Premier League Spotlight: LCPL

Art by h_n_g_m_n.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Premier League Coverage! Premier Leagues have long been one of the most popular tournament formats on Smogon because they combine the rush of bidding with the collaborative atmosphere of team play. The Smogon Premier League is the largest and most prestigious of such tournaments, but many communities on Smogon have Premier Leagues of their own. Today, we will be covering the Little Cup Premier League.

Introduction to LCPL

The sixth edition of the Little Cup Premier League, or LCPL for short, began shortly after the conclusion of SPL, and this year it was hosted by Coconut. To many Little Cup players, this is one of the most important tournaments of the year, and most work hard to advertise themselves to be picked up by one of the managers.

Similar to other Premier Leagues, each of the managers got 100k points to spend in a live auction to purchase players and were given the opportunity to draft themselves for 10k points. In addition, each of the managers picked one assistant manager, for which the prices were voted on by the other managers. After the auction, the 8 teams that were formed played each other in a round robin format over the course of 8 weeks in a series of 8 matches each. All of these matches would be played in one of the four official Little Cup formats, and each series consisted of 4 SM LC, 2 XY LC, 1 BW LC, and 1 DPP LC games. After the round robin concluded, the top 4 teams would move on to the semifinals and compete for the finals.

Auction

During the auction, it became very clear that different coaches went into this with very different plans. Jac of the Snivy Subterfuge decided to purchase a lot of cheap players, bringing him to a roster of a staggering 17 players. On the other hand, OP of the Lit af Litleos bought only 10 players, giving him the smallest roster, but spent 17k each on three different players, namely GOAO, ggggd, and Zebraiken, giving him a small but very strong team.

Also notable was the difference in types of players that were bought: Corporal Levi of The Belchsprouts spent many of his points on players that are well known in the LC community but mostly unknown outside of it, such as Jox, Serene's Grace, and Kaboom. Meanwhile, Sken of the Stunting Stunkies decided to focus on players that were well known in the tournament community, but didn't necessarily play a lot of LC, such as TDK, Rumor, and obii.

Early Weeks

In the first few weeks, it seemed like the strategy OP had used in the draft was working out; two of his expensive players started off well, with GOAO going 2-1 and ggggd going 3-0, while his decision to draft himself gave them another 3 wins, allowing the Lit af Litleos to pick up two wins and a tie, pushing them to first place. A team that had employed a similar strategy during the auction, Nineage's The Crystal Onix, was also doing well for themselves, with both Heysup and tko picking up 3-0 records while Ice Tea went 2-1, allowing them to pick up a win and two ties. In addition, Shrug's Guerilla Goletts got good results, taking wins over both the Belchsprouts and the Stunting Stunkies while only losing to The Crystal Onix. Especially Dundies, Brazilian Army, and Eternal Spirit were showing how good they were, as they picked up 2-1, 2-0, and 3-0 records respectively.

Meanwhile, macle's Gonefroggin.com Froakies weren't doing so well, with many of their players failing to pick up the pace to take the wins necessary to win a series, causing them to drop two series and tie another, putting them in the last spot. Similarly, Corporal Levi's Belchsprouts were not doing well for themselves, as they even suffered losses in games in which they were favored, such as Star losing to PD and TheFenderStory losing to Drew. The latter game was especially notable, as a bug, which is now known as the Mathematical Impossibility among the LC community, caused TheFenderStory's Carvanha to deal significantly less damage than normal to miss out on a KO onto Drew's Gligar, causing Carvanha to go down and placing Drew at a significant advantage. In total, the Belchsprouts ended up losing one series and tying the other two.

As is expected of a Premier League, these first few weeks allowed especially the newest metagame, SM LC, to grow a significant amount. Most notable were the increased usage of Onix, Croagunk, and Sticky Web. Onix serves as LC's most consistent answer to the tiers Flying-types, like Vullaby and Doduo, which was something that was severely needed. Specifically, its Eviolite Weak Armor set was capable of taking any hit from either of the Flying-types and then outspeed thanks to the ability, making it very threatening to these Pokémon and earning it its place as one of the most used Pokémon in LCPL. Croagunk rose to the ranks of LC's best Fighting-types, Mienfoo and Timburr, for its Nasty Plot set, which was quickly gaining a lot of popularity, as it was capable of soft checking opposing Fighting-types, functioning as a wincon, and utilizing its priority in Vacuum Wave, giving its team important role compression. In addition, its mixed utility set was also by no means bad, which gave it a good level of versatility and made it more and more popular. Sticky Web had already been rising in popularity, but the early weeks of LCPL significantly boosted this. The archetype utilized the incredibly reliable setter of Surskit, oftentimes its increasingly popular Choice Scarf set, in order to protect the incredibly powerful Life Orb Abra from opposing Choice Scarf users by slowing them down. This allowed Abra to dismantle the many unprepared teams, as even most Alolan Grimers, which were commonly seen as its best counters, went down to two Hidden Power Grounds. Web teams also utilized either Pumpkaboo-XL or Frillish as a spinblocker, which were capable of preventing even the best Rapid Spin user, Staryu, from removing the entry hazard. Pawniard and Onix were also very common on Web teams, with both of them being able to check the Flying-types that are immune to the hazard, while Pawniard also scares opponents out of using the already rare Defog with its Defiant ability. Lastly, Web teams often utilized a secondary sweeper, most commonly Croagunk, in order to more effectively pressure the opponent's team.

Late Weeks

During midseason, teams were allowed to use the points they had remaining to purchase extra players in the so-called Midseason Auction. Despite not many teams having enough points leftover to purchase players even at the minimum price of 3k, the few that did picked up some fresh strength; Jac's Snivy Subterfuge bought Alice Kazumi, Nozzle, and Kurukaito; WaterlessMelon's Waterless Wynauts drafted SilentMango; Sken's Stunting Stunkys went with Nudisto; and Nineage's The Crystal Onix got Disjunction.

Right off the bat, the Snivy Subterfuge appeared to many to have gotten much stronger. Both Alice Kazumi and Kurukaito were seen as some of the best undrafted players, and they quickly showed this by going 2-1 and 3-1 respectively. Partially thanks to these two, the Snivies went on to make up for their decent-at-best start of 1-1-1 with three wins and only one loss, pushing them to a third place and thus the playoffs. Surprisingly, Corporal Levi appeared to have gotten The Belchsprouts together during midseason. Players such as Star, Kingler12345, and TheFenderStory started consistently winning their games while relatively cheap players such as Jox, tazz, and Holiday started showing their strength and got excellent records, going 4-2, 4-1, and 4-1 respectively. All of this allowed the Belchsprouts to not drop a single series after midseason and only tie one, giving them the second place and a spot in the playoffs. OP's Lit af Litleos mostly kept up their momentum from the early weeks. Only dropping the first series after midseason, against the Snivy Subterfuge, they managed to ride on the back of miltankmilk and OP himself, who picked up 5-1 and 4-2 records, to take the first spot and thus move on to the semifinals. Nineage's The Crystal Onix were thought to easily clench a playoff spot after a solid start of the season, but things didn't go so easily. Even though Heysup and tko kept up their solid performance, other players started dropping a few games too many, causing the team to only win a single series after midseason. However, the two ties they picked up in addition to that ended up being enough for a fourth place finish, thus allowing them to face the Lit af Litleos in the semifinals.

Not all teams had a good time after midseason though. Shrug's Guerilla Goletts completely lost their pace after a solid start to a season, suffering losses in every series after midseason. Sken's Stunting Stunkies sadly didn't manage to pick up the slack after a disappointing start, losing all but the last week's matches. The Waterless Wynauts of WaterlessMelon didn't have a terrible showing, getting one win and one tie, but it wasn't enough to push them into playoffs after an only decent start. Lastly, macle's Gonefroggin.com Froakies appeared to be making up for a bad start, as they even had a chance to make playoffs until the very last week, since beating the Belchsprouts would put them in the semifinals. Sadly, they ended up losing the series 6-2, placing them sixth.

Metagame development of course also continued. Most notably, the competition it received from the rising Croagunk significantly impacted how common Timburr was, as it went from around 25% usage in weeks 2 and 3 to only around 8% in weeks 6 and 7.

Abra's usage started to fluctuate immensely; its usage peaked early on in week 2, before dropping in weeks 3 and 4, rising again in weeks 5 and 6, and finally dropping again in week 7. This can likely be attributed to the Sticky Web teams that Abra finds itself on being quite matchup based, causing its success and thus popularity to change significantly between weeks depending on the matchups it gets. Of course, Abra doesn't only find itself on these kind of teams, which is why its usage stayed reasonably high even in the weeks where it dropped, getting 30% usage even in weeks 6 and 7.

In a similar case to Abra, Alolan Grimer's usage also fluctuated significantly, from 10% in week 1, to 20% in weeks 3 and 4, and back down to 10% weeks 7 and 8. It's very likely that this was caused by the fluctuating Abra usage, as Alolan Grimer is one of its best counters. As such, more Abra usage usually caused more Alolan Grimer usage in the following week as a response, while less Abra also meant less Alolan Grimer.

Playoffs

And so the playoffs begin. As usual, the first seed from the round robin would face off against the fourth seed, while the seeds two and three also battle it out. This gave us the semifinals of Lit af Litleos vs The Crystal Onix and The Belchsprouts vs Snivy Subterfuge. The first matchup was heavily regarded as one of the most exciting matchups in the entire tournament. Both of these teams had shown their incredible strength during the round robin and both of them had players that were seen as some of the best. The series quickly appeared to sway into The Crystal Onix's favor, with -Tsunami-, Heysup, and FLCL picking up victories over their respective opponents, bringing the TCO to a 3-1 advantage, as miltankmilk had also trumped Disjunction. The Litleos didn't manage to bring this series back quickly, with ict and Nintendi both taking a game, bringing the series to 4-2, thus guaranteeing a tie at least for The Crystal Onix, while the currently undefeated tko still had to play. As it happens, his match vs Zebraiken was the next one that was played, and tko kept up his record and trounced his opponent, bringing the series to 5-2 and placing The Crystal Onix into the finals.

Meanwhile, the Belchsprouts were taking on the Snivy Subterfuge, and the series stayed very close for a while. Tazz and Kingler12345 picked up wins for the Belchsprouts, while tcr and Finchinator did the same for the Snivies, tying the series up at 2-2. But then the series appeared to slide in the Belchsprouts favor, with TheFenderStory picking up a win over Quite Quiet, and Serene's Grace taking his game against ItzViper482, thus guaranteeing a tie at least. Sadly for the Belchsprouts, Alice Kazumi showed her strength once again, taking out Holiday, placing the series at 4-3. The last game to be played was Jox vs Mambo, which was said to be an instant classic. Both of these players had shown to be able to read their opponent very actually while having excellent use of lures to take out threats on the opponents side. In the end, Mambo's utilization of a very niche Pokémon in Choice Scarf Mime Jr. allowed him to beat Jox, tying up the series and forcing a tiebreaker.

In the tiebreaker, we saw three different metagames being played: Kingler12345 would take on Mambo in SM LC, tazz was facing Alice Kazumi in XY LC, and Star matched up with tcr in BW LC. Soon after the start of the tiebreaker, Alice Kazumi showed expert utilization of a Substitute Gastly in order to take out tazz, quickly placing the Snivy Subterfuge ahead. After that, however, it took a while for games to be played, leaving both teams nervous for the continuation of this series as scheduling issues and arguments were placing both teams on edge. Eventually, however, Star utilized an Omanyte to beat tcr in BW LC, tying the series back up and making Kingler12345 vs Mambo the game to decide the finalist. Even though Mambo once again showed that he's not afraid of using niche Pokémon, as he brought a Pineco to his game against Kingler12345, the latter brought a Taunt Mienfoo, thus completely preventing the hazard stack strategy. This, in combination with a bad matchup against Kingler12345's Focus Sash Abra, caused Mambo to suffer a loss in this matchup, placing the Belchsprouts in the finals to take on The Crystal Onix.

The final series appeared to quickly slide in The Crystal Onix's favour, as they picked up a 3-0 lead thanks to rozes, ict, and Heysup picking up wins over Holiday, Confide, and TheFenderStory respectively. However, things were not over. Serene's Grace and Star both managed to get games back for the Belchsprouts, while tko picked up a win for The Crystal Onix (thus keeping his undefeated record), placing the series at 4-2. At this point, a lot of pressure was placed on all four of the remaining players. The first of the last two games played was tazz vs. -Tsunami- in XY LC. Tazz brought a strategy that had not at all been seen in XY LC during LCPL, namely Sun. It appeared to have a good matchup against -Tsunami-'s team, which was based around double Belly Drum with Magby and Zigzagoon and lacked Fletchling, which would allow tazz's Bellsprout to clean up later in the game. However, -Tsunami- managed to keep up the pressure, and after Pawniard switched in on Archen's Defog to get an Attack boost thanks to Defiant, things went south for the Belchsprouts. Though tazz attempted to counterplay it with his own Pawniard, -Tsunami- got two flinches with Iron Head, which opened up the way for Gastly to clean up, giving the win to -Tsunami- and placing the series at 5-2. Despite one more game being left, The Crystal Onix were now guaranteed the win, and were thus crowned the victors of LCPL 6!

Player Experience

Of course, no tournament is complete without the players and managers. So how did they all feel about how this league went? Did their team do well, or did it fall apart early? Was their team atmosphere a positive one where everyone helped each other, or did a lot of fights erupt? Were there any specific players on the teams that to the managers made very notable developments? In order to find the answers to these questions, I gathered one player and/or one manager from every team and asked them to write about how their team experienced this LCPL. Sadly, however, the Guerilla Goletts and Snivy Subterfuge didn't send a response, but all the others did, so without further ado, here are the experiences of the teams, in alphabetical order:

Closing Remarks

With that, this year's LCPL has come to an end. The Crystal Onix were crowned victors this time around, riding on the backs of their managers Nineage and tko, with the latter going completely undefeated with an 8-0 record. Despite there being plenty of arguments and saltiness in this tour, most of the players genuinely enjoyed themselves, as you have been able to read. I personally am already looking forward to LCPL 7, and hope to see you again then!