STEP 1: THE PLANNING

As an admin for RIT’s Pokémon Club, I had free reign to occasionally throw ideas at a wall and witness what would stick. One of the ideas that I had in my head for quite a long time was doing something akin to the Catching Contest in Gold/Silver/HeartGold/SoulSilver. This idea really came into fruition and turned into a really fun and out there event, which was much different that the usual battle tournament we seem to hold every other week.

Ideally, it would be easy to implement if there was some objective ruleset on what would get you more points in the overall scoring. The games to be used were Scarlet and Violet. The arguably most important part of the event was making it known by people early enough so that they could use the Meal Powers of those games. The idea was that someone who was more prepared with their ingredients and resources for catching would have the chance to get a higher score. Additionally (for reasons explained later), I wanted people to be able to get Apricorn Balls.

Over the course of a Saturday afternoon, I drafted an entire ruleset including very “shouldn’t need to have been stated” rules like not catching something outside of the tournament times and all of that. I also allowed teams of four, since I also had to come up with a system that was easy to understand, used the sandwich creation system well, and lastly but most importantly: was fair. It was with this that my entire draft for the rules was 7 pages. I thought of everything. What if someone evolved their catch and entered that? What happens if someone enters a marked Pokemon that is based off of someone’s birthday (this actually exists, by the way)?

Because an objective system is backed up by an objective point system, the next thing to do was to pull from gen 3 and get some judges for our contest. The judges use the objective scoring system and they also judge how well a mark or a ball fits a specific species. In this instance, we knew that we had tie-breakers pretty much built in. We also used things such as the characteristic phrase or the nickname of the Pokémon in EXTREME tie-breakers (which this did not come down to, thankfully). Thankfully, two of the admins simply did not have the game, and the other one as our third judge could still participate due to having two other admins who probably would have been more harsh to the third just for fun. Additionally, judges were needed in the event someone was blatantly cheating, for example if someone caught a Pokémon the day prior to the event or if they somehow caught a Pokémon in an area where it doesn’t exist. Given the close nature of club, I rightly figured that this wouldn’t happen anyways.

STEP 2: THE STRATEGY

Given the base ruleset above, there’s a lot to consider. What would be the best tactic for catching something that gets a lot of points? Catching everything you see all at once is a good way to go after using Title Power 3 and Shiny Power 3, but should someone specifically shiny hunt or should someone just catch anything? Would certain species have an advantage over others (note: there was a specific Eevee rule that stated that Eeveelutions evolved from Eevee would not count because you could get a mark, like a Rainy Mark or a Thunderstorm Mark and evolve the Eevee appropriately for a matching mark bonus). At this point, I only released the criteria for what gets more points- but I did not release the point system. That was to be released at the start of the contest for the purpose making sure that people aren’t bamboozled for the results, so that people know what to go for exactly, or so that people do not cheat beforehand and catch something a little too perfect.

At the end of the day, it was also something that people didn’t have to think about too much. Many people entered simply to continue their shiny hunting but in a more competitive manner. The species clause existed so that if someone just wanted to catch a bunch of Wooper, they could. I would want to support that! Also, being on a team was considerably better than not being on a team. The winners of the tournament all teamed up. So in some aspects, there was some four player strategy involved with delegation of location, I just didn’t experience it myself.

STEP 3: THE EVENT

There’s not a whole lot to say here. It was pretty tame. Really just grinding and hoping to get something good. My strat for the first half was catching Magikarp. While I have a shiny Margikarp and Gyarados, I thought having a Red Gyarados with the Anger mark would be so cool to have. It might be something that I try to do again in the future. But at any rate, attempting to catch that ended up not going to well. Even if the catch rate was easy, I think it was far worse than trying to specifically go for a shiny. Apricorn Balls and shininess share the same modifier, so if you catch a shiny Pokémon in an Apricorn Ball, it only really comes into play if you get into a tiebreaker. Basically, a Shiny Wooper is just as good as a Roaring Moon in a Moon Ball. My idea is that the more Pokémon I catch, the more chances I have at a really good mark.

Halfway through I swapped my search from Magikarp to Venomoth, because I have always wanted a shiny Venomoth (I like the blue, and I like to use Quiver Dance). I never got one of those either, and I entered in the contest with a marked, not shiny Heal Ball Venomoth. Rightfully so, I did not win. I don’t exactly remember who won, either.

STEP 4: THE EVENT

I genuinely have no idea who won if I am being honest… it was about a year ago now and I forget the results, but the event was a resounding success and we even held it again this year as well (less participants overall, but still a very fun event nonetheless). Also this post took me ~5 months to write where one day it was mostly written and five months later I decided to finish it. So… yeah, that’s a thing. More posts on the way sometime soon.