Pokemon 20th Anniversary Tournament
On 27th February, the Pokemon game series celebrates its 20th anniversary. To celebrate this here on TSR, we're having a pokemon tournament with a grand prize of a £20 amazon voucher.
We'll be using Pokemon Showdown (an online battle simulator run from your web browser using the setup from the latest generation of games) with Smogon ORAS OU rules (detailed in the spoiler below).
Sign-ups will be available until 12noon on Saturday 30th January, with a planned tournament size of up to 64 competitors in a straight knockout format. In the event of there being an uneven number of competitors, there will be a round robin group of 3 competitors, each battling each other once - scoring 1 point for a win and the competitor with the best overall record will progress.
Once your fixture is drawn, you'll have a week to organise a time with your opponent in this thread. If no battle is successfully arranged and completed then the winner will be decided by a coin toss.
Register your interest below.
Pleased to announce that the prize has been confirmed as a £20 amazon voucher.
We'll be using Pokemon Showdown (an online battle simulator run from your web browser using the setup from the latest generation of games) with Smogon ORAS OU rules (detailed in the spoiler below).
Sign-ups will be available until 12noon on Saturday 30th January, with a planned tournament size of up to 64 competitors in a straight knockout format. In the event of there being an uneven number of competitors, there will be a round robin group of 3 competitors, each battling each other once - scoring 1 point for a win and the competitor with the best overall record will progress.
Once your fixture is drawn, you'll have a week to organise a time with your opponent in this thread. If no battle is successfully arranged and completed then the winner will be decided by a coin toss.
Spoiler
Register your interest below.
Pleased to announce that the prize has been confirmed as a £20 amazon voucher.
(edited 8 years ago)
Scroll to see replies
Here's a quick guide for anyone new to this sort of pokemon battling, feel free to ask if you have any questions!
Pokemon Online is a battle simulator that precisely replicates the battle system used in Nintendo's series of Pokemon games. You are able to choose and customise your Pokémon team with full control over the options and mechanics present in the games and battle instantly with other players through your web browser or the downloadable app versions on Mac and PC.
For several years Pokemon Online and the battling community Smogon have partnered to provide the most popular source of Pokémon battling outside of the 3DS games themselves.
Smogon is the largest community of competitive Pokemon battling, and their formats or "metagames" have become the most commonly accepted sets of rules for playing Pokemon battles by. These rulesets are intended to provide the fair and balanced playing fields that minimise the influence of luck and try to keep the focus on the players' team composition and skill.
OverUsed, more commonly abbreviated to OU, is widely regarded as the "standard" format for Pokémon battling. It is characterised by primarily restricting access to the the most overpowered elements of the game that would otherwise dominate and unbalance the wider metagame. This essentially boils down to a concise banlist which can be found here- if it's on that list, it's off limits, if it's not there, you can use it on your teams.
For the most part if you've played a recent Pokémon game you'll probably be familiar with almost all aspects of the Pokémon Online teambuilder when it comes to choosing the attributes of each pokemon- species, moves, abilities, items, and so on. However there are two attributes that go largely unmentioned in the core game series and are never full explained, and those are EVs (effort values) and IVs (individual values). However both have a significant effect on the stats of your Pokémon and for a pokemon tournament, knowing how they work is very helpful!
*EVs are most commonly gained through battling other pokemon, with each species awarding a Pokémon EV points for a particular stat when it makes them faint (for example Pikachu gives the victorious Pokémon two speed EVs). For every 4 EVs gained in a stat, that stat is raised by 1 point. A Pokémon can gain up to 510 EVs total, with a maximum of 255 EVs in a single stat (however because EVs are only useful in multiples of 4, the maximum effective EVs per stat is 252).
So a quick bit of maths shows us that if you gain 252 EV points in one stat, that stat will be 64 points higher than if it had none. This is obviously a massive increase, and shows the importance of good allocation of EVs. For example if you have an aggressive but frail Pokémon like Talonflame, EVs are best invested into its attack and speed stats, since its poor defences will not benefit from them very much while being of no use at all in SpAtt if no special attacking moves are chosen.
*IVs also influence stats, but rather than being gained each pokemon has them randomly decided at the moment it is obtained (or, if bred from an egg, from the moment the egg is laid). A pokemon has between 0 and 31 IVs in each stat, with each IV representing one stat point, so a Pokémon with 30 attack IVs will have 5 more attack points than a pokemon with 25 IVs that's raised in the exact same way.
For the most part Pokémon Online makes this simple by defaulting all IVs to their maximum of 31 for the highest possible stat line, however there are a few instances where it is beneficial to lower one or more values. For example Pokémon that do not use physical attacks may choose to minimise their attack IVs to minimise the damage they take if they suffer from the Confuse condition, or speed may be reduced to make the Pokémon as slow as possible for using moves where going last is beneficial, or if the player chooses to use Trick Room to make the slowest pokemon attack first instead.
The other main reason to change IVs is that they are responsible for determining the type and power level of the move Hidden Power. The formula for this move is rather complicated, but if you do want to use Hidden Power on one of your Pokémon you just need to choose the version with the desired type on the move selection part of the teambuilder and Pokémon Online will adjust their IVs automatically.
*While the general idea of natures is explained, that they increase the maximum value of one stat and decrease another (there are also neutral natures that change no stats), the exact amount is not mentioned in the games. That amount is 10%, so quite a good chunk! As a general rule it is best to choose a nature that does increase and decrease a stat, as almost every moveset of a pokemon will benefit while having one unused stat that can afford to be lowered.
If this is your first taste of multiplayer battling, or just want to get more competitive to improve your chances of winning the tournament, be sure to spend some time on smogon.com. They have tons of articles and guides, as well as a "strategy pokedex" with examples of the most effective sets for each Pokémon. It's a great source of information and should give you some information to start building your teams!
Pokemon Online is a battle simulator that precisely replicates the battle system used in Nintendo's series of Pokemon games. You are able to choose and customise your Pokémon team with full control over the options and mechanics present in the games and battle instantly with other players through your web browser or the downloadable app versions on Mac and PC.
For several years Pokemon Online and the battling community Smogon have partnered to provide the most popular source of Pokémon battling outside of the 3DS games themselves.
Smogon is the largest community of competitive Pokemon battling, and their formats or "metagames" have become the most commonly accepted sets of rules for playing Pokemon battles by. These rulesets are intended to provide the fair and balanced playing fields that minimise the influence of luck and try to keep the focus on the players' team composition and skill.
OverUsed, more commonly abbreviated to OU, is widely regarded as the "standard" format for Pokémon battling. It is characterised by primarily restricting access to the the most overpowered elements of the game that would otherwise dominate and unbalance the wider metagame. This essentially boils down to a concise banlist which can be found here- if it's on that list, it's off limits, if it's not there, you can use it on your teams.
For the most part if you've played a recent Pokémon game you'll probably be familiar with almost all aspects of the Pokémon Online teambuilder when it comes to choosing the attributes of each pokemon- species, moves, abilities, items, and so on. However there are two attributes that go largely unmentioned in the core game series and are never full explained, and those are EVs (effort values) and IVs (individual values). However both have a significant effect on the stats of your Pokémon and for a pokemon tournament, knowing how they work is very helpful!
*EVs are most commonly gained through battling other pokemon, with each species awarding a Pokémon EV points for a particular stat when it makes them faint (for example Pikachu gives the victorious Pokémon two speed EVs). For every 4 EVs gained in a stat, that stat is raised by 1 point. A Pokémon can gain up to 510 EVs total, with a maximum of 255 EVs in a single stat (however because EVs are only useful in multiples of 4, the maximum effective EVs per stat is 252).
So a quick bit of maths shows us that if you gain 252 EV points in one stat, that stat will be 64 points higher than if it had none. This is obviously a massive increase, and shows the importance of good allocation of EVs. For example if you have an aggressive but frail Pokémon like Talonflame, EVs are best invested into its attack and speed stats, since its poor defences will not benefit from them very much while being of no use at all in SpAtt if no special attacking moves are chosen.
*IVs also influence stats, but rather than being gained each pokemon has them randomly decided at the moment it is obtained (or, if bred from an egg, from the moment the egg is laid). A pokemon has between 0 and 31 IVs in each stat, with each IV representing one stat point, so a Pokémon with 30 attack IVs will have 5 more attack points than a pokemon with 25 IVs that's raised in the exact same way.
For the most part Pokémon Online makes this simple by defaulting all IVs to their maximum of 31 for the highest possible stat line, however there are a few instances where it is beneficial to lower one or more values. For example Pokémon that do not use physical attacks may choose to minimise their attack IVs to minimise the damage they take if they suffer from the Confuse condition, or speed may be reduced to make the Pokémon as slow as possible for using moves where going last is beneficial, or if the player chooses to use Trick Room to make the slowest pokemon attack first instead.
The other main reason to change IVs is that they are responsible for determining the type and power level of the move Hidden Power. The formula for this move is rather complicated, but if you do want to use Hidden Power on one of your Pokémon you just need to choose the version with the desired type on the move selection part of the teambuilder and Pokémon Online will adjust their IVs automatically.
*While the general idea of natures is explained, that they increase the maximum value of one stat and decrease another (there are also neutral natures that change no stats), the exact amount is not mentioned in the games. That amount is 10%, so quite a good chunk! As a general rule it is best to choose a nature that does increase and decrease a stat, as almost every moveset of a pokemon will benefit while having one unused stat that can afford to be lowered.
If this is your first taste of multiplayer battling, or just want to get more competitive to improve your chances of winning the tournament, be sure to spend some time on smogon.com. They have tons of articles and guides, as well as a "strategy pokedex" with examples of the most effective sets for each Pokémon. It's a great source of information and should give you some information to start building your teams!
I'm up for it, have not touched it for a year though.
Gonna play right now to sharpen back up.
Gonna play right now to sharpen back up.
Pokemon and TSR!
Hell yeah, I'm in. I just need to get back into the OU groove.
Also a bit of friendly advice, try sets out and things. Smogon is nice and all, but experienced players know what people tend to use (e.g weakness policy multiscale Dragonite is as common as it gets) so being a little unpredictable can give you the edge over people. Make sure to have a few practice battles in the OU tier just to make sure you are in the flow and that your team works well.
Best of luck, everyone!
Hell yeah, I'm in. I just need to get back into the OU groove.
Also a bit of friendly advice, try sets out and things. Smogon is nice and all, but experienced players know what people tend to use (e.g weakness policy multiscale Dragonite is as common as it gets) so being a little unpredictable can give you the edge over people. Make sure to have a few practice battles in the OU tier just to make sure you are in the flow and that your team works well.
Best of luck, everyone!
(edited 8 years ago)
Haven't played competitively in a year or so... I remember pissing everyone off on Showdown with my Rain dance team and surprise everyone with my 100% crit. hit ratio Kingdra
I'll sign
@Kholmes1 @leafcannon I know you two like pokemon, thought you might be interested
we need as many players as we can
I'll sign
@Kholmes1 @leafcannon I know you two like pokemon, thought you might be interested
we need as many players as we can(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Dez
In. My Metapod will beat you all.
No chance it's beating my Kakuna.
man i need to get into competitive properly, my mate goes to tournaments abroad and stuff and is one of the top players in europe! i am currently breeding pokemon the conventional way though and just playing battlespot singles atm, build teams on showdown though and have a play around with some of the pokemon on there. cant wait until the digital release of the classics
Original post by eternaforest
Haven't played competitively in a year or so... I remember pissing everyone off on Showdown with my Rain dance team and surprise everyone with my 100% crit. hit ratio Kingdra
Urgh, rain teams
Removing premaweather from the game was the best change ever made to competitive battling.
I've not played since Black/White but if I have not deleted my save I should have a pretty serviceable rain team on there I can copy 
Quick Reply
Related discussions
- By next year this is what Sky should do?
- Kallisto's Monday Question: Events
- This isn't going to get better, is it?
- Kingston University: Freshers' Week 2023 Coming Soon!
- Percy Jackson TV show discussion
- 1 Year Anniversary Gifts
- life and stye
- 1 Year Anniversary
- Anniversary gift ideas
- Gift ideas
- Is there a possibility that my bf is cheating?
- Gift idea for anniversary
- What are your top 10 video games?
- Debate - what is the best revision music?
- Hidden from seeing instragram stories
- I feel guilty
- Anniversary Message
- Would marriage last if you get married at 22?
- A level Psychology help!!
- One year anniversary gift ideas
Latest
Trending
Last reply 5 hours ago
What games did everybody play on their computers at school or when they were youngerGaming
12
Last reply 3 weeks ago
Favourite Videogames Of All Time - Only remove 4 and add 4 from the last poster.Gaming
40
Last reply 3 weeks ago
What is everyone's favourite online puzzle game, like wordle/redactle/framed?Trending
Last reply 5 hours ago
What games did everybody play on their computers at school or when they were youngerGaming
12
Last reply 3 weeks ago
Favourite Videogames Of All Time - Only remove 4 and add 4 from the last poster.Gaming
40
Last reply 3 weeks ago
What is everyone's favourite online puzzle game, like wordle/redactle/framed?
