World Cup of Pokemon VGC - Discussion

jonas

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Sorry for being inactive on this thread everyone! the qualifying stage of WCOP has completed, and now there are 32 teams fighting for 16 slots remaining in a round robin group style format.
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Here are the Groups. In group 7, the last slot came down to a tiebreaker between Switzerland and Thailand, which turned into a 3 game playoff that Switzerland ended up winning 2-1
Some more questions I have, hopefully to stimulate activity on this thread:
1. What is the new "Group Of Death"?
2. Which teams surprised you to be in the second round? which teams were you surprised not to see?
3. Which team were you impressed by the most in the qualifying round?
4. Which team will make the biggest upset this round?
If you want to do general predictions feel free. 2 Teams get through from each group, to make it to playoffs
 
1. Group 3 and 6 strike me as the group of death candidates with Group 3 having 2 of the Top 5 teams in the tournament in Japan and Peru while Group 6 has an incredibly solid country pool overall with Italy and Singapore being the clear countries to watch out for. I'd give the slight edge to Group 3 because France also has some really solid players, while not being one of the top teams in my eyes, and Mexico has a couple very notable players.

2. The teams I'm most shocked to see not make it to the next stage were Germany and Australia, they both had really really scary rosters, and honestly props to UK and New Zealand for knocking them out of contention. I think no one is surprised to see US, Italy, Spain, Japan and Peru in round 2, but Italy had a pretty rough qualifier and were close to getting knocked out, so we will have to see what happens in the pool stage.

3. I'd have to answer Thailand here, going 7-1 against Argentina is insane and puts them as one of the top teams for me with the likes of Chile, Canada and Singapore.

4. I think Chile is gonna make waves, their roster makes them one of the best teams in the tournament (not top 5, but still one of the best) and idk why people are sleeping on them.

General Predictions:
Group 1 - India ( :D) and Thailand, if we dont make it, then we are getting knocked out by Portugal
Group 2 - China and Canada, Poland is a real contender though
Group 3 - Peru and Japan
Group 4 - Chile and UK, Brazil has a shot i guess? but I'll have to see
Group 5 - South Korea and Spain
Group 6 - Italy and Singapore, maybe Indonesia bc theyve got a solid roster too, but I dont see them taking down either of these teams
Group 7 - The Netherlands and New Zealand, Switzerland beat out Philippines in an incredibly close tiebreaker so they clearly got the grit to make it
Group 8 - United States and Ireland, Malaysia is pretty good but I dont think they can beat a team with the gamer Jomatoes carry, and Guatemala has a real shot if Teka stops playing Unite and actually plays the game
 
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On a more serious note
1. For me it's definitely group 3. Japan and Peru have insanely strong teams and France and Mexico are no slouches either
2. I was surprised that I didn't see Germany or Australia for the most part.
3. For sure Thailand.
4. Something in my gut says Portugal, though Chile does have lots of potential and that scares me.
 
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zee

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USA is now in the top 16! I played all 5 weeks of the qualifying rounds and finished with a 4-1 record (9-2 in games) with my only loss being to the insanely cute and talented Lilburr

I really only used two teams for this stage, one that most people have seen me use by now (charizard sun click here) and a pretty fun palkia snorlax team that I used vs Lily, but I really didn't tap into the whole "beating kyogre" thing that palkia teams do hard enough.

I recorded one of my sets and it was uploaded to victory road's youtube channel, which you can watch here:


I will be recording all of my playoff matches and uploading them to my own youtube channel as well.

follow the top 16 along here if you're interested. I'll be back with another update whenever our tournament ends.
 

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
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I played all 5 weeks of the qualifying rounds and finished with a 4-1 record (9-2 in games) with my only loss being to the insanely cute and talented Lilburr
I recorded this one!!


No commentary or anything, just the raw footage of the games.

I won't claim I made any of the teams I used, and truthfully I couldn't tell you who did. With that said Ireland's out of the tour so I'll paste what I used - as far as I'm aware these teams are somewhat known anyway, maybe it isn't my place to post them but hey.



I used this Week 1 and Week 2 against Lan Luu and Hennie Vermaak - I think I recorded both sets, but I never got around to uploading them. Can still do that if anyone would really like to see.

It's a pretty standard Calyrex + Mienshao thing as far as I know. I essentially told my team, "hey, I've never played VGC, I just wanna use something standard and reliable" and they recommended using Calyrex since it's the most straightforward restricted in terms of gameplan. I spent hours testing this team to make sure I had some clue what to do into every matchup I'd feasibly run into... except Calyrex-I TR lol (Caly-I, Torkoal, Oranguru, Tsareena, Indeedee-F, Stakataka) so that was terrifying to run into Week 1 but I managed to pull it out in 2 games somehow. After that I ran into a standardish Zacian team (Zacian-C, Volcarona, Rillaboom, Urshifu-S, Suicune, Regieleki) and barely etched it out in 3 extremely close games which felt super good.



The team I used vs zee, all I really knew about her was that I was not going to see Xerneas and there was a reasonably high chance I'd see Groudon so I took my chances on a minor fish and went with Goth + Kyogre. Ran into a Palkia which seemed insanely dire but the matchup ended up being fairly even as the rest of zee's team was quite weak to Kyogre outside of the Palkia. I managed to win in 3 again very close games, which unfortunately came down to Gothitelle hitting Hypnosis bc I'm bad and didn't secure the reliable endgame I should've done.



Going into what would end up being my last game I wanted to use something off the wall to try to catch Ismat Myron off guard, which unfortunately didn't work out for me as I loaded up Eternatus into another Calyrex-I. The pick made sense, I'd been pretty weak to it in the prior weeks. The games were still close - I pulled the wrong triggers at the wrong time - but ultimately didn't matter because a) I lost and b) we got 8-0'd so bop. Still a fun team, stolen from here. I recorded these games if anyone wants to see, just let me know.

My foray into VGC was super fun, I went in basically entirely blind and managed to put up a strong 3-1 record which felt super good. Playing on cart and with 4 Pokemon at a time were both very new experiences for me that were super difficult to get used to but I had a great time and hope to play in some more events going forward, particularly Hatterene Series which Eve convinced me to join. Also a big thank you to her for listening to me ramble during VGCWC about various things, and to mattiemoomoo for picking me up in the first place - great manager, great player, made this tour super enjoyable for me. That's all from me, I've enjoyed reading all the posts in this thread and I'm glad my first experience with VGC was a positive one. o/
 
Now that the VR World Cup is in its quarterfinals stage, China now looks like the team to beat in the tournament. Having just knocked out Team Singapore, they look to have fully ramped up after a somewhat shaky performance in the Play-Ins.

Seemingly spearheaded by their frontrunner Wang Yuxiang (ToumaKazusa) and Feng Ze (Yukino), they have been crushing Groups and dispatched their round of 16 opponents (Netherlands) and their quarterfinal opponents (Singapore) with relative ease after a fairly suspect Play In stage. I am very excited to see how they continue on in the tournament, and they look to be the favourites as of right now.
 
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