So, I just got back from the GA qualifier. Didn't place as high as I would have liked, but it was still a fun experience.
I'm gonna give a pretty basic story because I'm still considering attending the last chance qualifier.
Enter the Florida State Pokemon League, an energetic group with everything to prove...
So, we get to the convention center check out the Junior competition and hop in line which had already grown to have 70 or 80 people in it at the time. There we landed right next to Team Rose to I introduced myself and the members that were there at the time. After that I walked around to check out the Junior competition and ran into a couple of smogoners.
After that we wait in line until they shuffle us into a room like cattle, there we meet up with more smogoners who happen to be in line near us. From there, we go into the registration line where I get hassled about bringing a chair from some chick who you'll hear about later. The other girl at the front of the line made some interesting comments as well, in general I thought the staff was pretty awesome and handled the event very well considering there were over 650 people there. After that, I got into the battle line.
Now here comes the fun stuff...
Battle 1... ran into a guy that had a palkia... fake out? I think? Then this guy has the gusto to tell me I didn't know the metagame because he landed a supereffective attack. That kind of irked me. Anywho, I won that match and moved on.
Battle 2... Lead started off with a Snorlax Bronzong lead, with vaporeon support... that match was tough, but I won that as well.
Battle 3... I won this one fairly easily even though the guy had a good team. I won so fast though, that I forgot what he had, oops.
Battle 4... Now things get interesting because I get matched up with who I later found out was Mignot's daughter(before the battle though). I turn around before the match started to see Mignot get eliminated, by who I'm not sure, I don't think it was an FSPL member. I get apprehensive due to the Ducks shirt and the fact that Mignot probably made the team. We talked for a bit about smogon and whether or not she wanted a different person to fight, she didn't so we battled.
Out comes a Groudon Zapdos lead if I'm not mistaken... Anywho I take out those two and she follows up with Kyogre, who was either scarfed or spec'd, and a palkia? I think. Anywho, I won, shook her hand, and apologized for knocking her out before the finals.
Into the finalists lounge! I got my game hack checked and met up with the lady that almost stopped me from using my chair, by now she was laughing about how the guy with the chair made it to the lounge and how it probably helped with blood flow to the head and made me think and battle better. The other guy hack checking called me a genius for bringing the chair... I agreed and went on my way to see that Tiff(Tichu) had made it into the finalists lounge as well as Team Rose.
Now, here's the funny part of the story. Tiff had a great team made up for the tournament, but up until the day of the tournament she had doubted and made changes and doubted and made changes, so much so, that she never actually got to making the team that she had originally intended on playing with. Day before tourney and still no team. So, I offered to let her use the same team that I had been using prior to scrapping the entire team and going with something completely different which meant I had 2 fully trained teams of 6 geared specifically for VGC play. Now here's the kicker. Of all the people we had going out to VGC, Tiff was probably the LEAST seasoned battler of the bunch. So, after I traded over the team I created... BLADES' MASTER FLOW CHART! What is the Blades Master Flow chart you may ask? It was a piece of paper that I gave to Tiff day of the tournament that detailed EVERYTHING that she should do in every VGC situation using my specific team, truly a work of art it was! Later on in line she wrote weaknesses on the back to help out with typing and weaknesses. So, basically I had my team going and a team on autopilot. Using the Master Blades Flow Chart and my VGC tournament ready team, Tiff had made it to the finalist lounge!
After that we chilled and waited around the finalists lounge as well as watched other FSPL members battle their way through the tournament. I am fairly happy with the results though I had hoped for better. At this point we already had 2 members in the finalists lounge. I walk over to see John and Brian battling it up in round 3. Steve had lost out in round one to MattJ. Both Brian and Jon won their round 3 matches and moved on to round 4, also at this point I see Mike cruise into round 3. Brian ended up battling right next to Alaka but not against Alaka. Ironically Brian was the one who beat Alaka on PO. He wasn't as lucky with his final match. John won through and went to the Finalist Lounge. At this point we were fairly happy that we had 3 Florida State League'rs sittin pretty in the Lounge. Camillo also make it to round 4 but lost there. I look over to see Mike in round 4 locked in an intense battle against a Lv1 smeargle/Cresselia team. He was also running a Lv1 Smeargle team which made things even more interesting. He ended up losing which sucked because of things that are yet to come.
Also, before that me and Tiff got interviewed by a guy from either Kotaku or IGN about the Florida State Pokemon League so be on the lookout for that.
Anywho, 4PM rolls around and we draw energy cards for byes. I ended up getting a bye and they lined us up to go out to the battle arena. The way we are lined up, I don't get an opponent and have to fight a guy that battled in the first round that didn't get the bye. I was standing in front of Alaka and next to Tiff. We chatted it up until we were assigned opponents... Alaka gets the first one which happens to be Mattj, he hands him off to Tiff because he was from Smogon and Tiff starts to battle. The next guy goes to Alaka. Then, the next guy goes to me...
Alright, now I'm going to quote myself from before because I was 100% correct in my statements...
VGC uses Inconvenient Matchup!
...
It's a Critical Hit!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
The Video Video Game championships beat me with a critical hit. Unfortunately, that is the game we play.
The actual battle went more like this... in order to stop him from using TR I brought my Uxie instead of another pokemon on my team and I changed up Items because I knew he was packin' smeargle. I end up getting imprison off blocking his protects and his ability to use TR. Now here was the problem with Uxie being switched in, it seriously gimped my attack power so I wasn't able to do the damage I needed to win. Eventually I lost.
Later as predicted the kid gets knocked out because as I mentioned before, smeargle teams don't win VGC.
In other news though, it seems as though I might be making the trip out to Indi so I might see you guys out there. We'll see how it goes.
All in all, the FSPL performed pretty well for it's first VGC Tourney. 3 in the Finalist Lounge, and 3 to round 4 of the prelims, only one first round out to Steve who matched up against ???(EDIT:MattJ apparently not).
I'm gonna give a pretty basic story because I'm still considering attending the last chance qualifier.
Enter the Florida State Pokemon League, an energetic group with everything to prove...
So, we get to the convention center check out the Junior competition and hop in line which had already grown to have 70 or 80 people in it at the time. There we landed right next to Team Rose to I introduced myself and the members that were there at the time. After that I walked around to check out the Junior competition and ran into a couple of smogoners.
After that we wait in line until they shuffle us into a room like cattle, there we meet up with more smogoners who happen to be in line near us. From there, we go into the registration line where I get hassled about bringing a chair from some chick who you'll hear about later. The other girl at the front of the line made some interesting comments as well, in general I thought the staff was pretty awesome and handled the event very well considering there were over 650 people there. After that, I got into the battle line.
Now here comes the fun stuff...
Battle 1... ran into a guy that had a palkia... fake out? I think? Then this guy has the gusto to tell me I didn't know the metagame because he landed a supereffective attack. That kind of irked me. Anywho, I won that match and moved on.
Battle 2... Lead started off with a Snorlax Bronzong lead, with vaporeon support... that match was tough, but I won that as well.
Battle 3... I won this one fairly easily even though the guy had a good team. I won so fast though, that I forgot what he had, oops.
Battle 4... Now things get interesting because I get matched up with who I later found out was Mignot's daughter(before the battle though). I turn around before the match started to see Mignot get eliminated, by who I'm not sure, I don't think it was an FSPL member. I get apprehensive due to the Ducks shirt and the fact that Mignot probably made the team. We talked for a bit about smogon and whether or not she wanted a different person to fight, she didn't so we battled.
Out comes a Groudon Zapdos lead if I'm not mistaken... Anywho I take out those two and she follows up with Kyogre, who was either scarfed or spec'd, and a palkia? I think. Anywho, I won, shook her hand, and apologized for knocking her out before the finals.
Into the finalists lounge! I got my game hack checked and met up with the lady that almost stopped me from using my chair, by now she was laughing about how the guy with the chair made it to the lounge and how it probably helped with blood flow to the head and made me think and battle better. The other guy hack checking called me a genius for bringing the chair... I agreed and went on my way to see that Tiff(Tichu) had made it into the finalists lounge as well as Team Rose.
Now, here's the funny part of the story. Tiff had a great team made up for the tournament, but up until the day of the tournament she had doubted and made changes and doubted and made changes, so much so, that she never actually got to making the team that she had originally intended on playing with. Day before tourney and still no team. So, I offered to let her use the same team that I had been using prior to scrapping the entire team and going with something completely different which meant I had 2 fully trained teams of 6 geared specifically for VGC play. Now here's the kicker. Of all the people we had going out to VGC, Tiff was probably the LEAST seasoned battler of the bunch. So, after I traded over the team I created... BLADES' MASTER FLOW CHART! What is the Blades Master Flow chart you may ask? It was a piece of paper that I gave to Tiff day of the tournament that detailed EVERYTHING that she should do in every VGC situation using my specific team, truly a work of art it was! Later on in line she wrote weaknesses on the back to help out with typing and weaknesses. So, basically I had my team going and a team on autopilot. Using the Master Blades Flow Chart and my VGC tournament ready team, Tiff had made it to the finalist lounge!
After that we chilled and waited around the finalists lounge as well as watched other FSPL members battle their way through the tournament. I am fairly happy with the results though I had hoped for better. At this point we already had 2 members in the finalists lounge. I walk over to see John and Brian battling it up in round 3. Steve had lost out in round one to MattJ. Both Brian and Jon won their round 3 matches and moved on to round 4, also at this point I see Mike cruise into round 3. Brian ended up battling right next to Alaka but not against Alaka. Ironically Brian was the one who beat Alaka on PO. He wasn't as lucky with his final match. John won through and went to the Finalist Lounge. At this point we were fairly happy that we had 3 Florida State League'rs sittin pretty in the Lounge. Camillo also make it to round 4 but lost there. I look over to see Mike in round 4 locked in an intense battle against a Lv1 smeargle/Cresselia team. He was also running a Lv1 Smeargle team which made things even more interesting. He ended up losing which sucked because of things that are yet to come.
Also, before that me and Tiff got interviewed by a guy from either Kotaku or IGN about the Florida State Pokemon League so be on the lookout for that.
Anywho, 4PM rolls around and we draw energy cards for byes. I ended up getting a bye and they lined us up to go out to the battle arena. The way we are lined up, I don't get an opponent and have to fight a guy that battled in the first round that didn't get the bye. I was standing in front of Alaka and next to Tiff. We chatted it up until we were assigned opponents... Alaka gets the first one which happens to be Mattj, he hands him off to Tiff because he was from Smogon and Tiff starts to battle. The next guy goes to Alaka. Then, the next guy goes to me...
Alright, now I'm going to quote myself from before because I was 100% correct in my statements...
I had predicted before the tournament started that Smeargle could potentially knock out my team, but I also stated that smeargles don't win tournaments. 1 out of all 32 people left I get stuck with the ONE GUY with a smeargle, incidentally the same guy that beat out Mike earlier. That's a 3.125% chance of fighting a smeargle team and guess what, he fights me....
VGC uses Inconvenient Matchup!
...
It's a Critical Hit!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
The Video Video Game championships beat me with a critical hit. Unfortunately, that is the game we play.
The actual battle went more like this... in order to stop him from using TR I brought my Uxie instead of another pokemon on my team and I changed up Items because I knew he was packin' smeargle. I end up getting imprison off blocking his protects and his ability to use TR. Now here was the problem with Uxie being switched in, it seriously gimped my attack power so I wasn't able to do the damage I needed to win. Eventually I lost.
Later as predicted the kid gets knocked out because as I mentioned before, smeargle teams don't win VGC.
In other news though, it seems as though I might be making the trip out to Indi so I might see you guys out there. We'll see how it goes.
All in all, the FSPL performed pretty well for it's first VGC Tourney. 3 in the Finalist Lounge, and 3 to round 4 of the prelims, only one first round out to Steve who matched up against ???(EDIT:MattJ apparently not).
