let me start by saying that today was excellent in every sense of the word. this was just so much better than the other events i have attended and it was just...excellent.
here we are
this VGC was different, in that i did not have time to do a lot of team testing, nor did i have time to train a completely new team. i was ok with this though, as i was able to mess around with a kind of edgy team that i didn't expect to do very well with at all. i placed 14th (highest female smogoner placement there, awww yeah (i love you caffwin))
my day began with me waking up around 6:50 instead of 7:50 and then being awake for around an hour being a little nervous. i didn't eat anything because i usually can't before VGC. wehweh cry more says i to myself as i prepare my belongings.
i brought an easy-to-spot bag graced with my favorite pokemon, nidoking. if you want to challenge my love for him then i dare you (i heard during the tourny that fishy used him. my hero). along with him were the remainder of my top three, emboar and cryogonal. within that bag was three DS systems, two being extras in case anyone had problems.
around 9:00AM lilbeth and our buddy marcus showed up at my house, and we were off. it takes about an hour to get to the venue which isn't bad at all compared to the seattle drive i used to do. lilbeth and marcus both finished up teams on the way there while mine was already in the battle box.
after arriving at the mall, we heard it before we saw it. after entering we quickly found firestorm, caffwin, articuno, skarm, etc. the line for registration was pretty boring and long, so i took pictures while waiting. also i didn't ignore skarm (this is important)
marcus, and lilbeth's head....
ballin' banners
the registration table, where we received a regionals shelmet promo card worth about as much as firestorm's enteis.
registration was pretty smooth sailings, though firestorm and caffwin jumped line to go be at the help table to assist people who had problems registering/had problems with their games or team. someone brought his team on a french cartridge, who i eventually faced and he was really nice.
behind the help desk, where we gathered. our champion brought some pretty adorable plushies and arti rocked a glaceon face on top of his face. skarm makes sure i don't ignore him.
firestorm is special because he's helping. that dude in the corner is his buddy (danny? was that it? i'm calling him that) who i later had a tense match with. caffwin is smugleaf
pikachu was across from us
random sign pic. there were some with nidoqueens on them and i would have stolen any nidokings. :U
around 11:30, i think registration finally finished up. there were quite a lot of juniors and masters, and a good number of seniors. we would get 6 rounds while juniors and seniors got 5. before matches began i got to meet jabba and j leo, who trained one of my pokemon for me. thanks dude! we were all hoping not to be matched with each other right away of course, and soon enough the first matchups were posted.
before we visit battles, lets see my strange team. i only used the first four:
Vervain@ focus sash
rash/snow warning
252spatk/6spdef/252spe
-protect
-blizzard
-ice shard
-energy ball
abomasnow is a bro and pretty much always gets at least one blizzard off, which in my good matches was often enough to KO both leads with luck and type matchups. i had a different one originally, but discovered his EVs were wrong and so spent yesterday at work producing this one.
dewgong@ leftovers
calm/hydration
140hp/100spatk/240spdef/28spe
-protect
-blizzard
-surf
-fakeout
this dewgong was a boss and you know it. nobody i played in tournament or practice remembered that dewgong could learn fake out, so i had a lot of fun with that. blizzard was often enough to finish anything off that vervain couldn't. dewgong took a lot of hits in stride, and confused some players when it wasn't taking much from super effective hits. dewgong also pulled off three accurate blizzards during sandstorm and one double protect. it was nothing special. but it was dewgong, as only it should be. hydration was for rain amoongus which i never saw (though it worked wonders in practice). thanks to biosci for this
Scorpio@ ice gem
jolly/pressure
40hp/232atk/238spe
-protect
-ice shard
-low kick
-night slash
this is another ice type and you gotta deal with it. i wish i could have put in ice punch but i was just too lazy to do the battle tower again after low kick. not having focus sash was risky but he worked ok for what he did. night slash was for cressy...which i never saw. evs let it survive certain things that didn't happen either
Nightwing @ yache berry
jolly/sand veil
252atk/252spe/6 something i think it was hp whatever
-protect
-earthquake
-rock slide
-dragon claw
nightwing pulled some cool sand veil moves and took out an entire team by himself. after spending ages debating over yache and haban, and then being recommended yache, guess which one i ended up needing. thanks for this leo!
---el backup---
Pelagia@ lum berry
modest/swift swim
6def/252spatk/252spe
-protect
-hydro punp
-ice beam
-energy ball
a member of my 2010 team, she was for rain teams which i never saw. ok.
Victor@ air balloon
jolly/clear body
6hp/252atk/252spe
- protect
-rock slide
-bullet punch
-zen headbutt
hitmontop plagued me nearly every practice match. so i made this and then never saw a hitmontop. but at least now i have a metagross named victor.
alrighty so that is my team, make of it what you will but i love them like children or something. anyway, i did not take notes so yeah, just go with it.
round 1
against the TCG head judge. he's super nice and cool, and told me he had no idea how his team worked as his friends gave it to him but we were pretty sure he knew what was going on anyway. it was 2011 only TR, which was kind of awkward for me as a huge problem for me is scrafty. i've never faced a 2011 TR team so i wasn't 100% sure what to expect, but he did play it a little oddly. a loss for me after expecting the wrong things.
round 2
round 2 was against caffwin's first opponent. i think his team was salamence/meinshao/blissey/gengar. i was torn between knowing if anything was EV trained or not, as his meinshao seemed like it was but the blissey definitely wasn't (unless it was some really crazy offensive blissey???). didn't even bother with fakeout, just blizzard to death. garchomp came in at the end and did over 1/4 to blissey with dragon claw so yeah idk
round 3
a girl who seemed to know what she was talking about, and who kept saying she hated wash rotom because it took out her whole team. i later learned this was skarm's (i think?). milotic/latias/raikou/lucario. fakeout+blizzard everything to death and that's all she wrote. she really did not like my dewgong.
round 4
i got a great type matchup here after leading with dewgong/garchomp, as he wasn't expecting me to actually use garchomp for some reason. darmanitan/galvantula/bisharp/something else. fakeout+earthquake until death. didn't even bother protecting dewgong, she took those EQ like a boss.
round 5
second loss against danny in a close match that included dewgong hitting with blizzard two or three time in sandstorm, garchomp avoiding trick from a rotom cause by his own t-tar removing my hail, my weavile doing nothing, a garchomp speed tie, and us being too nervous to make moves so we took forever to do anything. he used wash rotom, t-tar, garchomp, and zapdos. he won by about 40 hp or so on t-tar, maybe less. i'll get the video up soon
round 6
this was an odd match. slaking/shuckle/leafeon/togekiss. this dude had a glaceon so i'm note sure why he didn't take the type resist at least instead of leafeon. i could see what he tried doing with slaking and it apparently worked until dewgong decided not to take that sass from anyone, and fakeout strikes again. blizzard everything to death, the end. after this battle we were hack checked at the top table. one person was disqualified for having illegal moves on a scizor (didn't see what)
so i ended 4-2 which isn't bad, considering my losses were with people in top 8. i was incredibly surprised to not run into things i was expecting, though apparently others hit multiple TR teams, rain, etc. i was hoping for genies since my leads rip them to shreds and they were everywhere when i was practicing, but hey, i had some great matches so who cares yeah?
prizes!
we watched as people none of us had played won, as of course most of us ended up with horrible matchups and everyone was just ksahgskf. R-inanimate took first as we basically all predicted after round 2, followed by people inlcuding TCG guy i lost to in round 1, danny, and chinese_dood. i took a pic of the dood's rad trophy
so rad mirite. go to nats, no options.
then we had a look at the mighty blue paper
there's me in 14. so proud of myself this year, especially after missing last season and placing 192nd in the autumn friendly...
after that we stood around for a while talking about matches and bad luck, and i participated in my favorite pastime which is ignoring skarm when he is talking to me. i told people i used dewgong and got comments such as "that's ballsy" and the like. then we all decided we needed food, so we went to boston pizza where i took a random photo.
not ignoring you skarm i promise. this time everyone is ignoring me
after dinner and watching some battle videos we headed back towards craving for a game, which was our lovely host. bought some pokemon cards for funnsies, pulled nothing really (WHERE ARE YOU MEWTWO) and took our group photos.
pros
-dewgong
-friends
-food
-the wonderful staff, who were more pumped than we were
-touching a shiny trophy
-didn't ignore skarm
-my team actually being done
cons
-me still ignoring skarm sometimes anyway
- chinese_dood not giving me his travel money even though i asked politely
-caffwin had to face a minimize clefable
-the free card was not nidoking
all in all, i had so much fun that my score doesn't matter. i got to see some bros, battle some mons, and be a champ. and i'm basically sure i'm going to be at nationals, so you better all bring your dewgong counters
here we are
this VGC was different, in that i did not have time to do a lot of team testing, nor did i have time to train a completely new team. i was ok with this though, as i was able to mess around with a kind of edgy team that i didn't expect to do very well with at all. i placed 14th (highest female smogoner placement there, awww yeah (i love you caffwin))
my day began with me waking up around 6:50 instead of 7:50 and then being awake for around an hour being a little nervous. i didn't eat anything because i usually can't before VGC. wehweh cry more says i to myself as i prepare my belongings.
i brought an easy-to-spot bag graced with my favorite pokemon, nidoking. if you want to challenge my love for him then i dare you (i heard during the tourny that fishy used him. my hero). along with him were the remainder of my top three, emboar and cryogonal. within that bag was three DS systems, two being extras in case anyone had problems.
around 9:00AM lilbeth and our buddy marcus showed up at my house, and we were off. it takes about an hour to get to the venue which isn't bad at all compared to the seattle drive i used to do. lilbeth and marcus both finished up teams on the way there while mine was already in the battle box.
after arriving at the mall, we heard it before we saw it. after entering we quickly found firestorm, caffwin, articuno, skarm, etc. the line for registration was pretty boring and long, so i took pictures while waiting. also i didn't ignore skarm (this is important)
marcus, and lilbeth's head....
ballin' banners
the registration table, where we received a regionals shelmet promo card worth about as much as firestorm's enteis.
registration was pretty smooth sailings, though firestorm and caffwin jumped line to go be at the help table to assist people who had problems registering/had problems with their games or team. someone brought his team on a french cartridge, who i eventually faced and he was really nice.
behind the help desk, where we gathered. our champion brought some pretty adorable plushies and arti rocked a glaceon face on top of his face. skarm makes sure i don't ignore him.
firestorm is special because he's helping. that dude in the corner is his buddy (danny? was that it? i'm calling him that) who i later had a tense match with. caffwin is smugleaf
pikachu was across from us
random sign pic. there were some with nidoqueens on them and i would have stolen any nidokings. :U
around 11:30, i think registration finally finished up. there were quite a lot of juniors and masters, and a good number of seniors. we would get 6 rounds while juniors and seniors got 5. before matches began i got to meet jabba and j leo, who trained one of my pokemon for me. thanks dude! we were all hoping not to be matched with each other right away of course, and soon enough the first matchups were posted.
before we visit battles, lets see my strange team. i only used the first four:
Vervain@ focus sash
rash/snow warning
252spatk/6spdef/252spe
-protect
-blizzard
-ice shard
-energy ball
abomasnow is a bro and pretty much always gets at least one blizzard off, which in my good matches was often enough to KO both leads with luck and type matchups. i had a different one originally, but discovered his EVs were wrong and so spent yesterday at work producing this one.
dewgong@ leftovers
calm/hydration
140hp/100spatk/240spdef/28spe
-protect
-blizzard
-surf
-fakeout
this dewgong was a boss and you know it. nobody i played in tournament or practice remembered that dewgong could learn fake out, so i had a lot of fun with that. blizzard was often enough to finish anything off that vervain couldn't. dewgong took a lot of hits in stride, and confused some players when it wasn't taking much from super effective hits. dewgong also pulled off three accurate blizzards during sandstorm and one double protect. it was nothing special. but it was dewgong, as only it should be. hydration was for rain amoongus which i never saw (though it worked wonders in practice). thanks to biosci for this
Scorpio@ ice gem
jolly/pressure
40hp/232atk/238spe
-protect
-ice shard
-low kick
-night slash
this is another ice type and you gotta deal with it. i wish i could have put in ice punch but i was just too lazy to do the battle tower again after low kick. not having focus sash was risky but he worked ok for what he did. night slash was for cressy...which i never saw. evs let it survive certain things that didn't happen either
Nightwing @ yache berry
jolly/sand veil
252atk/252spe/6 something i think it was hp whatever
-protect
-earthquake
-rock slide
-dragon claw
nightwing pulled some cool sand veil moves and took out an entire team by himself. after spending ages debating over yache and haban, and then being recommended yache, guess which one i ended up needing. thanks for this leo!
---el backup---
Pelagia@ lum berry
modest/swift swim
6def/252spatk/252spe
-protect
-hydro punp
-ice beam
-energy ball
a member of my 2010 team, she was for rain teams which i never saw. ok.
Victor@ air balloon
jolly/clear body
6hp/252atk/252spe
- protect
-rock slide
-bullet punch
-zen headbutt
hitmontop plagued me nearly every practice match. so i made this and then never saw a hitmontop. but at least now i have a metagross named victor.
alrighty so that is my team, make of it what you will but i love them like children or something. anyway, i did not take notes so yeah, just go with it.
round 1
against the TCG head judge. he's super nice and cool, and told me he had no idea how his team worked as his friends gave it to him but we were pretty sure he knew what was going on anyway. it was 2011 only TR, which was kind of awkward for me as a huge problem for me is scrafty. i've never faced a 2011 TR team so i wasn't 100% sure what to expect, but he did play it a little oddly. a loss for me after expecting the wrong things.
round 2
round 2 was against caffwin's first opponent. i think his team was salamence/meinshao/blissey/gengar. i was torn between knowing if anything was EV trained or not, as his meinshao seemed like it was but the blissey definitely wasn't (unless it was some really crazy offensive blissey???). didn't even bother with fakeout, just blizzard to death. garchomp came in at the end and did over 1/4 to blissey with dragon claw so yeah idk
round 3
a girl who seemed to know what she was talking about, and who kept saying she hated wash rotom because it took out her whole team. i later learned this was skarm's (i think?). milotic/latias/raikou/lucario. fakeout+blizzard everything to death and that's all she wrote. she really did not like my dewgong.
round 4
i got a great type matchup here after leading with dewgong/garchomp, as he wasn't expecting me to actually use garchomp for some reason. darmanitan/galvantula/bisharp/something else. fakeout+earthquake until death. didn't even bother protecting dewgong, she took those EQ like a boss.
round 5
second loss against danny in a close match that included dewgong hitting with blizzard two or three time in sandstorm, garchomp avoiding trick from a rotom cause by his own t-tar removing my hail, my weavile doing nothing, a garchomp speed tie, and us being too nervous to make moves so we took forever to do anything. he used wash rotom, t-tar, garchomp, and zapdos. he won by about 40 hp or so on t-tar, maybe less. i'll get the video up soon
round 6
this was an odd match. slaking/shuckle/leafeon/togekiss. this dude had a glaceon so i'm note sure why he didn't take the type resist at least instead of leafeon. i could see what he tried doing with slaking and it apparently worked until dewgong decided not to take that sass from anyone, and fakeout strikes again. blizzard everything to death, the end. after this battle we were hack checked at the top table. one person was disqualified for having illegal moves on a scizor (didn't see what)
so i ended 4-2 which isn't bad, considering my losses were with people in top 8. i was incredibly surprised to not run into things i was expecting, though apparently others hit multiple TR teams, rain, etc. i was hoping for genies since my leads rip them to shreds and they were everywhere when i was practicing, but hey, i had some great matches so who cares yeah?
prizes!
we watched as people none of us had played won, as of course most of us ended up with horrible matchups and everyone was just ksahgskf. R-inanimate took first as we basically all predicted after round 2, followed by people inlcuding TCG guy i lost to in round 1, danny, and chinese_dood. i took a pic of the dood's rad trophy
so rad mirite. go to nats, no options.
then we had a look at the mighty blue paper
there's me in 14. so proud of myself this year, especially after missing last season and placing 192nd in the autumn friendly...
after that we stood around for a while talking about matches and bad luck, and i participated in my favorite pastime which is ignoring skarm when he is talking to me. i told people i used dewgong and got comments such as "that's ballsy" and the like. then we all decided we needed food, so we went to boston pizza where i took a random photo.
not ignoring you skarm i promise. this time everyone is ignoring me
after dinner and watching some battle videos we headed back towards craving for a game, which was our lovely host. bought some pokemon cards for funnsies, pulled nothing really (WHERE ARE YOU MEWTWO) and took our group photos.
pros
-dewgong
-friends
-food
-the wonderful staff, who were more pumped than we were
-touching a shiny trophy
-didn't ignore skarm
-my team actually being done
cons
-me still ignoring skarm sometimes anyway
- chinese_dood not giving me his travel money even though i asked politely
-caffwin had to face a minimize clefable
-the free card was not nidoking
all in all, i had so much fun that my score doesn't matter. i got to see some bros, battle some mons, and be a champ. and i'm basically sure i'm going to be at nationals, so you better all bring your dewgong counters