Resource VGC 18 Rules announced

https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/a-new-video-game-championships-format-for-2018/

Here's a brief summary of the new regulations:

All battles will be Double Battles played in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon

All Pokémon in the National Pokédex are allowed, with the following restrictions:

Pokémon must have the Alola symbol showing they were caught in the Alola region

Mythical Pokémon, some Legendary Pokémon, and Ash-Greninja are not allowed

Duplicate Pokémon are not allowed

All items are allowed, but duplicate items are not allowed

All Pokémon are set to Lv. 50, including Pokémon below Lv. 50

Player time is 5 minutes

I nailed it.

Here's the updated Rules Document (as of December 6th, 2017)
 
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While it's not *completely* what I was hoping for (Battle Spot Doubles rules but no Megas), I'm still pretty happy. Here's hoping the Genies are unobtainable in USUM...
 
Let's hope there is someway to get older Legendaries in USUM like how they handled them in ORAS. Or maybe they will release them via events?
Edit: Also move tutors pls
 

antemortem

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All Pokémon below are set to Level 50? How does that work stats-wise? Pardon my ignorance, but the last time I played VGC was in 2014 when that most definitely wasn't a mechanic.
 
All Pokémon below are set to Level 50? How does that work stats-wise? Pardon my ignorance, but the last time I played VGC was in 2014 when that most definitely wasn't a mechanic.
You can calculate a Pokemon's level 50 stats with their IVs, Nature, EVs, and base stats. So if a Pokemon is below level 50 it gets leveled up and its stats are that of what it would be if it was rare candy'd to level 50.

I don't think they did that this year, or ever before, but it isn't terribly intuitive and means a little less training so I wont complain.

Let's hope there is someway to get older Legendaries in USUM like how they handled them in ORAS. Or maybe they will release them via events?
But they're all nature locked to Hardy. How hilarious would that be.
This interesting. What about lengendary Pokémon not found in Alola, like Latias and Heatran?
If they're released in SM/USM then they'll be legal, but the ones transferred from older games wont be. We don't know yet, but there may be a ORAS type system to catch them or they might just not be usable.

My hope is that there's a limited legendary pool (read: no landorus). Beyond that I'm happy with the format.

The only thing that bugs me is the 5 minute timer. I've had a lot of games go down past 5 minutes - that isn't much time. It means a lot of close games might get decided on time, which would suck. No one wants to see that. It also means you can win games where you don't have a win condition because your opponent used up slightly more time than you, which was possible before but much rarer. Now it becomes a lot more common, and quite frankly, it sucks. I feel like this is a rule they could change half way through the format. If not, they'll see an important match at a big event or two get decided by this and switch it back to 10 minutes.
 
ck49 they did that this year. All Pokémon are auto-leveled to 50. Also, I don't like the 5-minute player time instead of the 10 from a player's perspective, but as a judge, I like that it'll make for less times where I have to go and manually do a Match Resolution.
 

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With the wormhole mechanic in USUM, I have to wonder if that'll work like it did in ORAS. If that's the case we could be looking at a super-duper-ultra fun return to 2015 which would be a little disappointed. Of course, the megas being introduced will be a fun way to spice things up, with Megas and Z-Moves now being factors involved in battles and whatnot.
 
With the wormhole mechanic in USUM, I have to wonder if that'll work like it did in ORAS. If that's the case we could be looking at a super-duper-ultra fun return to 2015 which would be a little disappointed. Of course, the megas being introduced will be a fun way to spice things up, with Megas and Z-Moves now being factors involved in battles and whatnot.
I do hope they don't do that.
 
For those of you that want a head start on the metagame, here's the statistics from the global link: https://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/battle/#double Keep in mind that some of this data includes Pokebank transferred stuff, which brings up the question: Will move tutors be back? If they are, which ones will be available?
Since all points to a repeat of previous mechanics for "second batch of titles", Tutors being back is a realistic and legitimate assumption (expecially as a lot of Pokemon suffer a lot without Tutored moves, plus several Gen 7 Pokemon would benefit hugely by access to common tutored moves).

With the wormhole mechanic in USUM, I have to wonder if that'll work like it did in ORAS. If that's the case we could be looking at a super-duper-ultra fun return to 2015 which would be a little disappointed. Of course, the megas being introduced will be a fun way to spice things up, with Megas and Z-Moves now being factors involved in battles and whatnot.
With addition of tutored moves to gen 7 Pokemon + potentially new Tutors, and Z crystals, I'd expect the VGC metagame to shape up completely differently from 2015 and 2016 VGC.
Lot of previous gen Pokemon also got new egg moves this generation, plus there's obviously the potential of new Tutored moves available.

The Z-moves add a lot of counterplay to the powercreep of Megas, plus with the limitation of 4 Pokemon, running a Zmove AND a Mega significantly locks you out of running other powerful items like choices, LO, and berryes.

Looking forward to it, either ways.
 

cant say

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"Mythical Pokémon, some Legendary Pokémon, and Ash-Greninja are not allowed"

this is it. this is the doubles meta without Lando-T. I can't imagine them doing something similar to Mirage Spot / Hoopa Holes or whatever they're called and including every legendary. I mean the only legendaries available could very well be the Tapus and UBs, which means that this meta without Lando / Cres / Tran / Zapdos would be vastly different to BSD (which kinda sucks because I've been trying to get good at BSD in an attempt to prep for this).

If I can convince my friends Kaori Jhon Demantoid to build me heat teams I will be taking over the Aus scene MARK MY WORDS
 
"Mythical Pokémon, some Legendary Pokémon, and Ash-Greninja are not allowed"

this is it. this is the doubles meta without Lando-T. I can't imagine them doing something similar to Mirage Spot / Hoopa Holes or whatever they're called and including every legendary. I mean the only legendaries available could very well be the Tapus and UBs, which means that this meta without Lando / Cres / Tran / Zapdos would be vastly different to BSD (which kinda sucks because I've been trying to get good at BSD in an attempt to prep for this).

If I can convince my friends Kaori Jhon Demantoid to build me heat teams I will be taking over the Aus scene MARK MY WORDS
But you can't say for sure. They may find a way to put all the legendaries in for the format, like they did in ORAS.
 
I mean, ORAS simply put rifts to get legendaryes with, USUM actually has you freely travel across dimension holes, if you quickly do 2+2 you realize that if as predictable you'll have all non-mythical legendaryes catchable in USUM, it'll be via ultrarifts.

I highly doubt they would allow cover legendaryes again seeing 2016 meta disaster (cough primal Groudon), so it is very possible to skip over cover leges and only add stuff like dogs, birds, regis, etc.
 
Have was the case in VGC 17 and most 16 as well.
I know you could run a lv. 49 Groudon in 16, because I fought one at a Spring regional. I'm not sure when it was changed that gen.

Maybe I didn't pay attention to how autoleveling worked in '17, because my cart team for Sun is all 60+ and from trades.
 
That was
I know you could run a lv. 49 Groudon in 16, because I fought one at a Spring regional. I'm not sure when it was changed that gen.

Maybe I didn't pay attention to how autoleveling worked in '17, because my cart team for Sun is all 60+ and from trades.
That was for tethered tournaments (like regionals) only. For untethered tournaments, like Premier Challenges, MSS and whatnot, you had no other option.
 

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"Mythical Pokémon, some Legendary Pokémon, and Ash-Greninja are not allowed"

this is it. this is the doubles meta without Lando-T. I can't imagine them doing something similar to Mirage Spot / Hoopa Holes or whatever they're called and including every legendary. I mean the only legendaries available could very well be the Tapus and UBs, which means that this meta without Lando / Cres / Tran / Zapdos would be vastly different to BSD (which kinda sucks because I've been trying to get good at BSD in an attempt to prep for this).

If I can convince my friends Kaori Jhon Demantoid to build me heat teams I will be taking over the Aus scene MARK MY WORDS
I don't think cover legends are considered mythical; this line could just be alluding to the standard bans on cover legends and the like (Mewtwo, Groudon, Lunala, etc.)
 

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