Darkmalice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkVKXSRgHT4
My latest video is of a hax-filled VGCS Winter battle where Sand Veil worked more than a few times. My video can be used as evidence to support Smogon's ban of the ability. I put a lot of effort into the video... note the perfectly-timed appropriate music (e.g. the song Sandstorm).

So you easily came first in yet another tournament... you're definitely more impressive than I'll ever be. You mentioned the VGCS Winter tournament as well - how have you gone in it? I've won about 80% of my battles, mainly losing to unconventional tactics such as heavy stalling in doubles (Leech Seed Ferro, Substitute + Protect Zapdos... it was Rain-focused), and an extremely long battle where I couldn't overcome Thundurus spamming status moves. I'm still using my AVcon team since I haven't had time for a new one.

If I was the next closest to winning, with only 2 KOs... that's a bit scary. It's a shame about that triple Protect - I try to avoid having to risk even a double Protect. It's best to avoid chance scenarios whenever possible (hence why I often used Rotom's Thunderbolt instead of Hydro Pump, but that was also due to predictability). It would've been interesting to see your Water-focused team - we might as well try riskier concepts since if the meet-ups are regular. I'm quite a fan of Water, Psychic, Dark and Dragon-types... but I don't always use those types!

I forgot to ask, did you have any interesting battles apart from the ones with Henry? I know you won 4/5 of the main rounds (same as me), but I wondered if anyone put up a decent fight... probably better than my poor effort against you.
When you mention your team for AVcon last year, do you mean one you never got to use? I made my team by taking the 3 most effective Pokemon from AVcon 2011 (with slight changes), and adding more effective supporters to that solid core. Also, I never go through entire lists of Pokemon for possible threats... the most I did was read a list of released Dream World abilities since they're harder to remember.

I suppose that was a smart move, considering that Hariyama was one of your main sweepers and Breloom was probably not going to survive long against a Hail team anyway.
My new team will probably be 100% new, although it's hard to adjust back to 'normal' speed conditions after being used to going first most of the time. Do you find it hard to decide on your teams? I'm struggling to even choose my 6 Pokemon, let alone their movesets and everything else.

Thanks for the video link, it was useful to watch that battle again. Switching out Hariyama at the start surprised me. Landorus and Jirachi were interesting choices for a Hail team... I bet it felt satisfying to KO Landorus with HP Ice. I have a new team idea that seems good on paper, but I won't have much time to prepare it. Also, I had the most frustrating moment: While breeding Pokemon to fill the National Pokedex, I used one of my AVcon Pokemon as a parent... it happened to be very close to leveling up, which it did while in the Day Care. Also happened to learn a new move, replacing one that only its prior evolution could learn. With its essential move gone, a Pokemon was made useless by the game's stupid mechanics.

Yeah, that Occa Berry on Amoonguss tripped up a lot of people, and at AVcon I remember it once survived with 4 HP thanks to that. However, it wouldn't have helped against that Hail team you faced (I never battled him, but he was clearly a strong opponent).

It's funny that I outpredicted you with the 2 leads I chose, but the offensive threat of your leads still messed me up. One of my team's strengths is its reliability in setting up TR - either Scrafty + Reuniclus or Porygon2 + Amoonguss work well together.
It was good to see Hariyama being used - I'm guessing you chose it for its combination of Fake Out, slowness and powerful Close Combat, which make it arguably better than Guts Conkeldurr.

But the battle was so short (13 turns) and one-sided, it's boring to watch! Most of it was just me switching while you outplayed me. Do you really want to see it, though? I'd be more interested in watching your final battle, since it was intense.

Btw, you were one of the coolest guys at the tournament. I was fairly sure I recognised you from 2011 when you walked in.

That was certainly an interesting battle, although I'm ashamed that I only KOed 2 of your Pokemon. One of the reasons I messed up was that I expected you to use Trick Room to reverse it, and I wasn't sure if all or only some of your Pokemon were optimised for TR. I also forgot Hariyama outspeeds Scrafty in TR. Also, your double Ghost lead was an effective counter to Fake Out - did you always lead with that combo? Anyway, the two main things I learned from our battle: 1. My team is a bit too reliant on certain Pokemon such as Scrafty gaining momentum, and doesn't have enough offensive presence. 2. Your team works surprisingly well considering that it has Chandelure on a Rain-focused team, and a Pokemon as frail as Jolteon.

Hey there, thanks for the notification about the tournament! I always seem to neglect my account at the times when I actually get a message, so I only just found out from another source. I signed up with an alternate account, because I'm paranoid like that. I assume you'll be there? If so, I hope you'll go by the same username so I can easily recognise you.

Hello there. I just thought I'd let you know that I have over double the amount of Smogon friends you have.

Also here are some classic posts for you to enjoy:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63837
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3446608
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65982

I have one last thing to ask... how did you feel when you won last year at AVcon? I felt quite empty after my victory, because I had much lower expectations than I did last year. The fact that I won by a forfeit didn't help to make it satisfying.