How To Effectively Surprise Your Opponent

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Introduction

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It was this line in this WCoP that made me want to strive to write this article. You can watch the battle where this line was said by one of the best ADV players the site has seen here.

The element of surprise is one of the greatest tools you (as the player) have when entering a battle with your opponent. While definitely a cliche statement to make in this day and age, the concept definitely still rings true, as any seasoned veteran of the game will tell you. A few years ago in The Smog, Alchemator wrote an article on how to use gimmicks as they applied to the DPP metagame. While similar in concept, not all "surprises" have to be gimmicks, and many can in fact be very minor differences from the norm that can make all the difference in getting the jump on your opponent. In this article I'll delve into exactly how to surprise your opponent, what makes them surprising, and why you don't have to jump to gimmicks, but definitely can if you want, to surprise your opponent.

Why is Surprising Your Opponent a Good Thing?

Surprising your opponent is important because it, in effect, throws your opponent off their game. Pokémon is a game that relies a lot on planning ahead and making assumptions about what your opponent will do in order to pave the best route to a victory. If you can trip up your opponent into making the wrong move by revealing something they were not expecting, that can be your opening to win the game. Conversely, if your team is so well known, like VIL's was in the introduction, your opponent can play the game in a totally different way from how they normally would and change the pace of the game. No one would normally switch Blissey into Tyranitar because there are far too many dangers in doing so. However, in VIL's team's case, Blissey can easily switch into his Tyranitar without much fear, and knowing that fact allows Specterito to play differently than he normally would and make more "optimal" plays with that knowledge in mind.

The Smogon staff recently had a discussion about what was more important: teambuilding or playing skillfully? What was summarized in the end by user FLCL was that often there is only one true move to make for every turn. So for two opponents that will (almost) always make the correct move every turn, it will usually come down to teambuilding and matchup that determines who comes out on top in the match (ignoring hax and choking/misplays). What this means is that, for two evenly matched players, the one that brings the more "surprising" or well-built team that causes their opponent to mispredict or misplay will likely win the match.

How to Surprise Your Opponent

Now, surprising your opponent in the context that I will be talking about comes with the caveat that they must be experienced in the tier enough to make assumptions about the Pokémon and team that you bring to a battle. A new player really has no or little idea of what to expect, so essentially any set or Pokémon or change of item could be extremely surprising to them, even the sets that are considered standard.

This is also where I should make something clear: using "standards," whether they be Pokémon, sets, teams, items, EVs, anything, can be and is a good thing. They're standards for a reason, and it's because they've been proven to work. I don't think anyone would argue that Ferrothorn ever needs to be "surprising" or gimmicky in order to be effective. It has a few menial jobs that it does extremely well, checks various threats, and is a top Pokémon of OU for many reasons. However, you will rarely, if ever, see any vastly different variants of what is considered a standard Ferrothorn, and that's because it's so good at what it does with a standard set. The same can be said for Pokémon like Azumarill, Weavile, and Hippowdon. They are all pretty one-dimensional, but that doesn't make them any less effective. Now, can you change up how they're played, be surprising with them, and still be effective? Of course. However, they are just not Pokémon that you would typically change up in any real manner, because they just don't require it or their standard set may be too valuable for your team.

So how do you choose which Pokémon to be surprising with? This is also where I should be clear: not all of your Pokémon should be, or have to be, surprising in order to be effective. Can your whole team be variants or gimmicks and still work? Absolutely, I've seen it done. But usually, all you need is to bring one or two unusual or non-standard fare Pokémon in order to give you that edge in battle. So again, how do you choose? The answer comes down to: what exactly is your team is trying to accomplish? If your team goal is to set up a Mega Charizard X sweep, then your gimmicks or surprises should be done in an effort to get your opponent to lose their Charizard checks so that it can sweep in the endgame. A good example for this particular scenario is using Heatran to lure in Slowbro and using Power Herb + Solar Beam to eliminate it, which removes one of the best checks to a Mega Charizard X sweep. Another popular strategy along the same lines as this example is using Natural Gift to remove an otherwise hard counter to that Pokémon. This can be seen here in the quarterfinals ORAS OU match of Smogon Tour 19 between Bad Ass and Leftiez. In the battle, Leftiez's Azumarill used Natural Gift to remove Ferrothorn, which is normally an excellent counter to Azumarill, and allowed itself to be more effective in the match than it otherwise would have been.

What Makes a Good Surprise?

So how do you know if your surprise is good or not? Well, it all comes down to how exactly you want to surprise your opponent. There is a kind of hierarchy of surprises and tricks that range from minor moveset additions and changes to entire Pokémon to full-scale team gimmicks, and what you're aiming to do will lend to which kind will be more effective for you to use.

Minor moveset changes are definitely the most common, and I don't know a single top competitive player that doesn't edit at least a couple of their Pokémon to deviate a little bit from the standard sets to better suit their team's needs. The most common edits from standard sets are EV changes to hit different Speed tiers. When talking about defensive Pokémon, many players will refer to "speed creeping," which is giving typically fully defensive Pokémon a few more EVs in Speed than normal in order to get the jump on other similar defensive Pokémon, should the need to hit first ever arise. A good example of speed creep is Rhyperior in RU. Many players run the specially defensive set, and when doing so, many will opt to pump a good amount of EVs in Speed to ensure that they can outrun other specially defensive Rhyperior, and losing the marginal few EVs in HP usually isn't going to make a difference in individual battles, but the Speed EVs will. This is what I would consider to be the least surprising "surprise" you can use in a battle, but it is definitely effective when thinking about what you can do to most securely ensure you win the battle. More "surprising" uses of speed creep can be seen in Azumarill in OU and Skarmory in BW OU, Pokémon against which your opponent may more commonly assume their defensive or offensive Pokémon would outspeed, which could lead to a misplay.

Slightly more major changes include bringing more uncommonly seen moves on otherwise standard sets or Pokémon, like the aforementioned Power Herb + Solar Beam Heatran. Another good example includes MixTar in BW OU, both the surprise factor and effectiveness of which are detailed in Jirachee's RMT here. As Jirachee describes, and as can be seen from the rest of the team, Tyranitar is a very common, staple Pokémon of the BW OU metagame. And it's also commonly seen as a Stealth Rock setter, and Crunch and Superpower are both common moves on it. However, Jirachee's edit of adding Fire Blast to the set and pumping some EVs into Special Attack allows Tyranitar to function as normal but also comes with the benefit of being able to highly damage or eliminate Breloom and Skarmory, two Pokémon standard Tyranitar would not normally be able to touch. This is a very good use of a surprise tactic because Tyranitar is not a Pokémon experienced players would normally expect to misplay around, not only because it still performs its normal job of setting sand and Stealth Rock, therefore not tripping any signals as to the surprise it holds, but also because it meshes well with the rest of the team, making a sweep by Garchomp and Alakazam later in the game much easier.

Moving on to Bigger Surprises

While every top competitive player will make use of the minor surprises that just come from good teambuilding to get the jump on their opponent, not all will use the "bigger" surprises that entail bringing more obscure sets, Pokémon, or team styles to try to get the edge against their opponent, at least not all the time.

Obscure sets on common Pokémon are probably the most effective of the bigger surprises you can utilize. Like minor moveset changes, it all comes down to how effectively they cause your opponent to misplay and how well they mesh with the rest of your team. A good example of an obscure set that proved to be effective is Aeroblacktyl's Dragon Dance wallbreaker Latios that was shown in the quarterfinals of the WCoP and can be seen in action here. While Aeroblacktyl's team also features semi-obscure usage of Pokémon in Seismitoad and Spikes Klefki, it is his usage of DD Latios that really gave him the edge in the battle and allowed him to finish the game with a Mega Pinsir sweep in the end. It fit the team well because it carried Hidden Power Fire specifically to nail Steel-types like Ferrothorn, Earthquake for Heatran, and Zen Headbutt to highly damage Clefable, which would normally be able to tank most of what Latios could throw at it, which all opened up a sweep for Pinsir. And it was an effective surprise because almost all Latios are special wallbreakers with Life Orb featuring Draco Meteor (95% of all Latios last month used it).

The next step in the bigger surprises would be bringing an entire surprise Pokémon to the match. This is typically harder to pull off, not only because those lesser-used Pokémon are typically lesser used for a reason (there usually exists a Pokémon that's similar and proven to be effective more often than not), but also because your opponent will typically know what that obscure Pokémon is going to do. However, the point of bringing an obscure or surprise Pokémon is to throw your opponent off their game straight from Team Preview and hope that it exploits a team weakness that your opponent may not have prepared for. This is particularly effective in ORAS because there is just so much to prepare for in standard OU that while your opponent may have all of the top threats covered, they are likely to have some holes that can be exposed by the lesser-seen Pokémon. You play a gambling game bringing an obscure Pokémon: you're effectively banking on your opponent not having that hole covered, because if they do, then you've brought a less effective Pokémon to the match whose role could have been filled by something more generally effective. A good example of a player bringing a surprise Pokémon was the match between Speto and Improbable for Round 1 of the WCoP, where Speto brought a Nidoking, and can be watched here. While it didn't work out for Speto in the end, Nidoking proved to be extremely threatening for Improbable and was extremely hard for the latter to play around. Here it can be seen that Nidoking was used not only for the element of surprise but also because it filled a much-needed role that the team wouldn't otherwise have: an extremely strong special attacking wallbreaker that would hopefully remove Clefable and pave the way for a Latios or Tornadus-T sweep in the late-game.

The biggest surprise you can bring to a match is an entire team style surprise. Most commonly, this refers to bringing something like a weather team to a tier that typically doesn't see much weather play, such as Rain Dance in ORAS UU. Instead of banking on just one Pokémon to expose a hole in your opponent's team, you're devoting your entire team to a specific strategy to exacerbate any holes they may have and follow that path to a victory. This kind of surprise is definitely the most risky to employ, as all it takes is one Pokémon on your opponent's team that can effectively counter your team's entire strategy to cause it to fail. However, should they not have that one solid counter or check, or should they misplay in any way, entire surprise team styles can prove extremely effective. This was probably most evident in the last Smogon Tour, where Baton Pass teams quickly rose to the center of attention, particularly after user dEnIsSsS won an entire DPP tour with a single Baton Pass team. You can see a variant of the team he used in action here. The reason his Baton Pass team was so effective was that it was extremely formulaic and extremely underprepared for. When building a DPP OU team, you typically do not take facing full Baton Pass chains in mind, and even if you do, the check you have in mind may not be very effective against the formula being employed against you. It's this obscurity that made dEnIsSsS's team so effective, and it can make something like full BP a good surprise team style to bring to a high-profile match in order to throw your opponent off their game.

Finally, when it comes to the tournament scene, players become known for bringing specific team types or certain Pokémon, because that is what they become comfortable playing with. Veteran In Love is known for bringing very unusual Pokémon to GSC games, SilentVerse and Meru were known as prominent stall players on the ladder for many years from DPP to XY, and WhiteQueen is known for "blizzspam" in DPP and for bringing Serperior in ORAS OU matches, even to one of his finals matches for the latest OST. So with a dynamic like this within the tournament community, sometimes players will try to "counter style" each other by bringing teams or team types they generally would not. A good example of this dynamic can be seen in this WCoP quarterfinals match between cosine180 and WhiteQueen. cosine180 is generally known for bringing a team of "fat stuff" and playing more conservatively, and knowing this, WhiteQueen brought a team that generally has the advantage against this type of team, which can be seen by his inclusion of Gothitelle. However, cosine180 was able to turn the tables on WhiteQueen by instead bringing a team of balls-to-the-wall offense and in this manner was able to get the win by completing a Volcarona sweep.

Surprises vs Gimmicks

So after all of this, you may still be wondering what the difference between a surprise and a gimmick is. In my opinion, a gimmick is something that may or may not work, and the odds of it working are about as high as it not working. To me this includes extremely obscure sets or Pokémon like Electivire in ORAS OU and Choice Band Ferrothorn. While they may work every once in a while, even if they're effective at surprising your opponent, it may not even be enough to guarantee you a win. A surprise should get you that win, and a gimmick simply isn't that. A surprise doesn't even have to be all that "surprising." A Life Orb Swords Dance Garchomp set shouldn't be all that surprising, but due to the extreme popularity of the bulky Stealth Rock set, using it was definitely enough for SoulWind to trip up Steve Angello a bit in their tiebreaker match for the semifinals of the WCoP. While it didn't work out for SoulWind in the end, Garchomp's effectiveness is definitely palpable in their match and proves that you don't have to bring a gimmick in order to effectively surprise your opponent.

Bringing It All Together

With all of this in mind, I'll leave this closing statement by Stathakis:

Hopefully you as a player will have a better idea after reading this article of what constitutes a good surprise and how to use it to your advantage in your future battles. Always build to what your team's goal is, and only include what you think will get you that win. Remember that you hold all the cards when you step into battle—just don't bring all Jokers.

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