Thanks to my well placed Japanese sources, BlueCookies and I have discovered the ruleset for 2010 VGC! At least Japan will be playing this way, who officially knows about the USA and Europe at this point. There are a few changes, but most of it is the same. as last year; here they are:


POKEMON VGC 2010 RULES:

1. Double Battle

2. 4 pokemon in a battle

3. Pokemon lv. 1 through lv 100 are allowed (!)

4. If the pokemon are above lv. 50, the game will auto level them down to lv. 50 for the battle. Moves will stay intact during the auto leveling. If a pokemon is under lv. 50, no change is made.

5. No two of the same pokemon can be used (species clause)

6. Item Clause is on, Soul Dew is banned.

7. BANNED POKEMON ARE AS FOLLOWS:

Mew
Celebi
Jirachi
Deoxys (all forms)
Fione
Manaphy
Darkrai
Shaymin
Arceus

8. You may use UP TO TWO UBERS PER TEAM(probably means Team Sheet as well). This means that you cannot have a team like Kyogre/Palkia/Dialga/Mewtwo. Ubers are considered to be:

Mewtwo
Lugia
Ho-oh
Kyogre
Groudon
Rayquaza
Dialga
Palkia
Giratina


9. Any other pokemon may be used (this includes Tyranitar and all Rotom forms!)




Excited? Disappointed? What do you think of the new rules? Discuss.

Nice, I noticed you posted this on Smogon but decided to come here to talk about it instead. The most interesting thing I noticed was the fact that you can only use 2 ubers per team, so not every team will look incredibly similar. I'd bet the rules would stay the same here because changing them just seems like a dumb thing to do in a World Tournament.

It was posted on pokemonworld as well.

Nice work PBB. Where exactly did you uncover this information?

So this means half your team can be abusive, nice! I already have an idea for my team ^^.

Nice, there is going to be a lot of havock now in VGC, and our analysis aren't completely outdated

Yeah, we'll just have to wait and see what happens with the official rules before making analyses. I'll have both listed just as a reference, but depending on what happens, if uber rules are adopted I'll make sure they are more prominant than VGC 09 rules, and vice versa.

2 ubers is a decent compromise, kinda like with one of the PRAs or something a while back if I remember. Looks like the Lati@s are being nerfed though since they don't have their favorite Soul Dew. Overall not to bad, lifting the level restrictions and auto-leveling stuff to 50 is nice as well.

How many people do you guys think will just randomly train ubers and use them? By putting a limit on 2, more creativity is allowed. This will also force noobs to rethink their teams, since they can't spam Groudon/Kyogre/Rayquaza/Mewtwo/Ho-oh/Lugia like in JAA. Besides, aren't those kinds of people only in juniors or are young seniors (I'm a young senior)? Also, Snorlax and Weavile will be big things. Lax provides Sp. Def against those things known as ubers. Weavile outspeeds all the ubers (besides Mewtwo) and provides excellent coverage and has a great typing. Having the fastest Fake Out in the game also helps.

No, there are older noobs who still spam ubers. It's more of a lack of experience rather than age that leads to uber stacking.

I think the two uber rule gives an advantage to the better players, since they can't just come across a 4 uber user, get haxxed and then good day. They probably have an easier time of thinking of partner pokemon for their ubers, so it's not as hard to make teams.

Remember, it is not confirmed that these are the rules that will be used outside of Japan. Mike Liesik told my roommate at the world championship that he won't let the tounament rules to allow ubers. When asked recently on the official Pokemon Organized Play forum about what rules will be used Liesik said this: "We likely won't have tournament rules for VG ready to go until the end of this year. For now, it would probably be best to have them use the VGC format from the 2009 series." It is also important to note that outside of Japan wehave always had a separate set of rules for Pokemon Trading Card Game tournaments so it is not unlikely that the rules will be different for the video gae tournaments outside of Japan as well.

Now, with the TCG(and possibly with the VGC in the future as well), when different countries have different rules and they all meet at worlds, the US rules take precedence and override the other rules? Is this solely because it's happening in the US, or because TPCi is based in the USA?

I have a hunch that Mike had a good scream for bringing in Ubers. But now it's been helped by Mike in a way as theirs only 2 ubers allowed of your four. But did they actually already have this planned without Mike's input? Ahh the discussion remains..

The thing is, if we play the previous rules, the only things that can make it different and interesting are the new movesets, nothing else. I only hope the HG/SS moves have dramatically changed how 09 format is for next year and hence will make it less RD > TR > Coverage > RD

Poll time.

TPCi decides the rules for all of the world outside of Japan. The "i" in TPCi means international. The reason Japan follows TPCi rules is because TPCi hosts the event, not TPC (the Japan version of TPCi).

So then, if TPCi had the rules as 2009 rules for Europe and the USA, then when the Japanese came to Worlds they would have to conform to the old rules. Makes sense.


either way, we will find out what the USA rules will be in about early Jan. I am glad that things are starting to take structure for the VG events and Mike is doing a good job of that so far.


I BELIEVE IN MIKE LIESIK

Tell me, who did you vote for in the presidential elections?

Cause I BELIEVE IN CHANGE.

lol, PBB is conservative like me, but I believe in change too Naso, and hope we use these new rules!