Think Fast Competition

[Spoonfairy]

Entry: May 29 to June 5 (first 50,000 to sign)
Competition: June 6 to June 8

Battle Format: Single Battles

Eligible Pokémon: 001 to 718 from National Pokédex allowed, needs to be caught/hatched in Pokémon X/Y. "Some further Pokémon are also excluded from this competition."

Special Rules:

• 10 min limit per battle
• 30 sec party selection
• 15 sec per turn
• 10 battles each day max

Prizes: 1,000 Poké Miles

If you are going to anticipate please show us your party and tell us how it went :)

 

[BlakDragon]

This competition should be interesting.
We should expect some unique team combinations,
given the exclusion of the usual mythical Pokemon & Pokemon that cannot have the Kalosborn-insignia.
No legendary doges/golems/pixies/swords of justice will be a factor here, to name some.
It won't be just the Battle Spot Singles ladder with shortened time limits.

Hopefully I don't take forever and a half to build a team I'm comfortable with this time, oy.

 

[Spoonfairy]

I saw that they are having some contradictions going on about Pokemon X/Y legendary pokemons

From their news feed;
"The Think Fast Competition features Single Battles, and every Pokémon in the National Pokédex is eligible—even Legendary Pokémon such as Xerneas and Yveltal!"

While the rule set is saying;
"Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Celebi, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Victini, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem, Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect, Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde cannot be used."

 

[EnGarde]

Hi, I was reading the regulations here http://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/competitions/4006/regulation/?status=0. It says the second is true:

"Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Celebi, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Victini, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem, Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect, Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde cannot be used."

 

[Spoonfairy]

Yes that is were I read it too, but I suspect that that might be a copy paste issue as all rule sets before that said the exact same thing.
The news feed is obviously handwritten. Unless they change the rules that will be canon but I believe they might just change it.

 

[EnGarde]

So, what are you planning to do? I'm building a team with mewtwo and xerneas and I'll see if the battle box locks at the beginning of the competition. If it doesn't, then I'll fall back on my secondary team. :)

 

[Spoonfairy]

Will post it when I locked it in ;)
Mega Mewtwo? We will see!

 

[Pyritie]

If xerneas/yveltal/mewtwo are allowed then the rules are identical to the april friendly, right?

 

[Mega_Charizard_Z]

Just entered and checked eligible pokemon, only legends allowed are Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres. Still not sure what to use yet

 

[Ying]

Played my 10 games for today. 9:1 so far with a rating around ~1600.
Would have gone 10:0, missed an attack and lost after that to time out because of the hp difference.

Also played against some really funny Teams. xD One Guy had a Pikachu and a Japanese Player had a Greninja with Swagger and Protect.

 

[Personpersonperson]

My wifi is not so great right now, so I'm planning on doing this competition a few battles at a time. In my first battle tonight, I got my butt handed to me by a mega kangaskhan that flinched my sableye with rock slide. Two of the next three battles were complete domination thanks to my garchomp and greninja who each finished a battle untouched in three turns (picking delphox, lucario, and charizard is just inviting earthquakes and rock slides). The last battle needs to be seen because the hax is straight out of the Battle Maison or Battle Subway: 76JW-WWWW-WWW7-ZUY7

 

[Sara Sol]

I completely quit the competition after a greninja flinched rotom-w to death and managed to freeze my next two pokes with 1 ice beam each. In retrospect I probably shouldn't have, but was just furious.

 

[Mega_Charizard_Z]

Went 8 wins 2 losses my first day with a team of Garchomp, Infernape, Mega Blastoise, Noivern, Ferrothorn and Gengar. None of these Greninjas realize Noivern outspeeds and the number of times people set up a Substitute or Screens in front of it forgetting about Infiltrator is incredible. This replay shows why I never go on battle spot without Blastoise and Noivern: HX3W-WWWW-WWW7-P9AM

 

[Hulavuta]

Oh hey, so I entered this too. I didn't expect the shortened times to be an issue, and for the most part they aren't...except for the 30 second team preview, that's kicking my ass! As for my team, I don't have quite that many Pokemon yet so right now my team is Azumarill/Tyranitar/Aegislash/Hydreigon/Chansey/Skarmory. Yeah, I have a severe lack of speed...but the team is working out well so far. What I generally do is pick two attackers and then Skarmory or Chansey based on what threatens those two. Sometimes I use both and against certain teams it's really easy to just stall them out. Stalling in general seems like a cool strategy considering only 10 minutes to battles. There are some battles where my opponent had a wall like Porygon2 that I thought I couldn't break and decided to stall...in the end all of my battles have ended with knock-outs or surrenders but that seems like a viable strategy.

I played all ten of my matches today and went 7-1. Yes, you read that right. Two of my opponents disconnected (at least, I think it was them. I was able to go into the next game no problem so I don't think there was an issue on my side) but it didn't say that I got a win when I queued up for the next battle. Right now I'm waiting for the PGL site to update...hopefully it says I get those two wins, otherwise I'll feel very cheated. One of them disconnected after I had already fainted all of his Pokemon! -_-

UPDATE: They gave me a win for one of them (I'm assuming the one where I had already won) but the other one hasn't shown up despite it still saying I've played 10 games for that day...I played again to see if it would let me but apparently the next day has already started (it hasn't for me yet, I guess it's running on the same timezone for everyone) so right now I'm at 10-2 with 13 games played.

 

[Vizer]

This little tourney-thing is a lot more fun than I expected

Stalling in general seems like a cool strategy considering only 10 minutes to battles. There are some battles where my opponent had a wall like Porygon2 that I thought I couldn't break and decided to stall...in the end all of my battles have ended with knock-outs or surrenders but that seems like a viable strategy.

Agreed, my team's offensive but I ran into a guy with a balanced-ish team, definitely not fully defensive. His last Pokemon was Mega Venusaur with Giga Drain / Sludge Bomb / Leech Seed / Sleep Powder, and there were 4 minutes remaining. I had a full HP Kangaskhan and Aegislash, so I sent in Aegislash and, with the help of his Leech Seed and my Leftovers helping tick down the clock, I won by timeout with 2 Pokemon alive.

With a fully defensive team that can kill one offensive Pokemon in 10 minutes, I bet timeout would be a viable way to win, and it wouldn't even be that boring because of the 10 minute limit!

A team built around letting SubToxic Gliscor do its thing could burn loads of time, but it might be too hard to build a stall team that doesn't lose to Mega Gengar or Mega Kangaskhan.

Hopefully this competition comes back some day!

 

[Erebyssial]

Timestalling was pretty lame in this, I had a few good matches decided by the timer when it could have gone either way or lost because it forced a bold move. I think they could have stayed true to the gimmick of the competition without cutting down the overall timer as well. Then again I did use Zapdos+Ferrothorn a lot who are stally mons themselves, but they were so successful at handling all the big threats that it was hard not to keep bringing them

It was cool to go back to the pre-bank battle spot meta, I finished 25-5, 1750ish. Highest I saw was 1761 who I beat so I'm curious to see where I ranked

 

[Zetsumei-Sensei]

17-13 here, I'm ashamed to say...

I was very underprepared for scarfed Hydreigon. It wrecked me every time because I had no fairies and nothing else to outspeed it with.

Lesson for next time: Azumarril or GTFO.

 

[Hulavuta]

Finished with 20-10...it's not a bad record but I'm kinda upset because lots of my losses were total garbage. My very last game against a Japanese player, I had Tyranitar out against Charizard-Y and I lost to Focus Punch when Stone Edge missed. It is a clever strategy to get Tyranitars on the switch...maybe he predict I'd go for Stealth Rock or something, I dunno. But ugh, it's infuriating, 21-9 would've been great. Another one of my losses was a disconnect right at the beginning of the game. At least they let me redo the other disconnects that didn't count as wins or losses, so I could play all 30 matches.

Anyway here are some things I learned:

-The short timer hurt a lot more than I thought it would, especially since now I don't have time to use Honkalculator for damage calculations...just had to go on instinct for everything. I also found myself regretting moves and realizing the better move like a second after I make them.

-This isn't really applicable in regular battles where you have way more time for each match, but I found that if you are going to lose anyway, just do a super risky play. If you have the chance to kill one thing you can stall for a bit and win by having the most Pokemon at the end.

-It really helped me to deal with tilt. Normally if I go on a losing streak, I just keep playing until I get some wins to offset the losses. Obviously this is a bad idea, because when you're frustrated you can't really think straight and then continue to make bad plays. In this competition, since the number of games is so limited, I knew I should just take a break and come back later rather than wasting my chances.

-Never give up unless it is super super hopeless (think like Aegislash vs Chansey hopeless). There are so many times I completely thought I would lose, then realized a few turns later or after the game that I had a chance to turn the game around and maybe even get the advantage, if only I didn't give up so quickly and made a different move a few turns earlier.

-I never really understood why so many Hydreigons are scarfed (it is the number one item according to PGL statistics) but I realized why during this competition when I constantly found myself wishing I had a scarf on it -_-

-I have no idea how to deal with Aegislash paired with Rotom or Greninja. I'm actually gonna try that and a few other cool combos I ran into.

As for replays, I saved a few but I wouldn't really expect anyone to watch all of them. I'll just post my third-to-last battle, it was pretty good in my opinion. I thought I was in a hopeless situation and definitely going to lose, but some smart plays (at least I hope they were lol) helped me to stall out the timer and win in the end, 2-1. FUTW-WWWW-WWW7-QS5X

All in all, I'm not too dissatisfied with this competition, considering it was my first one and I was rushed to make a team. I learned a lot and it definitely could've been worse! As long as I have over 1600 points and a positive win/loss record I'm happy!

 

[Zetsumei-Sensei]

Was it just me, or was Ice Beam SUUUUUUUPER freeze-haxxy this comp? It seemed like every time I was hit with Ice Beam it would freeze! Meanwhile, it took five tries for me to inflict paralysis with Thunderbolt!

 

[Pyritie]

Ended 17-13 with my mono dark team since I didn't have any other good singles team ready on cart.

Started off 9-1 on day 1. Lost the one due to playing really badly around a dragonite.
I swear it kept counter picking teams for me on day 2. Almost every team had a rotom-w or greninja or m-lucario or something I couldn't deal with very well.
Day 3 was full of bullshit. Paraflinch togekiss flinching/paralysing every single fucking turn. Another guy who timer stalled with a goddamn minimize chansey. Managed to knock off its eviolite but then couldn't hit it for the rest of the battle and he won with timer stalling. And then sableye missed wowing a salamence 3 times in a row while it dragon danced away. And when I did finally hit it on the fourth try? Lum berry.

I was surprised at the variety in megas though. Only ever fought 2 mega kangas (one of them stayed in normal form to fake out sableye, then mega'd right in front of it) and fought a big variety of other ones. There were tons of greninjas, talonflames, and aegislashes though, as expected.

Also a lot of people who must've missed the fact that I was mono dark and didn't bring their fairies!

Was it just me, or was Ice Beam SUUUUUUUPER freeze-haxxy this comp? It seemed like every time I was hit with Ice Beam it would freeze! Meanwhile, it took five tries for me to inflict paralysis with Thunderbolt!

I had a hilarious battle where my mandibuzz was frozen by a gyarados' ice fang, and then later in the battle my greninja froze his heliolisk with one ice beam

 

[Hulavuta]

Scores are in!

I got 769th in the world...along with like 10 other people. Not too bad though, I guess. I got over 1600 points so I'm happy.

Hide

60th in the United States, that's a little better xD

 

[Sara Sol]

-The short timer hurt a lot more than I thought it would, especially since now I don't have time to use Honkalculator for damage calculations...just had to go on instinct for everything. I also found myself regretting moves and realizing the better move like a second after I make them.

This feels relevant http://i.imgur.com/dZIk8wW.jpg?1
On one hand I *loved* the faster pace, but on the other I'm not a fan of timestalling and wish there was a chess clock-like system.
Next Think-Fast is in August, but it's doubles so I'm not sure if I'll give it a shot.

 

[Age of Kings]

http://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/information/160d6d8b-677a-45f2-abb4-440439fd1f3f

Didn't want to post another thread but it looks like they're running a Doubles iteration of this. Standard Battle Spot rules plus the following time enforcements:
• A 10-minute time limit for each match will automatically be enforced in-game, beginning at the start of each battle. If the outcome has not been determined when the time limit expires, the game will automatically apply tiebreakers to determine a winner.
• At the beginning of each battle, players have 15 seconds to select three Pokémon with which to battle. Players will not be able to see the Pokémon in the opponent's Battle Box for this competition.
• At the beginning of each turn, players have 20 seconds to select a move or change Pokémon in battle. If a player has not made his or her selections at the end of this period, the game will automatically make selections for the player.

Interesting that you can only bring 3 per match rather than the standard 4 for all other doubles tiers.

 

[Spoonfairy]

I believe you should make a second post there as it is a new tournament after all :) But that is just my thought