AVCon 2010 Pokemon Tournament

I wanna be/the very best/like no-one ever was!

Platform - DS/Wii (Contestants must bring their own DS)
Format - Swiss
Player Cap - 128
Gametypes - Double Battle

Rules updates - last updated on 29/06/2010
* These rules are correct at the time of posting.
* Please check back leading up to the event for any possible revisions to these rules.

Please note that Pokemon signups will be mostly held on the Saturday. If there is still room in the tournament on Sunday, signups will be occuring Sunday morning as well.

Player/Audience behaviour
- Players must exercise sportsmanship before, during and after their matches. Players that exhibit any form of unsporting conduct (swearing at the other player, trash-talking, etc.) will automatically be disqualified.
- Onlookers in the audience who are rowdy or verbally/physically abuse the players before, during or after the tournament will be forced to leave the premises.
- AVCon does not tolerate cheating. Teams or players caught cheating, glitching, or game fixing can face disqualification.
- Only Official Retail DS game cards will be accepted in Nintendo DS tournaments.

Game Specific Rules
Playing conditions:
Sleep and freeze clause (You may not deliberately put two of your opponent's pokemon to sleep or freeze two of your opponent's pokemon at the same time. Pokemon put to sleep by the trainer owning them (for example, by Rest) do not count. This will be enforced directly on Pokemon Battle Revolution)

Species clause: No two pokemon of the same species on a team. Pokemon in the same evolutionary tree, but at different stages are fine (e.g., Charmander and Charizard is legal, Vaporeon and Umbreon is fine, but two Salamence is illegal. This will be enforced by Pokemon Battle Revolution.)

Item clause: No duplicate items on your team - for example, you cannot have two pokemon holding Leftovers. This will be enforced by Pokemon Battle Revolution.

Selfdestruct Clause: If both players are knocked out in the last round of a battle due to Explosion, Selfdestruct, Destiny Bond, or Perish Song, the player who used Explosion, Selfdestruct, Destiny Bond, or Perish Song is considered to have lost

Evasion-boosting moves (e.g., minimise, double team) are banned

One-hit KO moves (Sheer Cold, Fissure, Guillotine) are banned.

The move Dark Void is banned

Please do not deliberately activate the 'acid rain' glitch, or similar glitches. Information on the Acid Rain glitch is available here: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Acid_rain .

Banned Pokemon:
Arceus, Darkrai, Deoxys, Deoxys-A, Deoxys-D, Deoxys-S, Dialga, Garchomp, Giratina, Giratina-O, Groudon, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Latios, Latias, Lugia, Manaphy, Mew, Mewtwo, Palkia, Rayquaza, Shaymin-S, Rotom formes

Battle Settings:
Battles will be six-a-side double battles, with no level limit.

Other rules
- Battles will mostly be run DS-to-DS. We will have a few consoles running Pokemon Battle Revolution, and we will endeavour to place battles with a significant level mismatch on these. We won't have enough for everyone, however, so if you want the best chance of winning, get your team to level 100.
- If both you and your opponent are using HeartGold/SoulSilver, and are battling each other DS-to-DS, please use the level-scaling option.
- Excessive stall tactics will be frowned upon, and may be grounds for disqualification. The definition of 'excessive stall tactics' is up to the staff running the tournament. This rule is unlikely to affect you (I don't believe we've ever invoked it in a pokemon tournament yet, and double battle is particularly unfriendly to stall tactics), but is necessary - against an unskilled player, someone deliberately stalling could draw a battle out for hours, and we do not have the time for this. Playing defensively is fine - running your opponent out of PP is probably not.
- If you believe your opponent has broken these rules in a significant way, please report it to the nearest volunteer, who will investigate the situation and make a decision. Please do not abort the battle unless you are asked to. Be aware that we will frown on frivolous complaints, including technicalities (For example, two pokemon carrying a Potion would not be grounds to contact a volunteer - while, yes, they are technically in breach of the item clause, it's not a breach that matters)
- If a player is disqualified they will be removed from the tournament, with the opposing player being awarded a victory.
- If a problem occurs which is not the fault of the player (hardware failure, disconnected controller, etc), the players will engage in a rematch.
- The Referee and AVCon gaming staff reserve the right to ban any player or group for whatever reason from the tournament before, during or after the tournament.
- For any other situation which arises which is not covered by this rule set, the AVCon gaming staff will confer with the referee(s) and render a decision. Whichever decision is reached by the Tournament Referee is FINAL.

If there are any queries in regards to this tournament or any other aspect of the convention please don't hesitate to contact the videogames committee on videogames@avcon.org.au

Thread History:

I'm sorry that I can't speak from experience here.

We arrived too late for last year's pokemon tournie. Which was a shame. I really wanted to try out my team...

But using PBR seems to me the best way. A smaller group of staff can manage the fewer tvs / consoles and that way they can enforce the rules better.
I'm happy to have my pokemon scaled down to level 50, but I actually enjoy playing the games and training new pokemon if I have to. I won't mind if the organizers set me a limit.

Have you considered the fact that Heart Gold and Soul Silver are due for release (in March I think)?
Surely the powers that be might realise "hey, we could make more money if we release a new version of PBR thats compatible with the new generation."

sorry I can't be more help than that. That said, if its copies of the game that are needed I'll find and buy one. I don't have a wii but anything that'll help the tournie go smoother will be a relief i'm sure

-Ronny

That is a pity. I'd like to encourage more free battling and the like at AVCon this year - the tournament isn't going to really provide enough pokemon for everyone. And, of course, there's always the staff challenge.

I'm not sure whether HG/SS are compatible with PBR or not - I should test that (With the japanese version).

I assume there will be a PBR 2 or whatever they call it at some point, but the central issue with PBR is more the wii/ds connectivity, and I'm not sure that a sequel will fix that. It would allow the Rotom formes, but that's a minor issue, really.



All PBR does is treat your pokemon as level 50 for the purposes of the battle - it doesn't actually change their level, as such, it just puts the copies it's made for the battle at level 50 and sets their stats accordingly. There doesn't have to be any sort of level limit if PBR is used.

There won't be a level limit if we run a DS version of the tournament, either, because I'm not a fan of them in general. The problem is that if people show up with pokemon that aren't level 100 - say, if they've got level 50 pokemon (Most of the official Nintendo tournaments are run at level 50) - then they can't possibly win the tournament DS to DS.

We could run a 'pool' version, though, where we've essentially got two different tournaments for level 50 teams and level 100 teams, and then merge them at the end (by running on PBR), but that requires a fair few level 50 entrants for it to be worthwhile.



Don't bother buying a copy of PBR if you don't have one - more so if you don't even have a Wii to play it on!

We are interested in having games and consoles lent to us for AVCon, mind. So to other people reading this thread, one way to make the PBR tournament run more smoothly is to lend your stuff to AVCon over the weekend. We do take very good care of it - I'm confident enough in the safety of lent gear that I lend my own stuff.

You can also volunteer - specify that you'd like to work in videogames, and you'll probably end up there. You get a shift of a few hours helping us out with videogames stuff, and in return you get into the con for free (Well, more accurately, we refund your ticket price).

I went with my friends to AVCON in 2009 and waited eagerly to see them play Pokemon, unfortunately my friend's DS couldn't connect. This is obviously due to the large amount of DSes trying to connect to one of three or four Wiis. I think this is the main problem and if it can be fixed, you wouldn't need to reduce the amount of people to 64. But unfortunately I know of no way to connect the DSes to the specific Wii. It would be good if they had a DS to Wii cable for events like these.

The only thing that might improve the rate of connectivity is to have everyone in the Pokemon area that isn't trying to connect to a Wii to not use the WiFi, that does mean that they can't practice with friend's but at least it will reduce the amount of traffic going around a small area.

If I were to choose out of the options available, I would choose to have the tournament played on PBR mainly because it makes all the Pokemon the same level so it won't be a heavily one sided battle and also because it doesn't allow statuses such as sleep and freeze which, I'm sure, everyone knows is a pain when is used constantly against them. Also, it let's spectators watch all the battles without bothering the players because if it were DS to DS, it would obviously be hard to see what's going on with the small screen and the reflection.

AVCon will only be supporting official game cards this year. The AVCon VG committee will not be making any exceptions to this fact.

Well the stance we've held in the past is that AVCon does not condone the use of piracy enabling cards.

The wireless signals seemed to fluctuate a lot during the tournament. I think someone even claimed that the sun shining over the consoles affected the signal strength. Maybe we should book out one of the conference rooms to hold the tournament in? Only problem is you'll want to run it strictly on time.

We can cut down on time wasted sorting out hardware/teams in two ways:

1) A strict (and I really mean strict) one-more-chance-is-all-you-get policy for connection refusal (note that this is distinct from connection failure). Doesn't matter what the reason is (hacked pokemon, illegal team composition, incompatible piracy device), people are given one and only one chance to fix whatever the problem is before they're disqualified. This is harsh but perhaps necessary.

2) Checking connectivity pre-tournament as part of the registration process. This is in many ways nicer than (1), as it also works as a rule check if the tournament is mostly run on DS-to-DS play. Basically, people have to set up their team in their party and connect to PBR with the appropriate rules when they register for the tournament. Illegal teams will then be detected in advance and it will save both the organisers and the players a good deal of stress. The downside is, naturally, that some sucker has to supervise all this. I wouldn't mind doing this, although it seems like a bit of a soft option for staff. The important caveat here is that whoever is running the registration must know all the possible failure conditions for PBR connections and be able to look over a rejected team/cartridge and figure out what's wrong. Off the top of my head, we're realistically looking at half a dozen people, maximum, who're in the AVCon volunteer/staff pool.

Hey guys, i too would like to raise a few points about the pokemon tournament.

i arrived late last year as well (we rescued a dog instead ) but i could see some clear problems upon my arrival

firstly, i had no idea where the hell the tournament was being held. it took me ages of asking staff to find it. so idk, if you want to put up some signs or something. just for those people who are late or not wanting to miss any of the action.

secondly, my biggest annoyance (which would have been MUCH greater had i been playing),
There were legendaries and "Uber" grade pokemon in almost every player's party. i'd emailed prior to the competition and i'd been told there was a strict ban on all legendaries and some uber pokemon.

What i'd suggest is using Smogon websites "tiers list" to sort out what pokemon should be banned or not.
http://www.smogon.com/dp/tiers/
If we stop people from using Uber's, it would make people actually think of a decent party, and stop spamming everything with super strong legendaries.
this really needs to be enforced though, i cant even count the amount of uber's and legendaries i saw in the tournament despite the apparent ban on them.

i think a 64 cap on entrants would be best, and a place away from noise/extra traffic would make things run much smoother. i'd be happier to have it all run on PBR, but i agree with whoever raised the HG/SS issue.

with those new games, everyone's going to be using them, if we do it all on PBR, there will be a lot of disappointed people not being able to use their up to date pokemon.

(assuming of course, the HG and SS dont work on PBR)

We were using Smogon's tier list, excepting Wobbuffet and Wynaut (Because they're not nearly as bad in doubles). If you were battling someone with pokemon who were in the ubers list, you're well within your rights to ask that a staff member intervene.

We didn't check teams prior to the tournament beginning. We relied upon people obeying the rules that where there when they signed up, and people checking each other. (Although it should be noted that 'legendary' and 'uber' are not the same. Zapdos, Moltres, and Articuno are legendary pokemon, but they're not ubers)

None of the top 8 had ubers in their team, from what I can recall.

We don't know whether HG/SS do or do not work on PBR yet. I haven't tested it. They don't introduce any new pokemon, so it's still only the Rotom formes that are essentially banned by PBR.

Another option we're considering is a Swiss-system tournament. Effectively, everyone gets some number of matches DS to DS, and the more wins you get the better. There's a bit more to it than that - look up Swiss-system tournaments on wikipedia - but all you'd really need to worry about is that you'd be guaranteed to get a certain number of matches (likely around 4), more wins is better, and the top two after the Swiss section will have a finals battle on PBR. We'd do our best to deal with disparate levels, but if you want to ensure that never stuffs you up, you'd want level 100 pokemon.

This is, of course, only another option we're considering - we're not definitely going to do that.

I remember the list that was put up on here of banned pokemon.

Its true, most of them were uber legendaries. One of my friends decided he didn't want to enter the tournie because he couldn't use his mewtwo, rayquaza, palkia etc etc.

But not all the legendaries were banned. Your friend might not have told you everything.

Also, now that HG and SS have officially been released, does anyone know if they work with PBR?

EDIT: sorry James I didn't realise you'd just answered that question

"Just" answered it two months ago.

Acording to Bulbapedia:


Spiky-Eared Pichu being a HG/SS only Pokemon.

I have a question, will there be an item clause? Something to prevent an entire team of focus sash users?

Oh and i assume the tournament will be doubles but will it be 4v4 or 6v6?

We haven't decided the rules completely yet - item clause is one thing that might be up in the air.

In previous years we have run with item clause, but this year we're looking at running the entire thing (mostly) DS to DS for logistic reasons. Item clause is next to impossible to effectively enforce in such a circumstance with the number of people entering, so we might be better off without it - that's my position on the matter, anyway.

If you're worried about Focus Sash, I'd suggest Sandstorm, Hail, Stealth Rock, or moves that hit both opponents at the same time.

Tournament will be doubles - double battles go much faster - and will be 6 versus 6. Some of the extra events won't be, however - the staff challenge will be 6 vs 6 singles (With the general Smogon ruleset - so species clause, the Smogon ubers list (including Wobbuffett, but no item clause. It will probably be run on PBR, so don't count on having Rotom formes available)

That Reminds Me, What Exactly Is The Pokemon Staff Challenge? From What I Understand, Someone Versus An AVCON Person In Pokemon, Sounds Kinda Like A Gym Leader Fight. How Exactly Do People Enter And What Is The Prize If There Is One? Is It A Badge? That'd Be Interesting.