Smogon VGCPL - Feedback and Postseason thread

[zee]

Doing this a bit early because I'm gonna be busy this evening. With only 3 regular season games left at the time of this post, we're pretty much at the end of VGC PL's regular season. I'd like to thank all managers for making this a fun tournament where everyone was extremely friendly/considerate and we managed to avoid any drama. Special shoutouts to our two main hosts, Netherious and Jashsmash. I hope everyone will follow semifinals and finals with close eyes as semis will be up as soon as we have all 4 rosters!

This thread is a multipurpose thread for everything post season VGCPL. If you'd like to shoutout your teammates, post some cool teams or sets you used, or give feedback to us for future iterations of the tournament, we'd love to hear it!

If you'd rather not make a post, we have a google form here. Please go here instead of messaging a host privately if you won't be posting on the forums. If you are posting in this thread, here are some of the main questions I have!

-What did you think about the size/length of the tournament? Was 8 teams/8 slots too much? We leaned to inclusivity in this PL, as we drafted about 55% of total signups. Some of my players seemed a little concerned about the length as there were a lot of other leagues going on this summer. Going 6 teams would shorten the tournament by two weeks of regular season

-Did you have any issues with the hosts/managers/players that we were made unaware of? I apologize about the spreadsheet being unreliable for the first few weeks, that was the result of a communication error and I take full blame for that. It won't happen again

-What did you think of old gens? I know old gens were the sole reason some people signed up for this tour and I'd like to keep them around in the future as someone who appreciates VGC's history, but were the same 3 formats x7 weeks too much? Would you support a multi-format bo3 or rotating oldgens?

That's all I have to say for now. I'll be back to drop some 19 sets eventually. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us and I sincerely hope you enjoyed/are enjoying Smogon VGC!

 

[Namuko Pro]

Overall, I think the tournament was run really well, so thanks to everyone involved in hosting! To address the questions here (and some other stuff I've thought of):

-What did you think about the size/length of the tournament? Was 8 teams/8 slots too much? We leaned to inclusivity in this PL, as we drafted about 55% of total signups. Some of my players seemed a little concerned about the length as there were a lot of other leagues going on this summer. Going 6 teams would shorten the tournament by two weeks of regular season

That's all I have to say for now. I'll be back to drop some 19 sets eventually. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us and I sincerely hope you enjoyed/are enjoying Smogon VGC!

I think 8 teams/8 starters is definitely fine given the number of sign-ups, if people have concerns about the length of a tournament because they're playing in other leagues they shouldn't enter multiple that overlap in timing. 8 teams/7 weeks is less than most other leagues have anyway, and I'd say this tournament has a higher concentration of talent than any draft league with the exception of NPA (and WCOP if you want to count that as a "draft league" I guess).

-Did you have any issues with the hosts/managers/players that we were made unaware of? I apologize about the spreadsheet being unreliable for the first few weeks, that was the result of a communication error and I take full blame for that. It won't happen again

I don't have issues with specific people or anything, but just some thoughts on how rosters/players could be managed better. First is standardizing what the form of communication is for the league -- I know it's technically preferred to be on the forums here, but considering that probably 80% of people playing never sign in to the forums besides to report their match I think making it all on Discord is better. Ideally would have a standarized doc that has everyone's Discords listed (maybe just a page in the spreadsheet?) to avoid the inevitable "What is XXXXX's Discord" that pops up every week.

I think the trade deadline was before the season even started, which doesn't make sense to me (if I am wrong just ignore this point lol). Not that the Luxray were even trying to trade anyone, but I'm not sure what the point of not having it be at midseason is unless I'm missing something.

The biggest concern I have -- and had even before the draft -- is that managers being able to draft themselves at 10K is too big of an advantage if the manager would reasonably be expected to go for much more than that. Obviously I'm the biggest outlier in terms of cost, but even if I had gone for a more reasonable 20K and paired up to manage with someone else who would go for 20K, any team is going to be at a huge advantage if they can essentially get a free extra 20K to spend. Realistically the optimal strategy is for managers to pick whoever the best player that they're friends with is -- and who is not gonna sink their manager app -- to be their assistant manager, and get a really good player for well below market value. Granted, making the price too high just makes it too punishing for any managers who aren't elite but still want to play. Not sure what the best solution here is: maybe it's dividing managers into Tiers where they have to pay 20/10/5 depending on past accomplishments and such, or allowing teams that don't purchase a manager to have a "captain" that they can buy for 10K as long as that person agrees. It's hard to think of a great solution that still lets managers play, but since I'd likely still be going for at least a good bit above 10K next PL there's pretty much zero chance I don't sign up to be a manager since if I get picked it just makes my team much stronger than if they had to spend ~20K on me (or 34.5...).

-What did you think of old gens? I know old gens were the sole reason some people signed up for this tour and I'd like to keep them around in the future as someone who appreciates VGC's history, but were the same 3 formats x7 weeks too much? Would you support a multi-format bo3 or rotating oldgens?

Might be in the minority here but not a fan of how old gens were done in this tournament. Making three slots be gen 7 limits roster construction, and seems pretty arbitrary: if you're going back to past formats why not cut one of the gen 7's and do 2015 to have a gen 6 and a gen 7 nat dex format (since I think nat dex formats feel like the quintessential VGC format of that generation), or include Series 4 and/or Series 5 (and Series 9 after the shift). No idea what the actual reason for having it specifically be 3 gen 7 formats was, but the impression that comes off is that it's because the people organizing the tournament had the most fun/success in gen 7 and wanted to put those formats in. It's really hard to prep for those formats as well, since most teams won't have many people who actually played them outside the people they drafted specifically for those slots. What that being said I don't think that rotating the formats or doing a multi-format bo3 is a great idea, since both of those are more limiting in roster construction: needing to draft people who can play formats that aren't even going to be around every week, or needing to draft people who played several old formats. The latter also necessitates a lot more prep, and I really wouldn't have wanted to be playing in a hypothetical 14/15/16 bo3 even though I'd probably be one of the strongest people in the tournament at that format, since needing to have 3 teams is a lot more annoying than 1.

 

[EternalSnowman]

Honestly, big thanks for organizing this, and in general doing a great job with the Smogon VGC stuff. I know there's been a ton of interest in VGC for a lot of Smogon players in the past, but nobody has really taken the step to bridge the Smogon community to the VGC stuff. I think a lot of the stuff that have been made as an effort to promote VGC have been great. I think this tour was modelled after most PLs and I think that part is really good - obviously I'm biased as a long time Smogonite, but I think by this time next year, there may be even more interest in VGC in Smogon. The size/length of the tournament were perfect, I personally think single RR into playoffs is best, and 8/8 seemed like a great amount of slot/teams. As for other things, scheduling wasn't too difficult and yeah the spreadsheet being down was kinda annoying but it's whatever. As for old gens, I'm just not sure what the best way to do old gens for this tour is, like it seemed fine to me, but I just don't know that much about the old gens in VGC.

 

[Ace Emerald]

This has been an awesome tournament, big thank you to the hosts! A couple thoughts on the questions asked:

1) I much prefer a more inclusive league than an exclusive one. Getting drafted can already be dependent on knowing the right people, making the league smaller just makes it harder.

2) Don't beat yourself up too much about the spreadsheet, yeah it was a little frustrating but seriously y'all are volunteering your time and this stuff happens! Good vibes only :)

3) As long as current season VGC accounts for over 50% of the slots, I think you can play around with old gen representation. As someone who played a lot in 2014-2016, I would have loved to see some representation from that era. Maybe something like the "natdex" format from every generation, like 2015, 2018, Season 5? Again, lots of possibilities here.

 

[zee]

Thanks everyone for your responses so far in this thread or on the form! Now I'd like to share some of the 19 stuff I came up with as I felt like I did some minor innovations this PL. Some quick shoutouts to my team first though!

Wanna thank the magmas for a great season, tagmouse/mao/animus/clippers know how much I appreciate them and might not even read this thread so I'll sing my praises for them elsewhere.

SableyeVGC I'm sorry this PL wasn't your best showing. I hope it won't tilt your long term confidence, we all have bad runs. Was a pleasure working with you these past 2 months

LightScreener thanks for being reliable always! I'm glad you were finally able to get one for yourself last night!

lax I will fight for your PR access back king. I hope you had fun playing VGC and stick around!

Prinz is a filthy cancer but I still love him anyways. gg

Tenzai I know you didn't get to play much but I'm still glad I picked you up man. Much love

cool sets etc


Rayquaza-Mega @ Mago Berry
Ability: Air Lock
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 116 SpD / 140 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Ascent
- Extreme Speed
- Swords Dance
- Protect

Super super fat ray, that's pretty much it. It takes Moonblast from 252 Timid Xerneas and outruns Mega Kangaskhan. I've told people time and time again fat SD ray is the best Pokemon in ultra so I wanted to take advantage of that. I used this set for two of my first three weeks as a result.


Tapu Koko @ Electrium Z
Ability: Electric Surge
Level: 50
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Volt Switch
- Thunderbolt
- U-turn
- Protect

towards the end of ultra as a real metagame all the real fairy-weaks were either running so much spdef that gleam wasnt worth it or just took more from electric moves anyways. using this on a dual mega rayogre team allowed me to have weather control in a world where I can't bring ray as safely. I pulled Gengar + Groudon the week I brought this so I was glad I had it!

week 6 lunaogre vs zelda

I think LunaOgre was a super underrated ultra archetype, its positive matchups into XernDon/RayOgre/Psyspam/Xray are really nice but it struggles with yveltal and XL pretty hard. I pulled what I would consider to be a slightly negative matchup but my experience with the team dating back to when I brought a similar comp to the DC open worked in my favor.

week 7 half baked tornadus

Only other original team I made for this tour as I was paired against Joe to determine who would top the ultra series pull. Unfort I got in my head too much and decided that instead of hard CTing Joe's YvelDon I'd make a midground and build a team with an okay matchup vs that and his pocket XernOgre. YvelDon was what greeted me at preview, I was on the losing end of every important roll, and lost my gold medal. Oh well!

With the feedback on old gens I'm not sure if 2019 will be featured in the next edition of VGCPL so this might be a fond farewell. By far my favorite metagame and I don't think anything will ever top it, but I fully understand why I'm a minority for that. Thanks for reading.

 

[Megamite]

Gamer Jomatoes carry

 

[kimnaise]

Thanks for hosting, Zee! This has been well ran and having past formats to play with is definitely refreshing. One suggestion I have is probably to change the scoring system to 3-1-0 (W-D-L points reward) instead of 2-1-0. This way, teams will be rewarded more for their wins.

 

[Megamite]

One suggestion I have is probably to change the scoring system to 3-1-0 (W-D-L points reward) instead of 2-1-0. This way, teams will be rewarded more for their wins.

Seconded. It was frankly pretty ridiculous how contested 4th place was considering my team was 0-1-5 going into the final week.

 

[Bless]

I dont know if this is the best place to post this but I hope everyone in the vgc community finally understands how strong smogon players can be. Most of the managers ranked our team last but we were able to make playoffs. We didnt make finals but I am so proud of my teammates! Human Arcticblast dev611 Agati z0mOG Paraplegic AtmosphereVGC shiloh Shadowmonstr7 JRL TonyFlygon emma :)
Thank you zeefable Netherious and Raineko for running a smooth tour! i'll be looking forward to it next year!

 

[yone]

Thanks. :)

 

[jonas]

HI, I didn't know where else to put this, so I'm leaving a description of my tournament run with all the teams I used here, I didn't have the best tour, ending up 2-3 but I played some really good players, and sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Week 1 vs Kimnaise - LWL

Week 1 I was against probably the best player I faced in the entire tour, which ended up as my most regrettable loss this tour as well. the matchup was solid, as registeel shut down everything on his team except for the marowak, which turned out to be the biggest problem. due to his team being special spam + marowak and kartana, the game plan g1 was to game with snarl spectrier + intimidate lando, which didnt work out. in g2, i dropped the grimmsnarl in the back for registeel, which ended up paying off as it picked up a key ko after an iron defense. G3 i was in a pretty good spot, i got the right call turn 1 but i ended up missing a snarl. I still was able to manuever into a good spot after some bad rng, but ended up losing to a triple allyswitch from marowak. Definitely my most regrettable loss, but i was happy that i could put up a fight against a super strong player who was playing well.
Week 2 vs Shaman - WLW

Week 2 i was originally supposed to play against my fellow senior teka, but due to some problems on his side he got subbed out for shaman. Another super strong player, who although hadnt been playing much, top cut worlds in 2016. I originally was going to bring the same team i brought week 1 because i wanted a win with registeel, but i thought that shaman would bring some kind of HO, which gothitelle is really good at stopping momentum. As i loaded into the preview, the matchup was really rough, with regieleki being my key breaking tool, while he had garchomp. I decided to lead eleki g1, as i assumed he would go celesteela to cover the landorus. The play worked out, and i ended up winning g1 by taking out his max celesteela turn 2. G2 i incorrectly lead into what i thought would be a more passive lead, but he came out with garchomp and i couldnt really do anything from there. G3, i again successfully called the celesteela lead, and won in a really tight game in which i needed to land a hypnosis with gothitelle. Fortunately it landed, and i was really happy with myself for winning this one.
Week 3 vs JagSamurott - WW

The first week of s10, and i was ready. I got Jag, who is a decent player but thanks to my teammate ZekromZeke i was able to successfully fish a mu that made the week easy. Zeke is Jags PGL manager, and so he knew that jag was testing ndm + araq, so i decided that volc + yveltal was a pretty easy counterteam. Luckily for me, he brought the team i fished for, so i won pretty easy.
Week 4 vs Sohaib - WLL

I faced another Incredibly strong player at his peak, just off the back of qualifying for pc4 globals. I was also super busy this week, so i didnt have a lot of time to practice and i just ended up using my friend InkVGC s team from a different league. I had plenty of opportunities to win this one, but sohaib took advantage of every play and showed how good of a player he is. I was quite close to winning, and this team is super strong but I couldnt pull through, and sohaib showed how good of a player he is.
Week 6 vs ESM - LL

Again i faced a super solid vgc player, but this was by far my worst loss and most winnable match. I have no excuse for this one, i didnt prep much and brought a comfort pick, and even with a solid enough matchup i couldnt win. g1 i got blown by by ho shenanigans, and g2 i made basically the only losing play by sacrificing my rillaboom, which straight out won the game and i didnt realize that his calyrex was specs. Who knows what would have happened in g3, but im really dissapointed in this loss. He ended up getting second place in rose tower with that team though, so cushions the blow a little bit.

All in all, i think i definitely had one of the hardest, if not the hardest run in this pl. Really dissapointed in how i played though, and i could have picked up 2 more wins for sure. Thanks to Fumito and Megamite for drafting me, and all my teammates for surviving through my suckiness. the team atmosphere was incredible, and now i really want to learn older formats. Cya around!

 

[pix]

HI, I didn't know where else to put this, so I'm leaving a description of my tournament run with all the teams I used here, I didn't have the best tour, ending up 2-3 but I played some really good players, and sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Gamer Jomatoes so goooooddddddddddd

 

[Aldrich]

I dont have much feedbacks on post season, probably agreed on the points system to be the usual one (3-1-0 , or 5-1-0)

Now, I want to create a long heart felt appreciation to all my team members. This is my second time being an assistant manager but kinda the first time that I make some decisions for the team.

First and foremost I would like to thank zeefable Netherious Jashsmash and the Smogon VGC crew (if there is any other people I missed out) for hosting and giving the opportunity to be a co manager an Borghi who selected me as his assistant manager. Not gonna lie, I was kinda surprised that Borghi reached out to me and asked if I wanted to be his Assistant Manager because pretty sure last time we talked we wasnt in a really good terms , but this happens most of the time with me and Borghi, we fight sometimes and then we apologize and move on and become the best of buds again. And co-managing with him is fun and while we didnt reach the target we wanted, I felt like the team could have done better and I really enjoy being a part of the team. This has been one of the best draft league experience and I enjoyed the journey. Thank you for trusting me and hope we can run it back.

Next time to say thanks to all the members:

Eddie,Guzman031 tqew - Thank you for participating to be our team helper. Eddie you are awesome and it was fun to know you , Lenny you participated more than I thought you would and tqew you're jailed for being afk after a while smh

StarRaikou Chained chomper xtra$hine soulgazer - Kinda wished you guys were a little bit more active in the team but it is all right. Thank you for the contributions

Kotomi - The results in this PL didnt do you justice. You tried so hard but in the end it wasnt enough. Glad that you never gave up till the end.

Cobalte - Same like Sebastian and thank you for stepping up when we needed people!

Arekusabi - Was happy when you finally got a W vs Darcy. Hopefully you can have a better results in the next draft leagues you are in. Now you're banned.

Grandmas Cookin -Same like Sebastian & Emma. Maybe next time! Thank you for still contributing in team chats.

EclipseOwlVGC - Happy to get you on our team! An epic ultra series team builder and also hyped when playing the matches!!

EternalSnowman - Really glad that I came to know you now. Absolutely having an epic teams and also played very very well!

DarkJorch - You are definitely the superstar of our team. Always stepped up to the plate. Happy to get to know you

Pyreon - I knew once after you gave the epic speech in another draft league I had to get you no matter what. You blew away any expectations I have and is the biggest steal in the draft in our team. Amazing VGC17 Run and nobody can take that away from you. Also amazing team chat presence and glad that people recognized you now. Too bad you couldnt pull up with your favorite teams in the end but at least you had the all mandibuzz in your game!

Namuko Pro - Why are you too expensive smh. But thank God the money is kinda worth it as you provide team chat presence, a lot of good teams and fun to work with. One of the coolest people I know and I never doubted you!

PinkSylvie - Being in the same team with you was something I wanted to do for long and its a dream come true this season. It is an honor and I enjoyed every moment of it and you are an awesome gamer. Bird Up!

Last but not least I would like to apologize to anyone if there is something that offended you/didnt like my antics during the season , especially the Week 4 predictions thread I made. To clarify I just wanted to banter but then I got mad for getting subtweeted and all that, It was a useless dumb thing and in the end I proceeded to double down because of that. I know I'm not really the best at my wordings and sometimes my words can hurt you and am emotional but theres no excuse for me to be unprofessional after looking back.

Hopefully we can run it back next season. See you all next time!

Ald Out

 

[Idyll]

Now that that tour's done, I'd personally say that it was a really fun experience for me, coming from someone who doesn't even actively play VGC. I think it was quite well run from the administrative side so ya'll should give yourselves a pat on the back for this one.

I agree with above posters saying that there should be more standardization when it comes to scheduling, because honestly as someone who played on Smogon for years and has been used to a standard way of doing it, my scheduling for this tour kinda went all over the place in some instances. It's definitely no fault of anyone as this is a different demographic that very well only came to Smogon for this tour in the first place, but setting clear guidelines for proper scheduling (and by extension defining clearer guidelines for act calls) can be something to look into for future team tours within the Smogon VGC community.

Also, I agree with Namuko Pro that flat 10k for managers and assmen is p sus. I think there's a better way towards the sweet spot between inclusivity and balance. To comment on their presented alternative, I think deciding on price tiers can seem quite arbitrary, and it can also cause a bit of disagreement as managers will always be driven by self-interest. The way we do it for Doubles Premiere League is a higher flat price (we do 15k), which means that for "better" players it's not as abusable. Something to consider in this is that managers aren't even necessarily paying for metagame knowledge and expertise, but rather they are paying for the right to play; even if they don't buy themselves, "better" managers should still be more net positives relative to other managers as these managers can still contribute to their team at the price of free. Again, I'm personally not sure how this should be approached, but I think at the very least the status quo could be changed.

I'd also like to take this space to give quick shoutouts to my team the Seven Island Stoutlands for the pleasure of playing with you all in this tournament! Thank you so much to our managers Zelda and Dawg for the opportunity to play for the team! I also want to give a special shoutout to Helios of Sun for all of the help in prep, from getting me pastes of teams I could use to even giving me detailed advice on how to approach specific matchups. I am very much certain I wouldn't have even half the success I've had in this tournament if not for your help, and I'm taking this chance to publicly commend how big of an impact you've made to our team's run.

Overall, it's been a great time, and I hope to see more from this community :D

 

[Helios of Sun]

-What did you think about the size/length of the tournament? Was 8 teams/8 slots too much? We leaned to inclusivity in this PL, as we drafted about 55% of total signups. Some of my players seemed a little concerned about the length as there were a lot of other leagues going on this summer. Going 6 teams would shorten the tournament by two weeks of regular season

I think this is entirely fine. The length of the league was honestly okay, and if I'm honest, it could be a timing issue rather than a length issue. One possible suggestion would be to shift the timing of the league to possibly a bit later, maybe when some other leagues are about to finish. On that end, it could end up with more signups from more players, and more players and choose from.

-Did you have any issues with the hosts/managers/players that we were made unaware of? I apologize about the spreadsheet being unreliable for the first few weeks, that was the result of a communication error and I take full blame for that. It won't happen again

Only a small amount. One would be the form of communication where I do agree that Discord would most likely be a better place for match scheduling. Although I am fairly active on the forums, not everyone opens up the forums as often as I do, and they would probably much prefer scheduling using Discord.

I think managers going for 10k each is somewhat ridiculous. Again, I'm not the guy who can provide a perfect solution, but I agree with Memoric on the idea that 15k would be a much more reasonable amount. When I'm looking at the managers who drafted themselves in the first place, I can safely say that all of them would go for more than 10k because of their level of expertise at certain formats. Now, this isn't a perfect solution, and I apologize for that, but I think this is much better compromise than 10k.

-What did you think of old gens? I know old gens were the sole reason some people signed up for this tour and I'd like to keep them around in the future as someone who appreciates VGC's history, but were the same 3 formats x7 weeks too much? Would you support a multi-format bo3 or rotating oldgens?

I come from the team who lacked old format players, so my response to this may be slightly biased, but I think 3 formats is okay. I think though, there is no need to push for more old formats, and I think the amount we have here is probably fair. One major problem we had in the Stoutlands at least, was prepping for these formats, as we didn't have many people who were able to play these formats other than the ones who were drafted specifically for them. So I think, I think 3 is probably the maximum you should go for.


To end it off, huge thanks to everyone on the Smogon team for organizing the tourney, I really enjoyed myself!

 

[zee]

Gonna wrap this up and talk about my ideas for pushing this forward for transparency since everyone's had ample time to comment now.

-RE: Manager Pricing

I was actually super desperate when this tour started. I didn't know how many managers we were going to have signup, and I was especially insecure of the quality of managers, so we went with a lower 10K price to encourage more signups. It was apparent after the manager selections that 10K was an easy steal (take spurrific + emilio potentially being able to buy themselves for a combined 20K when they'd likely go for more than that individually in the draft). Flat 15K seems like a fine adjustment for the next iteration of this tournament.

-RE: Scheduling

Yeah I totally understand that scheduling for this tournament was a nightmare, considering we've had people who haven't logged on to the forum in a month+ reach playoffs I think it's pretty embarrassing. The default should always be Smogon VMs and this will be more heavily enforced going forward. It's fine if your preferred method of communication is discord, you can easily note this with a message on your smogon wall or your signature.

One thing I want to lump into this is winposting. Most teams only had like 3 players who posted wins (which kind of ties in to the above about so many players not really touching the forum past actually singing up). While it is not illegal to have another teammate post a win for you, we do want to crack down on this a bit in future iterations. It really is the bare minimum to log onto the site twice a week max for 2 minutes to initiate contact with your opponent and post your win.

-RE: Old Gens

Old gens are really finnicky when it comes to actually finding the people to do them. There was obviously a very dedicated pool from players such as myself, Agati, Zelda, Brady1225, Gramgus, Human, etc who quite enjoyed the old gens they slotted into, but on the flipside, some teams struggled to fill a specific old gen slot and had to either spend way more time prepping that slot or just let it fall by the wayside. I think the appropriate thing to do is survey this topic once more when it comes time for next year's event, because it's kind of hard to plan this in advance when we don't know what type of signup pool we need to cater to.

-RE: Team Size / Team Amount / Tournament length / Tournament timing

As of now, plan for VGCPL II to run the 8x8 structure again. 8's just been the standard in pretty much any VGC team tour in recent history, and it does not make sense to break from that size. People also seemed to enjoy the 8 teams and 7 weeks of regular season for inclusivity, so we'll be tentatively planning to do that again as well.

The one major complaint that was brought up was the tournament's timing. While we avoided conflict with a major Smogon team tour like SCL, in the VGC community, this tournament overlapped with (at the least, to my knowledge) PGL, WWT, and World Cup of VGC. This obviously wasn't my intention, but we'll be far more careful about overlapping tours going into next year.

Finally, one special announcement.

After surveying people on discord and twitter, it looks like a lot of people were excited to play on Smogon again soon, and I agree that one year (if not more) for the next team tour can be a bit painful. As such, Dodrio Cup will be replaced with a Winter team tournament. This will likely be smaller in length to avoid too much overlap with NPA. Expect signups to open around December with play beginning in January. Formats featured are still TBD, with the theoretical size being 6 teams of 8 slots.

Making this tournament happen and run so smooth was honestly a dream come true. Thanks so much to everyone involved, from the hosts, managers, players, and spectators. See you all this Winter!

Note: This thread will remain open in case anyone does have any further suggestions for the upcoming Winter league