Premier League Spotlights: OUPL

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Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Premier League Coverage! Premier Leagues have long been one of the most popular tournament formats on Smogon, because they combine the rush of bidding with the collaborative atmosphere of team play. The Smogon Premier League is the largest and most prestigious such tournament, but many communities on Smogon have Premier Leagues of their own. In this series, we will bring you complete coverage of each Premier League on Smogon as they end. Today, we are covering the OverUsed Premier League.

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Introduction to OUPL

The OverUsed Premier League, or OUPL, followed the footsteps of many other tier-specific Premier League tournaments. This year, starry blanket, Analytic, and Team Pokepals took up the task of hosting OUPL and it has turned out to be very successful and activity was maintained to a high standard throughout the entire tournament.

As for the format, OUPL followed a path much like those of similar tournaments: each manager had 100,000 credits to spend in a live auction, and the players bought would face off against another team's players in a variety of OverUsed formats across all generations. Each week, 3 ORAS OU, 1 BW OU, 1 DPP OU, 1 ADV OU, 1 GSC OU, and 1 RBY OU matches were to be played by each team. Throughout five weeks, each team would play every other team, with the two teams having the best record advancing to the finals.

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The Auction

After all managers were chosen by the hosts, the auction was held on the 7th of May, resulting in the following teams:

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The most expensive players in the auction were idiotfrommars and TheEnder, who went for a whopping 28,000 and 22,000, respectively.

An honorable mention goes to OrdA, who helped run the bot for the auction and ensured everything ran smoothly!

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The Early Weeks

After a strong start during weeks one and two, the Dashing Dragonites were in the lead with two wins, with every other team either losing twice or having one win and one loss. Although they had a strong start, every week was very close, with the Dragonites narrowly winning by one game each week. At this point there was no clear contender for second place, as many teams were sharing the same record of one win and one loss. Regardless of the records, the Fuego Ironworks Famahomes and the Topszn Noctowls had some of the strongest teams in the tournament and were likely to do well later on.

Week three came, and the Topszn Noctowls and the Inhumane Infernapes pulled through with another win. The Dashing Dragonites lost this week, putting all these teams in a tie for first place, but the tournament was far from over! The Menacing Metagrosses, however, had a very rough run in OUPL, accumulating three losses over the first three weeks, which heavily reduced their chances of making it to playoffs.

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With tournaments come upsets, and OUPL is no exception, with the most expensive player in the auction, idiotfrommars, going 1-4. ifm was drafted to play GSC after a solid performance in SPL and WCoP but had a very unfortunate run in OUPL.

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The Later Weeks

Weeks four and onwards were very important for all teams apart from the Menacing Metagrosses, as their 0-0-3 record made reaching playoffs impossible because winning the last two weeks in a row would only provide four points. The Fuego Ironworks Famahomes, Topszn Noctowls, and Twinleaf Thunder all pulled through with wins this week, making them most likely to make playoffs out of the lot. When week five started, these three teams were all competing for the two slots for the finals. The Noctowls had a lead over the other teams and had only to draw at the very worst to ensure they made it into playoffs. At the end of the week, they tied 4-4 with Twinleaf Thunder, just making it into playoffs alongside the Fuego Ironworks Famahomes, which managed to net wins weeks four and five.

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Highlight Match

The highlight match of this OUPL season for many would be TheEnder vs. Bluwing in week four. TheEnder brought an array of unconventional sets in order to throw off his opponent, including Choice Specs Rotom-W and Rock Polish Weakness Policy Tyranitar, and running both Latios and Latias on the same team. However, the only set that really ended up performing was Choice Specs Rotom-W, which managed to bait and remove Suicune easily so that TheEnder's Mega Lopunny could put in work late-game and clean up Bluwing's team, netting a needed win for the Famahomes.

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The Finals

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The finals were intense for both teams, as they were two of the strongest teams in the tournament. The Famahomes picked up the first win of the week, with Nails beating Bedschibaer in a BO3 RBY series. Get this Money won for the Noctowls, and Tesung helped net another win shortly after, putting the Noctowls up 2-1. Snowy won against Mizuhime in ADV and evened the scores out; then Mr.378 won against Sapientia, putting the Famahomes in the lead again, but Pearl won against Hootie and evened out the score once more. Stathakis played the second-last game and won against boudouche, putting the Famahomes up 4-3, meaning if they won, they would win the entire tournament, but if they lost, it would go to a tiebreaker. PokèManiac Livio pulled off the win against xray, evening the score one last time and forcing the tiebreaker to decide the winners. The tiebreaker format is one ORAS OU game and two other battles of the manager's choices. Tokyo Tom chose BW OU and TDK chose GSC OU, leaving some great games to finish off the tournament.

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After an intense finals series, both teams had to play three remaining games to decide the winner of the tournament. Get this Money's team featured entry hazard stacking with Mega Alakazam as a late-game cleaner, which worked great against TheEnder's team, as TheEnder's Mega Scizor, the only answer to Mega Alakazam, could be worn down by repeated switches into entry hazards and was also completely shut down by Get this Money's Talonflame, making it difficult for TheEnder to break GtM's team and pull off the win.

Mr.378 then won against Pokèmaniac Livio in a GSC OU game in which RNG had a large influence on the game. Early on, Livio missed Toxic against Cloyster, which would have been key in crippling Mr.378's hazard removal and eventually being able to potentially pave a way to win. Unfortunate for Livio, the game was cut short at turn 34, when Mr.378's Nidoking landed a critical hit on Snorlax, removing it from the game.

Tesung and rozes's game ended up being a long 100+-turn match, revolving around phazing each other's Pokémon with Skarmory and relying on Spikes damage to beat the opposing team. The game went on with phazing until turn 101, when rozes managed to switch Mienshao in for free and remove Tesung's Skarmory. Mienshao fainted to sand and Life Orb damage shortly after, leaving rozes with a Skarmory and Amoonguss against Tesung's Gastrodon, and the game was looking over. Until...

...this happens. Tesung is considered a really lucky player by many, and it's not hard to see why. It was an unfortunate end to the tournament, but the Topszn Noctowls played well through the whole tournament and were deserving of the win regardless of what happened.

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Closing Words

Overall, the tournament was ran smoothly, players always managed to play before deadlines, and many of the games were very close and entertaining to watch. Of course, no tournament goes without upsets, but this also allowed for unproven players to have a chance to prove themselves.

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Conclusion

Catch us later for a recap of PUPL!

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