Report: First Team Acronym of VGC 18 Spotted in Secluded Discord Server

(Thanks to @ChuppaVGC for idea)

Cupertino, CA - A potentially ground-breaking story has been developing today as rumors emerge from a secretive Discord server. The server, entitled "VGC 18 Teambuilding, Hentai, and other Weeby shit" has allegedly been throwing around the first known team acronym for VGC 18

A source from inside the discord server, who prefers to remain anonymous, has provided the Klingklang times with grainy images showing some examples usage of the acronym. Though the full acronym has not been observed, researches have concluded that it is of the form "KILL _ _ " where the 'K' stands for "Kangaskhan", the first 'L' stands for "Landorus" and the second L stands for "Literally Anything". The meaning of the 'I', as well as the two other characters, remain unknown. "This could be huge, potentially the next CHALK, or at least the next SMACK Chomp." Said one researcher who has been processing the data. We at the Klingklang times aren't quite willing to make such a bold prediction, but in any case we will keep you posted on this developing story

Other rumors swirl about a new Fini, Arcanine, Kartana and Electric type team being spoken about on this discord server, but we have yet to see any hard evidence of this FAKE news.

As VGC 2018 approaches, many players excited to immediately claim VGC 2017 was better

St Louis, MO - Now that Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon have been released, excitement abounds with regards to the new VGC format. Amongst all this excitement, perhaps the most powerful excitement comes from one particular group of people: people who will hate VGC 2018 and immediately claim VGC 2017 was better. These people are chomping at the bit, just waiting to claim how superior the previous format was.

"I just can't wait!" Said one excited on-looker. "I had some success in VGC 2017, I top cut 2 out of the 24 PCs I attended, so I consider myself an expert on the format. I just can't wait until VGC 2018 is finally unleashed and I am able to declare how much better VGC 2017 was." Many others echoed this sentiment, citing Landorus-T and lame stuff like Kangaskhan as the main reason for their hatred of the yet unplayed VGC 2018.

"I have yet to play VGC 2018" chimed in another player, "But I know one thing for sure, there is no way it will be as good as 2016, which, totally unrelated, was my first year playing."

NASA: Snowballing to be Impossible by 2035 Due to Climate Change

Houston, TX - Climate change has been a major concern for scientists for decades now, but recent developments show that things are getting worse even quicker than expect. This degradation continues, and earlier this week NASA released a chilling prediction: Snowballing will be impossible by 2035 due to climate change. NASA even went further than this, saying "The first person to finish first in their region and not receive a travel stipend has already been born".

This news has many people terrified, fearing that they will no longer be able to put forth a little bit of effort early and then easily coast to laters events with only marginal results at other events. The report included particularly chilling excerpts such as "Climate change has already done untold damage to the Championship Point structure, but this prediction confirms that the worst is yet to come" it continues to say, "Unpredictable climate has pushed nationals earlier and earlier every year, and in just 10 years the European internationals will be so early that the results won't even matter for the season they are supposed to count for. In just a decade's time there will be no regionals held within 100 miles of the east or west coast of the United States. by 2029, Australia will only have a single sanctioned event, held yearly at the top of Uluru. This is unprecedented, and I fear it may be too late to be stopped"

Others, especially some US politicians, are not swayed by these negative prognostications. One congressman from Alabama laughed off these predictions. In a speech on the house floor, he proclaimed "If climate change is so devastating, then how do you explain this?" as he held up a screenshot from the Pokemon Tournament website. "This image shows that there are 4 midseasons showdowns in the next 9 days in the state of Ohio alone! If climate change is real like those eggheads at NASA seem to believe, then how can this be true?"

NASA, however, quickly rebuked the congressman's argument. In a statement, a spokesperson for NASA stated "Climate change does not mean that every single region will see a decrease in championship points immediately. While climate change may cause an increase in championship points in Ohio, Siberia, and other places no one would ever visit voluntarily, these increases are heavily outweighed by losses in other areas. For every one Midseason Showdown Ohio gains, 2 Australian events are taken away. In the long run, however, even places like Ohio will see tremendous losses".

In addition to these remarks on climate change, The NASA report also predicted that by 2035, the rest of the world will still be sleeping on LatAm

QUIZ: So You Think You're Ready To Use Pheromosa?

QUIZ: So You Think You're Ready To Use Pheromosa?

Top 8 people who are in your carpool home from the regional

(Credit to Chuppa (@ChuppaVGC) for the inspiration and creative input)

So you just finished finished top 32 at the regional, not bad but not great either. That tournament was quite exhausting, but it was nothing compared to what this carpool is about to be. Take a look at these guys you’re going to have to put up with for the 5 hour ride home.

8: The guy who only got top 68

Ouch, this guy sure is disappointed! The whole car ride to the regional he was so excited for his team and proclaimed it to be the play, but the tournament determined that was a lie. He’s been pretty quiet most of the car ride, generally just sitting in the backseat sulking in the corner. But he does occasionally chime in whenever someone complains about a tough loss they had to one-up them and say how much worse of a loss he had. Better luck next time kid

7: You

Yeah we’re counting you in this list! And it’s not just because we were too lazy to think of eight other people or anything either! Your friend’s minivan is only supposed to fit 7 so having 8 people is a stretch anyway and we didn’t want to make this top 8 list unrealistic and pretend your friend drives one of those 15 seater vans or something! Anyway your performance was pretty meh so you don’t get to talk too much, if you talk about your losses you’ll quickly get upstaged by people with worse luck or if you talk about your success you’ll get upstaged quickly by people who did better, so you’re gonna just have to sit there and put up with everyone else’s stories!

6: The guy who panicked about not having a team the whole ride there, but still finished with the same record as you

Oh great, this guy finished with the same record as you. It was annoying enough listening to him the whole car ride here, panicking about his team and seemingly throwing random mons on to a team that don’t even fit together. But he ended up just picking some standard bullshit like always and finished with the same record as you (even though he totally got lucky with matchups). He’s going to spend the whole ride talking about how his wins with this unfamiliar team were entirely due to his elite skill, and all of his losses were due to inexperience with the team. It turns out that no team is the perfect team for him because win or lose he’s still a genius!

5: Your Friend’s Dad

Not exactly an avid video game player, somehow your friend’s dad got stuck with driving this car full of nerds around. Maybe it’s because your friend’s mom just couldn’t handle all that whining from the last time she had to drive her son home from a regional, maybe he’s got some sort of sweet deal with the Mrs. in exchange for this huge errand, or maybe his home-life is so bad that these 5 hrs of driving around nerdy kids is a relative solace compared to what he has to put up with at home. In any case, he’s here, and he’s not trying to talk about the tournament at all! After asking you how it went, he quickly interrupts your answer to instead change the subject to sports. He may take a brief break to talk about politics at some point but since you got stuck in the front seat you’re gonna have to do your best to keep up a conversation about why Bill Belichick is such a great coach or why Aaron Rodgers going down earlier this season is totally ruining the excitement of the football season for the entire NFC. May the odds be ever in your favor!

4: The guy who is just happy he had fun

Ok who does this guy think he is fooling? He went x-4 but still is putting on this clever façade that he is just happy he got to spend time playing his favorite game or that he is glad he got to see his friends. He even thanked your friends dad for driving back before we even got in the car! You don’t even know this guy, he’s just one of your friend’s friends so you can’t tell if this is really how he is, or if he’s just faking being unreasonably cheery. No one plays pokemon for fun and we don’t have friends, only rivals! Surely, this disguise of happiness that he wears is actually just to mask his sorrow from his underwhelming finish. There’s no way anyone can have fun without winning!

3: The guy who stole your team and placed better than you

The nerve of this guy! He hits you up a few weeks before the tournament and asks if you want to teambuild with him and of course you accept, any opportunity to improve your team is welcome! But instead of helping he just asks you what you have already and takes it without contributing anything at all! And to top it all off he actually placed better than you, which he claims is totally due to his top level play. (completely ignoring how he dodged all the teams worst matchups! Seriously he didn't even play one Tapu Lele!) He even had the sheer audacity to say “Hey team building with you was pretty fun! We should do it again!”. As if…

2: The guy who won the whole event

It’s weird, you were kind of expecting this guy to be all smug about it but he’s actually being kind of cool about winning. Maybe it’s because he is still taking in the fact that he actually won, or maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to make anyone who didn’t perform well feel bad. In any case, the brief serenity his unexpected lack of smugness provides (especially compared to the other passengers!) has been a welcome surprise. Plus now every time you beat him at a PC you can brag about beating a regional champion.

1: The guy who got 9th

It’s funny, before this tournament this guy didn’t have any strong feelings about tournament structure, but now he’s extremely fiery and opinionated! He currently has his laptop out and is looking at the entire tournament schedule, pinpointing exactly which losses contributed to his resistance being 1.32 percentage points lower than 9th place. He has already chewed out the guy who was just trying to have fun for not winning his x-3 match, which would’ve made his resistance better. He has decided that he is going to become a career statistician and introduce the “Points Excluding Non-Indicative Sets” Size as a new tiebreaker to replace resistance (he would’ve had the 6th biggest size under this system). You’re frantically searching the internet looking for scholarly statistics articles to distract him with so he’ll just shut up for like, 5 minutes