Return of Quicksand (I Tried)

(Link to rental team on PGL)

Alola friends. Long Leipzig weekend behind me now, time to share the team I brought. I'll talk more about the events in another post later into the season, but the summary of it is that I got top-32 at the main event and some chip CP from mostly irrelevant stuff, putting me currently at 239/300 CP.

But before I actually go into the team... Might as well take a little moment to say this: This was my last Regional and it will be my last year, with Worlds in Nashville being my final competitive event in VGC. The specifics about my decision, which I have long mulled over, will also follow in another post, which will be released some time this summer, but just telling you now. This is my last ride...but I will not go down easily.

[VG] I Somehow Won Another PC

Hello friends. Just played a weekend of PCs, again went pretty much just as this chaotic format really goes. I won the Saturday event with a mostly standard Xerneas team on a 6-2 (9-4) record, and I got last freaking place at the Sunday event with a different team that I'm obviously not posting here (which also happened to be my first ever negative record at an official event, fun fact). Happy reading! *cough*

[VG] Nugget Bridge 2.0 and First 2016 Victorious PC Team

Hello friends. I've played my first Premier Challenge of this format a week ago. It was somewhat resembling of Regionals: I felt shit going into it, then I played, and then I took first fucking place. Looking forward to all the tournaments not won when I'm actually feeling good...weeelll, what might help me in that regard is that there's a realistic chance that I'm just never feeling good this year. That's just what a nice new format we have! *cough*

Anyway, before you actually read further in this, you might want to check out the two articles I posted on Nugget Bridge recently, which are first my Regionals report and second a new entry of Dreykopff Explains the Game. The latter also has a few bits about the PC I'm talking about, so I'm not gonna repeat that stuff here and just show and explain the team.

[VG] Ending 2015 with Some Semblance of 2014

Hello world. I played my first two proper local Premier Challenges of this season throughout the weekend just passed. On Saturday, I won the thing, re-using my sucessful Regionals team unchanged. On Sunday, I entered with an even more experimental upgrade and I got no more than a pretty forgettable 2-2 Swiss (with amazing resistance actually, because 3/4 of my opponents made top cut on that day, haha). Everyone has their bad days from time to time, you know. I'm sharing this team here today anyway because I think it's interesting and maybe it even has potential -- things that could all be interesting to the suffering souls that are travelling to Leiden!

But before I actually delve into that, and with Nugget Bridge being not as fast as I had hoped... It makes sense to at least release a Pastebin of what's potentially the best team I have ever made, as it brought me to 2/2 tournament wins with an absolutely amazing combined 17-2 games record. The according Report will be released whenever NB is finally up to the task, but since that likely won't be in time anymore, you can ask me things via Twitter if you're interested to run this or a variation in Leiden. And with that out of the way...here goes nothing with the fake 2014 team:

[VG] Don't Call It a Comeback (Berlin Regionals Replays and Aftermath)

Lol, which one of these will I get first at a Regional+ level tournament? I haven't gotten either ever.

— Dreykopff 1st@Regs!? (@Dreykopff) November 24, 2015

Hello friends. What even was this weekend... I pretty much bombed the PC and then went on to win the Regional. At no point in this I was feeling really good about what I was doing, but in the past, when I did feel good about my team decisions and stuff, terrible things happened. What a silly plot twist. If someone wrote this as a novel or something, they'd get all sorts of shit flung at them.

[VG] Landos Verrat: Top 4 Nugget Bridge Invitational Team and Report

(Artist: HaleysRedComet)

Hello friends. I guess here's another blog entry from that guy who is so fucking behind, he can still only play "Cybersand". *cough* As it turns out, I in fact ripped off yet another Cybertron lineup and improved it again. And I did some nice work with it, first destroying Battle Spot with almost a 90% win ratio from 1500 to 1900 (the best I ever had!) and then, as the title says, winning a few pocket nuggets with it. I'd say that's totally all right!

[VG] CP Scales Revamped + Arena Cup Würzburg Top 16 Report

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).

[VG] 2015 June International Challenge Recap

Hello friends. I don't have a clue if anyone actually noticed, but yes, I've fallen behind in releasing my teams a bit these last weeks -- let's say purposely so. The most interesting stuff I have posted after all, and all that is left is a bunch of unfinished or simply bad teams. I will get to posting them...eventually. But for now, I've actually been getting back into playing this game recently. There's one last inofficial tourney left to play that I don't really know if I care about it at all, but soon after, there will hopefully be the new season. The post-Nats depression hasn't killed my lust for revenge, and revenge will probably...hopefully...maybe start in September.

Ok whatever, ignore this dreamer's words on a distant future. What I'm actually here for now is to simply repost some stuff from this tourney mentioned in the title. If you have read my post on Nugget Bridge already, you won't find anything new here except for the final result and what I think about it. I'm doing this mostly for the record and because there's probably some interesting stuff among it, but it's hard to find in a long ass forum thread like that.

[VG] A Diamond in Hills of Sand

(click to enlarge)

Hello friends. This is it, my final team for the season as far as CP events go. At the same time, it's my best not only for the year but quite a long time instead. I'd have really loved to present it on Nugget Bridge, but alas, the results, the bloody results... Italian Nationals would actually have been a top cut appearance at the very least, but as you all know, I fucked up in the silliest way possible. This is not the team's fault. Then there also was the June International Challenge, which I probably would have had to win in order for anyone to care -- I lost a few close games too many, and thus finished thirtysomethingth globally, at a flat 80% win ratio with 24-6. Again, it's not the team's fault when I make a wrong play in literally one turn and end up losing just because of it. A team isn't there to hold your hands or something -- you are the Trainer, and the Trainer makes the decisions. With this one, I personally am enabled to make the best decisions.

Well, that's probably already more introductory rambling than there should be, really. Let's get going!

[VG] Azumarill Quicksand

(Artist: Syrabi)

Hello friends. Japan sand time. As a good introduction before my own introduction, I recommend you be familiar with what actually was a thing in Japan. The team I'm showing you this time consists of the same 6 but I tampered with the sets a bit.

[VG] At the Point of No Return

(Artist: Chenks-R)

Time for the tragedy's fifth act. You can read the previous four acts (in other words, the previous article) to get a better picture of the whole story, but I'll treat most of this here is if the other article didn't exist, as in, I'm repeating explanations on EVs and stuff. With that out of the way, let's just get into it.

[VG] Salamence and Minions: A Tragedy in Five Acts

(Artist: XxGingerSharkxX)

Hello friends. Out of those five acts lined out in the title, we're in fact looking at four of them in this entry. The fifth would be German Nationals, and I'd rather have that in an extra article. (Although that's where the real tragedy actually unfolds...) This leaves us at four teams with minor changes between them for this time, and short accounts on my tournament experiences will round it out.

[VG] Early Heatran/Amoonguss Semi-TR

All right, as announced last time, now it's finally time to actually post some teams, now that my season is effectively over. For now, I'm releasing them in chronological order, but this might change if I feel like it. So we're still looking at a team that should be considered as early-in-the-format, having used it in late February and early March, where it already felt a bit old at times. However, parts of it have remained in my teams for most of the season, much notably the Salamence and even more notably...the freaking Amoonguss.

As for results, I brought this to the one International Challenge that didn't yet award CP. I ended up getting 1st place in Germany (well, but no one took the thing any seriously) with a record of 24-6 and missed top 50 in the world by 3 rating points. Afterwards, I brought it to a Premier Challenge and got a then usable 20 CP with it from a really weird run, won my Nugget Bridge Major match of the week and top cut a NB Live. Can't complain!

[VG] Figuring Out Megawaifu Is Hard

(Artist: Kboomz)

Hello friends, another big weekend of Pokémon just done. The USA had their Winter Regionals and I was playing in yet another one of the BisaBoard Opens -- I ended up making top 8 this time, though I have dropped the team I'm showing to you now right at the end of day 1 already. As nice as it would have been to finally try it out in Bo3s, I wasn't feeling it. Anyway, not too high-level of an article today, just sharing my mostly first draft of a Mega Gardevoir archetype with you, what is good about it and what I hate about it. I think this stuff has potential and could totally be strong in the late season -- just needs some / a lot of work, really.

[VG] There's a Traitor Amoonguss

(Artist: Celestial-Moo)

Hello post-Worlds depressive Pookaymanz out there. If someone asked me, what are the worst mons I've ever used, Amoonguss would probably be a big favorite to win this contest. It used to be a thing of bias, personal habits and what have you, but just recently, it turns out I haven't been wrong at all with my thinking that Amoonguss sucks. Here comes the rant about why this is the case and why I've randomly seen it coming from miles away! The article is going to have a chronological structure by formats, so we're starting with its introduction and ending with... its downfall.

[VG] Introducing My First Competitive Team on XY

The blog wasn't supposed to be in-game only, and now, also with the US Regionals for XY kicking off, is a good time to start bringing content related to the official VG Standard format. This weekend, I played in the Inoffizielle Deutsche Meisterschaft 2014, which is with 306 participants the biggest online Pokémon live tournament both Germany and Europe have ever seen. (For reference, the top 32 thread.) Also, congratulations to Naruto Uzumaki 97 (bad name, why do tournament winners always have bad names) for taking it all, as well as 13Yoshi37 for making the finals, reigning World Champion Mean for taking 3rd place and all the rest that did well!

For me, it unfortunately didn't go too well... Got a tough second-round group and ended up just going 1-2 in it and be eliminated. That's the way of the IDM sometimes/always, and eventually it just had to hit me rather than other people again. I'll probably write a short team analysis and report soon, but before that I think I deserve at least a half week break from this game, so whatever. This is what I used in overview, my very first team on XY. Take care.

Tyranitar @ Tyranitarite ~ Rock Slide ~ Crunch ~ Dragon Dance ~ Protect	Meowstic @ Sitrus Berry ~ Psychic ~ Charm ~ Light Screen ~ Safeguard	Bisharp @ Choice Band ~ Sucker Punch ~ Iron Head ~ Night Slash ~ Brick Break
Gyarados @ Gyaradosite ~ Waterfall ~ Earthquake ~ Dragon Dance ~ Protect	Amoonguss @ Occa Berry ~ Giga Drain ~ Spore ~ Rage Powder ~ Protect	Rotom @ Choice Specs ~ Thunderbolt ~ Overheat ~ Hidden Power (Ice) ~ Volt Switch