Isle of Armor VGC Threats and Team Building

Isle of Armor drops on June 17th, bringing Amoonguss, Politoed, Talonflame and more to the VGC 2020 format. Find out what new faces you can expect to see in competitive Pokemon Sword and Shield!

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VGC 20 Rule Announcement

VGC 2020 is upon us, and it’s looking like a fun year ahead! Pokemon Sword and Shield has brought about a major shift to the meta game of recent years, so team building and picking your team mates will be more important than ever! Jump in and let’s take a look at what the next year of competitive Pokemon will look like!

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Lets Go Pikachu and Eevee Team Building

Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee are just around the corner, and do we have an inside scoop for you! Players have already been hard at work team building, and we want to help you get started with your own when the game launches on November 16th!

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Kyogre and the Tricky Room

VGC 2019 is still in the early stages of its life, with the format not officially opening until September 4th. Despite this, team builders have been out in full force making waves in the unstable meta on Pokemon Showdown. Our computers here at Pikalytics have been in full force crunching numbers, and it’s time to breakdown one of the format’s popular cores: Kyogre & Necrozma-Dusk-Mane!

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Early VGC 2019 Team Building

The season of a volatile VGC metagame is upon us, and we hope that you’re having as much fun team building as we are! Although the format only arrived on Pokemon Showdown yesterday, players have already been experimenting with the VGC 2019 Sun Series. We’re going to see a lot of change and evolution over the months to come, but let’s dive in and see what’s being brewed up!

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VGC 19 Rule Announcement

Get ready for a busy year to come, the VGC 2019 ruleset has been announced and it’s looking like an exciting one! Legendaries, rotating item restrictions, followed off by an anything goes GS Cup style format. TPCI is looking to go out with a bang on the 3DS and Pikalytics is ready to give you the inside scoop!

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Pokemon 101: Effort Values

Effort Values make up a large portion of a Pokemon’s “total stats.” Mostly hidden from the game’s interface, EV’s exist for all 6 of the main stats (HP/Atk/Def/SpA/SpD/Spe) and each range from 0-252 per stat. For a simplistic calculation of EV’s, once a Pokemon has reached level 100, it will receive 1 stat point for every […]

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Pokemon Needs Game State Recovery

A double game freeze is a case in which both players’ games lock up mid-match due to some form of game error. We’ve already seen this before now in VGC 18, with the Snorlax Curse bug causing enough trouble that the move was outright banned before Dallas Regionals. Due to the immediate pressure on Game Freak to have this issue resolved before a number of larger tournaments coming, an outright ban was a relatively fair solution. The move wasn’t dominating the meta by any means (though putting up good results when used), and so forcing Snorlax players to instead utilize Belly Drum wasn’t the end of the world.

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Pokemon 101: Stats

While we may want to dive right into selecting members for our team, there are a few topics worth discussing before doing so. Get ready to learn some Pokemon math, and how it applies to the competitive game!

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The Chansey Epidemic

Okay, so maybe it’s not quite an epidemic yet.. but you’ll feel otherwise once you’re sitting across from a 66% evasion Chansey. With VGC 18 Dallas Regionals right around the corner, let’s take a look at how you can be ready for this gimmick that you will actually lose to.

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