JAA Washington DC (kaolinite)

Introduction

Hey there—I'm a fairly long-time visitor but first-time registered-member to Smogon. I'm glad to be a part of the Smogon community and I'll get to the Washington DC JAA warstory after I introduce myself and lay all the cards out on the table. About my Pokemon career, I started competitively battling in the days of PBS, then over to the GSBots on mIRC, and to NetBattle. I haven't been on IRC or Netbattle in a while though.

I'm going to break this post into some sections: just jump to the "JAA Tourney" section and skip the rest, if you want. The Tourney part is pretty lame, though. I really don't remember too much about things. If you really want to break down, I'll try my hardest to remember. But man, by the end of the Tourney/Day, all the Pokemon workers looked like they wanted to kill themselves—but I can appreciate all their hard-work and especially their patience and self-control not to scream at anyone.

About Me

I'm 22 years old and a recent graduate from Virginia Tech—graduated December 2005 and stuck around the area waiting tables for a semester before moving to Richmond, VA for a 'real job.' (I stayed as long as I could at college with my buddies and I had Spring Break plans that wouldn't look too hot if I took a week off a month or so into a new job) I'm a very mellow, chill person. I'm into whatever makes me happy; like TV, videogames, movies, music, sports—and I like 'em all: TV breaks down to mainly cartoons, sadly, I'm open to all types of music and movies. I'm a big Stern fan, so SIRIUS satellite radio helps the day go by. If you're a part of facebook.com (the college/high school version of MySpace), I'm there.

Preparation

I own Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald + BOX, Colosseum, and XD. They all played some kind of role in making my team.

The only pokemon generation I know is RBY, so FR/LG served as my EV training games. It seemed the fastest too for everything; VS seeker for trainer battles for rapid-fire EV training and Island 5 for money making to buy Vitamins. I also wanted to use the FR/LG girl trainer since she's gotten the least amount of action. So I restarted FR multiple times, playing as fast as I could to get to Mewtwo—and at the end, before I started a new game, I'd attach all the useful TMs/Rare Candies/PP Ups to my pokemon and deposit them into Pokemon BOX. The goal was to get at least 60 pokemon, for the National Dex and I played through the game with traded monsters with HMs from LG so my party would gain more EXP and make things go as fast as possible. On my last play through, I spent about an hour trading back and forth to my LG to rack up the Pokedex to 100, so I could actually withdraw monsters from Pokemon Box.

Sapphire was my “Pick Up” game and Level-up game—where I racked up a ton of Rare Candies/extra PP Ups. It didn't take too long to get the amount I needed. And I still hadn't caught Rayquaza, so I could soft-reset until I got the right nature/IVs I wanted.

Emerald was my breeding ground—that took the longest—but after multiple generations, I got my Clefable and Snorlax with the right Nature and high-IVs. (I saved before picking up an Egg since Nature/Gender/Trait are set but IVs aren't) AND where I got lucky catching Groudon with amazing IVs. Oh, Gardy's Synchronize-trait doesn't work on Ubers, so catching each Uber took hours and ate away at my patience.

It pissed me off that I bought XD just to learn Selfdestruct... but it helped me in the finals. In the end, Pokemon BOX ended up saving me a lot of time transferring monsters back and forth.

JAA Tourney

This would be the 3rd time Westfield/Montgomery Mall has hosted a Pokemon event. The 1st tourney was in '99 promoting the Pikachu VW Bug and Pokemon Yellow—the tourney consisted of three rounds; each round you win a “badge” which were really POGs—the undefeated got to play the NOA Poke-rep and if you beat him, you won a pokemon hat, the hat I won is collecting dust somewhere. The 2nd time was in 2000 promoting Stadium and the 2nd movie—same set up as before, except non-POG Badges/Keychains, and you get to play against the NOA rep on Stadium, if you won, you got nothing.

Anyway, I was working on zero sleep coming into the tourney. That ultimately made me totally emotionless but gave me a kind of concentration and some sort of instinct when I was playing the matches. I got there at 11:30am, a little late, and wanted to get a Celebi, but thought the line wasn't going to be that bad (I remember picking up a MEW for RBY and the line went fast)—I was wrong—the line went out the door to the street. So I walked around aimlessly and ended up watching the 12&under's final, which ended up being a pretty good game. When the match was over, I hadn't realized the line to register in the 13+ was already long as hell.

I was pretty silent in line, holding the urge to correct the people around me talking about Pokemon. It gave me some comfort that the people around me had no idea how to train their team whatsoever. AND I think there were probably only 5 people that knew about EV training/IVs, and most of them were from Smogon. There was no random seeding for Round 1—people ended up playing the person in front/behind them. I came to this tourney with 2 goals—not getting beat in round 1 and winning a GBA micro. I accomplished my first goal with ease.

My Team

Yeah, full of Ubers. Didn't care—there to win. [my memory is completely fried, I don't remember too much about any of my matches, so bear with me—oh, and the GBA/GC cables are super-trashed, like I mentioned in another warstory]

Round 1: VS a little girl

Her Team

I feel bad about this because the match ended in less than 2 minutes and I destroyed some girl's life. Clefable survives Sky Uppercut and Hydro Pump (halved because of Drought) then dies in the next turn—Sword Danced Groudon—EQ killing Blaziken&Vaporeon—then EQs Mewtwo and Venusaur.

Round 2: VS Steven (kid in front of me in the registration line)

Steven's Team

[Charizard+??? Lead—Mewtwo and someone] I don't remember this kid's team at all except Charizard and Mewtwo.

The match begins with Clefable eating a “Blast Burn” SunnyBeamed up, which shocked the shit outta me. I Rockslide and kill Charizard—Groudy EQ pokes 2&3 before dying, Snorlax and my Mewtwo rape his Mewtwo.

Round 3: VS some guy in a Nintendo Jacket

Nintendo Jacket's team

I used protect a lot this round—I think my opponent's monsters didn't have protect on their movesets. Slaking was a bitch to kill—and overall, a very slow-paced match. The ONLY time during the tourney that my Clefable was able to actually use Ice Beam and Softboiled.

Round 4: VS Quaza-A/Alvin

Watch the video—I should've lost this round. Hax with Quick Claw Snorlax. I feel like a douche—I thought things were going pretty good after I Endured/Protected against his Snorlax-"Kabigon" Selfdestruct. I could actually read his Japanese nicknames too “Snipe” as Mewtwo's nickname, I think (learned from playing imported Super Famicom RPGs)—I just remember the last two turns—I knew I was going to lose but my Snorlax used Protect to keep the match going as long as possible. Then, Body Slam kills Ludicolo. There was no way I thought Quick Claw would make ANY kind of difference, it was just a filler item—hell of a game though, I'm sorry you had to make an exit there.

Round 5: VS Carlos

This guy had the craziest team and freaked me out. I spent like 5 minutes trying to pick my team AFTER he was done picking his four. He had: Zapdos, Dusclops, Hariyama, Mewtwo, Kyogre, and Aerodactyl (I think) I knew the roles of all his monsters, like Fake Out Hari and Imprison Dusclops—but it didn't make a difference. The only thing I didn't see was his Selfdestruct Mewtwo. Which killed my own Mewtwo and Carlos' own Hariyama (who was going for Protect two turns in a row)

Final Round: VS Isaac

Isaac's team

(I can only name three of his monsters—Lugia, Mewtwo, and Kyogre—he might've used Snorlax)

I think Quaza-A/Alvin has the video to this—if you could please send me a copy on a CD or post it somewhere, that'd be awesome. I don't think you can save youtube videos. Well, the announcer, Chad (I think was his name, I never properly introduced myself) prepped us about the presentation and I shook hands with Isaac—who then called me “scary” or something—whatever, I guess.

Well, same strategy I had been using the whole tourney: Follow Me + Swords Dance. My Groudon ended up being faster than his Kyogre and in the second turn or so, I used Rock Slide to do crap damage to his Lugia and Kyogre but got Kyogre to flinch. Fast-forward a little, I think he had a Selfdestruct Snorlax...

Anyway, I was getting a little nervous, inputting a lot of moves at the 1 second mark—I was completely mesmerized by the colors on the TV in my dazed state. It came down to my Snorlax and Mewtwo VS his Lugia and Mewtwo. Time was getting really low—and I was going to lose from the time out. Lugia T-waves Snorlax. This is where I gamble everything on my Mewtwo's Selfdestruct. I hope that my Snorlax can pull off a Protect to survive. Success with Protect and BOOM—his Mewtwo survives with like 34HP, Lugia dies. We're both down to 1 monster each and my Snorlax has more HP. The timer was down to 10 seconds—I input a move as fast as I can because I want to really want to kill his Mewtwo—but it gets fully paralyzed—and time runs out. The “WINNER” goes over the girl trainer and I felt so relieved.