Blind BW

[Jellicent]

Team Preview was one of the defining new mechanics of the fifth gen. The competitive community had always been accustomed to the fog of war and many of us have wondered what the BW metagame would look like without this change. We'll get a good glimpse at that starting next week, when it's June's RoA Rotational Ladder (and Mini-Tour of the month).

For now, I thought it'd be fun to get this thread up a little early and give everyone a chance to theorymon a bit. Which dedicated leads do you think will shine brightest amid the weather wars? Will VoltTurn and phazing see a noticeable jump in usage as people attempt to scout opposing teams? What lures and surprise sweepers look most effective when playing blind?

 

[Afti]

First thing that come to mind as being much better in a non Team Preview format is Zoroark, which I think gets bumped from "lol" to "actually pretty legit." It's more or less a nonentity in standard BW play because it's really hard to surprise your opponent with a known Zoroark, right? Hazards really limit your ability to disguise Zoroark effectively as other mons - if Volcarona takes 12.5% from Stealth Rock, well, that ain't Volcarona - and you have to bring it in on something that a) Zoroark actually wants to be in against and b) isn't so bad for what you're disguising it as that it gives away the game. That places a lot of constraints on teambuilding and (paradoxically, for something that emphasizes mindgames and playing your opponent like Illusion does) forces you to play in a fairly rigid fashion until Illusion is busted. And it's not like Zoroark is a great mon on its own. It's alright - it could definitely be worse, anyway - but it doesn't really do anything especially well. It's just sort of a mediocre offensive mon that's too frail to set up easily, too slow to be suitable for aggressive play against offense, and not hard-hitting enough to do much against bulkier teams without setting up.

Zoroark gets a new lease on life in a blind format, though. It's gotten a reputation as a lame early-hype mon a la DP Electivire, and that's completely accurate, but there actually was some reasoning to Zoroark's early hype, at least. Before people understood that team preview was a thing, Illusion sounded goddamn terrifying, and in blind BW Zoroark is gonna be the monster people thought it'd be way back when. (Even if you can't run it with Swimming Goggles Starmie.)

Remember: Zoroark is bad because your opponent knows it's coming and can play around that knowledge. Blind BW lets you keep Zoroark in your pocket, though, and that's a gamechanger. It'd be a hell of a scout, for starters - since your opponent doesn't know you're running Zoroark as long as your team composition doesn't make it obvious, you can use to extract information about their response to other mons on your team and U-turn out. And since you aren't announcing Zoroark, you can even use it to scout against things it doesn't necessarily wanna fight, per se - there's immense value in (ex:) bringing in your "Ferrothorn," seeing what the opponent swaps in in response, and U-turning out the same turn their switchin shows up.

It'd still be very reliant on hazard and weather control - and on preserving whatever it's disguising itself as so status/HP indicators don't betray you - but it's a whole lot better, anyway, and what it does (information! information! information!) is really, really valuable in blind BW, which is a matchup-heavy limited-information format.

It also makes a solid anti-lead with Taunt and strongish attacks, or a formidable midgame hole-puncher with a usable speed tier, STAB priority, and the ability to come in, set up, and start firing off attacks when the opponent isn't really prepared to deal with that. It's also got a surprisingly decent set of "weird" utility options that would probably actually become kinda cute when you pair them with Illusion - I could see Trick and Foul Play both being pretty legit on a team that benefited from the support they'd provide.

 

[Wizard]

I do agree with the boost in viability for Zoro and I’d like to add something.

Firstly, I figure that Dugtrio and maybe Gothitelle would become extremely frustrating to play against, placing the emphasis of weather wars on “the first who manages to trap the opposing weather inducer wins”. Don’t get me wrong, trapping has always played a very important role in BW weather wars (well at least until 2015 bans) but blind BW would exarcebates this to the point it would get unsustainable for a competitive metagame. So we’d stick with our shed shells or straightly ban trapping abilities (bringing back Drought+Chloro. Maybe). Trappers get better in general obviously.

Volcarona and Dragonite would get scarier in lategame, because if you don’t see them coming you may end up with doing something else than setting up the rocks. And then pay with your blood.

Also in BW there are lots of extremely powerful wallbreakers that you really can’t afford to let them enter the battlefield freely, just think of a Hydreigon really glad to switch into a passive mon. It would become extremely punishing, even more than now.

Aaaand Ditto would literally steal games lol its case is really interesting because it wouldn’t exert psychological pressure on setup sweepers until it’s revealed...

 

[Afti]

Between Zoroark, trappers, (note: Zoroark is also a really scary trapper, come to think of it - set up Swords Dance as something switches in and then Pursuit whatever you baited in. Illusion is a completely obnoxious ability in a blind format, and lets even a mediocre mon like Zoroark play a whole lot of roles really effectively.) Ditto, multi-weather, (bait a trapper out to kill Tar > opponent trades Duggy for Tar > "psych, this is actually a rain team, lol") and really scary lategame sweepers like Volcarona and Dragonite, I think that blind BW would wind up being a format where your goal was, in large part, to force your opponent to reveal all six members of their party as soon as possible. There's just too much in this format that gets really dangerous if you can keep it in your pocket.

So I think earlygame in blind BW is almost entirely about scouting out as much information as possible before you commit to things. VoltTurn is very powerful (because if you can keep momentum up, you can force your opponent to reveal their mons - earlygame sacrifices are incredibly risky in this format, so if you have something in there that doesn't like the current matchup, you have to pull it out) and there's probably a decent niche in just being a bulky thing that phazes, because revealing a random mon from your opponent's party is itself a pretty big advantage.

Your goal is to preserve whatever tricks you've got up your sleeve until you can deploy them effectively, and ascertaining whether it's "worth it" to send out Duggy or Zoro or Ditto requires you to gather as much information about your opponent's team as possible. And they're playing by the same gameplan... so you probably get a series of very conservative plays in the early game until one player thinks they know enough to go on the offensive? At which point either that pans out and they break the opponent over their knee, or the opponent's information denial was effective enough that they're able to punish a premature offense and retaliate in kind.

Information management is definitely the name of the game, though. BW is offensive enough that you probably won't survive going on the attack too early in the game, because if you leave yourself exposed, your opponent's party is going to have the tools to capitalize on that in a really merciless fashion. Which is why, I think, blind BW earlygame probably winds up rewarding a very cautious, noncommittal style of play, where you try and avoid revealing information about your team to the opponent as much as possible while extracting information about theirs. Given how matchup-centric BW is, you probably only have one or two clear paths to victory against any given team if the opponent is playing well. So it's really important for you to identify exactly what those are before you risk closing anything off.