The Pokémon National Championships

the Pokemon North American International championships are the second biggest Tournament of the entire year with players coming from all around the globe to compete for money glory and their final chance to qualify for the Pokemon world championships for me this is the most important event of my entire season thus far I already qualified for the World Championships back in February but there's a lot more at stake here at the end of the season the eight best performing players in North America will get to skip the entire first phase of the world championships and start competing on the second day of the tournament being able to start directly in the second day is a massive massive advantage to give you an idea how big this is only one player has ever managed to win the World Championships after starting in the first day on top of that the last two times that I had to start in day one of Worlds I failed to make it out including last year so for me Nationals is my final chance to Auto qualify for day two of the world championships but there's a problem despite this being my most consistent season ever making it past the first day of competition in every Regional level event I attended and never finishing worse than 16th Place overall I'm not in the top 8 of North America reason being I was unable to attend either of the two other International championships in Europe and Australia these events are valued many many times more than the regional level events I attended and every other player in contention attended at least one of them while the majority of them attended both this puts me at a massive disadvantage as placing in the top 128 players at an international earned you as many points as a top 8 finish at a regional with better finishes earning many more points and so in order to earn a spot in day two of the World Championships I need to finish fourth place or better this is an incredibly difficult goal to achieve every other top American player will be in attendance as well as many of the top talent from from other regions but this is also the tournament that I've won more than any other claiming Victory three times out of the 10 times I've attended and in all three of those I needed to finish fourth place or better in order to make day two of Worlds so even though yeah it is a very ambitious goal it's also something that I've done before of course in order to win any tournament you need to have a good team if you're not super familiar with competitive Pokemon basically what you need to know is that a lot of the time spent preparing for tournaments isn't actually about playing the game it's about deciding which Pokemon to use there are about 400 Pokemon legal in the current rule set each with dozens of different moves they can learn and items they can use not to mention the fact that you can influence their stats to let them do wildly different things coming up with a cohesive six Pokemon team that works well together and covers all other combinations of six that you think you might play against is really really challenging which is why I'm not gonna think about it or at least I wasn't when our Story begins it's April 14th two and a half months before Nationals and my friends are competing at the European International Tournament I can't attend because I'm going to a friend's wedding but a bunch of my friends are going and I really want them to do well I'm working on a rain team with pelipper and palafin that I think has a bunch of potential when I get a message from my friend Yuki he's got a very unusual team featuring dendozo tinkerton and gothitel and since he has a parish mode he wants me to take a look at his team to see if everything is okay the team is really cool wide lens to you hits overheat and Willow Wisp far more often the flutter is super tanky and can support the team with icy wind tinkerton and gothitel provide two fake out supports and dendozo has gone I give Yuki my feedback but something about his team sticks with me now yondendozo isn't super uncommon by any means but Yuki had done something that I'd never seen before Herring yondendozo with shadow gothatel Yawn is a move that makes the target drowsy which causes it to fall asleep at the end of the following turn normally you use this to force a Target to switch out Since switching removes The Drowsy effect but Yuki paired dundozo with gothatel whose Shadow tag ability prevents the opponent from switching and also can support dundozo with fake out and heel pulse on top of that Yuki paired gothatel with Parish song flutter Mane allowing him to make use of the Paris trap strategy that causes all Pokemon to faint at the end of three turns unless they switch out with this Yuki had found a way to make two different modes that normally have no overlap work together beautifully but this pairing alone wasn't enough to really draw me into Yugi's Concept in fact what really got me so interested in the idea wasn't even a Pokemon that he had on the team it was a Pokemon that he didn't have but would fit in so well flamigo flamigo was on the very first team I built for scarlet and violet while its stats are mediocre at best it has the unique ability co-star which causes flamigo to copy any stat boosts or drops its partner has when it enters the battlefield this makes it the perfect partner for teams that set up a Pokemon to be super strong when scarlet and violet released I paired it with dozo and tatsugiri with toxic orb with the idea being if you could make tatagiri faint while inside Mendoza's mouth Mendoza would keep the stat boosts and flamigo could switch in and copy them it was a fun strategy but very gimmicky as it often requires you to knock out two of your own Pokemon in order to pull it off but toxic orb isn't the only way to make this strategy work if tatsugiri hears the Paris song before dundozzo Chomps down it will maintain its Parish counter meaning if tatsugiri is still into nozzo's mouth when its Parish counter hits zero it will faint and allow you to send in a new Pokemon like for example a Pokemon that could copy all of dindozo's stat boosts basically to say it a little bit simpler if I go in time when Iko my own Pokemon I'll be rewarded with two extremely powerful boosted Pokemon that are nearly impossible to stop with the addition of a single new Pokemon I could add an entirely new dimension for the team making it even more threatening but we're still over two months away from the tournament and building a team this far in advance can often be fatal as the strategies that are popular can change a lot in that much time so I went to the wedding rooted for my friends in Europe and put dondozo flamigo out of my head for now but a few weeks later I saw an opportunity to put this concept to the test Pokemon was holding a global challenge an online tournament that Awards points used to qualify for worlds or make it to day two for the top finishers with over 50 000 entrants this tournament would be chock full of top players and it would be a great opportunity to test if this concept actually works the only thing was I didn't want to alert the public to this team and using it on my main account would basically a shining Spotlight on it so I bought a new game and in order to not stand out I chose the name Michael after making it through the first hour of the game and claiming the Terra orb Michael was ready for the tournament of course I still had to flesh out the team I decided to run max speed dundozzo in order to be faster than most flutter Maine Dash top tagiri with helping hand speed boosting flutter main with some bulk but a good bit of special attack and a standard Parish trap golf L but then I ran into a problem I knew I wanted flamigo but I had no idea how to use it it's a weird Pokemon and the item and moves it wants really wasn't obvious to me but the global challenge was fast approaching and I didn't have time to figure it out myself so I decided to reach out to Carson confer Carson and I share something we both won the World Championships in 2016. with Carson winning in the middle age Division I knew Carson brought flamigo to several events this year so I decided to ask him for advice on flamigo's moves and items now personally I've never worked together before so I was expecting a simple answer in terms of what he thought was best but to my surprise Carson sent me a ton of great information detailing lots of extra context on flamigo that was incredibly helpful with Carson's experience I felt I had a much better idea of how to use flamigo and I locked in a clear amulet set with Bruce I now only needed one more Pokemon on my team and after a lot of consideration I decided on Ting Lou it's super strong bulky Pokemon that can use the niche move sand tomb which traps the opponent on the field and does damage over time it pairs really well with yawn Encore disable and Parish song and I liked that with Terra poison Ting Liu I could beat opposing flutter Mains which are a problem for Paris trap as a ghost typing prevents them from being trapped in while almost every tingloo at the time used a salt vest I gave mine a lumberry to protect it against sleep and burn and to allow my tingloo to carry protect which I think every Pokemon should have when a team can win with errors song and with that I had a team of six I wasn't sure exactly what to expect going into the global challenge it's not uncommon that a team will sound really great in theory and then just kind of collapse when you go to practice with it and this tends to happen more the weirder your team is to my surprise I found out quickly that this team was the real deal it wasn't perfect and it certainly wasn't complete but I was able to beat so many players without any issues with flamigo alone and I could beat even more players thanks to my expertise with Parish trap having two different modes that tried to win the game in completely different ways was extremely difficult for my opponents to handle after a weekend full of games I finished in the top 8 out of over 50 000 players winning far more games than I lost and several of those losses were to a turn one fissure connecting I was honestly shocked I'd done way better than I was expecting there's two weeks until the next Global Challenge and I can refine and use an even better version of the team there and that means the first thing I need to do is update my EV spreads as a quick explanation each Pokemon has stats that can be influenced with skill points called effort values or EVS for short and these EVS play a huge role in what a Pokemon does because you're limited in how many you get you're constantly trying to find the perfect distribution to balance between offense defense and speed and with six potential stats to invest in this is one of the most difficult technical skills in all of competitive Pokemon luckily I'm pretty decent at it but even luckier for me is that I'm friends with Dylan who's one of the best when it comes to making good EV spreads I asked Dylan to take a look at the team and he sent back a far more refined version based on the criteria I asked for but fixing the Eevee spreads isn't the only work I have to do this has been my first attempt at the team and there were things that were obvious weaknesses first I never clicked helping a hand on tatsugiri more importantly it felt like when I brought tatsugiri to the battle it never contributed anything on its own it was just there to faint inside dendoza's mouth this doesn't sit right with me as having a Pokemon whose only job is to faint just feels like a waste a big risk of this team is losing tatsuyuri before dendozo hits the field if this happens when you're using the flamigo mode you pretty much lose on the spot so I started thinking about how I could improve tatsugiri's contribution without risking throwing up everything single time I attacked with it what if I maxed out topsugiri's bulk and gave it a rosary Berry to allow it to survive three hits from most pokemon instead of two this could create situations in which topsugiri wasn't under the threat of being knocked out even if my opponent calls my play and what if instead of helping hand I run taunt this would help a lot versus a Mungus who at the moment can make my life hard with both Spore and clear smog there's a problem though muddy water is an inaccurate move and also if I want to invest in my bulk I have to drop special attack top tagiri's movepool is really shallow so I wasn't sure what other options I even had but then I found something chilling water it's a weak 50 base power move that never misses but always drops the target's attack stat I can use this move to help keep tatsugiri alive for longer and the less time tatsugiri spends in danger of being ko'd the longer I can wait before sending out dundozzo letting the Paris counter drop before combining this is good because top sagiri's health doesn't matter as long as it's above zero and dendoza's health matters a lot because you're often playing with two Pokemon against four by the time the setup is complete this allows top tagiri to better support the team in general as it can reduce the damage from powerful physical attackers such as Chen Pao while also having a reliable move that never misses which is great for finishing off low HP targets tinglu dendozo and gothatel were good and I didn't feel a need to make changes Beyond EV spreads while I could tell flamigo wasn't perfect yet it was strong enough that I didn't need to make any changes just yet which just leaves flutter Maine I realized I was pretty much only using it to set perish song and I almost never clicked Shadow Ball or moonblath on top of that being frail meant fluttermane often went down early into the battle which is a problem because then dendoza would be forced out even earlier than I wanted but even with a clever EV spread flutterman's always going to be frail due to its base stats oh if only there were a way I could make it bulkier wait phenomine is only on the team to use perishthong then why am I even using flutter Main in the first place why not use my personal favorite gen 9 Pokemon and extremely bulky Paris song user screamtail I tried it out and the difference was night and day the bulk made it so much more difficult to get off the field but that's not all screamtail learns a whole host of great supporting moves and two in particular caught my eye Encore and disable Encore forces the target to use the same move over and over again whereas disable prevents them from using the last move they used and using one after the other causes an opponent to struggle disable is also great on its own since you can stop any Pokemon holding a choice item from attacking and you can also turn off the more threatening attacks from your opponent whereas Encore can be used to force an opponent to keep using a defensive move a setup option or a not very effective attack having both gave me great options against clear smoga Mungus and Haze Pokemon in general and with with that version 2 of the team is complete well almost flamigo just didn't feel like the best version of itself possible but because so much of flamingo's success is tied to whether or not the setup went off properly it's really hard to tell a specific EV spread and item were actually optimal if only there was someone who knew a little bit more about flamigo Carson and I had kept chatting throughout the last Global challenge as he didn't think flamigo could work in the newest rule set so I reached out and Carson intrigued to see how I'd made flamigo work came on board the first thing Carson did was push us to add more bulk on flamigo we've been running max speed in attack but Carson pointed out that flamigo benefited a lot more from the survivability compared to just raw power and in talking about flamigo reviewing replays and testing matchups I realized a better item that we could use safety goggles with Kara steel and safety goggles flamigo becomes completely immune to a Mungus which is a big deal because flamigo's Brave bird has a ton of recoil when used against a moon guest and a clever player can use that to force you to trade flamigo for a Mungus which you often don't want to do and just like that the two-week period was up and it was time for the next Global challenge this one didn't go as well as the previous one the format is best of one and players often run strategies centered around surprising their opponents which makes these tournaments very volatile I still finished in the top 64 out of 50 000 players but more importantly than my finish the team felt amazing most of the losses came from situations where we were caught off guard by something completely unstandard a risk we wouldn't have to worry about in the open team Sheet format of Nationals and I realized something this team was the culmination of my entire season's hard work it had flamigo from the first team I ever built in dozen for my first official tournament team in San Diego screamedale from Orlando regionals which I won gothitel from Knoxville regionals and Ting Liu from my Hartford Regional team Nationals will effectively be the final Tournament of scarlet and Violet's first year since worlds this year uses a completely different format and this team was my way of taking everything I'd learned throughout the year and putting it to the test months and months of hard work all packaged together neatly in one flamingo-centric team Carson and I continue to work on the team over the next two weeks with Yuki's help but suddenly I found myself in hot water if you're a regular viewer of this channel you might have watched my video about the Hartford Regional championships a tournament where I finished third despite being very unprepared a big part of my journey throughout that video was about me finding a team under ridiculous time constraints less than a week before the tournament I hadn't had any idea what I wanted to use did you ever wonder why I let it get so close to the tournament without finding so much much as a starting point it wasn't that I was lazy it was that I was working on something bigger and I certainly wasn't gonna bring this team to Hartford it has the potential to win Nationals and the element of surprise will be crucial to giving it the best shot using it in advance would let people prepare against it making game plans or even changing their team I need to keep it a secret if I want the best chance of winning Nationals so I had to make a new team and I built one that was honestly pretty good but I already made that video so let's move on the only other thing I want to show you about Hartford is this we're going to be sending it to a short break when we get our top 8-0 do you guys like my these are Flamingo socks can they see I can't believe I didn't say anything these are my flamigo socks the lucky socks uh they are now yeah anyway you can sign off sorry maybe this is dumb but I wanted to throw in a little Easter egg on stream uh so I made sure to wear the flamigo socks even though Hartford went way better than I expected and I managed to finish third which would be a good enough finish at Nationals to get me day two the difference between the Hartford team and the flamigo team was Stark the flamingo team just felt so much better and now there's no more tournaments before Nationals which means it's time to refine the team to its final form Carson and I continued tweaking Dev spreads of the team with Carson pushing our scream tail to become faster and faster my good friend Marcus has to use the team as well it helped us to test specific matchups and game plan more than anything else though we spent this time practicing normally players practice using a simulator called Pokemon Showdown which lets you play games way faster but since this is where most Americans were practicing for the event using it would be really risky battle Stadium the in-game ladder is mostly made up of Japanese players so that's where Carson and I played between the two of us we played over 200 games and we'd often do group laddering sessions together as well we also played best of Threes against friends we trusted with Aaron Zhang Aaron Traylor and Brendan Zhang giving great in-game practice sets that we were able to record and review turn by turn by the way I literally have like hours and hours of footage recorded from all these practice sessions that I'm not really planning on posting anywhere I was thinking about maybe at some point opening up a patreon to post a bunch of stuff including some of these like behind the scenes practice sets so let me know that's something you all would be interested in after playing so many games though we discovered a couple of problematic matchups one being Mouse hold and annihilate and the other being goldango we ran sets against these trying to figure out what to do and what could be changed over the course of laddering I continued to win game after game after game and before I knew it Michael became the number one ranked player in scarlet and violet with a huge lead over the number two ranked player I also played a few games on Showdown each day just to try and keep an eye on the metagame and make sure we were abreast of any new development but after I realized it was taking forever to find an opponent I opened up the ladder into my shock found myself at rank 1. without realizing it I'd be become the number one ranked player on both Showdown and battle Stadium at the same time I switched to my Hartford team and quickly tanked my rating hoping that nobody had seen and it seemed like it had worked days passed and nobody seemed to care who the mysterious squash eater was I breathed it's a sigh of relief and went back to the safety of battle Stadium or so I thought during one game against a Japanese player I was playing incredibly well perhaps a little bit too well little did I know this Japanese player was streaming and there was one single American who happened to be watching the stream let's call him Paul Paul became very interested in who Michael was a high-ranking American on the latter that he'd never heard of before using a totally unique team it was pretty obvious that Michael was likely someone else and so Paul began his search for the mysterious Michael and after enough time he managed to link the account back to me Michael's secret identity was secret no longer Paul only told a few friends that he'd found my secret Nationals team but those few friends told a few friends who told a few friends who eventually told a player with their hands in nearly every major friend group in the scene and that player sent the team to all of them and so it came to be that the Monday before Nationals I received a DM from a friend hey man your team is out there every single group knows about it and they're preparing for it I'm sorry over the next few days Carson and I received DM after DM about our team and the reaction it was causing it was mass panic on a level I've never seen before in the competitive scene players with refined Nationals teams that they thought could win were suddenly faced with a matchup where they couldn't do a single thing every top player attending the event dropped whatever they were doing and started trying to find a way to beat my team every single one played sets against it developing game plans and practicing over and over again many players change their teams to have a better matchup adding clear smog onto a Mungus or making other favorable changes and some players even stole the team and brought it themselves to Nationals such as Brady Smith who was put on the stream the round before I was at Nationals with onlookers lauding him for such a cool creative team none of this is against the rules however I personally think that it is unbelievable probably lame in my experience top players fall into one of two categories players who want to win the tournament and players who want to be the best most players fall into the former category and so they obsess over things like scouting trying to glean every little Advantage they can getting gifted one of the top teams before the tournament is like striking gold for them as they can gain a massive advantage that they wouldn't otherwise have but for players who want to be the best it's different I personally do not care what team my competitors are bringing to an event I intend to beat them regardless of the team they have because I am the better player I do want to say that I don't think that Paul who was the start of this whole thing acted maliciously I would be shocked if he saw how far his actions would reach and equally shocked if he'd done any part of what he did to hurt me intentionally unfortunately his actions did cause both Carson and my odds of winning the tournament to plummet while not every detail of the leaked team was correct we'd completely lost the element of surprise Panic opponents feel when seeing flamigo for the first time and realizing they don't have a single practice game against it could have won sets on its own worse every top player now has experience versus my team whereas I don't have experience against their specific versions even if they're standard and on top of all of that having your team leaked is a horrible horrible feeling watching it spread knowing you're powerless to stop it everything about it just feels so incredibly unjust and the worst part is I was careful I practiced on a secret alt in a place where my competitors weren't even playing I didn't bring the team to a crucial tournament even though I didn't have anything else to use I worked so hard for months on something I was so proud of all for it to be taken from me four days before the tournament for my entire career players have been obsessed with finding my teams before the event I've been doxed before and had my Facebook hacked all in order for my competitors to try and find my team it even already happened this season where my competitors stole my Orlando team and then published it online with many of them bringing it to the tournament and finding success you think I'd be used to it by now but I'm not it feels so deflating to have it happen and it always feels so personal this doesn't happen to any other top player but because of a world champion and I have a big online presence and my teams are so unique it happens to me all the time and so days before the biggest most important Tournament of the Season thus far I have to handle the biggest leak I've ever dealt with Carson and I need to decide what we're gonna do should we make major changes should we pivot away from the team without talking about it first we both agree we are former world champions We intend to win the tournament because we are the best player of the tournament having the element of surprise would make things easier but I don't need things to be easy in order to win which means we have to make use of these final three days before Nationals we have two problematic matchups Mouse will deny leap and golden go Mouse hold can boost an Island's rage fist to ridiculous levels causing it to do absurd damage to our entire team and we don't have a way to stop it from getting set up on top of that Mouse holds terraghost and annihilates real ghost means we can't use fake out or perish song to stop them goldango is also a ghost type that is immune to Encore disable gone and perish song and can set up nasty plot while we're trying to get flamigo in or just output huge damage on its own we're running out of time when I have an idea currently we have Tara's Steel on topsugiri but we almost never use it what if we ran Terra normal it wouldn't help versus goldango but it might be useful against annihilates rage fist Carson and I test it with the help of some friends and it gives us another tool so we lock it in and just like that prep time is over months of hard work all leading up to this one chance fourth place or better to achieve my goal the entire competitive Community practicing against my team I face better rods and yet stepping off the plane in Columbus Ohio I don't feel stressed I feel determined I came here to win but in order to do that I need to make it past day one there's nine rounds today and I need to win seven of them to advance and winning more than that makes winning the entire tournament so much easier my round one opponent has a team that uses murkrow as the key support Pokemon with both Tailwind for speed control and sunny day to boost its teammates damage output game one goes smoothly as I use scream tail to disable choice scarf gray Tusk while trapping it in with gothatel forcing it to struggle from there I predict flutter main to switch in and KO with tingloo and with only murkrow and a Mungus left I easily win game two I switch modes completely this time going with the flamigo strategy and though my opponent plays well they don't have anything to stop the boosted bird I win both games and the set round two is versus another weather-centric team this time with Tyranitar lycanroc and sandvale I opened game one with King Lou and endozo one of my personal favorite pairings in game one I see an opportunity to trap Tyranitar and Garchomp on the field and pull off a pair of song early in the game leaving them with only flutter made an iron bundle who quickly fall against Ting Liu and dundozzo in game two I once again switch to the flamigo mode and my opponent brought four Pokemon to get one hit kayode by flamigo I pull off the setup and win the game round three is against ragov malavia the player who would eventually make it to the finals of the tournament he's also the first opponent who I know for a fact heard about the league I don't know how much practice he has against my team or whether or not he changed his team to match up better against mine so this has potential to go really badly Regal's team is another different type of weather team featuring pelipper and palafin alongside a Mungus iron hand Letterman and Arcanine game one starts with rigov's flutterman and iron hands against Mai tingloo and scream tale regab switches flutter Maine into a Mungus turn turn one as I tear it a poison with King Lou protecting his scream tail and heavy slamming a Mungus and eating a drain punch in return this iron hands has volt switch so I can't go for a Paris trap just yet but that doesn't mean I don't have any options I Encore the iron hands into drain punch and hit it with a sand tomb as they Spore my scream tail and are forced to drain punch for a small amount of damage I use sandton to trap both and eventually KO a Mungus full twitch lift rugoffs enough flutter Mane and a Mungus painting lets baby palafin hit the board fearing a heavy slam ragoff immediately switches flutter Mane back into iron hand but I protect both scouting this out and now finally it's time to go for the Trap I switched tingloo into gothatel as ragov goes for fake out and wave crash into scream tail but it survives with about 50 HP I use Encore to lock both his Pokemon into weak moves and resolve forfeits knowing the game is lost now ragoff's palafin has Haze which means I can only go for the flamigo mode if I hard read that ragav isn't going to bring palafin that feels a little too risky given I think I can win without flamigo in the first place so for game two I decide to stick with the perish mode but in hopes of immediately trapping in palafin who was kind of useless last game I pick a risky lead of gothitel and screamtail but my plan backfires as ragov leads with iron hands and flutter main which is a much worse lead matchup for me than last game I'm forced to protect both my Pokemon with the hope of using disabled next turn on the Spec's flutter main but regav doesn't give me the chance he uses voltswitch into his own flutter main letting him bring out a Mungus I make a risky move going for Paris song and psychic hoping Regal will switch out flutter Maine but he stays in and goes for Shadow Ball and Spore into the scream tale leaving it with low HP and fast asleep I switched to tinglu and protect but regav makes another great play doubling that slot again with Spore and Shadow Ball getting a crucial special defense drop and burning my lumberry this is getting bad fast but I see a way out I switch gothatel to scream tail sacrificing it to a Shadow Ball as I santum a moon guest unfortunately Spore hits my Ting Lou and I'm forced to take a nap I send gothindale back out and because flutterman's Parish counter is at one I can fake out a Munga safely as her golf switches to iron hands and the Paris song takes out a Mungus this relieves a little pressure but I'm still pretty far behind I need to make a prediction to turn this game around tinglu is the main threat I have so even though goffatel is super vulnerable I call that regav is gonna double attack Ting Lou I trastilized to poison as rigav to raspolises to fairy and thanks to the special defense drop Troy specs moonblast does a ton of damage but I hit tingloo with a heel pulse recovering 50 of my health iron hands wild charges King Lou but thanks to the heel pulse I survive and Ting Liu wakes up after only one turn of sleep this is massive because the move I chose is stomping 10 tantrum which doubles in power if Ting Lu's last move failed including if it failed due to being fast asleep thanks to this stopping tantrum Ko's iron hands in one hit and suddenly I'm in the lead three Pokemon against two I switched off the Tilt to dendozo but King Lou survives Moon blast and wave crash with exactly 5 HP and heavy slam Ko's flutter Maine left with only baby palafin Regal of forfeits and I win the set winning against another player who is also in the day two race is really really good that was kind of the first um more standard composition that I played against so far and so being able to not only win 2-0 but more or less pretty cleanly felt really good I feel like game one I'm really proud of and game two I made a lot of mistakes early on I think I led the I led the wrong Pokemon without a doubt I don't think my early turns were very good I was very predictable uh letting a bunch of My Pokemon fall asleep was really bad but I capitalized by recognizing The crucial turn where I needed to make a prediction I made the right prediction and then was able to turn around with some good luck so overall feeling really really solid at this point but we're still super early in the day so I have a long ways to go before I can really feel safe afterwards ragoff said that he'd practiced against the team but didn't think that I'd have both Encore and disable in other words practicing against the wrong version of the team had affected how he thought about the matchup Feeling bolstered by this information and the win I move on to round four it's against an indeedian armor Rouge player but I have plenty of tools to handle them I went into quick game four rounds in and I haven't dropped a single game but that'll change with round five and absolutely abysmal matchup my opponent has earthworm a Pokemon who basically takes no damage from my tingloo to dozo screamtail and gothatel who also can't be trapped in thanks to its shed tail attack on top of that flamigo is out of the question because the Chen pow has Haze as well as Terra ghost and throat chop which stops terroristong they also have booster energy flutter Maine a much more threatening version than the specs version that I can use to stable against and Dragon Dance Dragonite this is gonna be very hard in game one my opponent leads off with earthworm and iron hands with Dragonite and Chen pow in the back I'm able to gradually make my way through the team with parisong and eventually win against the earthworm thanks to dendozo and Ting Liu narrowly out damaging earthworm and Chen pow game two goes worse as with tarago's Chen Pao next to Dragonite I'm taking a ton of damage with no easy way to get rid of things quickly to make matters worse my opponent left iron hands behind for flutter Maine which is much more threatening I take a few Kos but in the end I can't match the damage and I lose game three my opponent brings the same Pokemon again and it's up to me to find a way to adjust I'm almost able to pull off a Paris trap but I've let my gothicell take too much damage it's in range of Chen Pal's throat chop and I just protected I can go for the double protect but two-thirds of the time it'll fail and I'll lose but I see a way out my scream tale is low HP so I switch it in sacrificing it and letting me reset gothatel without giving up the Trap I take two Kos with parisong and somehow clean up the game feeling okay that was the first game three of the day but it was really really tough uh the presence of haze and Terra ghost and throw Chop on Chen pow was just really really hard and though I want it like was a lot closer than I would have liked it to be I had to like make aggressive predictions and basically lay a trap and and have it pay off so even though I won I feel like this next round like I really need to just win round six cleanly so I can just keep momentum up and have some time to rest because I have to run right back inside for the next round with five wins and zero losses things are going well but I still have four rounds left today and my next opponent is a veteran player with a weird team he has armors and DD but unlike the one I played earlier this one has a weakness policy and weak armor intending to be a fast sweeper instead of a trick room one they open up with flutter Main and Talonflame and I win game one quickly taking out flutterman with heavy slam and then koing armarusian and Dede with Paris song game two is a bit harder as they use Garchomp to do a ton of damage early and I'm forced to let both my Pokemon faint in exchange for a double KO on indeedy and Garchomp thankfully I have dindozo and tingloo in the back against their Talonflame and armor Rouge and thanks to yawn I'm able to win one more win and I'll make it to tomorrow but this next one will be on stream I'm playing against the team players have been calling a new balance the same six Pokemon that I brought to Hartford regionals the battle opens up with Gyarados and flutter Maine against Mai Ting Liu and screamtail I protect scream tail and to rasterize Ting Liu as they dazzling gleam and taunt into my protect I figure there's no way they're gonna let me kale fluttermane for free so I switched to gothatel and parasong anticipating a switch into iron hands or a Mungus but to my shock they stay in and double attack my scream tail a terrible turn for me I saved scream Tails switching it out for Ting Liu as I fake out Gyarados and a dazzling gleam for a little chip I protect gothatel but they Thunder Wave My now poison type tingloo burning my lumbery as I stand to Mungus for damage over time and a trap I sacrifice screamtail and protect Ting Liu but in the parish counter KO Gyarados and I send out gothipel as they send out iron hand fake out a Mungus but iron hands swords dances and screamtail being down means I can't deal with it with parasong or encore by double up into the amungus drops it low but it heals back up with Citrus Berry a Mungus trastializes to water in order to survive the psychic but goth adult survives the Thunder Punch and just in case a Munga survived I attack it with Ting loose stomping tantrum finishing it off and wasting my opponent's Terra flutter main is sent out and I switched gothatel into dendozo who faints to a shadow wall Thunder Punch double up letting me KO flutterman with heavy slam keeping me in the lead two against one with two super effective Heavy Hitters who both resist drain punch I'm able to deal with iron hands and I win game one I switched the flamingo mode for game two as it's actually pretty solid into this matchup after predicting both turn one I go for Paris song and taunt as they switch to flutter Main and fail Spore chiu switches in and loses half of its Health Draco meteor as flutter Maine dazzling gleams I'm in a great spot all I need to do is get dindozu in and everything is set up to win the game I switched it to nozzo and get crit it was the only turn I was vulnerable with the parish counter at two but it happened and I lose the game on the spot now it's all down to game three I go back to the parish mode from game one and my opponent opens up with Gyarados and flutter Maine once again I make the same play as game one but this time my opponent waterfalls Ting Liu instead of taunting screamtail I learned from my mistake game one rather than predicting a switch I go for a parish long and heavy slam into flutter Maine and I see that just like I expected buttermaine stayed in I Survived The Shadow Ball and waterfall and Flinch if I don't Flinch I probably win the game on the spot but suddenly this looks way way more dicey I try and cheese the KO by disabling waterfall but Shadow Ball takes out Ting Liu and I'm down a Pokemon already I go into gothatel and buy myself a turn by faking out Gyarados and switching to dendozo and eat a dazzling gleam for my trouble I'm so far behind I need to play aggressively so I predict Munga switching in and hit it with both a yawn and a psychic as Gyarados taunt my gothatel and then faints to the Paris song I'm threatening to kill the amungus with wave crash and psychic so my opponent rationalizes to keep it safe as I yawn the iron hands and psychic amungus my opponent doubles dendoza with Spore and Thunder Punch but amungus falls asleep thanks to Beyond I switched in dozer to screamed hail and finally get a bit of luck as gothatel's psychic kritsamungus for the KO as iron hands swords dances and then falls asleep a gopher protect and Paris song as I know screamtail Will Survive a critical hit Shadow Ball but they target gothatel instead wasting their attack I've switched to dozo and Encore iron hand even though it's asleep right now I need to make sure it's locked into Swords Dance so it doesn't sweep through my whole team flutter main takes out dundozzo as the parish counter Falls to two I protect and disable Shadow Ball as moonblast goes with the protect and the Paris counter Falls to one I go for a double protect and fail but because I disabled Shadow Ball gothatel survives the moon blast and because I encored the iron hands it can go for a move to KO gothatel the parish counter Falls to zero volatile Remains the only Pokemon standing and I win the set and I'm guaranteed to make it to tomorrow but there's still two rounds left today and I want to win them both my next match is against chop across another player in the day two race who I'm confident saw my leaked team he'd actually played and beaten Brady Smith the player who stole my team on stream two rounds ago but Brady didn't have the right version and also didn't know how to use the team unfortunately for me Choppa has a goldengo which is one of the worst matchups I win game one by playing excellently setting up a pair of song the same turn I let screamtail go down and then converting that into a win but game two Chapa adjusts and leads off with goldango and Chen Pao instead of Dragonite and Chen Pao and my scream tail lead is much worse I flounder around a bit but I end up losing it's all down to game three I switched to a dendozo and Ting Liu lead against choppas Chen Pao and goldengo and I decided to make a read this goldango is the biggest threat to my team though I figured chapa's not gonna let me KO it for free since I know he has Dragonite in the back I decided to go for order up and heavy slam into this Chen Pao predicting goldango to switch to Dragonite a chop us which is Chen pow to Dragonite instead I do good damage but goldango tricks my dindozo giving a choice specs and stealing leftovers and make a risky move bringing in tatsugiri while I'm already locked into order up and I take out Dragonite iron bundle comes in but I'm able to take it out by terastalizing my red HP dundozzo to survive a freeze dry by the time the nozzo goes down I'm up three against two I go into scream to hell and I set up a parish song but I over predict and leave top sagiri vulnerable and it goes down it's a 2v2 with Chen pow and scream tail on the parish counter it all comes down to whether or not goldengo survives a stomping tantrum with Chen Palace sort of Ruin active I go for it and ah it lives on one HP despite Chen Powell fainting to perish song goldango takes out Ting Lu and I narrowly lose aim three yeah so we just lost around eight feeling a little bit bad about it just just like um my opponent plays Super well but I just feel like I definitely have a good big picture awareness I can like feel my exhaustion catching up maybe I can feel my face slipping so I'm just pretty worried going into the last round it was like game three like this Pokemon the super low HP so like it was really close but I just wish I'd like close that out and then yeah I'm a little worried given how I'm playing that like the last round might be difficult so uh yeah I just really really wanted to win this last one and be in good shape going into tomorrow I need to win this last one if I want to have any wiggle room tomorrow at all I'm playing against Trista one of the first friends I made when I started playing VGC something about going up against a friend just takes the edge off for me and I'm able to breathe a little easier she is a team with fissured and dozo which is very scary and she's already played Carson today though he was able to win game one goes smoothly Ikea her Chen power turn one with a double attack and get her flutter main turn two by switching in tatsugiri and wave crashing from here I'm up four against two and I can continually yawn trista's Pokemon taking a Dragonite with order up and eventually winning the game game two is a lot harder we both lead off with tingloo and dundozo but I think I have the advantage since I have santum I want to limit Tristan the ability to click fissure so I launched a santum and yawn at her dundozzo as she ruinations my Ting Liu and yawns my dendozo I switch into screamtail and protect locking a yawn but Trista has Whirlwind and uses it on her own dendozo freeing it from santum preventing yawn from taking effect and sending out her Chen Pao I Encore Whirlwind and Tara tingloo to poison as they ice spinner tingloo and Whirlwind sends scream tail into gothitel I switched to dozo in for tinglu who takes the ice spinner very well and launch a psychic into the dark type Chen pow but Chen Pao to rationalizes to ghost which is exactly what I was hoping for just this forced Whirlwind once again this time sending gothatel back out to scream tale she sent out dundozzo to replace the fainted Chen pow from here I have a Pokemon lead and I see a way to win I eventually forced Trista out of Ting Liu getting her to have both chiyu and endozo on the field together I perish song and let her KO Ting Liu letting me bring gothatel and safely with Parish already active from here all I need to do is waste a few turns and suddenly I'm up three against one in those when gothatel cleaned up the game and I win the set ending the first day of competition with eight wins and one loss I've just finished wrapped up day one um very very very exhausted but I'm really happy because I went A1 and Carson went 9-0 which I think given like you know uh like we were the two who like put the most uh time into this team is like a really really strong finish personal goal was to go 8-1 or 9-0 today um just to make tomorrow a little bit easier so um yeah I'm really proud of that especially given like fatigue definitely caught up to me like after that long stream set going right into another three-game set in a row I was really worried that I wouldn't have the mental uh fortitude to kind of like punch out and play well but if I'd gone from 70 to 7-2 I think I'd be really frustrated with myself so um being a one basically means that I can afford one loss tomorrow which is just so much so much nicer I mean ideally I get no losses but whenever you go to a tournament no matter how much work you put in no matter how good you feel there's always a chance that like here they're not gonna do that well then you won't even make it today two I think every competitive player knows that so um yeah to not only make it today too but do it with only one loss I'm really proud of that and I'm really um hopeful that I can make talking uh tomorrow we're in amazing shape for tomorrow with me needing to win four games and Carson only three out of the five we grab some dinner with friends talk about our problem matchups and hit the hay out of the nearly 800 players who started the tournament only around 60 remain after five more rounds the best eight players will advance to a final elimination bracket I might make it in if I win three out of my five rounds today but four wins guarantees it and thankfully my first round is against New Balance the team I have a ton of experience against I win game one almost immediately thanks to a turn one crit and I win game two without too much issue as well four rounds left and I need to win three of them but round 11 is against chop across my only loss from yesterday and it's like deja vu I win game one and lose game two in the turn one of game three is the exact same with me doubling Chen pow as it switches to Dragonite unlike last time my dindozo didn't get tricked and I'm in a good position to sweep when extreme speed lands a critical hit on my boosted endozo completely eliminating the option without dundozzo I can't win and my Pokemon fall one after another not only did I lose again I also was the very last match to finish of the entire round which means I don't get a break before the next match and my heart sinks when I see who I'm going up against Leonard Kraft a good friend of mine but he has mousehold and annihilate the team I have the worst matchup against in the entire tournament I'm not recovered from my last set at all and it shows game one starts out okay with my paranormal toxagiri getting around Leonard's rage Fist and taunting the mouse hold I decide to get a little greedy on turn two trying to Draco meteor Mouse hold as I figure it'll switch out and I've eved my top sagiri to survive an Island's drain punch even while I'm a normal type but I forget that Leonard has a different variant of this team than normal he has Chen Pao in the last lot which lowers topsugiri's defense genpow comes in tatsugiri drops to drain punch and I lose the game immediately I'm now down a game in my worst matchup and I'm totally drained I need to find some way of pulling it together as switch up the Pokemon I bring starting off with dendozo and Ting Liu it's something I thought could work in practice letter goes for a beat up and bulk up turn one but I yawned the annihil ape and sand tomb the mouse hold I predict him to switch turn two and he brings in Chen how thanks to the sword of Ruin Mouse hold faints to a wave crash and Ting Liu dropped Chen powder red with heavy slam we both position our scream tales in but Leonard makes a smart prediction and forces me to give up my topsugiri to keep my screamedale alive thankfully I'm able to use tingloo to take out screamtail and with only two Pokemon left I can win with aerosong I've brought us to a game three I lead off with dundozzo and Ting Liu once again but Leonard is something I've never seen before Talonflame and mouse hold lead he burns my DiNozzo right away removing a crucial source of damage and invalidates both my moves he then brings in annihil ape and uses beat up on it and the way you on the switch and sand whom the mouse hold this isn't a good position by any mean Leonard repositions and though I take out Mouse hold yawn wasn't able to put anything to sleep we both fight for a winning position me trying to stop his annihil ape and Leonard trying to stop my Parish song unfortunately my own Paris song forces me to switch out my scream tale and that means I'll no longer be faster than his annihilate in Tailwind but I see a way out I sacrifice most of the dozer's HP for a yawn on annihilate now annihilate has to make a choice if it stays in it'll fall asleep but if it switches I get to KO the low HP Talonflame Leonard switches and suddenly I'm up four against two I sacrificed Ting Liu to get screamed hell in but this game is so close I'm not sure I'll have the health left to stall out the perish song I see an option I switched tostagiri into ninjozo intending to sacrifice it and I go for a parish song and though drain punch takes it out it did its job parisong is up and tatsugiri is alive I to rationalized tatsugiri to normal and I Encore an island into rage Fist and suddenly annihilate the nightmare Pokemon the centerpiece of Leonard's team that does infinite damage can't do any damage to talk to Geary scream Tails dazzling gleam is not adding up fast enough either the parish counter Falls to three two one and every Pokemon on the field faints except for the small fish with a giant Jewel on its head but once again I'm the last set to finish I barely have time to get a drink of water before the next round goes up and my heart sinks I'm playing another golden go this one the much more problematic version with nasty plot and leftovers with Tara water and Grim snarl support I have almost no tools for this matchup but I'll need to find a way to win this was unfortunately the unluckiest set of the season for me the amount of flinches crits misses and paralysis that happened made the game almost unplayable for me and rather than recounted and seem like I'm planning a lot we're just gonna kind of skim over this one my opponent also didn't know that font didn't work on my oblivious dendozo which actually ended up winning them a game I lose game 1 narrowly after being basically unable to move at all but I build a better game plan for game two in game one they used Grim snarl and Gyarados to Slow Me Down in the middle of the game so I'll bring Parish trap and KO these two defensive Pokemon with that then win with dozo and Ting Liu it's all going swell until gothitel gets fully paralyzed on a fake out allowing Grimace gnarl to Thunder Wave screamtail allowing Gyarados to taunt screamtail preventing parasong and suddenly I don't see a way I can still win well I do see one way I can win on timer I stall gradually whittling down my opponent's Pokemon but in the end there is exactly one turn too many if I'd been able to waste 45 more seconds somewhere during the game I could have done it but in the end I'm behind when time runs out and I lose the set I'm so frustrated but when I look at the score so far I see something my resistance the tiebreaker that will determine who makes the final eight players is the best out of anyone with three losses that means if I win the last round I probably still make it in but once again I'm one of the final matches to finish because both games took so long and my final opponent is yet another mouse hold annihilate player and unlike Leonard this player definitely was well aware of the league I wouldn't be surprised if they practice games against my team before the event I decided to go with Ting Liu and dundozo instead of the flamingo mode both modes work but I'm just more comfortable with Parish but I'm just out of juice this matchup is too difficult and I'm making mistakes I lose game one and make back-to-back horrible moves in game two in a matchup where I really couldn't afford any mistakes and without taking a game I lose the set with that I'm out of the tournament uh I'm really really disappointed honestly I feel like my prep was so good everything was going so well and yesterday went so well so to go from eight in one to probably 10 and four it's I'm really disappointed the Pokemon's game about getting back up when you get knocked down but uh yeah this definitely stings so I'm out of the day two race uh we'll have to go through the world's day one it's just one tournament I think overall I still did well um I'm just waiting here right now actually if Carson makes it into the top eight I really hope that he does he can do the team justice but I think it was still a strong super strong team and a super good tournament I think I just kind of ran out of juice towards the end unfortunately one more win and I'd have made it I was the best ranked player out of everyone who got 10 wins Landing me a 19th Place finish my worst performance of the season and Carson despite getting one more win missed out based on the tiebreaker finishing 10th when he needed eighth so now that it's been a few weeks how do I feel about how things went first I think the leak was ultimately the Difference Maker here I know for a fact that three of my four losses were against players who benefited from it and losing the element of surprise and stats that ended up being nail biters was probably the difference so even though it was my worst finish of the year I still think that this team was something special and I think of just a couple things have gone differently I totally really could have won this tournament unfortunately this means that I missed out on getting the buy to skip the entire first day of the world championships and like I already told you only one player has ever managed to win the World Championships after starting in day one thankfully that player was me and this year I'm ready to do it again I'll see you at the world championships

Channel: WolfeyVGC

Views: 561,795

Keywords: Wolfey, Pokemon, VGC, Wolfe Glick, Competitive Pokemon, Pokemon VGC, twitch, pokemon nuzlocke, nuzlocke, hardcore nuzlocke, smallant, ludwig, pokemon challenge, pokemon challenges, alpharad, wolfeyvgc, purplecliffe, pm7, pokemen7, mandjtv, shiny pokemon, pokemon scarlet, pokemon violet, scarlet, violet, scarlet and violet, fuecoco, quaxly, sprigatito, pokemon tournament, wolfey tournament, wolfe glick tournament, US Nationals, Pokemon nationals, Pokemon National championship, Nationals

Id: onn_fljVCvk

Length: 54min 10sec (3250 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023