Chapter Text
Hey there! Before the story starts, I wanted to take a moment to explain how this tournament works. This isn’t some official championship or high stakes showdown—it’s just a fun format a bunch of us are doing together for kicks. But even when it's friendly, we go all in on the strategy and chaos.
We are playing pokemon showdown and a lot of these are competitive battles. I’ll be converting these battles into fun readable matches for you guys.
So here’s the gist: each of us rolled two random regions from the eight core pokemon regions—Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, and Galar. Those two regions determine which pokemon we’re allowed to use throughout the tourney. We skipped Paldea because of the insane powercreep that gen has.
Battle Format
The battles are played using National Dex AAA (Almost Any Ability) on Showdown.
You can find the full ruleset for NatDex AAA on Smogon here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/national dex almost any ability.3726510/
Everything else on top of that (the region locking, extra ability bans,locking natural abilities, etc.) are our own rules to make the tournament more fun.
Additional rules on top of National Dex AAA:
You can’t use pokemon’s natural ability, including any hidden ones. So, for instance, a Greninja can’t have Torrent, Protean, or Battle Bond.
pokemon that change their ability during the match—through Mega Evolution or moves—don’t follow the restriction of above point.
Regional forms (like Alolan or Galarian forms) are only allowed if you have the region they come from. So if you’ve got Kanto and not Alola, you can’t run Alolan Raichu even if the base form is from Kanto.
pokemon that evolve across generations are shared between both gens. For example, if your region has Scyther and someone else’s has Scizor, both can still use the full line.
Certain extra abilities are banned to make things less stally and more fun:
Stamina
Regenerator
Well Baked Body
Tournament Format
We’re running this in two phases:
Phase 1 – Round Robin:
Everyone plays one match against everyone else.
1 point for a win.
Points are tracked in usernames so we don’t forget who’s where.
Phase 2 – Playoffs:
Once Phase 1 ends, the top 3 players based on points move forward.
no.1 ranked player goes straight to the finals.
no.2 and no.3 play a best of 3 semifinal.
Finals are a best of 5 battle set. No resets, no second chances.
Region Assignments
Here's how the regions were rolled for each player:
Draco: Kalos, Alola
Najirs: Unova, Kanto
Trashman: Kalos, Hoenn
Etherlords: Alola, Galar
Lenaxiom: Kanto, Alola
Shay (me): Johto, Hoenn
Chronic: Johto, Gala
PSV: Sinnoh, Alola