Gustav

You earn $531.

Your Pokeball misses, but both of your Great Balls hit on the first try! Litwick gains 1 level and you earn $102.

In order: Flareon uses Fire Blast on Ekans lv 16 and then Ekans lv 17. If at any point Flareon faints, bring in Ponyta and Flamethrower as a backup. If this SOMEHOW does not work, Poliwag and Water Gun. We then start with Poliwag/Water Gun on Eevee and use Flareon and Ponyta (in that order, with the above moves) as backup if necessary.

I like the idea conceptually. I think there are some things to be said against it from a purely philosophical/sentimental standpoint, but that's because I'm a fairly philosophical/sentimental person. First off, in other leagues that have this system, some player careers can be much longer real-life time-wise--I know of people in the EFL and PBE who said they had their players for over 2 years, and I'd imagine that can wear down on some people (myself included) because it's a really big commitment to pour your activity into one player for that long to have what's generally a "successful" career. Also, it would disrupt the way things have been done here for a very long time, and a lot of the significance of past players could get buried if what a career looks like suddenly became radically different. Bringing in 9-season careers already did this and that's something I hate about it--so doing something that's much greater to that extent would give me similar feelings. That said, functionally and objectively there's nothing wrong with it. It's a system that's used successfully in other leagues. I just don't like it for OId Boys Club reasons.

F - Nico Pearce @Big Newff goes on the clock.

1. @Gustav (GM) F - Nico Pearce F - Alex Johnston F - Vinny Detroit D - Hammar Voss D - Erlantz Jokinen G - Bubbles Utonium 2. @Big Newff F - Vasile Lamb F - Anze Miklavz F - D - Brian Payne D - Sven Eightnine G - 3. @Jason kranz F - Henri le Massif F - Baby Bob F - Perry Laperriere D - Hard Markinson D - Tavish DeGroot G - Xavier Booberry 4. @badcolethetitan F - Saku Kotkakoivu F - Brendan Marner F - Daniel Janser D - Tui Sova D - Siyan Yasilievich G - David Davis 5. @KnightRiley F - Weenuk Warrior F - Taylor Mourning F - Yun Chiang D - Poopy Peepants D - Malum Maellard G - Augustus Kennedy 6. @zepheter F - The Board Game Clue on Skates F - Nezuko F - Ronan Lavelle D - Bo Johansson D - Hulk Hogan 2 G - Cole Pearce

Pokeballs on Ponyta until it succeeds, and if I still have any left throw them at Poliwag. If I can use my evolution stone now, use it on Eevee and evolve it into Flareon. IF I have a Flareon, attack Litwick with Bite. If not, use Bite with Eevee. IF I have to fight Poliwag, use Bite with Flareon and/or Eevee if it's still standing, and Stomp with Ponyta if not. IF I somehow have to fight Ponyta, Bite with Flareon and/or Eevee as well (hopefully it won't come to that). Final action of the day: Explore Saffron City. If I have fewer than 4 Pokeballs, buy however many I need to get up to 4.

Work x2 Buy an Old Rod and explore Mt. Moon.

I remember back when this thread was 100% stalkable because no one cared enough to claim before the "here's what's up, take whatever" post in it. I'm not even fast enough these days Good to see we have some decent writers doing it at least.

Go for it; it's relevant! I was just referring to the too-common practice of tagging someone borderline-unnecessarily to farm likes (which I've been guilty of myself as well).

VSN moment It was fun to see how much LA bounced around in your rankings. Not that we're realistically #1 or anything but I at least think your reasons for liking us are valid

This is a good time to admit we really just did this out of spite for you

Friends, Romans, @VHLM GM...lend me your ears. Job pay has long been a hot-button issue in the VHL, with everyone comparing their job to everyone else's and wanting fair compensation for their efforts. In turn, league administration has generally done its best to determine what that fair compensation is and reward it wherever possible. Now that @Spartan and I are part of said "league administration", we stand in agreement on a few general principles which have crossed the table of the BoG for, quite literally, years at this point: VHLM GMs are expected to do quite a bit to keep the league running, more than many other jobs in the league. Even "being there for the players" can, in some cases, be a goal that takes hours per day to meet. Many of these GMs meet those high expectations, and some have even managed to surpass them, showing the highest possible standard to the league and its members on a daily basis. Current VHLM GM pay is not reflective of the expectations placed upon our GMs. As such, to thank the VHLM GM crew for all they do, to more accurately define the standards they are expected to meet, and to fairly compensate them for said standards... ...with the permission of the @Commissioner crew... ...job pay for VHLM GMs is, effective next week, raised to 4 TPE per week. @Updater

Congrats to our new hires! I'm really looking forward to seeing what you can do in the VHLM.

Mod me pls; also in as a player this time. Anyone is welcome to ask me questions on how to mod as well! I can't guarantee I'll know everything but half a game of experience taught me a lot.

I debated whether I wanted to apply for the VHLM Commissioner position, but I figured I had a chance at it and there have been some things I've wanted to do with the VHLM for a long time now (you'll see). At the end of the day, I was happy to be hired and I'm looking forward to what's next for the VHLM--especially now that I've got a more direct hand in that. I guess I'll raise some awareness on one point, and that is that whoever's in charge of deciding these things can consider my updater position open. I have portal access as commish anyway, and I'm willing to help out with updates whenever it's necessary or whenever I otherwise feel like it, but I don't think I'm going to do it frequently enough that I should be claiming pay for it separately. A big reason why I wanted to become an updater in the first place was that I really wanted to see how things worked on that end, and now that that curiosity has been satisfied (and I have better things to do in the VHL), it's time to move on and let someone else move in if that's what those in charge want. It's actually a really good thing for me that I'm not claiming 10 per week in job pay, anyway--one of the big things that keeps me interested in this league is creating content for it. It doesn't matter if I'm GM, commissioner, updater, or whatever--I think my best place in the league will always be one where I'm putting out articles for it, and there's no better feeling for me than to finish something I've worked hard at and watching people enjoy it. I can't promise that super consistently, because let's be realistic--the ability to do either one big task or all the small ones opens up the ability to do small stuff on weeks when I don't have as much time, and I'll definitely have weeks like that ahead of me. That isn't to say that I'll never write a media spot again, though. I have a couple ideas in the tank for Hall of Very Good and I'll certainly put up other walls of text when they occur to me. As far as VHLM plans go? I think I'll keep that mostly secret for the time being. VHLM GMs (or at least those who were in the GM channel earlier today) already know of one big thing we'll be rolling out, and there's more on the way. @Spartan and I have always been able to communicate well with each other, and I can say that that's continued to be the case so far. I'm super excited to be working with someone who (I think) is very similar to me and shares much of the same vision and enthusiasm for the league. I'm also looking forward to establishing SUPREME DOMINANCE over the VHLM with my "lose a player, lose a finger" retention policy, but we'll talk about that at a later date. For now, the future should be considered bright and sunshiney, and I hope the minors will be a great place to be for a very long time.

Congrats on all that's good and I'm glad to hear you're making the right choice for yourself! I'm not sure how exactly we first actually got to know each other since I'm not sure we ever played together at that point (maybe in Malmo? I think that came along later though)...but I've always enjoyed talking to you and I'm sad that the league is losing a Porcupine Tree enjoyer. See you around (hopefully) and good luck with everything!

This is what happens when you hire me as an AGM. In all seriousness this was a much better return than anything else that could have happened with the Pearce situation. Right up until this came up we had a couple mega-fleeces on the table that we would have had to accept otherwise.

Team World homies stick together

Ready to make things happen! @Spartan and I have talked and we've already got some really cool things lined up for those of you in the @VHLM GM crew. I'm looking forward to see what we can bring you in the seasons to come

This is actually a really interesting thing to write about, and IMO not the least bit controversy-stirring. I kinda wrote about this myself a while ago back when practice facility was put on the portal. When I was a GM that season, we had loads and loads of players creating, never accepting a contract from anyone, and ONLY clicking the practice facility button on the portal every week. No welfare, no posts, no nothing--try to message them on the forum, and they never see it. It's likely that they never even knew the forum existed to begin with and somehow just ended up on the portal only; I don't know how. The number of people doing that went down with time, but I wonder how much it keeps up today because I really haven't tracked it since then. There is a difference between clicking the free buttons and checking the forum and the sims anyway from time to time and just...never even being aware that there's life outside the portal. At which point I'd claim expansion conspiracy, but Beav is no longer commish.

Honestly, I'm not sure if ANYONE knows how lines work (beyond just "I'm going to look for players with builds that I personally like" as a general principle. Meta stuff doesn't count and I'm still salty about that). @Advantage was the all-time winningest GM in league history when I played for him and we'd run into things all the time that would either work or not work for no apparent reason, and no one really understood why. Another line-related story was my least fun season with Davos (which I think was S74? I don't care to check) where we had a great roster going into the season but got hit hard by Simon and ended up way out of a playoff spot around the deadline with me switching lines around quite a bit up to that point. I move a couple players around, nothing that should make a huge difference, and we go 2-0...so I don't touch it...and then I continue to not touch it as we put together some insane run where we go 15-2 or something like that and get right back into a playoff spot. And then, with the same lines, and absolutely no changes, we get absolutely DEMOLISHED in just about every one of the handful of games we have left and end up missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker. Simon giveth and Simon taketh away. In general, though, this is a cool read and there's a lot that a newer member should get to know.

It's been a while since I GMed a team, and for some reason I don't remember whether I had in one tournament or another since leaving Davos; though I certainly haven't run a team in the conventional VHL-or-VHLE-or-VHLM sense of the idea, I'm about 70% sure I did the last World Cup (though I'm looking at the Team World message history and seeing that I didn't, so seeing as my name never changed from "Captain Globehead Supreme", I don't think that was true) and 100% sure I was at least offered a spot as World Cup GM because I remember the message, though I suppose that always could have been WJC, which I doubt, and I suppose that always could have been for the S80 World Cup, which happened before I ever stepped down from Davos and which would surprise me if it were true--though, seeing as my primary assumption has been proven false, it's impossible to say that I'm correct about anything and I'd be at the very least intrigued, if not outright surprised, by whatever the truth of the matter actually happens to be, which is something that by itself doesn't exactly surprise me as I've always been known to miss all the practical small details despite remembering just about anything that isn't practical, which coincidentally also applies to the end of my VHL GM tenure as I'm now forgetting when that ended (maybe after S81? I honestly have no clue), though I'd much rather forget about that and I'm sure the rest of you would as well, even though it's important to note that if it did in fact come to an end after S81, it's been three whole seasons since I decided to get the hell out of Dodge, something that equates to approximately (I can't remember if our seasons make this over or under, but I think over) six months, meaning that we would have seen SIX whole Presidential tenures from William Henry Harrison by this point, which is something that's a bit off topic (albeit fascinating) and should serve as our cue to return to the matter at hand, that being my running of Team World in this season's VHL World Cup, a position I was very honored to accept for reasons including but certainly not limited to the retention of my second-favorite server name ever, which, as you should be able to tell, is slightly sarcastic as I've always taken pride in being a decent GM who cares about the team and the experience of the players, something I've always found a bit lacking in tournaments like these when half the team joins the server and there's a message every three days, running entirely contrary to my "active locker room" style of management that (sometimes) makes people want to be on the team even if (and when) we can't stop losing, which I hope Team World is able to do in this tournament as I thank you for putting up with this monstrosity. @fishy hi