Saxlad's stuff edited

	London International

	The European Internationals were held a fortnight ago at The Excel Conference Centre in London, and what a tournament it was! Players flew in from all over the World  to represent their countries, and try to claim both cash prizes and valuable Championship Points that would see them closer to the ultimate goal of reaching the 2017 World Championships. The event featured players from around the world from Australia to Argentina and Japan and introduced some new tournament features to VGC not seen widespread before. There was drama abound, inside and outside of the game, and by the competition’s end Miguel Marti del Torre (Sekiam) was crowned the Champion. In this article, were going to look at some of the new features, some of the drama and a lot of the meta to find out what really went on in London, and how it might shape the metagame to come.

	New Mechanics and Team Sheet Drama

	The big new mechanic for VGC during the tournament was the introduction of carry-over swiss, namely that all records after day 1 would not be expunged as per usual, but would carry over to day 2. This meant anyone on an X-2 record needed to go X-0 on day 2 to be sure of making cut, or to lose no more than one match if they wanted to scrape in on resistance! Although met with a lukewarm reception by the players, the system worked well as it rewarded the players who had done the best in day 1, and therefore rewarded a performance across the event as opposed to two separate days. The player’s reception to this however was marred by lack of information and misinformation about how this would actually work. On day 1 very few of the judging and organised play staff seemed to know about the mechanics of the carry-over swiss, and whether resistance would carry-over with records. This meant the fact resistance was not going to be carried over was little known throughout the players leading to misunderstandings between the players and the judges, which ultimately marred some players experience of the tournament.

	There was very little drama to do with the organisation and gameplay of the tournament, which is almost a first for large UK tournaments known for underleveled Hydreigon and Water Sport Kyogre causing mass repairs throughout the tournament. However a couple of aspects of the tournament rules caused consternation online and at the tournament itself. It became apparent at the end of day 1 that quite a few of the top players, and no less than 3 of the 2016 Worlds Top 4, had fallen foul of the rules regarding team sheet accuracy. The rule states that if a Pokemon or item does not match the team sheet then a judge should “Remove incorrect Pokémon or item from party and apply a game loss.“ This rule primarily exists to prevent people changing their battle box mid tournament. This was proved to be easily done by a player who managed to input a whole team from VGC 2016 into his locked battle box before the tournament, although he used a legal team at the event.
10.	Whilst the rules in this case are fairly clean cut, some of the players questioned whether all the cases were punished fairly in this way. Some cases were clean cut with players writing wrong moves and natures onto their Pokemon, however other cases were a little closer to the knuckle with players debating whether a Miracle Seed and Meadow Plate mix-up should have been so harshly penalised considering that the item has the same effect in the game.

	https://twitter.com/13Yoshi37/status/807369811047153666

	The Constant Question of Resistance

	Once again the question of resistance came back as a topic of conversation for players, especially in day 2. Initially this was in question to whether resistance would transfer to day 2 with player’s records, which would have made it almost impossible for some of the lower place X-2 players to have even made the Top 8. Although this didn’t happen resistance still stayed in conversation as players debated whether it should ever be used to decide a Top 8 at a large competition.

	https://twitter.com/WolfeyGlick/status/807650213712318464

	Resistance is not as black and white as just keeping it or getting rid of it. The whole point of resistance is a method to award players for playing harder schedules (based on their opponents Win/Loss record) and the system is overall a fair one; someone who has to beat harder opponents has done something more valuable on average. However it does fall over at certain points in high-level competition where players who win 75% of their sets can fail to make the top 8 due to the results of the people that they played on that particular day. The real question we need to answer is, what system would be better to reward players. Maybe choosing an X-2 or X-3 cut to make it through to the single elimination rounds would even up the system, but still would be infuriating to players who miss top 8 due to a bad matchup in their first single elimination round. Another point to consider is that some players who had a good resistance at X-3 were able to get more CP than their day 2 counterparts by playing top 64 in the main event and then doing well at the Midseason Showdown side event, whilst players who made it to day 2 but (with a few exceptions) went X-5 or worse came away with less points from the event. You could fix this by assigning points to records as opposed to placings, but a change to resistance and the way competitive tournaments work is a big discussion, and a discussion for another article as there are many intricate arguments for and against the current system.

The Ever-Changing (Day 2) Metagame

	After only two weeks of play, the metagame going into the London International was always going to be extremely volatile. The early season standard team had already been established with a core of Tapu Koko, Garchomp, Celesteela, Marowak and Gyarados doing well at the few events before the International including winning a Premier Challenge in New Jersey and coming second in the first UK Premier Challenge. However, other teams came to the fore in the days leading up to the event. Some decided to include the fire water grass core, and others used this meta’s variant of the rain team, “Double Duck”, a team that combined the rain setting abilities of Pelipper with the Swift Swim ability of Golduck, and an extremely strong rain boosted Z-Hydro Pump.

	As predicted many people bought the early meta standard core and many of these teams made it to day 2, however lots of these teams had their own variants and techs for other matchups. One of these techs that did really well was the inclusion of Gigalith into the team to combat other weather. As Gigalith’s Sandstorm does not affect Celesteela or Garchomp, it gives a way to break the opposing teams focus sashes and neutralise their weather a big help to many weather focused matchups. Another surprising Pokémon used with this team was Gastrodon. Many people had written off Gastrodon in this meta, due to the loss of the Earth Power tutor and generally bad stats, however it found a niche on many teams helping to combat rain. Switching in Gastrodon would completely neutralise the power of “Double Duck” with its Storm Drain ability making it extremely hard for those teams to do any damage whilst Gastrodon was on the field. Gastrodon’s bulk was put to good use as well with people opting for recover to increase its survivability, as well as Toxic and in one team Z-Stockpile, a Z-Powered version which also fully recovers Gastrodon’s health, as well as applying a defence and special defence boost, making it even harder to take down, especially if the other team has no super effective moves to combat it with.

	Players also looked to other Pokémon to combat standard teams, one being the most used Pokemon in the top cut, Alolan-Marowak. A-Marowak whilst being slow has the ability Lightningrod, which allows it to redirect single target electric attacks to it and makes it immune to them, a boon to the electric weak Celesteela and Gyarados, while allowing Tapu Koko to use Discharge next to it. However A- Marowak was also used on other teams to help combat the threat of Tapu Koko, Raichu, Xurkitree and other electric-type Pokémon. People ran A-Marowak in many different ways, from Jolly to try and outspeed A-Muk and other threats, to running very little attack power and lots of bulk to survive combos that would usually bring it down. Either way A-Marowak was the most used Pokemon in day 2 for a reason and one of the most effective.
	Another surprisingly effective Pokémon was the Ultra Beast Kartana which was the most used Ultra Beast in the Top 8. Trainers sought to take advantage of Kartana’s solid typing (Grass/Steel) and extremely high base attack stat, whilst covering a very low special defence stat. This was done in many ways, with lots of trainers running Focus Sash on Kartana, while others, including Semifinallist Ben Kyriakou, used Assault Vest, allowing Kartana to survive a whole host of special moves and be able to use all of its coverage moves, as opposed to having to drop one for Protect as a lot of sashed Kartana’s did.

	The Top 8!

	The top 8 in this tournament provided a tale of two styles of team, Offence against Stall. Offence just made up more of Top 8 with Ben, William, Nils, Tommy and Michele running offensive teams whilst Tobias, Miguel and Nico ran very stall based teams with lots of bulky Pokemon including Celesteela, Porygon-2, Gastrodon Magnezone and Tapu Bulu. It’s interesting to note, that in a lot of cases the more offensive teams fell to the teams that had more bulk. The playstyle of Miguel and Nico allowed for many more switches, safe in the knowledge that if their opponent just attacked into their Pokemon they could come away with minimal damage and make their position on the board better. The offensive teams were less able to play the switch game, and so had to make predictions on which Pokémon would switch in where to wrest the momentum of the game from the opponent. Whilst there were some unfortunate automatic win conditions in the top 8, that saw Tommy Cooleen’s Ducks paired vs Michele and his Sash Xurkitree, many of the Top Cut matches went right down to the wire, a testament to the skill of all the players involved. A personal favourite of mine is the match between Miguel and Ben, in which Ben took the initiative beautifully in the first game before Miguel adapted amazingly to produce a stunning finale, if you only have time to watch one game, I’d implore you to watch that one! (include link here)

Unfortunately, while the finals was an amazing tussle between two fantastic players suffered due to the lack of offence on both teams. Even though Nico was running Psychium-Z on his Tapu Lele, which normally gives it massive stallbreaking potential, Nico was almost unable to touch Miguel in Round 1, with a lot of Nico’s stall potential wiped out by Miguel’s Toxic Gastrodon. However, Nico identified that his Celesteela was faster and was able to win the Celesteela Speed race and stall out Miguel’s Celesteela in Game 2. This took so long that the game ran to its 50 minutes in the third game and was called into its +3 turns, with Miguel just managing to do slightly more damage than Nico and take the crown. Whilst both players played extremely well, it was unfortunate that the final of the first big competition of the year came down to a stall war and I for one hope the rest of the metagame doesn’t follow suit.

Surprising Moments!

	Whilst there weren’t many surprising moments during the tournament a few stand out to mention. We learned in Day 1 that due to the lack of sun and lack of knockouts from ice moves, freeze stands to be one of the most deadly status conditions in this year. Although only a 10% chance from most ice moves, freeze happened liberally throughout the tournament, the most prominent happening when Matt Carter managed 4 sets of double freeze with Blizzard against Giovanni Costa, sealing the set in Matt’s favour and helping to send Gio tumbling out of day 1. Whilst freeze was rearing its ugly head, Poison and Toxic were also proving themselves as another extremely devastating status. With Alolan Muk receiving Poison Touch and Poison Jab a 51% poison chance awaited anyone unlucky enough to be on the end of a Poison Jab from Muk, which soon whittled down teams and made it difficult for them to function well. Another version of the poison was Toxic. Run mainly by Gastrodon and Porygon-2, this made autolosses in the end game turn into auto-wins as toxic put the opposing Pokémon on a timer whilst being able in both cases to recover 50% of its HP a turn, a death knell for most Pokémon.

	Another surprising strategy we saw in high level play was the use of Perish Song Politoed. This move on Politoed allowed players to break the Celesteela wall that we saw a lot in gameplay by bringing the game down to an extremely slow and bulky Politoed vs Celesteela. In most cases Celesteela being unable to touch Politoed as it closed out the win. While Perish Song wasn’t very common for most players due to no Pokemon in Alola having the ability Shadow Tag, it had its place and may well become a very viable technique to stop stall teams throughout this year’s metagame.

As it was the London International was a major tournament for this years metagame however Coming from a volatile metagame we have seen all sorts of teams with lots of well recognised Pokemon, and less recognised Pokemon both do well. Whilst people will undoubtedly use teams inspired by this event, the metagame remains volatile and wide open in a way not seen since VGC 2014. I look forward to seeing what people use throughout the season, and whether the London Internation really does have any lasting effect on VGC 2017.