By ChriSSyB

Chris Bullard

ChriSSyB tries Pokemon

So story goes.... I get home from work and over hear a conversation my housemate's are having about Pokemon…. I eavesdrop the conversation and find out they are talking about going to the UK national championship for Pokemon at the weekend. It had been mentioned a while back but no one knew where/when it was. I thought at the time I should enter and see what the scene was all about.

Following this conversation i log on msn and am greeted to a message from Dignitas's very own, Robert Brewster. At the time I was hoping that somehow I would be miraculously selected for the FIWC Wildcard, long story short I wasn't which meant I had to fill the Fifa void with something.

I Had Three days to prepare and basically asked one of the guys I worked with (Who had trained for the last couple months for this) "Is it possible to build a team in 2 days?" To which he replied "Yes". So I quizzed him about the game most of the night on Steam, trying to find out what the best Pokemon were to use in battles and what the best strategies were. I came to the conclusion I didn't have enough time to get "perfect" Pokemon so i would just try and get a team that covered all base’s and try to irritate my opponents by status effect moves.

Now I must admit i didn't have the slightest clue how deep the game goes. I think i was 10 years old when the first Red/Blue games came out and I loved them.....then naturally High School kicks in and any association you have with a game like Pokemon is social suicide, so I just didn’t play them. Now the game feels a bit retro so Pokemon is the game I like playing on my DS when I'm travelling around and basically need to kill time. I play the game simply as a RPG though and have never got caught up in the whole battling element. I normally just train one Pokemon up and it doesn't matter what type of Pokemon I face, it will just destroy anything.

So I begun my research on serebii.net and with a few helpful links from my friend. I quickly realised that I could only do what time allowed me, so I selected the six Pokemon I wanted in my team and the moves I would have to teach them. I selected a team that meant I would have a super effective move against any type of Pokemon in the game.......which wasn’t as easy as I’d of hoped, involving a strengths and weaknesses table and an excel spreadsheet for a good 3-4 hours.

The next two days went by and by midnight on Friday I had my team sorted to the default level. Tournament battles degrade Pokemon to level 50 so I only needed to get them above 50, in fear of looking like a total NOOB that I already was. In a world in which I can stop time, I could of levelled them up to get the moves that I wanted.....but I would just have to make do with what I had and hope for some mega luck.

Tournament Day
The national UK championships 2011, June 4th. This was the first western Europeon qualifier of 2011 and I wasn't sure what to expect. The Championship divides players into three divisions. Junior Division (Being born 2000 or later) Senior Division (being born 1996-1999), Masters division (Born in 1995 or later). This put me into the Masters division open to 512 people, "yeh right" I thought, for a Pokemon tournament? Despite my mates warning I still didn't believe Pokemon could be so popular, but their I was two hours before the tournament in a queue of around 300 people to compete in the tournament. I was shocked, where do all these people come from? Since when does a game like Pokemon have a massive community? Which is a little bit naive of me, considering the vast amounts of sales all Pokemon games get. But these sales are backed up by a pretty strong community with at least 1000 people willing to come to LAN, if not to win, then just to have a day out and talk about the game they love.

During the queue it was like trying to listen to people in another language, how in-depth the game is, it’s just scary and I slowly realised that you really need to know your stuff to win a tournament like this. It's not just down to the skill of battling, but experience picked up in battles and just knowledge of the game (almost like a test) a player needs to know every single weakness and strength of pretty much every Pokemon, what moves they can learn and how to train them in order to make them the very best they can be. With Pokemon now able to be two different types in the more recent generations of the game, this made the knowledge base a lot more complex.

The tournament was run efficiently but not very professionally. Matchmaking consisted of waiting in a queue and playing someone who was near you in that same queue in the first round, meaning if you are in a queue will all your friends, likelihood is you will all be in the same bracket as them. The tournament ran like clockwork though with a large number of referee’s on hand to assist people getting through the tournament.

Match Time
The big moment I had trained for finally arrived. I would get the chance to see if I could win just one game and advance to round 2. Realism then kicked in when I was told by the ref I couldn't have my printed out Weaknesses and Strengths sheet on the table as it was cheating and when loading up my battle information, the stat starring back at me in the "Number of Battles" column was a big zero.

Being so focused on having a team that might stand a chance, I had completely disregarded the fact a few battles might have helped in my preparations. Something told me this was going to be a little bit harder than defeating some little kid I bumped into on route 3 who only had a Pidgey.

What followed next was a little embarassing, much like a 10-0 beating on Fifa. The guy I faced off against obviously knew his stuff. Having all the good legendary Pokemon, all of which were faster than mine and they had four different move types ready to pounce on whatever weaknesses I had. My experience soon came through when I didn’t realise the move I counted on would end up confusing my Pokemon and another Heal move would put them to sleep.

So I made my way swiftly out of the tournament, got my picture with Pikachu and cheered on my friend who thought he could do quite well in the tournament. Unfortunately he was beaten in Round 3 by someone from Spain, which summed up how dedicated this community is and thus, how hard it must be to win a tournament like this. We didn't hang around for long before exiting the venue as in all honesty Pokemon isn't too great to watch on the big screen due to the turn based nature but this is forgotten by such a passionate community who simply turn up to an event like this because they want to, not for the prize money or anything like that.

All in all the experience was very eye opening. Pokemon isn't just a pick up and play game like Fifa, CSS, Street Fighter IV etc. To even stand a chance in a tournament like this, it requires hundreds of hours of dedication to train your Pokemon up to be the very best, which involves complex techniques in breeding Pokemon and halting their evolution.

Not just this but the Knowledge you have to have already acquired in Battle techniques is also important. Whilst the immediate skill depth is high, I can't help but feel a lot of luck is required when two players who are equally matched face off against one another. A lot of moves work on a % basis so it must be frustrating for Pokemon players who regularly compete in these types of tournaments when some games are determined on luck and tournament structures are single elimination brackets with only one game played.

I won’t be dropping FIFA anytime soon for Pokemon but it was fun to see a scene not complicated with the E-Sports world and the same kind of buzz you get when going to an I-Series. For now I will stick catching Pokemon and filling up that Pokedex.

If you want more information about the tournament, visit http://www.pokemonvgc.com/