Hey everyone, my name is Alessio Yuri Boschetto, also known as YureeVGC, and for those who don’t know me, I’m a VGC competitor from Italy. I started competing in VGC in 2014 and got my first decent results at the end of 2015. I recently got 10th at the Pokémon VGC 2017 London Internationals that took place from the 9th to the 11th of December, which is what I’m here to talk about. This report will include a teambuilding section, including the few variations that I tried out and a rundown of my tournament run. I don’t remember much from a lot of the games so I’ll just do what I can. I will also include some thoughts about the tournament and some random things about my trip to London in general. Feel free to skip anything that you might consider uninteresting.

Teambuilding

My teambuilding process started during Dortmund Regionals: I didn’t want to even think about VGC ‘17 until my last big event for VGC ‘16 was over, but I scrubbed out early enough so I just took the time to think about what could be good in 2017 (and complain on Twitter, which is what I’m good at).

The process started with Hibiki telling me about some core that he thought would be incredibly good:

The main idea behind this was some good defensive synergy, with Celesteela being able to switch into Poison and Ground, which threaten Tapu Koko, having two immunities to Electric, one being a Lightning Rod user, and Drizzle to help Celesteela survive Fire attacks. Oranguru gave a Trick Room option since the team is not too fast besides Garchomp and Tapu Koko.

Garchomp was a Focus Sash variant, Hibiki told me to use Specs Koko but I went to Life Orb immediately and the rest was fairly standard. Oranguru had the Z-Move to be able to set up Trick Room through Taunt and potentially launch a Shattered Psyche if there was no need for Z-Trick Room.

I tried the team out but I didn’t feel like it was good enough at all. Despite some good ideas in theory, the team had some flaws that I didn’t like at all. The Trick Room option wasn’t good at all in my opinion because Oranguru doesn’t do enough outside of it and with this team you don’t really want to set it up so often, meaning that Oranguru felt like a waste of a slot. I also didn’t like Pelipper as a stand-alone Pokémon and felt like Tapu Koko was really lackluster. Being almost useless in front of Marowak isn’t really something that I can appreciate.

After Dortmund Regionals, Zelda came to my house in Rome for a week and we played some fun teams for a bit, including an almost full UB team and a Primarina team, which were honestly pretty bad. With London being so close I started to panic a bit and tweeted a lot about the fact that no team that I tried was good enough, which is when my hero appeared.

Edu, who’s a great friend of mine, randomly messaged me with the team he was trying out. Obviously since I had nothing else to try out, I gladly took the chance to use a team that one of the best players in the world was using (speaking of which, go read Edu’s top 4 Worlds report). At the time I didn’t realize that the team had quite a few things in common with Hibiki’s team, while being in my opinion way better overall for a few reasons. Let’s get into it.



The Team At A Glance



As you can see, four of the Pokémon are the same species as the ones in Hibiki’s version of the team and it’s also very interesting that despite initially using this, Edu actually brought Pelipper and Golduck over Milotic and Whimsicott to London. A good reason for this is that the way me and Edu played the team was actually pretty different, so he needed other solutions to some things.

Another important thing to note is how the team has both the Fire-Water-Grass core (despite not actually having Grass moves) and the Fairy-Steel-Dragon core.

In-depth

Here are the initial sets that Edu gave me:



Garchomp @ Groundium Z

Ability: Rough Skin

EVs: 12 HP / 204 Atk / 4 Def / 36 SpD / 252 Spe

Jolly Nature

– Dragon Claw

– Earthquake

– Swords Dance

– Protect



Good old Garchomp is coming back from 2014, and apparently the 2014 EV spreads never die. This spread was supposed to live Mega Manectric HP Ice back when that was relevant but obviously it isn’t anymore and I changed that at some point.

The two interesting things to talk about here are Swords Dance and the item, but mostly the item because I didn’t end up using Swords Dance in London. One of the neat concepts behind Swords Dance is that the team literally doesn’t fear Intimidate at that point between Milotic and Swords Dance, which also helps in punishing defensive plays that some teams need to do against this team.

Groundium Z is the real deal though. If anybody doesn’t know, Tectonic Rage is a 180 BP single target move when triggered by Earthquake, making it incredibly strong and also giving Garchomp the option to have a single target Ground move once a game, which is very useful to bypass Wide Guard and when you really need to not attack your partner. The team has two Ground weaknesses so that can become important fairly often.





Tapu Koko @ Life Orb

Ability: Electric Surge

EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe

Jolly Nature

– Brave Bird

– Wild Charge

– U-turn

– Protect

Life Orb physical Tapu Koko is very very interesting. A lot of people turned it down and honestly I don’t really know why, as I think it’s overall great. U-Turn instead of Volt Switch allows you to pivot around even when there are Marowak on the field, Wild Charge is a strong offensive move and Brave Bird allows you to hit things for decent damage even when there’s a Marowak on the field, giving you more options overall. It can OHKO things like Araquanid or Hariyama which is really nice, on top of giving more options against Tapu Bulu.

You could make a case for putting Sky Drop in here, which I really considered before London, but I thought that the other moves were more important, especially for the way I played Tapu Koko. Tapu Koko’s goal in the team, when it wasn’t to just OHKO multiple things against some teams, was to chip away a lot of health from various Pokémon in the opposing teams to allow for the rest of the team to pick up KOs without risking too much thanks to their bulk or Speed.



Celesteela @ Sitrus Berry

Ability: Beast Boost

EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpA

Brave Nature

– Heavy Slam

– Leech Seed

– Wide Guard

– Protect

I genuinely laughed at 252+ Atk Celesteela when Edu sent me this, but it’s way better than you might think.

The moveset was pretty normal, Wide Guard was kind of useful for some things, Sitrus Berry was there instead of Leftovers for whatever reason and I’m pretty sure it was Brave 4 SpAtk because Edu must have used Flamethrower at some point. Some of this changed in the final version of the team and I’ll talk more about Celesteela later.





Marowak-Alola @ Thick Club

Ability: Lightning Rod

EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD

Adamant Nature

– Flare Blitz

– Shadow Bone

– Bonemerang

– Protect



Pretty standard Marowak, decent against Trick Room, helps against the Electric weakness that Celesteela and Milotic have and forms a good switching core thanks to that. Marowak is overrated but good.



Milotic @ Leftovers

Ability: Competitive

Level: 50

EVs: 252 HP / 100 Def / 36 SpA / 52 SpD / 68 Spe

Bold Nature

IVs: 0 Atk

– Scald

– Ice Beam

– Recover

– Protect

This is where the Leftovers went apparently. I’m going to be honest in saying that I have no idea what the EV spread accomplishes and I changed that a lot anyway. It’s probably some spread from 2015.

The moveset is as standard as it can get, Scald and Ice Beam provide decent coverage with Scald being one of the best moves in the game, Recover is great for survivability and Protect is just a standard move. I’ll talk way more about Milotic later, but let me just say that it’s amazing.



Whimsicott @ Focus Sash

Ability: Prankster

EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe

Timid Nature

IVs: 0 Atk

– Tailwind

– Taunt

– Moonblast

– Encore



This is the glue that holds the team together. Whimsicott is an amazing support Pokémon, Prankster Tailwind with so little Speed control in the metagame is great and allows for sweeps in some situations, but Whimsicott can also help the stally part of the team thanks to Taunt and Encore, while Moonblast is just a solid move in general. The 30% Special Attack drop chance is fairly nice as well. I didn’t like the idea of facing other Whimsicott as it can be pretty obnoxious but thankfully not many people used it and I didn’t face any in London.

So this is the first version of the team that I actually liked. I played a few games on Showdown before going on Battle Spot and it honestly felt really good. A lot of games boil down to board control and reward playing safe, but the team also manages to have some some really nice offensive options and modes that allow me to change the pace of the game if I want or need to a lot of the times. I was convinced that I would bring this team to London but it definitely needed a few small fixes in my opinion, so let’s get into the version that I actually brought to London:

The team



Kars (Garchomp) (M) @ Groundium Z

Ability: Rough Skin

Level: 50

EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe

Jolly Nature

– Dragon Claw

– Poison Jab

– Earthquake

– Protect

Two changes here. The EV spread became a simple 4/252/252 because I felt like that was all I needed. I should’ve probably used 4 in Special Defense (shoutouts to squirrelboy1225 and also to squirrelboy’s calculator) but I was too lazy to change those 4 EVs before the tournament so I just went with that. The lack of 4 in Special Defense ended up never mattering and having 4 in HP actually saved me at some point, so I guess it worked out anyway.

Poison Jab is definitely the bigger change though. I felt like being able to hit Tapu Bulu (and also Tapu Koko/Tapu Lele or other Pokémon like Clefairy) was more valuable than the threat of Swords Dance, so I almost immediately changed it to that, which really paid off in the tournament. I did consider switching Dragon Claw to Swords Dance, but Dragon Claw felt solid for many situations in which I needed some damage onto any Pokémon without needing to use Earthquake. Having a solid way to hit opposing Garchomp was also pretty nice.

Poison Jab also allows for safe Tectonic Rage targets on Tapu Lele as if it Protects it will then go down to the damage through Protect plus Poison Jab.

The nickname is from a character in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Battle Tendency, I was asking friends for nicknames, my friend Andrea suggested this and it felt appropriate so I just went with it.



Marty McFly (Tapu Koko) @ Life Orb

Ability: Electric Surge

Level: 50

EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe

Jolly Nature

– Wild Charge

– Brave Bird

– U-turn

– Protect

No changes here except the 4 EVs into HP instead of Special Defense because I like that. I already talked enough about what it does before.

The nickname is from the main character of the Back to the Future trilogy, who gets called a chicken fairly often but tries to start fights when that happens. A judge actually laughed at the nickname while checking my team sheet, so shoutouts to that judge.



Jon Evans (Celesteela) @ Leftovers

Ability: Beast Boost

Level: 50

EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spe

Adamant Nature

– Heavy Slam

– Leech Seed

– Substitute

– Protect

Leftovers is more solid than Sitrus Berry most of the times since matches with Celesteela tend to be fairly long (and you can just use Protect for recovery), I changed to Adamant because I had no reason to run a negative Speed nature and changed Wide Guard to Substitute, making this Celesteela even more standard. I also tried Flamethrower as this team can have some Kartana issues but overall the best move was by far Substitute.

Because of Celesteela’s bulk and the way it plays, Substitute just makes more sense to gain momentum in long matches or as a win condition sometimes. Max attack Celesteela can do some nice things like getting the KO on up to 132 HP Tapu Lele at -1 100% of the time, or getting the KO on most Tapu Bulu a fair amount of times. It also means that you can put a lot of Pokémon in range of other attacks in this team or chunk some frail Pokémon.

Attack Beast Boosts potentially make Celesteela extremely scary to face, which is one of the things that allows this team to change the pace of some games.

I put 4 EVs into Speed because even though I didn’t want to speed creep other Celesteela, I felt like putting 4 was just a safe bet. I think all the Celesteela I faced were faster than mine so this didn’t end up being useful but it was probably still the right choice.

I don’t think I need to explain more about Celesteela, be prepared for it, it will be around all year.

The nickname is Ezrael’s name, coming from the fact that he used timer stall to his advantage at Worlds a lot. Celesteela stalls a lot, even though it’s not timer, so it was appropriate.



Jen (Marowak-Alola) (F) @ Thick Club

Ability: Lightning Rod

Level: 50

EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD

Brave Nature

IVs: 0 Spe

– Shadow Bone

– Flare Blitz

– Bonemerang

– Protect

I was using Edu’s Marowak until a week before London, when I had two Premier Challenges to see how the team worked. I got top 4 at the first one after losing in Swiss and in top cut to a hard Trick Room team, which made me realize that I had some issues with that. While Brave Marowak doesn’t solve the problem entirely and I still need to play very well, it’s a really good tool against Trick Room and I never felt like the Speed that I had before was useful anyway. I also always tried to avoid putting myself in Marowak mirrors before, so this didn’t change much, except for me actually being able to know that in Trick Room it was going to be at worst a Speed tie.

I decided to go with max Attack rather than investing in Special Defense like a lot of people did because in most cases I would rather just not let Marowak take those special hits, especially from Pokémon like Tapu Lele. It paid off as I know that some KOs that I got throughout the tournament could’ve not happened if I had less Attack investment, and I never felt like I needed the extra Special Defense except in Round 14.

The moveset is fairly standard, I considered some moves like Substitute or Stomping Tantrum but they weren’t worth it. That’s all there is to it.



I don’t know how to explain the nickname in a few words, but it comes from one of our best judges, Jen Badamo.





Emily (Milotic) (F) @ Adrenaline Orb

Ability: Competitive

Level: 50

EVs: 252 HP / 44 Def / 20 SpA / 52 SpD / 140 Spe

Calm Nature

IVs: 0 Atk

– Scald

– Ice Beam

– Recover

– Protect

Yes, Adrenaline Orb. For those who don’t know, Adrenaline Orb is one of the new Gen VII items and what it does when held in battle is giving you a boost to Speed if you get Intimidated. While a lot of people argued that people are just not going to Intimidate Milotic, there are multiple good reasons to run Adrenaline Orb.

First of all, I don’t think that Sitrus provides enough recovery to be good right now, and even though it might save Milotic from time to time, it usually doesn’t change much, at least from my own experience. Leftovers would be way more useful than Sitrus because you usually want Milotic to stick around for a lot of time, but that item is taken by Celesteela, which needs it way more. Adrenaline Orb makes Milotic an actual offensive threat when it gets Intimidated, potentially changing the board position completely. +2 Special Attack +1 Speed Milotic is very scary, trust me on that. It’s still powerful without the +1 Speed boost, but being faster than Pokémon like Kartana or Garchomp changes things a lot.

The other argument to be made is that sometimes the opponents just need to bring their Intimidate users and if you play Milotic well enough you might be able to force them to switch those in. Adrenaline Orb also makes Milotic-Garchomp or Milotic-Tapu Koko way stronger because your opponent needs to choose between leaving the physical threat fire off its attacks at full power or powering up your Milotic. The potential surprise factor is also nice.

The EV spread is just 252 HP, enough Speed to outspeed Kartana at +1 because this team can have Kartana issues and I wanted to outspeed Garchomp anyway (it’s only 40 more EVs from outspeeding Garchomp to outspeeding Kartana). The rest is arbitrary because I couldn’t find good benchmarks. I wanted Calm because surviving more special hits felt more important.

Milotic is extremely underrated and it was my MVP in the tournament.



The nickname comes from Emily Engle, a US TCG player and also one of my best friends I’ve made through Pokémon. The original idea was “I don’t have ideas for the nickname so I’m going to put a friend’s name”, but after how much she helped me in the tournament she definitely deserved to have the MVP named after her. Also, both of them are pretty cute.



Styling (Whimsicott) (M) @ Focus Sash

Ability: Prankster

Level: 50

EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe

Timid Nature

IVs: 0 Atk

– Tailwind

– Moonblast

– Taunt

– Encore



This didn’t change except for me putting the 252 EVs into Special Attack rather than HP after failing to KO a Guzzlord in the first practice sets on Showdown. Special Attack is the right choice for this anyway.



The nickname is the same nickname that Jamie Boyt’s Cottonee had in Liverpool, which probably makes it an appropriate nickname. I was also hoping to face Jamie and take revenge, but that didn’t happen.

Before The Tournament

I was originally meant to arrive in London very late on the evening of the 8th, get to my hostel and play the morning after. I’m so glad that I changed my plans because that would’ve been horrible.

Emily convinced me to come to London two days before to hang out and visit the city a bit, which despite giving me a few less days to practice was 100% the right call. It was a good way to relax before the tournament and have some fun to relieve the stress. Speaking of practice, I managed to get to third place on Battle Spot at some point and even to (probably) second but then stuff happened (and by stuff happening I mean 15 disconnections in 20 games or something like that).

Two days before the tournament we went to see the Christmas lights at the Kew Garden (with Ezrael, Emily and some TCG players from various parts of the world) and I got to talk to Ezrael about the tournament and what we thought was good and stuff like that, which gave me some good confidence.



I stayed at Matteo Dorrell’s house with both Ezrael and Emily (and Boomguy) and in the morning Ezrael and I finalized our teams. I traded him a Miracle Seed Tapu Bulu for his team (I swear this is relevant).

At some point I also stole Emily’s beanie, which became my lucky charm for the whole tournament. It helped a lot.

I went to the venue early, met with some friends, got to know some TCG players and then when the time came I registered and got my cool hat. And some other people’s cool hats.



I’m on 5 layers of cool. Shoutouts to Jase‘s judgmental look in the background.

We were also given team sheets to fill and I asked to get a few deck lists as well in case I scrubbed out early and wanted to play in TCG side events, which I had practiced for with Ezrael the night before.



TCG testing with Ezrael. It didn’t go well for me.

We (Emily, Ezrael, Matt and I) went to eat at Cheeky Nandos, which was actually really good, then got to Matt’s house at about 11 PM and went to sleep a bit later.

I filled my team sheet in the morning as soon as I woke up and thank god I knew my team very well even without looking at my 3DS.

We somehow managed to get to the venue just in time for player meeting — or so we thought, but it was delayed anyway.

We had to wait for a bit but it wasn’t too long before we actually got to the player meeting, where they announced the tournament format: 9 rounds of Day 1 Swiss; 7-2s or better go to Day 2 where 5 rounds are played with records carrying over from Day 1, then cut to 8 after Round 14. I wish they had announced this before, but I really like the records carrying over. What I didn’t like about this was the chance of people going 7-2 Day 1, 4-1 Day 2, 11-3 total not getting to cut because of resistance, but we’re not there yet.

Not long after that, pairings for Round 1 were posted and I moved to my Round 1 table to meet my opponent.

Day 1

Bear with me, I really have trouble remembering a lot of what happened in these games and my notes aren’t really helping me.

Round 1: Dylan Pallaoro (CappyVGC)

His team:

Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



All I remember is that I saw Tapu Koko and Raichu in team preview and I brought what I usually bring against that, went Protect Tailwind and managed my game from there. I got the KO on Tapu Lele on a switch-in with Tectonic Rage so I didn’t know the item. I’m not 100% sure that I brought Milotic, but I remember not revealing that Pokémon. I might have brought Celesteela instead.



Game 2:

He brought: /

I brought: /

My last Pokémon was probably Tapu Koko but I can’t remember for sure. I felt like my opponent would lead Weavile so I decided to switch to a more defensive lead while bringing Marowak in the back to cover for the potential Raichu Tapu Koko lead again. That’s what he ended up bringing, I switched into Marowak Turn 1, got a Sub up, Turn 2 my opponent revealed Encore but misclicked the target and it was pretty much game over from there as I got the KO on Raichu and Tapu Koko was less than a threat.



1-0 (2-0)



Round 2: Eugenio Discalzi

There’s a little backstory to this game. Eugenio is a player from the Turin area that got to Day 2 of 2015 Worlds but scrubbed out at the tournament, which is pretty much my 2016 story. He used to pilot a hard Trick Room team, which is his favorite kind of team, and we used to be good rivals, facing each other at most tournaments we both were in. I beat him in Top 8 of his first official tournament ever but I was usually the one that lost. He stopped playing in 2016 because he didn’t like the format and had more things to do, but came back to playing for this tournament, and obviously we faced super early on in the tournament.

His team:

Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



This is a pretty normal way for me to deal with hard Trick Room. Celesteela can use Substitute, Marowak is slow and a big offensive presence, Milotic can help stall out Trick Room turns and Garchomp is a decent switch-in for some moves and is really nice when Trick Room is over, while not being pretty much dead-weight if it’s active like Tapu Koko.

That’s pretty much what happened, I don’t remember the exact details but Substitute and Marowak were strong and Garchomp helped in the endgame.



Game 2:

He brought: /

I brought: /



Since in Game 1 Milotic didn’t really do much and I managed to stall out Trick Room pretty easily I decided to go with the same leads but with Tapu Koko over Milotic in the back to capitalize more on being outside of Trick Room.

He lead Mimikyu and Araquanid which I thought was a 50/50 on who would’ve Protected of his two Pokémon, I double attacked into Mimikyu but he Protected and got a Liquidation off onto Marowak. Game over, especially after he burned my Celesteela with Will-O-Wisp. I didn’t even see his 4th Pokémon if I recall correctly.

In hindsight, I just made a mistake and got greedy, as I could’ve played it safer by going for Substitute and Shadow Bone into Araquanid, which would’ve given him way less options to punish me and in no case it could’ve been over from the start. I had to pay for my mistake.



Game 3:



He brought: /

I brought: /



This was NOT a fun game. He lead Hariyama and Porygon2 while I stuck with my lead, his Porygon2 got a Special Attack boost from Download. He went Fake Out into Celesteela and Shadow Ball onto Marowak… which got the KO. He apparently was Quiet 252 Special Attack Porygon2, which has a 50% chance to just OHKO 252 HP / 4 SpDef Marowak. From that point it was just game over, especially with him having Magnet Pull Magnezone and Thunderbolt Porygon2, I tried my best but there wasn’t much I could do unless he made huge mistakes, which he didn’t. I don’t think not Protecting Marowak was really a mistake as I was just not aware that he could KO me with Shadow Ball, but that happened. GGs.



1-1 (3-2)

Round 3: Guillermo Castilla (Kasty)

His team:



Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



I’m not 100% sure what the exact leads were nor do I remember what my 4th Pokémon was, but I remember that at some point he switched something into Marowak and Discharged with Porygon2, which wasn’t a nice surprise, but it didn’t do too much. At some point I got a Tectonic Rage off on a Tapu Lele switch-in, which gave me no info about Tapu Lele’s item but was pretty nice as me having the Pokémon advantage and Celesteela easily gave me the game.



Game 2:

He brought: /

I brought: /



I’m honestly not sure about the order of the Pokémon I brought and all I remember is that my opponent brought the same 4 but switched his lead. Not sure if that’s the lead he used.

I set up Tailwind, at some point switched into Celesteela and I remember getting a Leech Seed off onto a Tapu Lele switch-in. I decided to go for Poison Jab which is a roll on Tapu Lele after Leech Seed damage, knowing that the possible scenarios were me getting the KO with Poison Jab with a good roll or me trading Garchomp for Tapu Lele and getting an Attack boost (if I didn’t KO, since I suspected Scarf and he was, he would’ve got the KO onto my Garchomp, then my Celesteela would’ve picked up the KO onto Tapu Lele and got the Beast Boost). I ended up getting a critical hit with Poison Jab and not having to care about damage rolls, which pretty much sealed the game. This team is really good at capitalizing on Pokémon advantage.



2-1 (5-2)



Round 4: Giovanni Costa (Omega Gio)

Honestly my schedule had not been pleasant so far and then I got paired with a top 16 2016 Worlds finisher, so my trouble was just starting. I also knew he was playing an Eevee team, and while I felt fairly confident against Eevee teams in general, this was not some random person using it, so I expected something way more difficult. Let’s get into it.



His team:



Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



Since he didn’t have Smeargle I didn’t have to lead a big offensive threat with Whimsicott and decided to go with Milotic to restrict Gio’s options.

I just went for Taunt twice in the first two turns but got surprised both by Return’s damage from Eevee and Psych Up from Bulu (my fault really, I should’ve Taunted to be safe and Psych Up in an Eevee team should be expected). I tried to maneuver around everything but after he got his setup it was basically impossible.

Game 2:

He brought: /

I brought: /



I decided to go for a more offensive lead and it paid off, as I managed to get some damage off and then lure his Arcanine in as I switched into my Milotic, getting both the Competitive and Adrenaline Orb boost and giving me pretty good chances to win the game. I was surprised by a Light Screen from Clefairy at some point which could’ve given me trouble but I managed it pretty well and also got a critical hit at some point which, while not being necessary, definitely helped in cleaning the game more easily.



Game 3:

He brought: /

I brought: /

We both stuck with our Game 2 plans as the game could’ve clearly gone either way in some situations. I remember getting my Competitive plus Adrenaline Orb boost again at some point, but then mismanaged a situation where Gio got his Clefairy in kind of free and I lost a 50/50 call on a Protect, which basically cost me the game. He played the set really well and clearly deserved the win.



2-2 (6-4)

The situation was looking really, really grim at this point. Four rounds in and I was already on elimination matches, but I’ve been in that situation before so I just tried to stay calm. I went to talk with Emily, who had dropped from the TCG side of the tournament because of… reasons, and she told me to lose two other sets quickly so that I could drop and we could do something better than play Pokémon, which honestly didn’t sound like that bad of an idea at the time.



Round 5: Riccardo Appamea (Fire Gohan)



Third Italian in five rounds, and it’s also a really good friend of mine on top of being a really good player. Let’s just say that I was kind of wishing I had dropped instead of having to play him.



His team:

Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



The Tapu Lele vs. Tapu Koko lead revealed that he wasn’t Scarf as his Terrain activated last, which was a good thing to know for my Garchomp.

I tried to get in a better position by bringing in my Celesteela and Protecting the Pokémon that I didn’t switch out (can’t remember which one it was) but he revealed Substitute on Tapu Lele which caught me off guard and was kind of a pain to deal with. I don’t really remember what happened from there but we both switched around a fair amount, he revealed Shell Smash on his Cloyster but too late for it to matter as I was safe to get the KO on it. In the endgame it was his Garchomp that had taken prior damage and Tapu Bulu against my full health Garchomp and Tapu Koko and I still had my Milotic and Celesteela in the back. I got the KO on his Garchomp with mine and switched into Celesteela. Even though I didn’t need it, I won the Garchomp speed tie and then the next turn I still went for Dragon Claw on Tapu Bulu to possibly bluff a Choice Scarf.

Game 2:

He brought: /

I brought: /



I used the same leads as I thought they worked perfectly but brought Whimsicott in the back as Milotic was basically useless in the first game and Whimsicott could’ve helped in more scenarios. He lead Incineroar Tapu Bulu, I don’t remember what happened turn 1 other than me going for a Poison Jab into a Protect. Maybe I switched Tapu Koko out but I’m not sure. Turn 2 he switched his Tapu Bulu out for Celesteela and apparently my Choice Scarf bluff from Game 1 worked perfectly because I just got Tectonic Rage off on Incineroar which he didn’t expect at all. From there, with no damage taken and some strong attacks on my side it was a pretty clean game.



3-2 (8-4)



Round 6: Christian Schulz

His team:



Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



I’m not sure if those were my back two Pokémon but it’s likely what they were.

Facing a second Cloyster in two consecutive rounds was rather interesting. I really feared a Choice Scarf when I had to face that lead but considering that he had another potential Choice Scarf user in Tapu Lele and a Trick Room option, on top of Cloyster potentially having Shell Smash, made it seem unlikely to me.

I decided to double target the Cloyster turn 1 because I feared Cloyster way more than the threat of Trick Room on its own, so I went for Moonblast and Tectonic Rage into it. I went for Tectonic Rage instead of Dragon Claw because in my limited knowledge about Cloyster I wasn’t sure how much Moonblast would do, despite knowing that it had kind of poor Special Defense (I expected 50-60% and since Cloyster has amazing Defense I didn’t think Dragon Claw could do 40-50%). Moonblast ended up doing 95% so Tectonic Rage was kind of wasted but it wasn’t too bad. I can’t remember if my opponent Protected Oranguru or actually set up Trick Room, but it honestly wasn’t too hard to deal with anything he could’ve done from that point with that early advantage.

Game 2:

He brought:

I brought:



I honestly don’t remember anything from this game except that I won and that Tapu Lele revealed that it was indeed a Choice Scarf set.



4-2 (10-4)

Round 7: William Bassolino (willybax)



Fourth Italian in 7 rounds, and this one is a friend of mine too. Oh well.



His team:



Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



He lead the rain lead, I lead Garchomp Whimsicott with Milotic in the back to have some options in case the 50/50s in the lead didn’t work out too well.

I went for Tailwind and Protect as he went for Ice Beam into Garchomp and Hurricane into Whimsicott and Hurricane confused Whimsicott which was very bad to see. I expected a Golduck switch into Togedemaru and because I had talked with Italians about Air Balloon Togedemaru I decided to go for Moonblast and Tectonic Rage into that slot to cover as many options as possible. He ended up switching into Togedemaru, which was indeed Air Balloon, but Whimsicott hit itself in Confusion, went down and Tectonic Rage failed. Then Scald from Pelipper got a critical hit on my Garchomp, leaving it with 22 HP. I honestly don’t remember exactly what happened from there but I somehow managed to win thanks to my Garchomp surviving Fake Out from Togedemaru with 1 HP (sorry squirrelboy, 4 HP Garchomp worked out), my Milotic being faster than his Pelipper and a few reads I had to make at that point.

I don’t think my heart has ever pumped as much as it did during this game (and set), the string of bad luck was getting to me and the rest of the game was very stressful as I had to play flawlessly to come out with the win.

Game 2:

He brought: /

I brought: /



Neither of us switched leads or back Pokémon and I don’t remember anything from this game, but I somehow won.

I shook hands, took the match slip to the judge station and went away to look for friends. My heart was still racing from that set and I really needed someone to calm me down.



5-2 (12-4)

I found Emily and Purpur and asked them to go get something to eat together. I was super hungry and super stressed and needed to stay a bit away from the tournament area to calm down. I didn’t really manage to eat much because my stomach was closed but it was enough to stay focused. Hibiki also came along at some point and talking a bit with everybody really helped me destress. At least until Round 8 pairings were posted and I remembered that I had no rights to mistakes.



Round 8: Tomas Bernaus



His team:



Game 1:

He brought:

I brought:



I hated this game so much. I have no idea what order my opponent brought his Pokémon in nor do I remember what I brought other than Milotic and Celesteela (which were not my leads, at least I think). All I remember is that my opponent was late to the round by about 2 minutes, meaning that if it ever came down to time during the round I would’ve won the tie breaker for the current game, no matter the board state. It came down to my Milotic and Celesteela vs. his Celesteela. I have no idea why, but my opponent didn’t forfeit as he had all reasons to do so and the game dragged along until the end of the round timer. I won and it was over right there. Obviously this was good for me, but considering that I was still hungry and kind of tired from the tournament I really would’ve liked the set to end faster.



6-2 (13-4)



At this point I was beyond stressed. I was one set away from getting to Day 2, but it would’ve been a hard opponent to beat for sure and I was super tired and hungry. I went to eat something real quick before the next round started, found Emily again and started to vent about how much I hated Round 8 and how stressed I was. She calmed me down as much as possible and convinced me that I would win the next round for sure because the beanie I got from her was going to make sure I would and because she trusted that I was good enough to do it. Confidence boosts are all I need in tournaments.



Round 9: Pontus Westerlund

His team:



Game 1:

He brought:

I brought:



I’m not sure which were the leads from both sides, but I’m sure these are the Pokémon we brought. I also don’t really remember what happened in the games too much.

Game 1 came down to my Milotic vs. his -2 SpAtk Goodra and I won. He revealed Flamethrower on Goodra, Discharge on Porygon2 (and the whole moveset besides Trick Room), Tapu Lele being Life Orb and that his Marowak was faster than my Celesteela.



Game 2:

He brought:

I brought:



We both brought the same Pokémon but played the game somewhat differently. In the end I had Milotic and Marowak and needed his Goodra to not KO my Marowak, his Goodra was not in range of 2 Ice Beams, so I needed one of the following scenarios:

-One of my two Ice Beams crits;

-My Marowak either gets a double Protect or avoids the second Draco Meteor;

-I freeze with Ice Beam and he doesn’t thaw out, either for 2 turns if I freeze on the first or for one turn if I freeze on the second.



I ended up freezing him with (I think) the second Ice Beam, he didn’t thaw out and that gave me the win. He could’ve still managed to win in the endgame if he got 3 full paras in a row before finishing his Discharge PP, but that never happened.

He was a good sport about how the game ended and wished me luck for Day 2.



7-2 (15-4). Day 2.

I was ecstatic about making Day 2. I felt prepared for the tournament before going, but after losing in R2 and R4 I wasn’t expecting to do this anymore. I was also really happy to see that a lot of my friends had also made Day 2. Then I went away from the tournament area for some time, I really needed to relax a bit after such a long and stressful day.

I went back to the tournament area to wait for hack checks, found out about more people that got to Day 2 and just started talking about random things with friends. I was way calmer than I had been all day at that point, which felt really good.

After team sheet checks, which I’ll talk about later, we tried to find a place to eat something, didn’t find it, and went back to Matt’s flat. We arrived there just before 1 AM, ordered some pizza which took almost an hour to arrive, ate that and then went to sleep past 2 AM. That’s not ideal before Day 2 of a big tournament, but there wasn’t much choice since we all really needed to eat.

I woke up early the next day and arrived at the venue way earlier than needed. Day 2 anxiety was kicking in.



I don’t really remember what happened until we later got seated for Round 10.

Day 2

Round 10: Matteo Donati (Poops)



His team:



Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /

His team was fairly standard, I did standard things and played safe, set up Substitute, threw Scalds and played the game calmly. I honestly don’t remember what happened exactly because a lot of things that I do on some turns depend on what he did in the previous ones. I know the matchup, I feel like I have more options in it and just won the game without too many issues.

Game 2:

He brought:

I brought: /



I don’t remember which were his leads, but once again I just played to get myself in safe positions all the time and it worked out.



8-2 (17-4)

Winning the first round of Day 2 without too many issues made me feel way more confident in myself, which was pretty good considering I was both stressed and tired from lack of sleep.



Round 11: Adrian Baumann (Euler)



This wasn’t the first time I heard this name, but I had never met the guy nor did I really know why I knew the name, which wasn’t good. Regardless, I was feeling pretty confident and, strangely enough, not too stressed.



His team:



Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



This team was both scary and interesting to face. Him having two Intimidates and no ways to get rid of Milotic quickly except Tapu Bulu was nice, but at the same time Gastrodon is a pretty big threat.

I don’t remember much about how the game went but a few key things that I remember are his Gigalith being Rockium Z but using the Z-Move on a Milotic Protect, his Gastrodon resisting Tectonic Rage with 1 HP and his Tapu Bulu being Figy Berry which kind of screwed me because I thought I was safe by going for Poison Jab plus Ice Beam but it survived. His Arcanine survived +2 Scald which isn’t too surprising but it’s important to note and had Morning Sun. I had to call a few Protects here and there but in the end I won convincingly.



Game 2:

He brought:

I brought: /



I’m not sure in which order my opponent brought his Pokémon in, but it doesn’t change too much because the match was mostly positioning for the first turns.

At some point I felt behind because I had taken too much damage for my liking so I decided to call a Gastrodon switch into Tapu Bulu and Poison Jabbed that slot. It paid off and that gave me a big advantage for the remainder of the game as his Tapu Bulu was way more threatened by all my Pokémon after that point.



9-2 (19-4)



Round 12: William Tansley (StarKO)



This was the first time I faced William in a tournament and the thought of facing him made me start stressing out a lot, but I knew I could do it, so I tried to be confident going in.



His team:



Game 1:

He brought: /

I brought: /



This game is my biggest regret of the whole tournament. I played the start of the game pretty well, got kind of surprised by an Ice Fang KO onto my Garchomp which did tell me that he was most likely Adamant Gyarados, I had to use some resources to deal with Kartana and in the end I found myself in the following situation: my Tapu Koko and Marowak, both at -1 Attack, against Gyarados that had set up a Dragon Dance and taken a bit of damage. If I went for Brave Bird and Shadow Bone there was no way he could’ve won the game, as Brave Bird+Shadow Bone gets the KO if he targets Tapu Koko and Brave Bird+Wild Charge gets the KO if he targets Marowak.

I don’t know why I made this mistake, if it was me lacking sleep or something else, but I went for Wild Charge. With my Marowak on the field. The biggest rookie mistake you can make in this format, and it cost me the game, as I completely choked it away.

Game 2:

He brought: /

I brought: /

We both used the same leads and back Pokémon, I don’t remember how the game went but it was different, I made a good call at some point by switching my Marowak into a Fake Out and attacking with the Pokémon that was next to it and I didn’t make stupid mistakes this time.



Game 3:

He brought: /

I brought: /



I managed this game very poorly. I forgot that Turn 1 his Porygon got a Special Attack boost, which meant its Ice Beam brought my Whimsicott to 1 HP, while in my head I would’ve lived the Ice Beam with enough HP to live a Fake Out from his Raichu later in the match.

I remember him getting surprised by my Whimsicott having Encore because I tried to hide at least a move during the first two matches and not reveal it unless I absolutely needed it.

I think I could’ve had a chance at winning if my Garchomp had lived Ice Fang from Gyarados (same thing in Game 1), which I later discovered it could 7/16 times, but it didn’t happen and I can’t really blame my loss on that.

I’m really disappointed in how I played this match, I didn’t even get to see his last Pokémon (or I didn’t bother writing it down in my notes) and I got destroyed, Will adjusted very well but I definitely should’ve just played better.



9-3 (20-6)

Losing this set because of such a stupid play really hurt and got me super stressed about not being able to cut anymore. I also thought I wouldn’t have a chance to get on stream anymore which, while not being my main concern, wasn’t something I was happy about.

Emily tried to calm me down a bit, told me that I should’ve stopped thinking about the last match and just focused on the next rounds as I still had some chance to cut or at least finish in top 16.

I tried to follow her advice and suppressed my regrets about the set against William for a bit even though I was still stressing out a lot, waited for pairings and after a bit I found out who my opponent was going to be.



Round 13: Arash Ommati (Mean)



Facing a previous World Champion is never easy. Facing him in such an important game is even harder.

His team:



Before getting into the games, let me just say that this is the scariest team preview I’ve ever seen. I literally had no idea about what was going to happen.

I remember almost nothing from this set so I won’t even bother dividing it into the 3 games. I somehow won Game 1, got destroyed Game 2 by Surf Araquanid and called one turn right in Game 3 where he used High Jump Kick with his Pheromosa onto my Celesteela as I Protected, which gave me the win. That’s pretty much all I remember.



10-3 (22-7)

At this point my stress was skyrocketing. I was 10-3, one game away from definitely making top 16 and potentially making top 8 depending on my resistance.

I would’ve definitely faced someone really good, so it was bound to be a hard set. Emily tried really hard to make me destress but there was no way for me to be calm.

It took some time for the pairings to go up, but then I found out that I was going to face Conan Thompson. I tried to get some info but didn’t find anything other than the fact that he had Darkinium Z Krookodile (so pretty much useless information) and then went at the table. We were told that we were going to be streamed, so we had to wait a bit before actually playing.



Round 14: Conan Thompson (conan)



Since we were on stream, I won’t describe the games too much, you can just see them yourselves. The match is here at 06:10:45.

I’ll just say that I’m not very proud of my Games 1-2 but I’m pretty proud of how I played Game 3.

As for the plays that I made in the end of Game 3, I was pretty much already guaranteed to win but wanted to make the stall situation a bit more interesting for the stream, that’s all.



11-3 (24-8)



Final record. Missing one win due to an opponent shutting down his DS.

Day 2 aftermath

After winning I was extremely happy. Despite not liking the way I played too much, I was too happy for the result to really care. Going 11-3 at the first ever International Championships was incredible for me, Emily’s beanie worked some magic apparently.

A lot of friends came to congratulate me and I don’t think I’ve ever felt that relieved after a Pokémon match. I even managed to not stress out too much while waiting 2 hours for the final standings to see if I had made top cut.

I watched the other streamed sets, talked to friends and it was overall a happy time.

Then standings were posted.



London standings after Day 2 Swiss.

It hurt. It hurt a lot and it felt extremely unfair. After seeing the standings I just had a breakdown, went away from the tournament area and started crying because after all the effort I had put into the game and the tournament I ended up getting screwed by a stupid tournament structure, which had recently happened to me both at small events and at Liverpool Regionals and it all started getting to me way too much. It probably wasn’t how I should’ve reacted, but it felt way too bad.



The tournament was over for me right there so I just went away from the venue after waiting for a few friends, went to a bar and tried to distract myself. Shoutouts to British cider for being great by the way.

We also opened the 18 TCG booster packs I got for Top 16 and found some decent things.



Bad quality picture of the pulls. Shoutouts to Emily for pulling the fullart MCharizard EX.

The next morning we just didn’t go to the venue until after Finals. Emily prioritized bringing me to Pizza Hut for some reason.



Me being confused at stuffed crust pizza, which was honestly was way better than I expected.

Some thoughts on the tournament and its issues

As most people have likely already heard, London was controversial for multiple reasons.

As a European, the first issue is when the tournament was held. It is extremely early both in the metagame and in the season, and I think the second thing is more worrying. A lot of people in Europe just don’t have a reason to play and travel to tournaments anymore, which basically might kill the scene for some time, and that’s just terrible. I understand that the concept of Internationals creates this issue on its own, and I can’t say that I entirely dislike the concept, but it clearly has big issues. An important thing is that this issue is more of an issue because of there being few Regionals in Europe and them being mostly in the UK. If Regionals were more evenly distributed and were in even slightly bigger number, way more people would still have reasons to play the season.

Another big issue and one that affects me more personally is the tournament format. The first big problem with it is that it was never announced until Friday morning during player meeting, which is just ridiculous. There needs to be more communication about such important things. This was a problem with all news about London, everything was communicated at random points instead of all news about the event being published when the event was announced. This includes tournament format, entry fee, schedule and other things.

As for the tournament format itself, it had some nice things and some bad things. I’m personally a big fan of records carrying over from Day 1 and playing 5 rounds in Day 2. It’s a good way to reward a better performance than 7-2 in Day 1 and gives a reason to all players to play every game seriously, even if they’re 7-0 or 7-1 already. At the same time, in theory it doesn’t penalize people that go 7-2 too much, as you “just” need to go 4-1 in Day 2 to cut. Right? Nope. That’s where the issue arises. They decided to make the first part of the system really well, but decided to only cut to 8 players, which means that players going 7-2 in Day 1, 4-1 in Day 2, 11-3 total didn’t all cut and it was just based on resistance, which is just a very stupid and arbitrary way to decide who deserves to be in cut based on who had a “harder tournament”, which resistance isn’t that good at calculating. There were 3 players with an 11-3 record that didn’t cut and 6 that didn’t. Tournament time was not an issue in any way, having a cut to 14 would’ve only added one round and we had plenty of time to spare at the end of Day 2. Yet they only cut to 8. Why? I don’t know, but it’s a stupid system and I don’t think that such a way to decide who goes to single elimination can be taken seriously ever.

The last issue is team sheets. When we registered at the tournament, we were told that we needed to fill team sheets for “streaming purposes”. This wasn’t a new thing, it had already happened at a few tournaments and it’s understandable. Team sheets are also used at untethered tournaments to check that players don’t change anything from their Battle Box. The problem is that without letting players know, they decided to use team sheets for the purpose they usually have for untethered tournaments, despite London having proper software. I do understand why they did this. For those who don’t know, it is now possible for a player to actually hack and change the Pokémon in their Battle Box even when it’s locked by tournament software, which is obviously a big issue, so it made sense for the judges to check if team sheets were correct, but since players didn’t know that it was going to be this important they didn’t check everything meticulously, because they thought that even if there was some small mistake it wouldn’t really matter to commentators too much. Someone wrote Porygon instead of Porygon2 and his Porygon2 got removed from their Battle Box for that. Ezrael wrote Meadow Plate instead of Miracle Seed, which are items that have the same effect in all normal scenarios (the only different is when they’re Flung) and got his item removed plus a Game loss, and other stupid things like that. Small, innocent mistakes that they didn’t double check because they weren’t aware of how important it was due to lack of communication. I personally didn’t even check my 3DS while filling my team sheet because I had the same thought process, and thankfully I remembered everything correctly but I could’ve easily made a small stupid mistake. It also didn’t help that we didn’t know about having to fill team sheets until registration, which was either late Thursday evening or early Friday morning, meaning players had to fill team sheets when they probably were half sleeping. Overall, it was just a mess and the lack of communication towards the players created a huge issue with more than 10% of the field having something removed from their Battle Box and 3 of the 2016 WCS top 4 having something removed.

This is already kind of an “old” issue because there are now new team sheets that say that any mistake on them can be penalized, meaning that there shouldn’t be this kind of confusion anymore in the future, but it was worth talking about.

And to add one extra note to the team sheet issue, we really need tiers for the penalties. TCG has a lot of tiers for all kinds of mistakes that you can make on a deck list. Writing Juniper instead of Sycamore isn’t the same as writing two different cards altogether, so it makes no sense that in VGC writing a different nature is considered the same as writing a different move or a different Pokémon.

Before moving on to the final shoutouts, I think there are some good things that also need to be said about the tournament.

The VGC staff was mostly amazing, all the questions I had were answered promptly when possible, they dealt with the new timer rules well from what I can tell and overall despite them having a lot of work to do, they were always ready to clarify any doubts that people had when they could. The tournament was also run in a very timely manner (except a bit of lateness for player meeting), which was honestly surprising considering how much more they had to deal with compared to tournaments in the past (due to the new timer rules) and how big the event was. The location was amazing. There was a lot of space, it never felt too crowded and it had decent food options nearby, which is very important for me as I often need to get something to eat between rounds and very often the options near tournament venues are pretty bad or way too expensive.

Final Shoutouts