In what was a rollercoaster of an International finals, budding star Owen Murphy won the Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet North America International Championships in the Seniors Division for VGC, taking down his daunting opponent, Justin Miranda-Radbord, who holds a godlike achievement of 25 tournament wins.
What makes this International takedown even more impressive is Murphy pulled off this exemplary feat not only as a newcomer in the competitive Pokémon scene but also with a specific Pokémon pick known to bring people bad luck: Murkrow.
Even if you don’t believe in those folktales, it’s still odd to see a Murkrow doing well in a competitive tournament set for the international stage, right? Well, in VGC—the official competitive format for Pokémon that uses double battles—Pokémon like Murkrow have a very valuable spot in players’ teams.
Murkrow boasts the ability Prankster, which gives all of its non-attacking moves a +1 stage of priority, which means it makes a fantastic support Pokémon for its partner and teammates waiting in the back as all of its support moves will go before the opponent, and even its partner.
Prankster in conjunction with the move Tailwind make Murkrow a very potent Speed control option for Murphy’s team. His Murkrow also happened to run the move Sunny Day, which is a great option to enable the Protosynthesis ability on Flutter Mane and Great Tusk while also being a solid tech to counter Rain teams that showed up strong for NAIC.
With Haze filling up this nasty crow’s final move slot, Murphy had an instant option to take away all of its opponent’s stat boosts—a hard counter to the omnipresent Dondozo and Tatsugiri strategy that heavily relies on boosting the former’s stats.
Haze has the other huge benefit of taking away its partner Pokémon’s stat drops, which is mainly useful for the Gholdengo on his team as Murkrow can whiff away any Special Attack drops Gholdengo incurs from spamming Make It Rain.
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Funnily enough, Murphy decided against bringing his Murkrow to any of the three games in the finals set against Justin Miranda-Radbord due to the poor matchup it would have against his opponent’s team.
With 20 Regional Championship wins and four International wins for the Juniors division along with one Regional win in the current season in the San Diego Regional Championships for the Seniors division, Radbord is already a VGC legend with an unheard-of number of accomplishments before even entering Masters division.
Taking down this behemoth of a star to become the 2023 North America International Champion is no easy feat and Owen Murphy managed to do the impossible with solid prep and adaptive play in a heated International finals.
