Mr. Liesik, you guys have done a great job in the past 2 years that I've been a participant in the VGC. It's always tons of fun. As a competitive player though, I can't help but point out that it makes a huuuuuuuuuge difference whether or not we can see our opponent's mons before the battle.
For example, when we first heard about the Japanese rules, for some reason we all assumed we'd have team preview. A metagame began to develop among those of us who are already preparing that centered around looking at your opponent's team, and stacking your team against theirs. People knew the common threats, and invented interesting and unique counters against them. Surprisingly to me, solid and proven teams that worked wonders in '09 and '10 fell flat on their face in this new metagame because if your opponent had half a brain, they could read your most likely leads, and stack their team specifically to counter them. In it's own way it is fun, but it's just very different to what most of us are used to.
However, just a few weeks back, a certain user realized that on local play, team preview wasn't required like it is (or seems to be) on wifi. As a whole, we all started playing without team preview. The. Whole. Metagame. Completely. Collapsed. The new teams that were doing phenomenally well started failing hard, and the old, solid, proven teams started winning just like they used to.
In light of this this inadvertent experiment, I've come to the conclusion that whether or not we use team preview in VGC '11 will make an enormous difference on what kind of teams those of us that are preparing now will end up having to use. I know you and your crew have everything in the works, and I trust you all have it under control, but please, please don't keep us in the dark about this important aspect of VGC '11.
Thanks.
