Note from the Editor

Here I am, once again bringing to you all a new issue of our prestigious the Smog! Issue #20 in particular is a especial one, as it commemorates the 20th anniversary of the magazine and the third year we have been active since the very first issue was released. But I'll talk more about all this in a moment.

In the last two months, we've seen quite a few noteworthy changes happen across the site. On the competitive side of things, the Smogon Tour will soon be in its final stage and things seem to be pretty heated up, so make sure you follow this closely if you don't want to miss out on anything exciting that happens among the finalists. Even more interesting is the creation of an entirely new—and official—tournament designed to ensure every Smogon-supported Gen V tier is represented in an official manner — say hello to the Smogon Grand Slam, and you can follow this link to learn everything there is about it, including what it's going to take to get that new, shiny trophy. Our Pokemon Online server has also seen a few changes, most notably the addition of two new tiers: Monotype (based on Standard OU) and 1v1 Challenge Cup, both of which already register quite a lot of activity.

Community wise, probably the biggest change is the forum reorganization we carried out recently. Essentially, the old Dragonspiral Tower became what is now Smogon Metagames with sub-forums for each official metagame that we host on Smogon. Then, The Pokemon Organized Play sub-section was created to house Wi-Fi, VGC, TCG (new) and Orange Islands (new), the latter being home to anything that has to do with Pokemon games but that are not related to an existing metagame.

With site updates on a side, let's talk about the Smog now. On May 13th, 2009 the first issue of the Smog was released, and with issue #20 we want to celebrate both our twentieth release and the fact that the magazine has been live for more than three years! This is an incredible accomplishment in every sense of the word, and I cannot thank enough all of our writers, artists, proofreaders, coders and leaders that we have had at the Smog. Thank you so much! Similarly, thank you, our readers, for being always there looking forward to our next release — without you, the Smog would not be what it is and where it is today. You guys rock!

This time around we're coming with a total of forty one articles, reaching a new milestone once again! But there is more. Our artists have been prolific too — this issue we're featuring a total of sixty one art pieces that were drawn specifically for the Smog. These numbers fail to show how much work goes behind achieving these results, but they're useful statistics anyways. This makes issue #20 our most successful release to date, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed making it! Oh and... The results for the Smog Awards are here, too.

~Setsuna