I pitched the idea to toast and he said it was alright. I'm planning on receiving help from Audiosurfer, who frequents the smogdoubs ladder/threads.
The two are very similar, but they have a few key differences that set them apart from one another, such as;
-Two more Pokemon to work with. In vgc this forces you to make tough decisions as to which Pokemon your opponent will pick, but in smogdoubs you don't have to worry about this.
-Item Clause; smogdoubs doesn't feature this, allowing for more flexible teambuilding. In vgc, identifying an item on a pokemon can help you determine what another pokemon on their team is holding, e.g. if a rotom has a sitrus berry and cresselia doesn't have leftovers, you can assume that it's either chestorest or offensive.
-Sleep Clause; smogdoubs features this, making amoonguss and breloom much more manageable. in vgc, the mushrooms are high priority opponents since there's nothing stopping your opponent from sleeping your entire team if you let them.
-Special Pokemon/'Ubers'; Cases in point: Jirachi, Deoxys-A, etc. (Audiosurfer has to help me on this one lol)
-Age; smogdoubs is very young. the ladder for smogdoubs is also very terrible 90% of the time, with monotype teams and ingame team replicas lurking around every corner. this really can't be helped though, since most of the audience for smogdoubs have been playing singles for the majority of their competitive pokemon career. for evidence of this, see the posts of stealth rock in the smogdoubs threads, posts defending slaking in general stuff that is obviously bad. vgc ladders are much more matured, with the metagame being very developed because it has been played for about 5-6 years (?), with the most recent b/w metagame clocking in with two years under its belt. this is not to say that vgc is better than smogdoubs, just that smogdoubs is filled with inexperienced players, and it's still in a stage of 'everything goes'. if and when smogdoubs becomes official, you can expect to see less of this and more better prepared people.
-other things to mention; evasion, the fact that vgc is tpci's ruleset and subject to change to random stuff like unovamons only and bring 6 pick 2 ubers, um maybe other stuff i cant think of now??
-conclusion: you can play smogdoubs and vgc about the same way you can simultaneously play OU and UU competently.
The two are very similar, but they have a few key differences that set them apart from one another, such as;
-Two more Pokemon to work with. In vgc this forces you to make tough decisions as to which Pokemon your opponent will pick, but in smogdoubs you don't have to worry about this.
-Item Clause; smogdoubs doesn't feature this, allowing for more flexible teambuilding. In vgc, identifying an item on a pokemon can help you determine what another pokemon on their team is holding, e.g. if a rotom has a sitrus berry and cresselia doesn't have leftovers, you can assume that it's either chestorest or offensive.
-Sleep Clause; smogdoubs features this, making amoonguss and breloom much more manageable. in vgc, the mushrooms are high priority opponents since there's nothing stopping your opponent from sleeping your entire team if you let them.
-Special Pokemon/'Ubers'; Cases in point: Jirachi, Deoxys-A, etc. (Audiosurfer has to help me on this one lol)
-Age; smogdoubs is very young. the ladder for smogdoubs is also very terrible 90% of the time, with monotype teams and ingame team replicas lurking around every corner. this really can't be helped though, since most of the audience for smogdoubs have been playing singles for the majority of their competitive pokemon career. for evidence of this, see the posts of stealth rock in the smogdoubs threads, posts defending slaking in general stuff that is obviously bad. vgc ladders are much more matured, with the metagame being very developed because it has been played for about 5-6 years (?), with the most recent b/w metagame clocking in with two years under its belt. this is not to say that vgc is better than smogdoubs, just that smogdoubs is filled with inexperienced players, and it's still in a stage of 'everything goes'. if and when smogdoubs becomes official, you can expect to see less of this and more better prepared people.
-other things to mention; evasion, the fact that vgc is tpci's ruleset and subject to change to random stuff like unovamons only and bring 6 pick 2 ubers, um maybe other stuff i cant think of now??
-conclusion: you can play smogdoubs and vgc about the same way you can simultaneously play OU and UU competently.
