Rules & Summary

Phlygone Championship Series Summary

Welcome back to Season 2 of the PCS! There were a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, the season was relatively successful. The Phlygone Championship Series (PCS), if you weren't already aware, is a series of tourneys throughout the year, or Season. There will still be winners of each of these individual tourneys; however, Championship Points, or PCS Points, will also be awarded depending on your performance. Even if you do not do well in a tourney, you get rewarded points just for participation. However, if you leave a tourney that is in progress, or you are caught cheating in anyways, you receive a PCS penalty. This is to encourage tourney participation and discourage dropping out, as just finishing in a tourney is an accomplishment!

This year will be a little different, however. In our last two years, we have hosted many tournaments on Pokemon Showdown, a commonly used fan-made battle simulator. With the introduction of PGL tourneys with Gen 7 Sun and Moon, and a surge of interest in the Pokemon The Card Game Online on our discord server, we will be having tournaments on all three platforms. For those of you worried about preforming well in PCS but don't want to explore these new options, don't fret - Season 2 will have three different champions, one for each format!

Pokemon Showdown PCS Tourney Timeline:
Double Elimination Gen 7 UU - March
Swiss Gen 7 OU - April
Swiss Gen 7 RU - May
Phlygone Summer League - June to August
Double Elimination Gen 7 OU - September
Swiss Gen 7 UU - October
Swiss Gen 7 NU - November
Phlygone Winter League - December to January

PGL Sun and Moon Tourney Timeline:
VGC 2017 - March
BSS - June
VGC 2017 - August
BSS - November

PTCGO Tourney Timeline:
Theme - March
Standard - June
Expanded - July
Theme - August
Standard - October
Expanded - December

On top of this all, we are adding one more leader board to the list: Phlygone Monthly Sessions, run by our very own WingedZebra! These are extremely similar to Battle Arcade from Season 1, except instead of a random person, you will play another member playing in the competition. You have one month to gather as many victories as you can, which awards points. Whoever has the most victories at the end of the month earns bonus points! Note that Phlygone Monthly Sessions can only be played on Pokemon Showdown.

The Season begins and ends on Febuary 1st of each year. After each tourney, the PCS tourney points for each category will be tabulated at the bottom of Tourneys tab. A tally of each players points will be placed there. Depending on where you place on each leader board, various prizes will be awarded:

Pokemon Showdown Awards:
1st Place - Championship Sweater
1st to 5th Place - Be Featured in an Interview Posted on Phlygone's YouTube Channel
1st to 13th Place - Custom Artwork with you and a Pokemon

Sun and Moon Awards:
1st Place - A Years Subscription to Pokemon Bank!
1st Place - A Legit, Pokemon of Your Choice Shiny Made by MarcosGamez
2nd to 5th Place - A Legit Shiny Made by MarcosGamez

Pokemon TCG Awards:
1st Place - 20 Packs
2nd Place - 15 Packs
3rd Place - 10 Packs
4th Place - 5 Packs

Phlygone Monthly Sessions Awards:
Zebra will gather together a collection of various prizes into a "grabbag", and you get to pick personally based on the order you place! The prizes in the "grabbag" will be announced sporadically throughout the year.

Negative Points:
However, there will be consequences for negative actions. Cheating in any form may receive an appropriate amount of PCS point loss, and the most common forms of cheating are outlined in the Basic Rules section. Another way to lose tourneys is by leaving during them. It is important to note these No Show and Leave Penalty rules outlined below.

If you do not register for a tourney, you will not receive any penalty, AKA No Show.
If you register for a tourney, but let me know that you cannot attend the tourney 24 hours in advance, you receive no penalty. This is equivalent to a No Show.
If you leave the tourney midway through, or do not notify me before 24 hours, you receive the leave penalty. However if there is an extreme emergency, you may be exempt from the penalty.
It is possible to attain negative points.

Scoring Rules

Next are the Summer and Winter Leagues. The format is the Phlygone Draft-Style, where each player drafts a team and plays an extended tourney. Each league lasts an extended a period of time over breaks and require a little bit more time commitment. That is why the awards are so much higher for the leagues than they are for the splits.

Either way, the way you preform awards a certain amount of points. Note that participation in each tourney awards points, so it encourages you to attend tourneys for formats that may not prefer. This allows us to get better numbers for less popular formats. Also note that the OU Tourney from Feb 5th is on this list. That is because you will be awarded points for your performance retroactively. Note that all other tourneys are ommitted as they are from Season 0.

All of the Phlygone Championship Series Tourneys & the points each tourney it rewards is shown in the picture below.

Leaderboard

The leaderboard will be everchanging throughout the year, so check all the action out by clicking here to see the PCS Leaderboard!

Basic Rules

ENTRANCE RULES:

All rules of Smogon Format rules apply for each individual format.
If there is a suspect or a ban due to a bug, the format that is currently active will be used.
The entrance deadline is three days before the tourney date at 9:59PM PST/11:59 CST. This is done by RSVPing on the Tournament page on http://deltastreamingnetwork.weebly.com/.
If you do not register in time, you may be placed on a waitlist.
All 6 Pokemon (or Decklist) have to be entered before the tournament.
1. Your Pokemon must be submitted in the required registration form.
2. Your Pokemon must be submitted in the required registration form and the deadline is two days before the tourney date at 9:59PM PST/11:59 PST. This is done by entering the submission form which is emailed to you after registration. If you do not submit this form, a person on the waitlist may take your spot.
3. You CANNOT switch one Pokemon out for another Pokemon during the tourney. Note, this does not apply for PTCG Tourneys.
4. Adaptaplay: You CAN switch moves/abilities/spreads of your Pokemon at ANYTIME during the tourney. Note, this does not apply for PTCG Tourneys.
5. Everyone's Pokemon will be announced, as well as the tournament schedule two days before the tourney.
All entrants need to be logged in on the platform the tourney is being held on 20 minutes before the scheduled tournament (or match for leagues).
To communicate, please be logged in to the Phlygone Discord server (link enclosed)

MATCH SCORING & TIE-BREAKING RULES:
In our tournaments, it happens quite often where multiple players have identical W/L records, and a tiebreaker needs to occur. Below is the tie-breaking procedure. On 3/31/16 Phlygone Staff decided to add these rules, effective immediately:

Head to Head Victory: If the players have played each other, then the player with the victory over the other player wins the tiebreak.
KOF Tiebreak: At the end of every match, the amount of Pokemon each player took, or Knocked Out (KO), and the amount of Pokemon lost, or Fainted (F) is recorded. This is tabulated over the course of the tourney. If there is a tie at this stage of the tiebreak, then the player with the highest KOF Ratio, or Knockout to Faint Ratio, wins the tiebreak.
- Note: DIV/0 is considered to be infinite KOF.
Most KO Tiebreak: If there is a tie in KOF, then the player with the higher amount of KOs wins the tiebreak.
Coin Flip: If after the Head to Head, KO/F and Most KO Tiebreak the players are still identical, flip a coin to decide who wins the tie break.

FORFEIT RULES:
Forfeits have been a big problem in the previous Phlygone Tourneys. On 3/31/16 Phlygone Staff decided to add these rules, effective immediately:

3-0 No-Show Forfeit: If a player does not show up for their match, the opposing player is awarded a victory and a 3-0 KOF Ratio.
6-X Show Forfeit: If a player forfeits in the middle of a match, the opposing player is awarded a victory and a 6-X KOF Ratio. where X is the number of mons the forfeiting took.

GAME RULES:

You must play the MOST RECENT GENERATION of the format for the tournament you are participating in.
IF YOU ARE IN A TOURNEY GAME, before you start a match, MAKE SURE the streamers and/or organizers are aware that your game is going before you start. The streamer/organizer will give you a go before you can start.
If your game is scheduled to start and you are not there, you forfeit that game. I'm not going to wait for you to grab food from the dining hall. Be ready when you are about to go.
90 seconds per turn, but try and not to use that. Its way too long and everyone knows it. If it seems like you are just stalling a game by using THE SECONDS BETWEEN A TURN on purpose, then you will be warned. If it happens again, you forfeit that game. If it happens again, you are eliminated from the tourney.
Using a Pokemon Calculator, Smogon, Bulbapedia, etc, is allowed. Using /dt or !dt in the showdown chat is preferred, when applicable. Again, be careful about the rule above.
IF YOU ARE IN A TOURNEY GAME, please do not get into another game (OF ANY SORT). If your game is about to start, you have to forfeit all other games. If you are about to win a game outside of the tournament and if you lose you lose 250 ELO, I don't care. Don't play ranked games in between turns then.
IF YOU ARE NOT IN A TOURNEY GAME, don't start anything you won't finish in time. You will have to forfeit whatever game you are in or forfeit your tourney game.
SAVE THE REPLAY PLEASE

CHEATING:
Phlygone Tourneys has a 100% zero tolerance policy on cheating. Cheating may result in discipline, including but not limited to: PCS Point Loss, Game Disqualification, Tourney Disqualification, Tournament Registration Suspension or Phlygone Tourney Permaban.

Stream Sniping: Players are not allowed to watch the tourney while they are playing in their match if their game is on stream.
External Interplayer Support: Players are not allowed to communicate with each other about strategies during the middle of a game and can only use the game chat for communication for game discussion ONLY. If the chat is getting out of hand, I will force viewers to stop discussing the match in game. There is no ban for players communicating in-between games or matches.
Match Fixing: Any form of match fixing is prohibited and will result in an automatic permaban from all Phlygone Tourneys.
Non-Disclosed Rules: Anything that seems that it could obviously determined as cheating can be diciplined upon by myself.

Showdown Swiss Rules

(Applies for SWiss Tourneys ONLY)

Phlygone Swiss Tourneys are broken into two stages, the Swiss Stage, where all players get to play four games no matter their predominance, and TopCut Stage, where the best players play in a 6 man playoff to see who is the best. Eac

STAGE 1: FOUR ROUND SWISS (BEST OF 1)

The Swiss Stage is the non-elimination phase of the tourney. There are several rounds of competition, but each competitor (team or individual) does not play every other competitor. Instead, competitors meet one-to-one in each round and are paired by record and tiebreakers to ensure that as far as possible a competitor plays competitors with the same current record, subject to not playing the same opponent more than once. Competitors are paired based on approximately how well (or poorly) they have performed so far. In the first round, competitors are paired randomly. In subsequent rounds, competitors are sorted according to their cumulative record and /or tiebreakers so they are matched against someone with similar skill.

In our tournaments, we will be using a Best of One (meaning one game against each opponent) Swiss Style tournament with four rounds. After each round, you will move up or down with each match. This happens four times, with your final score determining your seeding in the TopCut bracket, with the players seeded 7 or lower will be eliminated from the tourney.

SWISS TOURNEYS WILL NO LONGER BE STREAMED AND BE HELD EXCLUSIVELY ON DISCORD.

STAGE 2: TOPCUT (BEST OF 3)

The TopCut Stage is the elimination phase of the tourney. The Top 6 from the Swiss round will be selected, and placed in a best of three playoff bracket. The top 2 players get round one byes. The 3 Seed plays the 6 Seed and the 4 Seed plays the 5 Seed. The lowest remaining seed then plays the 1 Seed. and the second lowest remaining seed plays the 2 Seed. The winners of those games play each other in the finals. PCS points will then be awarded accordingly.

Showdown Double Elimination Rules

(Applies for Double Elimination Tourneys ONLY)

Phlygone Double Elimination Tourneys has only one stage, a Best of One (meaning one game against each opponent) Double Elimination Playoff.

DOUBLE ELIMINATION (BEST OF 1)
In Double Elimination, the bracket is broken into two which allows players to proceed throughout a playoff and lose twice before they are eliminated. When a player loses their first match, they move from the Winners Bracket, or the bracket with players that have not lost a match, to the Losers Bracket, the bracket with players have lost one match. When a player loses in the Losers Bracket, they are eliminated. Both brackets proceed until there is a winner. When the Losers and Winners bracket are finished, the winner of each brackets plays each other in a championship game. However if the Winners bracket players loses, they play again, as they have not lost twice yet. If the Winner's Bracket player wins once, they are the Champion. If the Loser's Bracket player wins twice, they are the Champion.

The entire Winners Bracket will be streamed, where only from the Losers Quarterfinals on will be streamed.

PLAY-IN GAMES
Unfortunately, Double Elimination is a slightly flawed format. Therefore if we do not have 16 players, some amount of players have to play one more game than others. To decide who plays in these games, it will be determined randomly. I apologize for any inconvenience.

DOUBLE ELIMINATION TOURNEYS WILL STILL BE STREAMED

Phlygone League Rules

(Applies for PSL and PWL Only)

COMPETITIVE FORMAT:
OU Roster Management League

ROSTER FORMAT & FORMAT RULES:

Rosters are comprised of 11 Pokémon. All Pokémon in OU are eligible to be on rosters.
Pokémon can be acquired in three ways: through the Draft, through Trades or by Waivers/Free Agency. Pokémon can be lost in two ways, through Trades and by Drops. These terms are collectively called Roster Moves.
Every Pokémon will have a Tag associated with it. This Tag reveals how this Pokémon can or cannot be attained.
1. The BAN tag identifies Pokémon that cannot be attained in anyway.
2. The IOC tag identifies Pokémon that cannot be drafted or added to your roster directly, but you can attain by use of drafting a similar Pokémon and using an item (ex: Megas, Giritina-O, etc) or in battle move or circumstance (Darmanitan-Z).
3. The DFT tag identifies that this Pokémon can only be attained through the draft. Every Pokémon has the D tag assigned to them at the start of the season.
4. The ROS tag identifies that this Pokémon is currently on a roster. If a Pokémon it has a ROS tag, the roster it is currently on is displayed to the right of the tag. The only way to attain a Pokémon with a ROS tag is by trade.
5. The FA tag identifies that this Pokémon can be added to your team immediately.
6. The WP1 and WP2 tag identifies that this Pokémon on waivers, and can be added to your team at the end of the respective waiver period (1 or 2) if you claimed at the highest priority.
Every roster move will be timestamped, so we can see when a move was made.
The Draft Format and Rules
1. The draft order is snake. That means that the first player in the first round who makes a selection in the first round is the last person to make a selection in the second round. The second person who makes a selection in the first round is the second to last person to make a selection in the second round, and so on. This will repeat such that now for the third round, the positions now invert.
2. There will be 11 rounds in the draft. In rounds 1-6, each player will have 3 minutes to make a selection. In rounds 7-11, each player will have 2 minutes to make a selection. The draft clock will be up and live on Twitch.
3. If you cannot attend the draft, or if you are worried about a computer error, you can set-up an autoboard. An autoboard is where you can send me a google sheet with every Pokémon that you’d like to draft, in order in how much you want to draft them. Please contact me for more details.
4. If the timer runs out on your selection, and you do not have an autoboard setup, then the highest available Pokémon on the Pokémon viability list is selected.
5. Players are allowed to trade draft picks and Pokémon during the draft. This will be discussed further in the “Trading Rules” section.
Waiver Periods/Free Agency Rules
1. Free Agency (FA) occurs at anytime before the season and after the draft, and on Wednesday and Thursdays during the regular season.
2. The First Waiver Period (WP1) occurs on Monday of each week during the regular season.
3. The Second Waiver Period (WP2) occurs on Wednesday of each week during the regular season.
4. At any time, you can drop a Pokémon from your roster to make room for acquisitions. Drops are timestamped, so you can make successive moves without having to worry about me seeing it.
5. In FA, any Pokémon designated with the FA tag can be added to your active roster as soon as we have seen it submitted to the form. It could be possible that another team will have also tried to add the Pokémon to their roster, in that case, whoever submitted first receives the Pokémon.
6. In WP1 and WP2, any Pokémon designated with the WP1 and WP2 tag can be added to your added roster at the end of the waiver period. During waivers (WP1 and WP2), everyone has an opportunity to attempt to add a Pokémon. However, whoever has the highest waiver position has the priority. On Sunday, the waiver position order is determined by record, where the team with the worst record gets the highest priority on waivers. KOF is the tiebreaker. If you get a Pokémon on waivers, your priority drops to the lowest possible priority. You can make many waiver requests, however later requests will have significantly lower priority. The waiver priority at the end of WP1 is the waiver priority at the start of WP2. Drops submitted with waiver adds will not process if you are not successful in adding the Pokémon.
7. To drop a Pokémon, place the - symbol in front of the Pokémon in roster update form (ex:-Landorus-T). To add a Pokémon, place the + symbol in front of the roster update form (ex:+Landorus-I). If you want to add a Pokémon to drop another simultaneously, combine them with an & sign (ex:+Azumarill&-Rotom-M). If you want to make another waiver request, use the ; to separate the requests (ex: +Thundorus-T; -Dusclops; etc.). If I cannot understand your request it may not process.
8. TL;DR Basically the worse you are doing, and if a Pokémon is designated on WP1 or WP2, you get an earlier claim on waivers, but if a Pokémon is designated on FA then its first come first serve.
Trading Rules
1. At any point before the season starts, a trade can be executed.
2. You can not trade anything that is not on your roster, including Pokemon on cartridge, money, etc.
3. At any point on Monday -Wednesday before the end of the 6th week of the PSL regular season, a trade can be executed.
4. Any amount of Pokémon can be traded for any amount of Pokémon, so much that each team has the proper roster space and a minimum of 6 Pokémon remain on each team. Drops can be submitted within the trade request and will occur concurrently, and will not be dropped if the trade is not successful.
5. Trades for picks are not treated the same as Pokémon. You can have infinite amount of Picks (if trades fell your way), but after your 11th selection, all subsequent picks cannot process and are voided picks. You can trade lower draft selections at anytime before end of the pick.
6. Only 10 trades can be executed during the regular season. A trade with more than two people will only count once against the trade limit.
Due to Smogon Suspects, two rules have been put into effect to protect the league's integrity throughout the tourney
1. If a Pokémon is suspected to be sent from OU to Ubers during PSL, it cannot be played during the duration of the suspect. It can be kept, traded or dropped. If it is eventually banned, it is suggested that is dropped.
2. If a Pokémon is suspected to be sent down from Ubers to OU during PSL, it cannot be added to a roster during the suspected period.

SEASON MATCHUP FORMAT:

Once a week, from Thursday Night at 5:30pm PST/7:30pm CST to Sunday night at 9:59pm PST/11:59pm CST during the regular season, each team has a match, which will be on the schedule.
Each match is best of 3 and you get points depending on the result of the match for each game won. If someone wins 2 games to 0, then they get 2 points and the opposing player gets 0 point. If someone wins 2 games to 1, then they get 2 points and the opposing player gets 1 point. KOF Ratio (Knock-Out to Feint Ratio) is also calculated for tiebreak.
You can communicate with the other person to try and get a time that works for both of you. If not, the default time is Sunday night at 12PM PST/2AM CST. If someone does not attend, it is considered a 2/-1 win for the person who did attend. If neither player attends, it is a -1/-1 tie.
League Specific Forfeit Rules:
1. Show Forfeit: Forfeits in Leagues are identical to the Swiss rules.
  - 6-X Show Forfeit: If a player forfeits in the middle of a match, the opposing player is awarded a victory and a 6-X KOF Ratio. where X is the number of mons the forfeiting took.
2. No-Show Forfeit: Forfeits in Leagues are done similarly than the forfeits in Swiss, but are ramped up in penalty.
  1. First Forfeit: 3-0 No-Show. If a player does not show up for their match, the opposing player is awarded a victory and a 3-0 KOF Ratio.
  2. Second Forfeit: 6-0 No-Show. If a player does not show up for their match, the opposing player is awarded a victory and a 6-0 KOF Ratio.
  3. Third Forfeit: Out. If you forfeit three times, you are out, and your team is given to another player.
KOF is awarded in the same way outlined above
Each player will be in a division of 4. Each player will play each team in their division twice, for a total of 6 games. The divisions will be chosen by the lottery number. For the other 4 games, it will be determined by seed number.
Adaptaplay: Between each game, players can swap moves, items, abilities, spreads and even Pokémon, as long as this combination is OU Legal and you are using only Pokémon from your roster [Implied Rule, added for clarity].
If a disconnect occurs in the middle of a match and the game has not yet reached turn 6 then the match will be restarted. If the match has progressed to turn 6 or further and a disconnect occurs then the match then the player who has disconnected loses UNLESS the opponent wants to restart the game. You can only dc once without a called forfeit (DO NOT ABUSE THIS RULE)
1. When there is a DC, take a screenshot of the disconnect and ask your opponent to do so as well to log it. If possible, store a replay.
2. The disconnect from the side of the other player will be the one used. If you were making inputs into Showdown and it wasn’t registering them on your end, but registering on the server, then the Phlygone staff can do a review of the situation.
3. A post-turn 6 DC can be replayed at the opponents will. If it is not replayed, the opponent is awarded with 6 kills.
The winner of each division is determined by points. If a player wins their division, they get an automatic berth into the playoff tourney. The next six highest players in points get in via wildcard. The division winners get byes for the first round of the playoff, called the Wild Card round, where the 6 wild cards do a best of 3 play-in game. In the next round, the wild cards join the division winners in a top 8 bracket. Every game in the top 8 bracket is best of 5. See this spreadsheet to visualize the playoff. KOF is used as tiebreak.
Top Cut weekend begins at the end of the regular season.
STREAMING IS NOT MANDATORY. Please ask a staff member if you can stream your match. However if you are a streamer, you can stream your matches. All I request is that you let me know you are planning to stream your matches and that I am not responsible for stream sniping. There will be further information about streaming upcomming.
For each game, save the replay and record the KOF Ratio. Do this by clicking Upload and Share Replay in the Showdown window at the end of the game. Then, when the match is over, transfer to the spreadsheet.