Favorite Pokemon: Keldeo, competitively speaking at least (idgaf about in game or design, so yea). NU wise, my favorite poke is Tauros.
Most Used Pokemon: The pokemon I use the most in BW NU are probably Misdreavus and Garbodor while I use Mesprit and Mawile the most in ORAS NU.
Most Known For
Disjunction: Why is your name what it is?
Finchinator: My real life last name starts with Finch and as a kid who played baseball, I became "Finchinator" when I stole home in the middle of an important game 5-6 years ago and a random guy on my team came up with the nickname to honor the moment. It stuck with me and people used it a lot in the future and all of a sudden I adopted it as a name for various games I played, including pokemon when I first joined Smogon and PO forums, PO server, and PS.
Disjunction: What's your favorite pokemon type?
Finchinator: Fighting has to be my favorite pokemon type as there are a plethora of dynamic fighting type offensive pokemon in most tiers and I had a phase where I absolutely adored Heracross in BW UU and Keldeo in BW OU and the sentiment still lingers in me to this day.
Disjunction: Do you have a favorite team archetype?
Finchinator: My favorite team archetype varies from tier to tier (I'll go through all the tiers I consider myself competent at). In ORAS NU, my favorite archetype has to be bulky offense or balance because it has the ability to hit hard enough or clean up well enough to deal with stall while it can also check offense to a certain extent, which works out well in my book. In ORAS OU, probably semi-stall or HO because the metagame is sort of backwards and it's hard to cover so many things and still be able to..well win at all, lol. In BW OU, balance is my favorite archetype, but I can and will use pretty much everything. Same for BW OU in BW UU except I lean a bit more offensive here in general, to be honest. In BW NU, I love spikes offense and spikes balanced (Garbodor all the things n_n), but also use various types of bulky-offense, so it's hard to pick one, but I rarely use stall. Finally, I can use anything in DPP, but I can only build balanced and semi-stall well.
Disjunction: How did you come to competitive battling/smogon?
Finchinator: YouTube Let's Player Slowflake ( https://www.youtube.com/user/Slowflake - very good stuff to watch, even if you just listen to his narrations in the background while doing stuff, if you're interested in in game + competitive talk from a past period and he's got some interesting knowledge and opinions I suppose) was someone who I got into watching after school when I went to my grandparent's house and didn't feel like doing homework, so as I was watching his videos on my ipod at age 12 (specifically his RBY Let's Play which was published a couple years before I watched it) and I heard mentions of this "competitive" pokemon and "Smogon University" and I was sort of lured in because I was always a highly competitive person (in sports, in all kinds of games, and even in an academic setting). Anyway, in mid-August 2011 I decided to look into Smogon and eventually became a regular on the Smogon University Pokemon Online server (this predates PS). As Smogon moved to PS during the next Spring, I became a regular on PO, their forum, and in their community where I started off as an atrocious user, but grew into a better one and rose in their ranks. Eventually, I became relevant on Smogon through WCOP, SmogTour, and SPL (see more about this in question three).
Disjunction: What is your favorite aspect of competitive battling? (Teambuilding, battling, etc)
Finchinator: Preparation for important tournament matches and working as a part of a team take the cake here. To be honest, both of these lead to one thing: winning. I love winning and I cannot stand losing at times (for example, I was salty as fuck about my team losing in SPL and although I wasn't too vocal about it publicly (a couple times I was I guess), I expressed anger over my own loss and some other matters in private at length on a plethora of occasions simply because I H A T E losing). Prep for big games leads to knowing your opponent very well - dissecting their every team and play gives you the knowledge you need to be able to bring a proper team to match-up well with them and win the battle as an individual while working with teams in various tournaments is a generally fun thing to do as you can gain friends and have a good time while you also work for the ultimate goal of winning a team tournament (I guess this overall is part of why I've earned the "tryhard" label by many). If I have to simplify this and goto a battling vs teambuilding level, I enjoy building more than battling, unlike most people, but both are fun and necessary facets of competitive pokemon.
Disjunction: What's your favorite element of NU?
Finchinator: The fact that it's a bit more open to creativity and personal touches in teambuilding / play than mainstream tiers like OU and Ubers, but still has standards and norms that doesn't make it too crazy and challenging to be consistently successful. You could call this "balance" or you could call this the equilibrium between two extremes, but whatever it is, I admire these qualities counteracting each other in such a fashion that makes NU as it is.
Disjunction: Which generation of NU did you enjoy the most?
Finchinator: BW2 NU was enjoyable and I played a ton of it for Cased on PO, in the first NUPL, testing with Cased for some things, and for various other tournaments. It is in close competition with ORAS, but I'm not all that big a fan of any ORAS tier in comparison to their BW2 counterparts, so BW2 NU takes the cake here.
Disjunction: If you could make any change to the NU tier list, what would it be?
Finchinator: Banning Mega-Camerupt and forcing the RU guys to never use Skuntank.
Disjunction: Which NU player(s) do you respect the most? Any shoutouts for your friends?
Finchinator: Although I sometimes wish he would stop talking for once, Cased is probably the NU player I think shows the highest level of teambuilding and preparation for opponents in terms of innovation and success. However, FLCL and Soulgazer have both struck me as very knowledgeable (maybe even moreso than Cased) and able to win a majority of their matches, too (not to mention FLCL does it in various tiers, which is even more of a feat). However, the best SPL NUer, Teddeh, has also surprised me with his consistency as of late and level of play, so none of the above players have anything on him, either. Zebraiken also holds a special place in my heart for giving me a chance in SWCOP, being a genuine member of the community, leading the tier well, and playing solid in OU and NU in the past and recently. Finally, shoutout to Vileman + Ium for their big help in SPL, Raseri for being chill and leading the tier well, my whole NUPL team for being great so far, and all of the other friends I've made throughout my time in the NU community - you're all great.
Disjunction: Do you have any advice for anyone new to NU?
Finchinator: Get your name out there - join tournaments, post on the forum, and never be afraid of saying something. Worst comes to worst, you make a rookie mistake, learn from it, lurk a bit, and come back strong in the future. Coming from someone who was one of the most mediocre users on old PO, there is always a second, third, forth, etc. chances in this and other competitive pokemon communities, but you have to be assertive to make the most of any and all of your chances, so never ever hold back and always strive to be the best (like no one ever was - to catch them is my goal, to train them is my test ;]). If anyone who is new wants to ask questions on how I got to where I am today, I'd be glad to answer at length as going into specifics on this matter is kind of hard without having a specific focus, but overall just get over that barrier of being afraid to be assertive, post, and look foolish - you have to do something to make a name for yourself, so you may as well take some risks and hope for the best!
Disjunction: Where are you most active? (Pokemon Showdown, Smogon, IRC...)
Finchinator: IRC (#Neverused, #XYUU, tournament channels, and team channels), Skype (FinchinatorPO), Smogon Forums, PO Forums, PO Server, and SmogTours PS Server.
Disjunction: Do you have any current goals that you want to meet as a player?
Finchinator: In regards to team tours, doing well in all of the PLs I'm in (OU, UU, RU, and NU), HPL (Hispanic Premier League), and POWC. Also, the future SWCOP is going to be huge for me and my boys @ #USCentral! In regards to individual things, getting reqs in the Aegi suspect over in OU, making SmogTour playoffs like I did last season (may be better to do this next season as I dug myself a hole early this year, but it's not out of the picture for me to make it this season, just need to be clutch over the next three weeks), and continuing to establish myself as a solid player in various tiers in the Smogon Community.
Disjunction: Could you give us a sort of mini-RMT of a favorite team of yours to give us an example of your play style?
Finchinator: http://puu.sh/hk12L/f59c26b957.txt - this is a team I built around slow U-turn Defog Defensive Pelipper being a really cool pokemon to use in conjunction with offensive, but frail and SR weak pokemon as it grabs momentum well while tanking hits / forcing switches, controls hazards, and provides various other things for a team, too, such as being a check to physical fighters. Overall, I wanted to pair it with the dynamic duo of CB Sturdy Sawk and Specs Typhlosion, who both appreciate hazards being off the field. After I had those three, I knew I needed rocks and a set that I popularized after my SPL semi-final battle with FLCL was Custap Regirock, so I slapped that on as it also gave me another physical tank, fire check, and answer to some bulky set-up with boom that gets off damage and a free switch to something after boom. Finally, I wanted a pair of potent win conditions in conjunction with something to break CM Psychics, so I added on SD Mawile and RP LO Torterra (the latter is cool in general and matched-up well with a specific opponent I made this for in HPL, so it all worked out (the team won my HPL battle with some help from luck and it helped Living So Zambian get reqs)). Overall, this team is potent, but can be shut-down by a very specific variant of stall (not seen often, most stall is flat out overpowered as well as balanced if the team is played well) and offensive teams that are played better than this that can stop SD Mawile and RP Torterra.
~~~
I wanted to thank Finchinator for being so cool and enthusiastic for this week! I also wanted to apologize for this being tardy with this one because of my schedule lately. Feel free to ask the esteemed manager any questions you'd like answered!
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