[jas61292]

Well, the time has come to wrap this up. A lot of good entries, but I had to narrow it down to a reasonable number. So, here is the slate:

Yilx's The Big Dipper
Pwnemon's Hazard Control
Base Speed's Type Equalizer
reachzero's Setting the Pace
toshimelonhead's Mercenary
SlimMan's Substitute Abuse
Korski's Weather Warrior

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Yilx’s concept caught my eye immediately. The thing I like so much about this concept are the discussion points it has right in the questions. Addressing what is a core, and how one goes about beating it would make for a fine project direction. There is plenty to discuss, and plenty of freedom in how we go about doing it. It has some of the most solid goals of all concepts, and I think it would lead to an excellent process.

I think Pwnemon’s concept is really cool because it addresses the big topic of the day in OU. While everyone loves talking about weather, it is obvious that the current suspect test is all about hazards. I like how this concept is not simply about making hazards less of a problem for your team, but about trying to slightly alter the culture of OU. It’s easy to make a good spinner or magic bouncer and say you are trying to address hazards, but this is about something much more significant than that. Nothing is going to remove hazards from OU, but trying to reduce their significance, even just a little, is a great direction to take.

Base Speed took a cool direction with his concept. While a lot of people like to focus on team types, this takes a different spin by focusing on types themselves. Actually delving into what types are good and why could lead to plenty of great discussion. Originally I was unsure about this one cause it reminded me a bit about Mollux’s concept as far as studying types, but the difference is that here we focus more on the typing of Pokémon currently in existence. With this, we can try and discover if certain typings are simply better than others, or if a slight metagame shift can bring out the potential in some types that previously failed to shine.

While a bit late to the party, reachzero’s concept is just simply fantastic in its goals and scope. Broad enough so that each stage has plenty of options, but clearly focused on something that is of importance in every single battle ever played. While we always passively address the issue of speed, I would love to have a project focused on seeing how different speed interactions effect the way things play.

As with Yilx’s concept, one of the reasons I was greatly drawn to toshimelonhead’s was that it really is focused on a certain Pokémon concept that everyone knows about, but we have never really deeply examined. In this case, it is counters. While we have discussions about counters every project, we always simply talk about what Pokémon we want and do not want them to be. This concept would give us a chance to really address what being a counter actually means.

I decided to put SlimMan’s concept on the slate because, like reach’s, it addresses an important part of competitive Pokémon that has been used every single day, for multiple generations, but has never really been delved deeply into. Substitute is the single most versatile move in the game, and one of the most common as well. By doing this concept, we would be looking into what are really the best uses of this amazing move, and I’m sure we would also learn plenty on how to beat it as well.

With all the talk of weather out there, it would be an injustice not to have at least one weather related concept on the slate. There were a couple that I was really considering, but they were similar enough that I didn't really want to slate more than one, and deciding which to go with was probably the hardest decision I had to make. In the end I decided to go with Korski’s because, of all the well formulated weather concepts, I feel that his is the most achievable. Addressing weather is certainly an important issue, and if we are going to do it, I would like to do so with a concept whose necessary goals for learning are ones which we can approach with a good amount of confidence.