[Melee Mewtwo]

Okay, so the battles are in and I, somehow, managed to pull off two wins. I'm glad to see Team 2 won this as it sort of disproves the idea that Team 1's last pick is OP. Doom was having a bad day, though, and the matches were VERY trying on as far as patience was concerned. Really GGs anyways, too bad Team 1 couldn't have you at your best. I'm going to edit this post (maybe) with my analysis of the teams before and after the game along with other assorted info related to the project.

Before that real quick I want to reply to the above posts.
@TTar: Celebi didn't need to stick around for Lando as long as I still had Skarm. The trick was getting some SR damage on Lando so Scizor could sweep.
@blitzle: The crit did matter although it evened out the hax I had with Lando (only 50% chance to OHKO after two turns of SR) and the misplays we both made at the end.


I'm going to try to separate periods the affected my understanding and viewpoint of the two teams. This is mostly for myself but I hope the organization helps the readers understand me better.

Before Ape: The two teams were, more or less, fairly matched. Team 2 did have the advantage of Hydreigon who just had to click Draco Meteor to take a free kill. On the other hand, Scizor wasn't the best pick for the main sweeper and this put an immediately foreseen handicap on the more or less forced Skarmory. All in all though, there wasn't a massive focus on the results provided by a single Pokemon in the early game. I expected the battles to play out where each player would take turns giving some blows in an expected cycling of counters to counter their counters with the only really high points being when Hydreigon came in and Team 2 had to pick who was going to die. This personally seemed like a big advantage to me but this was, of course, before the final pick.

After Ape before battle: Cyredax suggests Infernape and all my dreams of having a typical battle with Hydreigon being my ultimate trump card going straight out the window. Infernape turned the game into a pure all or nothing match. Because of this, the value of each individual team member changed radically.

For Team 2: The best shot at winning the game was by wearing down Infernape via passive damage to a point that it could no longer could no longer counter or even stop a +2 sweep from Scizor. This made Skarmory an invaluable player as SR and/or Spikes were the only way to put Ape in that 50% range. Every turn I had with him was extremely valuable. Sadly, abusing Sturdy was clearly not an option as Mamoswine would become another very dangerous threat as soon as Skarm was out of the picture. Not only would he be able to take a kill every time he came in, he was also hitting hard enough that Scizor didn't have the chance to set up a SD on him if needed. All the same, I was hoping that walling 4/6 of the team would allow me to get SR and one layer of Spikes up (so that two switch-ins would put Ape in kill range) while playing it safe with Skarm. Keldeo also became incredibly important as he was the only thing standing between Infernape and clean sweep. It was going to be tricky playing him, though, as the threat of a Close Combat would make it hard for Keldeo to instantly perform his job. Celebi rose in value as it could deal with the single threat that prevented the success of the former two, Rotom-W. Between Wash and Ape, Team 1 had a difficult Volt-Turn core that was clearly going to require a lot of tricks to break long enough for Skarm to get his hazards up. Scizor was another invaluable member as he seemed to have the strongest chance of sweeping. I was again disappointed to see that he could only SD in front of two members (Rotom and Heracross) while being checked by a healthy Lando and the menacing Infernape. All the same, setting up on Rotom was definitely a redeeming feature as it was one of the two major players for Team 1. Heatran had some minor utility due to his ability to shuffle around a bit with Roar (hopefully getting some SR damage on Lando) and in his ability to prevent a Kyurem-B sweep. Hydreigon fell harshly from grace as the battle was clearly going to be very quick which ruled out my previous intentions to slowly pick apart the team one kill at a time. He became the prime kill fodder for sure.

Team 1: Infernape was just as radical for Team 1 as well. Instead of relying on the support of each member to wear down Team 2 faster than Hydreigon could take his kills, everything turned into god or garbage. Infernape was obviously one of the gods along with Rotom-W for his ability to keep the momentum via Volt-Switch while countering the pesky Keldeo. Everything else became garbage that was readily dispensable. They were all liabilities as Skarm could set up hazards on them while having virtually zero use as they weren't doing much more than what Ape + Wash weren't doing already. None, except a healthy Lando, were any use in preventing a Scizor sweep should Ape fail meaning throwing these guys when needed was a safe play for Team 1. This is basically why Hydreigon became useless, getting a kill wasn't spectacular anymore as there were 3-4 body bags lined up to happily eat a Draco Meteor.

Seeing all this and my tendency to play really poorly as a result of poor habits learned from laddering, I decided to do my homework on the calcs of everything beforehand while taking some time to mentally play out the games during the extra time provided by my lack of internet access. I feel this helped a lot in remedying my poor "skills" as there were a few cases where TGMD wasn't aware of certain important calcs that I had the advantage of knowing. All the same, this didn't prevent me from making some poor plays.

During the battles (I'll speak generally because it's late and I don't remember each match much): Like I said, I did some mental play-throughs and decided Keldeo was the safest lead as it prevented an initial Infernape threat while being fairly threatening himself. I had also decided that luring a U-Turn with Celebi to switch to Hydreigon was a solid way to get at least SR up early game. This was because a healthy Hydreigon couldn't be OHKO'd by U-Turn which forced TGMD to pick on of his garbage 4 since Rotom was DM fodder. I would then proceed to intentionally sack Hydreigon to whatever was chosen (in both cases, Mamoswine) so that Skarmory could be safely brought in to SR. Barring the crit the first game, this worked beautifully and the importance of hazards I had ranted on earlier justified my earlier claims. I feel that the fact that Team 2 could easily get the much needed SR up while Team 1 was forced to rely on the liable Mamoswine made a massive difference in deciding the game outcome. As for the rest of the game, it was mostly a prediction fest between 2-3 possible choices that were all or nothing almost every time. My goal was to drag out the game just long enough for my hazards to do my work so that Scizor could do his. Keldeo showed some surprising extra value as it was a reliable win condition himself due to his ability to clean the opposing team with sufficient passive damage as well as Scizor. Celebii's Baton Pass and ability to counter Rotom-W was very valuable as the later helped drag out the match while the latter could mean anther safe switch-in for Skarmory.


All in all, these were very good games. I feel the last pick isn't nearly as game-breaking as it seems and that it simply requires that extra care is put into Team 2's final two picks. Thanks again TGMD for these great games and your immense patience during the week that I was unavailable.