Taken over from Kavatika, approved by macle
Hello there, it's everyone's favourite LC Bot, QuoteCS! Today I interviewed one of my favourite LC Players, Corporal Levi!
QuoteCS: Tell me a bit about yourself.
Corporal Levi: I'm not actually 8'11".
QuoteCS: I never would have guessed. When did you start playing LC?
Corporal Levi: I very briefly dabbled in LC during the summer of 2013 but I had no idea what I was doing at all, so I quit after a few days and didn't start trying to play the tier competitively until late December.
QuoteCS: What do you like most about LC?
Corporal Levi: There are a lot of things that make LC great, of course, but one aspect I am particularly fond of is how contained the metagame is. Because the only large changes to the metagame are bans, which only happen once every few months, metagame shifts are quite gradual; this gives players much more time to adapt and keep track of what is good and what isn't. The smaller roster of Pokemon means that it's easier to cover more threats with one team, creating less purely match-up based games. Even though this might appear to bring the problem of staleness, I think there are just enough available Pokemon that are available that viable "new" Pokemon can be discovered to be effective and previous staples can fall out of favour to keep the metagame feeling fresh, at least until the next ban.
QuoteCS: If you could change something about LC, what would it be?
Corporal Levi: I really like the metagame as it is, so I would not mind at all if it stayed as such. With that being said, it looks like the vast majority of the arguments for Yanma's ban rested upon its Compoundeyes set, and nothing viable would be directly affected by a Compoundeyes ban (Agilipass Venonat is honestly really bad at best); as such, I'm somewhat curious as to how Speed Boost Yanma would fare in the current metagame.
QuoteCS: Speaking of the current metagame, what do you think is one of the best pokemon/strategies/teams in LC right now?
Corporal Levi: I think it's pretty difficult to argue right now that the best Pokemon isn't Mienfoo; it is able to do just about everything in one Pokemon, and does so well. A defensive Pokemon with Regenerator U-Turn is incredible however you look at it, and Mienfoo can hit just the right speed depending on what its team needs to get its teammates in safely while still checking important threats. Because that isn't enough, Mienfoo also gets one of the best moves in the game, Knock Off, and enough Attack and Speed to run several different offensive sets which allow Mienfoo to take advantage of the element of surprise against opponents expecting the standard bulky pivot.
One team archetype/strategy that I have found to be very effective in the current metagame, and at least since the bans of Murkrow and Meditite, is stall. A well-built stall team can generally handle just about everything the metagame has to offer except for a select few dedicated wall-breakers depending on the team, which is to be expected because a single team can't really cover everything, even in a contained metagame like LC. Stall doesn't have to rely as much on risky predictions like more offensive teams are often forced to; this makes it much easier to win decisively against less solidly built teams (unless they pack the specific Pokemon that can beat a particular stall team), while still performing well against similarly well-built teams.
QuoteCS: Which LC users/players inspire you? Which ones do you admire and respect?
Corporal Levi: Rowan and Goddess Briyella are two users in particular who I admire greatly. Rowan is an excellent Pokemon battler and has done an overall wonderful job at running the Viability thread; he is also one of those authority members in the LC Room on PS who makes an otherwise average room great when he is around. Briyella is also a very strong battler, and helped me a ton in getting into the actual Smogon community by showing me around IRC and various other areas of the forums. Dsr95 is another user that I look up to because he was the one who originally welcomed me into the PS community, in addition to being a thoroughly underrated battler and an easily approachable guy in general.
Other than that, Blizzardy, Superpowerdude, Yagura, Calloflochie, Amp Pharaohs, Antemortem, Tricking, Fran17, The Quasar, Trev, Sidneyfluff, Unfixable, Vileman, RZL2000, Shaymin :D, TCR, Wibbly, you, Kappaten, Aladyyn, Nightmare Vampire, HollowRidley, Nodly and best ghost Glassglaceon are all (at least sort of) LC players that I respect a fair amount and that I consider good friends of mine. Sparkymidget, Aerow, Obvious Power, Aroundtheswirlz, Fiend Hound, Ashley11, Zeriloa, Fizz, Thefenderstory, Dora, Tahu, Kingmidas, Antgeezy, Sparkytrain, Splashyship and Starmaster are all horribly nerdy, and most of them are terrible at Pokemon (especially Starmaster) as well, but they're fun to hang out with.
I probably missed some people but it's probably because my memory is pretty bad.
QuoteCS: Dsr was the same person that introduced me to the LC community. He was a pretty influential community member early on.
Do you have any advice for new LCers?
Corporal Levi: If you're coming in from another tier, don't be afraid to ask for help from a more experienced player; Little Cup has a lot of strange mechanics which may initially take some time getting used to, but it's definitely worth it.
Thanks to Levi for allowing me to interview him. I'll be back next week with another Player of the Week interview!
Hello there, it's everyone's favourite LC Bot, QuoteCS! Today I interviewed one of my favourite LC Players, Corporal Levi!
QuoteCS: Tell me a bit about yourself.
Corporal Levi: I'm not actually 8'11".
QuoteCS: I never would have guessed. When did you start playing LC?
Corporal Levi: I very briefly dabbled in LC during the summer of 2013 but I had no idea what I was doing at all, so I quit after a few days and didn't start trying to play the tier competitively until late December.
QuoteCS: What do you like most about LC?
Corporal Levi: There are a lot of things that make LC great, of course, but one aspect I am particularly fond of is how contained the metagame is. Because the only large changes to the metagame are bans, which only happen once every few months, metagame shifts are quite gradual; this gives players much more time to adapt and keep track of what is good and what isn't. The smaller roster of Pokemon means that it's easier to cover more threats with one team, creating less purely match-up based games. Even though this might appear to bring the problem of staleness, I think there are just enough available Pokemon that are available that viable "new" Pokemon can be discovered to be effective and previous staples can fall out of favour to keep the metagame feeling fresh, at least until the next ban.
QuoteCS: If you could change something about LC, what would it be?
Corporal Levi: I really like the metagame as it is, so I would not mind at all if it stayed as such. With that being said, it looks like the vast majority of the arguments for Yanma's ban rested upon its Compoundeyes set, and nothing viable would be directly affected by a Compoundeyes ban (Agilipass Venonat is honestly really bad at best); as such, I'm somewhat curious as to how Speed Boost Yanma would fare in the current metagame.
QuoteCS: Speaking of the current metagame, what do you think is one of the best pokemon/strategies/teams in LC right now?
Corporal Levi: I think it's pretty difficult to argue right now that the best Pokemon isn't Mienfoo; it is able to do just about everything in one Pokemon, and does so well. A defensive Pokemon with Regenerator U-Turn is incredible however you look at it, and Mienfoo can hit just the right speed depending on what its team needs to get its teammates in safely while still checking important threats. Because that isn't enough, Mienfoo also gets one of the best moves in the game, Knock Off, and enough Attack and Speed to run several different offensive sets which allow Mienfoo to take advantage of the element of surprise against opponents expecting the standard bulky pivot.
One team archetype/strategy that I have found to be very effective in the current metagame, and at least since the bans of Murkrow and Meditite, is stall. A well-built stall team can generally handle just about everything the metagame has to offer except for a select few dedicated wall-breakers depending on the team, which is to be expected because a single team can't really cover everything, even in a contained metagame like LC. Stall doesn't have to rely as much on risky predictions like more offensive teams are often forced to; this makes it much easier to win decisively against less solidly built teams (unless they pack the specific Pokemon that can beat a particular stall team), while still performing well against similarly well-built teams.
QuoteCS: Which LC users/players inspire you? Which ones do you admire and respect?
Corporal Levi: Rowan and Goddess Briyella are two users in particular who I admire greatly. Rowan is an excellent Pokemon battler and has done an overall wonderful job at running the Viability thread; he is also one of those authority members in the LC Room on PS who makes an otherwise average room great when he is around. Briyella is also a very strong battler, and helped me a ton in getting into the actual Smogon community by showing me around IRC and various other areas of the forums. Dsr95 is another user that I look up to because he was the one who originally welcomed me into the PS community, in addition to being a thoroughly underrated battler and an easily approachable guy in general.
Other than that, Blizzardy, Superpowerdude, Yagura, Calloflochie, Amp Pharaohs, Antemortem, Tricking, Fran17, The Quasar, Trev, Sidneyfluff, Unfixable, Vileman, RZL2000, Shaymin :D, TCR, Wibbly, you, Kappaten, Aladyyn, Nightmare Vampire, HollowRidley, Nodly and best ghost Glassglaceon are all (at least sort of) LC players that I respect a fair amount and that I consider good friends of mine. Sparkymidget, Aerow, Obvious Power, Aroundtheswirlz, Fiend Hound, Ashley11, Zeriloa, Fizz, Thefenderstory, Dora, Tahu, Kingmidas, Antgeezy, Sparkytrain, Splashyship and Starmaster are all horribly nerdy, and most of them are terrible at Pokemon (especially Starmaster) as well, but they're fun to hang out with.
I probably missed some people but it's probably because my memory is pretty bad.
QuoteCS: Dsr was the same person that introduced me to the LC community. He was a pretty influential community member early on.
Do you have any advice for new LCers?
Corporal Levi: If you're coming in from another tier, don't be afraid to ask for help from a more experienced player; Little Cup has a lot of strange mechanics which may initially take some time getting used to, but it's definitely worth it.
Thanks to Levi for allowing me to interview him. I'll be back next week with another Player of the Week interview!
