This idea of having to pick offensive counters is completely incoherent. You can put pressure on Team 1 without choosing "offense." Hell, by even having Gyarados use Thunder Wave, we've put pressure on Team 1 to select Pokemon that don't care about it or aren't worried about it. So, basically, slower Pokemon, defensive Pokemon, or Pokemon that use status to their advantage or are immune to TWave.
Just because it doesn't hit astronomically hard doesn't mean it's not a good early pick.
I also completely disagree with choosing hazards at the end. There are so fewer good Pokes to choose from that offer hazards--SPECIFICALLY Spikes. You run the risk of not even being able to fit a good hazard setter if you wait until the end. You also run the risk of the team not being able to counter a spinner should Team 1, say, select a spinner that shits all over Team 2 and their hazards. Lastly, you abandon the ability to necessarily choose a good partner for the hazard setter, such as Magic Bounce or a ghost-type, things you may not even consider until you choose hazards, in the first place.
Yes and no. Thunder wave does limit the opponent's future picks but not nearly as much as raw power. There are many pokemon that can fall into the group of those who can deal with T-wave. (like the ones you listed) Heck, even something that hates T-wave can still serve it's purpose as a counter due to its bulk/resistances. It'll just mean that it can do much else which'll make it an overall lesser pick. On the other hand, Pokemon with raw power (Terrak, Lando, Hydrei, etc.) have a very specific list of Pokemon that can counter it, some only have a specific set. This puts far greater limits on the future picks which is what we are aiming for. So yes, T-Wave does limit the picks just not as much as raw power.
As for Spikes, you pretty much justify what I'm saying. If we can't fit a Spikes setter latter on then that means that Spike setter wouldn't have been a good pick earlier, either. If Forretress becomes a bad pick because of the many fire types and setup sweepers on the other team then it probably wouldn't have done us much good earlier. In fact, it would have hurt us as the opposing team would have more slots to deal with the Spiker and would know exactly what it would be up against. Picking it last lets us choose what is the most fit for the situation and what'll make it harder for the opponent to counter pick. It's true that we may end up never getting Spikes in somewhere but that's not because of when we chose it, it's because the other player's picks didn't allow it. (bravo to them in that case)
As far as countering the other Team's counter picks, we'll just have to look ahead. Seeing as we will always make two picks at a time (with the exception of Team 1's last pick) it'll be our job to make sure that we pair our Spiker up with something that is going to at least force the other team to pick their poison. For example, if we grab Skarm + Latios for our final picks to counter a Breloom + Gliscor combo the other team will now have to choose whether it picks a counter for Latios (lets say Ttar) or a Magic Bouncer for Skarmory.
To sum it up, the latter picks have the advantage of being tailored to be the most effective (which is what causes the controversy around Team 1's final pick). Taking advantage of this is important for hazard setters as, generally (talking about Spike users), they don't have any real offensive presence which means their efficiency is completely reliant upon the number of free turns they are given to set up Spikes.
I said that it's a possiblity. Not that we had to do that at all cost on every single pick. So, your turn to read carefully, in what you quote there is an "only". And this is, an important word in this sentence.
So I contradict nothing.
About the "blame", he quoted me and said that this resulted in wrong decisions in the past CTP. He didn't blame me directly, but let's not play with words.
And, it was quite convenient to take the last CTP as example and say "care, here we made a mistake we must not make again", when he was the culprit (and oh snap.. you too mainly). The OP decided to do a blind vote for a good reason, the last CTP was almost a 2 men's project. So sorry if I point you and Mewtwo as responsible for the last CTP's nominations, but it would be foolish to deny the impact you had.
While I won't be bouncing on everybody's opinion, and always respect it in the end, when someone tries to diguise his into some absolute truth, it goes a bit on my nerves I must admit.
(TGMD covered everything I wanted to say in the first post so I'll just comment on the response)
I'm not sure what you are trying to say about "only fitting offensive stuff to check other stuff". If you are talking about only fitting members that deny Landorus-I playing time by threatening to KO then yes that more or less contradicts what you are saying things like a possible Heatran as a future pick. If you are talking only handling threats with offensive checks in general then I agree with you. Except that I feel we should never just rely on a threat being able to outspeed and KO, it needs to be able to switch in as well.
As for quotes, I just quoted you because you were the first post I saw to present the idea I disagree with above. (to be more specific, using a Starmie to check Lando) I tried to explain that with my little note in parenthesis about you not being the only one but I guess I did a bad job. What I meant to say is that who I'm quoting didn't really matter, I could have said the exact same thing quoting Alexwolf who posted right after you.
As for blame, it would be impossible to blame anybody for having to rely on Keldeo to check Infernape. Keldeo was picked early on for a completely different purpose whereas Ape was the final pick and built specifically to beat everybody knowing that we couldn't do anything about it. There's no blaming involved, I just used an example from a previous CtP. (the only one I participated in) (Oh, and just fyi, I volunteered to handle all the blind voting as Ganj4lf was originally worried it would be too much work to implement.)
As for not sticking "I believe" or "I think" in my arguments, I can't really help you much as it's just the way I present my arguments. It's off topic so I won't go much into it but if you want to discuss it feel free to PM me. Just read what I say with the idea that I'm assuming my opinions are opinions and that I don't need to remind everybody of that.
Anyways, back to Pokemon.
@ Neliel's edit : Yup, I agree, there are trades and that's the interesting point in my opinion. About forcing passively Landorus to use 2 spells, I totally agree, and I talked about that in my nomination myself. I believe also that we should force Landorus to limit his possiblites i.e, any nomination that does not fulfil this point is bad.
This is exactly what I'm saying we should avoid. If we don't take a solid counter to Lando we are going to have to deal with the problem later on that it'll pressure all our picks. Being forced to find another counter to something like Volcarona just because we didn't pack one to Landorus is something we want to avoid. This gives way too much control to the opposing Team and allows them to quite easily dictate our picks as there are many threats with a short list of counters. Even if in the end we succeed in blocking Lando from doing anything, we still failed in making the picks that we wanted and forcing the opposing team to react to us. I've no problem packing a counter to Landorus now and then opting for one good pick over another because it deals with Lando better. That's just being smart and considering the whole team. I just don't want to be forced to be still considering something else when we have new threats popping up.
As for Virizion, I personally prefer the CM or Work Up set as it has Giga Drain (and SpDef boosts for CM) to help keep Virizion healthy and more reliable as a counter to Landorus. It doesn't really have the raw power of something like Heracross or Gyarados to beat dents into things for every free turn so it needs to make up for that by being more durable and reliable when it comes to countering Landorus.
