My streams and Pokémon content I do in them

Hello, long time no see!

You may or may not have been following my streams and may or may not have noticed my twitter post concidering my "non-Pokémon-content streams" and now I want to create a short blogpost about the Pokémon content I produce.

My current work in progress schedule

I really want to continue the showdown tutoring sessions and so on, the format still needs to be truly figured out and I need to have a clear picture in my head how to do these. Still work in progress, but will keep happening! Suggestions are appreciated!

As you may have noticed I am planning to hold WiFi-streams twice a month, mostly because how inconvinient they are to set up for myself. One of those at this point will be with one or more members of @Pokerangers and another one with only me or any PR people who happen to hop into discord at the time. :P

At those there will mostly be wondertrades, battles and such. Maybe even stream giveaways. These are largely at planning phase and we'll see how these pan out!

And then the biggest thing I want to talk about are the Pokémon game playthrough on streams, ROMhacks, nuzlockes, just normal playthroughs... whatever. As I told you guys in one of my previous blogposts, I do not like to play through Pokémon games at all. In my opinion they're badly designed games that are not enjoyable to play through. But people still like to watch others to play through them and my stream playthroughs have so far been only my speedrun practices and so on (at which I've been slacking on. I need to get back to those. I am already super rusty as is.)

I MAY do something like play through a Pokémon game at some point if it seems that people really want me to. I still refuse to do any Nuzlockes and so on, because they're dumb and not fun at all.

I currently am on lookout for a new copy of XY or ORAS, because my own copies currently are in use and I do not want to delete their saves. If I manage to find one cheap, I will be playing through it on stream and then maybe do an stream egglocke or something. So yeah.


What do you guys like about my plans? Do you have any Pokémon related suggestions? I am open for those!

Now, I am back to watching LoL worlds and writing my RGTS analysis for monday!
See you then!


Kim

What to do with blog and youtube channel? Wall of text inc!

So yeah, I've been kinda out of this for a while. Mostly because I've just had a tons of things to do and my health to take care of. Also, my microphone broke so no videos either.

Yesterday I found an old headset that sounded passable, so I will be bringing Pokémon content (like the #HoopaCup analysis if people still want those and coverage of other tournaments Pudds puts together I take part in.) I also want to continue doing the RGTS analysis' Probably not on video but here in the blog.

The fate of my youtube channel is actually in kinda limbo right now. I could start a Pokémon Let's Play or something, but you who've known me for a while now know that I actually think that the Pokémon games themselves outside breeding, trading and battling, are not that good of games and I really do not enjoy playing through them.
I also do not like nuzlockes or other such challanges, which either end because of really dumb reason or end up being just massive grindfests.
And those do not change the fact that Pokémon games aren't really that good on story, gameplay mechanics or AI so that's out of question also.

I wouldn't want to start a series about a game I really do not enjoy playing through. I do speedrun Pokémon RBY and B2, but reason for that is that I can get through RBY in ~40 minutes and B2 speedrun takes like 2 hours or so (little bit out of that, haven't done a full B2 run in like a year or so.) But those are mostly streaming material and really do not make a good youtube series.

So currently my Youtube channel hosts mostly just team analysis, my Pokémon Showdown and WiFi-battling streams and all the non-Pokémon (yes, I will be doing that too. Do not whine about it.) content.

Showdown streams are quite simple to set up and do not require much, but people really like the WiFi streams and those are a pain without a capture card. The way I do them is following:

I have a WiFi-camera app on my phone, which I can open on my computer. To get the camera pointing at my 3DS I have to have the phone to lean on some coffee cups with tape and such and smallest nudge makes the whole thing to move out of place. Also, I have to sit really uncomfortably for X amounts of hours the stream goes on.

So yeah, setting up the WiFi -streams is super annoying. Usually they're worth it, but I do not really feel like having to do those too often. Especially because I do need my phone to other things.
The WiFi-streams will still happen though. I try to have them about twice a month or so at weekends and stream like 5-6 hours straight so we get tons of trading, battling and such going on.

The Non-Pokémon content probably do not interest many of you, but I really do not want to create yet another youtube channel for those. Currently I am playing through an old PS2 RPG from the same developer as Persona 3 and Persona 4 and that belongs to the same series (Shin Megami Tensei) of games: Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne (or Lucifer's Call here in Europe)

It is a long game and will probably span over multiple streams (and as such, videos) but at least it is content. And the funny thing about youtube is, you do not have to watch it if you do not want to.
Waiting for only Pokémon content? Please, you can only watch that and you can skip the non-Pokémon gaming alltogether! You do not really feel like watching Pokémon showdown teachings or such? You can watch the non-Pokémon content. Everyobody wins!


So yeah. That's the current state of my youtube channel and if you have any suggestions on what I could do with it, please I am open to them!


What comes to this blog, I am planning to keep this purely as a Pokémon blog, which means that I may not update this as often as I should because I really do not follow much Pokémon news, unless the Twitter starts filling with them. I am still planning to try and remember to do the RGTS analysis' of Pokémon I give away (either on my own Twitter account or at @PokeRangers) so if people are wondering what's the thought process behind my dumb movesets  and such.

I will also be covering the new main series Pokémon game as soon as it is released and I will be following the datacrackers' leaks and such when the first copies get to their hands. So THERE WILL BE SPOILERS ABOUT THE NEW GAME WHEN THEY REVEAL AND RELEASE IT IN JAPAN WHENEVER THAT MAY BE.

And as said "whenever that may be" I have no idea when the game is actually revealed, so do not expect the coverage start any time soon. :P

Again, with blog, I am totally open to suggestions and such.


But yeah, that's the state of my current outlets. Hopefully some of you have gotten at least something out of them and even if you haven't, I still keep doing what I want to do.

I do stream super irregularly, but every time I start a stream I'll be posting the link to youtube gaming service to twitter, so keep your eyes peeled. I will also publish every new blogpost to twitter whenever I finish one. RGTS Analysis' may even happen before the actual RGTS itself for sneak peaks!


Let's meet back later, shall we?


Kim

Zygarde stuffs, Pokémon Z a thing now?

Well, timing-wise it makes sense. Even if GameFreak didn't make "deluxe version" of 5th gen games (but a two totally different games as sequels with B2W2), X and Y still had either their "deluxe version" up and coming (which I will be calling Pokémon Z, for the clarity and stuff) and  Emerald, Platinum, B2W2... all were released within two yeas after the first versions (Yellow and Crystal a year after). So this WILL be little bit late, but there we can blame transistion to 3DS kind of in the middle of everything as taking little bit more time.

Now, it says nowhere that this game will actually happen, even though everything seems to be leading to that. I do not see GF implementing Zygardes formes in ORAS as you can't even catch the original thing there and there is no reason to go and add it to XY either. Moreso, people who have cracked the game codes open would've most likely found out if there were traces of completely new formes (and Zygarde Cells) in either of the game codes ages ago!

So yeah. If we approach this logically, there should be the "third" version of XY coming up in the future. Before 7th gen (which again, release time-wise, makes sense) and probably around the end of 2016 if we can trust GF and Nintendo to do their thing same way they've always done it.

All this blog post is speculation and putting pieces together, I may be totally wrong and for some reason Zygarde stars the 7th gen of games (which would be unheard of for earlier Pokémon to star as a new gen mascot, but not impossible) or that GameFreak just patches in a "Zygarde DLC" in ORAS, as that is a thing that can now happen.

About the formes that were revealed, I've nothing too special to say. Obvious nod towards DBZ is obvious and that's about it.

The Greninja is out for speculation. I do not know why it has Ash's hair, maybe they next time introduce trainer+pokémon fusions, like in Dragon Ball. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

If you want to read about CoroCoro leaks, you should head to Serebii, which will undoubtly keep covering things as they surface. I'll return to this topic when next months CoroCoro comes out and we hopefully get more specific game related stuff revealed.

I can't be hyped just from this, I need more concrete information about things to come so hey, if you are happy and hyped, good for you! But for me, we'll see you next time!


-Kim

Pokémon Go, please don't get hyped yet.

So yeah, Pokémon Go was revealed and people are hyped and it looks so cool and there are pretty computer graphics on trailer and it seems like what we've all been waiting for.

But hold your horses please. The trailer literally tells us nothing about the game. Pretty much everything it shows are some CG Pokémon that may or may not even appear in game, according to the quick gameplay shots at the end of the trailer, game looks more like a Pokémon tamagotchi / battling simulator hybrid than a AR game.

These are all the real gameplay footage shown in the trailer

Now, I do not doubt that the game actually may be fun and as it will be free to get from GPlay or Appstore you do not lose anything when trying it. I am going to try it (assuming my phone doesn't crash like with every other App I install with my old ass phone), but that's when the game is actually released AND we have some more legit information about it.

Currently we do not know anything about what kinds of microtransactions are in the game? Do you pay for better Pokéballs? Do you pay for a chance of finding better Pokémon? Do you pay for access to those timed events that I assume there will be (the Mewtwo one shown in trailer)? 

How is the gameplay ACTUALLY? Is it a Pokémon battle simulator on phone or is it simpler? More complicated? Does the game actually have any AR functionality at all? What does the pokéball accessory actually do? 

I am sure sites like bulbapedia and Serebii will cover the game thoroughly in upcoming months preceeding the games release, so we will get more information. Game may turn out looking better than expected, it may turn out being another Fallout Shelter, we just do not know yet.

I really do hope this game will be fun, the f2p microtransactions don't turn it to P2Win and that it'll be a fresh breath of air when waiting for the next main series game (about which we should get some more information in couple of times when CoroCoro releases). 

So let's just all be patient and not make too many hyped predictions that blur our vision!

Until the next time! (AND I REALLY TRY AND REMEMBER TO MAKE THE RGTS ANALYSIS FOR NEXT WEEKS RGTS!)

Kim

Shoutouts to people! My first month in Pokémon GA Twitter community

So, I've been a part of this community for a month and 7 days now. Time has pretty much just flown by and I just wanted to make this quick blogpost to give some shout outs to people that have made my decision to join in a real special and fun experience!

First of all, people of @TheHeavySquad whose #HoopaCup pretty much caused me to even think about creating a new account and start looking into this community more. (And people from my main account started to get grumpy from all the Pokémon GA / RGTS RT's I made.)

The Cup has been super fun to follow (and cover!) even though I dropped out early, can't wait to participate in the tournaments that are still up and coming at some point afterwards!

I especially have to shout out @pokepudding I've had the pleasure of chat with him about VGC and Pokémon pretty much more than any other member of the community yet. He is a super cool dude and deserves a follow! (and when we finally get our VGC going on with both our teams finished, I'm so going to kick your arse!) His "morning"(which are more like... late afternoon for me?) tweets are also kind of amazing, the lack of exploding whales lately though is kind of disturbing. It is like.. they're just waiting to ambush us again.. soon..?

Of course I have to mention @PokeRangers, group I've became a part of and, apart one incident involving horses, been feeling really welcome to! People are super nice and, even though I am still little bit outisder being so new and not knowing them for that long, feel like I can pop up in a group chat and start annoying the young'uns there. ;)


So yeah, here's for the first month. Day after tomorrow will be my birthday, I'll turn into an oldER and more decrepit man and then I'll raise my shot glass for the months to come in this community!

The next blog post will be another RGTS analysis for the RGTS I'm holding in PokeRangers' account this monday, so look forward to it.


See ya next time!


-Kim

RGTS Analysis: Metronome Chatot

Time for my new RGTS is here and as I forgot to cover my last one (Chesnaught & Arcanine) I'll cover this one!

Why I chose this set for Chatot was mostly just because it is silly yet can still work. Choice Specs are objectively better by mile and I'll go over why that is, later on.

So the set itself is quite simple. It revolves around having a substitute up and then spamming Echoed Voice, which boosts its power by 40 every time it is used, up to  200 Basepower after 5 turns and with Metronome as held item it boosts it even further by boosting its power by 20% every time a move is used without changing it, up to 100% (2x Power)

So after 5 turns Echoed Voice has Base Power of 400, with STAB. That is a lot.
Now, the weakness of this set comes from time. It is fairly unlikely that you're able to get to that point, even with substitute being up. When we compare choice specs to this, we get a table, something like:


turn 1 - 40 (60 w/ STAB)
turn 2 -80 (120 w/ STAB) (144 w/ STAB + metronome)
turn 3 - 120 (180 w/ STAB) (252 w/ STAB + metronome)
turn 4 - 160 (240 w/ STAB) (288 w/ STAB + metronome)
turn 5 - 200 (300 w/ STAB) (360 w/ STAB + metronome)
turn 6 - 200 (300 w/ STAB) (400 w/ STAB + metronome)


Now, if we look at Choice Specs, that just gives a flat out 50% boost at the start:

turn 1 - 40 (60 w/ STAB)
turn 2 -80 (120 w/ STAB) (180 w/ STAB + CS)
turn 3 - 120 (180 w/ STAB) (270 w/ STAB + CS)
turn 4 - 160 (240 w/ STAB) (360 w/ STAB + CS)
turn 5 - 200 (300 w/ STAB) (450 w/ STAB + CS)
turn 6 - 200 (300 w/ STAB) 

As you can see, CS keeps ahead until turn 5 or so. Now, I may have made some calculation mistakes but I am fairly sure that just pure damage output by CS is larger than with metronome. The good thing about this set compared to CS set is that you can switch out moves and use stuff like substitute and Nasty Plot (or Roost if you want to replace NP with that!) and have Heat Wave for coverage. 

The largest problem of this set is that Chatot is fairly frail Pokémon and just raw out damage of Boomburst is usually better way to go, but again. This set is made for fun. It is battle ready and can catch people off guard in switches and such. Even Heat Wave can pack quite a punch if used multiple times in row because of the metronome. 

Nasty Plot is there for SubScouting. You can substitute and check if opponent switches to ghost type before using an offensive moving and boosting your damage potential with Nasty Plot, then you can react to switchin with Heat Wave if need be.


Another problem with this set, compared to classic CS set is that instead of Boomburst and coverage moves like HP Ice, you are relying on fairly low damage at first. So you actually may want to run this birb in a doubles team where you can protect it with mat blocks, follow mes or wide guards. That can give you the edge of just spamming your moves and destroying your opponents!


Here is the RGTS Analysis for Metronome Chatot, hope you enjoy using your Pokémon! ♥

Greetings PokéRangers HQ

So yeah, me and Lewis have been planning this for a while and I said that I think about joining a larger GA account after I've finished my first own GA to check out how hectic and time consuming this can be.

I've now finished the giveaway and about three or four random RGTS's around there and decided to commit to this and join your ranks.

This means I'll need to introduce myself somehow. Lewis has brought me to speed with you guys most part and I already am acquainted with Pudding which helps me to fit in!

So yeah, my name is Kim and for years I've been going around Internet with just my name as my handle, so no fancy screen names for me. Never had the imagination to figure out one that I would like to use. I am 25 (or turn so in september 7th) years old and I've been playing Pokémon for pretty much as long as it has been a thing. (more about that in my first post in this blog so I won't be going through that again in this.)

I joined the RGTS/GA community quite recently. I haven't been taking part in these things for even a month and the way I really GOT into the community was SavageSquad hosted #HoopaCup which I've helped to cover on my youtube account.

 I really do not have a favourite Pokémon or game or anything as I find it overrated to box those things in as human mind changes so often. Things we liked as kids may have changed when we got older and thus I've never really picked any favourites.
Which also means I really do not have a mascot Pokémon or so. Never really put any thought in that.

I enjoy board games, TCG's, P&P RPGs and video games, I also adore baking and cooking and traveling and traumatizing people with finnish cuisine.

I am bad at writing these kinds of things, do not really like talking about myself.

I do not like it when people refuse my invitation to go to sauna, use nostalgia as a "valid" reason to tell that something is good and insects, which I am afraid to death.

If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask me! ~~


Kim

RGTS Analysis: BounceStall Gyarados

So, I was started to think that while I have downtime with #HoopaCup I'd cover my upcoming RGTS' on a video and I decided to record one from the Gyarados I am RGTSing today.
The video went well, but in the end I ended up deleting it because I just went on tangent on how to use it and then I noticed that on my recording software there still was "#HoopaCup Analysis" -text. And as it had nothing to do with #HoopaCup and I was too lazy to remove the writing in post edit I decided to come to my blog and pretty much write out what I said in the video and do the video format starting from my next RGTS sometime next week when #HoopaCup R3 has begun.

So, my next RGTS is, as you know, BounceStall Gyarados

I am not sure if it was I who invented this set or if this was used before me. But back in 4th gen I loved running this set on VGC Doubles with tons of hazards and chipdamage.

The Gyara goes like this:

Gyarados @ Leftovers
Impish Nature
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD OR 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Intimidate
~Bounce
~Roar (Dragon tail in current gen!) / Iron Head (current gen, old set had Outrage or Ice Fang) / Protect
~Toxic
~Waterfall

So, the plan is simple, throw a Toxic on opponent and then just bounce away. Then phase opponent out when it is about to faint to do that when it next switches in to hazards you hopefully already have up. Waterfall is there for STAB.

Now, the options for Iron Head and Protect are there for "strictly" doubles purposes. Because in doubles the strategy is little bit different and it revolves around the synergy of two of your Pokémon against two of your opponents ones. For example, I used to run this set on a doubles sandstorm team with Hippowdon and Gliscor doing their thing. I'll talk about them little bit later.

Leftovers is pretty much mandatory. One could argue that Sitrus berry could work in doubles, but after testing tons of things I figured that lefties is just a way too valuable of an asset to heal that ~8% of your health restored while bouncing is super important and may help you survive just one more hit!

With EV's you have some leeway. I like going full defenses because the point of this set isn't to do damage and mostly utilize Gyarados' GREAT base bulk, especially after intimidate.

So the point of this set is super simple, but using it nowadays isn't and the reason for that are two Pokémon:

Ferrothorn and Excadrill.

Those two are so common that it's dumb. You can't poison them, they do not take damage from sandstorm and they can kill Gyarados without any problems. Back in 4th gen there were very few Pokémon that actually could straight up wall this set. Skarmory being the most common one. Of course fast electric types like Raikous and Zapdoses running wild are still a problem, but not as big as just getting straight up walled by steels, especially now that fairies are thing they're even more common.

Just a word about electric types: They also can't get paralysed anymore by bounce, so that's also a bummer.

So, if you can find yourself against a team that doesn't have Pokémon that can wall this set  you are set. You can wreak havoc by right plays and predictions, but that requires you to have support. This set cannot sweep, not even if you're playing against your cat.

Potential teammates, singles:

You. Want. Hazards. Gyaradoses worst nightmares Tentacruel and Ferrothorn are great for this. Both can set up hazards and spin opponents own away. Ferrothorn of course being better in most situations, as it also resists the electric type moves opponents tend to throw against Gyara. Sandstorm or hail aren't bad additions either, sandstorm being more useful one in higher tiers, so T-tar or Hippowdon are great when supporting this set. Again, both Pokémon can set Stealth Rocks and have Sand Stream as an ability. There is this great little move called Venoshock that doubles its power if opponent is poisoned. Only problem is that not many Pokémon that are not outclassed by others aren't in higher tiers, good news is that Gengar learns it. Be it just a classic Scarfed Gengar set or an MegaGengar, with so reliable source of toxics flying around, using a moveslot for Venoshock may not be a bad idea. Gengar also can carry HP Fire to remove those pesky Ferrothorns that your Gyarados so hates.

Back in the day I used to run Gliscor with Hippowdon in my team. Gliscor was just a basic SD Offensive set and Hippo set up Stealth Rocks, yawned, EQ'd and Crunched opponents ot oblivion. That should give you guys an hint on what you could look at when building a singles team around this Gyara!

Potential teammates, doubles:

So, this team shines in doubles. Doubles has its own strategy and style of play where you usally do not see hazards and teams are built to have pairs that support each other. Now, if you are able to mess that synergy up you get an upper hand 99% out of the time. That's why this set used to be so good. It adored when hazards were set up and opponents team got shuffled. Also, in doubles you could free that roar / dt slot from Gyara for third damage option and have your partner do shuffling.

as a doubles my lead pair was (double weak to electricity, yay!)

Gyarados @ Leftovers
Impish nature
252 HP / 4 def / 252 SpD
Intimidate
~Bounce
~Toxic
~Ice Fang
~Waterfall

&

Skarmory @ Lum berry
Bold nature
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Sturdy
~Roost
~Whirlwind
~Stealth Rock
~Taunt

The point was just to keep opponent at bay and keep shuffling threats away with whirlwind. If it seemed that the opponent was particularly electric heavy, I swapped my Skarmory with my Hippowdon which I also ran in doubles.

Hippowdon @ Expert Belt
Adamant Nature
252HP / 252 Att / 4 Def
~Earthquake
~Slack Off
~Stealth Rock
~Ice Fang / Rock Slide

So, this was my all out badass destroy everything and all things you love Hippowdon that people really didn't expect. Usually people focused their efforts to my Gyarados which allowed me to first switch it out and away to safety from super effective hit and then either kill the opponent with EQ/RS depending on what I had against me at the time. If I was facing tons of Zapdoses I usually went RS over Ice Fang, but if stuff like Raikou was being problematic I usually had this guy run Ice fang in case of dragons, which at that point were a much more problematic things.

Now, these sets and Pokémon don't probably work as well nowadays because of the checks changing and coverage changing and just Pokémon doing things better / worse.

But no fret, couple of Pokémon I already thought about being a good partner for this Gyara:

Meowstics ♂: Prankster and tons of possibilities to support and disturb your opponents while Gyarados throws its status around and bounces up is really good. Another option for doing pretty much the same thing is Klefki which in many ways is even better, thanks to great typing.

Ferrothorn: Again, Gyarados HATES playing against this guy, but when it is on your side you can have it set up SR, Spikes and even more Toxics while doing tons of damage with Gyro ball. You can also have it manually use Sandstorm for even more chipdamage!

Things with lightningrod: Thanks to changes to this ability, things targeted to Gyarados and baiting discharges with Gyarados Protecting, stuff like MegaSceptile is actually a GREAT choice. It quad resists lightning type moves and out-tanks tons of threaths, while revenge killing them afterwards.

Pachirisu: As shown in last years worlds, Pachirisu brings in great support potential and especially in niche situations like this. Super Fang halves health of toxic'd Pokémon Follow Me brings single target moves targeted at Gyarados towards the rodent, allowing Gyara to do more of its magic.

Spinners, Defoggers, Stealthrockers, spikers, whirlwinders...: Like in singles you need hazards. They aren't really that common in doubles so only by bringing some of them you can mess opponent up. Skarmory again is a GREAT choice for this. It really hasn't fallen except when compared to Ferrothorn, but Skarm can do tons of support-ish things that Ferro can't. It can learn defog, SR and Spikes while roosting all the damage away. It also gets Brave Bird, but you wouldn't run that in doubles. So it loses little bit of ferros damage potential, but brings in crucial things that Gyara needs to shine.

There are tons more of potential teammates for singles and doubles. You just have to figure them out!


So that's that. Let me just add a small tl;dr to the end to sum this up:

With this set probably is quite hard to pull off any fancy games because of the steel types that run rampant. You need hazards and chip damage to be able to utilize this Gyarados set to its fullest. Best potential teammates include Pokémon that can set up sandstorm / hail and use Stealth Rock, Spikes or Toxic Spikes.
Shines in doubles, where switching and hazards are more rare. Relies on surprise element.

Please, tell me either in comments or tweet me would you like for me to continue writing these / making videos about these? I quite enjoy doing these and would love your feedback.

Let's see tomorrow when I give these bad boys away!

With love

Kim

Reverse GTS's & Giveaways I want to do at some point

I am just listing these things here as a reminder for myself and for you to see what to look out for in the future. If you do not wish to be spoiled, I suggest you do not read further. ;)

About how I do my RGTS & GA's

Hello!

As you may have noticed I finally got my Powersaves, which allows me to clone my Pokémon and join the community of Pokémon Twitter GA&RGTS people and after only one short RGTS and opening my first GA it has been a blast.

Today I got to 1000 tweets and decided to celebrate that with an extempore Vaporeon RGTS and have an RGTS of one of my favourite Gyarados sets ever.

But now that I've started doing these I started thinking that maybe I  should clarify how I deal with these events and what should you expect.

---

So far I've bred my RGTS/GA-mons myself and just cloned them and turned them shiny. I honestly do not care for Pokémon shininess, but as GA/RGTS I doubt people want to see "normal" Pokémon.

But I make sure that I will:

1. Do all the breeding for the base Pokémon myself. That means getting perfect IV's on stats Pokémon will use, beneficial Nature, possible egg moves and so on.
2. I also will farm Battle Maison for BP so I can teach GA mons the tutor moves which also takes time. 
3. I manually EV train my Pokémon so that they get just the EV spread I want them to get.

This at least shows that I go through some effort when getting my Pokémon BR and personal to give away!

I also decided on Clamperl as an fodder Pokémon for my RGTS's, mostly because people are unlikely to snipe it for some weird reasons thanks to how common it is in ORAS, that brings little bit problems to XY players as Clamperl is an uncommon Good Rod catch in Route 12, which makes them to go through little bit more trouble to get theirs for trade. (Which I suggest you do what I do: Breed the Pokémon you know GA accounts use and have like a box of them at hand so you don't 

really have to go and catch them every time a new RGTS starts.)

The way I decide when my GA's end is that I decide a date I want to get an X amount of RT's before, if that amount of RT's gets filled then I end the GA "early", otherwise I'll end it at the date which I keep semi-secret. (As in, I may drop the "deadline" on twitter or just give it if someone asks) but I like the flexibility of my style. The RT goals at this point hang around 100-150 because I do not have that many followers yet, even though Pokerangers' Lewis, SavegeSquad and Pudding RT my things really often and I am grateful to them for that! ♥

Now, I do not know what future brings, will I start abusing Powersaves more when I get tons of GA's and so on and so forth up and coming when I keep up with the community.
I also do not know how long I'll hang around in the community. So far I haven't had any problems, I really like people I've talked with and #HoopaCup has been an amazing experience and I still want to keep dedicating my time to it and help Pudding and SavageSquad keep the quality up!

After my GA ends this Saturday (! Spoilers!) I may, or may not have another announcement to be made. Maybe. Possibly. Only time will tell. ;)

My dream tournament format: from bottom to top!

The moment I joined the twitter GA/RGTS community and took part in #HoopaCup, a Pokémon tournament hosted by @TheHeavySquad and which I've started covering via streams and youtube videos because I fell in love with the light hearted and fun way to look at competition and tournaments.

So after #HoopaCup started, I begun to think about how we could keep this going with a chance for players to get better and everyone being able to take part in tournament, even with little to no experience in battling?
Then I remembered my time with our little Gym Leader -system while I still was at Jr. High School and started scribbling down notes and options on how to best turn this into semi-tournament style thing, with the emphasis on just having fun battling, getting better and trying out new things with Pokémon sets instead of glamorous prices, while still rewarding people with something fun. (Like pictures of badges and stuff you can put in your twitter profile maybe, more about this later!)

So, first we need something to build on, so I tell you guys our really old and bad way of handling things and then go through things I'd like to change with it and in the end go through how I would like to handle things with system like this!

Progression:
First there is a tournament of X amount of people who want to take part in the activity.
Tournament matches are best of 1 matches, battled with 3 Pokémon with VGC -rules.
After the tournament matches, the "Champion", will literally become that. I'll talk about roles and positions little bit later on, but just keep that in mind, ok?
Four runners up become the Elite 4 and depending on how many are left after that Gym leaders are picked from the remaining people, to max of 6 persons.
The people that are left and everyone that want to join after the first tournament can now challange first gym leaders in any order they want to and try to collect badges. After they've collected all the badges from the Gym Leaders they proceed to battling Elite 4 and after E4 they end up battling the champion of the first tournament.

After they've beaten the champion, they themselves become a champion and the previous champion can challange a place in the lineup with Gym Leaders and E4, starting from the first gym leader and using their rules UNTIL the previous champion loses, the last person he or she beat is replaced by him or her and the previous spot holder returns to the pool of "Trainers".

A really convoluted explanation of how it used to work in picture form

Battling rules:
Against Gym Leaders. Best of 3 matches, using 3 Pokémon, with TRAINER having 3 possible substitutions.
Against E4: Best of 3 matches, using 6 Pokémon, with BOTH parties having 2 possible substitutions
Against Champion: Best of 5 match, using 6 Pokémon, no substitutions with EITHER party.

Gym leaders need to have a monotype team. They can use different Pokémon against different challangers, keeping their type, but can't make substitutions while battling.
E4 members need to have a monotype OR themed team. They can use different Pokémon against different challangers, keeping their type or theme and they can substitute 2 Pokémon out of the original party IN BETWEEN the matches.
Champion can have a monotype, themed, or totally free team but they can't use anything but that team against every challanger. He/She can't change their team between challangers and he/she can't use any substitutions, but neither can the challangers. This is a match that tests the strenght of the challangers ingenuity against the team that won the original tournament and see if it can be beaten.

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So, there you have the OLD system which has its flaws. For example, it is really exhausting to keep track on everyones postition in the hierarchy. (Trainers, Gym Leaders, E4 members and Champions were changing very often and mistakes were made really often!) Also if anyone got bored it was really hard to find a replacement for him/her and that caused tons of delays.
The most problematic thing, especially nowadays I think, would be the VGC-rules, which may cause confusion and/or rage on people who have picked up Smogon tiers up and learned to play via them.
The matches also can drag on for a while, especially with the champion. BO5's can take a while which is exhausting and it is hard to arrange matches over timezones.

How would I change this to suit the possible tournament format?

1. I would ditch the long winded system, especially on thing that's arranged over Internet it would be an insane pain in the butt to keep track on things, people may get bored and timezones may cause problems.
   To fix this I would just make this a two round tournament. First round would be just like the old system with selecting the champion, e4 members and gym leaders. SECOND round would just be people challanging them.
   
   This allows the people already winning the first tournament know how strong they are and to "dropouts" a chance to check how they would change their tactics against monotype teams and more strict rulings.
2. I would switch the ruling system to Smogon mixed tier system with restrictions on too many OU -mons and some of the mons that were moved to Ubers from OU.
   Even though I am not a fan of Smogon tierings, the system is more comfortable to most of the people and there are tons of resources around so it'll lower the entry reguirements.
3. I would keep the second round closed from anyone that already wasn't on the first round. That would reduce the amount of people on tournament and make matches happen faster. It also would help GL/E4/C people to not have too much pressure from having to deal with too many participants.
4. I would drop out a challanger out the moment he/she loses on the second round. This also is in favor of time and sanity of the participants. 
5. I would also have second round participants to battle Gym Leaders / E4 members in order from "worst" to "best". (with the lack of the better words. In order they placed in the first round.) This places participants to a gauntlet-style brackets, that still allows an easy tracking on how they are progressing.
6. I would change the GL matches to BO1's and E3 & Champion matches to BO3's with 3, 3, 2 substitutes and 3v3 matches with GL's and 6v6's with E4/Champion.
   This lowers the time matches take, brackets move on faster and it allows more freedom to Gym Leaders specifically. Being able to substitute pretty much all of their Pokémon helps a lot and makes both them, and their opponent think outside of the box and try different strategies.
7. I would change the type restriction to THEME restriction, with monotype still being an option as a theme.
   This is just for an intrest of having diverse and interesting teams instead of possibly easily counterable monotypes.
8. I would ban out move based and gimmicky themes and would encourage Gym Leaders/E4 Members/Champions to go to themes based on Pokémon appearances and their properties instead.
   This is just to make it so that participants don't have to battle against dumb shit like F.E.A.R. teams or just super long Baton Pass chains that they may not be able to prepare for and so that we would get actual battles. Now, this doesn't mean that gimmicky and silly strats are banned, just limited.
9. I would allow for challanger to switch team between BRACKET battles instead of going through the whole gauntlet with same team. But when reaching E4, I would lock their team to keep them fair and add challange for both, the participant and E4 members & Champion.
10.  If one R2 Challanger would get to R1 Champion and would beat him/her therefore he/she would be the "winner" of the whole tournament.

The gauntlet and how it proceeds after the first tournament round

The whole point of this Tournament is that it can be easily replicated and it can be made a semi-regulard (monthly? once every two months?) thing because of the fairly simple two-round system, while forcing participants to make timely decisions and attune themselves to changing conditions.

This also allows participants to get used to competitive battling while things not being too serious and not having too much in line.

So in nutshell the tournament will be:

• 1 round of BO1 matches with modified Smogon mixed tier rules, which will be followed with gauntlet against the 11 (13, if 8 gym leaders) best performed participants, who have set rules given to them to follow and try to use their imagination to build a team within those rules to beat teams of anyone from round one who may want to try and win the whole tournament.
• Some rules will be set for challangers too for second round. Most notably having to fight with 3 Pokémon against Gym leaders 3 Pokémon and so on.
• Gym Leaders and Elite 4 members must use a team that shares a team, be it monotype, all dogs, all green pokémon etc, while Champion can use his or her Round 1 team if he/she wants to.
• Prizes will be shinies, battle ready Pokémon or such. Also getting experience and learning about Smogon style battling and having fun!

Hopefully you understood what I am seeking with this wall of text and tell me if you have some ideas on how to make this better or what to change or just general feedback! 

Thanks for reading!

Kim

Hello world! And chatting about old feels

Hello people! I am Kim and I am just a Pokémon loving, 25 year old Finnish guy and I decided to give a small blog a try. I probably won't be writing much and very often, but if something happens to catch my eye I'll be probably writing it here instead of twitter because I can't be bothered to be messing around with twitlonger.

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Today I saw this on my twitter timeline and just couldn't help about thinking everything I thought as a kid who got Pokémon Red pretty much as soon as it released in Europe and barely knew anything about it.

When you see your Magikarp evolving for the first time: pic.twitter.com/n6ITs7Tekc

— Pokémon World (@Pokemon_Days) August 3, 2015

So I'll be listing some really nostalgic things I remember and would LOVE to hear your input too!

As the tweet above implies, the moment when you realise that you actually can evolve Magikarp (and in my case, Abra too!) was insane. Hell, Gyarados looks BADASS and Kadabra was just powerful! (Especially when I figured that he can evolve even further via trading!)
When I got the game, I had no idea that you could share the EXP by switching Pokémon around, so the only way I was able to evolve Magikarp and Abra was to waste their Splash and Teleport PP and struggle enemies to death. I thought that was one of the stupidest mechanics of the game and those two Pokémon would be super useless and training them wouldn't achieve anything.

But man was I wrong.

Some of the mechanics also caused confusion. Realizing what TMs did and accidentally stopping the evolution of my Pokémon for the first time were small, but enlightening experiences that just have stuck with me through the years!

Then pretty much year later the games were pretty much broken to pieces and rumours started flying around: "Trade a Pokémon with surf and strenght to your game before S.S. Anne and push the truck to catch Mew!" and other stuff like that which of course I tried and found out that were bollocks.
BUT afterwards I started doing research on the Internet and via couple of friends we found out about DV's (gen 1 and 2 equivalents of IV's, which still exist but rather than affecting stats affect stuff like nature and Wurmple evolving etc.) and StatEXP (Gen 1 and 2 equivalent of EV's, which allowed to max out EVERY stat) and most importantly, "The Mew Glitch" (currently known as trainer fly glitch) which allowed me to gain little bit of popularity in school by having Mew before even the Toys 'R Us event was introduced here in Finland and because you could do it so early I was able to pretty much mass produce them by doing glitch, catching Mew, trading it to my brothers Pokémon blue and doing that over and over again until I had a boxfull of Mews, which I afterwards traded back to my game for trading for other stuff like rare Pokémon cards or trade evolution only Pokémon from my classmates at school and siblings. That didn't last long before pretty much everyone knew how to do the glitch (as well as the MissingNO glitch) and Mews kinda lost their value. Still, that is one of my fondest memories from the early times of Pokémon games.

Returning to DV's and StatEXP, I never really knew about tournaments or competitive play, but we still had this small ring of neighborhood kids and my brothers who used to battle each other pretty much every weekend. We just built teams and discussed about sets (...which were REALLY bad, we really didn't know what we were doing, we were like... 11 years old at max!), but those were really fun times and I did enjoy those a lot!

Then Gold and Silver got released and honestly I do not have any as specific and fond memories of the games as with RBY, but I know I did enjoy PLAYING those games way more than the first gen ones. Really nothing too special came up and I didn't really care. At the end of the second generation my enthusiasm died a little, but...


Then came third generation and Ruby and Sapphire. I was at Jr. High School at the time and for some reason there was this small group of kids who got Game Boy Advances (me included) and Pokémon games and decided that "Hey, let's create a club-like activity with gym leaders and league play and stuff and have people battle us for things from school cafeteria!) and so we did. I was one of the only ones who knew about EV's and what Natures did so I quickly rose to be as a champion and I chose flying to be my typing. During Jr. High I was bullied quite a bit but our little club I was able to hide from bullies a bit and have just fun. :P
But yeah, that lasted for like an year or two and then people kept losing their interest, not me though. I kept training different kinds of flyers, breeding and EV-training and I really did enjoy that! I even remember my "tri-battle team" (3v3 team) with Spearow, Pidgey and Taillow that didn't do that well but still surprised many. That was fun!

In fourth gen, Smogon was founded and I found out about it like a year later. I never had DS at that point, but they had made a simulator called "netBattle" (which Smogon had a room in. The software later closed down due to popularity of Shoddy Battle -simulator), which allowed me to get into the competitive Pokémon once again.
I was SUPER bad but I still remember playing in the original Shoddy Battle for quite a bit and still enjoying about figuring things out in Pokémon gaming.
Later I got DS and just played through 4th gen games, mostly wanting to get to the postgame to get to breeding and playing against people and that is still the case. I do buy every single main series Pokémon game and just play through them as fast as possible to get to the part of games I enjoy the most: Breeding and battling!

Man. This became a "My Pokémon history" post and went kind of tangent, whoopsie!

Let's see when I will be writing again, see you!


Kim