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Ask a simple question, get a simple answer - VGC edition

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Any team loses to a well played team. The point of Trick Room / Swift Swim is for your opponent to gain the speed advantage. The point of Hitmontop is to override that advantage with priority moves. There is no better priority user in 09, except for possibly metagross, but steel is a crappy offensive typing. You can use what you want, but that's what I use, and it's almost never failed me.
 
mattj said:
Any team loses to a well played team. The point of Trick Room / Swift Swim is for your opponent to gain the speed advantage. The point of Hitmontop is to override that advantage with priority moves. There is no better priority user in 09, except for possibly metagross, but steel is a crappy offensive typing. You can use what you want, but that's what I use, and it's almost never failed me.
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metagross is only like THE best pokemon in 09. also if you're a beginner in 09 you should just stick with stuff proven to work thats easy to use. flygon and hitmontop are pretty lousy imo so I wouldn't recommend them. ZapChomp is easy to use and will work against less experienced players so you could start with those 2 as a lead and go from there if you want (perhaps look at zerowings regional winning team from 09). You could also try the winning worlds team (toxicroak/empoleon/snorlax/salamence).
 
From personal experience I can recommend Arcanine (Intimidate) + Snorlax/Metagross. They've got great synergy and are able to do well against the majority of the (dead) metagame. For your back, you can choose two equally solid Pokémon, Zapdos + Ludicolo / Abomasnow come to mind.
 
Hitmontop isn't nearly as good in 09 and it is in 10. It runs into alot of problems with Garchomp, Zapdos, Metagross, and Ludicolo. You may get an attack off first, but the chances are you're going to eat up eating something much worse than your Mach Punch/Sucker Punch.

As for advice, there are quite a few warstories in this forum as well as videos on youtube that you can watch to get a feel for something that you like.
 
My Phoenix Regional winning team:

Francis the Garchomp (M) @ Lum Berry
Trait: Sand Veil
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Crunch
- Earthquake
- Protect
- Rock Slide

Francis, one half of my lead, works extremely well with his friend Louis, Earthquake hurts everything really hard (obviously except for Fliers/Levitators), Rock Slide is a great move that attacks both Pokemon and came in handy quite often during the tournament, and Crunch for any Dusknoirs or Bronzongs that I happen to come across.

Louis the Zapdos @ Chesto Berry
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Spd / 252 SAtk
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Detect
- Discharge
- Heat Wave
- Thunderbolt

Louis is the second half of my standard lead, Francis is immune to Discharge and it allows Louis to hit both opposing Pokemon and has a handy 30% Paralyze rate, Thunderbolt is there for just in case I don't want to attack my partner and don't want to mess with Heat Wave, which provides very good coverage for the team.

Bill the Metagross @ Occa Berry
Trait: Clear Body
EVs: 244 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 Spd / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Bullet Punch
- Earthquake
- Meteor Mash
- Protect

Bill could be called the MVP of the tournament for me, without him certain Pokemon would have caused quite a bit of damage to me, Bullet Punch, its resistance to Ice and Rock, were the main reasons Bill made it onto the team, and without that combination of things I may have been trounced from the tournament as early as round 2.

Zoey the Abomasnow (F) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Snow Warning
EVs: 22 HP / 236 Spd / 252 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Blizzard
- Energy Ball
- Hidden Power [Ground]
- Shadow Ball

Zoey keeps in the theme of attacking everything at once, but also serves several other purposes, it resists water, changes the weather, causes Focus Sash to be useless, and with the Scarf and EV spread shown, Zoey is able to outspeed Timid Max Speed Latios and below, some of which cause some major problems for Francis and Louis if they are outsped.

It's a very basic team that I created with a bit of inspiration from jeps, and not exactly original as the leads have been used in that form for quite some time, it wins with not only just straight up attacking, but attacking everything at once so as to not put all your eggs in one basket and targeting Protect users or a switch that resists an attack. Hits hard, fast, and gets the job done. Easy to use for beginners but still lethal enough to win against experienced players.

I would also read this article: http://www.smogon.com/smog/issue6/doubles

Should give you a good idea of what you will see in a doubles style tournament.
 
Thanks for all the help so far everyone =] You all seem to know exactly what you're talking about (I actually recognise most of you as highly accomplished VGC players)

Would anyone be able to talk with me one-on-one and help me out with ideas, team building, etc, to steer me in the right direction? That would be an immense help.

<3
 
Last year, VGC 2010, for the Japanese Regionals, did they need to preregister to participate? This year on the website it says that they need to preregister for it.
Also, the Japanese Regionals start April 3rd this year, which is my birthday!
 
Yeah. Sloshed, who lives in Japan, told us they had to pre-register to participate. Like last year, we probably won't have to.
 
In order to participate in a Japanese Regional you've always had to be a citizen of the Prefecture you were going to compete in. And IIRC registration was a month or two before the competition.
 
If I'm not mistaken, last year at Worlds, the LCQ's for VGC and TCG were the same day. Is the same thing going to happen this year? (It's probable that the current answer to my question is "We don't know for sure, but it will probably be like last year." However, I was hoping that there might be some confirmed dates, which would provide a definite answer to my question.)
 
Thanks everyone, I will probably be on smogonwifi at some point soon to get pointers.

makiri, I like the look of your team, it seems really synergetic while also being quite aggressive. I will probably end up using that team if I can manage to piece it together, the only problem will be getting a good Zapdos (or a Zapdos at all, for that matter).

Also, do good IVs make much of a difference in VGC? I know that obviously if you can get perfect/near-perfect IVs then you use them for sure, but what if I can't get good IVed Pokemon in time (as will probably be the case)?
 
Nopie said:
Thanks everyone, I will probably be on smogonwifi at some point soon to get pointers.

makiri, I like the look of your team, it seems really synergetic while also being quite aggressive. I will probably end up using that team if I can manage to piece it together, the only problem will be getting a good Zapdos (or a Zapdos at all, for that matter).

Also, do good IVs make much of a difference in VGC? I know that obviously if you can get perfect/near-perfect IVs then you use them for sure, but what if I can't get good IVed Pokemon in time (as will probably be the case)?
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imo, the IV that matters most is the speed IV.
In VGC, only a handful of pokemon are used, so chances are, you'll be facing some of the same pokemon you use, and will need to compete for a speed tie.
 
Would anyone be willing to tutor me in the ways of G5 VGCing???

I would like to go to my first VGC sometime this year, and have no clue what to do...
 
Main idea is go on Pokemon Online and look around at the servers until you find one with players in VGC 2011, then just play against them, tweak your team based one what you lose against, but do not counter team. Try many team types and spectate games, try to look at what works and what doesn't. If you go to Pokemon Online you'll end up having more opportunities to practice and get better for the VGC from that.
 
Human said:
Main idea is go on Pokemon Online and look around at the servers until you find one with players in VGC 2011, then just play against them, tweak your team based one what you lose against, but do not counter team. Try many team types and spectate games, try to look at what works and what doesn't. If you go to Pokemon Online you'll end up having more opportunities to practice and get better for the VGC from that.
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Plusle said:
Only Gen 5.
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Thanks for the info/advice guys.
 
HolyChipmunk said:
imo, the IV that matters most is the speed IV.
In VGC, only a handful of pokemon are used, so chances are, you'll be facing some of the same pokemon you use, and will need to compete for a speed tie.
Click to expand...

If that's the case, would I be better off playing a Trick Room team than Goodstuffs? I highly doubt I will be able to get myself a team of Pokemon with good IVs within two weeks unless I get outside help.
 
Stall doesn't really work that well in VGC, unless you have a really solid team. I don't know about Sandstorm, but Trick Room is a VERY solid competitor this year, along with GoodStuff (which is just a bunch of strong Pokemon that hit for a lot of damage). I haven't played much VGC '11, but from watching battles, I can tell you that.
 
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