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Wednesday 21 March 2018

Kommo-onism for Everyone -- Prague Special Event Top-16 Team

Alola friends. The grind for the invite is now officially over, I have booked Worlds too, and here I present to you the team that helped me finish the job.

Finding the Team

Well, first thing I should say here is that I actually meant to bring a different team to the event...another quicksand thing, in fact. It looked pretty strong on paper but it didn't fulfil my expectations in practice especially when talking about the (very troublesome) Tapu Koko matchup. Being weak to Koko is unacceptable and not worthy of an invite, so I decided that I would prefer to not use that and somehow find something that works better, if I can. Well, and then, you know, Hidden Ability starters got released a week before Prague (and a day before my local MSS on top of that), didn't exactly make things easier. But one thing that it did do...it made me pull up that Kommo-o stuff that's troubled me way too much to be just a meme, and added in the ugly kitty because why not. I played my 20ish test games and yeah, it felt better even with how it's kinda far from what I normally prefer to use. But then again, I've also said that 2018 feels a lot like 2016 to me. 2016 was sacrifices. 2016 was flowcharts. 2016 was everything I don't like about this game, but somehow it seems I had quite a decent grasp on 2016 despite the disgust. Naturally, I named my Battle Box with the team "BIG SIX", and then clicked some Geomancy like in the bad old days.

The Team

Was uns (Tapu Bulu) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Grassy Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rock Slide
- Wood Hammer
- Superpower
- Stone Edge

Bulu has the synergy with Kommo-o for dealing well with various Tapus (and Azumarill, if we want to think about my old team's matchup for a second), but it's too slow normally, so there's the Choice Scarf. Superpower for Incineroar, Stone Edge for Wide Guard happy Fire cheese, and Rock Slide has been as awful as always when not on Ttar, but it's fucking Rock Slide. One day I will steal a game with it like the pros are doing it regularly.

Oh, Bulu has been a bag of mixed feelings on that weekend. In multiple rounds throughout the event, opponents called the switch-in and clicked a stupidly risky Iron Head to make me rue my choice of running Tapu Bulu, but in the very last game, it was the winner, and that was pretty important to me. Maybe I just need to get good, yes, I know.

einst von (Incineroar) (M) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 140 HP / 36 Atk / 44 Def / 124 SpD / 164 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Knock Off
- Taunt
- Fake Out

You have seen a shitton of those smelly cats lately, and mine apparently is somewhat unconventional in multiple ways. The final judgement on whether that's worth or not has yet to be passed, I honestly have no idea. I can only explain things as I currently see them. First, the stats. I have no idea what a good Attack benchmark is, so I just went with Nature and the first free point from it. The Speed is for Koko in Tailwind, and naturally it also came in handy occasionally for winning the Fake Out wars against other Incineroars (all of them have been slower than mine, no exceptions). And with that out of the way, I did a bunch of random defensive calcs and distributed the rest so it looks decent enough. I don't remember what exactly I calced, sorry. Sitrus Berry has been picked because the team isn't really made to switch around forever and stuff, and even this Incineroar is still easily outsped by whole teams sometimes, so it seems safer to just take the easier but weaker recovery this time. Well, and still no Protect for the absolutely silly reason of already having 4 of them on other mons. I have never seen a good team that had 5 Protects. The ideal number is 4, and 3 is also acceptable. (Wait, I just realized that I lied. My own 2015 team had 5 Protects if we count King's Shield...) WHATEVER.

Taunt should have been reasonably good with the stupid support slaves that I expected to see, but then I only found Porygons and had no time to Taunt them because they might as well just spam attacks that actually add up. Between Taunt, Fake Out and Knock Off there is quite some duty overload on this single mon and there's hardly time to use all of them. Anyway, options to make all of this more streamlined are on the table.

Gott gegeben (Kommo-o) (M) @ Kommonium Z
Ability: Soundproof
Level: 50
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Clanging Scales
- Flamethrower
- Close Combat
- Protect

Nothing to see here, I don't know how to meaningfully improve this most basic build! Sad story, I actually wanted Fire Blast for Metagross (and possibly other things), but then I noticed Kommo-o doesn't learn Fire Blast...seriously, Game Freak!? I do remember that there was a time when Tyranitar knew only Thunderbolt but not Thunder, but they changed that! And now they are repeating the exact same mistake...well fuck me, that's what I get for rarely taking the risky options. Speaking of risky options, one might very well consider Focus Blast with all the multi-Intimidates. I didn't feel the need so far though.

I ended up being very hesitant to bring Kommo-o as soon as I saw double Tapus or something in team preview, and with one of them being Koko. That was probably more a player problem than a team problem, to be honest. On the bright side, the team has intentionally been made to not go all-in on such a fickle Dragon, so it wasn't the worst handicap.

wird uns (Whimsicott) (F) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Prankster
Level: 50
EVs: 188 HP / 68 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Tailwind
- Encore
- Fake Tears
- Protect

Pretty regular Whimsicott here too, my own contribution to the (assumed) metagame of dumb support slaves. I actually do believe Protect is stronger than a random attacking move right now, it can help you so much with positioning especially when Fake Out is right back to being basically everywhere, and free slots to Fake Out tend to be bad. It's a risk not worth taking for this team because it doesn't really get a compelling advantage from the free turn that the partner would get from the double especially in 4-4 situations. Well, and Incineroar is a special kind of annoying because of the Dark type mechanics. Can't give up Prankster, need it for Tailwind and Fake Tears...

Whimsicott's biggest weakness is to be left alive on boards where it contributes nothing. Luckily, I happen to be the type of Trainer who switches a lot and even does that with a relatively frail team like this somehow, so I ended up doing quite well at managing my positions with Whimsicott...even though I absolutely hate pure support mons (without redirectional self-exits), too! There have been plenty of games where I set multiple Tailwinds, showed the full freaking moveset, yada yada. Doesn't get better than that.

auch der Tod (Gengar) (M) @ Gengarite
Ability: Cursed Body
Level: 50
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Sludge Bomb
- Shadow Ball
- Disable
- Protect

Gengz is kinda broken. Shadow Tag is an Ability that needs a real nerf just like Prankster got one, can't say it often enough. And then everyone and their mother use Megagross and Tapus. It would be the most obvious Mega pick in the world if it weren't for the annoying Speed tie with Koko. Had to go for a few of them, sometimes my choice, sometimes opponent's, went roughly evenly, that's fair. There is a way to fix that though, and we know it all. ツ

It seems that Disable and I can't be friends, even with Shadow Tag and Encore to help. For it to work, the target is not allowed to use Protect, and the partner might very well be dangerous enough that we can't afford to waste that turn on a Protect. How do people even use Disable successfully, I simply don't understand for the life of me, but yes, apparently they do!

nicht nehmen (Tapu Fini) @ Mago Berry
Ability: Misty Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 212 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 36 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Muddy Water
- Moonblast
- Calm Mind
- Protect

Ever since I used FAKEPG, I'm always running Modest max on my Finis. Plays somewhat like Curselax with that -- get one boost, and then throw out big damage. Just not as good because too many bad weaknesses and less reliability. Muddy Water is the only major inaccurate move in this team, and of course I've lost multiple games to Muddy Water misses alone even in such a small sample size...but it's still better than Scald which probably just does nothing like ever, haha. And it also kinda was the game decider in my very last game of Prague because nice accuracy drop in your face, you know. Fini is a genie in a clam and you know it. And the Berry...I don't even remember what exactly made me put it on over my preferred Leftovers. Maybe it was the team's perceived ability to force plays, positions and mistakes via absolute rejection of passivity. It has paid off, only Knock Off and Thunderbolt crits got around it.

Someone has given me a face at having Fini and Kommo in the same team because of Misty Terrain and what it does to the Dragon move. Weeeeelllll...touché! This has been so fucking irrelevant for all of 2017, I simply didn't even think about it, haha. Anyway, it's not too much of an issue because I haven't been picking both of them often. Their roles are overlapping in special spread boosty things and they have plenty synergy with the rest of the team much more so than with each other.


No team preview section or anything like it here because I don't feel qualified to do it. My experience of playing this is quite a lot of learning by doing actually, it's really not your typical Dreykopff team at all. One thing it does share with my usual teams, however, is that picking a lead is the hardest thing. I hate leads, just let me start at midgame, haha.

Anyway, that will be it for today. I'm the happiest Trainer in a long time for having the definitive confirmation that I'm finally going to Worlds. A very nice part about it begins now: I have 5 months to cook up the one team. It's only that one distant deadline with the simple goal of world fucking domination, absolutely no pressure to perform before that. I have ideas, just need to get myself to play and flesh them out, you know, and then we play some games of Pokémon. The blog won't die in that time, still have a few things to release on the way. And probably also bring a meme or two to some irrelevant events while I'm at it. No matter what, I'm gonna make sure to enjoy my last ride in VGC. Alola!

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