Shortly after the 2011 Worlds, we are suddenly hit with the announcement of VGC 2012 having regionals in November.
Since I haven't really made teams for GBU Doubles, I have about 6 weeks to build a team. Since I felt short on time for testing and raising my team, I decided to use my 858 Battle Subway Team as a starting point and make a team off of it. Eraddd made a comment saying how it worked really well when he tried it out online until people finally started using some Anti-rain tactics. So I tried the team out for myself, found it to be surprisingly effective reaching a peak of 4th on the 2012 Skarmbliss Ladder, and never looked back.
Here's what the team ended up as:
Politoed***Asclepius
Ludicolo***Klarwind
Kingdra*** Raising Heart
Gastrodon***Kerykeion
Arcanine ***Laevatein
Zapdos***Bardiche
The overall team turned out to be quite versitile depite not having rain up very often. The last two Pokemon can pretty easily be substituted with other Pokemon to try to cover different things. Zapdos + Arcanine was the first version of the team, although I have tried a few other pairs for the team sideboard.
Admittedly, this team is weak to teams that have Abomasnow + Latios/Latias. But I kind of assumed that I wouldn't really run into these sorts of teams at the regionals.
Since I didn't really know what to expect from attendance numbers I felt that a rain team gave me a safe way to power through weaker opponents. Since this team is quite amphibious, I felt pretty confident on being able to do well.
In the end there were 72 players for the Masters at Oregon. And I'd estimate about 30 or so of them had some sort of online presence. So much for trying to coast through with rain teams. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who went with a rain team due to time constraints and wanting to use a "safe" team.
Although I wrote notes and can probably write about the battles in turn by turn detail, I'll save that for another day.
A 7 hour drive through the rain, a 7 hour drive back. And 7 battles in between.
"Would you like to board
the Northwest Regional VGC Train?"
>>Board
Info
Cancel
Battle #1 - vs Thomas Ferren
The opponent ran a Trick Room, and had a bit of the "single's team in a double's format" problem with his team. This worked against him since things like U-turn on Scizor or Ice Beam on Dusclops don't really help him much here. But his CM Reuniclus did give me a bit of a scare. Gastrodon lived long enough for me to safely win the battle.
2-0, 1W-0L
Battle #2 Jessica Bulger
Another Trick Room team, but without an Amoonguss and without any weather changers, so I decided to bring Politoed into the battle as my lead. The only person I managed to sweep with Rain the whole day, and only because the person screwed up and used Fake Out on my Ludicolo on turn one. She was kind of frustrated the whole battle because of it.
3-0, 2W-0L
Battle #3 - vs Bug Master Marc
It seems that a lot of us have managed to avoid facing each other so far, as many good players remained 2-0. My third opponent was Bug Master Marc. This was my only encounter with the SPF this regional.
I couldn't really get a good read on what his team was really going for. In the end I lead with Politoed and Ludicolo. On afterthought, that was probably the worst thing I could have started with in the battle, but that's beside the point.
"Ludicolo used Fake Out!
Amoonguss's Effect Spore!
Ludicolo fell asleep!"
sums up the battle. A bad team choice followed with a worse first turn lead to a battle that I was never in the running for. Losing to Fake Out -> Effect Spore -> Sleep sucks, but fortunately it's not Single Elimination, so I still get to play on to the end. But I remain SPF weak.
0-3, 2W-1L
Battle #4 vs Zane Nelson
There was a bit of extra delay before the start of the 4th round, as the staff started to clean up the place.
This person was someone who said that they were originally a TCG person, who wanted to try their hand at VGC. going 2-1 isn't too bad for a person like that.
I look at their team, and feel really annoyed. It was literally a team full of Anti-rain Pokemon, so Politoed was benched for this battle. Fortunately for me, the person's team choice didn't really handle Arcanine very well, and beat him fairly easily despite all the anti-rain he had.
2-0, 3W-1L
Battle #5 vs Dragonking700
Against another Trick Room team. I misplay early on in the battle, as I knew that the opponent would protect or switch with Abomasnow, yet I bothered attacking it anyways. Followed by the opponent pulling a fairly risky move in not protecting with Abomasnow on the second turn as I double targetted his Cresselia. My Politoed gets frozen solid on a switch in, which ultimately tipped the battle. I started to turn the battle around in the end, but it wasn't enough. I'm handed another loss to bad play followed by bs status hax.
0-2, 3W-2L
Battle #6 vs Thomas Felts
His team was pretty interesting Rain Team. I managed to keep one step ahead for the whole battle allowing me to win it, but things could have turned bad pretty quickly if I was caught by a surprise move.
2-0, 4W-2L
Battle #7 - vs TRE
By this point they had already taken down all the banners in the room, and stacked all the chairs aside from the ones we were still sitting on. They even took down the pairing boards, which caused a bit of confusion before they decided to put them on the walls. Oh, and some SPF started battling Shirtless.
And to end the day, I fight my brother. We both know what the opponent's team is, and both of the teams are a bit similar. It was a good match, both teams played hard.
1-0, 5W-2L
"Congratulations! You've successfully
reached aseven-win streak 5-2 record!
Since you'vewon seven in a row ranked 13th place,
I present you with theseBattle Championship Points!
R Inanimate received 3 CP!"
13th place isn't too bad. Especially since there was quite a bit of competition in this regional. My tie-breaker ended up a bit on the low side as almost all my opponents went 3-4 or 4-3, and I didn't really fight many well known players.
The tourney was enjoyable. The Swiss round definately helped out once we started to face off against each other, as win or lose we get to play our 7 battles.
The opponents I faced make my Politoed sad though. I only brought it into 3 battles, and I lost on two of them. I can't really bring a scarfed Toed against a TR team, and it's fairly useless against a fellow rain team. Evidently that was 6/7 players I fought, and the 7th person ran 6 anti-rain Pokemon.
A shout out to the SPF, Capri, Duy, GreenStarr, Stephen Morioka, Snake, Aralevent and any other people I missed. It was great meeting you guys again.
A shout out to the event staff. This is the first set of combined regionals, and the staff did well in making sure the event ran smoothly despite many of them not being as familiar with the video games as we are used to.
"Thank you for playing!
If you want to resume your challenge,
please visit us again.
At the Vancouver Regionals in April 2012.
We hope to see you again!"
Since I haven't really made teams for GBU Doubles, I have about 6 weeks to build a team. Since I felt short on time for testing and raising my team, I decided to use my 858 Battle Subway Team as a starting point and make a team off of it. Eraddd made a comment saying how it worked really well when he tried it out online until people finally started using some Anti-rain tactics. So I tried the team out for myself, found it to be surprisingly effective reaching a peak of 4th on the 2012 Skarmbliss Ladder, and never looked back.
Here's what the team ended up as:
Politoed***Asclepius
Ludicolo***Klarwind
Kingdra*** Raising Heart
Gastrodon***Kerykeion
Arcanine ***Laevatein
Zapdos***Bardiche
The overall team turned out to be quite versitile depite not having rain up very often. The last two Pokemon can pretty easily be substituted with other Pokemon to try to cover different things. Zapdos + Arcanine was the first version of the team, although I have tried a few other pairs for the team sideboard.
Admittedly, this team is weak to teams that have Abomasnow + Latios/Latias. But I kind of assumed that I wouldn't really run into these sorts of teams at the regionals.
Since I didn't really know what to expect from attendance numbers I felt that a rain team gave me a safe way to power through weaker opponents. Since this team is quite amphibious, I felt pretty confident on being able to do well.
In the end there were 72 players for the Masters at Oregon. And I'd estimate about 30 or so of them had some sort of online presence. So much for trying to coast through with rain teams. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who went with a rain team due to time constraints and wanting to use a "safe" team.
Although I wrote notes and can probably write about the battles in turn by turn detail, I'll save that for another day.
A 7 hour drive through the rain, a 7 hour drive back. And 7 battles in between.
"Would you like to board
the Northwest Regional VGC Train?"
>>Board
Info
Cancel
Battle #1 - vs Thomas Ferren
The opponent ran a Trick Room, and had a bit of the "single's team in a double's format" problem with his team. This worked against him since things like U-turn on Scizor or Ice Beam on Dusclops don't really help him much here. But his CM Reuniclus did give me a bit of a scare. Gastrodon lived long enough for me to safely win the battle.
2-0, 1W-0L
Battle #2 Jessica Bulger
Another Trick Room team, but without an Amoonguss and without any weather changers, so I decided to bring Politoed into the battle as my lead. The only person I managed to sweep with Rain the whole day, and only because the person screwed up and used Fake Out on my Ludicolo on turn one. She was kind of frustrated the whole battle because of it.
3-0, 2W-0L
Battle #3 - vs Bug Master Marc
It seems that a lot of us have managed to avoid facing each other so far, as many good players remained 2-0. My third opponent was Bug Master Marc. This was my only encounter with the SPF this regional.
I couldn't really get a good read on what his team was really going for. In the end I lead with Politoed and Ludicolo. On afterthought, that was probably the worst thing I could have started with in the battle, but that's beside the point.
"Ludicolo used Fake Out!
Amoonguss's Effect Spore!
Ludicolo fell asleep!"
sums up the battle. A bad team choice followed with a worse first turn lead to a battle that I was never in the running for. Losing to Fake Out -> Effect Spore -> Sleep sucks, but fortunately it's not Single Elimination, so I still get to play on to the end. But I remain SPF weak.
0-3, 2W-1L
Battle #4 vs Zane Nelson
There was a bit of extra delay before the start of the 4th round, as the staff started to clean up the place.
This person was someone who said that they were originally a TCG person, who wanted to try their hand at VGC. going 2-1 isn't too bad for a person like that.
I look at their team, and feel really annoyed. It was literally a team full of Anti-rain Pokemon, so Politoed was benched for this battle. Fortunately for me, the person's team choice didn't really handle Arcanine very well, and beat him fairly easily despite all the anti-rain he had.
2-0, 3W-1L
Battle #5 vs Dragonking700
Against another Trick Room team. I misplay early on in the battle, as I knew that the opponent would protect or switch with Abomasnow, yet I bothered attacking it anyways. Followed by the opponent pulling a fairly risky move in not protecting with Abomasnow on the second turn as I double targetted his Cresselia. My Politoed gets frozen solid on a switch in, which ultimately tipped the battle. I started to turn the battle around in the end, but it wasn't enough. I'm handed another loss to bad play followed by bs status hax.
0-2, 3W-2L
Battle #6 vs Thomas Felts
His team was pretty interesting Rain Team. I managed to keep one step ahead for the whole battle allowing me to win it, but things could have turned bad pretty quickly if I was caught by a surprise move.
2-0, 4W-2L
Battle #7 - vs TRE
By this point they had already taken down all the banners in the room, and stacked all the chairs aside from the ones we were still sitting on. They even took down the pairing boards, which caused a bit of confusion before they decided to put them on the walls. Oh, and some SPF started battling Shirtless.
And to end the day, I fight my brother. We both know what the opponent's team is, and both of the teams are a bit similar. It was a good match, both teams played hard.
1-0, 5W-2L
"Congratulations! You've successfully
reached a
Since you've
I present you with these
R Inanimate received 3 CP!"
13th place isn't too bad. Especially since there was quite a bit of competition in this regional. My tie-breaker ended up a bit on the low side as almost all my opponents went 3-4 or 4-3, and I didn't really fight many well known players.
The tourney was enjoyable. The Swiss round definately helped out once we started to face off against each other, as win or lose we get to play our 7 battles.
The opponents I faced make my Politoed sad though. I only brought it into 3 battles, and I lost on two of them. I can't really bring a scarfed Toed against a TR team, and it's fairly useless against a fellow rain team. Evidently that was 6/7 players I fought, and the 7th person ran 6 anti-rain Pokemon.
A shout out to the SPF, Capri, Duy, GreenStarr, Stephen Morioka, Snake, Aralevent and any other people I missed. It was great meeting you guys again.
A shout out to the event staff. This is the first set of combined regionals, and the staff did well in making sure the event ran smoothly despite many of them not being as familiar with the video games as we are used to.
"Thank you for playing!
If you want to resume your challenge,
please visit us again.
At the Vancouver Regionals in April 2012.
We hope to see you again!"
