This is our version of the team building competitions you'll find on Smogon. We hope that this competition will allow people to hone their team building skills and learn from their peers so that a major barrier for entry to battling here at PC ("I don't have a good team") will be defanged. More importantly, its main purpose is just to be a fun way to casually compete with others in a different environment than a battle and to be a fun way to engage competitive Pokemon.
The process is relatively straightforward. Each round will last two weeks. The rounds will start with me posting a new core of two Pokemon. Once the core is posted, you will have a full week to brainstorm, test, and post your team which includes those two core members. After a week, submissions will be closed, and there will be three days to discuss the teams that have been posted and to offer suggestions. Anyone who made a submission can implement suggestions or otherwise edit their team during this time if they so choose, so long as they note what edits have been made. (You are also free to discuss the teams during the submission period! This is just to make sure that there is enough room for discussion.) There will then be three days of voting.
While there aren't any rules, per se, we do ask that you consider the following guidelines:
When you post a team, please include an importable of your team (you can copy this from Showdown) and an explanation of the choices you made during team building. A sample entry is posted below.
There is no need for ostentatious presentation of your submission, but using images as a visual aid would be a good touch.
Don't bandwagon teams during the voting process. That's why the judging panel exists, but even so, try to judge the team on its own merits rather than who posted it.
When voting, consider the criteria that the panel will be using: viability (if the team good?), creativity (does it stray from standard builds?), and synergy (is there evidence of thoughtful team building?).
You can only post one team for each round, so use your submission wisely!
Remember that this is for fun, so don't be a jerk when making suggestions for other teams. It's a competition, yes, but we are also striving for a sort of collective construction of team-building knowledge.
