Smogon Charity Bowl III

Status
Not open for further replies.

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
is a Tutoris a Site Content Manageris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributoris a member of the Battle Simulator Staffis a Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Senior Staff Member Alumnus
UU Leader

SMOGON CHARITY BOWL III
(Thanks to brightobject for the logo!)

Following on the success of Smogon Charity Bowl II, welcome to the third Smogon Charity Bowl! Like most large tournaments on Smogon, the Smogon Charity Bowl III will be focused on Sword and Shield OU. While it hasn't quite been a year since the last edition of the tournament, we have a very important and urgent cause to donate to.

It should come as no surprise that this Charity Bowl will be raising money for the people of Ukraine. The people of Ukraine are suffering. With Russia's military invading and bombing the country, innocent civilians are caught in the crossfire and urgently need any help they can get. As such, Smogon is hosting its third Charity Bowl, a live tournament that will take place next Saturday, March 5th, at 12PM (noon) EST.. We will be raising funds for two on-the-ground humanitarian organizations providing vital supplies to Ukrainians: Project HOPE, which provides medicine and medical supplies, and CARE, which provides food, water and hygiene kits. .

You can join us for this tournament as a participant, or follow the action live on our Twitch streams at twitch.tv/smogonu. Smogon will be raising money via donations throughout the event, so we are encouraging all participants and spectators to donate whatever you can spare at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/smogoncharitybowl3.

FORMAT

The Smogon Charity Bowl will consist of two brackets that will merge into a single bracket from Round Three of the tournament onwards. The tournament will be single elimination, best-of-one. The format will be Sword and Shield OU.

Players will be randomly divided into two groups. Each group will play in a live best-of-one tournament, following the same rules and format as the Smogon Tour. From Round 4 onwards, players will play in one bracket.

All games will take place on the official Smogon Tournament server at http://smogtours.psim.us/.

General Smogon Tour rules:
  • You must have a Smogon forum account to sign up for this tournament. You cannot participate if you do not post in the signup thread. Proxy signup posts are not allowed.
  • When signups for this tour is posted, post as quickly as you can to ensure a place in the tournament. It is up to the discretion of the host on when sign-ups will be closed. On Xenforo (our current forum software), YOUR POST NUMBER IS NOT ALWAYS ACCURATE. Please do not attack the host or on SmogTours if your post number implies you should have been in the tournament and you are not.
  • Substitute players will only be applied in the first round and as deemed necessary by the host.
  • If you have signed up successfully, you must stay for the entire tournament unless you have lost.
  • You may change teams between rounds without penalty. You are, in fact, encouraged to do so to prevent your opponents from knowing your team in advance.
  • Do not hassle the host(s) of the current tournament.
Battling rules:
  • The format is Sword and Shield. The current status of the appropriate standard ladder will function as the prevailing tier list. If you have any question about whether a particular Pokemon is banned or not in any particular tier, reference the banlist of the appropriate ladder on PS! with '/tier'. This is not confusing. There will be no exceptions.
  • Species Clause: A player cannot have two (2) of the same species of Pokemon on their team, based on National Pokedex number. For example, a player cannot have two Koffing on their team.
  • Sleep Clause: A player cannot put two or more different opposing Pokemon to sleep using attacks that induce sleep to opposing Pokemon.
  • Evasion Clause: A player cannot increase their Pokemon's evasion stat with a move that specifically increases evasion. Items or indirect boosts do not break this clause.
  • OHKO Clause: A player cannot use a move that has a chance of instantly KOing an opposing Pokemon. For example, Horn Drill or Sheer Cold are illegal moves.
  • Timer Clause: If a player exhausts the timer, that player loses. SmogTours staff will not turn the timer off in any circumstance.
  • Self-KO Clause: If a player uses a recoil move to cause a draw, that player wins. If a player uses Explosion, Selfdestruct, Destiny Bond, or Perish Song to cause a draw, that player loses. If a draw would be caused by a hold item or ability that causes recoil to the opponent, the player that controls the Pokémon with the hold item or ability wins. (This clause helps determine the winner of what would be called a tie in DPP. Later generations do not apply this clause, because their cartridge mechanics will prevent ties from happening.)
  • Endless Battle Clause: A player cannot use a combination of items / moves / abilities to force a game that will never end (example: Recycle / Leppa Berry / Heal Pulse, etc).
  • Moody Clause: A player can not use the ability Moody.
  • Swagger Clause: A player can not use the move Swagger.


PRIZES

The winner of the Charity Bowl will receive a prize banner to appear on their Smogon account. In addition, the following Pokemon Showdown prizes are being offered, courtesy of Zarel:
  • A custom avatar.
  • The ability to recolor your PS username.
  • The ability to claim an unused PS username.
The winner will be able to choose two of the above options; the remaining option will be granted to the runner-up.

The prize banner will appear under the user’s custom title and state that they are the winner of the Smogon Charity Bowl. The winner will be allowed to choose from a range of colours.

The custom PS avatar must meet all ordinary rules for custom avatars, and is subject to Zarel’s approval.

The PS name recolor will allow you to change your PS username color to the color of another account that you own.

Regarding claiming an unused PS username, only names that have not been used for four or more years are eligible to be claimed.


DONATIONS

We strongly encourage all entrants to donate at least $5. However, if you are unable to give at this time, you will still be able to participate in this tournament.

You can show your support here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/smogoncharitybowl3.

Thank you all.

Please follow this thread for updates and information regarding sign-ups.
 
Last edited:

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
is a Tutoris a Site Content Manageris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributoris a member of the Battle Simulator Staffis a Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Senior Staff Member Alumnus
UU Leader
As some of you may have noticed, the donation page was briefly disabled. We were notified of some potential issues with our initial charity selection. Out of an abundance of caution, it has been removed as an option from the donations page. The two current charities, Project HOPE and CARE, have received top rankings from GuideStar, Charity Navigator and Charity Watch, and are both providing on-the-ground humanitarian support in Ukraine. Donations by default will be split evenly between the two groups, but may be directed to one or the other if desired. The donations page is once again live at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/smogoncharitybowl3.

In addition, the time for the tournament will be 12PM EST on Saturday, March 5th! We hope to see you all there!

Thanks to all for the support shown so far!
 

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
is a Tutoris a Site Content Manageris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributoris a member of the Battle Simulator Staffis a Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Senior Staff Member Alumnus
UU Leader
Just a quick reminder that this is happening tomorrow at 12PM EST! That's about 21 hours from the time of this post. Hoping to see a big turnout! :D

In addition, the OU team has kindly updated the Viability Rankings in preparation for the tournament, and they'll be updating Sample Teams later too so that you can get great, curated teams for tomorrow in case you don't have any! I'll edit a link in to this post once they finish their update.

update: here they are!
 
Last edited:

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
is a Tutoris a Site Content Manageris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributoris a member of the Battle Simulator Staffis a Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Senior Staff Member Alumnus
UU Leader
And we're done! Massive congratulations to the winner, RaiZen1704! Really incredible stuff from you all throughout, and we saw some great games all around that made for a super enjoyable spectator experience. Excellent jobs to our runners-up Gray and Ox the Fox as well, you guys put on a really enjoyable show!

We successfully raised $4230 (update: $4640!!!!) at the time of writing and I really couldn't be more proud. Thanks to everyone who came out and donated, watched the stream, or just played in general! A special shoutout to my amazing helpers: Kalalokki, who streamed the entire event in flawless fashion, ausma, Finchinator and Ruft, who casted alongside me and made up for my positively dated SS OU knowledge, and emma and Kaede who made hosting the livetour itself look like child's play. On top of that, Nol and Coconut took care of the Twitch stream super well. Nol also helped a ton with getting prizes together & ensuring publicity on PS, while Coco was invaluable in the planning process as both a soundboard and sanity check, as well as someone making up for my poor English skills when it came to writing the OP itself. Behind the scenes, Eve, martha, Lumari and Specs all provided super valuable input that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without, and despite telling you all he's retired, Hogg played an instrumental part in this as he always does, helping with setting up the donation link (and troubleshooting it after some teething issues), researching charities and soundboarding ideas.

I say this every time but Charity Bowls are by far my favourite event on Smogon and it's both an honour and an amazing experience to get the opportunity to host them. I really am astounded by how much we manage to do when we come together. Thank you all for everything and I hope you have a wonderful evening/day/whatever. <3

also @ whoever donated $1k during my sappy ending speech I want you to know that I love you but I will never forgive you for making me go red
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top