So since the PS tour has finished and I had a lot of fun I want to get into BSS for sure and hopefully do well in some later tours since my first was a success in my eyes. I thought it would be cool to do a kind of report thingy where I put all the teams I used and kind of discuss my thoughts on the sets and stuff. This may also end up being helpful for other new users like me since before this tour I'd literally played about 10 or so games in testing during BSPL but managed to do ok.
DISCLAIMER: I built none of these teams and just want to discuss where I thought I had issues and other things. A few came from Nouthuca and others from the old samples thread. I also used Jhons team once and one of mishimonos teams. Ill link to the RMT for jhons team and just a pastebin of the other teams.
R1 vs Kanon90 (2-1)
So I had no idea what to expect going into the tour and thought I'd just see how far I could get on the 3 samples I had in my builder and Jhons team. I'd played a few games on the ladder to try and get used to the samples but ended up not being able to get past 1100 elo so wasnt expecting much.
G1 (Team used) LOSS
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VS.
Ended up getting a direct mirror match g1 which wasnt ideal. I picked Hydreigon and Thund-T as my receivers since I felt that Blaziken covered Bulu well enough that my others could focus on the rest of the team. T1 I expected either a protect or flare blitz (since I was scared of that myself) and so I flare blitzed and ended up taking a HJK. Lost the next speed tie and then blaziken ran through me. I would definitely have brought fini over hydreigon could i do it again since it deals with blaziken and hydreigon well while thund and bulu are covered well. I also felt like I couldve played the blaziken mirror better by protecting t1 as an all-round safe play.
G2 (Team used) WIN
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VS.
Went with a sample I had been most comfortable with in the past and I really liked Mega venusaur in BSS because its super bulky and checks the tapus well. Tran was a natural pick to have a zard switchin and Koko as a more offensive check to zard and a way to reliably keep suicune low. Ended up being really scared of charizard after scouting for the focus blast and got a couple of neat misses which allowed me to keep tran around for hippowdon and sub z curse mimikyu really caused me problems but ended up being able to get a 3v1 vs hippowdon.
G3 (Team used) WIN
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VS.
So i knew i wanted to use something that had a good matchup vs jhons team since he won with it g1. this sample was p solid with scarf chomp as a lead to outspeed blaziken at +1 which worked perfectly. Inferno overdrive flame charge tran is very cool too and outspeeding thund t saved me a lot of trouble when facing fini since gar doesnt have sludge bomb.
R2 vs Moose And Goose (2-0)
Caught moose and goose literally 5 mins after the round was posted and saw he was known in the ps room so knew i would have to be careful. i immediately decided id use the scarf chomp sample i used last round in g2 since i really liked it and just chose another team to use g1 i had in my builder. once again though i had no idea what to expect.
G1 (Team used)
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VS.
The first time i really had a gameplan, my aim was to remove aegislash with thund t and gliscor and then set up a shell smash on lapras to win. i still need to work on the execution though as i ended up making stuff hard for myself by being scared to throw my gigavolt havoc into a kings shield and then needing to make a play with gliscor vs zapdos which ended up working well. cloyster ended up cleaning up by way of getting 2 5 hits on aegislash with icicle spear anyway.
G2 (Team used)
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VS.
This was my first time playing stall so i was caught off guard by sets like pursuit muk-a and guillotine gliscor (which thankfully missed) but otherwise i liked the look of my matchup here, since i could trap/ko chansey with gar then go to work with toxic heatran and np thund t. muks pursuit thankfully didnt do enough to gar to kill it after rocks so i ended up trapping the chansey on a toxic and winning. but it really opened my eyes to stall being a thing in bss.
R3 vs Dogknees (2-0)
I was scared going into this set because dogknees said he needed time to prep for me and chemcoop had told me that he actually plays bss so i didnt expect much. ended up winning quite comfortably with a good matchup g2. mishi had also passed me some teams which i wanted to try out. It was at this point in the tour too that I decided to go onto Nouthuca and get a couple of teams since the japanese teams had done me well up until this point.
G1 (Team used)
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VS.
From preview I didnt feel too uncomfortable since I knew that I had something for everything on his team. ferro seemed like a bit of a pain since i had to get celesteela in on a move that wasnt leech seed to sub up but it ended up not coming which was nice. taking out blaziken on an overpredict was big too as it meant i had hippo at full health for zapdos later in the game and celesteela was a lot safer. mimikyu was able to take down fini with curse/twinkle tackle and then curse + leech seed + sand was enough to stall out the zapdos in the end game.
G2 (
Team used, thanks Mishi)
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VS.
This game ended up being over very quickly since scarf lele caught dogknees off guard and was able to just take pretty much 2 kos. I picked zard x and thund t to deal with scizor and gyarados which were the 2 biggest threats imo. i had been told fightinium z thundurus was one of the best mons in the meta and wanted to try it out but didnt get to. i also didnt know scarf koko was a thing so it was scary to see it move before lele but after calcing i dont think wild charge ohkod anyway.
R4 vs byronthewellwell (3-0)
I had seen the name in high rounds of other tournaments so was scared to play but it was made easier by that fact that he used pretty much the same teams throughout the tour so i was able to prep effectively. It was at this point too that I realised i really liked the fini/p2 defensive style of team and tried to find teams that fit that mold.
G1 (Team used)
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VS.
Byronthewellwell had use the same eeveepass team in every g1 up to this point so i felt comfortable bring this team with haze cm fini. my gameplan was to ko whimsi with latias so that fini could come in taunt free and haze. cm espeon surprised me and meant i wasted my waterium z but when i was able to get a boost ahead i knew i had the game. celesteela was in the back because it seemed to wall most of his team even after a pass.
G2 (Team used)
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VS.
From preview i knew i wanted to get rocks up and then garchomp would put a lot of work in with tran beating serp and mimikyu, and gengar trapping kang. i didnt end up needing gar but i felt happy with how i played this, as i never felt uncomfortable during the game. heatran having flame charge helped here since it meant i could toxic gyarados to make sure nothing funny happened at the end of the game.
G3 (Team used)
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VS.
This team was actually a sample that i had in my builder so it made the matchup considerably easier, as shown when i was able to switch thundurus in on the gigavolt havoc. once again i didnt need my hippowdon but it was there for the possible mega ttar/aegislash and made my matchup very nice. leading here was a bit of a pain because if i led with thund vs mtar or hippo vs primarina i was in trouble. i ended up leading with thund because i felt it was easier to switch hippo in on ttar than it was thund on primarina, and it worked out well.
Finals vs Megazard (0-3)
I was kind of glad megazard beat solerme as i did not want to have to face the setup based teams that solerme had been bringing and felt that as long as i brought solid teams i would have a chance of winning. i got a few test games before the series to get used to my teams. i wasnt really nervous going into the set since i didnt expect to be here in the first place.
G1 (Team used)
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VS.
I started off with what i was told was a standard team as i wanted to use koko to have a solid answer to opposing breloom since id seen megazard use it. I straight up made the wrong choice bringing scarf lele over mimikyu here, and it end up going horribly wrong when i got swept by mence after it ate the ice punch from gross. i didnt account in my calcs for the fact that mence could be bulkier, which showed my inexperience in the tier.
G2 (Team used)
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VS.
This was the first game that i really felt like my matchup was tough and i didnt know what to do. I brought p2 just because its a good overall bulky mon and could check garchomp well, landorus was faster than thundurus so i could try and catch it with a rock tomb on a switch, and magnezone could trap celesteela and try and get me some momentum sub getting a sub up. as it happened, i let landorus get burnt and then misplayed by using eq on the turn after gar protected on te switch to thundurus. while the matchup was tough i really felt like i could have played better in this game.
G3 (Team used)
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VS.
Once again i struggled with what to bring and ended up getting beaten by LO toxic mamoswine, so p2 wasnt a check to it. I didnt bring volcarona even though there was a ferrothorn since i didnt want to be walled by charizard and let it set up since i wasnt bringing fini and it was a huge threat. I dont think i could have done much differently here except maybe bring tapu fini after all since i needed a better check to mamoswine and blocking toxic would have been nice.
So overall I learnt a lot from this tour and although it was a shame to come so close i was outclassed in the final and was happy to have even got there in the first place. i really like BSS and want to play more so that I can feel confident enough to build my own teams and hopefully use them in future tours and on cart too. Thanks to those who helped me test/translate/check teams in the later rounds it really helped.