We’ve reached the final week of January, meaning it’s now time to reflect on this month in VGC. What better way to do so than with our latest usage stats? We’ve had three Premier Challenge events happen in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. We’re beginning to see some clear patterns with the Australian metagame, so we advise noting the most popular picks in the usage stats from this week when building your team for the coming events.

With that said, we see Bailey Owen taking the first place slot for Box Hill with James Farrugia coming in at second place. Both players used similar teams with 4 of the same Pokémon, but having key differences in their choice of Island Guardian and final slot on their team. In Bondi, Daniel Walker comes in first with an interesting trick room hybrid team. This was perhaps what gave him the winning edge against second place finisher Arkington Owen, whose team had a few faster Pokémon choices. Hobart’s event just had a two person top cut with Lucas Gofton clinching a win over Brendan Webb. Lucas’ team was also a hybrid Trick Room team, which helped him manage the middling to faster Pokemon on Brendan’s side.

VGC17 Box Hill Premier Challenge | 28/01/17

1. Bailey Owen (@BargensVGC)

2. James Farrugia (@faybzplays)

3. Ryan Hercus

4. Will Antonyson (@RhombusVGC)

5. Sam Hughes (@sam_slugmeister)

6. Jay Tyrrell (@the_berger19)

7. Rob McAndrew (@DexVGC)

8. Luke Iuele

VGC17 Bondi Premier Challenge | 28/01/17

1. Daniel Walker (@Ludicola31)

2. Arkington Owen

3. Jay Callaghan

4. Andrew Das

5. Corey Munro

6. Martin Larumbe (@BaseIN2)

7. Anthony Aronis

8. Jake Warren

VGC17 Hobart Premier Challenge | 28/01/17

1. Lucas Gofton

2. Brendan Webb (@FloristTheBudew)

Usage Statistics for Top Cut

Usage Usage % Pokémon 14 78% 11 61% 9 50% 7 39% 6 33% 4 22% 3 16% 2 11% 1 5%

Arcanine

Seeing the popular fire Pokémon being in the top 3 for usage once again is no surprise. This time, Arcanine overtakes Garchomp for the number 1 most used Pokémon. The flexibility Arcanine offers for teams is usually always appreciated. Having access to Intimidate allows teams to last longer against physical hits, allowing allies to retaliate with knockouts. It has a good speed tier (base 95) allowing it to move before a lot of popular Pokémon. This is critical for when an Arcanine wants to be reducing physical damage further with Will-O-Wisp or reducing a special attacker’s damage with Snarl.

Kartana

While placing third in last week’s usage stats, today we see Kartana’s usage has increased to where it now reaches second place in usage! Kartana is most known for having an incredibly high attack stat and a strong speed stat. Kartana’s item usually dictates its stat build. With Focus Sash it can live any hit once, meaning it can focus on purely Attack and Speed stats for a huge offensive presence on the field. Some players might prefer to take the Assault Vest option, allowing it to use its good defensive typing both for physical and special hits. These Kartana usually focus on running a lot of bulk and speed, as having such a high attack stat means the damage difference between being trained in Attack or not isn’t huge.

Garchomp

While Garchomp still has a high placing in third, its usage of 50% has dropped significantly compared to last week’s 67%. This could suggest players are finding other ways to hit things ground coverage usually does. Garchomp is usually built to be hitting hard and fast, something we could see being less useful if more players start to use Trick Room hybrid teams.

Weather Setters

Looking at the usage statistics. We can see on a few teams that Gigalith (3), Ninetales (4) or Politoed (1) were used for setting weather conditions. The sand teams that use Gigalith tend to have a higher placing than the teams that use the Hail setter Ninetales. This could be due to Gigalith being more effective against a wide range of Pokemon. Also, Gigalith often features on hybrid Trick Room teams, a trend that we have discussed the success of.

Into the Future

Upon analysis of our usage stats, Trick Room hybrid teams that have a weather mode were quite successful this week. Building teams with either an answer to this type of team or including it in your own teams looks to be a smart call. Looking into future events, we anticipate perhaps a rise in teams focused around having the ability to shift weather conditions. Most weathers provide some level of synergy with the team they’re on, so not having a way to swing weather out of your opponent’s favour could put you at a disadvantage. The recent Melbourne Challenge online event was won by Aaron Zheng with a Ninetales on the team, so it’s definitely something to be on the lookout for!

No major changes in usage for any of the Island Guardians suggests that future events won’t deviate too much here either. The “Terrain wars” this year aren’t dissimilar to the “weather wars” that controlled VGC16. Consequently, including at least one Island Guardian on your team to control terrain is going to continue to be common.

We saw Pokebank receive its Sun and Moon update this week also. Though a few additions were brought to the table through some new egg moves and abilities being legal, we haven’t seen any major usage shifts with these newly updated Pokemon. Expect to see the same for events in the near future.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for our monthly Around the Stadiums article, and a brand new article coming your way about Australia’s Metagame!