tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54173533089148300092024-03-13T18:47:33.467+01:00Under Oblivion WingsTrainer Dreykopff's Pokémon VGC BlogDreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-66442218335582037112018-03-21T18:18:00.000+01:002018-03-21T18:18:06.275+01:00Kommo-onism for Everyone -- Prague Special Event Top-16 Team<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPUOdcPuVo1SbgvYdtWzvGJ-FcFTIYEljD6AWPrKfMR4oViV7A40J0nv8ZZwzKBh_1ri7tbOCkzay3mM4vAEGl62PB4Kk0_qCL4YKkM8I8YE8fE06x0WPpx8gYrGGrYKq4tKgv3zZVwoo/s1600/kommo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPUOdcPuVo1SbgvYdtWzvGJ-FcFTIYEljD6AWPrKfMR4oViV7A40J0nv8ZZwzKBh_1ri7tbOCkzay3mM4vAEGl62PB4Kk0_qCL4YKkM8I8YE8fE06x0WPpx8gYrGGrYKq4tKgv3zZVwoo/s400/kommo.png" width="400" height="244" data-original-width="819" data-original-height="499" /></a><br/>
(<a href="https://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/rentalteam/usum/BT-40AB-415B" target="_blank">Link to rental team on PGL</a>)</div>
<p>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.</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<h2>Finding the Team</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>The Team</h2>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Was uns (Tapu Bulu) @ Choice Scarf<br/>
Ability: Grassy Surge<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Rock Slide<br/>
- Wood Hammer<br/>
- Superpower<br/>
- Stone Edge</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">einst von (Incineroar) (M) @ Sitrus Berry<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 140 HP / 36 Atk / 44 Def / 124 SpD / 164 Spe<br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
- Flare Blitz<br/>
- Knock Off<br/>
- Taunt<br/>
- Fake Out</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Gott gegeben (Kommo-o) (M) @ Kommonium Z<br/>
Ability: Soundproof<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Shiny: Yes<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
- Clanging Scales<br/>
- Flamethrower<br/>
- Close Combat<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">wird uns (Whimsicott) (F) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Prankster<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 188 HP / 68 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Tailwind<br/>
- Encore<br/>
- Fake Tears<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>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...</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">auch der Tod (Gengar) (M) @ Gengarite<br/>
Ability: Cursed Body<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Sludge Bomb<br/>
- Shadow Ball<br/>
- Disable<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>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</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">nicht nehmen (Tapu Fini) @ Mago Berry<br/>
Ability: Misty Surge<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 212 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 36 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Muddy Water<br/>
- Moonblast<br/>
- Calm Mind<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr class="sep" />
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>the</em> 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!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-58727975438741986632018-02-03T18:00:00.000+01:002018-02-03T18:00:33.511+01:00Return of Quicksand (I Tried)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnoD_mYFdoBCBoZQ0dhRc7a0W2pXQt86xZPo9SD4Cx0bHa60h3SSZjzP2MJgFzVB8jRonBpViFHUfEq1Ovce3HPEACb9CoqCZCWZIyXiPB8dxrrx0RtxAo72tgDKgArqEnrXZwraqq9mI/s1600/quicksand18.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnoD_mYFdoBCBoZQ0dhRc7a0W2pXQt86xZPo9SD4Cx0bHa60h3SSZjzP2MJgFzVB8jRonBpViFHUfEq1Ovce3HPEACb9CoqCZCWZIyXiPB8dxrrx0RtxAo72tgDKgArqEnrXZwraqq9mI/s400/quicksand18.png" width="400" height="282" data-original-width="676" data-original-height="476" /></a><br/>
(<a href="https://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/rentalteam/usum/BT-4969-8DFD" target="_blank">Link to rental team on PGL</a>)</div>
<p>Alola friends. Long Leipzig weekend behind me now, time to share the team I brought. I'll talk more about the events in another post later into the season, but the summary of it is that I got top-32 at the main event and some chip CP from mostly irrelevant stuff, putting me currently at 239/300 CP.</p>
<p>But before I actually go into the team... Might as well take a little moment to say this: This was my last Regional and it will be my last year, with Worlds in Nashville being my final competitive event in VGC. The specifics about my decision, which I have long mulled over, will also follow in another post, which will be released some time this summer, but just telling you now. This is my last ride...but I will not go down easily.</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<h2>Finding the Team</h2>
<p>Well, this is the most awesome and most idiotic thing at the same time, really. It all starts with the fact that I could not at all motivate myself to play Pokémon in the first place. Story was finished a day before I left for Leipzig, threw the team together mostly on paper and just got the mons from friends. Little practice, less than 20 games before the main event. But it was absolutely fine because this happens to be a team that I know extremely well no matter what. Just check out my posts from 2015, and that will be enough to understand why I am saying this (and why it's true). And really, without any meaningful practice whatsoever, it was the best play available to me at the time. I really just dug out the old thing from its grave and changed some details where I felt like it was reasonable.</p>
<h2>The Team</h2>
<p>Quick note on the EV spreads: not gonna talk about them, really. It's way too early into the format, I've made the non-generic ones with calcs that might not even be relevant, and so on. I will only talk about what's guaranteed to be relevant.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Salamence @ Salamencite<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Hasty Nature<br/>
- Hyper Voice<br/>
- Double-Edge<br/>
- Flamethrower<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>...And that would be the change from Naive to Hasty right here! Tapus, freaking Tapus. Run the calcs and you'll see, it's a sacrifice worth making especially when you eat damage from sand. Well, and everything else is really just as it used to be. Aerilate nerf is a thing, yeah, but I can deal with it just fine. The purpose of Hyper Voice to generate massive chip damage, and it still does that. The purpose of Double-Edge is to pick off weakened or type-weak targets, and it still does that too. And Flamethrower is more important than ever because Metagross is back to being very relevant (it's been a long ass time!).</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Tyranitar @ Choice Scarf<br/>
Ability: Sand Stream<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Rock Slide<br/>
- Assurance<br/>
- Ice Punch<br/>
- Superpower</p>
<p>Pretty usual old Scarftar here, but the move choices do come with more caveats than I've known this time... I would have really liked Low Kick for Snorlax right now, and if some things had not been invented, I'd totally use Low Kick. But nein, they had to invent this lightweight Kartana. Great, just why! So yeah, Kartana is a killing argument for Low Kick due to the overall team composition that deals horribly with it when Salamence and Aegislash can't do the job. Assurance, on the other hand...it has done me some disservice this time around. I have probably brought it for the legacy more than anything else, and then it makes perfect sense that Crunch might have been the better and safer option.</p>
<p>Tyranitar King of VGC is back in full force, long live the King.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Amoonguss @ Payapa Berry<br/>
Ability: Regenerator<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 220 Def / 36 SpD<br/>
Sassy Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe<br/>
- Giga Drain<br/>
- Spore<br/>
- Rage Powder<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Amoonguss, the fallen support. Terrains hurt, can't Spore anything it endures anymore. It might just be, once again, the worst mon that I am using, but still it happens to be not completely useless. Sporing Landorus and Cresselia is good, redirection is good, and as you know, I always want to have my consistent game plans for the Trick Room matchups out there. Giga Drain is on it for Gastrodon and Swampert (and Landorus chip too, I guess), couldn't handle them well without it, but it does mean I have an out less against Koko.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Azumarill @ Assault Vest<br/>
Ability: Huge Power<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 124 HP / 252 Atk / 132 Def<br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
IVs: 5 Spe<br/>
- Waterfall<br/>
- Aqua Jet<br/>
- Play Rough<br/>
- Knock Off</p>
<p>Now Azumarill has been really nice, I have to say, underrated mon of the week! I have considered boring old Fini here, but ended up going for Azumarill because it's different in ways most desirable. Knock Off helps precisely against those Berry Finis, and against Snorlax and Cresselia too, it's so huge (power!?). I will bleed so hard the moment I will give it up. And Aqua Jet is that helpful bit of priority for my favored chokehold of board control on weakened targets, very much in the spirit of my old friend Abomasnow. The regular double STAB in the other slots just rounds it out well so it also has a presence when the situational moves are weak. Being unable to Protect can be a problem at times, but seriously, this cute little bunny is absolutely worth using right now as one of the few non-Megas and non-legends.</p>
<p>...And Play Rough is the worst move 10% of the time 100% of the time. Pokémon why..........</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Aegislash @ Leftovers<br/>
Ability: Stance Change<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 12 Def / 100 SpA / 76 SpD / 68 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Shadow Ball<br/>
- Substitute<br/>
- Wide Guard<br/>
- King's Shield</p>
<p>The old weaponry made in Germany, once again. Wanted both of Wide Guard and Substitute on paper, so it kinda made sense to run it like that, but in actual gameplay, well, it can turn out to be a rough deal not to have a more streamlined build whenever you aren't facing that rare matchup you actually need this nonsense for. This is mostly me being trapped in ancient ideas, and it may very well have hurt me. Ghostium with a second attacking move or Toxic over Substitute looks fair enough.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Excadrill @ Life Orb<br/>
Ability: Sand Rush<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe<br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
- Rock Slide<br/>
- Iron Head<br/>
- Drill Run<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Sheesh, doesn't have a Z-crystal on Aegislash and then forgoes it on Excadrill too... Well, on Excadrill it just isn't the right thing to run imo, period. Z-crystal entails only one strong attack, it can only be of one type and single-target, and whenever you're not using it, you'll just be weak as fuck. It's 2015 all over again in that I just need the help of Life Orb to still do useful damage after Intimidate. No rocket science whatsoever, just putting shit in range, you know.</p>
<p>Ground/Steel is still basically the best typing in the game. Tapus are still so hard to get though, they can just stall the sand and then they'll commonly have a random partner that threatens Excadrill. The whole composition isn't quite working as of yet. Which brings me to...</p>
<h2>State of the Archetype</h2>
<p>Quicksand and similar teams are in a most interesting position right now. Salamence/Tyranitar is probably hotter than it has ever been, only thanks to this nice, lovely, awesome and much needed Thundurus nerf (good fucking riddance!). You know, I felt forced to run Lum Berry Ttar back in the day only for Thundurus, but now Scarf (or Tyranitarite, old favorite of mine even moreso!) is perfectly fine. It helps so much that the Speed control metagame got stripped of its most painful and RNG-heavy element. But on the other hand, the world is still far from perfect. Tapus are the most notable new threat and they're a big one at that to Salamence and Tyranitar. Koko almost invalidates the combination on its own by just outspeeding them both, clicking Dazzling Gleam for 50% and more. Fini is annoying too, hard to get rid of and will do mean things to you when you let it move too often. Lele is always dangerous, but it at least can be contained decently enough in Bo3 for learning what build it exactly is. Well, and Bulu...happens to be commonly run with Choice Scarf right now, and that matters because it outspeeds the Ttar that can't Protect. Like yeah, I do have double Steel, but still it's hard to play around them! (Doesn't make sense to pick them both most of the time because I might need someone else too, you know.)</p>
<p>And my own team as shown has fallen very off-meta by the mere fact that it's...all breedable mons! You look at successful teams, and all that you see are ones that have 3 or more legends. Along with the Megas returned and the Z-moves of this generation. All of that power hike dwarfs the "normal" mons right now, they're in a place not too much better than 2016. And I'm no fan of it, I have to say. That may be a discussion for another day though. Anyway, this team as shown will have to go to rest because it's just not optimal anymore. I've still very much enjoyed playing it though, and I've made games interesting enough, but that's all because of my personal background, you know. Chances are I will at least try to rebuild the whole thing from scratch and have it be more up to date. If it also happens to be what I stick with, though...that I can't answer, it's just too early. All I know is I will not change my known general approach of play in my last year, and if I do, I am only doing it for a nice and potent meme. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-16029048160988245192017-10-29T17:17:00.000+01:002017-10-29T17:17:22.866+01:00WAYLeaders X Freezing Beauty -- A Decent Post-Worlds Team<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtaQvq6bRxMbsJZkBrFWhVQ1ns-JlMWSgph_42zPjXoM76I9-WExwWb9VX16XcipYtbkcCk_tAlqzJRlAMYdbAjTdwBRltogoGalf6lQg7u8B9aJ3VbDilGu-z0BButNpIRgiPKsnP7ZY/s400/alolan_nintetales_by_foxeaf-dba4drj.png" width="400" height="261" data-original-width="1024" data-original-height="669" /><br/>
(Artist: <a href="https://foxeaf.deviantart.com/art/Alolan-Nintetales-682128559" target="_blank">Foxeaf</a>)</div>
<p>Alola friends. While I just barely missed the 1/3 invite in September, I now got the 1/2 invite in October from a weekend at local events that turned out really nice for me. Actually, I'm gonna write a bit of a half-invite report soonish which will have various tournament stories, so stay tuned for that...if you're interested, anyway. Today, I'm just gonna focus on this "new" team that I made. I didn't play a single test match with it, I just brought it to the two tournaments, knowing already it would work for me as long as I'm not running into those classic unpreparable matchups, you know. Out of 65 possible total CP, I took home 55 -- lost to 3 people across the weekend, where I got revenge over one of them in top cut, entirely dodged the other in top cut, and rightfully lost again to the last one because he simply was the better Trainer that day.</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<h2>Finding the Team</h2>
<p>The main point to take away is that the motivation is really just as silly as it was back in January: I wanna play Ninetales bcause it's my favorite and I'll be able to handle whatever disaster may happen in the tournaments. I honestly still believe that Ninetales isn't good...but apparently it's good enough!?!?? You know, throughout months the results had me marveling at how people like Proman or Zelda could get such awesome results with teams that I think have so glaring problems, I was absolutely unable to swipe them and get reliable results of my own. (Well, in Proman's case I do know because he was just really fucking good with his team, always a pleasure to watch. And of Worlds I just haven't seen much this year, to be completely honest.) Oh yeah, speaking of that...just a few days before the weekend, I went with Pado's team on Showdown a bit -- another great example of all the highly decorated Ninetales/Lele stuff. I do like that one a bit more still, but actually using it was hard mostly because I wasn't able to get a solid grasp on which 4 to pick when, because I basically always wanted the whole team and stuff. It's a common problem with me and generally solid teams that I'm not understanding 100% because I wasn't the one who made them. So that ruled out Pado's team too, there was just too little time to get a shot at learning it for real.</p>
<p>But there would be a learning curve with any Ninetales team, really, because I've failed to make Ninetales for pretty much all format except I guess the very early part of it. If I wanted to avoid the learning curve, I'd have to play my known balloon team that goes back to freaking March (man, how time passes!), but...it's a little more dated than healthy, and my local community does understand well enough how it can be beaten by now. So, then...in a night of indifferent and calm despair, I got the idea to edit that very team in a way that would bring Ninetales in. I still wanted to have my good old Lele/Arcanine/Snorlax trinity because that shit has carried me all year, you know. Mandibuzz instead of Drifblim was something I had considered for a while because it addresses those dreaded Lillikoal and Mimilax matchups much better than the stuff I actually had, but with that I'd be afraid of the otherwise free rain matchup instead...and also lose some Speed that I really like, and what have you. It wasn't an easy switch to make. About how to fix rain again though...well, why hello there, my freezing beauty Ninetales! Magnezone never disappointed, but it kinda had to go simply in order to get some of my Speed back...and the improvement of my Garchomp matchup is also nice enough -- my good friend Apple criticized my team for its (lack of) Garchomp matchup a lot, and I'd agree to the extent that there were a few Garchomp combinations out there that were a bit harder to deal with than desirable. And, to round it all up...a bunch of movesets had to be changed in order to accomodate the new mons, too. Changes compared to the last version that I released on here will be <strong>bolded</strong> as usual.</p>
<h2>The Team</h2>
<p style="font-family:monospace;"><strong>Cassandra (Ninetales-Alola) (F) @ Light Clay<br/>
Ability: Snow Warning<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 100 HP / 4 Def / 124 SpA / 28 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Blizzard<br/>
- Freeze-Dry<br/>
- Aurora Veil<br/>
- Roar</strong></p>
<p>Oh Ninetales, the blessings you give me just by appearing on my screen. ♥ This time with Light Clay and some calculated bulk to do a few things more, and it turned out really well. I didn't quite get to setting Aurora Veil every time I brought it because sometimes I just had to click attack buttons on stuff to advance my position, especially when Ninetales went in the back. Freeze-Dry is in here for all kinds of Water types obviously, also some Wide Guard circumvention, and it was indeed very important, never would I even have wanted Icy Wind over it. Roar I ended up never clicking and I wasn't too sure on that slot anyway...I just tacked it on there because Mandibuzz isn't quite a 100% answer to Mimilax, and if they're too prepared, well, can't hurt to troll them right in their setup. I sometimes did miss Protect though, I like Protect on all mons and this team sorely lacks Protects in general, I just noticed... EVs let it survive Golduck's Hydro Vortex, and they also came with the free side effect that it's possible to survive a Flare Blitz + Extreme Speed combo with the help of Aurora Veil, making nice little fools out of some Arcanines not backed up by partners!</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;"><strong>Deter Tyrant (Mandibuzz) @ Psychic Seed<br/>
Ability: Overcoat<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 36 Def / 4 SpA / 116 SpD / 100 Spe<br/>
Bold Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Foul Play<br/>
- Snarl<br/>
- Tailwind<br/>
- Roost</strong></p>
<p>Mandibuzz was a perfect Drifblim replacement in the sense that I usually don't even bring it. Not my style to have mons that sit there doing nothing, just here for matchups and it does a lot more of nothing than Drifblim ever did. Would definitely like Taunt sometimes, but Snarl is important too -- it gives Mandibuzz a rare spammable move and sometimes it just happens that teams get completely walled. The Speed is to outspeed regular Finis (and fast Magnezones like my own as a bonus), bulk is mostly just a random mathematically optimal spread, but it does have nice side-effects against Fini, too. About possible future work, maybe an Aguav Berry could be good. Needs a lot of calcs and playtesting -- none of which I really had time for --, Psychic Seed was just the easy option, and without much thought behind it.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">MotherOLight (Tapu Lele) @ Choice Specs<br/>
Ability: Psychic Surge<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 236 HP / 212 Def / 36 SpA / 4 SpD / 20 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Psychic<br/>
- Dazzling Gleam<br/>
- Moonblast<br/>
<strong>- Thunderbolt</strong></p>
<p>Thunderbolt is back on Pink Panzer, and it's more valuable than ever. Have to make up for the lack of an Electric type, and this time I indeed clicked it multiple times and it won me games. The rest is the same as always. And for further improvements...I've run into a few faster Finis this weekend, and I'd very much like to know those stats. I've learned that I don't care a whole lot about winning the Terrain wars, but getting outsped and flung some watery shit into your face multiple times with Choice Specs on the Fini as well is very, very threatening and I'd like to not see it ever again. Help?</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Reverence (Arcanine) (F) @ Mago Berry<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 204 HP / 76 Atk / 20 Def / 148 SpD / 60 Spe<br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
- Flare Blitz<br/>
- Extreme Speed<br/>
<strong>- Wild Charge</strong><br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>And Wild Charge is also back on everyone's dog, yet another out for Water types and great to pin weakened Finis. Sometimes I hate that I can't even run Roar anymore, let alone Will-O-Wisp, but it is what it is, and that's also part of why I threw Roar on Ninetales in the first place.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Sancta Terra (Garchomp) (M) @ Groundium Z<br/>
Ability: Rough Skin<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 12 HP / 228 Atk / 12 Def / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Earthquake<br/>
<strong>- Fire Fang<br/>
- Swords Dance</strong><br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Garchomp still somewhat is the team's bitch for dealing with Muk, other Garchomps and some more, and I'm not exactly doing a great job at supporting it much. Put Swords Dance on there for the theoretical synergy with Mandibuzz, but that duo quite literally never happened during my tournaments, and Swords Dance plays on their own tend to be that high-risk-low-reward kind of setup a lot at least for me, but hey, it wasn't useless. I still like my max Speed on it, and I'm not sure if I really want a 3-attacks set without Adamant. Oh right, there's Celesteela though! Fire Fang went over Poison Jab obviously to deal with that, also help with Kartana, but if you really want to pressure Celesteela, then Swords Dance just so happens to be the thing you actually need. (So, in other words, we're looking at 2 moves for 1 mon? That is...not good, not good at all. *cough*) A thing worth considering might be more bulk to make better use of my damage reducers and Attack boosts, but I am very afraid of losing my still decent default damage, and you know very well how much I still insist on my Speed.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Never Enough (Snorlax) (M) @ Iapapa Berry<br/>
Ability: Gluttony<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Happiness: 0<br/>
EVs: 20 HP / 236 Atk / 252 Def<br/>
Brave Nature<br/>
IVs: 3 Spe<br/>
- Frustration<br/>
- High Horsepower<br/>
- Curse<br/>
- Recycle</p>
<p>Only slot I completely left as is, my old friend Snorri Snorrisson. It seems I just can't play without it in any format where it's one of the top meta threats. It's so good and it solves so many matchups. And, it's also one of my favorites, not too far behind Alolan Ninetales. ♥ In fact, I think it's the very same Snorlax I'm running since January...it just delivers, hands out the pressure that I simply want with an offensive team like this.</p>
<h2>Some Words on Team Preview and Other Stuff?</h2>
<p>Theory and practice turned out to differ to an extent here. The original idea was that I'd just pick the old 4 in any order in every game, and replace one of them with Ninetales or Mandibuzz where it made sense. What then happened was that I even used both of them sometimes, with mixed results. Most common lead was Arcanine Lele as always, but none of them is very much possible too (Ninetales Snorlax comes to mind, I've always liked that one...but that's not spammable, need to have a good sense for when it's the right time to lead that, it's a true counter-lead.)</p>
<p>Ninetales is mandatory against rain, can be picked against Torkoal but is generally not safe, should never be picked against Gigalith, is nice to pick against Garchomp but bad to pick against Heavy Slam Celesteela, and for the rest just whatever. It works all right when I feel like there's one of the original 4 that I don't want in the matchup. Oh yeah, typically in the back for weather wars and wherever for non-weather wars. Mandibuzz should be brought against Lillikoal and Mimilax, and against all else it's very situational. Tailwind can be useful sometimes, but it usually isn't against bulkier teams, and as I said, I#m no fan of committing to big Garchomp plays, would rather play with the whole team in fair balance and sometimes I'm even bringing Mandibuzz and Snorlax at the same time because I want both for the matchup. And a thing that's apparently not obvious, so I should say it too...bring Arcanine against rain, it's worth! It usually beats the non-rain parts and it has Wild Charge on it, just needs to be kept safe from Golduck and that's no different than keeping it safe from, say, Garchomps. Arcanine Lele is a good lead because Hydro Vortex kills nothing if I switch in Ninetales, and then they're sitting there with weak itemless mons, and if they don't lead the combo, then I still have Arcanine Lele, which will likely be good anyway.</p>
<p>All in all, nothing about the team has really changed, just some mons and movesets. Same old shit as back in March, just my typical heavy attacking with strong defensive switching options. It may be 5/6 of Zelda's team at preview, for example, but it's not at all about setups, only about harrassing foes with safe and rapid damage across the board, the very classic Dreykopffian way of play. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-35244657589212732362017-08-29T18:18:00.000+02:002017-08-29T18:18:21.951+02:00The 2017/18 Season and I<p>Ayelola friends, Captain Dreykopff the Eastern Kingbird writing. It's been a while...and I'm overusing this phrase a lot. This time for real though. Yet another rambly post ahead, but will also feature a paragraph or two of Pokémon talk near the end. Short version of it all: I'm back and you may have to deal with it if ol' uncle Tom so chooses.</p>
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<h2>The Bad Mindset That Carried</h2>
<p>One year ago, I issued that long ass <a href="/2016/11/vg-trainer-dreykopff-chooses-death.html">VGC quitting statement</a>. What then actually happened was that I never really left but stayed around being the filthiest of all casuals. It was a plan to eventually get back into things after all, so nothing wrong there. Anyway, "the bad mindset that carried"...ja, that is such a typical thing to happen with me. In that year of being nothing but a filthy casual, I did quite fucking well, if I may say so myself. I <a href="/2017/03/i-am-guardian-of-alola-february.html">memed it up</a> at <a href="/2017/05/hot-memes-international-challenge-april.html">not one but two</a> International Challenges, beating out most of my tryhard results at those. I got my first positive record in the NPA. I still semi-dominated my local scene that I like to build with power just how I like to destroy opponents with power. And in the last 4 months, I basically didn't the touch the game at all, then picked it up again in very recent weeks for some fun tournaments and thus far there's only one person who got a positive record against me. But most importantly, I <a href="/2017/04/we-are-your-leaders-idm-2017-champions.html">won the IDM</a> back in March -- a prestigious tournament in old Internet Germany that I've tried to win quite literally forever and always fell short.</p>
<p>And while all of that happened, I honestly gave just about zero fucks. Just play the things to prevent my metal self from gathering rust, you know, and just whatever about the results, nothing to lose, playing for fun, yada yada yada. And I'm not in the least surprised because this excuse of an mindset has already served me greatly back in 2009, when I came out of somewhere (I guess) to become the first VGC National Champion of Germany -- I just wanted to meet my friends and scoop to them but knock everyone else out! And what then followed, you also know, were years of wasted effort on my quest to get to Worlds just one more time. The best of them probably was the last one I officially partook in: the 2015/16 season. There was just no way I could be too serious about the steaming pile of shit that the 2016 format was, but certainly I was serious about my event attendance and that blew up my wallet to the extent that attending my easily achieved Worlds day 1 wasn't affordable. And now...I'm back for revenge. I'm just gonna chill in the circuit to the extent that is reasonable, filling my murky gardens with your sweet and spicy graves.</p>
<h2>Thoughts on the New Season and Plans</h2>
<p>There are many things I hate about the previous season and most of them are still right here, so I can by no means say I'm happy with everything. I'm just happy with the little stuff that they changed to the good (a good CP bar for everyone and a plannable season schedule), but all of the rest I still find pretty fucking awful (EU Internats in November, entry fees, top-heavy prize and stipends distribution, snowballing, the exaggerated UK bias, stressful but barely meaningful Premier Challenges, overblown best finish limits, etc.).</p>
<p>My position in this mess now is very much clearer than ever: I'm gonna snag that invite and then book my summer vacation in...fucking Nashville, Tennessee. What, this is not what I...eh, whatever, I can deal with it (I think). Worlds is Worlds. I always wanted to be there again, and now I'm (likely) gonna be there again! That and only that is the plan. I'm looking to beast it at my local events just like in the last two years, that should get me the majority if not all of my invite, and just for safety I'm gonna use sanctioned online competitions and a stray Regional or two to make up for what might not go quite as intended in this so unpredictable wilderness that is the metagame of Berlin, capital of the Federal Republic Germany. Well, and (hopefully!) there will also be other locals keen on getting that invite, so...ja, the more the merrier.</p>
<p>"Stray Regionals" will probably just be in Germany, for my international readers here, unless there are comparably cheap options outside that I might end up needing or whatever, but I sure as hell hope not. So, if you're not coming to me (I wouldn't recommend, slaughter is inevitable), you'll only meet me at Worlds -- but at least you will meet me at Worlds at all, after all!</p>
<h2>The Random Pokémon Section</h2>
<p>I've slept a bit on the metagame, and the moment I went from sleep to snooze, all I saw was that it was cracked wide open and it seems there's nothing left to truly believe in anymore, team-wise. Matchup luck galore, we're quite literally the Pokémon TCG at this point. As a somewhat effective generalization, we have come to a good old matchup triangle here: there's a bunch of successful teams that apparently have no Gigalith matchup, then there's teams that have an amazing Gigalith matchup (Metagross, various fighting types, Bulu), well, and then there's somewhere good old FAKEPG and similar teams still remotely around, to either feed on the fancy naïve or fall at the fancy hideous. Oh ja, and Marowak is quite literally back from the dead. Oh how I actually miss Chandelure; has more manageable Speed, doesn't kill itself with Fire STAB, no Intimidate shenanigans to mess with calcs etc., but oh well, can't change it. And Lightning Rod has become the worst Ability in the game after Prankster got nerfed (finally!), and it needs to stop. I fucking hate Lightning Rod, because there's always some annoying bulky mons that are only weak to Electric and one other type that varies and rarely has more than one good mon...yuck. Well, for what it's worth, 2017 was and is still a cool format, but I have the feeling it has already lasted long enough, haha. Hell, you know, in other years, it was the post-Worlds metagame that brought the clarity we sought, and now the thing is that we had that same clarity only before Worlds but now it's gone again because the whole fucking dex is proven viable!</p>
<p>Also, Ninetales (♥) is still my favorite Pokémon of Alola, but for the life of me I can't believe it to be worth using. Just why would anyone good at this game lose to a 3-mon team that maybe has Aurora Veil for a bit, because that's basically what happens when Freezes don't happen...oh well.</p>
<p>I mentioned FAKEPG shortly, the thing proclaimed as "the new CHALK" earlier and shit. You know what, I think they weren't as wrong as most of you think. People tend to falsely believe that CHALK be the ultimate archetype of 2015, which is just wrong, sorry not sorry. It's a good one for sure but it's not the answer to everything. Like, I found those without Thundurus generally easy to dismantle, and those with Thundurus were a pain in the ass mostly because Thundurus was broken as fuck and his friends became too powerful with that kind of luck. FAKE is no stronger or weaker than CHALK, there just is nothing as bullshit as Thundurus to support the core. (Fini's Muddy Water is still a load of bullshit in itself, but it doesn't have Prankster and counterplay is more readily available etc.) Why, of course people prepare hard for it at Worlds when the jig was up long before time, and the same would happen if we just hosted Worlds 15-2. (And let's also not forget that the 2015 top cut is a blatant lie about the true metagame because those samey Japanese just got lucky with the tiebreakers at X-2 and the real variety was all in the failed X-2s.)</p>
<h2>Wrapping Up (No Presents)</h2>
<p>Aaanyway...I've used some nice and fucking FAKKPG to get second at a recent grassroots Worlds party in Augsburg and I'll probably share that team here, as boring as it may possibly be. Some day in September, whenever I feel like. I'll probably not be too active with the blog again, mainly because I'm simply not looking to play Pokémon all year to begin with. There are just other things I enjoy notably more right now, a private life to take care of, and everything else. Some balance will be needed, and it should be for the best. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-76450903796553533542017-05-05T18:18:00.000+02:002017-05-05T18:18:17.185+02:00Hot Memes -- International Challenge April 51st Place<p>Alola friends. Results got released earlier than expected, so I guess I can also release the team earlier than planned. Record is 35 wins and 10 losses, 1804 rating, final and peak. Please don't copy it for a serious tournament, it's just not good. It's a fun meme though. Possibly improvable too, but I don't see myself doing it. Anyway, here goes nothing.</p>
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<p style="font-family:monospace;">Torkoal (M) @ Weakness Policy<br/>
Ability: Drought<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 236 HP / 252 SpA / 20 SpD<br/>
Quiet Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe<br/>
- Eruption<br/>
- Flamethrower<br/>
- Solar Beam<br/>
- Protect<br/>
<br/>
Nihilego @ Life Orb<br/>
Ability: Beast Boost<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Power Gem<br/>
- Sludge Bomb<br/>
- Hidden Power [Ice]<br/>
- Trick Room<br/>
<br/>
Lilligant @ Grassium Z<br/>
Ability: Chlorophyll<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 68 HP / 252 SpA / 188 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Leaf Storm<br/>
- Hidden Power [Fire]<br/>
- Sleep Powder<br/>
- After You<br/>
<br/>
Slowpoke (F) @ Eviolite<br/>
Ability: Oblivious<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 36 Def / 220 SpD<br/>
Relaxed Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 SpA / 0 Spe<br/>
- Surf<br/>
- Heal Pulse<br/>
- Sunny Day<br/>
- Trick Room<br/>
<br/>
Smeargle (M) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Own Tempo<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 68 Def / 188 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Follow Me<br/>
- Spore<br/>
- Feint<br/>
- Accelerock<br/>
<br/>
Hariyama @ Flame Orb<br/>
Ability: Guts<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 28 HP / 252 Atk / 228 Def<br/>
Brave Nature<br/>
IVs: 8 Spe<br/>
- Close Combat<br/>
- Heavy Slam<br/>
- Feint<br/>
- Fake Out</p>
<p>I got the general idea from low ladder Battle Spot, where someone was running a team of Slowpoke, Torkoal, Lilligant, Garchomp, Togedemaru and Gyarados. It seemed like some fun cheese, I just didn't like their team as a whole because it had one mode too much for my taste, and they would stand in each other's way. So, I set out to just make the the TR mode better, since that commonly just wins games if it goes unpunished.</p>
<p>But still, it's far from good. While I did make the setup a bit smoother via the addition of Hariyama and Smeargle, it can still be clunky when the opponent plays it smartly. A simple Fini/Arcanine lead is quite annoying, and if they then even have Snarl and Calm Mind combined, well, then I'm probably not winning with the Torkoal setup, and Nihilego will only work if they just have trash in the back <em>and</em> Arcanine has no Assault Vest Bulldoze. That's what most of my losses were, anyway. The other common way to lose is to just be outplayed: a few people stalled my Trick Room well and put themselves in a position where they'd just sweep when it's come, denying me a chance to get it up again. Hard TR is hard. I don't even know how I was actually able to like that way in the past...huh.</p>
<p>Part of the speed control problem actually lies in my overestimation of Lilligant's usefulness. I'm not the person to Sleep Powder my ass through games without anything else going (shoutouts to my luck there though; every Sleep Powder hit, I even got a 3-turn Sleep when I needed it, and multiple opposing Sleep Powders missed), so I mostly brought it in the back for late games. Unfortunately, After You Eruption isn't very effective because you'll commonly have only one turn in sun after TR runs out. I actually need me opponent to help me here by bringing Gigalith or whatever other anti-weather, so that I could reset it with Slowpoke, and boom, suddenly more turns of sun! As a result...I'd recommend giving Lilligant a Choice Scarf or using a Different After You mon that's just fast in whatever way that isn't based on sun turns, you know. That's the first thing, and the other thing is that the AFK matchup needs some work, no idea what to do about it though. Araquanid's scary too, it's a matchup full of coin flips especially when it comes with its own TR setter. Oh yeah, and Lillikoal mirrors are fucking disgusting. I literally won them because they commonly relied on Sleep Powder and got betrayed, lol. Anyone have good ideas how to approach them!?</p>
<p>The last thing I should talk about is this somewhat unconventional Nihilego set. I put Trick Room over Protect because that was the only way to get a Kokochu matchup that doesn't go to silly coin flips in best case. I'd lead Smeargle Nihilego and click Follow Me TR first turn, and then next turn either do it again or attack, depending on what happened. I just faced the matchup once and early (expected more, but nope, just Arcanine/Fini all the time, lol), and it was a beautifully engineered Bo1-style sweep. Well, and other than that...it did help in other occasions too to have that random Trick Room on Nihilego, so it was a good decision even with Kokochu just not really appearing this time.</p>
<p>Well, and now the next IC is already in May...turns out I haven't thought of a good new meme yet. I might just bring a serious team then, if I can find one that looks good in a Bo1 setting. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-43674128311217115562017-04-27T18:00:00.000+02:002017-04-27T18:00:20.244+02:00We Are Your Leaders -- Updated Version<p>Alola friends. This will be the promised appendix to last week's report: the changes I made to the team. Here's the pretty Battle Box picture, but I also slightly changed some EVs. For that, go read more.</p>
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<h2>Changes</h2>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">MotherOLight (Tapu Lele) @ Choice Specs<br/>
Ability: Psychic Surge<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
<strong>EVs: 236 HP / 212 Def / 36 SpA / 4 SpD / 20 Spe</strong><br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Psychic<br/>
- Dazzling Gleam<br/>
- Moonblast<br/>
<strong>- Psyshock</strong></p>
<p>First thing I changed was Lele. I gave back the Speed to turn it into an exact copy of Viera's EV-wise, because the lower Speed probably wouldn't be useful to fish for Finis anymore. It also lets Lele outspeed Pelipper and that has just become a bit more important than it was before because of how I changed Arcanine. But first, there's another thing on Lele: the last moveslot. I actually got the Psyshock idea from watching Toby's NPA replay with the same lineup. From my experience, I knew that I would almost never click Thunderbolt, and Fini will always be pretty annoying no matter what. And you know what, Psyshock is the best you can have against the Calm Mind version, just gotta switch Lele in to get the Terrain up, and boom, you'll have a strong hit ready, worst case they switch to a Dark type but that means Fini's done nothing. Other than that, Psyshock can also be used against Drifblims, but it's not recommended because Lele might just be doubled before it gets to move in those Driflele mirrors. Try not to lead Driflele against Driflele, it has a solid potential to cause misery.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Reverence (Arcanine) (F) @ Mago Berry<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
<strong>EVs: 204 HP / 76 Atk / 20 Def / 148 SpD / 60 Spe</strong><br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
- Flare Blitz<br/>
- Extreme Speed<br/>
<strong>- Roar</strong><br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>And here's the new Arcanine. Getting rid of Wild Charge actually hurts, but it's probably for the better. The team used to have a big cheese problem, and Roar opens up good options at least against all cheese that has no ways of preventing the Roar -- and that's about as good as it gets with this team, unless I change to Haze Drifblim or something. Well, and the EVs I also changed, and this was just to optimize some damage rolls. Offensively, it gives up the 100% chance to 2HKO uninvested Kokos with Flare Blitz + Extreme Speed, while still leaving it at a very solid 63/64 chance, and that's not counting one of the moves critting. Defensively, it reduces the damage taken from -1 Araquanid's Liquidation and neutral Adamant Garchomp's Earthquake a bit, so that none of them has a chance higher than 25% to OHKO, while they both were above 30% before.</p>
<p>And the rest I left as is. Too lazy to copy it up, just check out the original report for those, it's a good read anyway!</p>
<h2>Future</h2>
<p>Good question, don't have a definite answer yet. <em>Normally</em>, the team would still be good and fine and everything else, and I still like it too. But, the nightmarish niche matchups are not to be erased, and they happened to do super well in São Paulo. Smeargle/Nihilego is an autoloss by definition, Lillikoal is extremely annoying, and that's probably not even all from this top cut alone. I'll have to wait and see in how far all of that stuff becomes common or if it was just the community's mood of the week to overprepare for Driflele as though there's nothing else to worry about, lol.</p>
<p>And during my waiting and seeing, I tried out some other teams, mixed results and feelings. Some of them ended up just not having answers to Driflele and I understood the hard way how good my own team actually is, haha. I've also been thinking about using a similar team with Lele but without Drifblim, and all I then see is that many matchups become worse, few become better. Drifblim is a filler all right, but it's a really good one at that, let me tell you.</p>
<p>Thus, the quest for <em>the</em> team goes on, endlessly. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-46666500443440477232017-04-21T18:30:00.000+02:002017-05-03T23:56:44.734+02:00We Are Your Leaders -- IDM 2017 Champion's Team<p>Alola friends. One month ago, I did the unthinkable: I've finally won this prestigious online tournament that we literally call "inofficial Nats of Germany", hosted on Bisafans and sponsored by Nintendo and other partners. I've written a more detailed report in German, click <a href="https://www.bisaboard.de/index.php/Thread/306684-We-Are-Your-Leaders-Inoffizielle-deutsche-Meisterschaft-2017-Platz-1-Team-und-Be/" target="_blank">here</a> for it. It's slightly more "noob-friendly" and also contains the tournament run, whereas in here, I'll just focus on the team.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg22U1vKM6eNcNm7AasnIBNxSbHB-HfMcPPTEaGdAQwAYiJs_hyuXkrIjSTfHlg4IIK7LJURF6o0bYXX9QCMiWmN7YijhLwjlsFr8cbjUZumizG0qWo1I7oVavQGny6PqdtER5Rhj97Xeo/s1600/idm17.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg22U1vKM6eNcNm7AasnIBNxSbHB-HfMcPPTEaGdAQwAYiJs_hyuXkrIjSTfHlg4IIK7LJURF6o0bYXX9QCMiWmN7YijhLwjlsFr8cbjUZumizG0qWo1I7oVavQGny6PqdtER5Rhj97Xeo/s400/idm17.png" width="400" height="282" /></a></div>
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<h2>Finding the Team</h2>
<p>tl;dr: I literally copied the team from freaking low ladder.</p>
<p>It happened two weeks before the tournament, in the night of 13 March on Battle Spot. I just was trying to get a somewhat decent rating in the ending season. Didn't work, I was just forever trapped in the low ladder. *cough* And then this happened: I ran into <a href="https://twitter.com/AgatiGa" target="_blank">Trainer Agatiiiiii(...)iiiii from Brazil</a>, rated 1528, and with the team preview as seen above in the Battle Box picture. Eu sou o melhor, tornem se homens e respeitem os desejos da Game Freak. ツ It was my first real encounter with Driflele, and as the game progressed, I was just like: "fucking hell, this is just too good, how am I supposed to beat that!?!??" (Correct answer: "you better don't.") Somehow I still did manage to make it a close game and stuff, but still, I had seen enough.</p>
<p>Next day in the Gamblers Discord, I was gushing for hours on just how good I thought the combination of Tapu Lele and Drifblim was. To add some background: Throughout the weeks leading up to this, my teammates dropped like flies trying to make some Drifblim/Fini garbage (sorry) work. Never was a fan of that combo really, because it's so passive and their synergy is more forced than natural. Well, and the other thing is Lele itself: it's a mon had a hard time wrapping my head around originally. It has hardly any resistances of value and it's too slow to really be a potent independent attacker. It's basically Drifblim, which I since then also tend to fondly shorten to Driffy, that saved Lele for me -- I might still not have used it up to right fucking now if it weren't for the purple zombie balloon! Sad but true. Anyway, still on the same day, I made my first draft for a team, and it ended up being the same six as Agati's, got them without actually looking at my notes again. Then I went on Showdown and kidnapped poor children's souls. There was little in the way of it instantly becoming my favorite team in this difficult format. And there's more: In the two weeks leading up to the IDM, if we don't count EVs, I changed absolutely nothing from the first draft, that's how solid it was! Might as well put it like this: the team fell from the heavens just like a popped balloon at the end of its wild journey, and still it was mine. ♥</p>
<p>Another thing, the <a href="http://www.trainertower.com/onog-pokemon-invitational-results-teams/" target="_blank">ONOG Invitational</a>. I wasn't too sure what to think of the event and especially its peculiar metagame. Apart from Cybertron, they all brought teams that were rather original in their ways, and you know, when something like that happens, it's obvious that there's a high chance that one of these "special snowflake" teams will win it all, while not having been tested much by what we would consider the actual metagame of the format. This pending scrutiny then was carried out by the public, everyone caring on their own. And not rarely, it was a success.</p>
<h2>The Team in Detail</h2>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">MotherOLight (Tapu Lele) @ Choice Specs<br/>
Ability: Psychic Surge<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 236 HP / 228 Def / 36 SpA / 4 SpD / 4 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Psychic<br/>
- Dazzling Gleam<br/>
- Moonblast<br/>
- Thunderbolt</p>
<p>Bulky Spex Lele, also known as <em>Pink Panzer</em>, the MVP. Slow but dishes out much more than it receives. Especially with a partner that reduces damage taken even further, the opposing side may have to do ridiculous things in order to get rid of this killing machine quickly. That being said...resistances!? Pure luxury. Let's say it resists all hits except those it doesn't. ツ</p>
<p>Psychic for the very obvious and sometimes spammable main STAB, but I want to direct your attention to Dazzling Gleam as a strong secondary as well. While always underwhelming by itself, it creates mighty chip damage for getting into good positions later -- just like good old Mega Salamence with Hyper Voice, in a way. It also means Lele isn't a pure single-target weapon, which is good in my book because I hate to lose turns by hitting into the wrong Protects. Still, Moonblast is also very important for a few common 1v1s. Finally, Thunderbolt...I just had no better idea for the slot at the time, but it isn't the worst anyway.</p>
<p>The EV spread, for the most part, is the same as Viera's, except I removed some Speed to try and fish for more Finis (fish for Fini, nice one) with investment that would always be around this mark. It doesn't change anything notable under Tailwind (the benchmark is Adamant Scarfchomp). And here's all those amazing Pink Panzer calcs:</p>
<ul style="font-family:monospace;"><li>36+ SpA Choice Specs Tapu Lele Moonblast vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Tapu Koko: 144-171 (98.6 - 117.1%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO</li>
<li>36+ SpA Choice Specs Tapu Lele Psychic vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Garchomp in Psychic Terrain: 184-217 (100.5 - 118.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO<br/><br/></li>
<li>252 Atk Garchomp Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 150-177 (85.7 - 101.1%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO</li>
<li>-1 252+ Atk Garchomp Earthquake vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 46-55 (26.2 - 31.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO</li>
<li>+1 252+ Atk Garchomp Poison Jab vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 146-174 (83.4 - 99.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO<br/><br/></li>
<li>252+ Atk Arcanine Inferno Overdrive (190 BP) vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 154-183 (88 - 104.5%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO</li>
<li>-1 252+ Atk Arcanine Flare Blitz vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 66-78 (37.7 - 44.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO<br/><br/></li>
<li>252 Atk Kartana Smart Strike vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 150-176 (85.7 - 100.5%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO</li>
252 Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele on a critical hit: 144-171 (82.2 - 97.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO<br/><br/></li>
<li>252 SpA Life Orb Tapu Koko Thunderbolt vs. 236 HP / 4 SpD Tapu Lele: 71-86 (40.5 - 49.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO</li>
<li>-1 252 Atk Mimikyu Never-Ending Nightmare (140 BP) vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 120-144 (68.5 - 82.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO</li>
<li>-1 252+ Atk Water Bubble Araquanid Liquidation vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 69-82 (39.4 - 46.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO</li>
<li>+2 252+ Atk Gyarados Waterfall vs. 236 HP / 228 Def Tapu Lele: 142-168 (81.1 - 96%) -- guaranteed 2HKO</li></ul>
<p>Oh yeah, I think I also want to say something about my Item choice, too... Psychium Z I'm not very fond of in here because it would mean that Lele would just have one strong attack per game and would be mostly harmless afterwards. I get better value out of having the Z-crystals somewhere else, and sure as hell I have good options available. The other thing is Life Orb, which I in fact considered just hours before the tournament: It would grant me the ability to Protect in exchange for some bulk and add recoil on top. Still, that sounds like a pretty rough tradeoff and I'm very happy that I didn't use the IDM to test the change, because then I certainly wouldn't have won the whole thing. The full bulk was just too good time and time again, so Life Orb's just off the table again for the time being. Offense wins games and defense wins championships, you know.</p>
<hr class="sep"/>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">A Nightmare (Drifblim) (M) @ Psychic Seed<br/>
Ability: Unburden<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 28 Def / 36 SpA / 236 SpD / 204 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Shadow Ball<br/>
- Will-O-Wisp<br/>
- Tailwind<br/>
- Sunny Day</p>
<p>The Bank's got the bucks, guys, the Bank's got the bucks. We've been well aware that random Tapus are qualified to inflate our favorite balloon, but there's some special synergy exclusive to Lele: There's no shared Electric weakness, Lele can be guarded with Will-O-Wisp better than anything could ever do for Fini, and the attacking options are more potent, too. While I'm absolutely not saying that I'd lead this duo to every game, it's still safe to say that it's a threat to many teams, for they'll have a hard time dealing with both threats at the same time.</p>
<p>Shadow Ball as the attacking move here because it hits more (Kartana, other Leles, Ghosts) than Acrobatics would (Araquanid). Tailwind combined with Psychic Seed Unburden, naturally, is the thing that made Drifblim viable in the first place, being essentially guaranteed to get the setup (or something else equally good, for that matter) in every game. For the last slot, there's many options, and I picked Sunny Day because rainbirds are very annoying and I just don't know what I'd do against them without it. It also proved useful against Fini and other random bulky Waters in situations where I need Arcanine on board for the partner but would be forced to take Water attacks to the face.</p>
<p>The EVs, this time, are my own, and the idea is super simple: fast and durable. It outspeeds Modest Golduck to set Sunny Day before the Hydro Vortex comes out, and then it survives just about everything that's reasonable. I want to force people to spend a full turn to pop my balloon, so that gives either my other slot more time to do its thing, or Drifblim another turn to do something nasty. (I was inspired to do it this way when another Lele clicked Shattered Psyche to remove it, so I never wanted to see that happen again, and with it came other benefits.) All of this goes at the cost of Drifblim's damage output, but that's fine because I average maybe just one Shadow Ball click per game, never the same target twice and non-AV Kartanas still get absolutely wrecked.</p>
<ul style="font-family:monospace;"><li>252+ SpA Tapu Lele Shattered Psyche (175 BP) vs. +1 4 HP / 236 SpD Drifblim in Psychic Terrain: 190-225 (84 - 99.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO</li>
<li>252 SpA Tapu Koko Gigavolt Havoc (175 BP) vs. +1 4 HP / 236 SpD Drifblim: 186-222 (82.3 - 98.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO<br/><br/></li>
<li>252+ Atk Water Bubble Araquanid Liquidation vs. 4 HP / 28 Def Drifblim: 189-223 (83.6 - 98.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO</li>
<li>-1 252+ Atk Arcanine Inferno Overdrive (190 BP) vs. 4 HP / 28 Def Drifblim: 186-220 (82.3 - 97.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO</li></ul>
<hr class="sep"/>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Reverence (Arcanine) (F) @ Mago Berry<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 204 HP / 92 Atk / 4 Def / 148 SpD / 60 Spe<br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
- Flare Blitz<br/>
- Extreme Speed<br/>
- Wild Charge<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>In my favorite teams, I always like to have multiple slots to fulfil similar roles. This would make our common hot dog Lele's other partner in crime -- a combination we've already known since the first week of the format and still as strong as ever. Arcanine itself also happens to be the first major difference between my team and Viera's as well as more faithful derivates: I'm trading Gyarados's snowballing for better defensive synergy and utility. Steels are just too annoying in general, and they're in fact a strong reason why Arcanine even is the most commonly used Pokémon in this format -- there's a lack of competitive options.</p>
<p>The moveset, at the time of building, seemed unconventional for Lele teams in a way, but it seems it actually is no more. It's just a solid set and gets you immediate value out of your moves. Snarl's too slow for a fast team, Will-O-Wisp is already been done better by Drifblim, Bulldoze is just inefficient with all those grounded partners and Helping Hand also isn't as powerful in this team as it would be in others. Roar is one support move I actually could make good use of, but if it's worth, that's a good question, too...because Wild Charge just gives you so much flexibility when dealing with bulky Waters, instead of a harmless slot. Well, and Extreme Speed, even with Psychic Terrain in the team, is just kinda the best thing ever. As experience taught me, there's no way Psychic Terrain will be on all game, it's completely predictable when it goes away and that makes it easy to play around. And finally, Protect and other moves like it...I generally value them a lot in my team building, and this team right here being at only 3 of them total is a new low record for a good team of mine. In other words, skipping it on Arcanine is no option.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and then there's also the thing with the fancy fruits... Normally, I'd prefer Sitrus any day of the week, you know that from my common rants about non-Gluttony FIWAM Berries' randomness. I could never bury my teams in them like others do, never! (Physical) Arcanine still getting one from me is a rare exception because it's just so easy to activate it between recoil from the attacks, Rough Skin doing its thing (in rare occasions, even with my own Garchomp, haha), and maybe even weather damage helping further. But still: Sitrus is the best healing Berry, just because. Even when I used Flamethrower/Snarl in a different team recently, I hardly got the thing to activate, and thus went back to Sitrus's reliability.</p>
<p>Outspeeds Adamant Metagross regularly and Timid Scarf Lele in Tailwind. Calcs:</p>
<ul style="font-family:monospace;"><li>92+ Atk Arcanine Flare Blitz vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Tapu Koko: 102-120 (69.8 - 82.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO</li>
<li>92+ Atk Arcanine Extreme Speed vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Tapu Koko: 45-54 (30.8 - 36.9%) -- 72.9% chance to 3HKO<br/><br/></li>
<li>36+ SpA Choice Specs Tapu Lele Psychic vs. 204 HP / 148 SpD Arcanine in Psychic Terrain: 163-193 (85.3 - 101%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO</li>
<li>-1 252+ Atk Water Bubble Araquanid Liquidation vs. 204 HP / 4 Def Arcanine: 168-200 (87.9 - 104.7%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO</li>
<li>252 Atk Garchomp Earthquake vs. 204 HP / 4 Def Arcanine: 152-182 (79.5 - 95.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO</li></ul>
<hr class="sep"/>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Never Enough (Snorlax) (M) @ Iapapa Berry<br/>
Ability: Gluttony<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Happiness: 0<br/>
EVs: 20 HP / 236 Atk / 252 Def<br/>
Brave Nature<br/>
IVs: 3 Spe<br/>
- Frustration<br/>
- High Horsepower<br/>
- Curse<br/>
- Recycle</p>
<p>VGC 2017 is like GSC: no good team without a big fat Normal type. Und just like I back then eventually couldn't stand Blissey anymore, I'm having a hard time running Porygon2 today -- so I'll just have good old Snorri Snorrisson in every team again. How very bland and predictable.</p>
<p>Anyway: Snorlax with Lele is actually cooler than just Snorlax and whatever because now you have something that removes Fighting mons like Hariyama in one click, regaining some strength against the Trick Room matchup that should <em>normally</em> be prepared at this point. Well, except it's still hard for them, and Trick Room is really hard for Driflele. You may be able to check Porygon2 with Taunt, Ultra Beasts, specific Z-moves and all that stuff, but none of it would help you against, say, Mimikyu or Follow Me, and then things are getting ugly. Snorlax is just safe there, and it's so rock-solid (screw you Gigalith, you can't win without luck) that I can actually just forget about running all the other stuff. It proved very valuable in the tournament, I ended up facing various Trick Room components in more than 2/3 of my tournament run.</p>
<p>Nothing new about the set, same as always. Curse once and hit hard with Frustration, High Horsepower for best coverage (including the very threatening Nihilego and common Trick Room attackers that resist Normal), and Recycle for these situations where removing this best plushie of all time is just a little too hard.</p>
<ul style="font-family:monospace;"><li>252+ Atk Water Bubble Araquanid Hydro Vortex (160 BP) vs. 20 HP / 252 Def Snorlax: 207-244 (86.9 - 102.5%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO<br/><br/></li>
<li>236+ Atk Snorlax Return vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Garchomp: 88-105 (48 - 57.3%) -- 91.4% chance to 2HKO</li>
<li>236+ Atk Snorlax Return vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Araquanid: 90-106 (51.4 - 60.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO</li>
<li>+1 236+ Atk Snorlax Return vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Tapu Koko: 144-171 (98.6 - 117.1%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO</li>
<li>+1 236+ Atk Snorlax Return vs. 244 HP / 92 Def Eviolite Porygon2: 84-99 (43.9 - 51.8%) -- 9.4% chance to 2HKO</li>
<li>+1 236+ Atk Snorlax High Horsepower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Muk-Alola: 200-236 (94.3 - 111.3%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO</li>
<li>+1 236+ Atk Snorlax High Horsepower vs. 204 HP / 4 Def Arcanine: 188-222 (98.4 - 116.2%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO</li></ul>
<hr class="sep"/>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Death Squad (Magnezone) @ Electrium Z<br/>
Ability: Sturdy<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 92 HP / 4 Def / 156 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Thunderbolt<br/>
- Flash Cannon<br/>
- Magnet Rise<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Maggi brings the seasoning. Some/many hate it, I like it. I agree that Arcanine and Garchomp can be quite demotivational in many endeavours to make good use of Magnezone, but if we just allow ourselves to forget the necessary evil for a moment, nothing's changed since London: literally half the Metagame can't hit Magnezone well. Gigalith without Earthquake, Porygon2, Nihilego, Muk, Koko, Drifblim, Ninetales, and the list goes on. Additionally, it actually has the high Special Attack you'd expect from an Electric type, unlike that one charged chicken over there, you know...</p>
<p>This time, I ripped it from Viera without changing a thing, and I'm happy with it. The double STABs along with Protect and the Z-nuke are self-explanatory, it's just that filler move that is moderately hard to work with. Magnet Rise is pure situationality and I never ended up clicking it during the tournament at least. I did have plans to use it once or twice in some matchups actually, but games played out in different ways. At this point I still like to keep it because if the possibilities I'm seeing, and because all other options are just as situational. Discharge or Hidden Power Ice would be the best so you have more for Lightning Rod or hitting Garchomp respectively, but Discharge's damage is rather pitiful without Terrain and I'd rather deal with Garchomp in different ways (and even then, Magnet Rise can situationally help right there). Substitute and Toxic seem possible too, so use whatever you like best when running a similar team. Just make sure to always pick Sturdy as Ability because having two Items with one of them being Focus Sash is fucking great on a mon that's still offensive.</p>
<p>The full Speed unfortunately is just necessary on poor slow Magnezone, in order to outspeed +Speed Pheromosa, Modest Scarf Lele, Jolly +1 Gyarados and other stuff in Tailwind, also helpful for slow Finis and most Celesteelas outside of Tailwind. About the split between the rest, I'm not completely sure if these calcs show just what Viera actually wanted, but they look decent enough.</p>
<ul style="font-family:monospace;"><li>156+ SpA Magnezone Gigavolt Havoc (175 BP) vs. 12 HP / 124 SpD Kartana: 137-162 (100.7 - 119.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO</li>
<li>156+ SpA Magnezone Gigavolt Havoc (175 BP) vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Tapu Koko in Electric Terrain: 145-171 (99.3 - 117.1%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO</li>
<li>156+ SpA Magnezone Gigavolt Havoc (175 BP) vs. +1 4 HP / 252 SpD Drifblim: 234-276 (103.5 - 122.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO<br/><br/></li>
<li>252 SpA Life Orb Tapu Koko Thunderbolt vs. 92 HP / 4 SpD Magnezone in Electric Terrain: 66-78 (42 - 49.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO</li>
<li>252+ SpA Tapu Lele Psychic vs. 92 HP / 4 SpD Magnezone in Psychic Terrain: 69-81 (43.9 - 51.5%) -- 10.5% chance to 2HKO</li>
<li>-1 4 Atk Kartana Sacred Sword vs. 92 HP / 4 Def Magnezone: 68-82 (43.3 - 52.2%) -- 10.5% chance to 2HKO</li></ul>
<hr class="sep"/>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Sancta Terra (Garchomp) (M) @ Groundium Z<br/>
Ability: Rough Skin<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 12 HP / 228 Atk / 12 Def / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Earthquake<br/>
- Poison Jab<br/>
- Substitute<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Apparently, it's nigh impossible to build a decent team without Arcanine and Garchomp in this format. And look, what little of a surprise it is as soon as you notice they they, if you will, are literally Landorus split up in two. Same thing as 2014 with Garchomp and Salamence, you can't fool me. This world is addicted to Landorus.</p>
<p>Anyway, here's the thing: I needed something for Muk, some more for Gigalith, something for other Garchomps and just something fast and reliable. Garchomp's really good at all of that, also adds another Z-move, and I do like to have 2 of them in a team if I can. Substitute is the one thing that I took from Thowra's team, versatile generic move, and super helpful in a bunch of situations, definitely more than Swords Dance in this team. Swords Dance is just awkward when you lack the partners to Earthquake with and also rely on Tailwind sometimes (especially when you don't even have Jolly!). Speaking of the Nature and Speed thing...you know, I appreciate the Slowchomp fad for one and one reason only: less Speed ties, because mine's just faster! And if a Speed tie in fact does get revealed, then...</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">252 Atk Garchomp Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 12 HP / 12 Def Garchomp: 159-187 (85.9 - 101%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and about the second attack: Fini is annoying and Poison Jab is a single-target move that doesn't miss. Fire Fang over it would allow me to pick Garchomp in Celesteela matchups more easily, but I don't know, I already have more answers to Celesteela than I have to Fini. And Rock Slide without STAB isn't my thing because I never get flinches that matter and its damage is worthless.</p>
<h2>Using the Team</h2>
<p>It was quite easy at least to me in the early days, but it's safe to say that things have changed at this point. Driflele got noticed and some people even go as far as coming up with horrible memes just designed to beat Driflele and worthless for other teams. Half of them is probably well beatable by smart play, but ladders are always the worst anyway, so... Anyway, yes, other than that, I found it to be quite easy to pick up the team because it almost perfectly fits my "controlled offense" mindset and preference. I like to win games quickly by knockouts by damage but I delay risks as long as possible and reasonable, and well, that's what I do when running this team.</p>
<p>About the leads, if all of this is just confusing you, you already catch a lot of situations just by leading Driflele or Lele with Arcanine every game, and then having whatever in the back. That's really predictable, but it's safe for the most part. And for the more advanced stuff...some is plain logical, other needs you to get a good feel of everything. If Drifblim's fast enough without Unburden already, you can keep Lele safely in the back. When you'd want Tailwind rather late than early, you can consider bringing Drifblim from behind. When Drifblim just makes no sense to bring whatsoever, then yes, don't bring it -- no Speed control is fine, we have the bulk and priority to manage it. When someone is threatened by Magnezone, you can try to bring it right in the front. And when you see a Nihilego...that happens to be really threatening and is probably the very first thing where you'd want to consider deviating from a standard lead. Anyway, matches have played out quite varyingly for me while using the team. Sometimes, I would just stubbornly bring the same in the same order every game and be fine, and sometimes (especially in the slower games) I would bring up to 3 different leads to avoid being too predictable. In fact, predictability is Driflele's probably biggest weakness, and I've effectively erased that part right here.</p>
<p>And for playing out the games, as I said, I personally like to play conservatively, and this is part of why the team is as defensively solid as it is. The following applies to every game of competitive Pokémon, really, but I think this team is quite nice to practice it in the first place: think carefully about every move and what it accomplishes. Think about what has to happen, what has to be prevented and what has to be accepted in order to win the game at the end. Always look ahead far enough. And for this team specifically...I just have no idea what to say, it's so simple and flexible at the same time, haha.</p>
<p>About the unsolved problems the team has, I've already mentioned Nihilego a bunch, and another problem is what we commonly refer to as cheese. Eevee is basically an autoloss and other Snorlaxes can be difficult to handle as well. For the weather cheese, I've decided to have an autowin against rain, which in turn means that sun will still be dangerous, for the lack of another strong tech somewhere else. Can't win 'em all, same as every time. You can probably find less of the really rough matchups by running a different standard team, but it will also mean that you'll have less easy matchups and have to work harder for every win. With Driflele (as well as other teams I preferred in the past), some wins are just really easy and straightforward. Anyway, if we are allowed to ignore the dumb stuff, the team should still be decently runnable at events, possibly with some adjustments.</p>
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<p>And as far as these adjustments go...well yes, I've made a few between the IDM and now. I'll post a quick follow-up in one week, till then you can try to figure out on your own what I did. And for the actual tournament report, as explained in the intro, that's exclusive to the German version (but it does contain pictures of the matchups). Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-71534576950845865092017-03-21T18:00:00.000+01:002017-03-21T18:00:24.692+01:00I Am the Guardian of Alola -- February International Challenge 10th Place Team<p>Alola friends. Wrote most of this some weeks ago already and just figured I have no good reasons left to hide it any longer, so: Here it is, the team that brought me to the first page of the global rankings for the 2017 International Challenge February!</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiogmc5krf2dGy9pOg3F62_JyyJBmxRQaXSIQ4ev1ZDo32aPVJCPvxgG9md0N0mt5L272E27QjlpHM3vXxyf_VCywxuJN_1PV9eoWRBI_Uro1ivtbQYkOxrIBZ3VDotLtc7nTwX-zraxp8/s1600/icfeb17result.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiogmc5krf2dGy9pOg3F62_JyyJBmxRQaXSIQ4ev1ZDo32aPVJCPvxgG9md0N0mt5L272E27QjlpHM3vXxyf_VCywxuJN_1PV9eoWRBI_Uro1ivtbQYkOxrIBZ3VDotLtc7nTwX-zraxp8/s400/icfeb17result.png" width="400" height="160" /></a></div>
<p>And you're in for something that you aren't seeing every day, I can tell you that much in advance.</p>
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<h2>Development</h2>
<p>The basic idea is almost as old as the format itself, and it was pieced together from a multitude of things I saw. So, the main point of entry is that Gengar/Koko lead that Yoshi constructed his London team around. Quick refresher for those who have forgotten what was going on there: Sash Gengz, AV Koko with Nature's Madness, and the desire to start every game on a 4-3 lead by picking the right target to double into and before it moves, while the untouched one can't possibly get a revenge kill in the same turn. That concept looks quite nasty on paper, and while it's much unlike everything I did in the past, I deemed it very much worth looking into further. The lack of redirection and Fake Out in the metagame makes strategies like this and also more simple fast modes notably more potent than they were known to be in other formats.</p>
<p>That being said, I didn't like to just copy what was already there, because I got another idea that, while I never knew for sure it was better, definitely was different in some ways. My very own original team building has been so very lackluster since like forever and some days and it always saddens me, so of course I wanted to seize the opportunity to finally <em>create</em> something of my own again and <em>have it be good</em>. Make Dreykopff's team building great again, you know. So, I arrived at Tapu Koko and Nihilego. Nihilego would still have the Sash and then trade Taunt for Beast Boost. Koko would give up Assault Vest so that I could fill the moveset with whatever the fuck I wanted. As it turns out, these two never changed from my initial design. If you want to spoil yourself right here and now, scroll down to Koko and marvel at the glorious bird of Melemele. Otherwise, let's talk about finding the other 4 slots as well!</p>
<p>For the third slot, a standard Celesteela was already about 96% guaranteed (yes, I wanted a number that is higher than the accuracy of silly Icy Whiff). With the team being all about supporting Nihilego, I obviously needed something for Kartana. Also, since I am Dreykopff and like my defensive switches a lot, there is just hardly a way I'm getting around that Steel/Flying object when I'm starting with Kokolego, so there's that as well. And that's also the first half of the boring part out of the way. The other half of the boring part is...related to my observation that it's impossible to build competitive teams without Arcanine and Garchomp right now. When I first theorymoned the team, I was likely to get Arcanine because I was looking at Intimidate, switching capabilities and all that jazz, but that only happened on paper and wasn't actually tested. When I, weeks later, constructed a few different trios to actually complete the team, I arrived at the conclusion that I would likely want Garchomp instead, with Arcanine as the expendable one. You can thank Muk for that, because Muk is just really fucking annoying when you can't hit it for weakness, your Z-move isn't good for it etc. I could also have taken Marowak for a number of reasons, but yeah, it's Marowak, which is kinda underwhelming without Speed control. Garchomp is the kind of mon that always gives you a promise of being decent.</p>
<p>That leaves the last two slots. Things I was looking at originally were any weather changer to combat the Sash break that Snow Warning brings, and an attacking Tapu. Well, turns out the weather changers were either Ground weak (Gigalith, Torkoal) or just mostly useless if not even helpful to some opponents (Politoed). Attacking Tapus weren't looking too hot either. In my early notes, I had Bulu for doing something about the Ground weakness, but that's so impractical. Bulu has a handful of problems in this metagame that almost disqualify it for a supporting slot immediately, and Grassy Terrain can not only be reset but also doesn't do anything against Tectonic Rage or High Horsepower. So, I had to entertain the notion of maybe just having one of those mons with field Abilities in the supporting cast, and then use the last open slot to eliminate as many problems as possible individually or, even better, make the team more streamlined by opening up an alternative mode. One of the drafts I had hence featured Torkoal and Lilligant, with a total of 3 Z-Crystals in the team, just to give you an idea. That one didn't make it for the finalized build though.</p>
<p>And then the plot twist arrived: just forget about it all with that overburdening patching holes thing, we're running Clefairy Snorlax. That happened at a time when I grew very fond of Snorlax in the refined AFK team you know, so it was a safe call to just copypaste it then. Clefairy on top of that is one I've now appreciated for three formats in succession, because Follow Me is still the best non-generic move in Double Battles and hey, I didn't have double Tapu yet, so I still could afford another kind of double Fairy no problem. And that will be the lineup and how it came to be. On to the flesh of it!</p>
<h2>The Team</h2>
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<p style="font-family:monospace;">To Oblivion (Tapu Koko) @ Tapunium Z<br/>
Ability: Electric Surge<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 236 HP / 60 Def / 4 SpA / 52 SpD / 156 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
- Nature's Madness<br/>
- Hidden Power [Fire]<br/>
- Volt Switch<br/>
- Sky Drop</p>
<p>Don't believe what the guys at the car shark invitational might have told you, I am the true "inventor" of Guardian of Alola and my dear Tapu Kawkawkawkaw has proved it during this IC in ways that never ended well for my opponents, hahaha!</p>
<p>But jests aside, it's true -- I had this Koko build in the first week of January and justed waited for the right time to unleash it. Nature's Madness is the same as with Yoshi's from London, but I decided to power it up for a number of reasons. Since any imaginable Sash partner could easily arrive at points where it's impossible to do 50% damage with an actual attack to a specific target, chances are that 25% is still possible. Porygon2 and Hariyama are the best examples here -- it's very unusual for them to carry Berries that could mess with me, and that's where they will fall when they least expect it. Another common example would be Celesteela obviously, but that's still risky in Bo1 because you could always run into the FIWAM Berry build and get wrecked hard. Anyway, I usually just hit that Z-button when I know that it will win me the game or that I won't need another Z-move later (i.e., because I didn't bring Garchomp), and with that in mind, it's still nice and much appreciated that I can get around this disgusting 90% for one turn. Fun story: I once blew up a 1 HP Ninetales with it just because I wanted to nullify a Protect that could lose me pace.</p>
<p>With that big monstrosity out of the way, some words on the other moves. HP Fire is for Kartana, obviously. If it doesn't have Sash or AV, it will be quickly exterminated in the hottest depths of hell (looking at you Scarf and Lens users, be warned), no investment needed. Volt Switch is there for having at least some kind of STAB attack, I guess, and the mid-turn switching mobility is something I always approve of. Finally, Sky Drop extends the combos with Nihilego in another way. There's also the synergy with Garchomp's setup. If the Celesteela switch is free, I can even pick up Kartana with it and grab that guaranteed defensive Beast Boost next turn.</p>
<p>The EV spread is mostly similar to the bulky Spex Koko that Ray made earlier, with the following important differences: It outspeeds the now relevant and threatening Salazzle, it survives Adamant Garchomp's Earthquake in 15/16 rolls (of course I hit multiple max rolls or crits during the IC, not even kidding!) and offensive investment isn't needed at all for what this set does, so it's clear where that went.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Another Me (Nihilego) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Beast Boost<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Power Gem<br/>
- Sludge Bomb<br/>
- Hidden Power [Ice]<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">PhantomAgony (Celesteela) @ Leftovers<br/>
Ability: Beast Boost<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 164 HP / 4 Atk / 188 Def / 148 SpD / 4 Spe<br/>
Careful Nature<br/>
- Heavy Slam<br/>
- Flamethrower<br/>
- Leech Seed<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Sancta Terra (Garchomp) (M) @ Groundium Z<br/>
Ability: Rough Skin<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 228 Atk / 20 Def / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Earthquake<br/>
- Fire Fang<br/>
- Swords Dance<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Never Enough (Snorlax) (M) @ Iapapa Berry<br/>
Ability: Gluttony<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Happiness: 0<br/>
EVs: 20 HP / 236 Atk / 252 Def<br/>
Brave Nature<br/>
IVs: 3 Spe<br/>
- Frustration<br/>
- High Horsepower<br/>
- Curse<br/>
- Recycle</p>
<p>Sparing you the walls of text for these four mons here, because there's just not much to say about them. Nihilego and Celesteela are the most standard builds in the world. Garchomp and Snorlax have been copypasted from the respective AFK iterations I posted here before, nothing too original about them either at this point.</p>
<p>The actual moveset decision behind Snorlax though...Yes, about that one I should definitely talk after some reactions. I went for Curse because I just wanted that fairly reliable answer for Trick Room. Now that the rankings were released and some other metagame advancement happened these weeks, people also had good reasons to expect it to be a Belly Drum set. Well, you see, I didn't actually consider that myself for this team! But soon after, I did test that and saw I didn't like it. Supporting Belly Drum Snorlax with redirection is accepting you're playing a 3v4 game and giving up Speed control at the same time. It's nothing like the Kangaskhan/Azumarill cores of older formats, it's too passive.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Cry4theMoon (Clefairy) (F) @ Eviolite<br/>
Ability: Friend Guard<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 236 HP / 252 Def / 20 SpD<br/>
Bold Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Follow Me<br/>
- Heal Pulse<br/>
- Encore<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>So, on to the last mon of the party. While I was used to accepting compromises with the attacks it can survive, the limited movepool was something new. No Helping Hand, no Icy Wind, just all kinds of random fillers. Might have normally taken After You in the filler slot, but yeah, I have Snorlax, I don't need After You. And Heal Pulse...hm. That move should be quite good and a legitimate reason to run Clefairy itself, but it has never clicked with me ever and this IC was no exception. Like, it's there but I possibly clicked it even less than Encore; didn't keep count. Encore can get you some cool positions though if placed well, and even if not quite, the ease of prediction for the next few turns is super helpful when I'm trying to pick off targets one by one. Funny (and sad) moment I had: because of not knowing my Speeds well enough, this Clefairy sent some Heal Pulses and Encores at the wrong times against a full Trick Room team. I still think neutral Speed is the way to go with Encore, but really I should just be more aware of how that matches up with negative-Natured stuff. So that's everything about the filler moves, and now please a moment of silence for Helping Hand.</p>
<p>Other than that, Clefairy's main job is to spam Follow Me and Protect and sometimes add Friend Guard to Celesteela or something. For the EVs, you have to decide between Araquanid's Hydro Vortex and Nihilego's Life Orb Sludge Bomb, can't stand both. Should be obvious from the numbers what I decided to go with.</p>
<h2>Modus Operandi</h2>
<p>Since the team was based around the Kokolego combination and its early game, obviously I would lead that most of the time and then have the bulkier stuff in the back, both for defensive maneuvers and sealing up games -- most of the time, Celesteela and Garchomp. Whenever that didn't seem quite optimal with the little information I had from Bo1 team preview, I left it at simple replacements and/or changes of order. Like, if I see dedicated Trick Room, I'll definitely bring Snorlax and/or Clefairy somewhere. If I see multiple mons that Nihilego can't threaten even after Nature's Madness, I might still lead Koko but partner it with Garchomp or Celesteela and bring Nihilego in the back. If a team is naturally faster than mine, I'll probably have Clefairy to weather the storm.</p>
<p>And, most importantly with Kokolego leads: don't fuck up against Scarfchomps. One game I have humiliatingly lost because I went all in on it being slower right in turn 1, only to be Earthquaked way too fast and then not kill it with HP Ice. The (mostly) safe play in that situation would have been to Sky Drop it and Protect. That prevents unnecessary damage on Nihilego and Sky Drop should also normally chip it into Hidden Power range. Well, and even when not using this team or anything like it, I can only advise you to have plans against Scarfchomp. We've had our fun whining about it on Twitter and stuff, but truth is, Scarf is just as good as Groundium -- because a metagame shaped by the likes of Koko, Arcanine, common Ground weaknesses, an overabundance of fast and frail mons, and the unavailability of Excadrill very much call for it.</p>
<h2>IC Data</h2>
<ul><li>Played 43 out of 45 games, 36-7 record, 1864 peak and final rating, placed 10th worldwide, 1st in Germany/Europe and something yet undetermined for CP.</li>
<li>All losses were avoidable by better play, but I also won some games by decisive opponent misplays, or once a first-try Burn on a +6 Snorlax.</li>
<li>Streaks: 3W - 1L - 2W - 1L - 3W - 1L - <strong>16W</strong> - 1L - 3W - <strong>2L</strong> - 4W - 1L - 5W</li>
<li>Personal usage stats:
<ul><li>Tapu Koko: 41</li>
<li>Nihilego: 41</li>
<li>Celesteela: 40</li>
<li>Garchomp: 30</li>
<li>Snorlax: 9</li>
<li>Clefairy: 11</li></ul></li>
<li>Leads:
<ul><li>Kokolego: 35</li>
<li>Koko/Celesteela: 3</li>
<li>Kokochomp: 3</li>
<li>Snorlax/Clefairy: 1</li>
<li>Celesteela/Garchomp: 1</li></ul></li>
<li>Judging from those stats, it really seems like it was the ideal Bo1 team, because I was pretty much hellbent on what to do and my opponents would know none of it before it was too late. There isn't much we can infer from that for Bo3 situations, but as far as the facts go, I won all Bo3s I played with the team, though they weren't many, so...</li></ul>
<hr class="sep" />
<p>I don't know, man. It seems like I became a Bo1 god overnight (and then lost that talent right again *cough*), but sure as hell my efforts will get devalued by the misinformation factor again as soon as I get back to bringing "normal" teams to Battle Spot. I think it was just a lucky shot in the dark this time, because I also happened to avoid the bad luck where it mattered. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-28111597204180229842017-03-12T20:00:00.001+01:002017-03-12T20:00:24.905+01:00Facing My Weakness<p>Alola friends. Very different post today. Much rambling, little to no game-related content. Just been thinking a lot about the game and my place in it recently. Spoilers: no, not quitting it entirely (sorry not sorry haters!), that wouldn't be right. Just some things I noticed and might want to change.</p>
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<h2>What Happened/Changed?</h2>
<p>In a nutshell: I have quit competing in the official circuit and that is literally it. I am not putting less time into the game than before (just less money). I also still enjoy winning and hate losing as much as ever. Well, and that's where I'm wrong. As much as I appreciate this current format over the mostly dreadful one from 2016, I still have lamented a lot on how extremely fast and matchup-focused it is, as a reaction of me not finding a team I'm happy to just keep for months. There are multiple ways how this could possibly explained, but it matters not when the main point is this: I'm just here to have fun, and it seems I am forgetting this as soon as I get frustrated with how things are playing out. I (as much as everyone else) will undeniably have a hard time having fun in losing, being completely irrelevant and all that shit, but the mere feeling when you notice that you're doing things the wrong way, have no solutions but actually want solutions, that's...not helpful. I'm a filthy casual, I could just step away from it for a month or two no problem, but I don't want to. I might find some single-player games to fill my gaming time with no problem, but knowing what Pokémon has given me in the last 15+ years, I just wouldn't find a suitable replacement multiplayer/competitive thing out of nowhere. What an oh so typical love/hate relationship with a hobby...</p>
<h2>Reasons Not to Take a Break</h2>
<p>Aside from not wanting to move away just out of general enjoyment of the game itself, there's also some moral obligations.</p>
<p>First, the local events and everything around them. It was one of my most unrealistic childhood dreams to have local events every months, and look where we are now, we actually get to have exactly those events as well as a bigger circuit where they are tied right in. Now, I have officially left that circuit for the time being because of some major disagreement. But still, I am not so selfish that I would just leave and be done with it, especially when the overall situation for everyone is so terrible, I legitimately have to be afraid we lose it all if no one stays around to keep it alive. I'd rather have a bullshit circuit than no circuit at all, you know, even when I decide to be no longer a relevant part of it. I'm staying strong for my locals in the face of complete hopelessness, and I have big difficulties motivating them, but I try.</p>
<p>Second, there's also the NPA factor now, finally again. I didn't cost my team much and they could just ditch me for midseason and get someone else just as good no problem, but that's not what I want because I actually signed up to this for, once more, having this team competition experience with and against great Champions of this game in my life. I've played two seasons of NPA before: the first was great (and we won), the second was awful (and we took last place). Well, and what about this one? Seems fair to say it's somewhere in the middle, which is fine, really. Unfortunately, we now lost two weeks in a row to two very beatable teams, but we made too many mistakes and that cost us. This also includes myself at the very least for the current week. StarKO is a great player, I was very happy to be paired up against him for the first time in my life, and it's no shame to lose to him. But, the harsh truth is, I walked in with what should have been a favorable matchup for me and still got outplayed. Winning was humanly possible and I failed to do it, now not only punishing my ego but also my whole team for it. It was, just like many other losses for us, a good lesson anyway. Do we want to take lessons eternally, though? I'm afraid not, haha. Gotta step it up for the (near) future. When you lose points that you shouldn't lose, you have no reason not to to it better when the next challenge presents itself. And sure as hell I wish to get some more chances...and, you know, kick some more awesome players' asses <em>because I can</em>, haha.</p>
<h2>The Quest for the Team</h2>
<p>Well, that's the thing that everyone's dealing with in one way or another, haha. Some more, some less, something. I feel like it's been especially hard for me in general, because I'm a (hopeless) perfectionist and it's quite a number of varying approaches that have led me to success in the past, so, in a way, I'm just lost! There's three big approaches I want to look at here: using plain standard teams, building original teams and, since it finally is socially accepted now (was not for the longest time, I shit you not!), copying other people's teams.</p>
<p>Standard teams. That's the thing we always recommend to new players. Safest thing to do, little can go wrong. But, if you actually want to win...oh boy, the possibilities of things that can go wrong are endless! Personally, I hate mirror matches more than anything else. Even with a not-so-standard team that I loved dearly (hint: quicksand 2015), the mirror matchup was <em>one of only two</em> matchups where I had a non-positive record. Can you believe that? And when I run the standard shit that everyone else runs, chances are I'll get a lot of mirrors...also known as matchup where my chance of winning isn't leaving 50% any time soon. I just don't know how to get good at this kind of thing. I did sorta deal with it in 2016 with the big-6 mirrors, you know, but naturally that experience was a special kind of terrible for everyone involved.</p>
<p>Copying teams from others, independently of how standard they are. That's a fun one, and also generally recommendable to people of all skill levels. Many cool things have happened from it. In fact, almost all of my favorite teams ever have started as copied teams that I then just adjusted to do some things better. That being said, I feel like I should actually do it some more again. And that's where a luxury problem arises: the vastness of options. It's just too much to try, you need some kind of selection. And by that selection of mine, it's as if everything then disqualifies on the spot because there is some issue or challenge that I for whatever reason am not ready to deal with. And that is basically how I actively reject getting better, as I assume that I will not find answers that I don't already know. That's some detrimental impatience, no doubt...and still, it's sorta necessary because, again, we need a selection somewhere. All of that being said...is there someone who's a god at hoarding and classifying quality teams? I'd much love some educated recommendations matching some given basic requirements, haha, if that's not asking hell too much, anyway.</p>
<p>And then the final stage, building your own teams. Not because you can but because you really can. It's a thing I really love to do, and it's extremely challenging. For every good one I come up with, there's probably around 20 that just go nowhere. I can't feasibly expect to get that ratio up, but dealing with it can be hard at times. Now, just for the IC recently, I did bring a team that's my own creation, but what of it? It could still be just that 1 out of 20 that does something, and it's not safe to assume it actually has a future in development. Anyway, if we are being positive just for this one moment, then we are seeing right with our eyes how full of wonder this metagame is: Spaniards revived Bulu, Smogon leaders revived my favorite team from December, viewership invitational had some cool teams also on the winning end, Tman made fucking Brine work, and the list goes on. If all of that along with my past tells me something, it's that I could very well put some faith in my own ideas. Can't expect that all of them are worth it, but if I explore them more and let them breathe, there's a chance I find some more stuff that's neat. I won't possibly turn into German Enosh and have some new elaborate weirdness ready for every event (well, "event" *cough*), but doesn't hurt to try at this point. It's not like I'm getting too much out of delaying the fun of team building when I'm literally just here for the fun.</p>
<p>So, what will actually happen? Probably still a bit of everything, really (and it overlaps in various parts anyway, so). Just gotta work on the distribution to feel more at ease.</p>
<h2>Laddering Fatigue</h2>
<p>Don't get me wrong, both the in-game ladder and Showdown's ripoff are helpful and it's good to have them around. It's just not for me anymore. I'm old, I'm not laddering 6 hours per day anymore. But if you want to get top ratings, you're kinda forced to do exactly that...or, if you do want it quickly, you're just never allowed to lose. And losses <em>will</em> happen, a lot of them. Bo1 is the necessary evil and it will wreck your shit if something on that opposing team catches you off guard. And the higher you get, the more it will hurt your rating. Also, Battle Spot ladder resets. Did they just cut the cycles to 2 months!? I'd really like a Showdown-like approach where you can just register alts or something equivalent and then ladder with those and stuff, and without the reset that tends to happen right in the moment when you're finally getting somewhere.</p>
<p>About the Battle Spot part, there would be the obvious way to just force myself to play like 3 games per day or something, but you know what mostly keeps me from doing it: I only have dead teams in-game most of the time, and rental teams, while a really nice concept in itself, are so vast that there's again the selection problem...and also lack of personality, coupled with that one rating per game that will just go to hell should I pick something that doesn't click at all. But really, this is all on me: a classic motivation problem. What motivation could there be when there is just nothing whatsoever that's actually relevant about the ladder? You aren't even getting in-game rewards...except for a pitiful amount of Festival Coins that just isn't worth disconnecting from Battle Spot every time. Well, here's to me not forgetting about Battle Spot in season 3, I guess.</p>
<h2>Of Nationals Runs and Mentality</h2>
<p>Out of the 10+ National Championships I played in my life, I remember about 6 runs, give or take, that were good in some way or another.</p>
<p>3 of them happened with the perfect "fuck this shit, I'm just here for the hell of it" mentality, and I wanna say they were in fact, even if for strongly varying reasons, the "best". The one was the Nats way back in 2009 that I actually won, where I just played to see some friends and stuff, and entered with a mostly brainless fun team that was an hommage to another friend. Well, the tournament went by quickly, and sooner than later, I was already in top 4, joined by two friends and a random. Since I was the one who got matched up with the random, losing could have meant the instant death of my (then fairly good) reputation, so yeah, that happened, and I went on to the grand final show match on stage that just mattered for the original brick and title alone. Well, and then 2016, obviously. The format was impossible to handle, so what do you do...you go to Nats and play the big six or a variant, lead Xerneas Fake Out every game and autopilot it to whatever result pops up. Not what I actually did, haha, but something close enough anyway, little brainpower needed. Failed me in UK because I ran into too many hard matchups that I closely lost, along with one impossible one, then same team again in Germany and X-0 Swiss run because I dodged all of that stuff, played mostly mirrors, somehow walked away with wins in them etc., it happens. (That's the same day when ecopoképsychological Ph.D. Billa attested me a "Mew2King mentality" in the morning before, whatever that actually means. Well, I think M2K is fucking boss amazing at Melee, but sure he's behind his prime for an eternity by now as far as results go.) And then for Italy, I changed it up to this patchwork of double Primal team that was fairly nice but also had some flaws, same fuck-it-all-mentality, had a good time and got the same result as far as CP go, whatever.</p>
<p>The next 2 of those runs happened in years when I was mostly grinding just one team all year. Kinda long for doing that again some day, I have to say, but some stars would need to align. In both cases then, I just made a decision to run archetype X at the start of the format, then found out it was good by playing, and failed to find something else that worked better (but did try!) for me. Good times. In 2012, I had that well-practised TR team and realistic chances to win, still in Bo1 single elimination. What then actually happened is, for the only time in my life (!) I fucked up with getting one of the mons in-game -- as in, I forgot to teach my new custom Speed-IV Tyranitar Protect before the Battle Box lock. With shock I learned about that right in the middle of round 1, and saved a losing game to the timer somehow. But still, Tyranitar was so important, there wasn't a game all day where I didn't bring it. As it turned out, only one of my other games went smoothly, the rest all went to me bullshitting people on the timer, either because I was unable to play normally or because they actually were difficult matchups and I had to get creative. This way, I carried the run all the way to top 8 and was one win away from getting the trip to Alola, I mean Hawaii, but then karma bit back and I ended up somehow losing a game where I wasn't even in a losing position. So yeah, that one was actually a mess, but the result, on paper, still is my best non-winning one. The other of the 2 would be 2014 with Team MEGATAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!! That's when circuit injustice hit me the hardest: I got a respectable 6-2 in Germany and was eliminated at the end of Swiss. If I had went to the UK and gotten the exact same run, I would have cut. If I had went to Italy and gotten the exact same run, I'd have had another round to determine if I'd make cut or not. But because I was just in Germany and things happened as they happened, I had no chance.</p>
<p>And that would also be another kind of special run which matches with the last example, too: the greatest comebacks that fail in the dumbest ways. Said run started at 1-1 because Raichu/Blastoise wasn't a thing I could comfortably beat with my team, then I brought it back to 6-1 before the last round. I faced the guy who had a good team but played so randomly, barely anyone was able to make heads or tails of him. Or, more directly and critical of myself: he bullshat me with turn-1 Rock Slide magic and I was too much of a pussy to Swagger his Garchomp to bring a losing game back by some well-deserved revenge RNG So yeah, in a way, that was on me, circuit weirdness aside. The other comeback run happened a year later in Italy, and boy was it a story. But that story has already been told in great detail on this blog before, so...suffice to say, I started 1-2, brought it back to 6-2 with one more round to play, and had the game already won!, but in some delirious twist of mind, I clicked the wrong move without any reason and threw. Worst mistake ever, absolutely qualifies as Choke™. (That reminds me...I've been watching many NPA replays as they were posted. You wouldn't believe how many locked up endgames were pissed away literally in equally dumb ways! Doesn't make me feel better about myself, just makes me feel like...why does this even happen!? This should not happen! If you're a good manager, I recommend giving those persons a good and thorough pep talk...and likely also some bench presence for 1-2 weeks to follow.)</p>
<p>In a nutshell: Nats was only ever good when I was also feeling "good". "Good" as in casually fatalistic. Like our ancient heathen ancestors, you know. And it makes sense, because if I'm there to do anything of value, I have to bring out the plays and do stuff right on site, and if I lose, I'll lose with the blade of glory in my blood-drenched hands. The game has become too big to win Nats in my living room, it's impossible to catch all possibilities in preparation. It's a very important thing to remember, and it's exactly what has slowly but surely led me out of complete irrelevance throughout those recent years. That's good! I just never quite finished the job, and that's the bad part...and whether the opportunity ever presents itself again, that will depend on what TPCi will be doing in the future and whether I can learn to deal with those decisions even if they aren't going to bring back what we used to have before 2017.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Obvious conclusion is I'm probably bad. More productive conclusion is I can change a few things as long as I still am in that blissful situation where competition doesn't matter at all, and maybe it would make me less bad. I'm still the same person as one year ago, but I'm not the same Trainer by my own choice, so I shouldn't try to behave the same way, as it can conflict with having an exclusively good time. Let it go and move on, you know. (God, I fucking <em>hated</em> Nahyuta Sahdmadhi in that game, but still this character has left quite the impression on me with his nonsense, haha.) I've arrived at a point where it made sense to think about it all and put it into perspective, so I actually have some optimism that good things might come of it, no matter how irrelevant and forgettable they might be in the big picture.</p>
<p>And what even is your, the reader's, part in the whole thing? I don't know, depends. Naturally, you'd all have different personal stories to deal with, and possible similarities and their meanings you'll have to find by yourselves. If I somehow inspired someone to do something just from this wall of rambling, it was my pleasure. With that being said, we will be back at normal Pokémon content next time, whenever that will actually be. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-21335469302779591102017-02-27T22:01:00.000+01:002017-02-27T22:01:06.317+01:00Last Rites of Freezing Beauty<p>Alola friends. I did end up doing some more work on the team I released a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I came to conclusions that are strongly suggesting me to...let it go, and move on. But, more on those thoughts at the end of the post. A quick word about the results obtained with it: I won <a href="http://trainertower.com/forums/threads/npa-6-week-2.146/page-2#post-2102" target="_blank">a week in NPA</a> with it and scrubbed out at a Premier Challenge because I evaluated situations wrongly and, in turn, made awful plays. For full details about how the team came to be as well as details on unchanged sets, I recommend also reading <a href="http://i-tilde-weltall.blogspot.de/2017/02/freezing-beauty-ninetalesafk-team.html">the previous post</a>. Let's go.</p>
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<h2>The Team</h2>
<p>We remember, the team originally was slow as fuck. The first change I made (and soon after reverted) did nothing to solve that -- rather, it made the issue even more apparent. Most of my losses were to my mons just being outsped and unable to remove weakened targets. It became so obvious that I would really want Extreme Speed on Arcanine at the very least. That alone would require me to change a few other things as well though, because the original Arcanine had some important jobs that shouldn't just get lost only because I wanted priority. With all of that in mind, I ended up taking some inspiration from the Japanese gods of Battle Spot.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Reverence (Arcanine) (F) @ Assault Vest<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 204 HP / 140 Atk / 164 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Flare Blitz<br/>
- Extreme Speed<br/>
- Wild Charge<br/>
- Snarl</p>
<p>This Arcanine is, as we would put it in Germany, my "Mädchen für alles". Poor Fire dog has way too many things to do, it's far from healthy. I arrived at Assault Vest because I wanted every single one of those moves. It meant the inability to Protect, so it was quite an ordeal to keep it alive for Celesteela endgames or against aggressive Kartanas sometimes. So yeah, not my favorite set, but it's just the only thing that made sense.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">The Blade (Kartana) @ Choice Scarf<br/>
Ability: Beast Boost<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 68 HP / 108 Atk / 4 Def / 76 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
- Leaf Blade<br/>
- Smart Strike<br/>
- Sacred Sword<br/>
- Razor Leaf</p>
<p>Good old Scartana. You were calling it a meme a lot, but I always knew it never was a meme to begin with. With this defensive typing and these offensive stats, I am actually surprised that it took so long for this Item choice to actually get results. You can take a hit no problem, maybe even two if they are weak enough, and while you're doing that, you're sniping dangerous targets one by one. It harmonizes very well with Arcanine's Extreme Speed for lethal double-targets from full health. Razor Leaf is for Eevee and some endgames, defensive investment is for Kokochomp and Speed ties are still annoying. Did you know that Adamant Kartana and Timid Lele have a Speed tie on full investment? Obviously I went for max Speed because I also wanted to have decent odds of moving first against other Scarftanas, which sometimes came back to haunt me as I lost Speed ties or they were just Jolly.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Sancta Terra (Garchomp) (M) @ Groundium Z<br/>
Ability: Rough Skin<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Earthquake<br/>
- Poison Jab<br/>
- Fire Fang<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>As I already mentioned in the other report, the team didn't support Swords Dance very well, so it made sense to just change it to a more standard Garchomp. No regrets there, did its job perfectly fine and I ended up clicking Poison Jab more than I missed the ability to use Swords Dance.</p>
<p>The other three slots remained unchanged, so here they are again without dedicated comments:</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Last Crusade (Tapu Fini) @ Leftovers<br/>
Ability: Misty Surge<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 84 Def / 60 SpA / 4 SpD / 108 Spe<br/>
Bold Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Muddy Water<br/>
- Moonblast<br/>
- Calm Mind<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Never Enough (Snorlax) (M) @ Iapapa Berry<br/>
Ability: Gluttony<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Happiness: 0<br/>
EVs: 20 HP / 236 Atk / 252 Def<br/>
Brave Nature<br/>
IVs: 3 Spe<br/>
- Frustration<br/>
- High Horsepower<br/>
- Curse<br/>
- Recycle</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Cassandra (Ninetales-Alola) (F) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Snow Warning<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Blizzard<br/>
- Icy Wind<br/>
- Aurora Veil<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Overall, my changes did the team some much needed favors. It finally got some traces of speed to work with, but at the same time, the slow mode got more efficient as well. That became most visible in my usage of Snorlax: I had only brought it for Trick Room matchups before, but now I can also bring it against Tailwind, multi Tapus and other super fast stuff more easily, as it is so much better protected with the new A and K sets. Yet still...other problems remained.</p>
<h2>Problems</h2>
<p>The changes did a fine job at addressing those individual threats I listed last time, but some inherent flaws of this whole AFK concept are still there and not likely to go away. It's like this: for one slot that beats threat X, you typically have two slots that can't touch the same X, or are slow to do so. Arcanine itself is a very good example for this problem, and using something like Ninetales together with it doesn't help in these situations. Well, but then again, it's not the first archetype in history that has this problem; it has appeared many times in the past and tournaments have been won in spite of them.</p>
<p>That's where my own preferred playstyle comes in, it's just not quite like that. I like my neutral STAB coverage and my safe leads, and AFK with Ninetales fails to give me either of them. While I could very well play the team more, being a mere casual and with Ninetales (♥) as my favorite Pokémon of Alola, I also still enjoy winning as much as ever, and I just know deep in my heart that winning might be easier for me in other ways yet to be explored. This team still seems good enough to win, but it requires a level of perfection in my playing that is too hard to uphold.</p>
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<p>And that will be it for now. If you still have more faith in the core than I do and wanna give it a go, I updated the <a href="http://pastebin.com/nMxuGvtK" target="_blank">Pastebin</a> to have the improved team. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-69308686775204264572017-02-12T17:30:00.000+01:002017-02-12T17:30:06.287+01:00Captain Dreykopff's Treasures, Piece 2: Go Fast<p>Alola friends. Sorry for the delay, but hey, still less than a month! This will be the second out of 3 games featuring <a href="https://twitter.com/StarKO90" target="_blank">StarKO</a>'s team, and as promised last time, we shall have a look at the same Premier Challenge's final today. The last one, coming up in 1.5 weeks as currently planned, will be a Battle Spot game. Anyway, let's go.</p>
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<h2>The Matchup</h2>
<p>The opponent is Driss A. (<a href="https://twitter.com/KuzioVGC" target="_blank">@KuzioVGC</a>), local player without any big results who has been improving throughout the last year. Just like the other, this also happens to be a rematch from Swiss. I won that one in two games mostly just by being faster, getting more hits in and stuff, but I did also get a bit of help from the RNG just when it seemed like there was a chance I could lose a game in this matchup. So, if he plays just as well next time, you know, it might get interesting. On the other hand, I still go into the matchup knowing the basics of his team, so I'll be fully aware what to watch out for. It definitely was my desired matchup for the final -- the other would have involved the infamous Marowak/Celesteela combination together with the usual stuff, and I really didn't feel like facing Marowak again just two hours after having learned that it can tank a Dazzling Gleam + Shattered Psyche double-target. Another thing to note is that Driss told me that he didn't feel like RK9/Lele was the right way to lead against my team, whereas Toby led exactly that against me in every game we played. But even then...the leads he brought in Swiss were Gigalith/Gastrodon and Arcanine/Gastrodon. Are those even better? Seems questionable.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, the team preview. My team is still the same as last time, Driss's is Kartana, Tapu Lele, Gigalith, Gastrodon, Salamence and Arcanine, and we are watching game 1.</p>
<h2>The Game</h2>
<h3>Lead</h3>
<p>There, the inspiration! He's trying it this time, but yeah, it plays right into my Psychium Z. Also, there is no way whatsoever that Kokochu wouldn't both move first against his team, unless Kartana reveals Choice Scarf or something like that. Not that big of an achievement to be frank, like the whole AFK archetype right now is outsped by that duo if nothing's Scarfed. Kokochu is dumb.</p>
<p>I don't remember if I knew Lele's Item at this point, but let's assume I didn't. In that case, the most important bits of information at this point are that it has Thunderbolt and it isn't Choiced.</p>
<h3>Turn 1 (0:32)</h3>
<p>The obvious question is: Do I Z-Psychic the shit out of this dog right now or do I delay it a turn? As you're seeing, I end up delaying it and it's been a fine decision...until that Moonblast crit hits. My position is still manageable because I have Gyarados, but it was meant to be so much better. Chances are I can't afford a mistake now, if this game is to win.</p>
<p>So, the Lele Item... At this point, we very well can see that it looks like it's Assault Vest. But since everything was new to everyone when we played, I knew jack about my Lele damage rolls, so it certainly didn't dawn on me after this turn. All I remember about it is that I only thought of it once I learned that Dazzling Gleam was the last move -- don't remember if I learned that from our gameplay or from between-rounds talk earlier.</p>
<p>Psychic Terrain: 4 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 2 (1:19)</h3>
<p>Aw shucks. I so knew that Gastrodon would come in, how often have I even seen this in those days!? But as I said last turn, no mistakes allowed. If I Leaf Blade Lele and it attacks, I lose the game. I'm a mon behind and with little momentum going into the turn, so I have to go strengthen my position. It just so happens that the safest and most obvious play is exactly what rebuilds momentum for me.</p>
<p>Okay. Extreme Speed isn't a possibility because of Psychic Terrain (and Flamethrower usually is a good giveaway that it's not on the set anyway), so I now threaten two possible knockouts, but only one at a time.</p>
<p>Psychic Terrain: 3 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 3 (1:59)</h3>
<p>Ah dang, it wasn't quite this wonderfully aggressive play that I liked to remember, but it's close enough. The problem with Waterfall + Leaf Blade would be Gastrodon clicking Protect, but I don't know if it has Protect or not -- and if I find it out right here, again, I lose. Kartana needs to be conserved at all costs, it likely is my only way to beat Gastrodon. Possibilities of Waterfall + Protect: kill Arcanine or lose a turn but not the game. Anyway, just as I wanted, he switches Gastrodon out and in comes another mon threatened by Gyarados, so this is excellent for me. And it looks cool.</p>
<p>I'm not 100% sure why I didn't click Hydro Vortex here, but let's talk about it for the sake of argument and getting better. To me it seems like I was on the naïve desire to conserve it for a turn when Gastrodon definitely couldn't draw it. (And Raichu was, you know, not around anymore, so no conflicts there.) If Gastrodon switched out here, it would be certain that I wouldn't get rid of it for a moderately long time to come, and if it stayed in, I did nothing in this turn to kill it. (And Kartana, again, wasn't allowed to take another hit.) Now, it did play out perfectly fine without the Hydro Vortex in this case and there was nothing whatsoever for Kartana to fear, but that can't be generalized. However, I feel like we can never be too sure about our Arcanine calcs, and so Arcanine surviving the +/-0 Attack Waterfall could entail Gyarados getting Burned, thus no more threatening the Salamence. So yeah, if those rolls had gone right and he got the read at the same time, the game also wouldn't have looked very winnable for me anymore. Close calls.</p>
<p>Psychic Terrain: 2 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 4 (2:35)</h3>
<p>And now we're wrapping up. He can only kill one of my mons in this turn, and the one he chooses to leave alive will likely win together with Koko. I'm still not completely sure about Gastrodon honestly, but Gyarados is full and with the option of boosting its Ice Fang. Other than that, I really didn't know if Lele would survive the Smart Strike or not, but I had no safe Protect and doubling into it makes no sense in this position.</p>
<p>Here's the interesting part: With everything we know now, he had a play available to get me into trouble. Dazzling Gleam with switch back into Gastro brings me a mon behind again, and one I potentially might be unable to recover from. Hard to tell without actually playing it out, because Gastrodon endgames just tend to be really difficult to plan out turn-by-turn when the Grass move is gone.</p>
<h3>Turn 5 (3:15)</h3>
<p>Nothing else to say here, that was the game.</p>
<h3>Aftermath</h3>
<p>Game 2 started up with the same leads -- this time I nailed Arcanine on the spot and Raichu lived through the turn to tell the tale. I now also definintely knew Lele's Item, and I used that fact to let Raichu and Kartana just tear through his whole team while Gastrodon sat there doing insignificant things until all its friends were dead.</p>
<p>After the tournament, I told him that I thought his best play could have been to force me into the Kartana mirror. I can see why it's unpleasant to do that with all the ways I have to outspeed Kartana, but really, the team as is is horribly fucking weak to Kartana. There is a promise that it will get ugly if both Trainers bring Kartana, and you really can't tell for whom in advance. It's better than just accepting defeat anyway, and without his Kartana being a factor, I really was in firm control of things as long as I wouldn't fall behind in mons for no gain.</p>
<h2>Bonus: A Few Words on the Team</h2>
<p>So, the time before Bank arrived I spent mostly sponging mons and teams from friends. This <a href="http://www.trainertower.com/desert-surge-top-8-london-international-report/" target="_blank">Desert Surge</a> team was not only the most successful originally, but also the one I personally enjoyed to play the most out of them. For the longest time, I didn't even realize why -- I just read the report, tried it out and the rest is history.</p>
<p>For the longest time, anyway. Just a while after the fact, I realized that I should know perfectly well why I liked this team more than others: it bears an unusual amount of similarities to my beloved quicksand team (can't link latest version right now because RIP Nugget Bridge; but there's some other versions here on this blog, if you care about what I liked 2 formats ago). There's the extreme Speeds on both ends, there's the multi-target damage, there's obviously the strong Rock Slide clicker with Sand Stream as Ability, lol, and maybe some more, you get the point. However, there's also enough differences that do worry me: there is way too little bulk overall and there is no redirection. Games often start with some kind of Raichu lead, where I always have to play a guessing game on turn 1, and if that goes badly, it might cost me the game in the long run, you know. The Electrics and Sash Kartana are mostly useless for defensive switching, Gyarados is useful for it but can't quite do it alone, Gigalith can't Protect and Porygon is an essay of its own.</p>
<p>Without that insight, I was just aware of the team's problems but had no ideas for possible solutions. But with the insight described, lo and behold, I found some inspiration right from myself as to how I could possibly improve the team. Spoilers: I haven't done it in a serious way yet, just did some casual moveset chances but left team preview intact when the actual plan is to, in fact, replace mons. One of those rather trivial changes I made was to use Ray's Koko, for example -- the bulky Specs one. While I already had liked the idea by itself, I noticed upon closer inspection that this Koko is in fact very similar to the Specs Rotom I invented myself at the end of 2015 down to the very stats. Rotom is medium-fast, Levitates and gets Hydro Pump. Koko is very fast, unfortunately has inferior typing and fortunately brings Electric Terrain into the equation, for self-boosts and other nice things. If it weren't for Kartana existing, this would be my favorite Koko set no problem, but you know, Kartana does exist and is annoying as fuck, so it's challenging to use any Koko that doesn't have Life Orb + Hidden Power Fire unless the team turns out to be super strong at hating on Kartana. -- Yeah, not the case with Gyarados, Gigalith, Raichu and all those.</p>
<p>It's a point on my list of things to do. Haven't done yet as of writing. Maybe we will see the team back in changed form (for real), maybe I'll just fail and you'll hear nothing of it. Next Treasure, anyway, will be a game from Battle Spot featuring the team with minor changes, and the ones after that will likely feature Ninetales/AFK. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-62400304389725753972017-02-05T18:00:00.000+01:002017-02-05T18:00:01.155+01:00Freezing Beauty -- A Ninetales/AFK Team<p>Alola friends. I've been patiently waiting for this moment ever since Alolan forms were revealed, and it was worth it. My first team with Ninetales turned out better than I had expected and here I am sharing it now. (Actually, it wasn't just my first Ninetales team but my first self-made team in this format, not counting things I threw together for Battle Spot without much thought before.) However, if you for whatever reason want to copy it, I recommend not actually copying it straight away but changing a thing or two. I promise you the team is good, but I know it can be better.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwDu6Mti6sHNMM2IqqSlIUhG9MKJo3yDMWcAqf27rnQgYsU7wCqw_2esaIi7Cx1SA06kfLeGMpAf1wY5-EIe16PgVmwG6sSIsn9p8Y4S-yWXixqHTVen4whINVxEdsEp2Nue6YQrFzbZo/s400/ninetales_alola_form_by_gralmaka-daf169m.png" width="400" height="300" /><br/>
(Artist: <a href="http://gralmaka.deviantart.com/art/Ninetales-Alola-Form-629910778" target="_blank">GralMaka</a>)</div>
<p>For those judging stuff by results: I brought the team to my first MSS yesterday, finished Swiss as first seed but got knocked out in top 8 in a nightmarish matchup that still went to the third game, which then possibly was decided against me due to a lost Kartana Speed tie. So yeah, I've played many worse teams in my life. If you have a fighting chance, you know there's hope. Well then, on to the good stuff!</p>
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<h2>The Idea</h2>
<p>I didn't play at all during the first weeks of Battle Spot S2, just watched various streams and stuff. While doing that, I noticed a bunch of things that inspired me to make this team. I don't remember the order of everything, so...unordered list it is, haha.</p>
<ul><li>The best attacking type this year turns out to be Ground. Paul's Regionals team features 3 mons weak to Ground, an Araquanid and no immunities, as a prominent example. And for an underground example, I've been theorymoning a completely different team, where I found that almost everything I wanted to use in it was weak to Ground. Furthermore, usable Ground immunities are hard to find in general. Salamence is just trash right now, Gyarados isn't trash but really doesn't like Tapus and Kartana, Vikavolt is nice per se but awfully slow, Mandibuzz is awfully passive, and that just leaves us with the predictable and hated Celesteela. Obvious conclusion of all this: it's a Garchomp format, possibly more so than 2014.</li>
<li>Garchomp struggles with mons that it can't Tectonic Rage, and mirrors, as always with mons that can threaten themselves, are trouble. This is where Ninetales comes in -- mirror turns into a non-factor, flyers are covered and it has a nice pool of support moves available. I drew inspiration most notably from the Melbourne Challenge, where Ninetales did a lot of work and I so loved it. I wouldn't forgive myself to leave this format without ever using my favorite Pokémon/form of this new generation, and it seemed like Ninetales was right on its zenith on that day. If anything, I'd have to feed on the afterglow, you know.</li>
<li>The other thing to talk about is the infamous AFK core, as well as the three parts that constitute it. Arcanine is a pretty logical most commonly used mon right now, being the best Intimidate user period, and that's nothing to do with AFK. Now Tapu Fini, the defining part of this triangle, is most fascinating. Everything about it looks so mediocre (shoutouts to general Water type syndrome *cough*), but magically it isn't. We expected Fini to be gone as quickly as it emerged, and we were wrong. It took all the following Regionals and said Melbourne Challenge by storm. There was no way I could write it off any longer without at least trying it first, and so I did. Finally, Kartana, that's an easy one. It's my favorite mon of this format from a competitive viewpoint, because it's literally the best thing available. Amen.</li></ul>
<p>So, I just talked about Garchomp, Ninetales and AFK. If I put them all together, I happen to receive a lot of synergy already. In fact, those very 5 ended up winning Battle Spot S1! (Just with really goofy sets that I don't quite agree with, you know...) All I had to do was find a good last slot. I'll talk about that one at its place specifically. Anyway, a fun thing I noticed in all these weeks since the idea came to me: This team is looking very standard right now and I'm getting a lot of 5/6 matches, but I have yet to see a 6/6 match at team preview anywhere. <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">That's because your last slot is shit and you should change it, dumbass.</span>If you ever notice one, please tell me, haha. I'm curious to see how they went about designing those movesets!</p>
<h2>The Team</h2>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Cassandra (Ninetales-Alola) (F) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Snow Warning<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Blizzard<br/>
- Icy Wind<br/>
- Aurora Veil<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>The star of the show, my fluffy, snowy and just generally awesome best dog in existence. There's a moveslot syndrome here where I willingly took the risk to have Ninetales be complete Araquanid fodder, and it just so happened to be part of my downfall in that tournament...with little of any regrets though, because Freeze-Dry just doesn't do much for the team beyond that. Aurora Veil is a lock, that move is so fucking good and still no one runs, lol, Brick Break to counter it. Protect is a move that I just generally like to have, because without it there's no way I'm getting through turn-based Speed control alive -- I already have 2 other slots without Protect and almost all of the teams I ever truly liked have no less than 4 Protects or like moves. Finally, Icy Wind is just a cool (and rare) move to click when there isn't much to be gotten out of a Blizzard running off a feeble Special Attack base stat. Most notably, with the combination of Focus Sash and Icy Wind, odds are in your favor when you're facing Kartanas. With one of the two missing, it'd be just the pure Speed tie game between them.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Sancta Terra (Garchomp) (M) @ Groundium Z<br/>
Ability: Rough Skin<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 228 Atk / 20 Def / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Earthquake<br/>
- Fire Fang<br/>
- Swords Dance<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Have to send a quick apology to the NY/NJ community. I considered Swords Dance to be a gimmick when I first saw it on their stream, because at that time I was only thinking about Garchomp's coverage (and lack of Ground-immune partners!). But now, the idea actually was just to get the most insane Tectonic Rage ever (at +2 Attack, it OHKOs most Porygons!) and to counter Arcanine's Intimidate much more efficiently than switching. I didn't quite get to do the boosting part in every game because the team just isn't made to support that in the hardcore way (and Aurora Veil, while generally helpful, comes at the cost of also taking hail damage). Also, people know perfectly well how good Garchomp is, so it's hard to find mons other than Arcanine, Gigalith and Muk to set up on. Especially all the faster mons that 2HKO it are annoying.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Reverence (Arcanine) (F) @ Aguav Berry<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 204 HP / 4 Def / 36 SpA / 100 SpD / 164 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Flamethrower<br/>
- Snarl<br/>
- Roar<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>The other part of Arcaninetales, nothing...I mean, a lot of "special" here, lol. It's mostly there for Intimidate and Snarl spamming, to stack with or replace Aurora Veil. Roar I put on mainly for Eeveemancy, and it was free with Will-O-Wisp being useless by default on a Fini team. It also helped me once in a Calm Mind Fini mirror, where I can just Roar theirs out after a few boosts to gain an advantage, haha. Oh yeah, and I still hate FIWAM Berries more than any other Items, but with all the debuffing and hail chip going on, you know, might just as well help myself this one time.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Last Crusade (Tapu Fini) @ Leftovers<br/>
Ability: Misty Surge<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 84 Def / 60 SpA / 4 SpD / 108 Spe<br/>
Bold Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Muddy Water<br/>
- Moonblast<br/>
- Calm Mind<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Ah yes, the cute little purple dolphin/clam/mermaid/swordfish/whatever who has terrible diarrhea. You've all seen this set before, and no, unfortunately this is really just the best Water STAB we got. Gave me some unexpected wins with the accuracy drops, lost me some games with painful misses, dead even on that -- and the problem with Surf as the accurate alternative is that partners don't enjoy it. Also, many thanks to Twitter. I wasn't sure if I should run it bulky or offensive, and the only answers I got were bulky and naturally "don't run CM Fini at all". The bulk helped so much, it was pretty important. And finally...the auto-Safeguard that Misty Surge offers is very fucking nice, but using Leftovers only to cancel out hail half of the time is a bit meh, I have to say. The struggles of running Ninetales, you know...</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">The Blade (Kartana) @ Assault Vest<br/>
Ability: Beast Boost<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 68 HP / 4 Atk / 20 Def / 164 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Leaf Blade<br/>
- Smart Strike<br/>
- Sacred Sword<br/>
- Night Slash</p>
<p>Another set you've seen a million times by now. I changed the EVs to keep all the common calcs but have the 16n-1 HP number for hail.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Never Enough (Snorlax) (M) @ Iapapa Berry<br/>
Ability: Gluttony<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Happiness: 0<br/>
EVs: 20 HP / 236 Atk / 252 Def<br/>
Brave Nature<br/>
IVs: 3 Spe<br/>
- Frustration<br/>
- High Horsepower<br/>
- Curse<br/>
- Recycle</p>
<p>The last slot on <em>that</em> Battle Spot team was Koko. That doesn't fly here. With 4 Speed-natured mons in the other slots, I needed something real for Trick Room, period. Snorlax and Muk were the ones I considered, and Snorlax is what I just went with because it looked so good on paper. (Also, as a GSC player, I can't really say no to a good old Curselax with recovery, haha.) Speaking of paper, it's really bad against Kartana and that sucks. As games played out, Snorri just had little business to be brought to non-TR matchups overall. Ricardo's story with his own "hail AFK" team comes to mind here.</p>
<h2>Known Issues</h2>
<ul><li>Araquanid. I rely a lot on Fini walling it and I have no way to quickly remove it. It's still beatable just fine as and only as long as the rest of its team isn't too bad.</li>
<li>I can't outspeed Kartana and my Fire moves, while they are two all right, are both on mons slower than it.</li>
<li>Kokos and fast Leles can cause a lot of trouble depending on their sets. Fini is terrible at Terrain wars and the only mons that can deal with max Speed Lele can be assumed to be common targets by its partner.</li>
<li>Fast stuff like commonly seen on Battle Spot in general, as always. I've seen worse teams against that, but still it defeats half of the purpose when it's outright impossible for me to get out an Aurora Veil. Along with the Ground weakness, the threat of random hyperfast teams not caring about defensive synergy at all is really just the biggest downside of this otherwise nice format.</li></ul>
<hr class="sep"></hr>
<p>Well jeez, somehow I always manage to produce endless walls of text when I really just wanted to keep it short but not <a href="http://pastebin.com/nMxuGvtK" target="_blank">Pastebin</a>-short. Anyway, that's it from me for now. I'll be trying to lift the next of Captain Dreykopff's Treasures by this Wednesday or not long after. Not yet with this team right here though, but rest assured that there will be games with it later. The MSS gave me some nice material obviously, and I'm guaranteed to get more should I decide to further work on the team. Alola!</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-59598950470623061522017-01-18T20:00:00.000+01:002017-01-18T20:00:41.279+01:00Captain Dreykopff's Treasures, Piece 1: These 'Mons Are Poisoned<p>Alola friends. At the end of last year, I announced on Twitter that I'd go back to doing some nice little YouTube stuff, and now here it is. Actually, it's not just YouTube stuff but rather YouTube and blog stuff combined -- first thing you'll see every time is the link to the video (or, the embedded video) and below you'll find my turn-by-turn analysis of the game shown. I'll explain a bit more about this series and its purpose at the end of this post, but first let's just have a look at the first piece of my treasures!</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SH-YaqNFmlE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<h2>The Matchup</h2>
<p>Teams used: <a href="http://amalgame.jp/kartana-braviary-cantona-20161219/" target="_blank">Toby's</a> and <a href="http://www.trainertower.com/desert-surge-top-8-london-international-report/" target="_blank">mine</a>. Thanks to their creators for releasing them.</p>
<p>What you're watching is game 1 of the semifinal at a local December Premier Challenge between Tobias K. (<a href="https://twitter.com/TobySxE" target="_blank">@TobySxE</a>), who at that time was ranked #1 in Europe by Championship Points, and yours truly. We had already played in Swiss before, so none of us went into this blindly. (Naturally, it was the very first round -- stupid program has a habit to always give me the strongest opponent in the first round and then only the worst afterwards, RIP my opponents' win%, bubbles were created and popped.) As you can probably imagine, it didn't go so well for me. I made a bunch of wrong calls, it felt like I missed more Rock Slides and Toxics than I hit and obviously Toby is also pretty fucking good at this game, so I got completely destroyed. All I got from the match was Porygon's full moveset and the info that my Gyarados was slower than his Arcalele pair. Anyway, I dropped no more game in the following rounds and was lucky enough to not have the tournament end with 5 guys at 3-1 or higher, so I made it into top cut and that rematch.</p>
<p>So, what can we actually expect to happen here... First, he has little reason to change plans, because obviously it worked really well before. Braviary being not too hot in this matchup seems obvious. Kartana can definitely be considered because I have no easy ways to deal with it and my Gigalith can't Protect, but probably it was Sashed and then I'd have an easy time 2HKOing it with Porygon or most of my fast mode...the fast mode that is actually really bad against this team otherwise. Anyway, spoilers: he didn't bring Kartana ever, so full slow mode it was on his end. And for me, this means: my only way to stand a chance is to go for the Gigalith Porygon mirror -- both teams are, if you will, weak to their own TR mode --, get better RNG than last time, and hope to get into a position such that my faster mons can sweep the endgame. Also, remember that bit about Gyarados's Speed, it's important, too. But still, this is hard as hell. There's just a single thing that has to go wrong and I might be in big trouble again.</p>
<h2>The Game</h2>
<h3>Lead</h3>
<p>Best I could have hoped for. Raichu threatens Terrain-boosted Shattered Psyche and my Porygon is the first on the field in a matchup where I want to use my TR mode for the early game.</p>
<p>But there is something quite ironic to it: Today, I wouldn't feel good about this board at all. There is normally no way that there's no Taunt or Roar somewhere in that Arcalele combination anymore. In this case, I knew Arcanine's full moveset from Swiss and I <em>think</em> I also knew Lele's, but my notes aren't comfirming that I saw Thunderbolt. I have no idea if my notes have been taken sloppily or if I really hadn't seen/inferred Lele's full moveset. But the thing that absolutely is certain is that I wouldn't have expected Taunt on that day in a metagame quite earlier than now.</p>
<h3>Turn 1 (0:31)</h3>
<p>Perfect. Momentum is all with me and there will be no threat of Shattered Psyche in the late game.</p>
<p>But it was closer than it looked, because he knew. He did in fact consider clicking Will-O-Wisp into Raichu's slot, and this could have been very bad for me. Anyway, just because Rock Slide still doesn't get OHKOs, I'm still putting my Gigalith at risk of being Burned. It's a risk I have to take and there's also a chance I get a flinch to nullify it. And even if it gets Burned...that means it still had a guaranteed turn of unweakened Rock Slide and could stay around for a while as flinchbot or switch fodder after that.</p>
<p>Psychic Terrain, sandstorm, Trick Room: 4 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 2 (1:33)</h3>
<p>Well, so much about that free Rock Slide, Gigalith you fucking drunkass shitsack of a blindworm. It's almost like Swiss all over again...but there's one difference to that, which still makes it workable: WOW also missed. I'm not entirely sure if I like that outcome more than the expected one (as in, everything hitting on both sides), but anyway, this essentially was a dead turn in Trick Room without any Protects played.</p>
<p>Psychic Terrain, sandstorm, Trick Room: 3 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 3 (2:10)</h3>
<p>That's interesting. None of us committed to the original play. It's a good turn for both, I wanna say. He keeps his Arcanine healthy, I get free damage and the Toxic mirror begins, evenly. (Come to think of it, I actually still don't know for sure how much Stone Edge would do to Arcanine. It's something I need to look up when I build my own team with a Gigalith in it.)</p>
<p>Psychic Terrain, sandstorm, Trick Room: 2 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 4 (2:59)</h3>
<p>Yay, Rock Slide doing more Rock Slide things. Toby gets to even out the board entirely after playing the whole early game from behind, which may not be what I wanted to see at that moment but it's absolutely not the worst thing that could have happened. Time to play out that last turn of TR and see what happens.</p>
<p>Psychic Terrain, sandstorm, Trick Room: 1 turn left</p>
<h3>Turn 5 (3:53)</h3>
<p>Hmm. I don't remember if I clicked Recover or something else, but not getting a Recover of is useful in so far that I might get a free switch soon. The actual problem here now is that the opposing Porygon did get the Recover, so a second Trick Room from that end is a possibility. Raichu doesn't like that at all, but Gyarados would be fine with it. I just have to do it without Gigalith somehow. The only thing that' certain is that we will very soon break out of that silly P2/Giga mirror. Who will get the better end of it?</p>
<h3>Turn 6 (4:41)</h3>
<p>Oh shit. Good play by him to reset that Toxic counter, now that he got the health advantage. Absolutely disgusting that his Gigalith is still around. I was very torn between clicking Rock Slide to cover for Gigalith having too much health and Stone Edge to get more meaningful damage on a single target in. I picked the wrong one! And, about that Trick Room I set myself there...similar dilemma. Gyarados appreciates it against his other mons, but not at all against Gigalith. I must have known Lele's last move that's missing in my notes, because I simply wouldn't want Trick Room if it's a harmless one.</p>
<p>Trick Room: 4 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 7 (5:41)</h3>
<p>Ouch. I'm not entirely sure why I decided to let Gyarados try to attack here -- it's way too much damage with that Hard Stone and a flinch could have been game over. Fortunately, I did get that damage on the other slot in, but still... I'm now sitting here with a useless Raichu and my most important mon is weakened while also staring down a Porygon that got the good Download and Arcanine got the Intimidate reset. I need some real creativity to get out of this one.</p>
<p>Trick Room: 3 turns left<br/>
Psychic Terrain: 5 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 8 (6:36)</h3>
<p>Toby goes for the safe play and it works out in my favor...ish. Still, this looks extremely dire. Actually, from how I understand it, now that I'm reviewing it, he maybe actually has to make a mistake in order for me to turn this around!? The play that I fear the most is to Protect Lele and Ice Beam Gyarados. Moment of truth coming up!</p>
<p>Trick Room: 2 turns left<br/>
Psychic Terrain: 4 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 9 (7:02)</h3>
<p>HYDRO VORTEX!!!!!!!!!!! Unbelievable. He made the mistake. That's rare! But why did that happen? Looking at the TR count, I can only imagine that he was afraid of me getting a Dragon Dance in, predicting he would cover the Hydro Vortex, but...then what? Especially if he decided to Ice Beam the Gyarados like I described, I'm sitting there with a moribund fish that has to go for an obvious Protect next turn, an equally moribund Raichu that's just blown its Protect, and then what would for a 67% chance be a fatal 1-2 endgame. But well, there's also the possibility that Raichu would have attacked again this turn, and then that would have meant that it can Protect next turn and thus get a free attack moving first later. If that had happened, Dragon Dance would indeed have been a threat.</p>
<p>Trick Room: 1 turn left<br/>
Psychic Terrain: 3 turns left</p>
<h3>Turn 10 (7:56)</h3>
<p>He had to deal with Raichu in one way or another, he couldn't allow it to get a Psychic off out of Trick Room or it would be over. The way he did it wasn't the one I expected to see (Recover + Flamethrower in order to get a 2-1 situation), but didn't work out to my disadvantage anyway. No Waterfall flinch still keeps this game open, as he gets the dreaded Burn in.</p>
<h3>Turn 11 (8:44)</h3>
<p>I wasn't sure at all about Waterfall's damage in this situation and chances are he would Protect at some point, so it made sense for me to cancel Intimidate. Didn't quite get it right here, but still it's better than attacking, not killing, and thus staying slower. I just don't know what would have happened if I went for the attack. Now to pray to RNGesus...again.</p>
<h3>Turn 12 (9:05)</h3>
<p>Again doesn't go for the Protect, probably expecting me to go for another DD to punish it. It may have been hard to believe that Waterfall wouldn't kill from this range now, but it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. And that, my friends, was the game.</p>
<h3>Aftermath</h3>
<p>Game 2 was more of the same plans, except I replaced Gyarados with Kartana. This time, I was the first to get Toxic onto the other Porygon, then his Porygon also flinched in a very bad turn and then I brought it home with either Raichu or Kartana taking knockouts in the endgame while my Porygon still wasn't Poisoned and would stall out whatever was left. Thus, I moved on to the final thanks to what felt like a small miracle. And how did that go? Find out next time in Captain Dreykopff's Treasures!</p>
<h2>Bonus: About Captain Dreykopff's Treasures</h2>
<p>For those who followed me back when I blogged in German during the BW era, you might remember some game analyses I did on there. It was pretty much the same setup: potato camera to film a cherry-picked replay, put it on my YouTube and then go through it turn by turn. It was a fun thing to do, and for what it's worth, I actually find it more interesting than this Battle Spot live stuff. Battle Spot live episodes are very lengthy, since they have a lot of downtime between moves/games, and it's random what kind of games you're gonna get. Now with this thing that I do, there's much less time wasted for the viewer and I can guarantee you a decent match every single time. It wouldn't be a <em>treasure</em> otherwise, you know. ツ</p>
<p>While it's not 100% sure, I wanna say it's like 99% that it will always be me playing, never other people against each other. I enjoy this game and format, so yeah, even after quitting the competitive circuit, I wanna play and am looking to get some nice memories from it. And since I also like to win, it's only natural that you'll see me win most of the time -- not exclusively though. Usually, there's more to learn from losses, and with this whole analytical aspect, I am very interested in featuring losses that have more value than just me being inexcusably bad. Also, just as I'm writing this, I'm getting started on my own team building, so you can (hopefully) look forward to that as well.</p>
<p>So, with that out of the way, I'll be back with the second piece next Wednesday or the one after that. I would like to do this weekly, but time is a limited resource and this isn't exactly less time-consuming to do than just live-record 14 random games in a fancy overlay and be done with it. Alola!</p>
<p>(Bonus points to those who get that little nostalgic reference in the title.)</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-14855475604112983022016-11-05T19:06:00.000+01:002016-11-05T19:06:02.784+01:00[VG] Trainer Dreykopff Chooses Death<p><strong>Hello friends. It's been an open secret ever since London was announced, but now it's time to make it absolutely official to the world: VGC has lost me for the time being. I will not be competing in the official Championships for an indefinite amount of time. If that's all you wanted to see, you can leave and party hard now. That's the tl;dr.</strong></p>
<p>For those who still want to read up on the details, unfortunately I need to start with a disclaimer. I still remember how my good pal Adib went just a little overboard expressing his opinion on Twitter and then got harsh reactions by the usual mob for it. Not much later, he deleted his Twitter. If these two events are connected or not, I can just speculate right now, but for sure as hell it reminds me to make one thing clear before I start my rant: you are free people, so you are free to make whatever the fuck you want out of this circuit. I am <strong>free to disapprove of any of your decisions</strong> but I am <strong>not telling you what to do</strong>. Note the difference.</p>
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<p>All right, where do I even start...let's try my personal expectations. In the first night of Worlds, it became apparent to me that I've been playing the circuit in the wrong way in the past: I fully committed on day 2, failed, and then I couldn't afford the easily achieved day 1 anymore. Thus, my plan for 2017 became to just go for day 1 and then actually use it. Then, the new season structure was revealed. Now, day 1 requires pretty much the same commitment that day 2 required before. And to make things worse, the most important tournament of the season happens only 2 weeks after the game for it is even released, which really is just nothing but a fucking joke become reality. So yes, there you go, I disapprove of people's decisions to go play in that particular tournament but I have no right to stop them. It's your own decision to play in an event that is just wrong for the integrity of the circuit, it's your own decision to be addicted to drugs or -- more fittingly right here -- gambling, it's your own decision to end your life at the floor of a nice and high bridge, you name it. None of my business. I respect your decisions and I respectfully disagree with them.</p>
<p>Okay, so I never was going to play London because reasons. Then what about the rest? Dortmund Regionals is one I considered for a while, but even if I would have gone there, I would have likely regretted it with any result that's not reaching the grand final. Technically, this bloated events requires investment equal to or higher than the Nationals we knew, but it's just a puny Regional and a first place in it isn't even close to giving you the first half of your invite anymore. They could have easily done it in one day -- then I could just get there in the morning, leave at night, easy. No accomodation costs, no additional stress organizing the whole trip with others etc. I decided it's not worth the effort, and chances are it would have to happen many more times and to places way farther away from my home. I may have been fine with doing the triple Nats marathon 2 years in a row, but I'm not fine with doing an indefinite and vaguely defined Regionals marathon throughout the whole year. And we can extend this dicussion to the augmentation of Midseason Showdowns. I'd rather just have them get axed and move the CP bar to 400 at max, really. It's bullshit to be compelled to accumulate 4 MSS results when only between 1 and 0 of them will be held within 2 hours of your place.</p>
<p>So what's then left is local and online. In these, I might stay around still. The former aren't as draining and the latter are very well draining but entirely free to enter (and you can chill with a nice fucking beer and music while you play, you know, haha). While my local scene doesn't entirely agree with the new circuit as well, they're still supporting it to the extent of fully participating in it, and well, that's fine for the sake of keeping the local scene alive, at least. My intention of quitting the competition is to tell TPCi they've fucked up, not to kill my local scene.</p>
<p><strong>But naturally, TPCi will only see the few hundred participants at their major events -- not the vast majority that has decided to stay away from them.</strong></p>
<p>Having played and loved this game and all the shit around it, it certainly wasn't an easy decision, and for the same reason there's also no way I can make any final decision right now. If I will in fact vanish forever, I will not tell you on some big ass Internet post but just vanish silently. No one quits with a bang, ever. I'll follow in that tradition, so yeah, I'm still alive, still getting Sun/Moon, you can still talk to me and shit, no big deal. I'll just be a casual for the time being. Literally all I want is to have a good time.</p>
<p>The 2016 season was right at the limit for me. It was fun, not denying that and no regrets whatsoever, but it was also draining. I don't know how many of you are aware or not, but I'm your typical introvert in that sense. I do enjoy getting out of my dark chambers every now and then, but I can't be out all the fucking time, I need to recharge. This new circuit won't let me recharge. Instead, Pokémon VGC now has become a "full-time job that you can't make a living with". (Because I haven't mentioned it yet, obligatory shoutouts to the random Fridays that them kids have to play Truant ツ and us adults have to take leave every time. We are not freaking America, we don't have a fourth of July that's as sacred as Christmas, it isn't as easy.) Better focus on the work that actually pays my life, you know, and if <em>then</em> there some day still is enough energy left, I may choose to return.</p>
<p>About the running season, the only thing that can save it for me is Amigo hosting a surprise German Nats with adequate CP next Spring/Summer, just like it always was. If that happens, there's a good chance I'm trying to get that desired invite. If that doesn't happen, it's really unlikely you'll see me hell-knows-where soon. And whatever happens next season and later, that I will decide when it's time. I can only hope TPCi <em>eventually</em> learn from mistakes, but we all have learned the hard way that expecting such progress is foolish. That being said, I will put my conclusive words for today in Portuguese because Portuguese is an awesome language for awesome people. Have a good one.</p>
<p><strong>Tornem-se homens e respeitem os desejos da TPCi.</strong></p>
<p>PS: Holy moly, that prospect of someone going 7-0 in Swiss and then not seeing a single CP for it is not from this world. I have made such a good decision and still they find new ways to confirm me. This is the best slapstick reality ever.</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-91401255824835119552016-10-24T20:00:00.000+02:002016-10-24T20:00:20.305+02:00[VG] A Devil's Pact -- A Groudon/Yveltal Team Analysis<p>Hello world. Just yesterday, I've <span style="line-through;">randomed my ass through</span>won my first Premier Challenge of the season, and this post will focus on the team I brought. I probably have about as much to write about the circuit we currently have and I'll definitely do that too, just...not right now. That will have to wait for another day. Team report just before going into the last month of VGC 2016 it is.</p>
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<h2>Team Building and Expectations</h2>
<p>My opinion on the format didn't change. I've tryharded it for 6 months and that was absolutely enough. For the last months of it, whenever things weren't looking to go well, I just wanted to have fun at least. An obvious way to do that is to finally play your favorite restricted mon. I've tried to make Yveltal/Kyogre work for quite a while and to no avail. Yveltal/Groudon, on the other hand, I touched only for brief moments just to confirm that it's way too inconsistent for my taste. But now that I don't really care anymore...the inconsistency isn't a problem anymore. I like Arash's idea to add Jumpluff a lot on paper, and even long before that Nats I already considered to run a big-6 variant with Jumpluff -- it's a nice partner to special Groudon (and also to Xerneas if you're using that).</p>
<p>On Saturday, my last 3 of the lineup were Gengar (Mega, Shadow Ball), Talonflame (Choice Band) and Kangaskhan. The first two were mostly added to beat Xerneas. Shadow Ball was there to enable Gengar to hit Groudon and Steels (and also to win Gengar mirrors I guess). Most offensive Talonflame to pick up late-game kills. Last slot could have been anything, really, so I just threw in Kang and said fuck it. Didn't even test the team because I didn't feel like playing Showdown. All right, now to the event. I finished Swiss 3-1 and almost bubbled (again), because this shitty program paired me with two 1-3s (again) all while my only loss was to a player leagues above me (again). Well, turns out my first-round opponent won his last round to go 3-1 and put himself on that heartbreaking 5th place -- so I got in. And then I just lost there. The team had absolutely nothing to deal with Klefki. This Klefki then also proceeded to win the whole thing, and if we also remember the last October PC, then these two winning teams have a thing in common: Prankster and Swagger.</p>
<p>The moment I saw that final play out, I knew I was gonna just throw in Thundurus and resort to the Swagger button for all matchups I can't win "normally". The move is just to good, and we also have established by now that Thundurus is very mediocre in this format if he doesn't have <em>the only right move</em>, as Lega put it. He knew all along. And well, there comes a nice and welcome bonus with it: a decent-ish out to some Speed control. All right, and while I was adding Thundurus, I also really wanted my good old friend Salamence back. Ultimately, the team ended up becoming Arash's six but with different sets in various places.</p>
<p>To describe the differences between my team and the much more famous older one in a nutshell: when Arash is flipping coins in 4 out of 5 turns, I'm flipping coins in just 3 out of 5 turns. This statement may look wrong on paper because I added freaking Swagger, but it's more a thing about my preferred play style: I'm more on the Wolfey/PokéAlex/Lajo side of things, I hate coin flips and I love board control. I appreciate to have many turns where little can go wrong, but the nature of this team archetype simply is that you absolutely can't be safe all the time. That being said, it's very clear that I too wouldn't have won without Sleep Powder doing its job.</p>
<h2>The Team</h2>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Yveltal @ Life Orb<br/>
Ability: Dark Aura<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Sucker Punch<br/>
- Knock Off<br/>
- Foul Play<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p><strong>Set:</strong> You know it all, nothing...special here. ツ</p>
<p><strong>Possible changes:</strong> I wanna say none. I considered Black Glasses after losing to Life Orb recoil a lot, so I asked Yuri (has anyone ever told you that "Yuree" is an ugly spelling?) about it and he gave me very important bits of information. Long story short: Black Glasses fuck up damage rolls big time. Could be made up with Adamant Nature I guess, but I'm not sure if I'd really want that. It may be a thing for anyone else out there to consider though.<br/>
Oh right, and I have a bad HP number for Life Orb here. It's just what I had on my game, so...</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Groudon @ Red Orb<br/>
Ability: Drought<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 Def<br/>
- Eruption<br/>
- Earth Power<br/>
- Hidden Power [Ice]<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p><strong>Set:</strong> Standard special Groudon. The team will always hate facing Salamence a lot and Rayquaza is annoying too, so Hidden Power is very important.</p>
<p><strong>Possible changes:</strong> Without a doubt, Eruption can be a terrible Fire move in a bunch of situations, but just as I said before, Hidden Power is too important. We can't afford a decent alternative Fire move.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Jumpluff @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Chlorophyll<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Def / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Rage Powder<br/>
- Sleep Powder<br/>
- Encore<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p><strong>Set:</strong> Sleep Powder is your trusty RNG to gain positions where none should be gained. Rage Powder is very useful when not facing another Grass type. You'd think that it's really sweet while firing off Eruptions and stuff, but...truth is, I didn't get to do that a lot, because almost everyone ran Kyogre at the event. But even then, Rage Powder was at least useful to control the Raichus, Mawiles, even the Kyogres themselves and what have you. Encore is another way to force win conditions or just be annoying, nothing new here. Protect for keeping the Sash when I want to keep it.<br/>
The EVs guarantee a Speed tie on Raichu and give Jumpluff a good chance to not be insta-killed by Return/Frustration Kangaskhans without Intimidate in play.</p>
<p><strong>Possible changes:</strong> Safeguard somewhere could be nice. It's just as situational as Encore. Mental Herb to deal with Taunts is also a possibility, but won't help much against Gengars because they'll just outspeed and Sludge Bomb you away before you move. Needs testing and mostly lucky metagame calling, I guess.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Thundurus (M) @ Sitrus Berry<br/>
Ability: Prankster<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD / 4 Spe<br/>
Calm Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk<br/>
- Swagger<br/>
- Thunderbolt<br/>
- Thunder Wave<br/>
- Taunt</p>
<p><strong>Set:</strong> This has been around forever, the horror of many formats. I never really used bulky before in 2016 and Sash was already in use, so this was a fairly easy decision this time. And on top of that, there's little reason to care about Speed when no less than the whole remaining team run max Speed. It could turn out awkward in Thundurus mirrors though, didn't have to play them. Only Raichus. Way too many of them.</p>
<p><strong>Possible changes:</strong> I am very inexperienced with true bulky Thundurus, so the EVs may not be optimal. I just threw on this spread because I was mad at how much damage even uninvested Kyogres do to Thundurus -- Origin Pulse still has a chance to 2HKO, I just kept it as low as possible. Anyway, things to look at: a nice Speed stat that costs as few points as possible, Thunderbolt damage rolls on Kyogres and possible physical threats that I didn't consider at all.<br/>
I also thought about a more annoying set with Leftovers and Protect for a bit, but after facing various Bronzong/Kyogre teams, I'm fairly convinced that Taunt Sitrus should still be the way. Without Taunt, all I could do to them under Trick Room would be freaking Swagger, you know, but with Taunt I can limit the Bronzong's options and thus make Groudon useful against Kyogre.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Salamence @ Salamencite<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Naive Nature<br/>
- Hyper Voice<br/>
- Double-Edge<br/>
- Draco Meteor<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p><strong>Set:</strong> Again, Ydon teams don't like Salamence on the other side of the field. People almost completely stopped running Draco for a while, and they'll all rue the day when they're up against a good old Draco Meteor Salamence. And if someone still runs Life Orb Rayquaza, it also helps with that. Oh yeah, and last but not least I just have to make clear how much better than Talonflame Salamence is: It's just way too hard to keep Talonflame alive as long as I need it, but with Salamence that's no problem at all.</p>
<p><strong>Possible changes:</strong> The EVs, definitely. I just grabbed the only Draco one I had in my boxes and it's pretty fucking old. From what I remember from my time with double Primals, some Attack investment is needed to get good rolls on Kyogres. Additionally, it seems that Hasty is better at this point.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite<br/>
Ability: Scrappy<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Happiness: 0<br/>
EVs: 84 HP / 124 Atk / 44 Def / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Frustration<br/>
- Sucker Punch<br/>
- Power-Up Punch<br/>
- Fake Out</p>
<p><strong>Set:</strong> Again just picked whatever from my boxes, and this was the lucky one. Didn't get to make much use of PUP, it's definitely not as good here as it is in a Xerneas team.</p>
<p><strong>Possible changes:</strong> I don't know, just about everything I guess. In the tournament, I picked mostly Salamence. Options range from switching to DE/LK over running random shit like Icy Wind to replacing Kangaskhan completely. The thing basically is that every single Mega including other Kangs discourages me from using Kang and she doesn't help a whole lot in big-6 matchups as well. I consider Gengar again a likely candidate for taking the spot, or maybe even a non-Mega something. And Mawile probably not because it's just too helpless against Groudon and Bronzong when its purpose would be to beat all the common friends of these two.</p>
<h2>Closing Words</h2>
<p>Yeah, the team's quite unoptimized and chances are I'll not do too much on my own to improve it. If you really have no idea how to consistently force wins though (or, you're just a player who never loved safety to begin with), the team should be decent. No idea what else to say. Tweet me questions if you have some, I guess. Good night.</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-80262277873804387442016-05-24T20:21:00.001+02:002016-05-24T20:32:57.021+02:00[VG] 2016 German Nationals Aftermath<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Finished DE Nats 8-1, top 32. Tournament systems are dumb period. See you in Italy. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PlayPok%C3%A9mon?src=hash">#PlayPokémon</a> <a href="https://t.co/W1FhbJzhhB">pic.twitter.com/W1FhbJzhhB</a></p>— Bleykopff (@Dreykopff) <a href="https://twitter.com/Dreykopff/status/734356604955594752">May 22, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<p>Hello world. The actual report with all the Pokémon stuff etc. will have to wait for a few more weeks, but there is some other, more informal stuff I'd like to just get out of my system. It was a Nats different than all I've played before and in many ways. I shall keep it in good memory.</p>
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<h2>My Tournament Run</h2>
<p>I had never before finished a Nats Swiss stage at X-1. The only time I finished one at X-2, only X-1s with a single exception were allowed into day 2. And if we're talking about X-0 Swiss, I had achieved that as well only once in my life, which was just a local Premier Challenge. And then...yeah, I magically pulled the 8-0 Nats day 1 out of my imaginary hat. Don't know if it's good or bad that no one ever expected that -- they could have won a fortune way beyond just a mere paid trip from that single idiotic bet. A sweet dream it was, and I woke up from it in the morning of day 2, when I had my top-32 match and unfortunately lost it in yet another dumb way. Why do all my Nationals have to end in dumb ways, and sometimes out of my control as well?</p>
<p>It is what it is, I guess. In order to win tournaments, and especially big tournaments, you need luck, and preferably a lot of it. I had some luck I'm definitely not used to for all of my Swiss run but after that it ran out like it always would. And even then, I could have made the next round anyway, but I just wasn't good enough. Just like I wasn't good in enough Liverpool, where I faced 3 extremely hard matchups in Swiss and lost in all of them -- just took the two of them that weren't completely unwinnable to a honorable game 3, but yeah, wasn't good enough to take them in the end and that decided the run. No one (except maybe the best of the best) has an inherent right to luck, and if I make just mostly good plays but not the best plays, one can only wonder why I didn't come up with the best plays when I needed them. That is exactly why I still don't have my paid trip. There is no fucking up allowed and minor mistakes still are mistakes that can cost you absolutely everything.</p>
<h2>Official Streaming</h2>
<p>I'm living another dream and I still haven't woken up from that one. We were actually used to this kind of online content exclusively for the godblessed land of the United States of America for a while -- until the true gods from TPCi threw the whole thing from the sky above Europe in what felt like an instant for us outsiders, with the result even rivaling the original in quality! (Add to that mostly flawlessly run tournaments. It's literally only the circuit and the prize support that are still in need of huge improvements... Speaking of which, why does Pokémon not monetize the streaming? Is it just physically impossible with a disabled Twitch chat or what's the deal here?)</p>
<p>And because those running the show think that i'm sorta relevant (well, they probably have to, with me having a 500+ CP preseason...), I made it onto that stream. Twice, in fact, first time in Liverpool but just as the backup match and wasn't shown. Not even unhappy with that, for I got completely wrecked, lol. But then in Kassel, I made the primary match of the fifth round, the whole world saw it and it was a (Moon)blast. I will link some YouTube of that later in my report, so just go look it up by yourselves if you want to watch it now. If we ignore the part of me playing somewhat questionably but it just working out anyway, I'm very happy with the product for many reasons. It's better than Christmas (which admittedly isn't hard per se, but let's not talk about that madness here).</p>
<h2>The Future of Germany Leaves Some Questions to Be Answered (Somewhat Digressing!?)</h2>
<p>The bad news related to our country started with Lajo -- the first of the two definite best players of Germany as well as the infamous last warrior against Japan -- quitting the circuit for job reasons. Then many regions in Germany had or are still having problems in terms of running local official tournaments. Extend that to the bigger scale as well, where for whatever reason unknown to me only Amigo is allowed to host Regionals (contrary to other European countries, where Regionals are hosted by regular persons), but decided to host only three of them in a country as big and rich as Germany, which is completely unfair in comparison to some other places. (And this weird "tradition" of having a Regional right <em>after</em> the National isn't the coolest thing either.) So essentially, all Germans who desired to just have their Regionals best-finish limit filled out before Nats were absolutely required to travel abroad. (You may figure out by yourselves if that applies to everyone else as well or not!) Aaand we also didn't have a Regional in the current format before Nats. And finally... I'll have to get to this "two definite best players of Germany" part again. The second one of them, online known as Yoshi with various numbers maybe even counting his Kangaskhan/Gengar teams, chose death as a competitor in order to bless us with top-notch commentary.</p>
<p>Especially thinking about these two exceptional players (might as well call them...the freaking double Yoshis, if you know/remember what I mean) we don't really have anymore, it's interesting to realize how much they have influenced me (and probably many others as well) personally after all. Lajo was a local of mine and essentially the "German Wolfey" in terms of team building. I always was a huge fan of Wolfey ever since he appeared out of nowhere in 2011, so it was just great to have someone similar to him not so distant. The Scrafty/Rotom/MEGATAR/stuff team I ran for most of 2014 wasn't his at all but was majorly influenced by his style. While I never grew fond of Amoonguss in all years between 2012-2014, this typical Lajonic mon suddenly turned into my gift of life for all of 2015, and I also did a few things with it in the present format now that Safety Goggles are even less of a (Moro)barrier, haha. Another thing worth noting is that he used to be the only local player here to win multiple Premier Challenges. After he quit, Toby and me followed him in winning 3 of them in a single season, and I myself took even more after that and am now the single person with the most official tournaments won in Berlin ever. However the fuck I did that, at least half of them I did so random stuff, lol -- but it was a nice and fun thing to do regardless!</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"Work until your idols become your rivals." <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Pok%C3%A9mon20?src=hash">#Pokémon20</a> <a href="https://t.co/iTYguDGiw9">pic.twitter.com/iTYguDGiw9</a></p>— Red (@_MasterRED_) <a href="https://twitter.com/_MasterRED_/status/703649757256781824">February 27, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<p>Shoutouts to cheesy Twitter pictures -- but the ascent to Mt. Silver is still very fucking long if even manageable at all, you know. Well, and then about Markus-Yoshi, he was for many years just a rival that most of the time came out on top and nothing was supposed to change about that. I literally never copied any of his teams before or stuff like that, let alone build in any way like he, but that changed when he completely annihilated my possibly Nats-intended Icy Wind + Thunder Wave Cresselia double Primals team 2 weeks before Liverpool using that one specific big-6 variant (might as well call it "lil C", contrary to "big C" which would be the one with Cresselia). I took a rough copy of the team to Battle Spot for shits and giggles in my desperation to find a good team for Nats, and since I had played other big-6 variants all year, I didn't need much time to learn to play it on an acceptable level once I had grasped the basic idea. And here I am now, having made my first ever Nationals top cut after many cursed years using exactly that team of his that I turned into my own. Well, and then there was my appearance on the stream as a bonus. I just watched it, and it was so awesome that and how the master himself commentated over my performance. So yeah, all of that is history that has written itself within less than a month.</p>
<p>Moving away from them...their illustrious spots as the very best this country has to offer are quite contested. I see none close to them at the present, but many who are on that one level below and could potentially rise one day. First (not in any qualitative order, just grouped by archetypes as I perceive them) we have Lega and Billa, quite alike to and different from each other in some ways. They have a common tendency to grind the same team all year, change whatever detail about it every other week and steal a bunch of games with those nifty techs. Whenever I actually saw them play, they weren't the most spectacular, but I do like a lot how they approach team building. They also both were consistently at Worlds since 2013 -- just that...well, one of them, reigning king of wallet warriors, is so smart that he essentially avoided all legit competition for the running year. Something I can't think too highly of, but unfortunately it is within the rules. Next we have Toby, another local, just playing his second year of VGC and probably walking out of it with his second Worlds day 2 -- maybe even with his second X-2 there, and this year it would definitely mean the top cut with the change of tournament system. One might think he's complete shit at team building, because all he has done in those two years was, well, copying other people's teams (or for the running season, almost just CHALKT and big-6 exclusively, hahah) and putting in an amount of tournament work with them that sometimes even surpassed what the original creators were able to do! Then we have Daflo and Luca: These two are notorious for their bad mentality which almost definitely holds them back a lot. Whenever they aren't held back though...everyone should know by now that they can do pretty great things on good days and that warrants them being in this group of potential "successors". Similar with Christian C., or just Chris, a driving force of our local community, loses motivation way too quickly when unfortunate things happen but totally is a threat to anyone when in the right state of mind. Next is our freshly-baked Nats runner-up Dark Psiana in his second season of being relevant result-wise. Unfortunately I can't say a whole lot about him because I've barely seen him play in my life and also played against him just once -- but that was a great game back at the end of 2014. Of Michilele, I haven't seen much actual playing in all those years as well, but you know, he's there, and at least he can still top-16 a proper Nats after all. And the last one I want to mention here is my good friend drugduck -- has to be with that friendship bias bonus though, because he just fell somewhat behind in recent years and hell knows why. Just stop sucking, silly, and things will just fall into place!</p>
<p>Apologies to those not mentioned or legitimately forgotten, it happens. Be good, play well, have some appropriately timed luck and who knows what may happen. Germany is a sick haven of good Trainers and it's not too hard to get in touch with the great ones, learn from them, and beat them. And where would I see myself? Well, as the facts are standing, I am no match to the people mentioned. Your typical average third- or fourth-class Trainer. I may beat them not too rarely when I face them in games, but they have shitloads of tournament success and I don't. I'm not comparing myself to those who have what I desire. I did enough of that in the past...and it held me back big time.</p>
<h2>Personal Plans Moving On</h2>
<p>For this season: There's a Regional and a National left to play and I'm naturally entering them both, still looking to finish the job that I failed in Kassel. I can't make any promises or something, but I grew bored of dwelling on unfortunate Nats exits for all those years and a top cut appearance (as first seed, no less) absolutely is a positive memory, so I should be mentally fine. (But still, there is a single thing I hate about that run: I faced not a single one of those mentioned big names as well as equivalent Trainers not from Germany. I've had lots of other tournaments where I faced even multiples of those guys sometimes, but yeah, playing them at PCs or online obviously is different from playing them on the big stage.)</p>
<p>For all seasons: I can't think of a reason to quit other than becoming no less than fucking World Champion. Even the very flawed circuit isn't turning me off, just because playing in the events I can feasibly play in and meet all those friends is so much fun and I don't want to give that up. While always falling short of stuff may be annoying and I definitely don't like it myself, at least it can be motivational when you know you got close. And yeah, as long as you aren't something like a World Champion, there always will be new challenges to be accepted.</p>
<p>Tutto piacione.</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-91317329228563524062016-03-03T21:30:00.001+01:002016-03-03T21:30:42.153+01:00[VG] Team Building Goals, 2016 Edition<p>Hello friends. As I start writing this, I don't even have too much of an idea yet where this is gonna be going in some aspects. Anyway, two months and a few into the format, we have all had our fair share of experience with it and some teams. Looking at my own experience, I can only say that some things will always be the same, haha. So this will be just some informal article about what I personally look for in my teams and why I want it like that. This is in no way the holy grail to the metagame or something, just personal observations, opinions and preferences.</p>
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<h2>Flashback: 2015 and Earlier</h2>
<p>The thing that most of you might still remember is that dreaded <a href="http://nuggetbridge.com/blogs/entry/955-rock-slide-no-pride-hyper-voice-had-no-choice-berlin-regional-champions-report/" target="_blank">quicksand team</a> that I really enjoyed a lot. And it wasn't even the first team of its kind, in a way, that I used in my life. There are common attributes about this and other teams that I -- consciously or subconsciously -- seek to recreate in the present, because I simply feel best when I have them at my service. (And because of the nature of 2016...it's basically impossible to recreate the exact same feel. We can only get remotely close (yeah, I just said that, huh). More on that later.)</p>
<p>The main things to notice are the wide distribution of damage potential coupled with useful bulk on literally every mon. Salamence, Tyranitar and Rotom are the driving force and very "complete" all by themselves. They are joined by Excadrill or Aegislash for specific matchups, obviously good attackers as well and even the seemingly frail Excadrill isn't frail at all -- it has quite a solid HP stat and the typing is amazing for the sake of actually taking a hit without the need of a Focus Sash. Finally, Amoonguss is pretty worthless in terms of damage output but instead is quite a potent and aggressive supporter. Adding all of that together, the team can put out constant pressure without being too worried of severe retaliation a lot of the time -- and that's what I like!</p>
<h2>Back into the Present</h2>
<p>Blissful were the days when there were barely any big attackers beyond the Megas. Now basically everything that can do meaningful damage while also taking meaningful damage is a Mega or appeared on some game's cover (RIP Zygarde, notice how I'm not talking about you!). It's the format of extremes if we ever had one, way more so than 2010. Extremes are the polar opposites of balances. I have legitimate trouble with that but I have to deal with it anyway. Welcome to the world of ridiculous attackers, ridiculous supporters and a type-chart gone down the shitter.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, we'll just not be having any of what I was doing before. (You may be relieved now!) We have some archetypes that have options to be not completely of another world, and that's cool enough for the time being. I'll just walk through them a bit.</p>
<h3>Groudon, Xerneas and the Big Six</h3>
<p>Well, as you may have noticed, I used mostly a bunch of variations on this stuff by now. If it's an option for the future will remain unanswered for a while, but that's somewhat of a different topic. So what do we have here: Groudon, Xerneas, Kangaskhan, Salamence, Talonflame, Smeargle. Smeargle takes Amoonguss's role of the dedicated support slot, even bringing both redirection and Sleep back, go figure. Talonflame looks like Aegislash's weird flying brother, coming with another "Guard" move, weird stats, pretty nice neutral coverage with a single and strong primary attack and a nifty to way to either force or deny Speed control, good defensive typing for what it's worth included. And the other four are just the generic bulky attackers, with Salamences actually reappearing and being, in fact, mostly the same as before. It looks like it absolutely makes sense that I used this team a lot, but still...switching capabilities are limited despite the similar layout. With the sand team, I was able to align to or sometimes even force a slower pace of play easily, yet with the big-6 we absolutely have to be aggressive or we will just get wrecked.</p>
<h3>Rayogre</h3>
<p>I'm afraid I can't help you a whole lot with this, for I only played Rayogre once -- that was in the first week and it went to hell. Hell knows when I'll touch that duo again. Would be wise to do so eventually, but you know...time is a limited resource when there's also other things you want to do!</p>
<p>Anyway, from what I'm gathering so far and to put it way too bluntly, Rayogre does not equal Rayogre does not equal Rayogre. This is just a duo and the surroundings can look very different. The first kind is the support-heavy one, that one I do absolutely despise. Unfortunately, it comes somewhat naturally, because really, when you have a fucking Kyogre, there just is no fucking other attacker to match that; even Rayquaza sometimes looks like a baby compared to the ogre's obscene damage output. And yeah, that's fucking Rayquaza, which is otherwise an amazing attacker as well, the best single-target glass cannon you will ever find. Weeelll...one might think so. Having watched various Regionals streams, I came to the conclusion that it's likely better to use Focus Sash than any item boosting damage. That thing brings Rayquaza from...consistent 2HKO power to still consistent 2HKO power, better at locking up games, independently from what kind of Rayogre build you may be running. Anyway, the support-heavy Rayogre is what it is: you have this duo for dishing out damage and almost everyone else in the team just sit there doing little in terms of bringing games to a conclusion.</p>
<p>And then there's this other kind of Rayogre that does come closer to me ideals: focus on solid attacking power everywhere. You know, instead of the passive shit like Follow Me Fairies, Crobat, Cresselia, Smeargle and all that, you can also add the 2014 special with mons like Kangaskhan, Talonflame and Aegislash all together even. Boom, now we're talking! I'm absolutely not opposed to checking builds like that out, just...the time, I'm lacking the time!</p>
<p>Finally, we have this weird little thing that is the choice of Mega Evolution. Back in that very early Rayogre team, it feels like I was a while ahead of time, for I did run Kangaskhan in that and brought Kang and Ray together a lot, deciding on the fly which one to beef up. It's a cool thing to do. However, we also learned that foregoing Mega Rayquaza can be harmful at times. Even more than damage output, you'll actually lose Speed and that can bite you a lot. Kyogre completely relies on Speed control to do its thing, Kangaskhan only ties other Kangaskhans at best and plain Rayquaza is just somewhere between them -- a feature of little use. You'd really like Rayquaza to be faster a lot...and that makes filling the other 2 slots obviously trickier. A plain Kangaskhan can't do much beyond clicking Fake Out with a cool Ability and then cannon fodder, and it gets worse when you think of the Rayquaza/Mawile combination that has seen some success as well.</p>
<h3>Double Primal</h3>
<p>Ugh. I can't bring myself to enjoy double Primals as long as I'm still playing Bo1. Rely on Speed control, hardcore edition. And even then, you can still get completely fucked by other Primals because they just so happen to have exactly that Speed that you didn't want to see in that specific moment. Bo1 is the bane of this archetype's existence, Bo3 may totally save it. We have to expect it to do some work at Worlds and (hopefully globally Bo3) Nats, but for our beloved Bo1 Regionals I feel like it's an ordeal to run as long as you don't have absolutely clear-cut plans for any expectable situation.</p>
<p>Anyway, this reliance on Speed control tends to also compromise the team's layout. There'll likely be a Trick Room setter, and that will probably be either of those stupid non-attackers Cresselia and Bronzong that are hard to get off the field when you don't actually want them anymore. Or any Tailwind mode, common as well, just even harder to pull off in the first place with many other Tailwind setups bringing those faster-than-90 mons with them. That being said, double Primals are runnable both with high or low support. High support brings more control that can only challengingly be made proper use of and low support gives up too much control for my liking.</p>
<h3>Zero Primal</h3>
<p>Haven't seen much of that so far, but it exists and it's absolutely scary to play against. It's something to have on the map, and not having to deal with weather wars at all is quite a nice way to make sure your attackers can always do their jobs no matter what. I really don't enjoy Primals too much for all the catches they bring.</p>
<h3>Wolfey's Team!?</h3>
<p>Now that's been interesting. It's basically a modification of the Ho-Ogre archetype that was running around for just a little bit till everyone started to respect the Ho-Oh and all went to shit from there. Now it's the Dialga over the Ho-Oh and the rest is pretty much the same. Is it better than its predecessor? Absolutely. Is it what I'm looking for? Maybe. I'm giving it like 20% chance. The team is still a bit slow and passive, I have trouble with that as usual. And it is, just like its predecessor, destroyed in its very foundations by double Primals...and dealing with Smeargle is still relying on RNG a lot, with no ways to shut it down quickly, let alone reliably. What will actually happen now very likely is that people will copy the team a lot, realize it's way too hard to play for them, and abandon it again.</p>
<hr class="sep"/>
<p>I have no conclusion to make here except that there are options. I'll continue on my quest to find something that may by some magic miracle reconcile me with the format, but we all know that saving the world may be an easier task than that, haha.</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-66272705096996974642016-02-20T16:16:00.000+01:002016-02-20T16:18:28.156+01:00[VG] RIP Some More Teams<p>This bitch's been lying around here for a while now, so let's just get this off my chest, I guess. Anyway, there will be nothing overly important in this post. If you're looking for somewhat important stuff, go read <a href="http://nuggetbridge.com/blogs/entry/1322-big-six-to-big-sixteen-innsbruck-regionals-report/" target="_blank">my Innsbruck Regionals report</a> instead. This post basically covers all events leading up to that Regional.</p>
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<p>We're starting with the International Challenge January. I entered it with both my ORAS games -- for the first time ever I did a thing like this, and it feels like for the first time ever no one else did, lol. First run I played was the worse of the two, finished at 91st place, 1735 rating and a 31-14 record. Some more details on both my runs I posted <a href="http://nuggetbridge.com/forums/topic/21731-pokemon-international-challenge-january/?do=findComment&comment=258827" target="_blank">on NB</a>. The team was heavily inspired by what multiple fellow Germans were using shortly before. Copy at your own risk I'd say -- loaded with inaccurate moves, slow as fuck and still not a favorable matchup against the big-6 (especially if the Groudon has a Rock move). In general, I think it's a very bad time to use Ho-Oh right now.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOGogSxpMeWat_kRjcoB4TYcsgMuyEC-_4JJMUIaDQuFcur2vkBKeh6YULpbIhLG76QF6Cb9NP1SNzSpfog0wvhuZ3OVgeihSX8J8Ku_B7CDDAmZxK6DImtXteSWzQc4oIj6KwMk0tIwE/s1600/icjan2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOGogSxpMeWat_kRjcoB4TYcsgMuyEC-_4JJMUIaDQuFcur2vkBKeh6YULpbIhLG76QF6Cb9NP1SNzSpfog0wvhuZ3OVgeihSX8J8Ku_B7CDDAmZxK6DImtXteSWzQc4oIj6KwMk0tIwE/s400/icjan2.png" /></a></div>
<p>And then, I ran the most original team imaginable on my main game. 1780 rating, 33-11 record, 30th place on the rankings, 10th place for CP. Absolutely better than expected, but yeah, it might have been just one win away from obsoleting the sixth Premier Challenge for good...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLxaogXIpS5N2gZhkxNtdDL8g8QxRWWjyKrzbQmDPzGd7ExpE6XGgdSILk43PYcEUmbmQgwhqOtHHuf1K8i89_ysLIlIbp2i0fz5ciLbaYM1ygfjZjVLy3KuN1fbXRf75EVgKJHifUiPE/s1600/icjan1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLxaogXIpS5N2gZhkxNtdDL8g8QxRWWjyKrzbQmDPzGd7ExpE6XGgdSILk43PYcEUmbmQgwhqOtHHuf1K8i89_ysLIlIbp2i0fz5ciLbaYM1ygfjZjVLy3KuN1fbXRf75EVgKJHifUiPE/s400/icjan1.png" /></a></div>
<p>So much for that. My probably biggest conclusion from the IC was that it should be smart to use the big-6 in a way that mirror matchups are somewhat favorable, because the mirror matchup, in fact, seemed like the hardest matchup. (Actually, with further experiences gained since then, I'd say Trick Room with Mawile is harder.) So that's basically what I tried to do by replacing the flying minion. Played the PC on next Saturday, 4-1 Swiss, then lost in top 8 to said Mawile Trick Room in a pretty clear game 1 and a hilariously bullshit RNG game 2. I was obviously not too pleased with this result and I was gonna use something different, again more experimental, on Sunday -- but with how much that sucked (NB Live: 1-3 drop or something), I said to Hell with it and went with the Crobat standard team again. It somehow was a 3-0 start into the Swiss, then I played my top-8 opponent from before in the last round, same teams, and this time he beat me with Moody Moonlight Cresselia. Well whatever, I still made top 4! The bad thing is that I lost yet another Bo3, this time in 3 games against Rayogre -- very back and forth set, and unsurprisingly, game 3 was decided by an endgame coin-flip turn where I went for the wrong move.</p>
<p>Meh, what a weak weekend. It was actually strong in that I finally didn't get completely wrecked on one of the days, but the CP payouts just aren't too hot when you aren't taking first place, you know. I'll absolutely go for obsoleting both these results because fuck them and fuck the team as well, haha. For Innsbruck, as linked way above, I returned to the pure big-6 lineup and teched it out a bit -- only to still be weak to Mawile under Trick Room, yeah... Oh well, here's the Crobat team list of pure fucking ordinariness. See you whenever and take care.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Muttis Stolz (Kangaskhan) @ Kangaskhanite<br/>
Ability: Inner Focus<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Frustration<br/>
- Sucker Punch<br/>
- Low Kick<br/>
- Fake Out</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Cleopatra (Salamence) (F) @ Salamencite<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Naive Nature<br/>
- Hyper Voice<br/>
- Double-Edge<br/>
- Draco Meteor<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">UltraUmboxer (Groudon) @ Red Orb<br/>
Ability: Drought<br/>
Brave Nature<br/>
- Rock Slide<br/>
- Precipice Blades<br/>
- Fire Punch<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">ゼルネアス (Xerneas) @ Power Herb<br/>
Ability: Fairy Aura<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
- Dazzling Gleam<br/>
- Moonblast<br/>
- Geomancy<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Swiss Cheese (Smeargle) (F) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Moody<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Follow Me<br/>
- Dark Void<br/>
- Fake Out<br/>
- Spiky Shield</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">>.<Keese>.< (Crobat) @ Lum Berry<br/>
Ability: Inner Focus<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
- Super Fang<br/>
- Tailwind<br/>
- Taunt<br/>
- Quick Guard</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-3942536538660886532016-01-25T18:00:00.000+01:002016-01-25T18:00:14.931+01:00[VG] I Somehow Won Another PC<p>Hello friends. Just played a weekend of PCs, again went pretty much just as this chaotic format really goes. I won the Saturday event with a mostly standard Xerneas team on a 6-2 (9-4) record, and I got <em>last freaking place</em> at the Sunday event with a different team that I'm obviously not posting here (which also happened to be my first ever negative record at an official event, fun fact). Happy reading! *cough*</p>
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<p style="font-family:monospace;">UltraUmboxer (Groudon) @ Red Orb<br/>
Ability: Drought<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
- Earth Power<br/>
- Eruption<br/>
- Flamethrower<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Braver Vogel (Talonflame) (M) @ Life Orb<br/>
Ability: Gale Wings<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Brave Bird<br/>
- Flare Blitz<br/>
- Tailwind<br/>
- Quick Guard</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Mihiip (Amoonguss) (F) @ Occa Berry<br/>
Ability: Effect Spore<br/>
Relaxed Nature<br/>
- Grass Knot<br/>
- Spore<br/>
- Rage Powder<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Kalter Hund (Smeargle) (F) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Moody<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Follow Me<br/>
- Dark Void<br/>
- Fake Out<br/>
- Spiky Shield</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Victorinox (Salamence) (M) @ Salamencite<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Return<br/>
- Giga Impact<br/>
- Substitute<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">ゼルネアス (Xerneas) @ Power Herb<br/>
Ability: Fairy Aura<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
- Dazzling Gleam<br/>
- Moonblast<br/>
- Geomancy<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>It's a variation on the common BIG SIX obviously, no need to explain them, so I'll just focus on what I changed and why. First Amoonguss, that one is in the team because it would be pretty Trick Room weak otherwise -- and Trick Room is a very realistic possibility in my local scene, about half of our players at the very least are known for having been generally fond of Trick Room over periods of time long enough to matter. This most notably came into play in the grand final as well as my Swiss encounter with the same person: an original Kyogre/Dialga team that wasn't overly hard to cheese out with Xerneas/Amoonguss/Groudon.</p>
<p>The other one is another Weird Salamence™. Special Salamence is way too situational for a team that doesn't even have space for Kang as an alternative, I don't know how yet how to run mixed ideally and I'm fairly certain purely physical is strong, too. And a good physical attacker also is what this team really needed, again for lack of Kang. That, and I really wanted Intimidate somewhere, so here it is. With that out of the way, the freaking moveset... Frustration because I'm not fond of killing myself. Substitute because it can win you games and Salamence's physical movepool is too sparse anyway. Giga Impact for the very same reasons, and to make up for the lack of additional damage that Double-Edge would have surprised while actually surpassing even that by a very notable amount. Without it, I would have been eliminated in top 8, where I concealed it till game 3 and then used it to snipe a Ho-Oh. That being said, the team still is horribly Ho-Oh weak, and that's precisely how my Nugget Bridge Live run on the same day ended in, well, top 8!</p>
<p>Another bit on the Kang thing, well very certainly I would have liked to have Kang, it was just space that was the issue. Groudon/Xerneas obviously have guaranteed spots. I wanted the Amoonguss for Trick Room while still keeping Smeargle just to have everyone's favorite duo of animals available (kill the animals, save the frames). And then I also definitely wanted Intimidate and Talonflame (not only to conform with the Bird Challenge™), so yeah, maybe next time Kang.</p>
<p>So as usual, this team is far from optimized. It did its job for the time being, and that's what counts at the end of the day. I'm now at 3 wins in Premier Challenges and 3 more still funfilled results. Can I meet my ambitious goal of 150+/180 CP? Find out next time at...content creation memes.</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-20703024467449645382016-01-17T18:00:00.000+01:002016-01-17T18:00:36.081+01:00[VG] Nugget Bridge 2.0 and First 2016 Victorious PC Team<p>Hello friends. I've played my first Premier Challenge of this format a week ago. It was somewhat resembling of Regionals: I felt shit going into it, then I played, and then I took first fucking place. Looking forward to all the tournaments not won when I'm actually feeling good...weeelll, what might help me in that regard is that there's a realistic chance that I'm just never feeling good this year. That's just what a nice new format we have! *cough*</p>
<p>Anyway, before you actually read further in this, you might want to check out the two articles I posted on Nugget Bridge recently, which are first <a href="http://nuggetbridge.com/blogs/entry/955-rock-slide-no-pride-hyper-voice-had-no-choice-berlin-regional-champions-report/" target="_blank">my Regionals report</a> and second a new entry of <a href="http://nuggetbridge.com/blogs/entry/1142-dreykopff-explains-the-game-why-the-new-format-is-bad/" target="_blank"><em>Dreykopff Explains the Game</em></a>. The latter also has a few bits about the PC I'm talking about, so I'm not gonna repeat that stuff here and just show and explain the team.</p>
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<p style="font-family:monospace;">UltraUmboxer (Groudon) @ Red Orb<br/>
Ability: Drought<br/>
Quiet Nature<br/>
- Eruption<br/>
- Earth Power<br/>
- Precipice Blades<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Ho-Oh @ Leftovers<br/>
Ability: Pressure<br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
- Sacred Fire<br/>
- Brave Bird<br/>
- Substitute<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Mihiip (Amoonguss) (F) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Effect Spore<br/>
Relaxed Nature<br/>
- Grass Knot<br/>
- Spore<br/>
- Rage Powder<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Muttis Stolz (Kangaskhan) @ Kangaskhanite<br/>
Ability: Inner Focus<br/>
Adamant Nature<br/>
- Frustration<br/>
- Sucker Punch<br/>
- Low Kick<br/>
- Fake Out</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Cresselia @ Lum Berry<br/>
Ability: Levitate<br/>
Sassy Nature<br/>
- Ice Beam<br/>
- Helping Hand<br/>
- Skill Swap<br/>
- Trick Room</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">♪S♪G♪Q♪F♪ (Lapras) (F) @ Sitrus Berry<br/>
Ability: Water Absorb<br/>
Sassy Nature<br/>
- Sheer Cold<br/>
- Perish Song<br/>
- Ice Beam<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>This whole team is an upgrade of the very first thing I tested with the new rules: a Cresselia/Groudon/Kangaskhan Trick Room core joined by a Ho-Oh that plays like a Heatran that hasn't yet been made the (2015) metagame's hottest whore. Basically, I wanted to play the new CHALK without ever having played the original CHALK, lol. Definitely behind time and maybe also ahead of time, you know. This team is indeed kinda complicated for contemporary early-format standards. But that's just me, I just <em>have</em> to be different, you know... Coin flips will be lost with 50% chance and that is bound to be a problem when there are too many coins flipped.</p>
<p>Groudon, Kangaskhan and Cresselia are as self-explanatory as always. Ho-Oh pretty much is as well. I really wanted to use it just for the hell of it, because it's one of my favorite Pokémon and there are so many common mons that can't touch it, it's crazy -- attributes that Heatran and Ferrothorn can only dream of. The moveset apparently is just what about everyone would think of first when using Ho-Oh with the intention to wall stuff and it's decent, but it may not be optimal yet. I basically want Recover somewhere but I just have no space for it -- the two attacks are mandatory and Protect is very helpful, too. So that's the first 4 slots. Ideally, I'd just bring those to games and make them work. The last two slots were just for matchups that the original core struggles with, and I tried probably at least 10 different mons in those by now.</p>
<p>Lapras is stupid, and my Lapras set is stupid, too. I hated Kyogre matchups, I hated Salamence matchups, I hated Rayquaza matchups, I hated Cresselia matchups. All of them. A lot. Out of all the random mons I tried to help me there (most prominently Ferrothorn: Ferrothorn sucks, it just gets beaten up all the time and does nothing back), Lapras was the one that could actually be considered a threat. Spam Sheer Cold when foes can't touch it, easy. That happened multiple times on that day. I just...had really bad luck with that move, lol. Can't complain when I still win I guess, but it just looks so retarded when you try like forever and nothing happens. Protect because I like to have Protect, Ice Beam as the only damaging move because Lapras won't do notable damage ever anyway, but this move specifically does at least OHKO Salamence and Rayquaza with 100% accuracy. Finally, Perish Song to put 3-2 situations and stuff on lock without having to rely on any of the other shit.</p>
<p>And then Amoonguss again, memiest of memes. It's kinda good and it kinda isn't. I didn't like it in this team because I liked to bring Cresselia to every game but I absolutely hate to bring Cresselia and Amoonguss to the same games. Other than that, yay Spore, yay redirection, yay horrible Ability activation luck! Oh yes, people already made those jokes about me possibly using Amoonguss for another whole format...and it's not entirely unrealistic, because the thing is simply more reliable than Smeargle and can help with possible Trick Room weaknesses instead of amplifying them.</p>
<p>Overall, the team is as early-format as it gets. So unoptimized. It's slow, so it just gets punched a lot and can do nothing about it sometimes. It absolutely hates Crobat, mainly because Cresselia can't carry Mental Herb and some Dark Void insurance at the same time. (Naturally, I faced only Crobats and Talonflames but no Smeargles, who knows how the hell I won...) It's sadly not much of a surprise that my win ratio in practice was only around 50%, and I brought it to the tournament only because I had nothing that went better for me.</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-64577395481285039312015-12-21T20:00:00.000+01:002015-12-21T20:00:08.831+01:00[VG] Ending 2015 with Some Semblance of 2014<p>Hello world. I played my first two proper local Premier Challenges of this season throughout the weekend just passed. On Saturday, I won the thing, re-using my sucessful Regionals team unchanged. On Sunday, I entered with an even more experimental upgrade and I got no more than a pretty forgettable 2-2 Swiss (with amazing resistance actually, because 3/4 of my opponents made top cut on that day, haha). Everyone has their bad days from time to time, you know. I'm sharing this team here today anyway because I think it's interesting and maybe it even has potential -- things that could all be interesting to the suffering souls that are travelling to Leiden!</p>
<p>But before I actually delve into that, and with Nugget Bridge being not as fast as I had hoped... It makes sense to at least release a <a href="http://pastebin.com/4azAq04U" target="_blank">Pastebin of what's potentially the best team I have ever made</a>, as it brought me to 2/2 tournament wins with an absolutely amazing combined 17-2 games record. The according Report will be released whenever NB is finally up to the task, but since that likely won't be in time anymore, you can ask me things via Twitter if you're interested to run this or a variation in Leiden. And with that out of the way...here goes nothing with the fake 2014 team:</p>
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<h2>Motivation</h2>
<p>There were a few things about the usual team that I always hated, and one of them is Aegislash's notorious slave moveset. Only Shadow Ball as attacking move is really awkward when Normal or Dark types are running wild everywhere, you know. In that moment when famous people were reminiscing Nikolai's Sub/LO Garchomp of 2014 Senior Worlds in some Internet chat, I remembered that there actually were people who tried Sub/LO Aegislash in 2015. I wasn't one of those yet, but suddenly I just wanted to give it a shot, just for the hell of it and fully knowing that I wouldn't play this format literally only for a few days longer. Bare Life Orb Aegislash is just kinda meh I'd say (and that one I have also used way before), but Substitute suddenly made this more interesting and still bringable against Trick Room. It's quite an audacious set, and it can wreak much pain and terror if left unchecked for too long.</p>
<p>But then we also know: Life Orb is taken. There's no way I would ever run Excadrill with an inferior Item again, so I was looking to just replace Excadrill entirely for the sake of freeing up the Life Orb, and then potentially make further adjustments depending on what I'd end up with.</p>
<h2>The Team</h2>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">I Punish (Aegislash) (M) @ Life Orb<br/>
Ability: Stance Change<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 188 HP / 252 SpA / 68 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 7 Atk<br/>
- Shadow Ball<br/>
- Flash Cannon<br/>
- Substitute<br/>
- King's Shield</p>
<p>Well, I already said most about it in the motivation. This little motherfucker is amazing when he can get (lots of) free turns, but that's not trivial and thus he does qualify as hard to play, probably. I'd test it some more if I didn't have to play this atrocious new format instead, but it is what it is...</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">AutumnLeaves (Garchomp) (M) @ Focus Sash<br/>
Ability: Rough Skin<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Rock Slide<br/>
- Earthquake<br/>
- Dragon Claw<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Welcome back, good old Garchomp. Because I still was really fucking afraid of Thundurus no matter what (and rightfully so, if I'm looking back to Saturday's grand final where a lone Thundurus almost succeeded to steal a game with some Thunder Wave jackpot luck!), it was really hard for me to justify using anything other than a (physical) Ground type. With Excadrill gone, next best options are Landorus, Mamoswine and Garchomp. Could all be decent, I just rolled with Garchomp. Don't like Landorus too much for his typing and low Speed (as in Therian; Incarnate can go fuck off without LO as well imo) still and don't imagine Mamoswine doing too well either, again with unfortunate defensive typing and also really bad against Charizard, which I can't exactly afford without further replacements.</p>
<p>And about the Garchomp itself...there's not too much to say. It's pretty fast and it can always take a hit. Typing is still super awkward, I'm never too sure when to bring or not bring it, sadly. Ground/Steel is best Ground at least for use with Salamence/Tyranitar, period...</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and no Sand Veil because it's trash. If you wanna know why, watch my first-round match against Lajo of the 2014 Nugget Bridge Invitational.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">L.A.★STAR (Amoonguss) (F) @ Rocky Helmet<br/>
Ability: Regenerator<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Shiny: Yes<br/>
EVs: 140 HP / 172 Def / 196 SpD<br/>
Sassy Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk / 4 Spe<br/>
- Giga Drain<br/>
- Spore<br/>
- Rage Powder<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>With Fairies rising up to be major threats again after those specific changes, it only made sense to go with the (shiny) Sassy Amoonguss again, like I did in the Landorus version as well. At least she looks almost pretty this way.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">CosmosCharge (Salamence) (M) @ Salamencite<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Naive Nature<br/>
- Hyper Voice<br/>
- Double-Edge<br/>
- Flamethrower<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Same as always.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Wings?Horns? (Tyranitar) (M) @ Lum Berry<br/>
Ability: Sand Stream<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Rock Slide<br/>
- Assurance<br/>
- Dragon Dance<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Same as just before.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">HymnsOfLoss (Rotom-Wash) @ Choice Specs<br/>
Ability: Levitate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 60 SpA / 196 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 14 Atk / 30 Def<br/>
- Thunderbolt<br/>
- Hydro Pump<br/>
- Volt Switch<br/>
- Hidden Power [Ice]</p>
<p>Same. *cough* Yeah, you'll have to wait for the explanation to this machine some more, I guess. But if you're actually good...you should well be able to figure it out on your own!</p>
<h2>Tournament and Review</h2>
<p>Round 1 I was up against what seemed to be a mostly standard team, but he had multiple non-standard moveset choices that all caught me off guard just like everyone truly loves it from Bo1 Swiss, heh... I still walked away with the win on a bad move and some Amoonguss luck, but convincing looks different.<br/>
Round 2 was I believe Kangaskhan, Charizard, Sylveon, Aegislash and double genies, so that was a very nasty team preview already (which could have been at least a bit less nasty had I run any other of my quicksand teams, haha), which I didn't get out of too well indeed. Then he, too, just let me put over half of his team to Sleep and horrible Sleep rolls for him ended up giving me another bad win.<br/>
Round 3 I faced Toby again, after a long time of somehow eluding each other at events actually, and he pretty much destroyed me with how weakly I was playing this whole day. It's a little sad I coudn't give him a real challenge, for he very well may be that one person around who understands STAR and CHALK <em>combined</em> better than anyone else -- so he played the CHALK part in this matchup and knew exactly what to do in order to beat me. Congrats to him again for taking the full 30 CP of that day without dropping a single game.<br/>
And finally round 4, I was forced to learn that Gardevoir/Landorus is an extremely troublesome combination after the changes to the team. The old Salamence/Aegislash combination would have handily taken that stuff apart, but the new one...not so much. I still could have actually won if my Rotom hadn't been unlucky two turns in a row, but it's expected that it can't always land its attacks, so that was only fair and ultimately the correct end to this awkward run.</p>
<p>So yeah, the Fairies, the fucking Fairies most of them all again. They are absolutely not impossible to beat with this team, as already shown, but still they're super tricky to beat. Other than that, I still believe that the team does have some potential -- I just won't have more chances to wake it, so no harm in releasing the team this quickly, obviously. If you feel up to the task of continuing this development for me, good luck, and May the 4th maybe be with you depending on whether some event is on that day at all, hahahah. Looking at my own performance though, you should definitely be warned that this team probably is quite challenging to play well. You know, when I have pretty much achieved full mastery of the Excadrill team but then have a hard time with this new variation, something's really different, haha. As a matter of fact, it trades some of its defensive solidity for even more offensive presence -- it's confirmed riskier.</p>
<p>I'm so sad about this format change, 2017 can't come soon enough...</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-79819511761762195392015-12-11T19:30:00.003+01:002015-12-11T19:38:40.654+01:00[VG] An Overview of Viable Non-Restricted Pokémon in the Upcoming Format<p>Hello World. With the initial content mainly focusing on the restricted but still emphasizing the importance of the non-restricted (for obvious reasons, you're gonna have 4 of them no matter what), I thought it couldn't hurt to scroll through the Pokédex a bit. What I've come up with is in no way the definite list or something naturally and I may have completely overlooked stuff. Anyway, here goes nothing.</p>
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<h2>Will Probably Be Used a Lot</h2>
<h3>Mega Kangaskhan</h3>
<p>Bulky, reasonably fast and hard-hitting Fake Out bot with strong neutral coverage, same as last format. With only two restricted mons allowed in the full team, chances are you'd want a non-restricted Mega for the sake of having a third very strong mon at your service, and really, who would be better at exactly that job than freaking good old Kang. Will probably be #1 Mega for the third format in a row as well as top 3 overall usage again for the third format in a row.</p>
<h3>Cresselia</h3>
<p>Your generic Speed control, Skill Swap and other support slave. Have to watch out for Taunts and flinches, but if you can get around those, Cresselia will obviously do her job no problem. We might even see entirely non-attacking Cresselias a lot, because Cresselia really isn't hitting shit for damage anymore.</p>
<h2>Will Be Used</h2>
<h3>Smeargle</h3>
<p>Prepare for it or your skull may get fucked in the body bag. It's getting much better in this format.</p>
<h3>Mega Mawile</h3>
<p>I'm just putting it into this tier because people are hyping it up a lot, but personally I'm very sceptical. Taking care of Landorus and Heatran wouldn't have been too hard, but still only a handful of people actually felt able to do it. Now it has even bigger problems with fucking Primal Groudon that's so much harder to check, too! Add to that the stats that are still so meh that even the Kyogre matchup won't be too good, and then it should be clear why Mawile probably doesn't want to be the solitary Mega of any team, at least. It still beats Fairies and Kang and brings the probably rare Intimidate, so it has some valuable niche uses.</p>
<h3>Mega Salamence</h3>
<p>Special is probably dead, just can't keep up with the power creep. Physical can still be useful, because it's fast as fuck and that Double-Edge with proper Attack investment still slaughters animals alive. Main issue will probably be that most would just rather have Kang for the utility instead as their Mega, haha. Fun fact: If you can remove Desolate Land somehow, it has Hydro Pump in its movepool. Non-Mega obviously has Intimidate as well.</p>
<h3>Togekiss</h3>
<p>Follow Me bot, and also the oh so glorified primary partner to Mega Rayquaza. Can also do Speed control things and will be generally hard to OHKO.</p>
<h3>Amoonguss</h3>
<p>Rage Powder / Spore bot with excellent Speed for and against Trick Room shenanigans. It should have the bulk to survive anything below Overheat from Primal Groudon -- an issue that Occa Berry or even Focus Sash could fix easily --, and surviving attacks from Kyogre, Xerneas, Cresselia and Kangaskhan is basically free. Sitrus Berry could be very viable as well, for the purpose of eating up multiple hits and still standing.</p>
<h3>Ferrothorn</h3>
<p>Beats Kyogre, Xerneas and Cresselia. Low Kick Kangaskhan is annoying but can be somewhat answered with Rocky Helmet or Chople Berry. (And let's be real, everyone should use Low Kick in this format.) I expect it to again wall full teams once that one way to hit it hard (Groudon) is removed.</p>
<h3>Thundurus</h3>
<p>Eh come on. We will see no end to it. Prankster Thundurus is broken beyond repair and there's no way to forget. If Foul Play should become popular, we will especially see no end to Swagger, because, you know, how to best slam a Groudon right back into its grave!? However, Thundurus still suffers from moveset limits. He'll be most threatening in Bo1 play with the unknown movesets, but shouldn't be too hard to deal with in Bo3, unless your team for some reason is really fucking weak to him. Powering through his mediocre defenses got easier than it ever was, anyway, just gotta get those hits off in the first place.</p>
<h3>Aegislash</h3>
<p>The Good Deoxys™, you know. Steel type with amazing stats and cool moves like Wide Guard and Shadow Sneak in its movepool. It's definitely good, but it's also not too hard anymore to hate hard on it by just doing nothing that it can ever prey on.</p>
<h2>May Be Used</h2>
<h3>Mega Venusaur</h3>
<p>Psychic is trash and Flying is visibly limited, so you all know the turquoise fatass that still has almost no weakness and won't ever fucking die if you don't bullshit it via the RNG, because it's still slow and doesn't really threaten much, you know.</p>
<h3>Raichu</h3>
<p>Fake Out, Lightningrod, Encore, Nuzzle and all that stuff. It was already bad without the restricted in the format, doesn't get worse with them now in. Perfectly usable for all sorts of cheese.</p>
<h3>Clefable</h3>
<p>Another Follow Me Fairy. With Unaware, it can offer some Rayquaza cheese protection.</p>
<h3>Parasect</h3>
<p>Bad Amoonguss with Wide Guard.</p>
<h3>Dugtrio</h3>
<p>If you really, really, like REALLY want to get rid of Groudon... Dugtrio can trap it and should be able to kill it with a double-target. Note that this doesn't really work when they can bring Trick Room or something else, it's not exactly hard to get around the Dugtrio troll.</p>
<h3>Golduck</h3>
<p>If you really hate Groudon for your life...maybe Cloud Nine Golduck can do something!?? Golduck is really fucking terrible though, so don't expect to have an easy time with it. I can only see it doing well in great players' hands -- in the average ones', not so much.</p>
<h3>Arcanine</h3>
<p>Decent Intimidate user. Very good against Xerneas and learns Wild Charge to hit Kyogre hard with a boosting Item. Otherwise is still kinda terrible against Hoenn trio though.</p>
<h3>Machamp</h3>
<p>Trick Room Dynamic Punch, potentially Iron Ball Fling.</p>
<h3>(Mega) Gengar</h3>
<p>Mega is probably more useful than traditional, because Shadow Tag is a broken Ability and the support of non-Mega seems to be easily overpowerable (and it can't Burn Groudon). Of special note: Gengz is pretty fast and learns Skill Swap.</p>
<h3>Exeggutor</h3>
<p>I'm putting this here because it was sort of a thing in 2010 as well. It has Chlorophyll to be fast in Desolate Lands and it has Trick Room coupled with medium bulk (or Focus Sash) for Speed control.</p>
<h3>Rhydon (and Rhyperior)</h3>
<p>It's Rhydon, lol. It could see some use as a cheap Groudon check. Survives and 2HKOs a lot of things. Also learns Horn Drill, as you should be well aware from Battle Tower and friends.</p>
<h3>Jynx</h3>
<p>Fake Out bot with Dry Skin, a decent pool of support moves and decent offense.</p>
<h3>Lapras</h3>
<p>Has amazing bulk and seems to have decent matchups against some common stuff. I'm very afraid it might be lacking in damage output, maybe you just have to Specs or Life Orb it at this point to get kills.</p>
<h3>Ditto</h3>
<p>Two Primals or two Megas for your team or something along those lines. Could potentially be even moved a tier up, who knows.</p>
<h3>Crobat</h3>
<p>Fast, Inner Focus, Tailwind, Taunt, Super Fang, Poison type (but bad STAB sadly), Quick Guard.</p>
<h3>Lanturn</h3>
<p>Real men use Lanturn. Never forget.</p>
<h3>Jumpluff</h3>
<p>Another stupid support slave. Normally Chlorophyll, but Infiltrator could be interesting if Substitute or Safeguard become common.</p>
<h3>Sunflora</h3>
<p>Sorry Evan, Sunflora still sucks!</p>
<h3>Wobbuffet</h3>
<p>More Shadow Tag. Can lock down mons that rely on spread damage in hilarious ways.</p>
<h3>(Mega) Scizor</h3>
<p>Threatens Xerneas and Cresselia, could be decent if you can avoid Fire or keep Primordial Sea up.</p>
<h3>Hitmontop</h3>
<p>Fake Out, Intimidate, support moves. The weird Technician thing of 2010 is probably dead, and I don't see the proper Intimidate variant ever getting too much traction either.</p>
<h3>Blissey (and Chansey)</h3>
<p>Special attackers can't ever beat her if they're not boosting, nuff said. Also learns an obscene amount of nice shit, there's not even much reason to use the Minimize gimmick to begin with.</p>
<h3>Raikou (maybe Entei and Suicune too?)</h3>
<p>It's fast and has a cool movepool. Unfortunately very weak to Groudon.</p>
<h3>(Mega) Tyranitar</h3>
<p>Not as good as it used to be, has to play without that increased Special Defense now. Mega can sort of make up for that loss, but in turn costs the Item slot. But you know, Tyranitar still is The King of VGC, so it will never really be dead.</p>
<h3>(Mega) Swampert</h3>
<p>It can do well against Groudon and learns Wide Guard. Swift Swim cheese could be situationally useful, but I'd focus on its usefulness against Groudon.</p>
<h3>Ludicolo</h3>
<p>Not as good as back in 2010 anymore imo. Flying and Poison both got more relevant, attacks are stronger and stuff.</p>
<h3>Shiftry</h3>
<p>Ludicolo's disrespected brother. Has STAB Foul Play, otherwise not too good.</p>
<h3>Breloom</h3>
<p>Sash it and not even weather to fear. Very usable, and very inconsistent.</p>
<h3>Shedinja</h3>
<p>Everyone better prepare for this fucker. Could be prudent to establish having a Toxic / Leech Seed / whatever user per team as a basic rule of team building. If you're not following it, there's a chance you will be either unable to hit Shedinja or even be <em>made</em> unable! Bonus: It doesn't necessarily have to come with Golduck and (normal) Rayquaza anymore.</p>
<h3>Hariyama</h3>
<p>A Machamp that trades Dynamic Punch for Fake Out. Ray's 2010 team warrants it being mentioned.</p>
<h3>Sableye</h3>
<p>Prankster.</p>
<h3>Mega Manectric</h3>
<p>Bad Raikou and Landorus in one slot, threatens some stuff at least. Has the option of Intimidate Volt Switch.</p>
<h3>Claydol</h3>
<p>Has a remotely acceptable Groudon matchup. Pretty terrible otherwise.</p>
<h3>Milotic</h3>
<p>Can still wall a lot of shit. May be difficult to bring against Kang/Groudon teams with how they can just power through it anyway.</p>
<h3>Dusclops</h3>
<p>If you don't want Cresselia, maybe for some reason you want Dusclops instead. I guess Night Shade is better damage output than anything Cresselia can do in that regard, lol.</p>
<h3>(Mega) Metagross</h3>
<p>Eh, it's just so bad against a lot of common stuff...and only good against not enough common stuff. There's a chance this thing may be somehow figured out, but till then I'd rather have a safer Mega and another Steel type.</p>
<h3>Infernape</h3>
<p>Fast Fake Out and decent against Kang and Steels. I don't expect much from it, mentioning it here is mainly another relict from 2010 Worlds Finals.</p>
<h3>Gastrodon</h3>
<p>Unlike Swampert, it isn't terrible against Kyogre (in turn not as good against Groudon though, lol). But still, chances are that Kyogres STAB won't be single-target, and that means Storm Drain will always be doing a bit less than what is theoretically intended.</p>
<h3>Ambipom and Mega Lopunny</h3>
<p>Yaaaay, more fast Normal Fake Out bots, we can never have enough of them!</p>
<h3>Garchomp</h3>
<p>Good Speed and decent Groudon/Kangaskhan matchup, can potentially feast on Cresselias stopping to use Ice Beam.</p>
<h3>Toxicroak</h3>
<p>A Fake Out slave for Kyogre teams. It's probably terrible with that atrocious Speed and not too much else to offer in return, but if anything, we can be sure it will pop up in minor age Divisions at the very least.</p>
<h3>Weavile</h3>
<p>Come on, you know the text by now!</p>
<h3>Mamoswine</h3>
<p>Can do something against Groudon and Rayquaza. My hopes in it are very low, because these are so much stronger than the targets Mamoswine normally addresses.</p>
<h3>Various Rotoms</h3>
<p>The thing has mediocre stats, and those already came back to bite it in 2015. It can basically resist the Hoenn trio but its ability of doing something back isn't too outstanding, so they may power through it anyway.</p>
<h3>Liepard</h3>
<p>More fast Fake Out. More Prankster. More Foul Play. People have been talking about it a lot already and it will definitely be decent -- not exceptionally good though, because it just will always be a first-Route shitmon and that's it, lol.</p>
<h3>Conkeldurr</h3>
<p>Iron Fist Life Orb Trick Room glass cannon. Everything else is complete shit and/or outclassed.</p>
<h3>Whimsicott</h3>
<p>More Prankster. Gets Worry Seed, but that may become just as one-dimensional as Encore already is.</p>
<h3>Cofagrigus</h3>
<p>Could do some funny Skill Swap Mummy things. Also learns Ally Switch, Imprison, Fake Tears and lots of other bullshit that you're never gonna fit onto a set.</p>
<h3>Gothitelle</h3>
<p>Shadow Tag that is neither a frail Mega nor freaking Wobbuffet. Cresselia outclasses it hard if you don't actually do things with Shadow Tag.</p>
<h3>Escavalier</h3>
<p>Your usual Fairies and mushrooms counter that looks like a degenerate mushroom itself.</p>
<h3>Mienshao</h3>
<p>More Fake Out, matches up well against Kang without requiring it to be Mega itself.</p>
<h3>Hydreigon</h3>
<p>Hydreigon is bad, but it's one of the best answers to Groudon available. We should see it around, the only question is how (un)successful it will be.</p>
<h3>Volcarona</h3>
<p>Rage Powder and Fire type, should match up well with all the Steel types likely to be used, especially since Heatran will inevitably fall off the face of the Earth. Interesting slot for Xerneas cheese. Also learns Tailwind, Struggle Bug and stuff like that.</p>
<h3>Virizion</h3>
<p>Can take a hit of Primals, threatens some stuff and is immune to Amoonguss's shit. Trick Room will be its worst enemy.</p>
<h3>Tornadus</h3>
<p>Similar to Thundurus, with a few differences in movepools.</p>
<h3>Landorus</h3>
<p>Yep, we've seen him everywhere, now he's only niche. Therian has Intimidate, Incarnate has good Speed and can just spam Earth Power. Similar problem as Virizion otherwise.</p>
<h3>Talonflame</h3>
<p>I consider Talonflame the spiritual successor to weird old Hitmontop, with a few different attributes, naturally. Brave Bird with priority and good neutral coverage is decent. It can even get two of them off in the face of Groudon -- or provoke it to waste a turn Rock Sliding. Just slap a Life Orb and some nifty support moves on it and you're good to go.</p>
<h3>Male Meowstic</h3>
<p>More Prankster, more Fake Out, more Role Play (no Skill Swap because fuck Game Freak), more Swagger, more awwdorable.</p>
<h3>Sylveon</h3>
<p>I don't know. It matches up awfully against Groudon and it just isn't as threatening anymore as it used to be. Maybe if Dragons not named Rayquaza ever get big or something. I'm assuming RIP Sylveon.</p>
<h3>Klefki</h3>
<p>More Prankster. Freaking Crafty Shield may be a nice little tech that Klefki gets exclusively.</p>
<hr class="sep"/>
<p>Yep, that's only 3 tiers, if you will. Not much point in separating further when right now it's all imagination anyway. Tournaments will show everything. I'm expecting CHALK-style teams where you replace Landorus and Heatran with your two restricted to be solid and common at the lower-numbered tables.</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-77896179538219101502015-11-30T18:30:00.000+01:002015-11-30T18:30:13.442+01:00[VG] Don't Call It a Comeback (Berlin Regionals Replays and Aftermath)<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Lol, which one of these will I get first at a Regional+ level tournament? I haven't gotten either ever.</p>— Dreykopff 1st@Regs!? (@Dreykopff) <a href="https://twitter.com/Dreykopff/status/669191348449316864">November 24, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>Hello friends. What even was this weekend... I pretty much bombed the PC and then went on to win the Regional. At no point in this I was feeling really good about what I was doing, but in the past, when I did feel good about my team decisions and stuff, terrible things happened. What a silly plot twist. If someone wrote this as a novel or something, they'd get all sorts of shit flung at them.</p>
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<p>Anyway, whatever. It was fun, it was great and it was...a day of playing Pokémon. For your viewing pleasure (or disgust!??), I saved all the replays. The semifinal will go onto YouTube later, the Swiss rounds probably not.</p>
<p>R1: Sy Thai Ducng N. [L] 3FQG-WWWW-WW36-ASHP<br/>
R2: Tristan S. [W] GRQG-WWWW-WW36-ASJ4<br/>
R3: Dominik G. [W] GB4G-WWWW-WW36-ASLW<br/>
R4: Yassine B. [W] 8V7G-WWWW-WW36-ASM5<br/>
R5: Steven M. (Kali) [W] NHWG-WWWW-WW36-ASZW<br/>
R6: Stephan A. (appi) [W] MK7W-WWWW-WW36-AST2<br/>
R7: Daniel T. (Esco) [W] Q6PG-WWWW-WW36-ASTR</p>
<p>Top 4: Szymon W. (Szymoninho, <a href="http://szy.hatenablog.com/" target="_blank">blog</a>) [WW]<br/>
QEMG-WWWW-WW36-ASUP<br/>
4THG-WWWW-WW36-ASVR</p>
<p>Final: Matthias S. (Lega) [WW]<br/>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2QIpY50-rfk?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>As for the team, Amigo released the <a href="http://event.amigo-spiele.de/2015/11/28/mathias-grauer-win-the-arena-cup-berlin-vg/#more-30322" target="_blank">top 4 team lists</a> on their usual blog. If you're looking for explanations and/or have questions, please be patient. The Report on Nugget Bridge is in the works (also, as of writing this, I'm still looking for an artist to create the article artwork!). The team is decent, I guess, but it's absolutely <em>not</em> the best that the metagame has to offer right now.</p>
<p>And what's next, I legitimately don't know. If last year is any indicator, nothing's next. Absolutely none of the European Regional Champions back then won a travel award to Worlds. I'm not too unlikely to follow this tradition, and then it will pretty much be just one day of glory but completely useless in the grand scheme of things. My position with my entire 242 CP out of just two Regionals is pretty solid though, it's probably safe to assume that I'll add a few more to them eventually and it should safely turn into a day-1 invite, if those are anything like last year. A day-1 invite that I still wouldn't use. Naturally it takes much more to get a trip than just winning a Regional, and the spots are very limited.</p>
<p>Some words on the remainder of the pre-season, anyway, Germany should probably get two more Regionals, and I'm going to attend both of them to hopefully get a nice third result for finishing up my Regionals record. And then in between all that stuff, there's still Premier Challenges pending. It looks like we will finally get started with having our local events again. Gotta catch up to those quick CP farmers that are populating most of the first page of the leaderboard, you know. ツ</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-88534430458102732832015-10-12T18:00:00.000+02:002015-10-12T18:00:08.131+02:00[VG] Dreykopff Explains the Game: Mirror Matches<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKzavxFENsDQJbAokFM8G5PG0DvU-ERXoJTcJMBQifIJgdJLeSaTuvAfaeFFQ-Hz3Z8v5mx1zuwNE92dmBuiUpEHlafK6d_ZIxyT4DhQriQjGxUcle9cEkYZzOMDIhVGib7mWOepfpCTk/s400/megagardevoir_mirror_by_evilqueenie-d8pf9m6.png" /><br/>
(Artist: <a href="http://evilqueenie.deviantart.com/art/Megagardevoir-Mirror-526432110" target="_blank">EvilQueenie</a>)</div>
<p>Hello Internet users,</p>
<p>time to start a new series...or fail it. We'll see. You know, posting teams/reports exclusively gets boring at some point, and I always liked to mix different stuff in as well. The title I chose for it probably is half ironic and half serious -- who am I to explain this game to anyone anyway, with my various accomplishments that I never had? Anyway, this series targets any players from bad over good to excellent and it's entirely up to you what you're supposed to take away from those rants. If you agree with me, that's cool, but if you completely disagree, that's fine as well (please try to get some discussion going in that case though!).</p>
<p>That being said...let's have a deep look into the mirror!</p>
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<h2>Obligatory Definition Introductory Part</h2>
<p>"Mirror" is a commonly used term to refer to matchups where both Trainers that are facing each other in a match of Pokémon are using teams similar to each other in important aspects. If you are playing to win, chances are that you'll be confronted with mirror matches eventually, because there will inevitably be other people who have similar ideas about how they are supposed to win.</p>
<h2>Experiencing Mirror Matches</h2>
<p>Experiencing mirror matches is definitely one of the sillier Pokémon experiences available. Let's say you are running Kangaskhan, Landorus, Thundurus, Heatran and two random other mons. Because a lot of people are doing just that, you can realistically expect to play matches with 4/6 same teams at preview, and very possibly even multiple times in a single tournament. So this should be a fair example.</p>
<p>Heatran has always been notorious for being awkward against itself. Faster one wins. The one without Earth Power or Shuca Berry loses. Let's just use Timid max Speed Shuca to maximize the odds, right? Right. *cough* What we then end up with is, well...a mon that still is kinda slow overall and has a very underwhelming damage output on top of that (which also means it just scratches the Thundurus you'd really like to see gone fast because it's Thundurus doing Thundurus things). It's also still pretty bad when either of the opposing Landorus (likely with Superpower) or Low Kick Kangaskhan is on the field. But you definitely aren't losing more than 50% of the time against the other Heatran. *cough* Sounds like a good mon to have, really. *cough*</p>
<p>Now Thundurus is a bit more straightforward and usually has a chance to be useful. Looking at the Thundurus vs. Thundurus matchup, again Speed is a pretty neat thing (this will be a common theme *cough*). Whoever gets to Taunt or Swagger the other one first will have an advantage if they click the wrong move or get the wrong RNG. Now just doing Timid max again means you <em>theoretically</em> have a good chance to be safe from the other's bullshit. Practically, this happens to be mostly wrong, because you will lose your Thundurus so much earlier if you don't bulk him up like the other. Clicking the Taunt button then is entirely based on glorified guesswork and you might get more value out of simply doing (lots of) damage. Okay, and about the rest... Thundurus is useful for making the enemy Heatran less of a threat (and even more so with common 5th/6th slots in Amoonguss, Aegislash and Cresselia), but especially Kangaskhan and Landorus are tricky to handle. You can go Thunder Wave that Kang and possibly lose your Thundurus for doing it, which may or may not be good or bad for anyone. If you have him Protect-less, she can also just click the Fake Out button for a head-start in the damage race. And then Landorus is one where Speed again is pretty important: If you have a super bulky Thundurus, it's probably safe to expect that you'll get hit by a Rock Slide or Stone Edge before you may even get a chance at possibly firing off a Hidden Power -- unless you, you know, are champ enough to just click Swagger instead and give them even worse odds of landing that same move in the first place. But the other way around, if your Thundurus actually is faster than their Landorus (and maybe even their Kangaskhan), you got yourself a super nice endgame option. Good Luck™ surviving long enough to learn about it. *cough*</p>
<p>With that we shall have a look at Landorus, probably the worst best mon ever. Literally the whole metagame is loaded against him so hard that I personally feel like it should be pointless to actually use Landorus, but well, reality is harsh. Intimidate is a really good Ability and Landorus is the only mon that gets (and keeps) it and is the least likely to be complete garbage otherwise. So on to the given matchup: Landorus is pretty shit at dealing with himself. If you have a slot for Knock Off, that can possibly be useful but it's still far from being the definite solution, because you'll still have to stand up to a barrage of Rock Slides, and possibly faster Rock Slides. Notice the common theme? Congratulations! Having the faster out of two Landoruses is usually good -- can only be bad when the slower one U-turns out, and stuff. Next thing Kang and Heatran -- if you see these two, you are pretty much required to bring Landorus, because there just isn't much that handles those two well at the same time, and most definitely there will be nothing like that in your own team at the same time. And about Thundurus...just see previous paragraph, have nothing new to add here.</p>
<p>Finally, Kangaskhan. The other 3 are actually fairly tame in comparison to what everyone's favorite kangaroo that can't fucking jump across the plains brings to the mirror table. Just the other day I've again seen a Bo3 match where game 1 started with bottom player's Kang Faking Out top player's Kang. Game 2 of that match, naturally, started with the top player's Kang Faking Out the bottom player's Kang, and no, this wasn't IT Nats or something like that, so they didn't switch sides between games! These guys are so good, aren't they!? We can't even blame them, man. If you willingly run something other than Jolly max, you're also willingly opening yourself up to be cornered by not only this specific kind of iconic play, but also to lose Kangaskhan mirrors in general -- hitting first is such a major advantage with a fucking panzer like Kangaskhan <em>even if</em> the slower one happens to be EVed dedicatedly anti-Kangaskhan! Next thing, you might think Inner Focus could be a way to shield yourself from Fake Out nonsense -- well that's wrong, it's just useful against Raichu, Liepard and all that shit. Trying to pull off Inner Focus against other Kangs always comes with the risk of them simply Low Kicking yours into death either immediately or they get to be confirmed faster next turn. Inner Focus is just useful for guaranteeing to get a Fake Out off when it's absolutely crucial. And that's the whole gist of it again, again see other paragraphs for the rest.</p>
<p>Could do this same analysis for any kind of mirror matchup, but yeah, no. At the end of the day, it's totally natural that every kind of mirror matchup in the world is some fickle kind of powder-keg. It's already inherent with the absolute nature and impact of the Speed stat.</p>
<h2>Winning Mirror Matches</h2>
<p>Yeah, that's right. Now I'm gonna fucking tell you the one ultimate recipe for consistently winning against literally yourself. Except I'm maybe not, sorry. That recipe probably exists somewhere out there, but how would I even be aware of it when I don't actually run this particular archetype, at least?</p>
<p>Anyway, I did in fact reveal the most important thing, it's really easy and really hard at the same time: go and beat yourself. How would you beat yourself? If you can beat yourself, you can beat others who try to be yourself. Doing it <em>occasionally</em> is something that probably everyone can feasibly achieve, but doing it <em>consistently</em>, that's, if anything, a Champion's privilege. Feel free to try and do it though, because we always need new Champions to make sure the old Champions aren't fading away at the lack of competition, you know. If you find a way and get to show it while also not losing anything towards non-mirror matchups, congratulations.</p>
<h2>Special Snowflaking as the Easy Way Out</h2>
<p>So if you really <em>are</em> winning your mirror matches consistently while also beating the rest, you are incredibly good or you are incredibly lucky. Probably some of both, because I've never seen (and never will) an excellent player take his Championship completely without getting lucky along the way, you know. Anyway, if you do have a solid plan for beating a copy of yourself when it matters, that's pretty good -- and if you don't, you're basically accepting that your tournament run will literally be determined by luck.</p>
<p>And because of this, personally, I'm a special snowflake. I hate my tournaments be determined by luck exclusively, so I very much prefer to run something different. Mostly some second/third-rate standard shit, because that's already enough to make the natural coin-flip matchup uncommon enough for it to likely not determine my run. I simply know that I'm terrible at this kind of matchup, and my record of actual mirror matches with what I'm indeed using totally is nothing to write home about -- but I face it rarely, and I do get good records against almost everything else.</p>
<p>The magical number in the world of Bo1 Swiss is greater than 75-85%. You can pull it off via confronting mirrors or you can pull it off via avoiding mirrors. You decide. Good luck.</p>
<h2>Bonus: News from America</h2>
<p>Specifically with my chosen example (not that there was much choice to begin with, hahahah), I doubt that I've told you guys much new, just raised awareness at best, nothing more. An actual solution we saw just yesterday was a mindboggling representation of the Kangaskhan/Azumarill/Amoonguss core (you know, might as well just call it "KAA" -- shoutouts to our friends from Japan, haha) mixed into the usual CHALK and friends. It turns out that advancement of the metagame sometimes may just as well mean literal regression -- welcome back to early 2014 in this case, haha. Definitely not telling you that you should all run Azumarill now though, because, you know, a lot of people will anyway, and so it's actually what you are absolutely required to have a plan against. Use it or not use it, but always beat it -- or get beaten and get lost.</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5417353308914830009.post-47725049820141531452015-09-13T18:30:00.001+02:002015-09-13T18:30:34.698+02:00[VG] Landos Verrat: Top 4 Nugget Bridge Invitational Team and Report<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjXrMCx6Ta5L-ZfTZbUTKuCBDPXSxLTJhQxOx7cSq7847fJt7ZrYRUtIoYyOXa71hTkWT-h_EjyFS33VvzPaxe_fSwNN1EX4FYV6C8ubWjLtRDmbJqtV8sANREaHrtn6C4pEPfNDLnWSo/s400/da_tyranitar_by_haleysredcomet-d7sr8f5.jpg" /><br/>
(Artist: <a href="http://haleysredcomet.deviantart.com/art/Tyranitar-471563105" target="_blank">HaleysRedComet</a>)</div>
<p>Hello friends. I guess here's another blog entry from that guy who is so fucking behind, he can still only play "Cybersand". *cough* As it turns out, I in fact ripped off yet another Cybertron lineup and improved it again. And I did some nice work with it, first destroying Battle Spot with almost a 90% win ratio from 1500 to 1900 (the best I ever had!) and then, as the title says, winning a few pocket nuggets with it. I'd say that's totally all right!</p>
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<h2>Team Finding Quest and Other Issues</h2>
<p>I originally wanted to bring something entirely different for the NBI, played around with various ideas on Showdown. I had at least one that actually seemed like it could work, but well, it needed a lot of work in order to really work as well! Work that I didn't feel like putting in during post-Nats depression, then Worlds came around quickly enough and...things have been shaken up by the very obvious, funnily enough. Then I just quickly force-forgot about all those super-fancy and oh so metagame-breaking ideas and decided I'd go for consistency, period. And consistency, in my case, means quicksand. It would be safest to just run some variant of my final Nats team again, and I would be the least likely to fuck up using it, because it's pretty much the only thing I happen to know pretty much everything about.</p>
<p>Anyhow, it's not an archetype without some ever-looming problems -- none is. As I see it, there are two main cogs to make or break some critical differences. The one that I've been mostly set on for months is the Water/Electric problem: you want a bulky Water type in a sand team, but you also don't want to be weak against other bulky Waters. The very obvious answer is Wash Rotom -- it's the only way you can save yourself from the woes of legitimately wanting a seventh team member. While I am still interested in other Water mons (again, I really liked Azumarill, and Milotic is interesting as well just because it's so nigh-invincible on its own), that missing seventh slot I'm sure would annoy me to no end, so...let's worry about that whenever, haha. Rotom it is, and it most definitely makes a lot of sense against Landorus/Heatran/Thundurus combinations while not being as overly reactive as that slow and vulnerable Gastrodon without any Speed control to help it.</p>
<p>The other problem is the Ground type. Excadrill is awesome, I have no reason to change my opinion here. But then Incarnate Landorus of all things appeared, and he has a bunch of nifty things that Excadrill can't really do. We start with Excadrill not exactly being safe against Kangaskhan without both of Tyranitar and Amoonguss. And then the probably worst thing is Charizard and friends. Excadrill, just like Tyranitar, is doing absolutely nothing to get around Wide Guard, and that means trouble. (Additionally, Excadrill is also pretty bad against Rhydon/Rhyperior, whereas Landorus is really good against them.) Last but not least, if we look at the Excadrill vs. Therian Landorus matchup, then the only Landorus I actually like to bring Excadrill against is the one with Choice Scarf. Assault Vest, Life Orb etc. not so much -- the Sand Rush Speed advantage isn't worth as much because Salamence works just fine for outrunning those, and when I can't even lock them into Rock Slides, yeah, Excadrill suddenly is pretty risky. Following the trend from Worlds, I expected Scarf Landorus to not be too common in the NBI, and then this Hidden Power Ice special Landorus would be pretty strong at beating the others. As that tourney played out, though... I only picked Landorus a single game, and then this plan went right out of the window again thanks to unexpected details about the opposing team. Whatever! At least I now can say that I legitimately tried Landorus.</p>
<p>And now enjoy this team in detail. It's so fun to play and pretty strong at the same time, I love it.</p>
<h2>The Team</h2>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Landesverrat (Landorus) @ Life Orb<br/>
Ability: Sand Force<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe<br/>
Timid Nature<br/>
IVs: 22 HP / 24 Atk / 24 Def<br/>
- Earth Power<br/>
- Stone Edge<br/>
- Hidden Power [Ice]<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Ripped this one straight from the cutest and whitest anime girl ever, just like Cybertron did for his Nats -- only I kept the good Item because I didn't need it somewhere else. Ground and Rock moves as single-target are usually rare and people will always try to cover those weaknesses with Wide Guard, and then it's fairly obvious what a Landorus like this does to them. It's a trick that's actually as old as 2013, just matters somewhat more nowadays because Aegislash and Charizard are so big threats.</p>
<p>Special shoutouts to imperfect IVs, bust over flawless I choose you etc. Indeed, I did soft-reset the thing instead of just asking the next best hacker on Twitter to copy me a perfect one, because I just really prefer to use my own mons as long as I can. I get to change nicknames to my heart's content, and well, they're my own!</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">L.A.★STAR (Amoonguss) (F) @ Rocky Helmet<br/>
Ability: Regenerator<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
Shiny: Yes<br/>
EVs: 140 HP / 172 Def / 196 SpD<br/>
Sassy Nature<br/>
IVs: 0 Atk / 4 Spe<br/>
- Giga Drain<br/>
- Spore<br/>
- Rage Powder<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>New Amoonguss this time, now more specially defensive. Without the double Steel, Hyper Voice Fairies clearly become a tougher matchup, and in order to not be totally reliant on Wide Guard when I can't just remove them before they move, it makes sense to be interested in having a good Amoonguss against them as well. Hence, this one is made to survive Mega Gardevoir's Psychic (hoping it doesn't randomly have Psyshock instead because that will still be a roll *cough*) and then hopefully get some Spore off.</p>
<p>I am probably the unluckiest person alive with shiny IV breeding -- the only 5IV shiny mons I got before were ones that needed all 6 stats instead of just 5, simply doesn't get trollier than that. But then, in the one session where I bred my first Sassy shrooms, I randomly got this nice one here in beautiful purple. The 0 Attack is very fucking nice and the low Speed is very good as well -- it's actually flawed because it would tie with Iron Ball Politoed, but well, I can't remember if I ever saw that again after 2013... And finally, the nickname. What a meme. A thing you can do is: collect all the starting letters of this team's mons and arrange them nicely. That being said, screw CHALK and praise STAR. Salamence/Tyranitar/Amoonguss/Rotom is <em>the</em> core, guys.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">HymnsOfLoss (Rotom-Wash) @ Sitrus Berry<br/>
Ability: Levitate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 244 HP / 28 Def / 60 SpA / 28 SpD / 148 Spe<br/>
Calm Nature<br/>
IVs: 3 Atk<br/>
- Thunderbolt<br/>
- Hydro Pump<br/>
- Electroweb<br/>
- Will-O-Wisp</p>
<p>The Lajo. I ripped this Rotom straight from Lajo's Nats team, only made it faster than Tyranitar. It's as standard and boring as it gets for the most part, except for, well, the Electroweb! During the period of trying to find a new archetype to like, I naturally also played Lajo's team a bit, and the Electroweb Rotom was the one part of it that was really inspiring. It's the perfect fit for a team that mostly spams Hyper Voice and Rock Slide. And it's even more of a fit after Excadrill is gone and basically everything is caught in some stupid middling Speed. It will forever be annoying that it can't hit Ground types like Icy Wind though...but on the other hand, the STAB damage does matter more than you'd think. I'm not joking when I tell you that Electroweb sometimes happens to be surprisingly useful when trying to get around redirection.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">CosmosCharge (Salamence) (M) @ Salamencite<br/>
Ability: Intimidate<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe<br/>
Naive Nature<br/>
- Hyper Voice<br/>
- Double-Edge<br/>
- Flamethrower<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Same as before.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">Wings?Horns? (Tyranitar) (M) @ Lum Berry<br/>
Ability: Sand Stream<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe<br/>
Jolly Nature<br/>
- Rock Slide<br/>
- Assurance<br/>
- Superpower<br/>
- Protect</p>
<p>Again same as before. Note how it's slower than Rotom, so even plays like Electroweb + Assurance are most definitely a thing.</p>
<p style="font-family:monospace;">I Punish (Aegislash) (M) @ Leftovers<br/>
Ability: Stance Change<br/>
Level: 50<br/>
EVs: 252 HP / 12 Def / 76 SpA / 100 SpD / 68 Spe<br/>
Modest Nature<br/>
IVs: 6 Atk<br/>
- Shadow Ball<br/>
- Wide Guard<br/>
- Substitute<br/>
- King's Shield</p>
<p>And this one also unchanged. I did reverse-engineer the EV spread that I had sold as somewhat random though. I kinda lied, it's not random at all. It's probably one of the greatest spreads I ever made. It's basically an Aegislash that does Aegislash things: it doesn't go down easily. I have a full page of interesting calcs in my notes, but revealing them here...would be boring, sorry. Go and build your own, it's a rewarding thing to do. ツ (Well, someone please get BIDC to explain his freaking Relaxed Aegislash. I'd be willing to trade my information for exactly that information, haha.)</p>
<h2>The Tournament</h2>
<h3>Top 64: Bye</h3>
<p>With my neat amount of 111 NP and as 9th seed, I was honored to skip the first round of the whole thing. I ask you again: <em>what is 70</em>? ツ</p>
<p>Other than that, battle replays. Since my run lasted 10 games flat and that's exactly what the game lets us upload, I just uploaded them all because why not. Top 8 should be up on Nugget Bridge's YouTube eventually and I may or may not edit them in, but you know, if you don't want to wait for that, I'm leaving the codes anyway.</p>
<h3>Top 32: vs. Chuppa</h3>
<p>Kangaskhan / Landorus-T / Amoonguss / Thundurus-I / Cresselia / Arcanine</p>
<p>Game 1: XTJW-WWWW-WW2Z-PP7T<br/>
Game 2: ZSVW-WWWW-WW2Z-PP8T</p>
<p>He had a similar idea of running Landorus, and that cost me my Salamence right in the first turn of the first game. Fun times... But with this surprise out of the way so early, I didn't lose too much from it. Tyranitar happened to be pretty strong against everyone except the first two listed, and Landorus being unable to threaten an OHKO was helpful as well. Thus, I brought the first game back with it and second game started with a 4-2 lead thanks to it. The free entry of the Kangaskhan/Amoonguss duo afterwards was a potential problem though, and in fact almost made the comeback -- if it weren't for the surprise Electroweb to ignore Rage Powder and deliver the last chip of damage necessary to win!</p>
<h3>Top 16: vs. EmbC</h3>
<p>Mienshao / Volcarona / Thundurus-T / Metagross / Hydreigon / Gastrodon</p>
<p>Game 1: EGHG-WWWW-WW2Z-PP9U<br/>
Game 2: FXFG-WWWW-WW2Z-PPB9</p>
<p>Oh, look at that traitor who betrayed Tyranitar all year! ツ Well, I wasn't exactly happy at facing that matchup without my Excadrill, but you know, it is what it is. Worst case, I would lose from some really fun games, because games against him are always a treat no matter what. It definitely looked like I'd lose game 1, it seemed like he brought the perfect four against mine -- only thing that saved me were a few very risky plays that ended up working out. That's also how game 2 started, where I was leading with Rotom/Tyranitar against Metagross/Hydreigon -- what a terrible lead! Well, because my mind was trapped in that "base 70 Speed" concept, I assumed that Metagross would be the slowest mon on the field and tried to nail it with Electroweb + Assurance -- worst case I'd be getting Hydreigon to -1 Speed. I got it right in the sense that he really didn't go for the Protect ME, but...naturally it was Jolly and thus faster! And then he doubled into Rotom with Dark Pulse and Zen Headbutt, got no flinch and ultimately a dead Metagross. That was close as hell and could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Fortunately enough it didn't, and so it completely broke his neck instead of mine.</p>
<p>I was happy with finally leaving a Nugget Bridge Invitational on a positive record. On to the next round!</p>
<h3>Top 8: vs. MajorBowman</h3>
<p>Escavalier / Virizion / Swampert / Arcanine / Thundurus-I / Cresselia</p>
<p>Game 1: 6N9W-WWWW-WW2Z-PPCP<br/>
Game 2: H6HW-WWWW-WW2Z-PPDU<br/>
Game 3: GJ8G-WWWW-WW2Z-PPEZ</p>
<p>Ugh, what a matchup. I knew right from the start that I'd likely have to play like a demigod in order to get past this. And this is essentially how I approached game 1: went for a risky opening in order to get an early lead and hopefully carry it home, so that it maybe fucks him up psychologically in the games after, who knows. Totally didn't work like that though, because he managed to pull back this game on me not clicking Wide Guard in fear of Swampert's Ice Punch, where Wide Guard would have actually locked me up the game. My hopes of getting through this grew slim. However, if anything, game 2 raised them up again, as he for some reason didn't bring the Virizion this time so that Rotom and Tyranitar had no problem controlling the field from start to end, even around missing multiple inaccurate attacks on that pesky Thundurus. It was the most obvious thing in the world that Virizion would come back eventually, and it's well protected by its partners.</p>
<p>And then we had this third game, which was something else entirely. I tried to donk the Cresselia that he now brought for the first time immediately, didn't work out just by a sliver of health, and the got the full 4 turns of Trick Room without a dead slot in any of them as a reward. It got even worse as he nailed my Salamence switch-in with that Ice Punch into the Rotom slot -- excellent play from him and now my endgame was completely dead, too! The fighting chance I then had left was basically to perfectly read his every turn remaining, which I in fact did for the most part -- except for the one when Trick Room expired. I should have seen the switch into Virizion coming and nail that with my second Electroweb usage of the night, and then all could have been fine. But as it was, my Salamence was dead and thus Virizion outsped everyone and threatened most. Aegislash as the most important mon in the matchup just had to go the distance for me, and with some nice little big help from the RNG, it did!</p>
<h3>Top 4: vs. Shinon64</h3>
<p>Kangaskhan / Azumarill / Landorus-T / Thundurus-I / Amoonguss / Heatran</p>
<p>Game 1: EHMW-WWWW-WW2Z-PPGW<br/>
Game 2: 8UTW-WWWW-WW2Z-PPH5<br/>
Game 3: 4C3G-WWWW-WW2Z-PPHS</p>
<p>Remember how it still saddens me to never have faced a Japanese player at Worlds? Turns out that I at least can have a Bo3 with a lot on the line against one of them online. Fair enough. And funnily enough, it actually wasn't my first time playing this specific person -- we already had an encounter during a NB Live, where he kinda completely outplayed me with some fun Trick Room team and I literally stole that away from him, getting the dreaded Rock Slide double flinch in to prevent it from going up a second time. He's one of the best Trainers I ever played, that's for certain. This one would be pretty hard.</p>
<p>Game 1 was a complete trainwreck for me, glad we do have Bo3 to alleviate this. His Kang was clearly the MVP here, catching me off guard twice by having first Ice Punch and then also still Low Kick in the same moveset. From there, it was clear that my Landorus would be completely useless throughout the entire tournament, go figure. And Aegislash would again be really important, since Kang likely was unable to touch it, Landorus was our most beloved Choice Scarf set and Heatran had no single-target Fire move. Thus, I went into the second game with a much better plan, and, adding in a hard read or two, it worked out perfectly. Naturally he tried to get some momentum back with Thundurus Swagger magic, but I can't deny my schadenfreude at seeing that godforsaken move miss not once but twice, hahaha! At the end, the trainwreck was completely returned, at two 4-1 forfeits each.</p>
<p>All right, that was good. Even if I'd lose now, I'd lose with honor and be happy with my run regardless. I still wanted to win though! My idea of doing it was picking exactly the same again, and that...went horribly wrong, and it's quite ironic how it happened. I had told people all the time that one little detail I really liked about sand was the ability to discover Safety Goggles without powdering right into them. Just remembering exactly that might have saved me this match. Instead, I actually noticed Thundurus's Item at no point in the match, only realized it wasn't Life Orb but didn't even think of Sitrus possibly being on Azumarill and stuff. Anyway, I just fucked up big time by simply not noticing Thundurus's lack of interaction with the weather. Then I predicted him not Taunting Amoonguss on that one turn amazingly right in game 3 -- only to, boom, Spore straight into Safety Goggles and also staring down the Heatran behind a Substitute. RIP me, it's been nice! Why do I always fuck things up when it matters, it's a fucking curse... Well all right, after that most dreadful turn of events, I decided to still let him work hard for this victory, because he really should. I drew out this game as long as I feasibly could to maybe tempt him into a big mistake or get incredibly lucky, but it didn't happen, and I finally threw in the towel as Aegislash was left alone but still required a switch on his end in order to actually go down. Many thanks for this match and congratulations on beasting it all, my friend.</p>
<p>As soon as that Amoonguss catastrophe happened, I knew I should have brought Rotom, and I likely would have if I had known about the Safety Goggles. Also, I was somewhat afraid of his own Amoonguss, which tempted me into not using it. Add to that the readily available possibility of his genies completely bullshitting it with Swagger and Rock Slide -- not like we all haven't seen it happen before, haha -- and Kang would be slightly problematic as well without Amoonguss to help me, assuming Return or Double-Edge in the last slot. All hail Thundurus/HALK/Water, I guess. This archetype has worst-case 50-50 matchups against almost everything, just like my own beloved quicksand. I can only praise the consistency.</p>
<p>Another part of the irony is Safety Goggles Thundurus himself. I was legitimately calling that one being possibly huge in the late season as soon as we knew the format of 2015. Look how painfully right I was...</p>Dreykopffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983772295706693515noreply@blogger.com0