Teams from the 2016 Pokémon World Championships

[Velocity]

Originally from http://nuggetbridge.com/blogs/entry/2003-teams-from-the-2016-pokémon-world-championships/

The top trainers from across the planet gather each year to compete at the World Championships. The teams they use either reflect the pinnacle of the metagame or an attempt to break the meta. This year proved to be no exception with a very diverse range of Pokémon. Here is every team that the 106 most elite players from over 20 countries brought to Day 2 of the 2016 World Championships in San Francisco!

The format of this article is modeled after the one done in 2014 by Firestorm and the one done in 2015 by kingofmars. Big thanks to everyone who contributed. 52 different Pokémon saw play in the competition. The defining feature of the 2016 format, however, was that trainers could use 2 Restricted Pokémon on their teams. 6 unique Restricted Pokémon were used in 8 different combinations. There were also 9 different Mega Evolutions that competitors brought to battle.

Top Cut

1. Wolfe Glick (Wolfey)

2. Jonathan Evans (Ezrael)

3. Markus Stadter (13Yoshi37)

4. Eduardo Cunha (EmbC)

5. Aaron Traylor (Unreality)

6. Justin Carris (Azazel)

7. Barry Anderson (Baz Anderson)

8. Baris Akcos (Billa)

9. Sebastian Escalante (Sebas)

10. Giovanni Costa (The Gio)

11. Michael Lanzano (JiveTime)

12. Edward Cheung (Harbinger)

13. Jamie Boyt (MrJellyLeggs)

14. Blake Hopper (Bopper)

15. Sam Pandelis (ZeldaVGC)

16. Matthias Suchodolski (Lega)

17. Patrick Smith (SalaMenace)

18. Alejandro Jimenez (Legacy)

19. Andrew Nowak (Nowakgolf)

20. Wonseok Jang (KrelCROC)

21. Conan Thompson (Conan)

22. Dane Zieman (AgentOrangeJulius)

23. Christian Cheynubrata

24. Till Bohmer (Dark Psiana)

Finished 4-3

25. Rajan Bal (blarajan)

26. Ying Jun Qi (Ying)

27. James Baek (Jamesspeed1)

28. William Tansley (StarKO)

29. Matias Roa (Boah)

30. Eric Rios (riopaser)

31. Alvin Hidayat (Jibaku)

32. Kotake Hideto (Liar)

33. Motochika Nabeshima (Elm)

34. David Mizrahi (AwesomePlatypus)

35. Nimiel Catipon (leimin)

36. Hayato Takahashi (Hayato)

37. Matt Carter (Mattsby)

38. Matthew Coyle (OneEyedWonderWeasel)

39. Brianna Birt (TR Jessie)

40. Alexander Kuhn (Hibiki)

41. Suzuki Tatsu (MDK)

42. Yuanhao Li (Hao)

43. Christian Ramirez (EwokPadawan)

44. Jirawiwat Thitasiri

45. Tobias Koschitzki (Tobysxe)

46. Alex Gomez (Pokealex)

47. Marcel Kapelle (Massi)

48. Yuichi Sasaki (Yuuichi)

49. Masaki Kubota

50. Riccardo Appamea (Appa)

51. Kazi Rahman (AwakenedCity)

Finished 3-4

52. Alfredo Prada (AlfreDo)

53. Rachel Annand (SPEevee)

54. Matteo Moscardini (MoscaVGC)

55. Or Kei Yin (CyrusOr)

56. Grant Weldon (Velocity)

57. Javier Senorena (Proman)

58. Joshua Lorcy (Lorcylovesyou)

59. Hongyu Zhu (fivepointstars)

60. Chien-Chien Tsai (ChienX2)

61. Rafik Sadli (DominoRaf)

62. Justin Burns (Spurrific)

63. Kitaoka Tsubasa (nanakango)

64. Federico Andino (AndyVGC)

65. Takuro Terada (inoseno)

66. Greyson Garren (Greysong)

67. Zhang Zhe (polito)

68. Naohito Mizobuchi (Penguin)

69. Aniello Iuliano (Senior14)

70. Federico Turano (AvatarFede)

71. Soichiro Kohara

72. Ethan Hall (Jhon)

73. Jang Jung In (JJI)

74. Christopher Kan

75. Alex Underhill (Lexicon)

76. Jonathan Chiang

77. Simone Sanvito (Sanvy)

Finished 2-5

78. Andre Tavara Jara

79. Chase Lybbert (I Am a Rookie)

80. Lukas Muller (Knappi)

81. Bridger Snow (squirtwo)

82. Meaghan Rattle (AvengedWerehog)

83. Alessio Yuri Boschetto (PokemonZone)

84. Demitrios Kaguras (kingdjk)

85. Chi Yuen Fu

86. Alexander Poole (triceratops5)

87. Juan Naar (DonVGC)

88. Michael Riechert (Michilele)

89. Dominic Scheffler (TheFlashColonel)

90. Chen Wu

Finished 1-6

91. Kamaal Harris (Kamaal)

92. Tsao Che-Ming (Duoo)

93. Hironori Seino

94. Marcelo Salgado (Lerion)

Did Not Finish

Jeudy Azzarelli (SoulSurvivor)

Yosuke Isagi (Tony)

Gary Qian (ZygardeVGC)

Lee Ji Seok (MeLuCa)

Shoma Honami (SHADEviera)

Cedric Bernier (Talon)

Steven Markhardt (Kali)

Koki Honda

Victor Manuel Gonzalez Garcia

Kimo Nishimura (TFC)

Hideyuki Taida (BIDC)

Arash Omatti (Mean)

 

[blarajan]

I want to thank Velocity for hosting the thread here. Let's open up the discussion. Which teams are you all most surprised to see do well at Worlds? Why do you think those teams might have done well? What about Wolfe/Markus/Billa's team do you think allowed for it to be 3 of the top 8 teams? There's a lot of interesting things that happened at worlds this year and I think they're worth discussing.

Which was your favorite team in day 2? (besides mine?)

 

[Psynergy]

Well TFC has the best team without a doubt, this isn't even a question.

I actually mentioned this in the other thread before but I really liked the variety of teams that showed up even though every team outside of the 4 Dialga used some combination of the big 5 legends (Weather Trio, Xerneas, Yveltal). They weren't all necessarily the same few archetypes either which was pretty cool to see. They're not all Gary Qian thankfully but there's all sorts of interesting support Pokemon being used too (Clefairy, Slowbro, Zapdos, etc), and that's probably the most fun part about this format. I actually really like Dane Zieman's X-Ray team though, it's similar to what I used earlier in the season but with Raichu over Weavile and Mega Gyarados over Landorus-T, and even back then I was thinking about using Gyarados in some form so it looks exactly like something I would use.

 

[Jibaku]

Most surprised:
I wasn't really surprised by anything tbh. In a sense, I'd have to think lowly of a team to be surprised at its placement if it performed well. But, I don't.

Wolfe/Markus/Billa/Brendan:

1) Correct Meta Call: With an increasing number of Xerneas post US nats (actually post UK Nats), the correct meta call is to counter the living daylight out of it. XRay was also on the rise post Italy Nats and as such a strong gameplan against the myriad of Xerneas + tech partners. But first and foremost, the team needed to counter most Xerneas + Groudon teams, given the duo's success at US Nationals. Starting with a core of Mega Gengar/Bronzong/Kyogre gave the team the most efficient path to having a decent advantage over the common G/X archetypes, and as long as the team could contain the early pressure from Kangaskhan (hi Hitmontop), it dealt with the overused archetype very well. The combination Gengar and Bronzong also troubled XRay quite a bit. In addition, the combination of Rayquaza + Kyogre naturally has an advantageous matchup against the 2nd most likely pair at worlds, Dual Primals. The classic RayOgre builds were typically very offensive and risky to use, but Wolfe/Markus/Brendan figured out a way to stabilize the pairing (though Rayquaza wasn't added until later), enabling it to be a safe pick.

In addition, people sort of slept on RayOgre because it hasn't seen success since the beginning of this format.

2) Immense flexibility: The team's got a lot of things going for it. Double speed control, bulk, power, Intimidate, electric redirection, lots of weather control, Shadow Tag lockdown, strong switch opportunities, minimal RNG reliance, and even incredible timerstalling capabilities that they didn't even think of during teambuilding. It can play defensively and shut down enemy momentum easily from Fake Outs, stalling Trick Room and Tailwind turns. The same Fake Out pressure can be used very aggressively to allow Kyogre to deal heavy damage or Rayquaza to set up Swords Dance. The amount of ways this team can dance around its opponents makes it really difficult to counter. No, using Dialga does not automatically counter this team.

3) The players are very good. I don't think I need to explain this much.

My favorite team:
Obviously mine, and if not, Jon's, even though we tried to build away from Jon because he had a Manectric...

More serious answer: I love wolfesquad and it's my favorite, but since I've already explained it I'm going to pick another. I pick Aaron Traylor's Team with Xerneas/Groudon/Smeargle/Salamence/Bronzong/Cresselia. It may be an odd choice because the team looks standard, but let me explain. While I am generally not a fan of Groudon/Xerneas (I spent pretty much the entire season trying to shut that stupid duo down), Aaron's team had a little twist over most other Groudon/Xerns. Typically, we see players carry either Cresselia or Bronzong, but Aaron dropping the incredibly powerful Mega Kangaskhan and enabling the use of both Psychics makes so much difference that I don't feel that most people will notice. The team has immense flexibility as a result, maintaining Bronzong as a weapon against most other Xerneas teams, while also having (offensive) Cresselia to deal with many other things (most notably a bunch of RayOgre and Dual Primal scenarios). That one change is so clever and the team becomes incredibly difficult to counterteam as a result. The Cresselia played an important role in keeping the team safe from the rather surprising number of Mega Gengars that came out of almost nowhere, and Aaron was fortunate enough to practice against a good number of Mega Gengars before worlds. He was one step ahead.

I also think that this is a meta resistant team and can go through multiple metagame phases without being changed and it'll still work well. It's a bit weak to Dark mons as Xerneas is poorly supported on this team and therefore isn't really great at answering them, but it has outs to everything. It is important to note that Xerneas's presence plays an important part in allowing the double psychic core to work.

Its color coordination sucks though and thus isn't very pretty to look at.