First things first - Thanks to Solace, JRank, PenguinX, and Hoyle. You helped fix me up for VGC in a short time frame, thank you so much!
Introduction
Waking up is not my thing, let alone waking up early. My alarm went off at quarter to six so I had a shower and grabbed a coffee, and got my stuff ready to leave. I left home at about quarter to seven, and arrived at the train station about 25 minutes later. Anyway, after three train journeys, I was at Birmingham International.
I quickly met up with SkyNet, and we wandered down the (long) walk to the area where it was taking place. I wasn't really sure what to expect for my first VGC, but I thought it was a surprisingly big area, and we quickly joined the line to be sure of getting a place. The guy in front of me in line asked for a battle. It was funny because I had to ask him how to set it up because I wasn't familiar with wireless play, but he helped me like the noob I am. Anyway, I won in a battle where he used Charge Beam Thundurus. B-Lulz then came and spoke to us for a bit, and then I think we just kinda left the line and lingered around for a while, and met some other people like EspyJoel (who looks SO much younger than I expected, I actually thought he was someone else to begin with because he looked so young hahaha). After a while it got pretty boring, so we jumped back in line with gec/tab/Kinneas and co., and pretty much just waited for it to start. So many people are just hilarious (especially tab, but I don't know why, I think it's just his facial expressions make me laugh hahaha), and it's a shame I didn't get to talk to some other people who helped me so much, like PenguinX and Hoyle, which sucks. We messed about with Trainer Cards for a bit, Kinneas changed my Trainer Card so it said "KIDS are the reason for GUNK SHOT", which I changed before playing lol. I think it was tab who changed someone's to "I like SNATCH, and I like KIDS too". tab also decided that he was going to get a wristband to play despite not having a DS or cart, but he left the line after a while so we didn't get to see him own his opponent round one. :(
Tbh I thought there was a lot of waiting early on, but eventually we got registered (after a lot of faffing around with the Battle Box x_x), and were ready to go. At this point, it would probably be wise to give you an insight of the team that I was using.
Chandelure @ Focus Sash
Timid - Flash Fire
~ Heat Wave
~ Shadow Ball
~ Trick Room
~ Imprison
Jellicent @ Choice Scarf
Timid - Water Absorb
~ Water Spout
~ Hydro Pump
~ Shadow Ball
~ Ice Beam
Amoonguss @ Coba Berry
Bold - Effect Spore
~ Spore
~ Giga Drain
~ Protect
~ Rage Powder
Conkeldurr @ Flame Orb
Adamant - Guts
~ Mach Punch
~ Drain Punch
~ Rock Slide
~ Protect
Krookodile @ Chople Berry
Adamant - Intimidate
~ Crunch
~ Rock Slide
~ Earthquake
~ Protect
Haxorus @ Haban Berry
Jolly - Mold Breaker
~ Dual Chop
~ Brick Break
~ Rock Slide
~ Protect
Major props to Solace for hooking me up with a team less than a week before the VGC, and giving me the basic tips on what does what. It's a pretty simple team I guess, I just tried to counter whatever I saw. I didn't use Haxorus at all, mostly because I felt the others had better defensive qualities if I needed it, but yeah. Ideally, Chandelure and Jellicent would've had Flame Body and Cursed Body respectively, but I guess this gave me a couple of extra immunities. Also, major thanks to JRank, Hoyle, and PenguinX, who helped provide me with my team and everything I needed. <3
We were in the line and I was hoping that I'd be paired with the guy nearby who had a type-sheet he was trying to memorize, which had what was good against what on it, but it wasn't to be. :(
Preliminary Matches
Round 1 - Some dude
This guy was probably in his 20s, and I think his family was watching because I kept getting weird stares from the side (unless that's just me :[). I wasn't too nervous, which surprised me. Until I saw his team.. I just remember looking at his team and thinking "this will be hard". He led Scrafty and Reuniclus against my Chandelure and Krookodile. I used Imprison whilst Scrafty used Fake Out on Krookodile. His Reuniclus used Focus Blast on Krookodile (Chople), which took me to just under half IIRC. Anyway, the next turn I'm pretty sure I took out Reuniclus with Crunch + Heat Wave, damaging Scrafty in the process. Can't really remember much else, but he was a good sport and wished me luck in the future. I didn't have a single unsporting opponent, which was cool.
Round 2 - Some dude mark 2
Again in his 20s, I can't really remember much apart from it coming down to whether my Chandelure would hit both of his Pokemon with Heat Wave. Of course, it did, and I was into the third round. I was already pretty pleased as I had made it out of round one (which was my first target, then it was finalists lounge!), so I felt pretty good and wanted to just enjoy it from here on out.
Round 3 - A younger dude
This guy was probably about my age. I think his team looked more threatening than it was (although that seemed to be a theme of the day!). Jellicent and Amoonguss teamed up and really helped dismantle him. His Galvantula wasn't able to do much, and I think after getting a lead it was just a case of maintaining it. I finished this match and noticed that SkyNet was STILL playing his round two match, which I thought was weird because I started my round two match at the same time as him. Unfortunately he lost to luck, bsrey :(
Round 4 - Lord Gatr
Don't know if this chap has a Smogon account, but if you do, then hi! I knew this match was to get into the finalists lounge. This was against Lord Gatr who put up a good fight. Luckily I took out his first two Pokemon okay, and his last two were pretty weak to Conkeldurr which would have sealed the deal despite a double Rock Slide miss in my favour on the penultimate turn. Now in the last 32, LETS GET IT.
Finalist Matches
I was now in the finalists lounge (it's not a lounge at all though, it's just an area), and had reached the highest target that I'd set myself. As I've said already, I was just pleased to get this far in my first VGC, and whatever happened was fine by me from here. Quite a few people I knew got in - gec, Havak, tblakey89. A few others I knew by sight, such as Rees and Ruben, were also in. A few others such as B-Lulz and Kinneas were knocked out just after I got through IIRC, which kinda sucked.
I got really quite nervous from here on out, and was tapping my foot constantly, and the woman interviewing and commentating was more interesting from here on out as she was actually speaking to people I wanted to listen to (eg. Havak, Rees, and so on) as opposed to random people who said "It was a good battle." when asked how it went. I'm pretty sure she had no idea when Havak talked of moves hitting/missing or whatever, but I think everybody else understood lol.
Round of 32 - Petar
I wasn't given one of the seven byes, so had to play. This was the most fucking insane game ever. I know that his Cofagrigus gave one of my Pokemon the Mummy ability, which then went on to give some more of his Pokemon the ability. It ended up with Conkeldurr knocking out Scrafty (I think it was Scrafty?) and gaining the Mummy ability... and then its Flame Orb activates. "Great", 50% attack instead of 150%, but I had to do it really. At this point, there's about five minutes on the clock and it's my ~45% Amoonguss and near max HP burnt Conkeldurr facing his 100% Amoonguss. I Spored his Amoonguss and note that I outspeed, whilst I Protect with Conkeldurr. The next turn I use Rage Powder and Drain Punch... and it turns out that he has Leftovers. I thought the match was over at this point, but then I realised that was that the match was going run out of time with Amoonguss vs Amoonguss, so it was a case of "who would have the most Pokemon, or in the case of a draw, the highest HP". I knew I had to keep Conkeldurr alive or I would lose, as my Amoonguss had far less HP than his, and couldn't do much. Anyway, a few turns of trying to make sure he couldn't do anything if his Amoonguss woke up, and I was through due to the timer. Kinda sucks, but I had to stall to win. It would've gone to time regardless, so yeah, it was the best strategy at that point to just keep Conkeldurr alive. I was last to finish my battle in this round by quite some way, I think. He realised what I was doing with all the Protecting and Sporing and not really attacking, and asked the judges about it, but they said it's fine.
Round of 32. gec is at the bottom in the blue, I'm to the left a bit in the also-blue jumper, when the guy was asking the judges.
Round of 16 - Pedro
The employee who had been rooting for me in some of my previous matches spoke to my opponent in Spanish after he said he was from Spain, whilst I sat there confused as fuck. This match was probably one of the easier ones of the day, because the team I was using countered his so well, which is just lucky for me I guess. Chandelure Imprisoned his Cofagrigus' Trick Room (it might have been Reuniclus, but I think it was Cofagrigus lol), and from there it was just a case of wearing down his pretty slow Pokemon with super effective hits. I'm pretty sure he was really weak to Krookodile's Crunch, and Chandelure's Heat Wave was wearing stuff down a lot too. I'd noticed as we'd gone through the day that I started spamming multi-hit moves to try and find out the last two Pokemon, and then just settling the match down and bringing it home. Pretty sure that describes this match perfectly, too.
Quarter-Finals - gec
gec has uploaded the match here. Probably the most talkative of my English opponents, I had calmed my nerves a bit in this game knowing that top 8 was a great result. It was a friendly match I guess, we were talking most of the way through, but I had a major team advantage. I got lucky with Effect Spore, dunno if gec's crit mattered, but this was where Amoonguss showed its use. Importantly, his Electric Gem Thundurus outsped my Timid Scarf Jellicent... something which, for some very odd reason, I didn't particularly take note of, and I'm kinda annoyed at myself for that more than anything, because that was something that I absolutely should have noticed without fail. Something as big as my Jellicent being messed up... and I didn't even pick up on it. This was one of the games that I played really quite badly in, I'm really very lucky that the match up and luck was so good that it didn't matter.
Semi-Finals - Zog
Didn't realise this was Zog until I saw the trainer card, and I think it was the same for him. I was pretty sure that I'd lost after turn 1 or 2... not really sure how I managed to get it back, but it was his ~80% Guts Conkeldurr facing my ~80% Guts Conkeldurr & ~35% Krookodile. I go for the Drain Punch and Rock Slide (Rock Slide over EQ in case his Conkeldurr is faster than mine), for damage and the flinch chance. My Conkeldurr knocks Zog's low enough so that it will be KOed by its burn, and then his flinches to finish it off.
At this point, Ruben was already through. The Nintendo employed girl who had been rooting for me and also translating for Ruben comes up and tells me to ask Rees for Ruben's weaknesses because "I must beat him", which was pretty funny. The next five minutes were weird, with interviews beforehand and then just getting ready to play. I rush off to buy another bottle of water quickly (£1.80, wtf), and waited to begin.
Finals - Ruben
[Edit: I watched the final fully now so I can remember what happened, and yeah I choked big time. Not sure what happened there lol, but oh well.]
For anyone interested, my Jellicent was Timid Scarf. But I found out when I got home that the EVs on it are for a Tailwind team, so it's not maxed out. Kinda funny in retrospect and completely my fault for not checking and just assuming that Timid Jellicent would have max Speed, which possibly cost me more than anything else in the match. I'm not hugely fussed though, it was better to find that out in the finals than in the previous rounds!
Afterwards
We had some photos and interviews next. I didn't particularly enjoy the interviews because I always felt like they wanted you to say more than you did, but whatever. A few of them were really annoying too. Every time they asked "did you have a set strategy", "what made your team special", "how did you prepare your team", I just said "I didn't, I got it from a friend who's idea it was, so really it's all thanks to him", which it is (Solace <3). I did make a scooter reference at one point ("I scooted my way to the finals"), which obviously nobody understood haha.
Some guy came up to me and asked me to battle and I said I couldn't be bothered now, but maybe if I had time. Then B-Lulz pipes up without realising what was going on and says "your train doesn't leave for another 2 hours!!". Cheers bro. If the guy I'm talking about ever reads this, I'm sorry for not battling, the last thing I wanted at that time was to play more Pokemon!
SkyNet, B-Lulz, and I then went and just hung around for a bit, not really sure what to do for over an hour. We went to Wetherspoons and "watched" the football - i.e. we sat there and chatted for an hour. We all then left a bit later and went our separate ways, it was great meeting you guys though, definitely made the day worthwhile. And I hope to see you again at other tournaments or events maybe. :)
I probably missed out people who I met, but so much happened and I can't remember all of it (or much of it at all tbh). All in all, the best thing was meeting people you've known for ages but not known at the same time. Everyone was friendly and awesome, and it was fun chatting to various people. I didn't expect to do so well but I'm not gonna complain. Getting the prizes was obviously also great, but that's simply all in a day's work...
