Recently in Tournaments

By s_aman. Art by Zracknel, Seaco, Lutra, and Bummer

Hey, PokéManiacs and their female versions! In this article, I will go over what has been recently going on in the Tournaments section of Smogon. Enjoy.

Smogon Tour 19

Smogon Tour is one of the most prestigious and popular tournaments on Smogon. It is held twice a year, and the Smogon Tour trophy is one of the most sought after trophies in competitive battling.

Week 1 [ORAS OU #1]

Winner: ben gay (finals)

The inaugural tour of this season, hosted by Funkasaurus, saw a huge turnout with 256 sign ups. Bloo, ben gay, xtra$hine, and Tamahome made it to the semifinals. The first semifinal match was between ben gay and Tamahome. ben gay beat Tamahome after securing a strong lead in the early-game. You can watch the replay here. In the other semifinal game, xtra$hine was able to KO Bloo's Metagross early game with his Choice Band Azumarill and Rocky Helmet Garchomp's recoil damage, and then Baton Pass a Speed Boost to Kyurem-B, thus pretty much sealing the game in his favour. That replay can be found here. In the finals, xtra$hine was able to set up multiple layers of hazards on ben gay's side early on. However, his Garchomp was severely damaged in the process, courtesy of an Ice Beam from ben gay's Clefable, thus making ben's Talonflame seemingly a huge threat, especially after ben removed hazards with his Tentacruel. However, just when it seemed like ben gay was going to sweep with Talonflame, xtra$hine revealed Choice Scarf Stone Edge Bisharp. However, Stone Edge, known worldwide to miss when you need it the most, as usual missed and Bisharp was burned; ben gay set up a Swords Dance with his Mega Scizor, winning the first tour of this season. You can watch the replay of the final battle here.

Week 1 [ORAS OU #2]

Winner: NightFox (finals)

Hosted by FireMage, this tour again saw a turnout of 256 participants. Nightfox, Hec, Kiyo, and Skillinjah reached the semifinals. In the first semifinal game, hec was able to set up multiple hazards on Kiyo's side with his Scolipede and Landorus-T. With some bull's-eye predictions and an unexpected Explosion from Landorus-T, hec never really lost momentum in the match and won it convincingly. The replay for this battle is located here. In the second semifinal match-up, skillinjah's Hippowdon seemed like it could check more than half of Nightfox's team. However, Nightfox was able to hugely cripple it, thanks to a Grass Knot critical hit from Mega Metagross. Now, Skillinjah had to play extremely carefully around Nightfox's Garchomp, which was revealed to be a specially-based mixed attacker with Stealth Rock. It also allowed Nightfox to freely spam Shadow Ball with his Raikou, weakening Skillinjah's Ferrothorn early mid-game, and sweep late-game. You can watch the replay here. In the final game, Nightfox brought a team pretty similar to his semifinal team. Nightfox's Landorus-T looked like a big threat to hec's team, especially if it were a Choice Scarf variant, which most of them are. It was revealed to indeed be a Choice Scarf variant and swept late-game to win the game for Nightfox. You can watch the replay of this game here.

Week 1 [ORAS OU #3]

Winner: KratosMana (finals)

Zebraiken hosted the third and final tour of the inaugural week of this season. KratosMana, Ojama, Twin Citiez and Alloy reached the semifinal. In the first semifinal match, Ojama could not break past KratosMana's stall team, which featured some innovative sets such as parashuffling Mega Latias and Calm Mind Reuniclus, so he forfeited. You can watch the replay of this game here. In the second semifinal match, Twin Citiez's Hippowdon missed a Toxic on Alloy's Kyurem-B mid-game, which came back to bite him later on. Twin Citiez had set up his Mega Charizard-X for a Dragon Dance sweep. However, instead of Roosting on Scizor, he KOed it with Flare Blitz. That recoil coupled with recoil from KOing Clefable took it down. Alloy's Kyurem-B lived a Focus Blast from Tornadus-T with a very little amount of HP and spammed Roost to recover. This is where the Toxic miss hurt Twin Citiez and took the game away from him. You can find the full replay here. In the final matchup, Alloy put early pressure on KratosMana by setting up a Tail Glow with Manaphy, which looked like a huge threat. Basically, every time Manaphy came in, KratosMana had to play carefully. A Scald burn on Ferrothorn did not help either. KratosMana managed to set up two Dragon Dances with his Mega Altaria, but it was burned by Talonflame and then revenged by Tyranitar, which was almost KOed in the process along with Talonflame. However, Alloy again set up a Tail Glow with Manaphy, but it was weakened by a Knock Off from Mew. Then KratosMana decided to sack Hippowdon in order to bring Talonflame in to revenge Manaphy, and the Smogtours lobby chat was flooded with "choke" comments, which only got worse when he sacked Talonflame to burn Landorus-T. However, Alloy's last two Pokemon were unable to break past Mew and those "choked" changed into "congrats". You can watch the replay here.

Official Doubles Winter Seasonal

Round 4 Highlight: BLINGAS vs. Tricking

This is the first of the four major seasonals in the "new and improved Doubles Circuit" for 2015. The changes made include a power ranking, highlight matches getting streamed live on Smogon Twitch with commentary from Doubles veterans, and a cash prize to the winner of each tournament. You can watch those streams for the first three rounds here, here, and here. The first one is piccolo vs finally, won by finally. The second features McMeghan vs shrop05, won by McMeghan 2-1, with some nice comebacks. The third game features aim vs Laga, which aim won 2-1; he lost game 1 but made a comeback to win the set. This tournament is currently in round 4 and the highlight match of this round is between BLINGAS and Tricking. Be sure to follow this thread to find out when they play to make sure that you don't miss the stream. Some other interesting match-ups this round are Stratos vs Tsunami, Alf' vs Mizuhime, Lord Alphose vs Blarajan, and Lohgock vs zdrup15.

RBY OU World Championship

Finalists: Mael, Tiba, ALLALA, MetalGros$$

This tournament, hosted by user Lutra, is a standard RBY OU tournament which aims to find the best RBY player of the year. The first three rounds consisted of best-of-3 matches; however, due to the amount of luck involved in RBY, the fourth and fifth rounds were made double-round-robin, while the semifinals and the finals will be best-of-5 matches. The top 8 consisted of MetalGro$$, M Dragon, Ortheore and Mael in group 1, and Master Tim, Tiba, Agammemnon and ALLALA in group 2. Mael topped group 1 with a 4-2 record followed by Metal Gro$$, who originally qualified due to an activity win against M Dragon, as they both had a 2-2 record, but won outright after an extension was granted. ALLALA was the first person to qualify from group 2 with a 4-2 record. The second qualifier from group 2 was Tiba, who beat Mister Tim in a tiebreaker. The semifinals match-ups are Mael vs Tiba and ALLALA vs MetalGro$$. You can follow the action here.

Random Pokémon Tournament

Winner: atomicllamas

In this tournament, players were given 6 random Pokémon, from the pool of all non-Uber fully-evolved Pok´mon, by the host, Oglemi. Species Clause did not apply in this tour and people could get multiple Pokémon of the same species. atomicllamas and hard contested the final round. hard was unable to break past atomicllamas' bulky Fighting-types, Machamp and Conkeldurr, and forfeited, thus giving atomicllamas the win. You can watch the replay here.

All Stars Tournament

Winner: kloshitt

This tournament was hosted by user X5Dragon. In All Stars Tournament, players had to make teams consisting of 1 OU/BL Pokémon, 2 UU/BL2 Pokémon, 2 RU/BL3 Pokémon, and 1 NU Pokémon. This tested their ability to teambuild and account for a large amount of threats, adapt quickly to a metagame, and knowledge of different metagames. Whitequeen and kloshitt reached the final round. kloshitt beat Whitequeen to win the tournament with the help of some luck and a very good match-up, as well as some solid teambuilding. You can watch the replay here.

Some Other Tournaments

The Level 1 Tournament is in semifinals. It required the players to pay special attention to EV spreads while teambuilding. Theriouhh, Metaphysical, Tricking, and Zebraiken are in semifinals. You can follow this tourney here. Balanced Hackmons Tournament ended recently, with yoman5 beating Fran17 by a 2-1 margin. You can watch the replays here, here, and here. Frizy defeated Lyconic in the finals of First Blood Tournament, in which the player who loses a Pokémon first loses. c0mp won the recently concluded XY PU tournament, beating Mael and Jefozz in the finals.

Okay, ladies and gentleman! Hope you enjoyed this article. Hop onto the Tournaments forum and enjoy this game. Until next time!