Iceball47

Wassup fellas,

I’ve been into competitive Pokémon for almost 10 years now, and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. Before all that, I was just a casual player — running through the mainline games on the Wii and later on the Switch. Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet especially kept me hooked and reminded me why I love this series so much.

My real start in competitive came from Pokémon Brick Bronze on Roblox. I was part of a community called Team Celestial, where we held our own tournaments, made teams, and even ran our own ELO system. That little community really lit the fire for competitive battling in me. When the game got taken down, most of us moved to Pokémon Showdown to keep the grind alive.

On Showdown, I fell deep into OU and UU, which are still my favorite metagames to this day. I loved the teambuilding, the mind games, the constant adaptation — all of it. But if I had to pick a format that really feels like me, it’s draft leagues. I’ve played in about five so far, and honestly, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing Pokémon. I love the draft phase the most — figuring out synergies, sniping picks, theorycrafting cores — but I’ll be real, my prep game is kind of buns. Still working on that part.

What I’ve come to really respect is how the Smogon community has kept this scene alive for so long and built something meaningful on top of the Pokémon IP. From custom formats to tiering and metagame development, it’s a whole world built by the players, and that’s something I want to be more involved in. I’ve never posted on the forums before — like, ever — but I’m changing that now as I take things a little more seriously and aim to keep improving.

Oh, and if you see a Slowbro (or anything from the Slowpoke family, including the Alolan forms) on my team? Just know it’s personal. That’s the GOAT.

Looking forward to learning more and being part of all this in a bigger way.