Aww dang I went to bed and missed two pages
In Japan? I'm not really sure. I know Japan kicked our asses at Worlds in 2015 because they brought their mega Kangaskhan and we didn't. (Among other things, but mega Kangaskhan was a big one that nobody expected, for some reason!) Apparently the US meta thought it'd be like 2014, where everybody was expecting mega Kangaskhan counters, thus nobody brought mega Kangaskhan.
In 2014 the VGC meta was entirely different though, because only Pokemon from the pre-E4 Kalos Pokedex were allowed. In 2015 Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire came out, and the banlist busted wide open to allow everything but the cover-legendaries + event-only legendaries + Mewtwo, so Japan brought their Landorus-T, their Heatran, their Cresselia... and their mega Kangaskhan.
Honestly I liked the 2014 VGC meta better because the limited pool of Pokemon gave less popular Pokemon a time to shine, because their stronger counterparts were banned- and we got stuff like Pachirisu winning Worlds, which only worked on account of the very specific circumstances. You'd have to tailor very specific stat setups on your Pokemon to counter very specific things, and take your opponents by surprise... and that was a lot of fun. Now that practically all the Pokemon are allowed it's just the regular old 252/252/4 EV setup for a lot of Pokemon, you try to go wide with your teams instead of there being so few Pokemon that there are specific threats.
I don't think less of people who use the same four or five strong Pokemon on their teams, like some people seem to, that's just the nature of the competitive game. If you want to do well you use the best tools provided for you. I feel like a lot of the USA VGC community is searching for That One Pokemon that nobody would expect that's going to become the Next Big Thing in the metagame and get hung up on it because they want to be "original", whereas the Japanese VGC community is a lot more connected than ours is, they share their teams a lot more and they're less secretive, and they also have a lot more local grassroots tournaments- easier because they're smaller geographically I suppose. Their metagame progresses a lot faster than ours and ours is always trying to keep up with theirs when practically all we can do is google translate their blogs... xD
Apparently in 2016 VGC, Kyogre, Groudon and Rayquaza are in, including their mega-evolved forms. I'm interested in seeing how that goes but I can only see it being completely centralizing and everybody using it or using things to beat everybody else's.
sorry I turned that into a tangent about the VGC I just like talking about the VGC and wish I didn't need hundreds of dollars and lots of gasoline to compete
(01-25-2016, 05:18 AM)Alderique Wrote: Pokemon merch is frustrating! I mean, it makes sense that they would sell whatever's popular, but I tend to like unpopular things. I don't like keeping plushes, but I would probably get a nidoran plush.
I wonder how popular kangaskhan is in Japan? i like her mega but never ended up using it. I'm indecisive about megas ;.;
In Japan? I'm not really sure. I know Japan kicked our asses at Worlds in 2015 because they brought their mega Kangaskhan and we didn't. (Among other things, but mega Kangaskhan was a big one that nobody expected, for some reason!) Apparently the US meta thought it'd be like 2014, where everybody was expecting mega Kangaskhan counters, thus nobody brought mega Kangaskhan.
In 2014 the VGC meta was entirely different though, because only Pokemon from the pre-E4 Kalos Pokedex were allowed. In 2015 Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire came out, and the banlist busted wide open to allow everything but the cover-legendaries + event-only legendaries + Mewtwo, so Japan brought their Landorus-T, their Heatran, their Cresselia... and their mega Kangaskhan.
Honestly I liked the 2014 VGC meta better because the limited pool of Pokemon gave less popular Pokemon a time to shine, because their stronger counterparts were banned- and we got stuff like Pachirisu winning Worlds, which only worked on account of the very specific circumstances. You'd have to tailor very specific stat setups on your Pokemon to counter very specific things, and take your opponents by surprise... and that was a lot of fun. Now that practically all the Pokemon are allowed it's just the regular old 252/252/4 EV setup for a lot of Pokemon, you try to go wide with your teams instead of there being so few Pokemon that there are specific threats.
I don't think less of people who use the same four or five strong Pokemon on their teams, like some people seem to, that's just the nature of the competitive game. If you want to do well you use the best tools provided for you. I feel like a lot of the USA VGC community is searching for That One Pokemon that nobody would expect that's going to become the Next Big Thing in the metagame and get hung up on it because they want to be "original", whereas the Japanese VGC community is a lot more connected than ours is, they share their teams a lot more and they're less secretive, and they also have a lot more local grassroots tournaments- easier because they're smaller geographically I suppose. Their metagame progresses a lot faster than ours and ours is always trying to keep up with theirs when practically all we can do is google translate their blogs... xD
Apparently in 2016 VGC, Kyogre, Groudon and Rayquaza are in, including their mega-evolved forms. I'm interested in seeing how that goes but I can only see it being completely centralizing and everybody using it or using things to beat everybody else's.
sorry I turned that into a tangent about the VGC I just like talking about the VGC and wish I didn't need hundreds of dollars and lots of gasoline to compete
![[Image: IvpjiCs.png]](http://i.imgur.com/IvpjiCs.png)
