Yes.
Hey all, this is my second time doing a warstory but probably my first legitimate one since I played many battles in Pleasanton compared to last year in San Jose, where I suffered an embarrassing loss due to a Heat Wave double miss. It was a very long day, and I had tons of fun battling and meeting up with other Smogon members.
The night before the big day I had trouble sleeping, waking up around 11 pm, 2 am, 4 am, and again at 6 am before deciding to wait out my phone's alarm. I ate a rather large breakfast (leftovers from the previous day's lunch to be precise) and made sure I had all my stuff ready and left American Canyon on an hour-ish drive to Pleasanton.
The night before the big day I had trouble sleeping, waking up around 11 pm, 2 am, 4 am, and again at 6 am before deciding to wait out my phone's alarm. I ate a rather large breakfast (leftovers from the previous day's lunch to be precise) and made sure I had all my stuff ready and left American Canyon on an hour-ish drive to Pleasanton.
Oh hey look, it's Saboros
Anyways, I arrived the scene at around 8:20, and ran towards the convention room hoping to find fellow Smogonites. Much to my chagrin, I did end up waving around my "sign" like an idiot. (If you can call an 8'5" by 11' piece of yellow constuction paper etched with the message in red permanent ink: Hello, my name is Nickscor from Smogon a sign, then sure) I got many strange looks and I could tell that not a whole lot of people from Smogon bothered to show up as early as I did. Around 8:30 I decided to take a seat and hoped for some Smogon members to show up, but to no avail. I met these two kids—I'm convinced they were entering in Seniors or probably Juniors—Connor and Caid. I introduced myself and asked if any of them had White version so that I could revive my Black City, Connor was going through the Extralink and I flat out didn't pay attention to anything he was doing. They were two little derplings but seemed like good kids, Caid was warning me to not get the NERF skin for the 3DS since you can't remove it and was asking if I knew what SpongeBob was. He was confused when I told him I grew up watching it, so I just told him yes. He was telling me how "Patrick doesn't know what 1+1 is" and I was just like lolwut. Connor also had a Zekrom and Kyurem in his party, I told him those two were banned from the competition. It was rather obvious that he was not only a casual player, but also one who didn't check the rules beforehand. I tried waving my "sign" once more after Connor and Caid left to check the rules, and before I knew a really tall guy immediately recognized the Smogon part and approached me.
It was around 8:47 that I met Kid Kadabra, Saboros, and their unnamed friend, we kinda did introductions and such. Kid Kadabra doesn't look like a kid for sure, and as such he was entering Masters with me while Saboros was gonna play Seniors. That was cut short, as registrations began and would eventually take about three hours to finish.
The "scrubs" line.
As Huy would later put it, the people who didn't pre-register were scrubs. No Kid Kadabra, I do not think you're a scrub.
Holy shit, now that's a long line. It was even longer outside.
The first was Sonny, who I've seen working multiple times at a not-so-local Barnes & Noble (of all things!). I was like "WTF you doing here?" and he told me he was a Pokémon fan which was the last thing I would've ever expected from him. He knew his stuff about Mons and seemed to have a pretty decent team going on and we talked about school and stuff. He entered in Masters and would get 8th place by the end of the day.
The next was Matthew who was entered in Seniors and his two friends(?) whose names I forgot. All I know is that one of them was wearing bunny-ears hair accessory thing that was apparently from VOCALOID—thus earning her the nickname "Crazy Otaku Girl". Matthew apparently has an account here that he doesn't use, but didn't bother giving me a username; despite that he was a good kid to talk to, mainly because he knew his shit. I was like, "If you know EVs and IVs, you'll do fine". Crazy Otaku Girl gave me a weird look, but it seemed Matthew was the one who taught the two how to play well. After lots of discussion, he was telling me about how TGC is a goldmine for Nintendo because of the cost of rare cards and just buying the cards in general. Note to self: Hell is a bad word.
I also met an asian kid who was entering in Seniors. I unfortunately didn't get his name, but for some reason he reminded me of Babbytron. I was complaining about I only brought a measly pack of Emerald Breakfast on the go! to the tournament and he offered me some of his snacks which I politely declined. He asked me where the gift shop was, I pointed to what looked like a gift shop and checked it out. They had all kinds of cool shit, from Pokémon cards to Japanese magazines, I was annoyed at the fact that I didn't bring extra money to buy cool stuff.
I actually spotted Huy and OmegaDonut in line for registering their team for the tournament but I was to much of a wimp to walk up to them. However, I did have my "sign" up when I saw Ninahaza, he approached and greeted me as I was a Smogon member and such. Finally, some Smogon members are here.
A few minutes after, we spotted Zari and his younger bro, !!! (yes, that was his nickname) and I was like "Yus" when giving the biggest bro-five/handshake/whatever it was. He brought his laptop, so I was expecting some XD shenanigans and Xenoblade Chronicles bgm later. After that, we caught up with Huy, Duy, and the other Smogon/SkarmBliss/PO players before finding voodoo PIMP (Yes, there was a heavy emphasis on the PIMP). He asked if I had Heat Wave on my team again, and I was like...
Shit. I did, actually. Better not double miss again.
9:50, we meet up with NixHex and his girlfriend, Stephanie and then saw the Skyla and Elesa cosplayers. Yes, we made it our freaking goal to get a picture taken with them; right before we were about to ask to get a group picture of Team Smogon with the cosplayers, we were told to move out of the way for the pre-registration line.:evan:
Around 10, the line for the unregistered players still extended outside and as such, we needed to find a way to kill some time. Zari played some XD: Gale of Darkness and showed me some of the stuff he (legitimately!) RNG abused (Dat Natu, Togepi, and Beedrill; he was working on Dodrio at the time) and later some fics and music. I couldn't hear a damn thing going on with those headphones on bro. Wish I had my own so I could tune out everything.
As if it weren't obvious enough, the battles were gonna start later, and would take about another hour to have everyone registered. But remember guys, waiting is only half the fun! I derped around some more, messed around on IRC, talked with Kaphotics and !!!, and saw an African-American girl cosplaying as the female protagonist of BW. Whenever Zari tried to type something on #smogonwifi, Kaph would occasionally reach over and mess with the keyboard and I would take over, thus making Zari change his name to 'Multiplepeeps'. And yes guys,
Other things before the battles actually began was meeting breh and discussed XD Pokémon such as the 3 Follow Me users available in the game, seeing a guy with a Torchic and Chikorita plushies sticking from his white jacket pockets, the announcer trolling the VGC players by getting everyone's attention and pumping up the crowd...for the TGC finalists.
Okay, now that the waiting is done, battles were gonna start. Since there was like 300+ people, there would be 8 rounds, Swiss style. I didn't expect to win more than half of them, let alone the entire thing.
Here's my team. I credit R Inanimate for making it up as he used it in the International Wi-Fi Tournament a few weeks ago and allowing me to use it, although I made some minor tweaks here and there. Other than that, it plays the same. Any notable changes are bolded. I removed the EVs since I may or may not use this in Nats. Who knows, we'll see.
Quiet, @ Focus Sash
Ability: Snow Warning
Blizzard
Grass Knot
Ice Shard
Protect
Sets Hail to counter Rain and Sand. Surprisingly enough, I only ran into one Rain team, which was the final battle but ran into lots of Sand. I screwed up the EV spread since I did it the night before, it was negligible at best. This already had with Grass Knot as it was bred it 5th Gen, I didn't have enough time to find one with Modest and Giga Drain (4th Gen exclusive TM!), so I had to settle for this.
Adamant, @ Bug Gem
Ability: Guts
Megahorn
Close Combat
Feint
Protect
MVP of the tournament, this caught many opponents off guard. A lot of Pokémon don't have shit on him, and can still deal respectable damage. I got to KO at least one Cress with this, so that was awesome. Designed to take special hits and strike back appropriately, but rather weak to physical hits. The thing I was scared most about using him was its double Flying weakness, thankfully I didn't run into any Acrobatics Crobat or Tornadus. I didn't use Feint as much as I would have liked.
Timid, @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
Thunderbolt
Blizzard
Will-o-Wisp
Trick
Scarf Blizzards are no laughing matter, as I tend to pair this with Abomasnow for Hail. Will-o-Wisp came in handy when I needed it, for the most part this played really well. Rock Slides hurt a lot though.
Jolly, @ Yache Berry
Ability: Sand Veil
Dragon Claw
Earthquake
Rock Slide
Protect
Standard Garchomp. Pairs well with Togekiss and Rotom, as it can use Earthquake without friendly fire damage. When going up against Sand, I sometimes swapped in Garchomp to abuse Sand Veil instead of the predicted switch to Abomasnow.
Calm, @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Serene Grace
Follow Me
Air Slash
Thunder Wave
Softboiled
Follow Me is nothing short of amazing. For one, Togekiss outspeeds 99% of the Hitmontops seen in the tournament, allowing it to use Follow Me before Hitmontop can Fake Out, thus allowing Togekiss's partner to do what it wants. It's quite bulky to boot too, and Sitrus allows it to take more abuse.
Modest, @ Fire Gem
Ability: Flash Fire
Heat Wave
Earth Power
Overheat
Protect
Standard Heatran, he probably got the least screen time. Fire Gem boosted Overheats are nothing to scoff at either, but leaves it vulnerable after the SpA drop. There were some situations where I wish I had Dragon Pulse over Overheat (ie. when it's up against a Latios), but it never cost me any matches.
Kaphotics has sent me the savs with the respective Battle Videos, allowing me to review them all, except for the first two which I neglected to save. Eiganjo has made some of the videos available on YouTube, so props to him on that.
Round 1: Vs. K33ON (0-0)
He only had 5 Mons in his party so I was a bit confident that I would win at least this battle. Pretty straightforward battle, I got a critical on a Fire Gem Overheat which promptly OHKO'd his Cress. Other than that, his DynamicPunch Machamp was the most annoying part of the battle, especially since my Togekiss would not stop hitting itself. This match could've ended badly if the hax really got to me.
2-0
Round 2: Vs. Mikoyan (1-0)2-0
I'm sure this guy knew what he was doing, but suffers from the "Bring Singles knowledge into Doubles". Garchomp was the MVP, managing to stay alive throughout the entire match. I forgot Tyranitar could learn Ice Beam. (He a used Boah variant)
3-0
Round 3: Vs. EverythingArcher (2-0)3-0
I was warned it was only going to get harder from here on out, and my opponent knew his stuff despite my initial impression...or at least I thought he did. He was actually pretty tall and intimidating, but I managed to pull through...somehow. I also had to teach him how to switch in after a double KO during the battle.
Watch on YouTube, courtesy of Eiganjo
2-0
Watch on YouTube, courtesy of Eiganjo
2-0
Round 4: Vs. DaNukes (3-0)
Double freeze hax, DaNukes kinda jinxed it by saying how he was scared of getting frozen...only to get frozen right after he said that. He swapped out his frozen Cress for a Tyranitar, only for that to get...frozen. I felt really bad for him.
Watch on YouTube, courtesy of Eiganjo
3-0
Round 5: Vs. SlashMolder (4-0)Watch on YouTube, courtesy of Eiganjo
3-0
He was telling me about how he witnessed my defeat last year because of my Heat Wave double miss. I didn't let that get to me, as I played it safe and went with my "Never go for the obvious" strategy. I got Freeze hax on his Tyranitar and I suppose that (sorta) makes up for last year. Looking back, had he not missed Rock Slide when I swapped in Abomasnow and using Heat Wave rather than HP Ice, I would've probably lost.
1-0
Round 6: Vs. OmegaDonut (5-0)1-0
I saw Mike Suleski on the sheet and I knew shit was gonna get real. Well, at least one Smogonite would get 6-0 after the battle. He ran a really weird ass Tyranitar, that motherfucker was pretty fast. He packed a Aron and I was like "nope", so I Tricked a Choice Scarf onto it so Berry Juice wouldn't activate (I thought it had Shell Bell, but he told me Berry Juice is the go-to item for Doubles Endeavor Aron). Not too haxy, in fact I missed a Will-o-Wisp near the end of the battle. I wasn't confident of winning and I was scared when I won because I thought you would've raged. :<
2-0
Watch on YouTube, courtesy of Kaphotics
Round 7: Vs. TheFourthChaser (6-0)2-0
Watch on YouTube, courtesy of Kaphotics
Pretty cool guy to talk to before and during the battle. He told me that #insidescoop isn't too important and I told him that I only cared about getting a custom title rather than a badge. The MVP of the game was Togekiss, as he took everything the opponent threw at him with Follow Me while Heatran and Heracross handled the dirty work. Oh yeah, this is where Heracross proved his quality by outspeeding and knocking out Cresselia. A bit haxy, as Heatran got a critical Heat Wave on Hitmontop as well as his Metagross Meteor Missing my Heracross.
3-0
Watch on YouTube, courtesy of Eiganjo
Round 8: Vs. MikeyFromSantee (7-0)3-0
Watch on YouTube, courtesy of Eiganjo
The final battle between the two undefeated battlers. I was scared shitless since I knew beforehand that he was running Rain, as Rain is my bane. For some reason, he refused to switch his leads, even though I had Tricked a Choice Scarf on to his Musharna and crippled his Ludicolo with Thunder Wave. After those two were taken care of, I was somewhat confident that I could win, unless his Politoed had Rain Dance. When I knocked out his last Pokémon, Politoed I was like, "Holy shit I did it".
2-0
2-0
Final Record: 8-0
I was pretty psyched when I found out that I won and this kid was looking at me strange when I asked him if it was a dream. Duy picked me and hugged/spun me around and when the announcements for the Top 4 went on, I was lifted up by Duy and Ninahaza. We ate after at Habit's, and my dad was a derp. Guess I'll see you guys at Nationals.
Props
- Took a pic with the Elesa and Skyla cosplayers:naughty:
- Going far beyond my initial expectations
- Getting to meet up with everyone and have a good time
- Free lunch and dinner
- Winning a trip to Nats
- Mastering the Battle and Matchup RNG (lol)
- Registrations took fucking forever
- Didn't bring money, so no plushies for me
- My dad driving miles away from where I was after we ate, and getting home late
- Confusion hax during the first battle
- Crazy Otaku Girl running into a Shiny Speed Boost Blaziken and the opponent got away with it
- Double freeze hax on DaNukes
- Zari leaving early, as !!! wasn't feeling well
- No Eye of the Tiger or Final Countdown
- Not battling voodoo PIMP
- Not getting a 3DS
- Huy almost forgetting Kaph while driving off with the trunk open (or is it?!?)
- Didn't get
manya flood of VMs congratulating me
All the fellow Smogonites attending the events and cheered me on during the end and having confidence in me when I didn't have any myself. You guys made this a very fun experience for me.
Zari - I wish you could've stayed longer, but it was cool hanging out with you again. Your little bro is...interesting.
Kaphotics - Thanks for uploading my savs so I could keep more than one Battle Video. And also tweaking the final battle with the pads and music. And a cool guy.
NixHex - Yay, it was awesome meeting you. Those two byes in a row...lucky.
OmegaDonut - Pep talk before the final battle.
Duy - For being extremely patient for waiting for my dad to pick me up and offering to find him since he was like, 5 miles away >.>
Huy - For being the best. Do I really look like a Sewaddle?
Ninahaza - You're a pretty awesome guy, it'd be cool if we could chill at Nats or whatever. That and lifting me up with Duy when I was deemed Champion.
Age of Kings - Just because. Crack is cheaper.
DaNukes - Sorry about the double freeze.
voodoo PIMP - What's not badass about you?
SlashMolder - The Battle RNG hated me last year, but liked me this time.
TheFourthChaser - I think our battle was the least haxy of all my battles.
breh - I forgot that we talked about XD stuff, also broke out of his shell to met us.
Stephanie - For cheering me on during the final battle.
Kid Kadabra - You're really tall. I actually wanted to battle you. Kadabra the Kid sounds badass.
Saboros - Nice meeting you I guess.
KKYoshi33 - Knows his shit about anime and inviting me to the UC Davis Anime Con.
The Lube - Thank you for dinner!
Sonny (Not a Smogon member)- I didn't think you played Pokémon. Next time I go to Barnes & Nobles I wanna battle you xD
Chad (Not a Smogon member)- For congratulating me and not making fun of me back in high school
MikeyFromSantee - For being a great opponent to the very end, hope we could clash again at Nats!
Everyone else that I forgot to name - For being awesome during the tournament.
Special Thanks
The people who RNG Abused the Pokémon for my team. So that means Zari, Cereza, TheMantyke, Biosci, xElite, and Troggy all won (in a way).
R Inanimate for letting me use his team.
My parents for allowing me to attend.
The people at Pokémon who put the event together and made it possible.
The cosplayers for taking a picture with me
Awwwww yeeeeeeeah!