'Matt' edition
This is gonna be a continuation/expansion of a piece I wrote in the past about my Sutton Regionals run in the spring .Hopefully it'll be more in depth and cover everything I want to cover so get ready for a behemoth piece of writing. It's gonna be a doozy to get everything down so I hope you enjoy it when its finished. On top of my own, I'm going to see if I can get other members of the group to contribute their own story to make a sort of mini series prior to worlds 2016.
I started playing Pokemon casually way back in 1999 when I was a wee lad and was gifted a copy of Pokemon Yellow and a Game boy colour for my fourth birthday. Since then I have played every generation of Pokemon up to now and I still enjoy it as a young adult. I'm unsure if I would enjoy it still if I hadn't found myself in the competitive VGC scene so I owe that quite a bit.
I first dipped my feet into competitive play around 2007 with Pokemon Battle Revolution, if you even want to call it competitive with all the Darkrai flying around spamming dark void. (sounds familiar) While I was absolutely awful at it I learnt the basics and how to use items somewhat effectively. I didn't touch competitive again for a very long time as I was unaware of the VGC in the UK as it was still a small thing and wasn't advertised very strongly
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That was until 2012 came around and I attended my first VGC event which happened to be Nationals. I got absolutely creamed and knocked out instantly with single elimination brackets which sucked. But I liked the atmosphere and was determined to get better.(I still am) Sadly in 2013 the UK still didn't get many events outside of nationals so I spent most of the down time finding out who I was as a player. I avidly remember 2013 as my snowflake year. I used incredibly questionable things and still won a fair deal so naturally I thought this was how I would progress. Naturally I've learnt this isn't the case but I keep myself open to the stranger choices. UK nats 13 I finished 6-3 and was incredibly pleased with myself, which looking back is strange as I get upset with myself at 6-3 nats finishes nowadays.
Mon of the season 2012-2013:
I loved Hailroom so so much. I wasn't the best at it but I felt right at home with it. Maybe one day it'll be good again.
Onto 14 and the snowflake train was loaded and ready to blast through and get me my first worlds invite. For anyone that knows me you're probably laughing at how that year ended up but for the rest I went 3-0 to 3-5 at nationals from raw RNG hatred. I was never going to play mons again but anyone who has tried to quit knows full well how hard that is. The withdrawal games in the winter were probably the most important games of my life progression wise. I learnt how to minimize RNG so that I don't suffer the same fate at a large tournament ever again. At the time I wanted to throw punches around, but at the time of writing, I'm honestly glad I got murked by double freezes and heat wave burns. Everyone needs a really bad tournament RNG wise to fully understand how it works and how to bounce back and keep a strong head after a bout with RNG goes horribly wrong.
Mon of the season 2014:
Goodra is the biggest accident of all time. Accidentally putting on a choice scarf and winning that tournament was the best. Hope to use you again in the future. S L U R P F R E N
And then 2015 came around and with it, UK's first real 'circuit' with PC's and Regionals. Kinda. We had very few PC's and one regional. But it was better than last year so we made the most of it. Over the course of the year I managed to attend 2 PC's one Regional and 2 Nationals. This was also the first year I sat down and used what I personally felt were the best Pokemon and made an actual team. Naturally Kangaskhan was going to return along with favourites Heatran and Cresselia from 2013. My stronger choices in Pokemon made a massive difference in how I perceived the game as a whole and it did me a world of good. It also got me stronger results than previous years alongside much more experience in a tournament setting. While I barely missed worlds that year I wasn't upset. I had learnt a lot and was more determined than ever to finally achieve my goal from day 1 of play. To make worlds.
Mon of the season 2015:
Oh Kang, you absolute babe, I will continue to be carried by you for years to come. You're the stronkest there ever was <3
And now here we are in 2016, arguably the easiest year to get an invite to the world championships. If you can stand the format enough to even bother getting the CP required that is. I started this year with massive excitement personally as I really enjoyed playing the Ubers Tier in Smogon inbetween seasons. I deluded myself into thinking it would be an easy ride with my 'knowledge' of these Pokemon aquired from singles. I was very wrong and got blown all the way back for so so long. I'm not ashamed to say I was incredibly frustrated by the way the format played early on and simply didn't want to play it. I tried every possible combination and nothing worked. Everything clashed with the way I play, Xdon especially which was hyped as being the greatest of all time. I was in a hole but attended the Glasgow regional anyways, just to experience what the format felt like in a real life setting. I ended up getting my worst ever finish and a Flu to top it all off.
But with this huge embarrassing finish sitting on me and having the feeling everyone was laughing at me. I got up and kept trying and that's where I started the circuit properly. Similar to VGC14's national finish, I needed a terrible placing to progress as a player and Glasgow was just that. I owe it in that sense. (Not the flu it gave me however, that was rotten.)
So, completely ill and almost unconscious from lack of sleep,feeling sad and a nasty flu, I was sat in the coach station with Tom @thesaxlad trying to figure out what went wrong and simultaneously throwing pokemon in a teambuilder. It all went dark after that and I remember being ill for a while. However, I remembered the mons that were in the teambuilder and gave them a try on showdown. That's when I started getting results. (The results up to Regionals are covered in the appropriate entry in this blog.)
Mon of the season 2016:
You don't know how much I love this thing. I cant put it into words how much work it has put in over the season and how much it will hopefully continue to put in. Thank you Evil Birb Fren. <3
After the Sutton regional finish I was still short on CP, sitting on around 208. Luckily for me there were some PC's and another MSS I could attend before having to go nats or bust on the circuit. The PC's I attended were rather small and not worth going into detail about but I achieved second place and then top 4 in one weekend bumping up the CP further. Leaving me in a position to clinch worlds with a top 16 at the MSS over a top4 that would of been required without the PC points. At the MSS I 100% went 4-2 and most definitely didn't throw the last game to a massive nerd who needed top 4 for his own worlds <3 Without joking around I managed to finish '4-2' in 14th place. I had finally done it, I had made worlds. It was a strange feeling, and I didn't know what to do with myself. So obviously I drank lots of alcohol and ate greasy chicken! When I had recovered from my binge, I still wasn't sure what to do with myself. So I decided to attempt to shoot for a paid trip with a massive run at nationals. It was ambitious but it was worth a try. (Stranger things have happened)
MVP of the month:
I've never liked Whimsicott, its always been an ugly puff ball thing that annoys me every time I see it. But with throwing a Life orb on it. It made my worlds dream happen. Thanks I guess?
With nothing but a PC in the way of UK nationals and my chance for gold I went all out at the PC and ended up winning 'undefeated' (I lost a game but it didn't count because worst TO) I was super confident for nationals but not super confident about Bo3 swiss all day. I felt that I would burn out really hard near the end. Thankfully I didn't showing myself I've come a long way from when three Bo3's in a row would make me want to sleep. I ended up going 6-3 from some delicious justice in the form of Thunder Wave. A move I've been rampantly and indiscriminately spamming for years. Doesn't matter if your a Aerodactyl or a Munchlax, you're gonna get zapped with it. So with karma slapping me in the face and crushing my dreams for paid you'd think I'd be more upset. I am not, VGC14 nationals taught me to not get angry at this game and I refuse to be. I lost my chance to get paid, however unlikely it was, (If a mandibuzz can get top 4 so can I) but I'm still here and I'm half ready for worlds. I will be attending so get ready to be paralysed if you face me >:]
When worlds is over I'll make another post detailing what I used (it's gonna be funky) Till then...ba bye.
PS: wanna thank all my frens for smacking me when I snowflake too hard and for being nasty to me when I do well. It keeps me going and its appreciated.
PSS: I havent played a single game of VGC16 on Battlespot all year and I have 471CP. Doesn't matter where you practise just that you do.
tl;dr: You're only as good as you want to be. It may take time but you'll get there in the end.
-Matt
