Smogon Grand Slam XV Playoff Interviews

ego

Three months of Slam qualifying have passed, and playoffs are about to start! How are you feeling?

mind gaming

Feels weird to think about playoffs now since I've been playoff locked for about a month and a half now and was just playing for individual Open wins instead of the playoffs race. This led to me being pretty disconnected from the actual tournament. It feels like I played a lot of standalone tournaments, and Slam just happens to start now after a waiting time. I do feel confident tho in my ability to perform well in every single tier played in Slam. It's just about closing it out now and avoiding bad luck.

ego

Do you think that's a really different feeling to how you felt going into, like, Slam 2025 or Classic 2024 playoffs?

mind gaming

Yes, I used to have more of a standard experience of finishing my Opens and Cups in a tight playoffs race and then have a week or two as a break where I could start looking into general ideas of what I wanna load for playoffs or hit up some ppl who would be down to help me with my weaker tiers. There also used to be the element of trying to figure out where the cutoff would be and seeing how many more rounds I would need to win to guarantee a spot, which in itself is a pretty interesting dynamic to stay engaged with the tournament.

But a general advantage I have this year tho is that I feel confident in every single tier no matter who I have to face and no matter what tiers I will need to play them in. Another thing that changes drastically is the interaction with other players. If you are in a tight playoffs race, you actually have a natural good topic to bring up and talk over with friends and other competitors. Meanwhile, saying something along the lines of "I've been already qualified for over a month now, just waiting for playoffs" usually just ends most interactions regarding that topic.

ego

That makes sense! Do you think that means it's been a more independent run for you, then? Less able to rely on support for these tiers and more on building and prepping yourself?

mind gaming

Well, I tried the approach of building every team purely on my own this year and not relying on anyone else's teams or building input of any form. The result of this is a general deep understanding of how the tiers work as well as the intent behind some of the more wacky sets that I have been bringing while also being able to always have teams that perfectly fit my own playing style but also a more counter-teamable scout. Which someone who gets passed teams doesn't need to worry about esp when they get teams from multiple different ppl in the same tier, making it impossible for the opponent to tell what style to expect.

ego

Oh, that's fascinating. Do you think that's a strategy that works better in Slam than in Classic and Masters? Maybe because the tiers have been developing over a shorter period of time and there's more room to experiment?

mind gaming

I do think that is the case. I believe lower-tier mainers have less of a meta-knowledge advantage than oldgen players when they are compared to general good tour players that have enough experience with the tier. This comes partly from the tier not being as old and ever-changing, so you have less time to build up that advantage of the newest format, at most usually like four months with the last big tiering action or important tier shifts happening, changing the tier a considerable amount. But the most important factors are the number of games played as well as the number of players who have tried to solve the meta previously. I would make the claim that an oldgen player who has played the tier for around ten years has more games played and watched as well as more teams built in those ten years than a lower-tier player in the last four months of their tier. I would also say that there are more oldgen players who have built for tournaments in this tier on the highest level even if they might not do so anymore since that also develops the meta and leaves fewer things unexplored.

I think the best example for this would be ABR, who has played a rly high amount of Regis in the ADV Invitational and Sandslash Wrap in the RBY Invitational; with him not being the only one to attempt those more niche picks, it creates a pretty weird dynamic where you could build a creative team today that you are pretty proud of, and there is a very good chance at least twenty other ppl have built a very similar team to that, and at least five have brought it to a tournament game. Meanwhile, in lower tiers, I want to say you usually have not more than ten or fifteen strong players who rly actively play the tier right now, leaving a lot of things still unexplored. This makes it easier to build teams for lower tiers as someone who has not been engaged much with the tier. On the flipside tho oldgens are more accessible for when you wanna learn how to play the tier since it is easier to find teams that are designed for the current meta as well as players who have played said meta before and can play with you even if it might have been half a year ago that they last played it, resulting in an easier time to both find games and try out different styles for yourself.

ego

I guess the other thing there is that with the oldgens that have older players with years of experience and replays with creative ideas, you can always use them as a starting point. Like, you can look for ABR replays in ADV to see if he has ideas that he tested out and that you can develop further. Do you have anyone in Slam tiers that you know has really creative concepts that you can use as the starting point for your own ideas?

mind gaming

Not rly no. Watching replays has never been my thing. I don't have the attention span to focus on a replay without doing anything, so I usually just spam the skip turn button to see mons die fast and get to who was the winner.

ego

Hm, that makes sense. You could still skip to the end of the replay to check out the team if you think that's a player who usually has interesting ideas, but it sounds like the strategy has been to rely more on your own theorizing or reading of what's strong in each meta.

mind gaming

Generally yes, I have my own very weird way of prepping that not rarely leads to me playing an entirely different metagame from the rest of the player pool.

ego

Do you remember how you first got into low tiers? Ever since the start of 2024, you've transformed almost entirely from a current-gen OU main to playing just about everything that's not current-gen OU.

mind gaming

Well, the ppl who know me from way back prob know me for me playing Gen 7 RU most. I had not actually played OU till I was invited to play in the World Cup, and during that time SS OU was the only tier played in WCoP. So when I got subbed in for Conflict I kinda just had to learn that tier for the tour itself, and I kind of enjoyed the hype of the official tour games, so I stuck around with current gen OU, which lets you participate in all three team tours, making it a pretty convenient tier to play. But then I kinda got bored of playing current-gen OU during SV and just started to play everything else I could play in official tournaments just to play something new.

ego

Oh, I didn't know that! The part about USUM RU, I mean. I wasn't around back then haha.

Are you planning to play any of those new (for you) tiers in team tours? So far I think it's just been SV, SS, and DPP in SPL as well as OU and PU in SCL. Are you thinking about anything else? Or is it your manager era for now?

mind gaming

I'm very moody, so it's hard to say rn; I'll have a better answer closer to the tours actually starting.

ego

Hm, that's reasonable. There's a while until SCL anyway. I guess I'll just ask you for your thoughts on a few more things. How do you feel about the slam format (and the classic format, since you've played both and they're almost the same)? People have debated about both the best finish limit (taking your Top 5 Open/Cup results) and about whether the Open/Cup system is better than the Swiss system in Masters. What do you think?

mind gaming

The Classic/Slam system is my fav pre-playoffs tour type. I think it fits the tour perfectly and is the best at giving you enough games to actually learn some of the tiers. BFL5 makes the points spread out more since it would kinda be lame if everyone just hovered around the same point value, while it also leaves room to compare top players of their generation since I could, for example, have the maximum amount of points in BFL3 this year, making it hard for someone in the future to compare with that if at best he can reach the same points value. More of an issue I have with these tours tho is that their timing is rly bad. By the time Classic rounds are getting to the tougher ones, you are currently in Slam playoffs and fully committed to those, making it extremely difficult to qualify for both in the same year since it would require you to prep for a total of eleven different tiers at the same time. They are also two tours that are so similar that a good number of "jack of all trades" players would wanna play both, although they don't rly main any of the tiers in either of the tours, which results in a pretty frustrating timing. I believe having Slam earlier at the start of the year would be a lot better. I don't think the prep work of OST + Slam is nearly as difficult as Classic + Slam and I don't think the ppl getting to the late rounds of OST are rly that into Classic or would struggle during the early rounds.

Another thing I don't like is how the picking of tiers in playoffs is just needlessly complicated. Currently it's both players' ranks in all tiers, and the first two tiers of the top seed player get picked, then the first two remaining tiers of the lower seed player, followed up with the highest of the top player's list to round out the five tiers played. It kind of sounds like a neat system where you just rank your tiers and don't rly gotta think about it much more until you realize that if both players have overlapping tiers they wanna play, it gets skipped on the lower-seeded players' list, letting them effectively pick three out of five tiers and giving them the advantage during the picks. I think an easier version to circumvent that would be a lower-seeded player picks two tiers first (this way they also don't need to rank all tiers but just share their top two tiers), and then the higher-seeded player picks from the remaining tiers what is not played (so they also don't need to give a full ranking but just share their bottom three tiers). It's way easier to understand and works pretty much identically except for the case where both players have the same tier in their top two.

ego

Oh, this is great!! Thank you for such a thorough answer. One more question, and then I'll let you go. I'll borrow this one from the questions I asked everyone! If you weren't in the tournament, who would be your favourite to win? Top 3?

mind gaming

My German buddies fogbound lake, lax, zugubu royale.

ego

I didn't know lax was German hahaha. Okay, I did say that was my last question, so I'll finish up now :). Thanks so much! Do you have anything else on your mind?

mind gaming

Yes, I would like to know the crowd's opinion on which three players they root for most. And for that I trust the popularizer of the Grand Slam (ego) to have an opinion that perfectly represents the player base naturally without even asking them. And if it doesn't, it obviously becomes the crowd's opinion. Don't tell me now tho; I can read it later in the interview.