So Malaysia is finally getting its first Premier Challenge using the new VGC 2016 Rules. More details of the event can be obtained through the following link
My attempt to for Worlds was quite poor in my opinion. Though nevertheless I had a lot of fun in Boston and I grew a lot as a person and also a VGC player from my experiences there. Even though Worlds 2015 ended, VGC 2015 did not end there. The Asia Pacific region was able to start the 2015-2016 season just a few months after worlds unlike previously where we had no events afterwards till the new year. Meaning while Worlds 2016 will be played in a different format than 2015, we could start collecting Championship Points through events that was ran after Worlds which still would be using VGC 2015 rules until the end of December. While I was back in Melbourne, Australia for my studies, I was not able to attend as many events as my other Asian peers as Australia started having events much later than the rest of the Asia Pacific region. The target for this season unlike last season’s Top 18 placement to qualify for Worlds, is a 200 Championship Points bar. Meaning any player who obtained at least 200 CP will qualify for Worlds which is a much clearer and obtainable target compared to last season. I was able to get some CP from the Boston Open though that was quite low and I’m hoping to be able to overwrite it through other Regional level events. I was actually hoping to be able to be in the 200 CP range going into Nationals when we had no idea what the CP bar was going to be like since I assumed it would be more around 300 CP, but I never expected to reach it this early in the season.
When Premier Challenges finally started in Australia, it was during my University’s exam period though I was able to attend and win one of the first Premier Challenges in Morwell, Victoria, Australia. Unlike the rest of the Asia Pacific, Australia plays their Premier Challenges in a Best-of-3 format for the entire tournament instead of a Best-of-1 swiss + Bo3 top cut format used in Asia and I highly preferred the Bo3 format as it is the format I’ve gotten used to playing since Aussie Nats, Singapore Nats and Worlds. Since I was busy with exams, I made a team on the spot before the Premier Challenge which I was comfortable using and I ended up sticking with it pretty much throughout my entire Post-Worlds 2015 season with only some minor changes between tournaments.
The team has served me well netting me the following achievements.
Premier Challenge Sceptile Series #1 Morwell, Australia – 1st Place/33 Players.
Though after my exams finished, I headed back to Malaysia to spend my Summer Holidays there. This would also mean that I would need to start getting used to playing in a Best-of-1 swiss format again.
I also went to Bristol, UK for my sister’s graduation ceremony and before I went, I had heard that there was going to be a VGC Regionals in London so I made a stop there en-route and finished 31st Place/124 Players.
After spending some time going to Ireland to visit another sister, I came back home to Malaysia and finally played in a local Premier Challenge after so long and finished 5th Place/40 Players actually going undefeated during swiss rounds which was really surprising to me.
Next big tournament was Malaysia’s first VGC Regionals of the Season, at this point, the 200 CP bar had already been announced and I was thinking that I’m not that far off and I’m comfy with my current team so I’ll just stick with it despite some of its more gaping weaknesses such as having a hard time dealing with Aegislash. I was able to reach my target of at least finishing in the Top 16 at regionals placing myself at 10th/107 Players which means that I have safely crossed the 200 CP bar with me currently having 219 Championship Points putting me currently as being 1st in Malaysia as well as 3rd in the Asia Pacific Region in terms of Championship Points.
I’m quite proud of myself for being able to qualify for Worlds 2016 without actually playing any VGC 2016 tournaments yet haha but hopefully I’ll carry on this momentum into 2016 and earn even more Championship Points. In any case, 2015 has been a great year for me as a VGC Player and I hope to do even better in 2016 to make Malaysia proud. One thing I like about qualifying this early is I still relatively have plenty of time to look for cheap flights and accommodations to Worlds next year.
Now that what felt like an extremely long and tiring yet very fun weekend for me is finally over, I guess its about time I get down to writing this post.
Last weekend on the 19th of December 2015, Malaysia had our first VGC Regionals of the 2015-2016 VGC season hosted withing Comic Fiesta which was Malaysia’s longest running as well as biggest Anime, Comics and Games convention. Even though VGC 2016 rules has already been announced, since it will not be implemented before the 1st of January 2016, this Regional still uses VGC 2015 rules though it awards Championship Points towards a Worlds 2016 invitation.
Players came from all over South East Asia to participate in the tournament. We had our usual Singaporean neighbours coming over to steal some CP, some Thais and Indonesians came as well. In fact top cut for the tournament was 4 Malaysians, an Indonesian, a Thai and two Singaporeans. I was told that we apparently had some Philippines in the tournament as well though I didn’t notice them which was unfortunate as it would have been great to get to know them and we had people from all 4 countries hanging out not only after the event but over the course of the next few days which is why I said that it was an extremely long and tiring yet fun weekend haha =D
Also I would like to mention that I spent the entire day before Regionals hanging out with the Thai and Indonesian players along with the other KL Raikous and spent the night playing Yu-Gi-Oh! against Ariff at the hotel haha. Yes Ariff, you can activate a normal magic card on the same turn that you set it =P
Okay now on to the tournament portion of this post,
Considering that I have had reasonably good results using this team throughout the entire post worlds 2015 season so far with an Australian Premier Challenge Win, top 31 at London Regional and 5th Place at an Elevated Malaysian Premier Challenge, I decided I would use the same team again since I’m obviously comfortable with using it at this point and trying a totally new team when all I needed was to play it safe and get decent placings at several events is all I needed to reach the 200 CP bar at this point means that taking risks is not what I wanted to do even though I’m perfectly aware of weaknesses of this team at this point. Nothing much changed from when I used it at London Regional except that I changed Shadow Ball on Sylveon to Hidden Power Ground in order to be able to hit Heatran and Mawile better. Knowing that we had 107 Masters in the tournament, our trusty swiss calculator showed us that if we want a guaranteed place in top cut, we will have to go for at least a 6-1 record in swiss or be that one person who depends heavily on resistance to cut.
Kangaskhan, my go to Mega of VGC 2014 and VGC 2015 and probably what I’ll be using early VGC 2016 and maybe even throughout 2016 if I still find it to be extremely viable which it seems to be so far. I used to play an Adamant bulky set but after Worlds, this set just feels much better knowing that I’ll be faster than a lot of other Kangaskhans or at least speed tie with other Max speed ones. I do miss having Fake Out sometimes but being able to use Protect has helped me out in so many situations, its just much more better overall in my opinion. I’ve also gotten a bit better with finding opportunities to boost with Power-Up Punch which is why I went with Jolly max speed now rather than a bulky Adamant set which would have had more power at the start.
Click RSlide (Landorus-Therian) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 12 HP / 252 Atk / 92 Def / 4 SpD / 150 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Rock Slide
– Earthquake
– Knock Off
– Superpower
Nothing much to say here, standard Choice Scarf Landorus-T that survives a +1 Life Orb Sucker Punch from Bisharp while being faster than Weavile.
Standard Talonflame set, nothing much to say here, mainly added in due to the fact that my team needed some Fire type coverage as well I’ve been having trouble with some super bulky or fast fighting types and it also helps me take out opposing Amoonguss before they cause trouble.
Tailwind helps a lot if my opponent isn’t a Trick Room team or no longer have their Trick Room setter and is especially deadly after Kangaskhan or Sylveon has boosted themselves with Power-Up Punch or Calm Mind.
I’ll be honest and say that I’m not sure what the EVs are for, I simply copied it from the Nuggetbridge Damage Calculator and when I tested it, I was quite satisfied with the bulk it had so I simply kept using it. I’ve won so many battles with Amoongus simply sporing majority of my opponent’s team or redirecting their attacks after Sylveon or Kangaskhan finish setting up that they just can’t take back momentum from me.
Nico Nico Ni (Sylveon) (F) @ Pixie Plate
Ability: Pixilate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 6 Def / 248 SpA / 4 Spe
Modest Nature
– Hyper Voice
– Protect
– Hidden Power [Ground]
– Calm Mind
Standard Sylveon, I used to have Shadow Ball instead of Hidden Power Ground though I changed it in order to be able to hit Heatran and Mawile better. If I could get a Calm Mind or two and then either set up tailwind or trick room, my opponents are going to be taking some huge dents in their team at Sylveon’s expense.
The tournament:
Round 1 Vs. Fadhlul Hadi [Arc Nova] (Malaysia)
[Ranked 84th with 2-5 in Swiss]
He brought:
I brought:
As soon as I saw Fadhlul’s team during team preview, I knew it would be interesting. I sat there scratching my head for a bit cause I didn’t remember anything at all about Drapion other than its typing (it took me a while to even remember its name). Typhlosion was also another source of a headache for me since I knew that its job would be to do something like spam eruption, but I didn’t remember its speed or how powerful of a special attack does it have so I was a bit uncomfortable to make certain plays that I could have otherwise easily made if I had properly known all those information. Pachirisu even though now no longer containing any surprise factors or the best follow me user unlike when Se Jun Park was using it in 2014, would also be quite the troublesome little critter. Nevertheless, I played safely and the match was very straightforward and ended with my first win of the day.
Overall Result: 1-0
Round 2 Vs. Yoko Taguma [Yoko ♣] (Singapore)
[Ranked 16th with 5-2 in Swiss]
She brought:
I brought:
Here’s a match-up that I dreaded. I knew that if I wanted to achieve a good ranking in this event I would have to battle with a number of famous players but I had hoped for that to happen at least not as soon as round 2 with the large pool of players at the event. This was way too soon. Anyway, going into team preview, I realised I’ve seen this team somewhere before, Yoko had posted this team before on her blog. Though at the time of the match, I had forgotten most of what the team did and I think the only thing I was certain of was that the Abomasnow was sashed and that the Mega Salamence is mixed. Though I also remember thinking that I have to play carefully as a lot of time has passed between then and now and she could very well have done quite a number of modifications to the team.
Anyway, things looked bad for me right from the get go, I did some poor plays and my team got dented so much that there was very little chance of coming back though I soldiered on. I was very surprised by the Sacred Sword coming from Aegislash but thankfully it failed to KO my Kangaskhan due to it being at -1 from intimidate. Halfway into the game, some calls that could have gone either way which was 50-50 turned the tide in my favor such as whether or not Yoko will do the same play of switching Salamence into Rotom-W or whether or not she would attempt to King Shield in front of my Talonflame after she had gotten her Weakness Policy Boost on Aegislash. Calling the switch into Rotom-W, I opted to HP Ground her Aegislash which activated the Weakness Policy when she failed to use King’s Shield due to using Wide Guard the previous turn and I was able to put a tailwind up. She choosing not to King’s Shield the next turn was crucial and I was able to take out Aegislash with Flare Blitz and take out the Rotom-W with a single target Hyper Voice. From there Landorus could take out her damaged Salamence with Rock Slide and Sylveon with Hyper Voice, the game was set as long as I didn’t miss any Rock Slides and I got my second win of the day.
Overall Result: 2-0
Round 3 Vs. Zain Khalid [Silver] (Malaysia)
[Ranked 8th Overall, finished swiss ranked at 8th place with a 5-2 Record]
He brought:
I brought:
I can’t catch a break can I. I dreaded this match up even more than the last. Zain was an incredibly strong player in Malaysian tournaments and has won a couple of Premier Challenges this season as well as top cut in another. He has also had considerable performance last season and even though I’ve always ended up with more Championship Points than him on the Malaysian leader-board in the past, I’ve lost majority of the battles we have had though this would be the first time ever that we would battle in an official event. We were also the “lucky” table number that would be featured on stream this round. Due to some earlier technical difficulties, we were the first on stream for the day. We were instructed to wait until about 10 minutes into the round before we could start our match which kinda annoyed us a bit as by that time, a large number of the other contestants would have finished their matches and would be able to gather information on our teams since we were being featured on several Television screens in the tournament area though we followed the instructions given to us since there’s not much we can do about that.
Going into team preview, I saw several things which my team would have an extremely hard time against, namely the Mega Mawile and Gothitelle which once trick room comes up, speels doom to my team. There’s really not much to say here about this match, I played poorly and a bit desperately against Zain which something that won’t work against a player like him. I was somehow able to navigate myself into getting a Power-Up Punch with my Kangaskhan late game which gave me a fighting chance even 1 Vs. 3 as long as his Mega Mawile which I was able to spore doesn’t wake up too fast though a scald burn from his Gastrodon destroyed any hope I had of winning the game and I have my first lost of the day. Every match from here on out has just increased in the level of importance as if I want to still make top cut, I can’t afford to lose even one more match.
Overall record 2-1
Round 4 Vs.Tze Han Teo [Flurk] (Malaysia)
[Ranked 58th with 3-4 in Swiss]
He brought:
I brought:
Ok, here’s another member of the KL Raikous. After the first round, I keep battling against people I know….I’ve known Teo for a long time now and even though he has not had much success in VGC besides from getting Top Cut in a recent Premier Challenge, he has much potential to surprise you as he does have all the knowledge as a competitive Pokemon player to do well at events unlike your average player.
So looking at Team Preview, I saw Khan Artist and I have no answer to that… so I guess I would just went with my usual lead and go from there. His first move was obvious enough once the match started so I switched Sylveon out for Amoongus for some Rocky Helmet damage on his Kangaskhan though surprisingly he didn’t go for the first turn Dark Void but Sheer Cold onto Cresselia from Smeargle. He used Dark Void afterwards and attempted to use Sheer Cold a couple more times though the RNG would not allow it, I was able to wake up fast with my Cresselia and bring Trick Room up, he missed a chance to preserve his Smeargle by attempting to use Sheer Cold instead of Dark Void to put my Cresselia back to sleep and that gave me a chance to get rid of it as well as Spore the Landorus that switched afterwards with Amoongus being super fast in Trick Room. He got a lot of burns from his Heat Wave but I guess the RNG decided not to be totally unfair by making him not hit his sheer colds and have a Rock Slide miss on my Sylveon which resulted in it being around to longer to help me finish off the match.
Overall Result: 3-1
“I could feel it, Dark Void was going to miss, so I clicked Sheer Cold instead” (Teo Tze Han 2015). Best quote of 2015.
Round 5 Vs. Jirawiwat Thitasiri [Karf] (Thailand)
[Ranked 13th with 5-2 in Swiss]
He brought:
I brought:
My next opponent would be the Legendary Jirawiwat. I’ve met him before during Nationals in Singapore and though I’ve never fought him before, I’ve heard tales of his magnificent Kecleon. Looking at his team, he has some unique choices namely the aforementioned Kecleon, a Mamoswine and a Cobalion which could be troublesome to deal with as its really physically bulky and can either be a special attacker or physical attacker due to its stats, when paired with Milotic, Cobalion could also provide some good defensive switches. I was also quite wary of Breelom. I’m not exactly sure what I should do against such a team really since you rarely face such unique team choices. Fighting against a team which has several members that could outspeed my team means that getting trick room up was vital in this match. From there, I could use Amoongus to spore most of his team which I did so that whatever their functions were, they won’t be able to carry them out properly. This was a success for me and I practically put his entire team besides Milotic to sleep and chip away at them before they could do anything to me and finish off the match from there. It was quite a straight forward match, but a scary one nevertheless and would also be much scarier if he got some one turn sleeps.
Overall Result: 4-1
Round 6 Vs. Quous Tee [Sora] (Malaysia)
[Ranked 14th with 5-2 in Swiss]
He brought:
I brought:
So far so good until I found out who my next opponent would be. My next opponent would be another member of the KL Raikous, Quous Tee. This match-up is a huge problem for me as I’ve used this same exact team I’m currently using in a Premier Challenge two weeks before Regionals and I had to play Quous in four battles in that Premier Challenge, once during swiss and in a Bo3 match during top cut, so right from the start, I’d be playing at a disadvantage as Quous would be much more familiar with information on my team though I’ve been playing with the assumption that people would know a number of information on my team since I appeared on stream earlier but Quous out of any other player in the tournament especially would be familiar with it.
So onto the match, there’s not much to say about the match really, it was a very straight forward match where I take one of your mon out, you take out one of my mon which goes on and on till the end. If you’re interested to watch the match, you’re more than welcomed to watch the video below. His last choice of taking out my Landorus with Hidden Power Ice after I used Superpower on his Kangaskhan was a bit questionable and allowed my Sylveon to take out his Heatran with Hidden Power Ground. Though I could have taken a Heat Wave even at that point and still survived and be able to take him out next turn even if Sylveon went down to a Heat Wave though it would have been all up to damage rolls if he had decided to Sucker Punch my Landorus that turn and the RNG would be deciding the winner if he had gone for that move. So I took this game.
Sitting at 5-1, I’m guaranteed to be in the top 32 at least which would guarantee me Championship Points for this tournament which was a major relief as I’ll be much closer to a world invite even if things go downhill in the final match though I’ve gone this far, I’m not about to relax too much yet as I’ve still got a chance at top cut if I win the next round.
Overall Record: 5-1
Round 7 Vs. Chaiyawat Traiwichcha [Nontaro] (Thailand)
[Ranked 7th overall, finished swiss ranked at 6th place with a 6-1 record]
He brought:
I brought:
The moment of truth, whomever wins this match will have a record of 6-1 which guarantees him a place in the Top 8 Cut while whoever loses needs to depend on resistance for one of two things, being that one last person to be in top cut or failing that, have enough resistance to be in the top 16 rather than top 32 as top 16 will receive 92 Championship Points Vs. 56 Championship Points for the top 32. Being in Top Cut or the Top 16 would safely put me over the 200 Championship Points bar for a Worlds Day 1 Invite.
I’ve actually battled Chaiyawat quite a number of times since after Nationals as he’s quite active in asking for battles online so I know that this match is definitely going to be a tough one which isn’t so great on the nerves. So again, once we went into team preview, I see quite a standard team which means two things, probably won’t be seeing much surprises and its gonna be a hard and close battle. I went with my Landorus-Kangaskhan lead to be able to put out as much damage as I hopefully can from the get go with Cresselia and Sylveon at the back. Failing to take out his Heatran with my Power-Up Punch follow up after a Superpower was crucial and I forgot about Overheat the next turn which is why I kinda left it alone that turn which resulted in me losing my Kangaskhan. Taking the risk of him targeting the Cresselia slot or predicting my Protect on Sylveon in the face of an obvious Fake Out was also another risky play which didn’t end well for me. I had very little chance for recovery after that and Chaiyawat sure wasn’t going to give me an opening for one either and so I lost Round 7 bringing me to an overall record of 5-2. Congratz again Chaiyawat for making top cut.
Overall Record 5-2
With Zain who was sitting nearby telling me that he lost this round as well, I knew that I won’t have enough resistance to get myself into top cut and sure enough I ended up bubbling at 10th.
and with that, my regional run ended with me finishing at 10th place providing with 92 Championship Points bringing me to a grand total of 219 CP, safely above the 200 CP bar making me again the first Malaysian and only Malaysian so far to qualify for Worlds (though with the way the season is going so far, I’m quite sure a number of my friends will be joining me as world qualifiers soon and I won’t have to be the only Malaysian VG player at worlds next year unlike this year, yeay \0/ ).
See you all at San Francisco and I’m looking forward to VGC 2016 and let’s see how far I can go in that format.
Also thanks to Wilson and his team for organising the event and also thanks to the Comic Fiesta 2015 Committee for being such generous venue sponsors as well as supporting the Pokemon community for several years now. Also thanks everyone for the wonderful and fun time as well as all the nice memories.
Picture of “Team Bubbles” at the 2015 Malaysia VGC Regionals 2015 (Those who ranked 9th to 16th that didn’t have enough resistance to get into the top 8).
Here’s some battle videos of all my battles at London Regionals which I attended. I ended up finishing 4-3 ranking 31st out of 124 Master Division Players.
Currently still travelling around so this will just be a short and simple post compared to my usual long winded wall of text since I’ll be busy going from London to Bristol and then to Dublin, Ireland for a while before finally travelling back to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.
I was able to catch up with fellow South East Asian, Shang Loh from Singapore, who’s currently studying in the UK. Good luck in the UK for both your studies as well as for VGC.
My name is Zarif Ayman and I recently became the Champion of the first ever Asian VGC Nationals event in Singapore. A little bit of background on myself, I’m a Malaysian VGC player who is currently studying for a Master’s Degree at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. I started playing the game we all love in the days of Red and Blue like many others though I didn’t dive into the world of competitive Pokémon until after XY came out due to introduction of the easier breeding mechanics even though I was somewhat aware of competitive aspects of the game since generation 5.
Since I started competitive Pokémon, I have had some decent success though mostly in grassroots singles format tournaments in Malaysia though I dreamed about being successful in the official VGC format. With some satisfying results from the 2014 season where I was able to finish 81/442 at Aussie Nationals in my first year of VGC, I started the 2015 season with determination to work hard, be more active in the VGC scene and hopefully improve greatly on my tournament results and maybe become the first ever Malaysian to qualify and participate at VGC Worlds.
I was lucky that Aussie Nationals this year happened to fall on the weekend right after all my work for uni was due and after a poor performance at Melbourne Regionals, I decided that it would be the start of my redemption though the heavy workload and a last minute announcement that Nationals would run on a Best-of-3 format did not leave me much room to plan out my team though the Best-of-3 announcement made it much more straightforward. At the end of the day I ended up with a 6-3 finish and placing 57/320 overall. It wasn’t a finish I was happy with, but satisfying enough especially knowing that two of the people that I lost to made it to top cut.
With the winter semester holidays starting, I flew back to Malaysia to enjoy my holidays and with that decided to journey down to Singapore from Kuala Lumpur for the Asian Nationals that was confirmed recently at the time. With the organizers confirming that it will also be Best-of-3 throughout the entire tournament including the swiss rounds, I started work on improving the team I used at Aussie Nationals.
Nothing much to say about Kangaskhan really, she has always been my go to Mega for VGC and even though I’ve tried using other Megas, I’m most comfortable playing her so obviously I decided the core of my team has to be something I’m most comfortable using even though some of my friends was talking about how a lot of people would be prepared to fight Kangaskhan. Being something I’m used to using, I would also be used to fighting teams that was designed to fight against Kangaskhan. There’s nothing much to say about the EV spread really, I knew I won’t be comfortable with anything lower than max attack and I put just enough speed EVs to be able to outspeed Modest Heatran after I Mega and I put the leftover EVs in HP for some bulk.
For Amoonguss, I didn’t want to go with a minus speed nature simply because I wanted to be faster than other Amoonguss and I also wanted to minimize confusion damage from being hit by Swagger. I actually just went on the Nuggetbridge damage calculator and copied Keonspy Winter 2015 Amoonguss set and from testing and experience at Aussie Nationals, I was very satisfied with the bulk it had so I didn’t change anything.
I wanted a powerful Special Attacker and Sylveon looked like it was the obvious choice for me at the time and since I did not fully invest in Special Attack, I felt that I needed to use Choice Specs in order to be able to fully dish out consistent large damage. I found the EV spread on Nuggetbridge though it originally had less Special Attack and a bit of Speed though I decided that since a lot of times, I’ll be setting up Tailwind, I’ll just dump those Speed EVs into Special Attack so I can output more damage.
With the provided bulk, I was guaranteed to be able to survive a Double-Edge coming from either a Jolly Mega Salamence or a Jolly Mega Kangaskhan. Being able to survive a Jolly Double-Edge from Salamence was really important for me as during testing, most of my opponents didn’t bother to double target into Sylveon since they assumed Double-Edge would be able to take it out and being able to KO back with Hyper Voice from Sylveon was something I extremely liked.
252 Atk Aerilate Mega Salamence Double-Edge vs. 180 HP / 212 Def Sylveon: 154-183 (79.7 – 94.8%) — guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Double-Edge vs. 180 HP / 212 Def Sylveon: 162-191 (83.9 – 98.9%) — guaranteed 2HKO
I don’t actually remember where exactly I got the Suicune set from. I needed the Special Attack to be able to OHKO 4HP Landorus-T and with 20 Speed, I’ll be able to outspeed Adamant Choice Scarf Landorus-T once I have a Tailwind up. The decision to go with more Special Bulk rather than Physical Bulk helped me a lot throughout the course of the Tournament.
Click RSlide (Landorus-Therian) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 12 HP / 252 Atk / 92 Def / 4 SpD / 150 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Rock Slide
– Earthquake
– Knock Off
– Superpower
Nothing much to say here, it’s the standard Choice Scarf Landorus-T set. I simply took Amr97’s winter 2015 BANGxBANG set from the Nuggetbridge Damage Calculator which will allow me to survive a +1 Life Orb Sucker Punch from Bisharp as well as have enough Speed to be able to outspeed Weavile.
Heatran is the Pokémon I went for last simply because I really needed the Fire coverage as well as give me access to that Fire/Water/Grass core along with Suicune and Amoonguss. I’m not really good with using it and I really didn’t pick it much unless I feel that I really have to or it gives me a huge advantage. The choice of Focus Sash was a very last minute thing I did because it kept dying way too fast for me and when I decided to go for the Ground reducing berry, I always got hit by Fighting moves and vice versa so I just slapped on a Focus Sash on it since as long as it’s not something like Parental Bond hitting me on the other side, I would at least be able to dish out an attack.
Day 1: The Shark tank
Round 1 Vs. Yang Ze Guan [Jorm] Level51
The name sounded quite familiar though I had no idea who it was. I much later found out he’s Singapore’s infamous VGC player, Level51.
Game 1
He brought
I brought
The first match was pretty much my Mega Kangaskhan being faster than his Mega Kangaskhan and him not being able to handle Hyper Voice from my Sylveon until it was too late for him to recover. He also had Roseli Berry on his Sableye which helped it survive one Hyper Voice though by the time it came out, there was nothing it could do.
Game 2
He brought
I brought
He played much more defensively in the second match bringing in a substitute Heatran and super bulky Mega Venusaur as well as shuffling Landorus-T in and out for intimidate while slowly chipping away my team’s health though after putting everything he had besides Venusaur to sleep with spore, it was just a simple matter of eliminating everything before they wake up and double targeting Venusaur to net the KO. A critical hit on the mega Venusaur also helped me finish the job faster disallowing him any chance to try and win by slowly stalling my team to death which could or could not happen at that point depending on how bulky the Venusaur was though I think I could have killed it regardless.
Win 2-0
Round 2 Vs. Daniel Lee [Daniel]
Game 1
He brought
I brought
He went straight for Amoongus with his Zapdos and Kangaskhan bringing Kangaskhan into Hyper Voice KO range after some rocky helmet damage and recoil. Everything got destroyed by Double-Edge and Hyper Voice afterwards.
Game 2
He brought
I brought
He played the paraflinch game attempting to paralyze everything with Clefairy while I took down Clefairy’s partners and proceeded to use Rock Slide with Terrakion. Though with Suicune not paralyzed on my team, I set tailwind up to outspeed the Terrakion and net the win.
Win 2-0
Round 3 Vs. Liu Jain Tang Sayha [Sayha]
My next opponent was Sayha from Taiwan. I had no idea what to expect going into this match as I’ve heard the meta in Taiwan is quite different than South East Asia or Australia in general.
Game 1
He brought
I brought
I made pretty much went for all the obvious plays in this match and he called pretty much all of them giving him the momentum which I had very little chance to recover from. Though I dragged the match on in order to gain as much information as I can from his team.
Game 2
He brought
I brought
Since he called all the obvious plays the previous match, I decided to up my game predicting all his predictions to the obvious plays and responding appropriately forcing him into a defensive corner from which he wasn’t able to take back momentum from. Once his Safety Goggles Entei was out of the way, Amoongus was able to run wild with spore.
Game 3
He brought
I brought
My opponent didn’t seem to have been able to adapt to the change of pace, he still went for all the plays which counts on me making the obvious plays and with tailwind up, the only thing stopping Mega Kangaskhan from running wild fully was his Aegislash which after a snarl did not pose much of a threat to my team. I was able to take out Entei and Aegislash after he left his Aegislash in Sword form to wide guard against a possible Hyper Voice while I move to single target them with Scald and Shadow Ball respectively.
Win 2-1
Round 4 Vs. Max Lee [M]
I somehow ended on stream. It’s a very Se Jun Park Worlds 2014 ish team with the Mega Gyrados and scarfed Gardevoir while replacing the infamous Pachirisu with something much more suitable for the VGC2015 format in the form of Clefable for Follow Me support. I was quite nervous going on stream and at this point I was starting to become slightly tired from all the games as well as me fasting on the day so I was mostly feeling dry though I think I played quite well though looking back, I could have still played better.
You can view the whole match here:
Win: 2-1
Round 5 Vs. Yoko Taguma [Yoko ♣]
After looking at the pairings, I very much dreaded this match up. Yoko is quite a famous player in the South East Asian region having had solid performance in most tournaments that she attended in Singapore and Malaysia having top cut quite a few of them. Going into team preview, I recognize the team as the standard Japanese sand team which was quite popular at that time and I’ve faced such teams quite a number of times though it is quite a good team and with Yoko piloting it, I fully expect an uphill battle here.
Game 1
She brought
I brought
Nothing much to say about this game, I was being constantly read like a book here. Gained some valuable information here though after a few turns, I had little chance of winning though a critical hit knock off on Aegislash that took it out from full HP kind of gave me a little ray of hope though Yoko was already too far ahead at this point for me to struggle through and she wasn’t going to allow me to take momentum away from her.
Games 2
She brought
I brought
Game 2 saw the Sand part of Japanese sand making an appearance. I was able to spore her Tyranitar turn 1 and predict the switch into Excadrill the next turn sporing that same slot which allowed me some huge advantage being able to eventually take out her Tyranitar and Excadrill without them being able to wake up and do anything before being KOed.
Game 3
She brought
I brought
Game 3 was quite a long and intense match. She protected Salamence and Spored my Sylveon on the first turn. The next turn she used Hyper Voice chipping my Sylveon and doing major damage on my Amoonguss which did about 60-70% or so but I was then able to Spore her Salamence in exchange. I was then able to switch Kangaskhan in and I went straight for Amoongus to take it out since I can’t afford to have any other members of my team to be put to sleep at this point. Afterwards I still had one more Double-Edge on Rotom-W being Khan finally went down. I was afterwards able to setup tailwind with Suicune and clean up with Suicune and Sylveon.
Win 2-1
Round 6 Vs. Zulherryka Yusof [MewzxcVGC]
I actually hung out a bit and had some nice conversations with Zul before the tournament started while we were all waiting for registration to end and the tournament to start earlier in the day. We talked about how we both started playing competitive Pokémon around the time XY first came out though Zul was quite obviously much younger than I am. I actually thought he was a Senior at first before discovering he was in the Masters Division. We were both also quite nervous at this point about this game since we were at 5-0 and whomever won this game guarantees themselves a place in the Top 8 cut. Anyway diving into the match
Game 1
He brought
I brought
I made a huge mistake in this game of leaving the Cresselia alone for far too long allowing it to get several Calm. By late game, I wasn’t able to do much to get rid of the Cresselia and lost the game.
Game 2
He brought
I brought
In game 2, I decided that if I was going to take back a game, I had to go with some hyper offensive leads. I very much still had lots of trouble with his Cresselia though I was able to quickly get rid of all his other Pokémon. Having the advantage of numbers, I was able to slowly chip away at the Cres while limiting the amount of damage it could do with Snarl before bringing Kangaskhan in to finally take it out winning me game 2.
Game 3
He brought
I brought
Not wanting to deal with Cresselia like I did in the last two games, I went with a double physical lead with Mega Kangaskhan and Landorus-T to quickly get rid of it double targeting it with Knock Off and Double-Edge in turn 1 though my Mega Kangaskhan got paralyzed by Thundurus in return. His Mega Charizard Y finally making an appearance in this game though made me worry a bit. A late game flinch from Rock Slide on his Heatran allowed me to avoid being hit by what was probably going to be an Overheat on my Landorus-T allowing me to keep it around long enough until he was not able to protect his Mega Charizard Y any longer giving me the win I needed to secure myself a spot in Top Cut.
Win 2-1
I was super excited at this point, I was able to go through 6 rounds of swiss undefeated which guarantees me a spot in Top Cut which also guarantees me top 8 Championship Points which means that along with the CP I already have, I’m almost guaranteed a spot in Asia Pacific’s Top 18 unless a bunch of players decides to go play in and gain CP from some other National event outside of APAC (which at that point, US Nationals was the only one left as far as I can tell). We were given a short dinner break at this point. I was super tired from the long day and feeling very dry since I had been fasting throughout the entire day and I was able to quickly go to a nearby supermarket to get myself some drinks and snacks as it was finally time for me to break my fast. The most important thing for me at that point was really just to get a lot of water to drink as I was more feeling dehydrated more than hungry or anything.
Coming back from my short trip to the supermarket with my friends, I saw that pairings for the final swiss round has been posted and my opponent was…
Round 7 Vs. Wai Yin Low [Yin]
Low Wai Yin is an extremely big name in the South East Asian VGC Community. She previously earned herself a spot in Worlds by going through the gruelling LCQ before SEA had any official support for VGC and she had also have some solid results in many tournaments throughout the season including winning Malaysia’s first VGC Regionals. At this point however, since I was tired and had already guaranteed my spot in Top Cut, I didn’t really play very seriously and played more to gain information on her team for use during the Top Cut matches on the next day. Throughout the game, I divided my attention between attempting to gain information on her team as well as looking at the match that was being streamed at that time which was between Jaryl Chan and Phil Nguyen (Boomguy) since at the time, it was thought that only the winner of that match would get into top cut and it was a very intense match (though Phil who lost eventually still made it into top cut due to some very high resistance). Anyway on to my quick games with Wai Yin.
Game 1
She brought
I brought
Game 2
She brought
I brought
Both games was pretty much very straightforward really, nothing super exciting, we exchanged blow after blow until my Pokémon eventually all got knocked out much faster than hers. I tried to play in a way where I would have some chance to find out whether some of my Pokémon were faster or slower than hers and how much damage some stuff would do but there’s really not much excuse on how poorly I played this round.
I apologize to Wai Yin for not taking our games more seriously and I did kind of wasted a chance I had to battle seriously with one of the best VGC players of the region though I was very tired and hungry at this point and didn’t have much energy to thing ahead that much though I gained some valuable experience from our match.
Lose 0-2
Finished Swiss with 6 Wins and 1 Lost and got myself into the Top Cut.
With the long day finally finished and me unexpectedly making into day 2, we quickly went back so that we would be able to reach our hotel area and get some proper dinner before the shops around closed. I was actually extremely tired after day 1, but after dinner and a good shower, I decided I should spend some time looking back on Wai Yin’s team as well look up some information on other Top Cut players that is available online as well as watching back some of their matches that was featured on stream during the swiss rounds on day 1. I ended spending quite some time before eventually getting some sleep.
Day 2: Top Cut
The dream, its real.
I woke up for day 2 still quite tired from day 1 though feeling much less nervous about my matches for the day as I was happy enough to make it into Top cut which as I said earlier pretty much guarantees me a top 18 spot in the Asia Pacific giving me my Worlds invite. I’m also aware that even if I were to win the tournament, I won’t be getting the paid invite since I won’t be able to catch up to the points of several players to get myself that Top 2 in the region in Championship Points even with a win. Still though, I was determined to try my best since I was the only Malaysian left in the tournament and any further win from here on out will be icing on the cake with also an increase in prizes I could get as well as some SWAG points I guess haha. It would be a battle where us foreigners try to take the Nationals crown from our host Singaporeans as each battle in the Top 8 involved a Singaporean against either an Australian, Malaysian or Hong Kong players.
So my opponent in my top 8 match is Singapore’s Jaryl Chan. Jaryl is another player who has had some good performance throughout the season leading up to Nationals. I actually fought him before during Malaysia’s first ever Premier Challenge where I was only able to turn the game around from what I had thought had been a lost game due to a huge misprediction on his part.
Top 8 Vs. Jaryl Chan [Jaryl]
Game 1
He brought
I brought
I went straight for his Crobat while he protected Charizard. I knew I couldn’t stop him from getting a Tailwind up, but I at least wanted to get rid of it before it caused me more trouble. From there a Fire Blast miss on my Landorus-T meant that his Charizard Y had to eat a Rock Slide and I was able to easily KO his Landorus-T and Conkeldurr with my Suicune and Sylveon respectively while tanking hits from them.
Game 2
He brought
I brought
Knowing that he would very likely protect his Charizard turn Y against my Landorus-T & Kangaskhan Lead, I went straight for a double target on his Cresselia slot to take it out before it could do anything troublesome. I was able to maneuver myself into a good position to start taking out his Pokémon being able to safely bring in Sylveon without taking any damage and having done some chip damage on most of his team while putting his Mega Charizard Y at -1 Special Attack through a Snarl though he was able to land a Critical hit Fire Blast of Sylveon the next turn OHKOing it from full health before I could do anything. I wasn’t able to recover from there losing game 2.
Game 3
He brought
I brought
Jaryl played extremely well during game 3 holding on to is momentum for majority of the game and I did some poor plays during some turns though I was able to keep myself from falling behind. Halfway into the game though, I was in a bad position and I recall thinking to myself that I had only two ways of winning. Either Jaryl’s Charizard Y needed to miss a crucial Fire Blast which he was obviously going to take, or I needed him to go over his allocated turn time for a third time. Players only had 45 seconds for their turn, being an untethered event, judges needed to manually enforce this and Jaryl generally takes a long time to think while selecting moves, he had already received two warnings for going over time at that point and a third time would have resulted in a game loss for him. A crucial rock slide flinch on his Conkeldurr however gave me the chance I needed to turn the entire game around as he wasn’t able to KO my Landorus-T that turn with an ice punch allowing me to seal the game from there.
Win 2-1
Top 4 Vs. Edward Cheung [ルギア]
My next opponent would be Edward Cheung from Hong Kong
It was decided that our match would be put on stream and you can watch a recording of it through the following link
Looking at the team during Team Preview, I knew it was going to be very hard for me to win this match with some bad matchups for me.
Game 1
He brought
I brought
Recognizing Amoongus as a huge threat to my team, I went straight for it in turn 1 with a Double-Edge which a critical hit netted me the OHKO on Amoonguss and allowed me to hit his Thundurus with a Single target Hyper Voice putting it into KO range for the following turn. In return to this, I allowed both my Kangaskhan and Sylveon to be paralyzed by his Thundurus though at this point, the momentum was hugely in my favour and Edward wasn’t able to recover giving me the win for game 1.
Game 2
He brought
I brought
I knew that trick room Mega Gardevoir was something that was being used quite a lot nowadays though I noticed that his Mega Gardevoir was quite fast, I decided that it could probably be a good idea to set up tailwind and maybe since its fast, it won’t use Trick Room. This proved to be a huge mistake on my part. That was a downfall which I couldn’t recover from.
Game 3
He brought
I brought
Halfway into the game, I pretty much knew that there was no way I was gonna win at that point. Things was bad for me though remembering some wise words, I kept calm and clicked Rock Slide and a series of rock slide flinches totally changed the tide of the game, three Rock Slide flinches to be exact. As well as him going after Suicune with a giga drain for some reason instead of using Ice Beam on Landorus during a turn where Rock Slide missed his Ludicolo but flinched Heatran and failed to KO Suicune with said Giga Drain. Sorry for the Rock Slide flinches Edward.
Win 2-1
There’s no way to sugarcoat it, a lot of hax and luck on my part was involved in me winning my Top 4 match. Sorry Edward, though I am extremely happy to be able to make it to the Finals and have a chance at the tittle.
Finals Vs. Zulherryka Yusof [MewzxcVGC]
Wow I somehow reached the Finals and my opponent is Zul again whom I faced during the swiss rounds in an intense 3 game battle. At this point, we were pretty much familiar with each other’s teams having fought before and watched matches on stream of each other. We had kind of a short break while the Junior and Senior division final matches was happening on stage before it was our turn. It was quite surprising for both of us to reach this far into the tournament compared to some other big names in the tournament.
If you’re interested in watching our entire match, you can do so here
Game 1
He brought
I brought
I went with my Mega Kangaskhan + Landorus-T leads here since from our match during swiss, Cresselia gave me the most trouble I wanted nothing to do with that since this set of leads is the most effective thing I have to get rid of it fast. Breelom is a huge problem for my team especially if starts sporing my mons. It was somewhat a relief when he paralyzed some of my mons as even though I’m now slower, I can’t be put to sleep. With that in mind, I was able to cover my bases quite well and with the RNG not stopping me from moving due to my paralysis, I was able win game 1.
Game 2
He brought
I brought
I saw no reason to change what I was doing so I went with the same leads again this game. He did a very questionable play of switching his Charizard into the Cresselia spot as I could have used Rock Slide that turn or I’ve also showed that I can KO Cresselia with a double target with Landorus-T’s Knock Off and a Double-Edge from my Mega Kangaskhan. In any case, that resulted in Zul’s Charizard being KOed by my double target before it could do anything at all meaning that he lost his Mega and sun setter turn 1 giving me a huge advantage. A double switch into Suicune and Sylveon helped me cover my bases well from there on fighting against special attackers which are good targets for my Suicune’s Snarls. From there all I had to do was get rid of everything else he had before switching Landorus-T and Mega Kangaskhan back in to deal with his Cresselia and I had the win.
Won 2-0
I did it somehow, I actually won a National event further solidifying my Worlds invite as well as make our Malaysian VGC community proud. It was an extremely fun and happy experience. I was able to gain a lot of experience from this tournament and also meet so many players from all over Asia through it. If only there was more time to hang out with everyone after the tournament though since most of us had flights back to our homes that night, we had to leave almost immediately afterwards with just time for a quick dinner. Thanks to the organizers who made these all possible and I hope we can all meet up again in the future whether at more local Asia Pacific tournaments or at Worlds. I’ve meet so many great people through VGC and am extremely proud of how far we have all grown as a community. Thanks as well to all my friends especially fellow KL Raikous who have helped me with training, won’t have made it this far without you guys.
Wow if you actually went through and read the entire post, thank you so much for taking your time. I’m honestly not so great with summarising events so there’s a huge wall of text here. Thanks and look forward for more from me =) See you all in Boston for Worlds.
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