, reduces thunder and hurricane’s accuracy to 50% and enables Solar Beam to be used in a single turn

• Drizzle: Pelipper Politoed
• Summons Heavy Rain on Switch-in
• Heavy Rain provides a 50% damage boost to all water type moves, reduces fire type damage by 50% and increases thunder and hurricane’s accuracy to 100%.

• Sand Stream: Tyranitar Hippowdon Gigalith 
• Summons Sandstorm on Switch-in
• Sandstorm causes all Pokemon which are not ground, rock or steel type to lose 1/16th of their health at the end of each turn.

• Snow Warning: Ninetales-Alola Abomasnow Vanilluxe
• Summons hail on Switch-in
• Hail makes gives blizzard 100% accuracy and causes all non-ice type Pokemon to lose 1/16th of their health at the end of each turn.

Weather Abusing Abilities

• Swift Swim: Kingdra Ludicolo Mega Swampert BearticKabutops
• Provides 2x Speed in Heavy Rain

• Chlorophyll: Lilligant Venusaur
• Provides 2x Speed in Sun

• Sand Rush: Excadrill 
• Provides 2x Speed in Sand

• Slush Rush: BearticSandslash-Alola 
• Provides 2x Speed in Hail

Levitate

• Common Users: Latias Cresselia Hydreigon 
• Immunity to Ground Type Moves

Gluttony

• Common Users: Snorlax Muk-Alola Linoone
• All berries which would be consumed at 25% health get consumed at 50% instead
• Synergises extremely well with Fiwam berries

Beast Boost

• Common Users: CelesteelaKartanaNaganadel Stakataka 
• After Pokemon takes a knockout, gets an additional stage added to its highest non-HP stat (if two stats are the same, it picks the one which it checked first)
• E.g. if attack and defense are the same, the Pokemon would get an attack boost

Shadow Tag

• Common Users: Gothitelle Mega Gengar 
• Opposing Pokemon are unable to switch out, unless they are ghost types or also have the shadow tag ability
• Volt Switch, U-Turn, Parting Shot or Baton Pass can still be used to switch

Telepathy

• Common Users: GardevoirOranguru
• A Pokemon with telepathy is unable to be hurt by its partners attacks
• Excellent on Pokemon which have partners that use spread moves such as Earthquake, Surf or Explosion

Friend Guard

• Common Users: Clefairy
• Partner Pokemon to a Pokemon with Friend Guard take 25% less damage from attacks
• Fantastic synergy with frail setup-based Pokemon such as Eevee or Linoone

Team Archetypes

Unless linked to an External site such as Trainer Tower, all of these teams are my own versions of each team and are in no way guaranteed to be the same, or as good as the original! In addition, many of these teams are older and may require tweaking to be effective in the current metagame. They are just meant to be a guide to help you understand how certain team archetypes are constructed, but you are more than welcome to try them out and see if you can improve them yourself!

Mega Metagross Goodstuffs

Standard Meta Lele

Standard Meta Fini

Charizard Y Goodstuffs

Carson Confer’s Team

ApplePieVGC’s Team

Matthew Jackson’s Team

Snarl Trap

Standard Japanese Snarl Trap

AvatarFede’s Tapu Lele Snarl Trap

Kommo Gengar Whimsicott

DesuTCG’s Oceania Internationals Top 8 Team

Mega Salamence Goodstuffs

Ashton Cox’s Top 4 Oceania Internationals Team

Mega Gyarados Goodstuffs

Japanese QR Code Team

Sand Teams

Offensive Sand Team

BrodaVGC’s Sand Team

Rain Teams

Thundurus-I Hard Rain

CrazyMix’s Early Meta Rain Team

Allister Sandover’s Singapore Open Rain Team

 Hard Trick Room

MissingNoL’s Hard Trick Room Team 

Gothitelle Mawile Trick Room

SirScrubbington's Top 16 2018 Sydney Challenge Team

Mega Tyranitar Setup Spam

Barry Anderson’s Setup Spam Team

 Standard Mega Tyranitar Setup Spam

Mega Charizard X

Jamie Boyt's Malmo 1st Place Team

Mega Gardevoir Trick Room

TheRazer456’s Gardevoir ZapCat Team

Gardevoir Azumarill Trick Room

Perish Trap

Ketchupplant’s Early Perish Trap Team

Natizo_’s Offensive Perish Trap Team

Broda’s  Perish Rain Team

Chansey Stall

Standard Chansey Team

Kangaskhan Goodstuffs Teams

Bulky Trick Room

MrGX’s Early Goodstuffs Team

Standard Volcarona Goodstuffs

Lele Hyper Offense

Graham Amedee's Top 16 Oceania IC Lopunny Team

Accelgor Lele MimiLax

Accelgor Lele Pallosand

Drifblim Lele

Mega Steelix

Wolfe's Mega Steelix Team

Mega Latias

Feis’s Mega Latias Team

SamVGC’s Latias Team

External VGC Resources

VGC Articles & Write Ups

Trainer Tower

Teambuilding Resources

Pokemon Showdown!

Trainer Tower Damage Calculator

Pokemon Showdown Usage Statistics

After clicking on a snapshot date, you can enter /moveset/ to get all of the moveset data which is otherwise hidden from view! e.g. 

https://www.smogon.com/stats/2018-01/moveset/

Gabby Snyder Team Builder (Type Coverage Tool)

USUM Pokemon Global Link VGC Leaderboard & Usage

Youtube Channels

Barry Anderson (World Class UK Player)

Jamie Boyt (World Class UK Player)

Aaron Zheng (World Class American VGC Player)

Wolfe Glick (2016 Pokemon World Champion)

Markus Stadter (World Class German Player)

Jt pkmn (Regional, National & World Stream VOD Uploads)

Twitch Channels

Jonathan Evans (2nd Place 2016 Worlds, NPA Commentaries)

Chris Danzo (High Level American VGC Player, NPA Commentaries)