Entrocefalo vs Takatk
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ubers-703750
The team entro using was suggested by shuwri as he believed that’s a counter team to takatk. Well :/
I ain’t trying to be bad ass here, but I was urging entro to either use a super offensive team to prevent takatk to use some random set up shit or use zamazenta to absolutely dominate an expected physical overload team. Well only if entro trusted me…
Hatterene is good overall especially pairing with miraidon because every draco absorber in the tier do nothing to hatterene, allows miraidon to click draco endlessly. Instead, it goes for sole hatterene… I mean even iron treads looks much better lmao
Anyway, team matchup is pretty shit for entro as ting-lu is a complete sac in this game basically means entro is 5 vs 6 at the preview. The lead and the early game development makes sense. Entro beautifully dodged the wild charge (as expected lol) and forced zacian out of the game with gatekeeper koraidon. A lucky burn takes out takatk’s lando which is huge as entro’s koraidon now is on favour in trading. However, as entro was used to play super safe, takatk successfully gambled a nuzzle on toxapex as it risked activating eject button for nothing (pex was advantage mu 1v1 every mon except hatterene). Taka got the para (and rocks damage) on kyorge which is huge, as orge is only checking physical attacker in a pinch when it is full and healthy. After some pivot with entro sacking his orge hp trying to stop the momentum of takatk, taka manage to click healing wish against pex, and successfully make a substitute of groundy, but taka seems not liking the idea and with substitute still intact, switch to chien-pao for a free hex of 32% hp. Here, entro decided to switch. If I am entro, I would stay to click draco or dtail.
Entro again he is a good player and will be too conservative sometimes. This time taka had the gamble, sding chien pao and successfully removed pex, the largest enemy of his team, and forced entro’s tera to be able to stop chien pao smoking around. By teraing fairyceus into water, entro lost his last dragon immunity and thus he must sack orge as fairyceus health is not enough to take band dclaw under sun. However, entro with low timer choked hard here. After he sack orge for setting up rain, he went his own koraidon to set up the sun again, leaving no room for his fairyceus to recover. Taka somehow sacked zacian for no reason as any move from entro just doesn’t kill (he should be awared of the damage on lando T early in the game), which gave entro a last hope on scarf koraidon closing the gate (ie a high enough roll of his koraidon to low kick ko band korai). On the last 2 vs 2, 49% korai vs 76% hp groundy on field. Koraidon is never killing groundy at that hp, but groundy’s eq can ko koraidon. Meanwhile, if takatk decided to attack and entro switches, gira-O will have a free attacking turn and entro will have the odds to low kick win. Entro make the wrong predict here so takatk was able to finish off the last win con of entro, winning the game.
Overall, takatk’s team was almost an impossible mu for entro as entro is basically on 5 vs 6. Except the last choke on fairyceus, entro has do his best to stop takatk’s overloading purpose with some beautiful dodge like dodging the wild charge from zacian. However, the mu is just way too bad that entro at the end stage only earnt a 5050 chance with all his effort in the early game and he didn’t get it, so I think that’s a tough take from entro.
Again, a habit will damage us no matter that habit is “good” or “bad”. We just can’t always play the same way especially against tour player. Entro is a good player and I think every good player has a “habit” to stay conservative when the game condition improved significantly. This is a good habit ngl when you just change the game condition from 50% winning to 90% winning and no one will blame you to play in extremely careful in that kind of situation. However, it actually feels quite similar when you can turn 10% wr to 50% wr, just like entro did in this game against takatk. This similar feeling probably gave illusion to entro’s deep mind and his habit of “playing carefully when condition improved” literally put him back into disadvantage condition. What I want to say is, no matter how good you are, you must play elastically and try to not follow 100% to the most obvious line of the game play. Maintaining elastic imo is the best way to win.
Shuwri vs ox04
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ubers-702980
I have told shuwri to use Scarf koraidon against ox and look how scarf koraidon just fking owns him just on the preview… lmao
Looking at the preview, kyogre looks way too threatening for ox04 if the orge is using the right set, namely bulky cm orge
Icemaster. Although ox is using some balance core such as waterceus and eternatus, it is still very clear ox04’s team is a HO with samurott in the team.
With some pivoting from ox04 side, he managed to make samurott to the field safely against ting-lu, making its maximum use to chip shuwri’s fairyceus down to 47% and ox decided to go waterceus after almost 4 mins of thinking. I don’t really like shuwri decision in this turn as it stayed and clicked recover. It is absolutely disrespect to opponent if you think he would hard choke after thinking for 4 mins, he must have some reasons to go waterceus against a -1 def and 47%HP fairyceus. Though it is a waterceus, shuwri still should think a bit on why ox is going waterceus when he has a full eternatus at the back. In a HO team like ox used, the probability of ceus running DD/SD, no matter what type it is, is above 90%. With ox team basically has no weakness to fairyceus it really doesn’t have the necessity to recover here because if this is really a dd waterceus, shuwri team has barely any resistance to it and early damage on waterceus will be appreciated. Shuwri further sacrifice eternatus hp as the result of his unawareness on the fairyceus being very useless in this match up, and as the result basically giving its full eternatus just for a single toxic on dd waterceus. You can see the contradicting play of shuwri here: at one point, he didn’t play aggressively with the useless fairyceus to the big threat of waterceus after ox reveal it’s dd set; on the other hand, he sacked a full hp eternatus just for putting toxic on waterceus, and that’s quite common on player who didn’t give enough respect to the game and thus lacking a proper plan of the game. This type of inconsistent play seldom appears to be a big choke in a turn, but when you review afterwards, those plays are shameful to watch. With waterceus taking out eternatus and iron treads surprise ice spinner to lando pretty much set the game. (I won’t stay lando in front of treads when you know you can’t stop it from rocking. Knock and icespinner are both unbearable). While shuwri still overlooking fairyceus value, ox04 managed to set flamecharge+nastyplot on chiyu, tera flying dodging the wrong move from ting-lu being the last straw of shuwri’s lost as the flinch actually didn’t matter due to flame charge from koraidon/agility from eternatus still clean even if orge clicked ice beam.
Overall, Ox04 is the better side of the game in terms of gameplay and gameplan, and shuwri was ever chasing and the wrongly valuation of its own fairyceus cost him the game.
LBN vs Nael222
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ubers-703112
Nael was using a very low competitiveness team towards LBN simple broken spam, thus it should be easy LBN win.
The web team used by nael didn’t have very strong inner logic. Physical attacker in the team, ekiller caly-I and urshifu doesn’t have strong synergy as they really don’t share same check. Landours-I is a fraud in the current meta and you just want to use groundy for a ground type attacker compared to the ball-cutting movepool of landorus. The landorus also gives free defog to giratina so effectively nael is playing 4 vs 6 and as nael was not able to outtrading a boots miraidon, he quickly forfeited when he finally needs to go landorus and invited giratina’s defog.
I hope I have this kind of mu every week lmao.
Mimikyu Stardust vs Sanv (Qiyu5)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ubers-702709
Typical sanv team with extra dark for calyrex and full twave team kek. Mimikyu’s team is solely trying to mu fish sanv as you can see later, which it is almost a lost for sanv just looking at the preview, but the game ended up in a speed tie. Oh well…
Nothing special at the lead shuckle is just doing the shuckle thing, and then the 6-0 incoming weavile comes into the position. I told mimikyu thousands of times do not use sash weavile on shuckle web but unfortunately no one listened. This is basically because shuckle’s ability to prevent hazard is zero, making sash is a complete fraud item in shuckle’s web. It sd on the dark pulse locked yveltal, and kills tyranitar on switch with low kick, a specific move just for sanv for its high tyranitar and ferrothorn usage. But because of weavile’s sash, it is a roll for weavile 0HKO standard ndm with one knock. If mimikyu have life orb or expert belt for example, given triple axel all lands, sanv is basically getting 6-0 by weavile. Nonetheless mimikyu decided to switch out (where I think I stay, 50% is not bad at all) and decided to give yvetal’s hp to eat a move from ndm and allowing rocks from sanv. This is ultra big choke from mimikyu side as now he is risking scarf calyrex speed crapping all his team. He managed to flinch sanv’s yveltal with rockside, killing yveltal to free the route for his own calyrex. Sanv however, make another choke on the turn yveltal go down as he decided to go his scarf calyrex. Please be noted that calyrex can’t 0HKO any of the mon mimikyu has except caly, and it is even a speedtie if mimikyu do decide to go caly, as the result mimikyu weavile was able to drain another sack from sanv. The triple axel miss leaves the last hope for sanv to win the speedtie, but fortunately this time my teammate won that tie and the game.
TBH, although this is a win, it is really a shame for mimikyu that he was forced to gamble on the tie with this kind of mu advantage. but personally, I think it is understandable as mimikyu is not ubers main and maybe it is just too harsh for him to be able to illustrate a full picture of a uber game.
Oras
Skimmythegod vs robjr
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen6ubers-703591
After last week heart breaking lost, skimmy finally found this timer and was able to plan the play like an expert.
On preview it is a zong balance vs dual primal balance, it should be an advantageous mu to skimmy but probably the lead is not very optimal. oras rule: when you can lead porge, lead it. Same as ss rule no1, it forced at certain mon to be up against you, and you just naturally gain advantages by doing so. On top of that, as primal orge generally is more unwallable, it is more favourable to porge to come in early, unlike pdon, who basically always want to stay behind until the team needs him, and forcing it on the field in early game is definitely fruitful.
Nonetheless, robjr didn’t go dark void immediately, instead it went for a substitute and miss dark void on the scarf xerneas switchin, and skimmy beautifully read the zone and put his giratina in the position. (Though I am in doubt here as doubling orge maybe a better choice tbh as I said above.) skimmy spammed some twave luring the rocks and the switch, and he clicked a goat draco to remove the biggest threat namely darkrai. With iron defense steelceus, the earthquake-less ekiller from robjr became a deadweight. After giratina managed to defog the rocks, skimmy successfully make mence into the position safely. However, as skimmy still didn’t put its rock, the double intimidate is quite annoying to face for skimmy as it may end giving robjr mence free DD. The game actually did go that way, but as robjr was greedy to dd again, skimmy managed to phase mence and successfully put rocks limiting robjr mence, so that scarf xerneas was able to clean the pathway for the iron defence steelceus to win the remaining ground-attacker-missing team. The early draco pretty much set the tone of the game, but skiimmy may have done better on the double intimidate play by robjr, such as attacking mence instead of attacking lando as mence placed a larger threat than landorus-T.
Bonus:
Bo3
Inder (Captain ICVR) vs Lunala (Aniki)
SV:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ubers-702807
Again, as the author had some built-in trust with inder, I didn’t involve much into his SV preparation and eventually leaded to this disaster where inder brought no SV Box legends with a modest fluttermane, leaving his team open against miraidon and chienpao once zacian gone, and his team is overall passive which also means inder is heavily relying on zacian to revenge as well. But on the other hand, as lunala also lacking speak control besides chien-pao’s priority, lunala is also super weak to zacian. No poison type was brought by both sides so the toxic spikes mu was negligible.
Inder was super aggressive at the beginning of the game, forcing lunala’s tera on ting-lu on turn 4 to try to phase zacian. I don’t really agree with inder clicking playrough here as lunala was just too obvious to tera in this turn as he literally brings ting-lu on corvi’s ut after seeing zacian sd. Lunala was lucky to see a giratina dragged out, so that ting-lu was able to put a layer of spikes which is huge to inder’s team as chien-pao started looking very scary for inder given zacian’s first attempt was gone. Inder trying to switch aggressively with zacian but failing to do so and basically sack waterceus for free by doing so. Without waterceus and zacian being too low thanks to aggressive switching, a sweep to inder is basically one sd away from chienpao, let alone the unstoppable fairyceus as well. With all set up mon, speed control and intimitater are all gone, inder quickly forfeited the game 1 which probably was unexpected to every one of us.
G2:
SS
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ubers-702810
I don’t know what to say, lunala just got 6-0 by specs orge
Lunala’s team is like stallish, but also lacking an instant powerhouse with the structure of yen. I mean if you decide to play passive or stall, you really should drop yen and go for the traditional blissey/tyranitar/pex core instead of yen, or audino shedinja to name a variation.
Trying to stall with a yen structure basically is asking to get fucked by groudon / kyorge and you see what inder brought in the team.
G3:
USM
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ubers-702812
I bearly know anything of USM and I don’t want to comment inder’s meme team.
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