Hello Interest of Nets. Before leaving, I was actually gonna write another entry to basically revoke most of the things explained in the previous one -- didn't work with my priorities, so whatever. You shouldn't have missed that giant wave of relief anyway (and if you actually did...dang, should have been at least a small bit more patient!). With the updated numbers on the same page as before, we are looking at what could possibly be not the worst but the best season we ever had.
And this new season now has officially started for all the Germans who didn't undergo Operation Boston Open Head-Start™ earlier. Also, I played my very first Regional ever on this past Saturday. I will tell you the story of that one now. The photo above is the team I entered it with, and it is exactly the same as the one I posted on here a while ago. I only changed the nicknames. And maybe Amoonguss's Ability to Effect Spore. Or maybe not. It's a secret (I have forgotten).
My Tournament Run
R1: Hussayn A. (Rabigator44)
Milotic / Kangaskhan / Landorus-T / Thundurus-I / Heatran / Amoonguss
The good news: I have experienced all sorts of randomness in first rounds throughout the year, so I was quite happy to finally get an absolutely expectable matchup immediately. The bad news: We have a 50-50 matchup right here, it's quite tricky especially at team preview. What then happened in the game is that he pretty much picked the most Rotom-weak group of four possible and then my Rotom did the bulk of the work, which eased my way through this game a bit. 1-0
After the tournament, our reigning National Champion Blacklag challenged me to a friendly and he had the exact same six in team preview. The only thing I happen to remember about that game is that I picked differently, he did as well, and it kinda went to shit for me. Milotic is annoying.
R2: Swen S.
Venusaur / Togekiss / Milotic / Tyranitar / Landorus-T / Cresselia
The world is a village. I already played him exactly one year ago at the Arena Cup Berlin, so it was very nice to meet him again. I wasn't too sure what to make of this team, but again, Milotic is annoying. However, I got a pretty good position from the start that even allowed me to keep Rotom's Item completely hidden, remove Milotic early and after that Landorus just was no threat anymore even with my Rotom being locked into Thunderbolt. Fun fact, it Thunderbolted something in every single turn of the game. 2-0
R3: Alexandra E. (Breekachu)
Landorus-T / Charizard / Kangaskhan / Breloom / Cresselia / Raichu
What a matchmaking! On the one hand, I was picked by The Great TOM to be paired down, so RIP resistance...maybe. On the other hand, I already had faced her on Battle Spot just right before I left my place -- and knowing a thing or two about the team didn't help me too much because all the individual parts of this team have the potential to be very annoying for me nonetheless. The game itself probably was more annoying for her though, because the RNG flipped basically everything into my favor. First the Landorus was confirmed to be a magical crit magnet in the moment when I was actually trying to sack my Excadrill in order to get Tyranitar in for free (with the possible bonus of getting a flinch if that failed), which in turn would cover a possible one-turn Sleep by Cresselia. So I totally didn't get Tyranitar in there and Cresselia just slept the full 3 turns anyway to make me absolutely not regret that crit. It all fell apart from there. 3-0
R4: Mirko J. (Akira)
Venusaur / Rotom-W / Landorus-T / Scrafty / Heatran / Charizard
Battling Trainers older than me and even playing competitively longer than me, part 1. And other than that, it's even a common matchup, too... We first met as I timer-stalled him out of 2012 Nats top 8 with good old Rest Cresselia, a year later he got his revenge at an inofficial tournament using a team inspired by my own against me, and then we also had quite a bunch of Premier Challenge encounters throughout the year. Anyway, let's get to this one here: He led Venusaur + Scrafty into my Salamence, which I saw as a free opportunity to click Hyper Voice assuming he wouldn't have the rogue Hidden Power Ice Venusaur. That worked out quite well, as he let me do exactly that, crit the Mega Venusaur with it and it was dead right there. Sure is something else to see this fatass go from 100% straight to the grave...since physical Salamence is dead, at least. And then I quickly expanded that to 4-2 lead by sniping his Landorus, but lo and behold, he read a Protect + switch perfectly and I also made a somewhat silly play the turn after (I clicked Double-Edge into Scrafty but forgot that Salamence was at -2 Attack!), and then we somehow were right back at 2-2. I still liked my endgame there though, since Tyranitar was able to kill the Scrafty immediately and then his Rotom alone shouldn't be enough to handle my two at the same time. 4-0
R5: Dominic S. (TheFlashColonel)
Kangaskhan / Smeargle / Landorus-T / Aegislash / Thundurus-I / Cresselia
We had some time to chat before the match, because there was a re-pairing and it didn't affect us. I totally would not want to face his usual Malamar because that's literally always been another bane of my existence just due to my preferred team choices. Then he already told me that he didn't have Malamar this time, and that he supposedly was more afraid to face me. I actually want to believe him, because his team really looks like it should have a hard time with mine. So then we played, and I got the 4-3 on turn 1, where the Smeargle essentially died doing absolutely nothing. Then he brought in Landorus and I completely bound him with Wide Guard, while Kang still didn't do too much. Then this Landorus survived two Hyper Voices in the darkest red I've ever seen while I at the same time lost every single coin flip of the Aegislash mirror. This way, I lost my Salamence before his Kangaskhan even took major damage, which was very bad. As I then just killed his Landorus anyway for lack of better options, he naturally got Kang back in at neutral Attack and a nice free Power-Up Punch to go with it. From there I was absolutely dead. And Aegislash is cancer. 4-1
R6: Thomas G. (Zinnwurm)
Golurk / Rotom-W / Heatran / Aerodactyl / Amoonguss / Kangaskhan
Battling Trainers older than me and even playing competitively longer than me, part 2. What even is this tournament... Well, this game now went completely south. Something in me didn't feel like playing well, so I basically made him a present by playing shit from start to end. If it were Bo3 instead, I maybe would have had some ideas of what to adjust, but with just this one game, I completely botched it and there's no forgiveness for that. It's nice to see he got top 16 though, who knows how amazing he could possibly be if he took this fucking game just a bit more seriously, haha. 4-2
R7: Fabian Z.
Azumarill / Amoonguss / Blaziken / Salamence / Tyranitar / Aegislash
Weeelll... Here we have a Trainer playing his first VGC tournament ever and he has a sand team heavily stacked against sand mirrors. I didn't like this, I didn't like this at all. Finishing 4-3 was about as realistic as it gets (hint: never start 4-0 again, it brings bad karma!), and I can't even remember what my freaking mental state was, haha. Anyhow, the first turn was about the worst imaginable - he got a free Substitute for Aegislash and I had no way to deal with it without simply getting overrun by the partner. I probably should have lost right there. But inexperienced as he was...he didn't protect it well. I successfully managed to break the Sub with a couple Rock Slides, and as soon as that Sub was gone, I double-targeted down every partner of Aegislash's and Blaziken's fairly obvious non-attacking turns. With just one mistake on my part in there, chances are I'd just lose to the Blaziken instead. But that just barely didn't happen, and I was as relieved as I could feasibly be after my fuckups during all of that latter half. 5-2
Personal and General Review
Naturally, I only cared for that top 16 as soon as I saw my second loss, and it got quite close with most of my opponents clocking in at those mediocre 4-3 or 3-4 records after I had beaten them (at least none worse than that!?). Ended up just barely making it, at 15th place. Fair enough. I guess that's all I wanted. Top 16 -- with 92 CP the last result before the exponential drop-off and a fairly attainable one just by playing well -- was in fact my goal going into the tournament. Problem is, I didn't play well. If I wouldn't choke in almost every single game, I'd basically have the top cut for free, one would think, and that's the part about it that I don't like. I wasn't even nervous or something (the mad roller-coaster of Italy technically killed these kind of feelings in me anyway), I just made various bad decisions for whatever reasons. This is a thing that seriously has to stop eventually -- or else I will never play at Worlds again. Anyway, the season still is long, and having 92 CP at least is no bad way at all to start the CP grind. It's already more than winning freaking three Premier Challenges...all while winning 3 PCs alone would be absolutely amazing in east Germany. (Speaking of which, next Arena Cup / German Regional is at the end of November in Berlin. Dear invaders, we will be prepared and you shall fall. ツ)
All right, and with that egomaniac rambling out of the way... There's a few other things to talk about. First and foremost, we need this godforsaken tournament software! I'd gladly trade my comfy ability to hold my 3DS in hand during games for others not getting some bullshit judge calls. I'll have you know that I indirectly witnessed a story where one Trainer was ahead 3-2 at the 15-minute mark. Then judges decided they would play one more turn after that. Suddenly it turned to 1-2. And if we would play yet another turn, it would turn into a clear 1-0 victory. But as you may have guessed, nope, the guy got a completely undeserved loss. This should not happen but it does happen and will always continue to happen as long as we get no better solution! And a very easy better solution would be to not make such ridiculous arbitrary decisions but ones that at least somewhat make sense. The ruling, as it is, already is wrong where it tries to enforce the 45 seconds per turn which is entirely unrealistic for obvious reasons (fun fact, if I recall correctly they even missed a fake move selection timeout right on the bloody stream!). This implies that putting a stop at 15 minutes -- no matter if exactly there or one turn after -- is simply not the same as having the actual software. You also can't simply check all the health in the remaining bits of the timer, again for obvious reasons. It just does not work, period! So what they in fact can do, well, that is to simply play games out that are realistic to be played out in a timely fashion. In other words, the Muk or Chansey bullshit as well as Calm Mind Cresselia vs. the world gets the loss, and everything that has neither healing moves nor attacking/hitting inability involved gets played out. Yes, it's still wrong compared to the software because an Amoonguss could beat a Charizard on that and stuff, but you know, there is just no fucking way. We need the software if we want to do that, period.
Well, and if it weren't for these fuckups (and the steadily downgraded prizing), this could have actually been an extremely well-organized tournament. It was the fastest major I ever played, except for some not too long re-pairing and a lunch break, there was no downtime, and even the first round wasn't as lengthy as it used to be. All in all, VG started on time (!) and was finished before 8pm. Not so much for TCG though, could as well have hit us instead... I heard Amigo's laptop broke somewhere near the end of TCG Swiss and everything got severely delayed. The final probably wasn't done before midnight because of that. Better hope that no one got stuck in this town over-night just because of that...
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