Current tournament: Rivalry round 2Gen6 has been released, and enough research into basestats and movepools has been done, the new arrivals are now avaiable on showdown.
You all know what this means!
I hereby open the sign-ups for the new bay12 league, now with gen6 mons.
But Akroma, I own neither a DS nor any pokemon games!No problem, the internet provides! A simply, easy to use plattform has been built in the form of
Showdown, allowing simple, free online play, without the need of actually spending any money on supporting nintendo. Damn them anyway for not allowing us to use their multi million dollar in development cost games for free!
Okay, so I am on showdown, now what?First of all, you should register your nickname, which can be done in the top right corner. No Email needed, just a name and a password. The gear-button allows you to set your avatar.
Next up, team-building. On the left, you will find a "teambuilder button". There, simply pick 6 mons, and set them up. To avoid having to deal with various banlists that will later inform you that the set you have picked is not actually allowed, you should set your team format to "Pokebank OU", this will make most non-viable choices invisible during teamgen. It's not foolproof though, so you might have to make edits to your team. You will be automaticaly informed before battles.
Formats, Tiers, what the fuck?The showdown website puts pokemon in tiers of relative strength/amount of useage, to prevent teams full of weak pokemons to be swept by mewtwo level powerhouses. It also enforces some rules, such as the sleep-clause, which prevents you from putting more than one pokemon at a time to sleep, the species clause (only one mon per kind), as well as bans to evasion boosting moves and OHKO moves. It also prevents you from picking move/ability combinations that can not actually obtained in the game via breeding.
Abilities, Items, EVs? What is that?Those who only played pokemon in the first gen will probably be suprised that pokemon has become a bit more complicated. Items are simple, they just do what the description sais, same for abilities. You should be able to find something that suits your tastes. If in doubt, "leftovers" are always good for defensive mons, while mons meant for offense can benefit from the "lifeorb".
EVs are pretty self-explanatory when you see the sliders, it's simply bonus points to your pokemons stats. Natures can further boost a stat, while at the same time lowering another. Usualy it is the best choice to take a nature that lowers either attack, or special attack, depending on what your pokemon is NOT using, while raising whatever you want your pokemon to be good at.
And how do I actually find other people from the league?To be able to challenge another user, you have to be in the same chatroom, click on the users name and challenge him. Unless otherwise agreed on, set the format to Pokebank-OU, which allows the use of all mons of all gens, except the incredibly powerful uber-mons.
To be able to easily spot one another, we use the chatroom "arts and crafts", which is usualy rather empty. To make yourself extra noticable, I advice adding "Bay12" to your nickname. The chatrooms can be found if you click the + button on the right and scroll down.
It is polite (and useful for yourself) to post here in the thread to announce that you are currently waiting for challengers in arts and crafts, and if you have the time, to edit your post once you go offline.
But I am no good at pokemon, and just losing is boring.Don't worry, this thread also counts as a tutoring thread. The more experienced users will gladly help you building a strong team, and give you advice during battles. This is a decidedly non-competitive team (unless there is currently a tournament going on), to make sure everybody can use whatever team they like, rather than having to plan their team around the meta game. It's rather boring when every team looks basicaly the same, everybody having the same pokemons etc, just because they do happen to be the best choices. Proper trainers should use what they like, not what they need.
Participants:
Akroma
Culise
GreatWyrmGold
Ultimuh
Rolepgeek
Hihi2463
Neotemplar
Bluerobin
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also, consider this a gen6 discussion thread