VoltageVGC Draft League Application
Hello, everyone!
I’m excited to announce a brand-new Pokémon VGC draft league! This league will follow Regulation H rules and be played on Pokémon Showdown.
Draft Format
The draft will follow a snake format, with one adjustment in the 3rd round to help balance the power gap between top-tier Pokémon. The draft order will go as follows:
1st round: 1, 2, 3, 4, …
2nd round: 4, 3, 2, 1
3rd round: 4, 3, 2, 1 (same order as the 2nd round)
4th round: 1, 2, 3, 4
And will continue snaking for the rest of the draft
Each player will draft a team of 10 Pokémon. Unlike many draft leagues, there will be no tiering system, tera captains, or anything like that. Instead, we’ll use a unique mechanic called “Exhaustion”.
Exhaustion Mechanic
To encourage deeper team-building and strategy, a Pokémon can only be used, or “dressed,” for a maximum of two-thirds of the regular season matches. For example, in a 12-match season, any given Pokémon can only be dressed 8 times and must sit out at least 4 matches.
Here’s how it works:
Each week, players select 6 Pokémon to “dress” for their match. Even if a Pokémon isn’t brought into battle, it still counts as “dressed” if selected.
Pokémon usage will be tracked, and each team’s dress/scratch data will be publicly available throughout the season to maintain transparency.
Exhaustion does not apply during playoffs.
This mechanic ensures that teams don’t rely too heavily on their top picks and will need to think strategically about roster depth throughout the season.
Teams and Players
The league will consist of 13 teams. Teams can have up to 3 players, which helps spread the load of team-building and ensures there’s always someone available for matches. Teams can add new players (who aren’t part of another team) at any point during the season, but new players cannot be added once the playoffs begin.
Regular Season
The regular season will be a 12-match round robin, with teams playing 3 matches per week. Matches will be flexible in terms of scheduling, but the standard times are:
Tuesday, 8 PM PST
Thursday, 8 PM PST
Saturday, 8 PM PST
All matches for the week must be finished by Sunday 2pm
If you can’t make the standard times, you can coordinate with your opponent to reschedule within the week. All regular season matches are best-of-three, with tiebreakers determined by individual game win percentage.
Playoffs and Last Chance Gauntlet
After the regular season, the top 7 teams will advance to the playoffs. The remaining 6 teams will enter a last-chance gauntlet to compete for the 8th and final playoff spot. The gauntlet will be a series of best-of-one matches:
13th place plays 12th place
The winner of that match plays 11th place, and so on, until one team earns the final playoff spot. The last match for the final slot will be best-of-3.
In the playoffs, seeding will not strictly determine matchups. Instead:
The 1st seed gets to pick any team from the bottom 4 playoff seeds as their opponent.
The 2nd and 3rd seeds will then choose their opponents, leaving the 4th seed with the remaining team.
This format will also continue in the second round of the upper bracket.
The lower bracket will pair up the highest seed difference between teams that haven’t faced each other yet.
Match Reporting
Whenever a match is played, both players are required to save the battle replays. Although I only need one replay, having both players save it provides a backup in case someone forgets. There will be a designated chat for submitting replay links to keep everything organized.
The date and time of the draft is Saturday November 2nd at 8pm for rounds 1-5, and Sunday Nov 3rd at 10am for rounds 6-10 (otherwise 13 teams x 10 picks = 130 picks + delays could take a very long time and allows for some research for the latter half)
