(Not) Breaking The Format, a Newark VGC warstory (with pictures)
So this was basically my first VGC ever. It was pretty fun; I met some cool peeps, got some photos (hopefully I can upload them soon @_@) and battled basically all day which was nice... among other things. lol
Pre-tournament
So myself and two other friends left from Wisconsin on monday night to travel across to Pennsylvania, where my mom is. It was a 14 hour trip and we were dying a bit on the inside from the monotony. haha
We get to my moms place, stay there for a few days, then get a hotel the night before the tournament. The hotels around the Expo Center were all great and were all the same price basically, so I couldn't complain. Was cozy.
We settled in and finished EV-training and whatnot and doing our team sheets for the next day.
Day of the Tournament
We check out of the hotel at around 8:30 and move all our clothes and luggage over to the car, lock it, and head over to the juniors line which is readily moving through. A senior line basically started wayyyyyy early xD and had only about 50-ish people by the time we got there. I saw some smogonites in line but didn't say anything until much much later. Made two new friends then too, which helped pass the time to practice battle and whatnot. Fightgar and TDS were right behind us by the time the line reached the registration/check-in area. Myself and the two friends we made went to check out the junior battles and the finals before the senior line started.
Also, I should mention, the ENTIRE room the tournament was held in was essentially Pokemon-Online, except in-person and at a place. It was really cool and convenient to battle anyone on a whim that way. In fact its probably what made the day as enjoyable and not-boring like it could have been otherwise. lulz
some dudes playing on screen
the finalists lounge before it was completely filled with the 50-some players later on in the day
the check-in counter
Anyway, so after the site-seeing and moving through the line, we all registered. And of course, the team:
Hitmontop (Tippy) @ Life Orb
Adamant
252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
- Sucker Punch
- Mach Punch
- Detect
- Fake Out
Standard Zerowing 'top. I didn't invest anything in Speed like I know some did, I didn't really care.
Giratina (Darkwatch) @ Scarf
Adamant
4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Shadow Force
- Shadow Sneak
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake
I wasn't too sure how this set works. Shadow Force was really the only move I needed, with Dragon Claw and the occasional Shadow Sneak. In fact, I never used Earthquake except on P-O. lol
Back-ups:
Palkia (D'espace) @ Haban
Timid
4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Spacial Rend
- Thunder
- Blizzard
- Protect
Abomasnow (HealthCare) @ Sitrus
Quiet
56 HP / 252 Atk / 200 SpA
- Blizzard
- Ice Shard
- Wood Hammer
- Protect
And the other two which I didn't really use, but figured I may as well have them to be safe. Plus, I just love Metagross that way.
Metagross @ Occa
Kyogre @ Wacan
Round 1 vs. Guy w/ headphones: Was pretty straight forward. I saw a Scizor and Kyogre lead pair. I Fake Out Kyogre, he Bug Bites my Scarf Giratina which disappeared. Then he surf's his own Scizor. He had a Toxicroak I think which scard me slightly, but SF one-shotted it. o.O 3-0
Round 2 vs. Random Kid: Was much easier than the first round. He lead Sceptile and Charizard. I think he got an attack or two in? 3-0
Also, as a note, according to my two friends when Mike called out the audience, asking "everyone shout out there so-far favorite trainer!" everyone shouted my Trainer name (Dark). So I was crowd favorite for what was about 10 minutes before I was bumped next round. lol That was probably kinda exciting.
Round 3 vs. Luigi: I lost this round due to my stupid predictions and the fact I got crit'd.
I don't remember exactly what happened, but I know it came down to my barely-alive Hitmontop (in hail) vs. his Dialga & Mewtwo. He lead with Infernape and Mewtwo, with Tyranitar and Dialga in the back. For some reason I didn't mach punch his Tyranitar which was de-sashed and it probably costed me the match. I'll upload the video # so everyone can see my stupidity! haha
The main thing I should have done, I think, was SP'd his Mewtwo near the last two turns, instead of bothering to Detect. That way SP + Aboma's Blizzard would have brought Dialga into KO range even with its Chople, and Mewtwo would have been in red from SP, causing Blizzard to most likely KO it. Of course Ice Shard can fix that the next turn if it survived. Oh well, it was a good match and Luigi is a cool guy. We both agreed it was our best match all day. Both of us mispredicting and taking turns controlling the game. Darn D Pulse critting Palk!
Afterwards
Like I said before, pretty much the before and after of the event was the most exciting. I signed up for KotH but the line was already too long and I only won a single round before it was decided they needed to keep it 1 round per person to get everyone to play... which defeated the purpose of KotH but whatever.
left: BlueCookies, right: TDS. I think someone else took this picture, can't remember.
left to right: Me, VashTheStampede, my friend, BlueCookies, DragonFE, TDS. Good photo me thinks
I met a ton of people too. Yeah. Finals was pretty cool too I guess. More Top and Ogre leads. During Semi-Finals, one person from each round had the Top-Ogre style team. It's so broken lol
After everything settled we had to jump start our car since the battery died. FiveK was gonna help us, but we got help before he needed to (sorry I didn't tell you, you were gone anyway). Mike Liesik helped us with that. EPIC props to Mike Liesik.
Shortly after the jump, myself, my two friends and Vash all drove around for about 30 minutes trying to find the train station to drop off Vash at. Damn Newark is complicated and has tons of bumpy roads. :/ Still, it was cool hanging out with Vash/Levi. He's a really cool dude. Hope to see you again bro.
Props:
- Epic hotel
- Awesome people
- Awesome battles
- Meeting DragonFE, TDS, dtrain, BlueCookies, FiveK, VashTS and everyone else.
- Two guys giving us jumper cables, we're indebted to you =)
- Mike Liesik... is epic
- Being crowd favorite for 5-10 minutes...
Slops
- After said crowd favoritism, immediately losing to a guy who went to lose in the very next round xD
- Why was it 3.50 for Nachos?
- My friend battling TDS first round, sorry man D:
So this was basically my first VGC ever. It was pretty fun; I met some cool peeps, got some photos (hopefully I can upload them soon @_@) and battled basically all day which was nice... among other things. lol
Pre-tournament
So myself and two other friends left from Wisconsin on monday night to travel across to Pennsylvania, where my mom is. It was a 14 hour trip and we were dying a bit on the inside from the monotony. haha
We get to my moms place, stay there for a few days, then get a hotel the night before the tournament. The hotels around the Expo Center were all great and were all the same price basically, so I couldn't complain. Was cozy.
We settled in and finished EV-training and whatnot and doing our team sheets for the next day.
Day of the Tournament
We check out of the hotel at around 8:30 and move all our clothes and luggage over to the car, lock it, and head over to the juniors line which is readily moving through. A senior line basically started wayyyyyy early xD and had only about 50-ish people by the time we got there. I saw some smogonites in line but didn't say anything until much much later. Made two new friends then too, which helped pass the time to practice battle and whatnot. Fightgar and TDS were right behind us by the time the line reached the registration/check-in area. Myself and the two friends we made went to check out the junior battles and the finals before the senior line started.
Also, I should mention, the ENTIRE room the tournament was held in was essentially Pokemon-Online, except in-person and at a place. It was really cool and convenient to battle anyone on a whim that way. In fact its probably what made the day as enjoyable and not-boring like it could have been otherwise. lulz
some dudes playing on screen
the finalists lounge before it was completely filled with the 50-some players later on in the day
the check-in counter
Anyway, so after the site-seeing and moving through the line, we all registered. And of course, the team:
Hitmontop (Tippy) @ Life Orb
Adamant
252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
- Sucker Punch
- Mach Punch
- Detect
- Fake Out
Standard Zerowing 'top. I didn't invest anything in Speed like I know some did, I didn't really care.
Giratina (Darkwatch) @ Scarf
Adamant
4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Shadow Force
- Shadow Sneak
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake
I wasn't too sure how this set works. Shadow Force was really the only move I needed, with Dragon Claw and the occasional Shadow Sneak. In fact, I never used Earthquake except on P-O. lol
Back-ups:
Palkia (D'espace) @ Haban
Timid
4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Spacial Rend
- Thunder
- Blizzard
- Protect
Abomasnow (HealthCare) @ Sitrus
Quiet
56 HP / 252 Atk / 200 SpA
- Blizzard
- Ice Shard
- Wood Hammer
- Protect
And the other two which I didn't really use, but figured I may as well have them to be safe. Plus, I just love Metagross that way.
Metagross @ Occa
Kyogre @ Wacan
Round 1 vs. Guy w/ headphones: Was pretty straight forward. I saw a Scizor and Kyogre lead pair. I Fake Out Kyogre, he Bug Bites my Scarf Giratina which disappeared. Then he surf's his own Scizor. He had a Toxicroak I think which scard me slightly, but SF one-shotted it. o.O 3-0
Round 2 vs. Random Kid: Was much easier than the first round. He lead Sceptile and Charizard. I think he got an attack or two in? 3-0
Also, as a note, according to my two friends when Mike called out the audience, asking "everyone shout out there so-far favorite trainer!" everyone shouted my Trainer name (Dark). So I was crowd favorite for what was about 10 minutes before I was bumped next round. lol That was probably kinda exciting.
Round 3 vs. Luigi: I lost this round due to my stupid predictions and the fact I got crit'd.
I don't remember exactly what happened, but I know it came down to my barely-alive Hitmontop (in hail) vs. his Dialga & Mewtwo. He lead with Infernape and Mewtwo, with Tyranitar and Dialga in the back. For some reason I didn't mach punch his Tyranitar which was de-sashed and it probably costed me the match. I'll upload the video # so everyone can see my stupidity! haha
The main thing I should have done, I think, was SP'd his Mewtwo near the last two turns, instead of bothering to Detect. That way SP + Aboma's Blizzard would have brought Dialga into KO range even with its Chople, and Mewtwo would have been in red from SP, causing Blizzard to most likely KO it. Of course Ice Shard can fix that the next turn if it survived. Oh well, it was a good match and Luigi is a cool guy. We both agreed it was our best match all day. Both of us mispredicting and taking turns controlling the game. Darn D Pulse critting Palk!
Afterwards
Like I said before, pretty much the before and after of the event was the most exciting. I signed up for KotH but the line was already too long and I only won a single round before it was decided they needed to keep it 1 round per person to get everyone to play... which defeated the purpose of KotH but whatever.
left: BlueCookies, right: TDS. I think someone else took this picture, can't remember.
left to right: Me, VashTheStampede, my friend, BlueCookies, DragonFE, TDS. Good photo me thinks
I met a ton of people too. Yeah. Finals was pretty cool too I guess. More Top and Ogre leads. During Semi-Finals, one person from each round had the Top-Ogre style team. It's so broken lol
After everything settled we had to jump start our car since the battery died. FiveK was gonna help us, but we got help before he needed to (sorry I didn't tell you, you were gone anyway). Mike Liesik helped us with that. EPIC props to Mike Liesik.
Shortly after the jump, myself, my two friends and Vash all drove around for about 30 minutes trying to find the train station to drop off Vash at. Damn Newark is complicated and has tons of bumpy roads. :/ Still, it was cool hanging out with Vash/Levi. He's a really cool dude. Hope to see you again bro.
Props:
- Epic hotel
- Awesome people
- Awesome battles
- Meeting DragonFE, TDS, dtrain, BlueCookies, FiveK, VashTS and everyone else.
- Two guys giving us jumper cables, we're indebted to you =)
- Mike Liesik... is epic
- Being crowd favorite for 5-10 minutes...
Slops
- After said crowd favoritism, immediately losing to a guy who went to lose in the very next round xD
- Why was it 3.50 for Nachos?
- My friend battling TDS first round, sorry man D:
