Going from Showdown to Battle Spot to Live Tournaments (Part 1)

Art by Pyritie.

So you've been playing around on Pokémon Showdown! and decided that it was time to bring your top-notch team into the 3DS games in order to participate in Battle Spot battles or online tournaments? Or perhaps there is a big Regional or International happening around your area, and you want to join? In this series of two articles, we bring some tips on how to make this transition from Showdown to online cartridge play, and from there to real life tournaments. This article focuses mostly on VGC, but some of it can be used in other formats.

Going from Pokémon Showdown! to Cartridge

Let's say you dreamt up this awesome team that will put you on the top of the ladder. Let's say you found yourself a core that'll beat the meta, and you are sure it will be awesome. You wake up, turn on your computer, and in less than 15 minutes, you've got yourself a team ready to play.

Well, in cartridge play, that is as far from the truth as it can be. 15 minutes may not be enough even to catch the Poképarent you need, with the right gender and ability. This guide should help you to breed good 5 IV Pokémon. If you know exactly the team you want, you just need the right parents for the Egg moves and ability, a little bit of patience, and something to entertain yourself while waiting. I feel that listening to a podcast is a great way to pass the time while breeding.

One important difference between Showdown and cartridge is that it's way harder to get those 0 IVs in Atk if you don't already have a parent with it. For 0 IVs in Speed, I take an average of a box and a half to get a perfect Pokémon with 4 31 IVs and the 0 in Speed. The advantage of SM is that you can save yourself some time if you just use a Power Bracer (for 0 IVs in Attack) or a Power Anklet (for 0 IVs in Speed) once you have found yourself a parent with the desired 0 IV, and then use Hyper Training to “edit” the IVs of the other stats to 31 with Bottle Caps. Remember that this only saves time if you have the Rare Kitchen 5 Stars, preferably two of them, so you can speed up your leveling process. If you don't know how to do it, here's a quick guide from user Its_A_Random on our forums.

For EV training, specially when you need precise EVs that are different than the 252/252/4 sets, use Isle Evelup and go do other things while your Pokémon are being efforted (you can set three different regimen at the same time). If you are pressed for time, you can just beat down wild Pokémon with Pokérus and Power Items. Here's a good guide for it.

One change in VGC this generation is that all Pokémon's levels will be made 50, no matter if they are lower or higher than it. That means that, if you have, let's say, a Shellder that already has all the needed moves when it's hatched (or can be taught through TM), you can promptly evolve it at level 1 and just use it that way.

Let's fast-forward to the moment when your team is already complete. It generally takes me around five to ten days to build a complete team from scratch, being in the lower end if I have most of what I need and in the higher end if I need something specific, like a female with a hidden ability in a male-predominant species, 0 IVs in some stat, or a specific Hidden Power. If you have a 6 IV Ditto, this process only really takes maybe several hours, less if you get lucky and have simple spreads. If you don't, you can ask in the SQ/R thread in the Wi-Fi section. I'm sure someone will help you.

Now you are ready to face the challenges of Battle Spot or an online tournament. And here is where most of Pokémon Showdown players have a hard time. Because in cartridge play, the time you have to make a decision is significantly shorter, and you cannot undo a misclick.

In Pokémon Showdown, even with the timer turned on, you both have a long time to choose your team of four in Team Preview and to select your moves each turn. More than that, if you've made a wrong selection, and your opponent hasn't made theirs yet, you can just cancel your decision and choose something else.

Well, on cartridge, you don't have these luxuries. You have three different timers to worry about. The Team Preview timer is only 90 seconds. The turn timer is only 45 seconds. And on top of that, you have a chess-like Trainer timer of 10 minutes in VGC17 and 5 minutes in VGC18.

I really want to emphasize this because it's where most players that are new to cartridge play struggle. Now, you have to analyze all possibilities without the luxury of using a command to check the stats, you can't hover the mouse over the opposing Pokémon to have an idea of what abilities it could have or its possible Speed tier, to see what moves have been revealed, or to check how many PP it still has. You must know this (or have a fast app on your side) beforehand, and that means way more information needs to be processed in less time. As said above, you have only 45 seconds to analyze all possible scenarios, predict your opponent's moves, and make your choices. If you don't do it by the time the timer is over, the first move your Pokémon has will be selected by the system. And if you do make a choice before the timer is over, you can't undo it. So, take your time to make your decision, but remember you don't have that much time. It's good practice to not use any app because you won't be able to do so in live tournaments.

The Player Timer is the last timer that you have to worry about. Each player has 10 minutes. While you are making your decision, your time decreases. After you've made it, and are waiting for your opponent to make his, and during the battle animations, the timer doesn't run. If your timer reaches all zeroes before your opponent's, you lose. Simple as that.

Another important difference between Showdown and cartridge was somewhat mitigated this generation; the field information. Up to Gen 6, it was up to the player to take notes of how many turns of Trick Room, Tailwind, or screens remained, as well as any stat changes that any Pokémon had. Now, you can just click on the + sign on the bottom screen, and it will show everything you need to know, from field effects to stat changes. This is one less thing to take note of during your battles.

Since we advise you all to bring a pad of paper and a pen to live tournaments, we suggest that you start taking notes at home, to practice. Even though you have all the info on the screen, you still want to remember which Pokémon your opponent brought, because that means you can infer which ones they still have left, as well as their moves, items, and abilities. You could also write down things like if a move is enough to KO another Pokémon or not, or if one Pokémon is faster than another, or what item it's holding.

Battle Spot and Online Competitions are best-of-one games, so the information you collect isn't as important as it is in best-of-three, but practicing this while in the comfort of your home will make the next step of your transition easier. There is already a lot of pressure going on in Live Tournaments, so you don't want to put yourself under more. Just practice, take notes of every battle you make online, and if you believe there is anything to be learnt from that battle, save the video to watch later.

One last thing to practice during your play time at home is stamina. Big tournaments generally have 8 or 9 rounds of Swiss on day one, 5 rounds on day two, and the top cuts on day three. That means up to 27 battles on day one, up to 15 on day two, and up to 9 battles on day three. You can be part of up to 51 battles in three days, one after another, with a short break between most of them. The more you practice battling a higher number of battles at once, the better you will be at this. Online competitions generally have a limit of 15 battles per day, for a total of 45 or 60 battles in them, depending on how long they run, so, again, even though you won't have to do everything at once, you will still need stamina to be at the peak of your performance for the whole duration of the competition if you want to take those sweet CPs.

Best-of-One versus Best-of-Three

I touched above on the subject of the battle format, and I want to expand on that. Be it on Online Tournaments, on Pokémon Showdown, or on Battle Spot, your battles are generally in best-of-one (BO1) format. That means you battle only once with your opponent, and the outcome is definite.

In most live tournaments, however, the matches are best-of-three (BO3). That means you can have up to three battles, and the first player to win two is the winner of the match. Some smaller tournaments can be run in BO1 format, but the Top Cut is always BO3.

The main difference between these formats is how valuable information really is and how much the novelty or surprise factor of your team will matter.

When you have only one battle, there's really almost no point in taking notes, since when a Pokémon goes down, it's down for good, and knowing that your Pokémon survives a specific attack also doesn't mean much. On the other hand, even when a battle is lost in BO3, you can use the last turns to get information on how much damage a Pokémon does to another, and you'll already have learned something about the movesets and items.

The importance of that, and I get back to the surprise factor, is that you cannot surprise someone twice with the same thing. After you use it once, it's gone, your opponent will know about it. So if your team is based on some shenanigans that only work if your opponent isn't ready for them, it probably will not work in BO3 matches.

If you're playing a BO3, you'll want to save some things for game two. Don't lay it all out at once. Each piece of information you can withhold from your opponent is a valuable one. The same way that each piece of information you can extract can make a difference. Obviously, don't put yourself in a bad position because you don't want to reveal information. Your first objective must always be to win, but if you can do that and at the same time you preserve some of your little tweaks to your Pokémon, the better for you.

Another important aspect of BO3 tournaments is the ability to make adjustments. At Team Preview, you generally have an idea of what your opponent will try to do and what you have to do to stop them. After one match, you may be proven wrong. If that was BO1, too bad for you. Unless you were able to meet your opponent again in the Top Cut, you wouldn't be able to do anything with the information you gained.

In BO3, though, you can make adjustments. If you see an unusual move or item, and that catches you off guard and makes you lose game 1, you can put yourself in a better position to counter that in game two. So I stress again, always get information on what format the tournament you are going to will run, because that can define the best strategy and team to use.

Practice on Battle Spot and see if you can have best-of-three battles by either calling people on the VGC Channel on Showdown or battling with friends. We will talk about taking the next step and going to live competitions on the next part of this series.