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Resource NUPL XIII and NUFL I Team Dump
- Thread starter Pokeslice
- Start date
(Click on sprites for the pastes)
Week 1 vs zS (Win)
Returning to the tier after the NUCL loss streak was quite challenging, especially while facing a high caliber player like zS. This team was far from optimized and you can tell it based on some on the Amoonguss and Flygon sets, that are quite suboptimal, but I feel like the main ideas (SD Migo and NP Rotom-Heat) were great calls. Looking at momo's FCL players' scout, we noticed the teams were often pretty slow and the fighting resists had been Grass/Poison types and slower Ghost-types so far, despite being quite defensive teams, offering opportunities for Flamigo. Rotom-Heat was picked because momo was known for loving NP Ninetales, Dragon Move Less Fat Flygon, and Magician Klefki, three Pokemon with bad matchup into NP Rotom-Heat. There are some sequences that I could have played better in the middle game, but I eventually won the mindgame at the end and with it the victory. This set me on the right foot and was a win I clearly needed to get some confidence back.
Week 2 vs Nashrock (Win)
Week 2 was a crazy week because I was visiting family for half of the week and was still in every open for Slam. This left me with little time to prepare and a team that once again had some pretty blatant weaknesses. Compared to last week, I wanted to flip some of the weaknesses I had, such as my hazard game since I had no spinner and no spikes against zS, and I decided to repeat mons from last week. The team ended up being quite okay despite lacking a good plan against Bellibolt teams. Fogbound Lake was extensively testing that Pokémon that week and I kept losing to it, so I was quite scared when Nashrock revealed one at preview. I honestly thought that was doomed, but it turned out alright. Nashrock didn't tera anything into a Fighting resist, letting me spam free Close Combat with Tauros, while also letting me weaken Bellibolt with Tsareena. I was happy with how I played and happier with that team than last week's.
Week 3 vs DugZa (Loss)
So I eventually jumped on the Bellibolt hype train and wanted to try it out. I also knew DugZa was the kind of player to use boring balances, which Scrafty is usually great onto and it gave me a great Ghost resist, something I hadn't bothered to cover in week 1 and 2. I also figured out a status spam strat could work fine against DugZa, especially if he couldn't use his tera for Poison / Steel because of a Tera Fairy to cover Scrafty. At the end of the day, the team struggled of the lack of Steel-types and I definitely should have made one of the defensive pieces a Tera-Steel user. DugZa brought a Normal spam balance and I had to trade Basculegion for Porygon-Z, leaving me with no hope of beating Bulk Up Breloom. I knew that Pokémon was a hard matchup from test games against OBB, but I got quite surprised by it being Tera-Elec which wasn't standard at the time. Honnestly that team was pretty trash with an underwhelming Flygon match-up too, and even if the game got quite close at the end, I think it's better to avoid looking in that direction again.
Week 4 vs Danny (Loss)
Feeling unhappy with my loss with balance, I switched back to offense and recreated something similar to the NUCL team I used against Mada. I wanted to use broken Porygon-Z since it was still allowed and I should stop myself from bringing honnest teams only. So Danny brought a team that was quite prepared for Porygon-Z with Bronzong, Diancie, and Incineroar, but managed to almost lose to it just because of how broken this Pokemon was. Anyway, Ho3n was meant to bring the same team as Danny, except for the Flygon set. I wrongly assumed Danny was band, skipping the turn it attacked my Flamigo and not noticing it hit 4 times and not 3. This error costed me the game as Tera Ghost Specs Shadow Ball was easily cleaning up in the endgame (as the Flygon was Adamant); this was a very embarrassing way to give Danny his first ever win against me (I'm still positive against him, whether he likes it or not).
Week 5 vs crying (Win)
This was crying's first game in the season and I knew they usually go with their own teams, so I had nothing to scout. They are known for bringing some quite creative techs and mainly using hyper offense or stall. Scarf Florges and Swords Dance Incineroar are good Pokemon against both in my experience; while Kilo usually farms offense and Vaporeon with removal is great at playing the long game against more defensive teams. At the end of the day, I messed up my endgame by not roaring the struggling toxicroak for no reason, but eh odds still were in my favor (afaik) and I won. Looking back, the team feels a bit slow to use and it's hard to keep momentum with it.
Week 6 vs Kiyo (Loss)
There was a double sub on week 6, and I ended up preparing a team for MC. Kiyo's scout was full of Bronzong and not so many Ghost-resists, so our idea was to build around Chandelure. I built two teams, a Ghost spam and a special spam, and that's with this one that MC ended up rolling. We got rained and the matchup was less than ideal, not much else to say.
Week 7 vs BIG TONY 2014 (Win)
So we brought an earlier version of the team to the game, because Ming linked the wrong version :rolling_eyes:. Anyway, Tony doesn't like bringing Water-resists so we brought Inteleon + Toxicroak, the old reliable GXE core. The rest of the team is a quite standard defensive core aimed at laying hazards up. Tony brought the one Pokemon that beats Toxicroak + Inteleon, but instantly traded it against Diancie. So Inteleon just destroyed him, even if the Goodra version would have cooked harder.
Semi-Finals vs BIG TONY 2014 (Win)
I got to beat Tony myself this time and take revenge for NUCL finals. The idea was to bring Goodra again as it had a great matchup against what Tony brought in week 7 and we believed Tony wouldn't be bad enough to not bring something for Inteleon again. Well, Tony brought 0 water resist and Goodra had a bad matchup. Nonetheless, Copperajah proved to have an insane matchup, while Meloetta found itself in a great position once Bronzong was eliminated. I'm happy with how I played that one, though the team wasn't perfect.
Finals vs DugZa (Win)
Once again, I preperrade for balance when facing DugZa. Didn't make the same mistake of forgetting the Steel-type, and added Duraludon, a Pokémon OBB had been high on and matched well into some of Shengineer's most used Pokemon's like Kilowattrel, PH Breloom, and Diancie. The call this time was PH Breloom, which farmed a lot of balance and also matched up well against that stupid Pokemon called Bellibolt. Added Sylveon to be able to last against other balances, Incineroar to break faster than Breloom, Tentacruel for removal, and Kilo for speed control. The team is quite weak to Toxicroak on paper, but fortunately the tera types on Sylveon, Duraludon, Kilowattrel, and Incineroar all help against it, while DugZa seemingly expected Gligar and brought Ice Punch Toxicroak which had a poor match-up there.
Finals tiebreak vs Loocas13 (Win)
Ho3n ended up editing the team, to make it more offensive, but here was the original idea I had. Slowbro seemed good based on the high use of Tauros-Water and Breloom, and could play long games against the usually passive teams of loocas. Scrafty was added for similar reason and defensive synergy, helping out with Dark- and Ghost-types that could annnoy Slowbro. Vaporeon brought a necessary Water resist and Wish support for Duraludon, which well was just as good in Ducks scout as last round. Kilowattrel and Scyther were added for Speed control, key immunities, and removal. Eventually, loocas brought a Rain team, which is not ideal when facing Vaporeon + Duraludon, so I feel like Ho3n probably would have won without the edits, even if his version had a much better matchup.
Week 1 vs zS (Win)
Returning to the tier after the NUCL loss streak was quite challenging, especially while facing a high caliber player like zS. This team was far from optimized and you can tell it based on some on the Amoonguss and Flygon sets, that are quite suboptimal, but I feel like the main ideas (SD Migo and NP Rotom-Heat) were great calls. Looking at momo's FCL players' scout, we noticed the teams were often pretty slow and the fighting resists had been Grass/Poison types and slower Ghost-types so far, despite being quite defensive teams, offering opportunities for Flamigo. Rotom-Heat was picked because momo was known for loving NP Ninetales, Dragon Move Less Fat Flygon, and Magician Klefki, three Pokemon with bad matchup into NP Rotom-Heat. There are some sequences that I could have played better in the middle game, but I eventually won the mindgame at the end and with it the victory. This set me on the right foot and was a win I clearly needed to get some confidence back.
Week 2 vs Nashrock (Win)
Week 2 was a crazy week because I was visiting family for half of the week and was still in every open for Slam. This left me with little time to prepare and a team that once again had some pretty blatant weaknesses. Compared to last week, I wanted to flip some of the weaknesses I had, such as my hazard game since I had no spinner and no spikes against zS, and I decided to repeat mons from last week. The team ended up being quite okay despite lacking a good plan against Bellibolt teams. Fogbound Lake was extensively testing that Pokémon that week and I kept losing to it, so I was quite scared when Nashrock revealed one at preview. I honestly thought that was doomed, but it turned out alright. Nashrock didn't tera anything into a Fighting resist, letting me spam free Close Combat with Tauros, while also letting me weaken Bellibolt with Tsareena. I was happy with how I played and happier with that team than last week's.
Week 3 vs DugZa (Loss)
So I eventually jumped on the Bellibolt hype train and wanted to try it out. I also knew DugZa was the kind of player to use boring balances, which Scrafty is usually great onto and it gave me a great Ghost resist, something I hadn't bothered to cover in week 1 and 2. I also figured out a status spam strat could work fine against DugZa, especially if he couldn't use his tera for Poison / Steel because of a Tera Fairy to cover Scrafty. At the end of the day, the team struggled of the lack of Steel-types and I definitely should have made one of the defensive pieces a Tera-Steel user. DugZa brought a Normal spam balance and I had to trade Basculegion for Porygon-Z, leaving me with no hope of beating Bulk Up Breloom. I knew that Pokémon was a hard matchup from test games against OBB, but I got quite surprised by it being Tera-Elec which wasn't standard at the time. Honnestly that team was pretty trash with an underwhelming Flygon match-up too, and even if the game got quite close at the end, I think it's better to avoid looking in that direction again.
Week 4 vs Danny (Loss)
Feeling unhappy with my loss with balance, I switched back to offense and recreated something similar to the NUCL team I used against Mada. I wanted to use broken Porygon-Z since it was still allowed and I should stop myself from bringing honnest teams only. So Danny brought a team that was quite prepared for Porygon-Z with Bronzong, Diancie, and Incineroar, but managed to almost lose to it just because of how broken this Pokemon was. Anyway, Ho3n was meant to bring the same team as Danny, except for the Flygon set. I wrongly assumed Danny was band, skipping the turn it attacked my Flamigo and not noticing it hit 4 times and not 3. This error costed me the game as Tera Ghost Specs Shadow Ball was easily cleaning up in the endgame (as the Flygon was Adamant); this was a very embarrassing way to give Danny his first ever win against me (I'm still positive against him, whether he likes it or not).
Week 5 vs crying (Win)
This was crying's first game in the season and I knew they usually go with their own teams, so I had nothing to scout. They are known for bringing some quite creative techs and mainly using hyper offense or stall. Scarf Florges and Swords Dance Incineroar are good Pokemon against both in my experience; while Kilo usually farms offense and Vaporeon with removal is great at playing the long game against more defensive teams. At the end of the day, I messed up my endgame by not roaring the struggling toxicroak for no reason, but eh odds still were in my favor (afaik) and I won. Looking back, the team feels a bit slow to use and it's hard to keep momentum with it.
Week 6 vs Kiyo (Loss)
There was a double sub on week 6, and I ended up preparing a team for MC. Kiyo's scout was full of Bronzong and not so many Ghost-resists, so our idea was to build around Chandelure. I built two teams, a Ghost spam and a special spam, and that's with this one that MC ended up rolling. We got rained and the matchup was less than ideal, not much else to say.
Week 7 vs BIG TONY 2014 (Win)
So we brought an earlier version of the team to the game, because Ming linked the wrong version :rolling_eyes:. Anyway, Tony doesn't like bringing Water-resists so we brought Inteleon + Toxicroak, the old reliable GXE core. The rest of the team is a quite standard defensive core aimed at laying hazards up. Tony brought the one Pokemon that beats Toxicroak + Inteleon, but instantly traded it against Diancie. So Inteleon just destroyed him, even if the Goodra version would have cooked harder.
Semi-Finals vs BIG TONY 2014 (Win)
I got to beat Tony myself this time and take revenge for NUCL finals. The idea was to bring Goodra again as it had a great matchup against what Tony brought in week 7 and we believed Tony wouldn't be bad enough to not bring something for Inteleon again. Well, Tony brought 0 water resist and Goodra had a bad matchup. Nonetheless, Copperajah proved to have an insane matchup, while Meloetta found itself in a great position once Bronzong was eliminated. I'm happy with how I played that one, though the team wasn't perfect.
Finals vs DugZa (Win)
Once again, I preperrade for balance when facing DugZa. Didn't make the same mistake of forgetting the Steel-type, and added Duraludon, a Pokémon OBB had been high on and matched well into some of Shengineer's most used Pokemon's like Kilowattrel, PH Breloom, and Diancie. The call this time was PH Breloom, which farmed a lot of balance and also matched up well against that stupid Pokemon called Bellibolt. Added Sylveon to be able to last against other balances, Incineroar to break faster than Breloom, Tentacruel for removal, and Kilo for speed control. The team is quite weak to Toxicroak on paper, but fortunately the tera types on Sylveon, Duraludon, Kilowattrel, and Incineroar all help against it, while DugZa seemingly expected Gligar and brought Ice Punch Toxicroak which had a poor match-up there.
Finals tiebreak vs Loocas13 (Win)
Ho3n ended up editing the team, to make it more offensive, but here was the original idea I had. Slowbro seemed good based on the high use of Tauros-Water and Breloom, and could play long games against the usually passive teams of loocas. Scrafty was added for similar reason and defensive synergy, helping out with Dark- and Ghost-types that could annnoy Slowbro. Vaporeon brought a necessary Water resist and Wish support for Duraludon, which well was just as good in Ducks scout as last round. Kilowattrel and Scyther were added for Speed control, key immunities, and removal. Eventually, loocas brought a Rain team, which is not ideal when facing Vaporeon + Duraludon, so I feel like Ho3n probably would have won without the edits, even if his version had a much better matchup.
If you watch my YouTube videos at all, then you may have heard me mention that I wanted to start playing tournaments in some capacity again this year to prove a point. I get a decent amount of people throwing strays my way about how I generally avoid tournaments and saying I'm not worth drafting as support in others because of this. I don't really blame people for thinking I'm not SCL caliber or anything, but the disrespect felt like it was getting too loud. I also hadn't finished NUPL with a positive record yet (plenty of .500 results), so that was a personal goal that I fortunately met.
Week 1 vs Fantos13 (W)
Fantos had basically nothing in his scout, so I went with something that I felt would punish inexperience. Pikachu is pretty insane when you position effectively with it, and SubPass Flareon is probably its best enabler. The team identity overall was just trying to shove wallbreakers in my opponent's face behind the safety of a Substitute. Overall, it's basically just another take on Water-type overwhelming and exploiting.
Week 2 vs Parpar (W)
Originally, I was going to do something like lead Substitute Torkoal or an Octillery. Frankly, I didn't end up enjoying what I built, so I just threw something together the day I had to play using a fun wallbreaker in Choice Band Relicanth. Mostly, I just wanted to hit something hard, and Relicanth has like fine synergy with Calm Mind Chimecho and Bulk Up Hitmonchan. Non-Sky Uppercut Hitmonchan was something interesting to me too; I think extra coverage is a great way to unlock its potency, and Bulk Up can carry your Mach Punch's strength enough anyway.
As an aside, these Glalie EVs suck! I was trying for a bit bulkier of a spread that still retained good offensive presence and missed the mark hard.
Week 3 vs snaga (L)
Originally, this team was built to face goldmason. I remember seeing his teams lacked bulky Water-types and relied on Glalie a LOT. So, I tried something to 1) pressure Glalie well and 2) can sweep because he lacks bulky Water-types. Unfortunately, it ended up being ME that got punished for having a fake Water-type, and I lost to a Huntail. Some of this was due to panicking when the Huntail came out, and I misplayed my advantage after dodging Hydro Pump with Flareon. I should've always been going for Fire Blast predicting Metang or Haunter to pivot in instead of trying to KO Huntail. The Whiscash has since been replaced :)
Week 4 vs Kaboom (L)
This was yet another week where my opponent was allergic to true Water-type checks and where they finally brought one! This time I got Bellossom'd, which was an increasingly common trend in some of my games across tournaments. The team is pretty straightforward in concept here: Seadra early-game can weaken any Water-types or Glalies so Pelipper can clean late-game. Sadly, the matchup against Bellossom is probably a bit too bad. Maybe Haunter is better off being a Golbat? Then you can probably shift Pelipper to be a Huntail or something else.
Week 5 vs violet river (W)
Hey, everyone! Once again a scout that I felt I could exploit with an offensive Water-type lead! Finally, I get the call right despite another Bellossom bring. The identity was just paralysis spam here, as river really likes using offense. Bulk Up Hitmonchan ended up 6-0ing very easily, though, so there's not much to comment on.
Week 6 vs Plague (W)
I had two thoughts coming into this week: CB Hitmonchan fucks, and this user has a ton of Metang usage. CB Hitmonchan lead with HP Fire Haunter + Raticate felt like a good way to match up against this scout, and I even threw in a SubToxic Wailord for good measure. Turns out, though, Plague simply stole from my teambuilder this week and loaded something I recognized eventually. I misplayed the game a bit when Kingler came out, but otherwise this felt fairly clean on my end.
Week 7 vs Real FV13 (W)
[5:03 PM]
I've tried building for like two hours and nothing speaks to me
This sums up how I felt coming into this week, and I basically just reused a team from earlier in the tournament. I then got stalled. There was a Bellossom. This could've gone terribly, and honestly I should've known fairly early that I was being stalled when the Rapid Spin Hitmonchan took less than half from my Haunter. That simply is never happening unless the opponent is stalling because that is a super specific Hitmonchan set that is locked to stall for viable usage.
Really, this game should've been kind of easy if I acted on my prediction after I got put into Petaya Berry range with my Haunter. I knew Hitmonchan was switching into one of Sableye or Metang, and I just didn't want to risk it so early when the Hitmonchan was kind of low already and unlikely to be that important for my opponent. I think had I hit Sableye early, it gives me so much momentum because then I can KO it with HP Fire the turn after, which conveniently smokes Bellossom if he wants to try and preserve it too for some reason. If Bellossom comes out the turn after, then I just boom on it (and I think he's inclined to let me? Not sure personally if he'd assume I had it). At worst, he sacks the Hitmonchan, and then I have insane momentum: all layers up and three Pokemon dead with Bellossom at around half HP. It's more likely at that point too that I can make real progress with Octillery to set up a Metang sweep late-game.
Instead, what we get is a very hilarious late-game where I freeze the Bellossom and FV misplays and gives me the chip damage on Golbat I needed to win.
Semifinals vs Plague (L)
I had the same gameplan coming into this week, as the scout was only one team bigger. I got Baton Passed and lucked a bit. Truthfully, I had two misplays where I definitely cost myself enough to not just call this a hax loss: I misclicked my Bellossom when Delcatty came out, and I foddered my Bellossom into Venomoth when I should always be letting Pelipper go to sleep. Hitmonchan basically won 100% of the time if I sack Pelipper to sleep then go back to Hitmonchan. So long as I don't get poisoned on the first Sludge Bomb, I can KO Venomoth and of course deny a Substitute to everything on their team. I sort of blame the misplays on being tired after work, but reality is I didn't play this slowly enough.
(The luck I'd point to mostly was Minun tanking Glalie Earthquake. It was an over 80% chance to OHKO, and if I get that, then Plague never gets the chain going and probably loses on the spot? Hard to make that claim for sure, but no Speed passing to Octillery is killer and makes dealing with it a lot easier. I also would've had Spikes layers and maybe get to surprise OHKO Flareon even. C'est la vie...)
---
This was a really fun tournament. I feel good about the state of ADV as all stands and enjoy the variety of Pokemon available for usage even if teams feel a bit repetitive due to how great Glalie is. I didn't really feel limited at all by its presence and definitely think a ban would be useless for the tier. I might post teams from ADVPL and ADVLTL later too, who knows.
Week 1 vs Fantos13 (W)
Fantos had basically nothing in his scout, so I went with something that I felt would punish inexperience. Pikachu is pretty insane when you position effectively with it, and SubPass Flareon is probably its best enabler. The team identity overall was just trying to shove wallbreakers in my opponent's face behind the safety of a Substitute. Overall, it's basically just another take on Water-type overwhelming and exploiting.
Week 2 vs Parpar (W)
Originally, I was going to do something like lead Substitute Torkoal or an Octillery. Frankly, I didn't end up enjoying what I built, so I just threw something together the day I had to play using a fun wallbreaker in Choice Band Relicanth. Mostly, I just wanted to hit something hard, and Relicanth has like fine synergy with Calm Mind Chimecho and Bulk Up Hitmonchan. Non-Sky Uppercut Hitmonchan was something interesting to me too; I think extra coverage is a great way to unlock its potency, and Bulk Up can carry your Mach Punch's strength enough anyway.
As an aside, these Glalie EVs suck! I was trying for a bit bulkier of a spread that still retained good offensive presence and missed the mark hard.
Week 3 vs snaga (L)
Originally, this team was built to face goldmason. I remember seeing his teams lacked bulky Water-types and relied on Glalie a LOT. So, I tried something to 1) pressure Glalie well and 2) can sweep because he lacks bulky Water-types. Unfortunately, it ended up being ME that got punished for having a fake Water-type, and I lost to a Huntail. Some of this was due to panicking when the Huntail came out, and I misplayed my advantage after dodging Hydro Pump with Flareon. I should've always been going for Fire Blast predicting Metang or Haunter to pivot in instead of trying to KO Huntail. The Whiscash has since been replaced :)
Week 4 vs Kaboom (L)
This was yet another week where my opponent was allergic to true Water-type checks and where they finally brought one! This time I got Bellossom'd, which was an increasingly common trend in some of my games across tournaments. The team is pretty straightforward in concept here: Seadra early-game can weaken any Water-types or Glalies so Pelipper can clean late-game. Sadly, the matchup against Bellossom is probably a bit too bad. Maybe Haunter is better off being a Golbat? Then you can probably shift Pelipper to be a Huntail or something else.
Week 5 vs violet river (W)
Hey, everyone! Once again a scout that I felt I could exploit with an offensive Water-type lead! Finally, I get the call right despite another Bellossom bring. The identity was just paralysis spam here, as river really likes using offense. Bulk Up Hitmonchan ended up 6-0ing very easily, though, so there's not much to comment on.
Week 6 vs Plague (W)
I had two thoughts coming into this week: CB Hitmonchan fucks, and this user has a ton of Metang usage. CB Hitmonchan lead with HP Fire Haunter + Raticate felt like a good way to match up against this scout, and I even threw in a SubToxic Wailord for good measure. Turns out, though, Plague simply stole from my teambuilder this week and loaded something I recognized eventually. I misplayed the game a bit when Kingler came out, but otherwise this felt fairly clean on my end.
Week 7 vs Real FV13 (W)
Rabia
this scout has been so uninspiring[5:03 PM]
I've tried building for like two hours and nothing speaks to me
This sums up how I felt coming into this week, and I basically just reused a team from earlier in the tournament. I then got stalled. There was a Bellossom. This could've gone terribly, and honestly I should've known fairly early that I was being stalled when the Rapid Spin Hitmonchan took less than half from my Haunter. That simply is never happening unless the opponent is stalling because that is a super specific Hitmonchan set that is locked to stall for viable usage.
Really, this game should've been kind of easy if I acted on my prediction after I got put into Petaya Berry range with my Haunter. I knew Hitmonchan was switching into one of Sableye or Metang, and I just didn't want to risk it so early when the Hitmonchan was kind of low already and unlikely to be that important for my opponent. I think had I hit Sableye early, it gives me so much momentum because then I can KO it with HP Fire the turn after, which conveniently smokes Bellossom if he wants to try and preserve it too for some reason. If Bellossom comes out the turn after, then I just boom on it (and I think he's inclined to let me? Not sure personally if he'd assume I had it). At worst, he sacks the Hitmonchan, and then I have insane momentum: all layers up and three Pokemon dead with Bellossom at around half HP. It's more likely at that point too that I can make real progress with Octillery to set up a Metang sweep late-game.
Instead, what we get is a very hilarious late-game where I freeze the Bellossom and FV misplays and gives me the chip damage on Golbat I needed to win.
Semifinals vs Plague (L)
I had the same gameplan coming into this week, as the scout was only one team bigger. I got Baton Passed and lucked a bit. Truthfully, I had two misplays where I definitely cost myself enough to not just call this a hax loss: I misclicked my Bellossom when Delcatty came out, and I foddered my Bellossom into Venomoth when I should always be letting Pelipper go to sleep. Hitmonchan basically won 100% of the time if I sack Pelipper to sleep then go back to Hitmonchan. So long as I don't get poisoned on the first Sludge Bomb, I can KO Venomoth and of course deny a Substitute to everything on their team. I sort of blame the misplays on being tired after work, but reality is I didn't play this slowly enough.
(The luck I'd point to mostly was Minun tanking Glalie Earthquake. It was an over 80% chance to OHKO, and if I get that, then Plague never gets the chain going and probably loses on the spot? Hard to make that claim for sure, but no Speed passing to Octillery is killer and makes dealing with it a lot easier. I also would've had Spikes layers and maybe get to surprise OHKO Flareon even. C'est la vie...)
---
This was a really fun tournament. I feel good about the state of ADV as all stands and enjoy the variety of Pokemon available for usage even if teams feel a bit repetitive due to how great Glalie is. I didn't really feel limited at all by its presence and definitely think a ban would be useless for the tier. I might post teams from ADVPL and ADVLTL later too, who knows.
Alright since mean slice forces me to post, I guess I don't have a choice.
This is the team I would've brought to Finals TBs if the Ducks dared to pick DPP.
Magmortar kinda is a duck. And ducks love the rain. Concept was to lure opposing waters in early with Magmortar and chip or kill them. Taunt is neat because if Slowking comes in, you can taunt it and more freely trap it with skuntank without having to worry about Twave or it just slacking off on your ass. Skuntank also has Rain Dance and Boom to enable the 3 Swift Swimmers. Swimmers kinda do what you expect them to do, which is miss hydro pump or aqua tail and get OHKOed, or get killed by Hitmonchan LO after some chip. But a lot of teams kinda slap Slowking on their teams as water counter play and call it a day, so it's funny to see when the swimmers actually do take off. Lunatone puts down Rocks, sets Rain and Booms. It is also the team's only ground or normal resist. Last Move can be a number of things, like Reflect or Hypnosis (or Gravity so you don't miss Hydro Pump lol.), but none of them feel really great.
Other than that, my computer exploding mid tour has not left me with a lot of self built teams to post, so I'll give a few sets.
Lapras @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 128 HP / 12 Def / 252 SpA / 116 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Ice Beam
- Hydro Pump
- Thunderbolt
I think Lapras is pretty cool. It has decent special attack, which, coupled with its amazing coverage, is pretty hard to wall in this tier. It is a little bit like Ampharos in regards that is extremely hard to OHKO, while being able threaten most things. It can't think of a special attack that it can not take from full health, and even on the physical Side only stuff like Hitmonchan, Medicham and offensive Rhydon can threaten the kill with their super effective STABs, which means your opponent is almost always forced to take at least one of its painful attacks. Having an amazing MU against the offensive Waters while not being really pursuit-trappable is appreciated as well. What I especially like is that it kinda sits on non-set up slowking forever thanks to its immense special Bulk and attack it until you eventually para it, crit it, freeze or pp stall it. Sub always lives Psychic and a lot of people will attempt to catch you with a twave. Long story short, you beat slowking 1v1 and get a free sub out of it, which allows you one more free amazing coverage move against whatever comes in.
Obviously Rocks are an issue, but when you bring Lapras in before they become an issue (or manage to keep them off), it will be very annoying to face.
Dragonair @ Leftovers
Ability: Shed Skin
EVs: 200 HP / 252 Atk / 56 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rest
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage / Dragon Claw
- Extreme Speed
Dragonair is a Mon I stumbled upon when I noticed my opponents noticing that my winrate against Dusclops was getting grimmer and grimmer. I ran through the list of 101 HP Sub Mons that could Set up a Sub and something else on Clops. While some of them intrigued me (Sub DD Lapras), most sounded like pure desperation moves, especially since most of them can't actually switch into Clops because they still fear catching a WoW. This made me think of something that doesn't mind eating a burn in the first place. RestTalk Dragonair has two Options to shrug off the Burn, while also being able to set up. Dragonair can kinda set up on some other defensive mons as well without fearing status as much as other Mons. The fact that there are no real dragon resists in this tier enforced me in my curiosity to try this out. Espeed can pick off weakened foes that outspeed at +1, which is why I did not feel the need to invest into speed any further. 56 Speed ensure that I can at +1 outspeed stuff like LO Medicham, because Gen 4 Espeed only has +1 Prio and I did not want to get picked off by a Fake Out or Bullet Punch. Tauros is annoying.
Pinsir @ Rowap Berry
Ability: Hyper Cutter
EVs: 8 HP / 248 Atk / 36 SpD / 216 Spe
Adamant Nature
- X-Scissor
- Earthquake / Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- Stealth Rock
This was a lead designed to cover a wide range of common leads my opponent used, including Ampharos, Sharpedo and Tauros. The EVs are designed to live Sharpedo's Hydro Pump as well as Rough Skin (or modest Sharpedo Pump, if anyone is mad enough to play that). Rowap breaks Sharpedo Sash. That's pretty much the only thing it does, but I was hellbent on not losing the Shark Lead MU without Hax involved.
Pinsir is pretty cool.
Let me know what you think!
This is the team I would've brought to Finals TBs if the Ducks dared to pick DPP.
Magmortar kinda is a duck. And ducks love the rain. Concept was to lure opposing waters in early with Magmortar and chip or kill them. Taunt is neat because if Slowking comes in, you can taunt it and more freely trap it with skuntank without having to worry about Twave or it just slacking off on your ass. Skuntank also has Rain Dance and Boom to enable the 3 Swift Swimmers. Swimmers kinda do what you expect them to do, which is miss hydro pump or aqua tail and get OHKOed, or get killed by Hitmonchan LO after some chip. But a lot of teams kinda slap Slowking on their teams as water counter play and call it a day, so it's funny to see when the swimmers actually do take off. Lunatone puts down Rocks, sets Rain and Booms. It is also the team's only ground or normal resist. Last Move can be a number of things, like Reflect or Hypnosis (or Gravity so you don't miss Hydro Pump lol.), but none of them feel really great.
Other than that, my computer exploding mid tour has not left me with a lot of self built teams to post, so I'll give a few sets.
Lapras @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 128 HP / 12 Def / 252 SpA / 116 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Ice Beam
- Hydro Pump
- Thunderbolt
I think Lapras is pretty cool. It has decent special attack, which, coupled with its amazing coverage, is pretty hard to wall in this tier. It is a little bit like Ampharos in regards that is extremely hard to OHKO, while being able threaten most things. It can't think of a special attack that it can not take from full health, and even on the physical Side only stuff like Hitmonchan, Medicham and offensive Rhydon can threaten the kill with their super effective STABs, which means your opponent is almost always forced to take at least one of its painful attacks. Having an amazing MU against the offensive Waters while not being really pursuit-trappable is appreciated as well. What I especially like is that it kinda sits on non-set up slowking forever thanks to its immense special Bulk and attack it until you eventually para it, crit it, freeze or pp stall it. Sub always lives Psychic and a lot of people will attempt to catch you with a twave. Long story short, you beat slowking 1v1 and get a free sub out of it, which allows you one more free amazing coverage move against whatever comes in.
Obviously Rocks are an issue, but when you bring Lapras in before they become an issue (or manage to keep them off), it will be very annoying to face.
Dragonair @ Leftovers
Ability: Shed Skin
EVs: 200 HP / 252 Atk / 56 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rest
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage / Dragon Claw
- Extreme Speed
Dragonair is a Mon I stumbled upon when I noticed my opponents noticing that my winrate against Dusclops was getting grimmer and grimmer. I ran through the list of 101 HP Sub Mons that could Set up a Sub and something else on Clops. While some of them intrigued me (Sub DD Lapras), most sounded like pure desperation moves, especially since most of them can't actually switch into Clops because they still fear catching a WoW. This made me think of something that doesn't mind eating a burn in the first place. RestTalk Dragonair has two Options to shrug off the Burn, while also being able to set up. Dragonair can kinda set up on some other defensive mons as well without fearing status as much as other Mons. The fact that there are no real dragon resists in this tier enforced me in my curiosity to try this out. Espeed can pick off weakened foes that outspeed at +1, which is why I did not feel the need to invest into speed any further. 56 Speed ensure that I can at +1 outspeed stuff like LO Medicham, because Gen 4 Espeed only has +1 Prio and I did not want to get picked off by a Fake Out or Bullet Punch. Tauros is annoying.
Pinsir @ Rowap Berry
Ability: Hyper Cutter
EVs: 8 HP / 248 Atk / 36 SpD / 216 Spe
Adamant Nature
- X-Scissor
- Earthquake / Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- Stealth Rock
This was a lead designed to cover a wide range of common leads my opponent used, including Ampharos, Sharpedo and Tauros. The EVs are designed to live Sharpedo's Hydro Pump as well as Rough Skin (or modest Sharpedo Pump, if anyone is mad enough to play that). Rowap breaks Sharpedo Sash. That's pretty much the only thing it does, but I was hellbent on not losing the Shark Lead MU without Hax involved.
Pinsir is pretty cool.
Let me know what you think!
Golem Clefairy Spikesless - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5nu-846542
Regarding the game itself, despite it looking like I was behind early, really I had the clear endgame always in mind: bring down Seismitoad (tricked a scarf turn 1) and Rotom-Frost (rocks went up, started taking a lot of damage early), and NP Golbat will win, even as last mon. Unless Zweilous got crazy lucky (mostly if it were Crunch and got defense drops against last mon) I was pretty confident I'd win in that endgame. I then became extremely confident in it the first time Zweilous rolled a roar, meaning no def drops. It didn't even up getting to last mon, but if it had, this was the end regardless.
Regarding the team overall, spikesless is inherently a challenge in BW where spikes are pretty free and spinners are bad. I wanted to share this team as an example of what kinds of tools a good spikesless needs because the key to a successful spikesless team is often misunderstood. The TL;DR version is don't expect to take a team with Garbodor and replace Garbodor with Weezing and for it to work. The best spikesless teams will usually look and play fundamentally differently. I don't exactly recommend a new BW player to pick this up and use it successfully, since Spikes structures will be much easier to understand and win with, but for the real BW enjoyers, hopefully this will encourage more folks to try out building spikesless.
First, we have the core that I started the team with: Golem, Golbat, and Clefairy. Clefairy and Golbat have excellent natural synergy and both are spikes immune. Clefairy is naturally most threatened by Fighting types, which Golbat 4x resists and sets up on with Nasty Plot. Golbat is so immensely physically tanky that it lives for example CB Sawk Stone Edge after rocks so it also just generally helps Clefairy with most any physical attacker. The core is also extremely good into a lot of special attackers due to Clefairy's sheer bulk on the special side and Magic Guard enabling easy switchins even to some difficult to switch into mons like Serperior or offensive Seismitoad, boosted by its immunity to scald burn or toxic damage. Very few special attackers beat Clefairy 1 on 1. Very few physical attackers beat Golbat 1 on 1. This is really keying in on the 100% winning/losing matchup point noted above. Where Clefairy can struggle with special attackers much more so is to ones that set up (hence Encore) or Taunt. Mandibuzz Taunting might often be a big problem for a fat core like this, but with both mons immune to Toxic, Clefairy having Knock Off, and Golbat getting Sludge Bomb poisons, it flips that matchup. So I'd generally be more worried about for example a Taunt Gardevoir than a Taunt Mandibuzz. At first glance, the most natural Rocker for a team like this (if not Rocks on Clefairy itself) would probably most often be Seismitoad, but here I went Golem. First it's important to note that I mostly only considered the Ground type rockers so something like Regirock was pretty much off the table (I wanted to ensure a volt immunity, since repeatedly switching Clefairy into a volt into a physical attacker seems like a doom loop if i've ever heard of one). There are a handful of ground type rockers here though (Seismitoad, Golurk, Golem, Piloswine, Camerupt) so why Golem?. The main reason why was that I felt the team would appreciate a normal and especially a flying resist and I also did want to make sure that with as slow and passive as Golbat Clefairy can be and with the lack of spikes, I felt the team likely needed quite a bit of power and priority or speed control options to address threats and trade favorably. Only Golem and Piloswine have priority. Regarding Golem over Piloswine, again I thought a normal and flying resistance would be important, but even beyond that Piloswine damage trades very well in general, but a lot worse in a spikes deficit since it can't hold leftovers. Sucker Punch being stronger into neutral targets than Ice Shard also seemed helpful, and I'm really not worried about Serperior with Clefairy and Golbat.
With that core in place, what are my biggest concerns? The three special mons that most readily came to mind were standard TrickScarf Rotom-Frost, NP Taunt Misdreavus, and a lot of Gardevoir sets, since all threaten Clefairy while also outputting massive damage on Golbat and Golem. On the physical end, I was also concerned about a lot of u-turners, especially Primeape scaring Clefairy out, uturning on Golbat to a counter (see above: re concerns volting on Clefairy). And I was concerned about Sawsbuck since +2 LO Double Edge is KOing golbat after rocks. Finally, the team remains pretty slow and passive even with Golem's attacking power on its STABs and pretty strong Sucker Punch. The remaining 3 mons were meant to address all this. First, if you can't beat Scarf Frostom, join em. This gives me a trick switch in, blizzard resistance, and a speed control/momentum generator. It also gives me an option to beat a set up mon if it got rolling (like maybe a Curse Miltank, which beats Clefairy pretty well even with Encore). Next, Band Skuntank (this could probably be other items and maybe should be if I tested this more!) gives me options into every psychic and ghost type and the strongest priority in the tier. Lastly, despite not resisting U-Turn and in fact being weak to it, Tangela's regenerator and immense physical bulk let it shrug them all off with easy, even with Rocks up, letting me not always have to use the rock-weak Golbat as a pivot for Primeape. This was also a very important secondary Sawk check considering how terribly weak the team is to Sawk's Mold Breaker EQ besides Golbat. Tangela gets the broken sleep OHKO button too, which ensures it will never be passive. Sludge Bomb coverage was to cover for Sawsbuck who threatens to break Golbat at +2 and I didn't want to have to rely on hitting Blizzard.
Other teams I used*
practically identical, very solid structures:
slightly different, less solid, more matchuppy:
considerably different, leaning more HO:
*I'm not posting these full pastes because i think it's better for people to experiment with these types of teams on their own to see what kinds of checklists a solid team should be following and also to experiment with what sets these teams need. One of these first two maybe could go in a new sample if we revamp those. But I want to stress that despite 4 repeating mons on those first two teams, sets are not the same and a Gurdurr Skunk team is inherently gonna play differently from a Mandibuzz Sawsbuck team. Understanding what sets the other 4 should have to best pair with mons 5 and 6 is a good lesson for folks to play around with. These structures are very solid and even suboptimal sets will still do pretty well for you.
**Note that I definitely do not mean to suggest from this dump where I used 4/5 Skuntanks that Skuntank is by any means mandatory or even close to it nor that Piloswine or Golurk or other rockers I didn't use are bad rockers, etc. I was just enjoying using these structures and I only played 5 games of BW for this tour. If I'd played 9 or whatever I'm sure I would have brought some more variety in other games to avoid a counter scout so much. More generally though I do think having a Dark (which is realistically one of three mons like 95% of the time, Skuntank, Mandibuzz, or Zweilous - Cacturne, Shiftry, and others do exist but are considerably worse and more rare) is usually important and you should be very careful any time you're bringing a team without one of those three mons. Double and triple check are you really ok into Misdreavus and Gardevoir and Duosion without them? They're all extremely scary Pokemon when you don't have a dark and there's really not a great way to check all 3 in one slot without a Dark. It can be quite limiting to start every team with Garbodor+one of 3 pokemon, so I don't mean to say you have to do that - It's possible to cover them all overall as a team. Just make sure you know what you're doing if not using a Dark.
Regarding the game itself, despite it looking like I was behind early, really I had the clear endgame always in mind: bring down Seismitoad (tricked a scarf turn 1) and Rotom-Frost (rocks went up, started taking a lot of damage early), and NP Golbat will win, even as last mon. Unless Zweilous got crazy lucky (mostly if it were Crunch and got defense drops against last mon) I was pretty confident I'd win in that endgame. I then became extremely confident in it the first time Zweilous rolled a roar, meaning no def drops. It didn't even up getting to last mon, but if it had, this was the end regardless.
Regarding the team overall, spikesless is inherently a challenge in BW where spikes are pretty free and spinners are bad. I wanted to share this team as an example of what kinds of tools a good spikesless needs because the key to a successful spikesless team is often misunderstood. The TL;DR version is don't expect to take a team with Garbodor and replace Garbodor with Weezing and for it to work. The best spikesless teams will usually look and play fundamentally differently. I don't exactly recommend a new BW player to pick this up and use it successfully, since Spikes structures will be much easier to understand and win with, but for the real BW enjoyers, hopefully this will encourage more folks to try out building spikesless.
First, the obvious: the answer is rarely spin even if you're trying to win a longer game. The first key in the builder is really just to make your team care about spikes as little as possible. This can be very limiting since of course only Flying types are naturally immune on typing alone, which will just make your team very weak to Stealth Rock and Electric/Ice/Rock attacks instead (seeing as NU has nothing neutral, not even a Gligar). Levitate and Magic Guard mons certainly exist here and many are very good, but also many fill the same niches and have the same weaknesses as one another and it can be hard to use more than 1-2 of these per team. The second key for a spikesless team is making sure it is winning the damage trading long term, since even if you're intentionally minimizing how much Spikes hurts you, you still don't have Spikes to hurt them. Spikes are good vs everything, that's why they're so prevalent, but most notably spikesless means you can't rely on spikes as a pseudo check or deterrence to pivots and glue mons (especially ones that resist SR) like Primeape or Seismitoad. You need other ways to wear them down or, more likely, directly beat them. Meeting all these criteria will generally mean you need some combination of multiple mons with recovery or wish passing (one of the most widely used spikesless teams has Alomomola wishing to damage outputters Kanga and Band Sawk) or lots of disruption with things like Knock Off to make Stealth Rock hurt more or status moves, etc. You also might want to use more polarizing mons that have 100% winning/losing matchups vs the generally positive trading mons, since you're probably not looking to play the same game your opponent is. Only the most spike immune teams can win in a typical BW NU trading game against a team with spikes (i'm talking like a team where like 4-5 mons are immune to spikes). Meanwhile, Garbodor is pretty much infinitely flexible, trades pretty well even when not clicking spikes, and the things Garbodor can't do usually Cacturne or Roselia can do instead. So the options for spikes structures are pretty limitless and spikesless are definitely quite a bit more limited and many people just don't care to try it, but it is definitely possible. This team tries to use many of these strategies to make the spikesless team work together.
First, we have the core that I started the team with: Golem, Golbat, and Clefairy. Clefairy and Golbat have excellent natural synergy and both are spikes immune. Clefairy is naturally most threatened by Fighting types, which Golbat 4x resists and sets up on with Nasty Plot. Golbat is so immensely physically tanky that it lives for example CB Sawk Stone Edge after rocks so it also just generally helps Clefairy with most any physical attacker. The core is also extremely good into a lot of special attackers due to Clefairy's sheer bulk on the special side and Magic Guard enabling easy switchins even to some difficult to switch into mons like Serperior or offensive Seismitoad, boosted by its immunity to scald burn or toxic damage. Very few special attackers beat Clefairy 1 on 1. Very few physical attackers beat Golbat 1 on 1. This is really keying in on the 100% winning/losing matchup point noted above. Where Clefairy can struggle with special attackers much more so is to ones that set up (hence Encore) or Taunt. Mandibuzz Taunting might often be a big problem for a fat core like this, but with both mons immune to Toxic, Clefairy having Knock Off, and Golbat getting Sludge Bomb poisons, it flips that matchup. So I'd generally be more worried about for example a Taunt Gardevoir than a Taunt Mandibuzz. At first glance, the most natural Rocker for a team like this (if not Rocks on Clefairy itself) would probably most often be Seismitoad, but here I went Golem. First it's important to note that I mostly only considered the Ground type rockers so something like Regirock was pretty much off the table (I wanted to ensure a volt immunity, since repeatedly switching Clefairy into a volt into a physical attacker seems like a doom loop if i've ever heard of one). There are a handful of ground type rockers here though (Seismitoad, Golurk, Golem, Piloswine, Camerupt) so why Golem?. The main reason why was that I felt the team would appreciate a normal and especially a flying resist and I also did want to make sure that with as slow and passive as Golbat Clefairy can be and with the lack of spikes, I felt the team likely needed quite a bit of power and priority or speed control options to address threats and trade favorably. Only Golem and Piloswine have priority. Regarding Golem over Piloswine, again I thought a normal and flying resistance would be important, but even beyond that Piloswine damage trades very well in general, but a lot worse in a spikes deficit since it can't hold leftovers. Sucker Punch being stronger into neutral targets than Ice Shard also seemed helpful, and I'm really not worried about Serperior with Clefairy and Golbat.
With that core in place, what are my biggest concerns? The three special mons that most readily came to mind were standard TrickScarf Rotom-Frost, NP Taunt Misdreavus, and a lot of Gardevoir sets, since all threaten Clefairy while also outputting massive damage on Golbat and Golem. On the physical end, I was also concerned about a lot of u-turners, especially Primeape scaring Clefairy out, uturning on Golbat to a counter (see above: re concerns volting on Clefairy). And I was concerned about Sawsbuck since +2 LO Double Edge is KOing golbat after rocks. Finally, the team remains pretty slow and passive even with Golem's attacking power on its STABs and pretty strong Sucker Punch. The remaining 3 mons were meant to address all this. First, if you can't beat Scarf Frostom, join em. This gives me a trick switch in, blizzard resistance, and a speed control/momentum generator. It also gives me an option to beat a set up mon if it got rolling (like maybe a Curse Miltank, which beats Clefairy pretty well even with Encore). Next, Band Skuntank (this could probably be other items and maybe should be if I tested this more!) gives me options into every psychic and ghost type and the strongest priority in the tier. Lastly, despite not resisting U-Turn and in fact being weak to it, Tangela's regenerator and immense physical bulk let it shrug them all off with easy, even with Rocks up, letting me not always have to use the rock-weak Golbat as a pivot for Primeape. This was also a very important secondary Sawk check considering how terribly weak the team is to Sawk's Mold Breaker EQ besides Golbat. Tangela gets the broken sleep OHKO button too, which ensures it will never be passive. Sludge Bomb coverage was to cover for Sawsbuck who threatens to break Golbat at +2 and I didn't want to have to rely on hitting Blizzard.
Other teams I used*
practically identical, very solid structures:
slightly different, less solid, more matchuppy:
considerably different, leaning more HO:
*I'm not posting these full pastes because i think it's better for people to experiment with these types of teams on their own to see what kinds of checklists a solid team should be following and also to experiment with what sets these teams need. One of these first two maybe could go in a new sample if we revamp those. But I want to stress that despite 4 repeating mons on those first two teams, sets are not the same and a Gurdurr Skunk team is inherently gonna play differently from a Mandibuzz Sawsbuck team. Understanding what sets the other 4 should have to best pair with mons 5 and 6 is a good lesson for folks to play around with. These structures are very solid and even suboptimal sets will still do pretty well for you.
**Note that I definitely do not mean to suggest from this dump where I used 4/5 Skuntanks that Skuntank is by any means mandatory or even close to it nor that Piloswine or Golurk or other rockers I didn't use are bad rockers, etc. I was just enjoying using these structures and I only played 5 games of BW for this tour. If I'd played 9 or whatever I'm sure I would have brought some more variety in other games to avoid a counter scout so much. More generally though I do think having a Dark (which is realistically one of three mons like 95% of the time, Skuntank, Mandibuzz, or Zweilous - Cacturne, Shiftry, and others do exist but are considerably worse and more rare) is usually important and you should be very careful any time you're bringing a team without one of those three mons. Double and triple check are you really ok into Misdreavus and Gardevoir and Duosion without them? They're all extremely scary Pokemon when you don't have a dark and there's really not a great way to check all 3 in one slot without a Dark. It can be quite limiting to start every team with Garbodor+one of 3 pokemon, so I don't mean to say you have to do that - It's possible to cover them all overall as a team. Just make sure you know what you're doing if not using a Dark.
with NUFL over it's time for me to grace you all with the wonderful teams I built in my heroic 3-2 (act losses don't count.) run through finals.
https://pokepast.es/5b19b2c5c306f027
this was some dick and ballsacks rain team I made 10 mins before playing
it lost
https://pokepast.es/5b19b2c5c306f027
this was a dick and ballsacks rain team I chose to run again because I forgot to build
I accidentally ran the prototype version of it where half the sets weren't finished instead
it won
thank you for coming to my team dump
draft me for nupl cowards you won't.
https://pokepast.es/5b19b2c5c306f027
this was some dick and ballsacks rain team I made 10 mins before playing
it lost
https://pokepast.es/5b19b2c5c306f027
this was a dick and ballsacks rain team I chose to run again because I forgot to build
I accidentally ran the prototype version of it where half the sets weren't finished instead
it won
thank you for coming to my team dump
draft me for nupl cowards you won't.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I'll only accept it as a defeat if y'all just admit you were terrified of getting worked in the neutral by specs bellibolt.
We prepped for AV but not Specs. That's terrifying
Well, its very unfortunate that we lost in the end. While I didn't really have a great record (2-5 definetely isn't great, I could have done a lot better), I enjoyed this tour, and made all of my teams.
Week 1
The scout for this week was somewhat standard build. It was meant to be built around tauros paldea blaze, but the stars of the show ended up being vaporeon and a-tales. Fauros was a bit of a weird set, wild charge was meant to hit mons such as basculegion for surprise damage, while stone edge clocked altaria. Haze vaporeon was not intended for p2, but rather for scrafty who I hated. But it came in clutch LOL. The a-tales set is the only one I like, I think commiting tera blast for a-tales is really bad when you can slot in dark pulse, beat zong, and then tera against copper. Rest of the team is standard.
Week 2
Really close game, unfortunately loaded a really rough MU against toxicroak. The main idea was specs tera fairy sylveon to rip apart any bulkier squad he has, with shadow ball sniping zong. Roar could help with spikes and give sylveon a bit of defensive merit in battles. Flygon is standard offensive rocks. Alolaslash is dicks, but its needed to compress steel, spin and spikes. Sableye is actually a pretty interesting mon. It completely wrecks the HO/Offense MU as long as they don't have a tera dark (spoiler alert, they did). Wauros is standard (why he look like that in the mini-sprites dog), munki is standard.
Week 3
This is definitely my worst team, its just way too slow ngl. Not much to go over for this team ngl, so yeah. Soak bellibolt can force switches and makes the loom MU playable. Offensive pert is cool to smack targets such as altaria hard. Tera grass a-muk makes the breloom MU better as well, while also resisting ground.
Week 4
I horribly played this game, but hey, the team is cool. Main idea is steel overwhelm, with everything on the squad technically being walled by steels. Dragalge is a cool mon, able to chip any non Klefki steel for big damage with either shadow ball on zong or raw dracos on copper. Duraludon is a cool offense mon, but it sucks so immensly hard into zong unless its dark pulse, which sucks into everything else. Definetely needs to be built around.
Week 5
Another close game, this time it was built around CB flygon spikes, with dudunsparce support. Stone edge on CB flygon can hit altaria and kilowattrel for super effective damage, while also making flamigo not a totally free switchin. Dudunsparce with tera poison can setup on a lot of targets, especially if it gets a few rattled boosts. Swampert was ev'd to always live two tauros cc's from full, with the rest going into special defense. Everything else was mostly standard.
Semifinals
I knew that I couldn't beat obb via pure skill, and had to use somewhat cheesy tactics. So g-terrain time. Munkidori set evs idk what they do, darkprobz provided them. Focus blast+shadow ball hits most things that normally counter munkidori. Standard diancie set. Grafaiai was teched to deal with houndstone, which I saw quite a few in the scout. The common roar/wisp sets with night shade as the only attack were complete setup fodder for this aiai, though no stab attack hurt. Breloom was also for the bulky MU, thunder punch and seed bomb are incredible at hitting most things and g-terrain means tera electric is pretty free. Finally, tatsu was mainly for hazard control, and I think personally it can be a neat mon on some offensive teams.
Finals
This unfortunately came down to a sucker punch 50/50, but I played my best so I'm happy it didn't come down to me choking (like how it does more often then I'd like to admit). I noticed there was only one vaporeon, so ofc inteleon can be an actual mon. I think inteleon does have more viability then people give it credit for, since it kinda rips apart non vapo builds and vapo builds it can get in teammates reliably. Copper was protect but honestly anything last can be slapped there. Raikou was tera flying to help against grounds like rhyperior (who beat my shit in the game, I'm realising this mon may be broken). Gligar was a really cool tech, it was FAST. 200 speed evs outspeeds modest bascu, which means it also outspeeds toxtricity. This means it can suprise kill these mons if they don't expect it, which is really cool. Croak, inteleon and tsareena are mostly standard, tsareena has tera dragon to cope against chandy.
Going to shout out some players who helped me with building: darkprobz (get pinged again lol), Tree69420 JensenDale, hammer798 and prob more that I'm forgetting about. Y'all helped me a lot this tour, so thank you very much for helping me as much as you did.
Week 1
The scout for this week was somewhat standard build. It was meant to be built around tauros paldea blaze, but the stars of the show ended up being vaporeon and a-tales. Fauros was a bit of a weird set, wild charge was meant to hit mons such as basculegion for surprise damage, while stone edge clocked altaria. Haze vaporeon was not intended for p2, but rather for scrafty who I hated. But it came in clutch LOL. The a-tales set is the only one I like, I think commiting tera blast for a-tales is really bad when you can slot in dark pulse, beat zong, and then tera against copper. Rest of the team is standard.
Week 2
Really close game, unfortunately loaded a really rough MU against toxicroak. The main idea was specs tera fairy sylveon to rip apart any bulkier squad he has, with shadow ball sniping zong. Roar could help with spikes and give sylveon a bit of defensive merit in battles. Flygon is standard offensive rocks. Alolaslash is dicks, but its needed to compress steel, spin and spikes. Sableye is actually a pretty interesting mon. It completely wrecks the HO/Offense MU as long as they don't have a tera dark (spoiler alert, they did). Wauros is standard (why he look like that in the mini-sprites dog), munki is standard.
Week 3
This is definitely my worst team, its just way too slow ngl. Not much to go over for this team ngl, so yeah. Soak bellibolt can force switches and makes the loom MU playable. Offensive pert is cool to smack targets such as altaria hard. Tera grass a-muk makes the breloom MU better as well, while also resisting ground.
Week 4
I horribly played this game, but hey, the team is cool. Main idea is steel overwhelm, with everything on the squad technically being walled by steels. Dragalge is a cool mon, able to chip any non Klefki steel for big damage with either shadow ball on zong or raw dracos on copper. Duraludon is a cool offense mon, but it sucks so immensly hard into zong unless its dark pulse, which sucks into everything else. Definetely needs to be built around.
Week 5
Another close game, this time it was built around CB flygon spikes, with dudunsparce support. Stone edge on CB flygon can hit altaria and kilowattrel for super effective damage, while also making flamigo not a totally free switchin. Dudunsparce with tera poison can setup on a lot of targets, especially if it gets a few rattled boosts. Swampert was ev'd to always live two tauros cc's from full, with the rest going into special defense. Everything else was mostly standard.
Semifinals
I knew that I couldn't beat obb via pure skill, and had to use somewhat cheesy tactics. So g-terrain time. Munkidori set evs idk what they do, darkprobz provided them. Focus blast+shadow ball hits most things that normally counter munkidori. Standard diancie set. Grafaiai was teched to deal with houndstone, which I saw quite a few in the scout. The common roar/wisp sets with night shade as the only attack were complete setup fodder for this aiai, though no stab attack hurt. Breloom was also for the bulky MU, thunder punch and seed bomb are incredible at hitting most things and g-terrain means tera electric is pretty free. Finally, tatsu was mainly for hazard control, and I think personally it can be a neat mon on some offensive teams.
Finals
This unfortunately came down to a sucker punch 50/50, but I played my best so I'm happy it didn't come down to me choking (like how it does more often then I'd like to admit). I noticed there was only one vaporeon, so ofc inteleon can be an actual mon. I think inteleon does have more viability then people give it credit for, since it kinda rips apart non vapo builds and vapo builds it can get in teammates reliably. Copper was protect but honestly anything last can be slapped there. Raikou was tera flying to help against grounds like rhyperior (who beat my shit in the game, I'm realising this mon may be broken). Gligar was a really cool tech, it was FAST. 200 speed evs outspeeds modest bascu, which means it also outspeeds toxtricity. This means it can suprise kill these mons if they don't expect it, which is really cool. Croak, inteleon and tsareena are mostly standard, tsareena has tera dragon to cope against chandy.
Going to shout out some players who helped me with building: darkprobz (get pinged again lol), Tree69420 JensenDale, hammer798 and prob more that I'm forgetting about. Y'all helped me a lot this tour, so thank you very much for helping me as much as you did.
since my teammates are all dropping their dumps i think i might as well, shoutout darkprobz and Heatranator for helping with building and also JensenDale for that one test game
week 1 vs neomon (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-844610
i hadn't rly been active in NU leading up to this tour so shoutout darkprobz for passing me a team, edited tales from groundblast to fire to cover zong better
week 2 vs Jojen (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-846319
specs chandy looked really good into this guys scout of fat shit so i built around that, then added hazard control (alt), gunk croak for vapo fats, scarfgon for voltblock + speed control, and had pdef zong to be more solid into migo.
week 3 vs asa (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-847721
decided to build around copper bo to try to cover for HO but also be fine into other midrange structs while having room to pilot myself, with otr diancie and copper being v good positive traders into HO. in game i really didnt expect sd qwil as i hadnt seen it outside of rain leading me to bring the game to a speed tie in a very winnable position and losing
week 4 vs OBB (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-848989
i really liked specs intel into his scout of very little water immunes and decently offensive structs. rounded it out with a pretty defensive core of gastro zong incin lugg and a scarf migo to get intel in as much as possible. in a test game i got cooked by an HO due to lack of priority so i edited migo to be feint > roost, which really came back to bite me in the ass as knocked roost migo would be a lot better into his team.
semifinals vs mipc (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-852636
this guy had a super exploitable scout of only fat balances that i was really surprised nobody had called him out on it yet. sd migo + specs toxt tore through all his balances so i just rounded it out with some strong guys and a momentum rocker of epack gon, and knock tsareena to force knock into gbro
finals vs purbaj (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-855315
building in a new meta was pretty tough cuz scout wasnt as useful to go off of, built some rhyp fats the week before but i brought them in nult so i didnt rly feel good abt bringing them to tour
then i was like cbgon cooks and i tried to build around that with also boots skewda who hit hard as fuck, then some defensive guys to hold the team together and also croak for vapo
overall pretty happy with how i did this tour and we had a great time with the BALLs gg everyone
week 1 vs neomon (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-844610
i hadn't rly been active in NU leading up to this tour so shoutout darkprobz for passing me a team, edited tales from groundblast to fire to cover zong better
week 2 vs Jojen (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-846319
specs chandy looked really good into this guys scout of fat shit so i built around that, then added hazard control (alt), gunk croak for vapo fats, scarfgon for voltblock + speed control, and had pdef zong to be more solid into migo.
week 3 vs asa (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-847721
decided to build around copper bo to try to cover for HO but also be fine into other midrange structs while having room to pilot myself, with otr diancie and copper being v good positive traders into HO. in game i really didnt expect sd qwil as i hadnt seen it outside of rain leading me to bring the game to a speed tie in a very winnable position and losing
week 4 vs OBB (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-848989
i really liked specs intel into his scout of very little water immunes and decently offensive structs. rounded it out with a pretty defensive core of gastro zong incin lugg and a scarf migo to get intel in as much as possible. in a test game i got cooked by an HO due to lack of priority so i edited migo to be feint > roost, which really came back to bite me in the ass as knocked roost migo would be a lot better into his team.
semifinals vs mipc (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-852636
this guy had a super exploitable scout of only fat balances that i was really surprised nobody had called him out on it yet. sd migo + specs toxt tore through all his balances so i just rounded it out with some strong guys and a momentum rocker of epack gon, and knock tsareena to force knock into gbro
finals vs purbaj (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-855315
building in a new meta was pretty tough cuz scout wasnt as useful to go off of, built some rhyp fats the week before but i brought them in nult so i didnt rly feel good abt bringing them to tour
then i was like cbgon cooks and i tried to build around that with also boots skewda who hit hard as fuck, then some defensive guys to hold the team together and also croak for vapo
overall pretty happy with how i did this tour and we had a great time with the BALLs gg everyone
Since I see the dumps that everyone else is doing, I decided to do my own dumps for NUFL. First, I Just wanted to say thank you to Wesleyy and Azaan for taking me, even if I didn't perform up to my standards (1-4). Also, I would like to shoutout feen and Taka for helping me out with prep and being fantastic teammates.
Week 1 vs Olivia (L):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nu-2371136635-7a5ivt6sntq6tgg870idg3imlsh5viepw
For week 1, I wanted to use Porygon-Z, which would eventually end up being banned. I also wanted to use a HO team to try to cheese out the matchup. The match went poorly, as I committed Tera too early and wound up unable to deal with Meloetta.
Week 2 vs Phantomistix (L):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-846420
Week 2 I played very early in the week as I was leaving on a study abroad trip to Sweden (had a blast over there), which led to me running HO again. Feen gave me this HO team which I then proceeded to use for Week 2. The game went rough, especially at turn 22 when I sacked Scyther with there being no real reason for me to sack.
Week 3 vs Showl (L):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-847884
Week 3 I saw from the scout that Showl had very high Vaporeon usage, and did not expect them to run it a fourth time, so the team and I decided to run Rain. Unlike the previous two weeks, this was the first team for the tour that I had made myself. After some suggestions from Taka, I decided on this team. The match started off well, but I threw by sacking Killowattrel to a Scarf Flygon as opposed to Drednaw, which lead to a Bastiodon sweep.
Week 4 vs Daharan (L):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-850071
Originally I was supposed to play Asa, who was unable to make the match. I decided on using this Balance team, which had a better matchup into the bulkier teams that I was expecting my opponents to run. I decided on this team featuring Scope Lens Inteleon, Specs Toxtricity, and Double Dance Bronzong. The matchup that I ran into was a nightmare, as the team I was going up against had a Vaporeon which hard walled my Inteleon and a Muk which dealt with Bronzong. The match itself was even worse, featuring one of the biggest blunders that I have made (forgetting that muk was faster than bronzong, which cost me the match).
Week 5 vs Lyra (W):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nu-851221
Initially, I was not scheduled to play in Week 5 of NUFL, but I got subbed in late in the week. I had no time to quality check this team, so I threw these mons together. My goal was to use Golurk to wallbreak and use Vileplume to annoy the opposing team. The team has many different problems, such as being extremely slow outside of Rotom-C and lacking a steel-type. I won through using CB Golurk to wallbreak, which really carried my entire team.
I was extremely disapointed in how I performed this tour, as I definitely could have done better than my 1-4 performance in the tour. However despite my awful record I had a ton of fun this tour and I hope to use this tour as a learning experience to be a more complete player. I also look forward to competing in NU teamtours in the future.
Week 1 vs Olivia (L):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nu-2371136635-7a5ivt6sntq6tgg870idg3imlsh5viepw
For week 1, I wanted to use Porygon-Z, which would eventually end up being banned. I also wanted to use a HO team to try to cheese out the matchup. The match went poorly, as I committed Tera too early and wound up unable to deal with Meloetta.
Week 2 vs Phantomistix (L):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-846420
Week 2 I played very early in the week as I was leaving on a study abroad trip to Sweden (had a blast over there), which led to me running HO again. Feen gave me this HO team which I then proceeded to use for Week 2. The game went rough, especially at turn 22 when I sacked Scyther with there being no real reason for me to sack.
Week 3 vs Showl (L):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-847884
Week 3 I saw from the scout that Showl had very high Vaporeon usage, and did not expect them to run it a fourth time, so the team and I decided to run Rain. Unlike the previous two weeks, this was the first team for the tour that I had made myself. After some suggestions from Taka, I decided on this team. The match started off well, but I threw by sacking Killowattrel to a Scarf Flygon as opposed to Drednaw, which lead to a Bastiodon sweep.
Week 4 vs Daharan (L):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nu-850071
Originally I was supposed to play Asa, who was unable to make the match. I decided on using this Balance team, which had a better matchup into the bulkier teams that I was expecting my opponents to run. I decided on this team featuring Scope Lens Inteleon, Specs Toxtricity, and Double Dance Bronzong. The matchup that I ran into was a nightmare, as the team I was going up against had a Vaporeon which hard walled my Inteleon and a Muk which dealt with Bronzong. The match itself was even worse, featuring one of the biggest blunders that I have made (forgetting that muk was faster than bronzong, which cost me the match).
Week 5 vs Lyra (W):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nu-851221
Initially, I was not scheduled to play in Week 5 of NUFL, but I got subbed in late in the week. I had no time to quality check this team, so I threw these mons together. My goal was to use Golurk to wallbreak and use Vileplume to annoy the opposing team. The team has many different problems, such as being extremely slow outside of Rotom-C and lacking a steel-type. I won through using CB Golurk to wallbreak, which really carried my entire team.
I was extremely disapointed in how I performed this tour, as I definitely could have done better than my 1-4 performance in the tour. However despite my awful record I had a ton of fun this tour and I hope to use this tour as a learning experience to be a more complete player. I also look forward to competing in NU teamtours in the future.
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I still have ways to go in this tier but coming off NUFL with a 5-0 in ORAS and also supporting Oathkeeper in NUPL, I'm feeling pretty good so I want to drop my two favorite teams used
NUPL W5: Oathkeeper vs. Abejas (W)
This team is based on a similar concept Xatu offense in RU I really like which basically uses xatu + bulky rocker to placate threats and provide entry points for threats. Piloswine is both fat as hell and hella strong and after losing to it in the previous round to Watashi I knew I wanted to use it. Clefairy was originally twave, but Bughouse suggested HWish which came in clutch and Oath piloted the team very well overall.
Basically Barbaracle is already mad broken but imagine having to play two of them back to back.
After the game I made some changes the team upon further testing, but I never got the opportunity to load it in NUFL. Wisp is better on Pyroar than Overheat overall for the archeops mu. I originally had Sleep Powder on Lilligant but it kept getting blocked by the mon already being twaved or burnt, so I ended up putting yet another healing wish cuz often times a 3rd barb is just better than lilli lol. Mental herb on barbarcle was a complete brain fart btw its supposed to be white herb
NUFL Finals: Ruffles vs. Rarelyme (W)
This team is based on a team I love in OU with SubWisp Gengar + Spikes while foregoing removal (literally just used it in wcop) and I wanted to do smth similar in NU. It was actually quite difficult and it took me multiple weeks of going over the team and testing with multiple iterations of the team until I ended up with this. Was really proud to load this in finals.
So in my game vs. Rarelyme my Mesprit was Specs but it was very evident to me that the team was too slow even w/ discharge + twave and I think Scarf Mesprit is better here. I overlooked fast electrics basically. Either way you want Healing Wish for Rotom. Steelix was Gyro Ball + Curse but tbh Toxic + Heavy Slam is clearly better here.
Adamant Poison Barb Garbador was basically a cool idea I came up with to pressure Pelipper/Xatu and forcing spikes, esp with poison chances. It's much better than using smth slow and clunky like Roselia or Ferroseed. Rotom is modest with enough speed to outspeed skuntank as I felt I needed the extra fire power to get good chances vs. paralyzed clefairy. Twave + knock + stoss/moonblast clefairy is actually an insane progress maker, esp with hazards up. Finally, Poliwrath was used here to provide counterplay vs. waters including barb, rain, and samu. Also for CB Aurorus. It's kinda ass but it does the job and is the only solution I found in this slot, and circle throw is nice vs. slower teams with hazards up and Vaccum Wave can come clutch.
Till NUCL
NUPL W5: Oathkeeper vs. Abejas (W)
This team is based on a similar concept Xatu offense in RU I really like which basically uses xatu + bulky rocker to placate threats and provide entry points for threats. Piloswine is both fat as hell and hella strong and after losing to it in the previous round to Watashi I knew I wanted to use it. Clefairy was originally twave, but Bughouse suggested HWish which came in clutch and Oath piloted the team very well overall.
Basically Barbaracle is already mad broken but imagine having to play two of them back to back.
After the game I made some changes the team upon further testing, but I never got the opportunity to load it in NUFL. Wisp is better on Pyroar than Overheat overall for the archeops mu. I originally had Sleep Powder on Lilligant but it kept getting blocked by the mon already being twaved or burnt, so I ended up putting yet another healing wish cuz often times a 3rd barb is just better than lilli lol. Mental herb on barbarcle was a complete brain fart btw its supposed to be white herb
NUFL Finals: Ruffles vs. Rarelyme (W)
This team is based on a team I love in OU with SubWisp Gengar + Spikes while foregoing removal (literally just used it in wcop) and I wanted to do smth similar in NU. It was actually quite difficult and it took me multiple weeks of going over the team and testing with multiple iterations of the team until I ended up with this. Was really proud to load this in finals.
So in my game vs. Rarelyme my Mesprit was Specs but it was very evident to me that the team was too slow even w/ discharge + twave and I think Scarf Mesprit is better here. I overlooked fast electrics basically. Either way you want Healing Wish for Rotom. Steelix was Gyro Ball + Curse but tbh Toxic + Heavy Slam is clearly better here.
Adamant Poison Barb Garbador was basically a cool idea I came up with to pressure Pelipper/Xatu and forcing spikes, esp with poison chances. It's much better than using smth slow and clunky like Roselia or Ferroseed. Rotom is modest with enough speed to outspeed skuntank as I felt I needed the extra fire power to get good chances vs. paralyzed clefairy. Twave + knock + stoss/moonblast clefairy is actually an insane progress maker, esp with hazards up. Finally, Poliwrath was used here to provide counterplay vs. waters including barb, rain, and samu. Also for CB Aurorus. It's kinda ass but it does the job and is the only solution I found in this slot, and circle throw is nice vs. slower teams with hazards up and Vaccum Wave can come clutch.
Till NUCL
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I participated in both tours, but was mostly supporting in a variety of tiers. I did play some games in both though so here are the teams! There is an nufl oras team missing but thats because I used an Abejas team so ofc im not sharing a team that isnt mine.
NUPL
SV NU vs Fusien
I wanted to build with scrafty since its such a good breaker and I landed on this fairly fat team. It also has elements of status spam (munki, beli, altaria) with cm hex chandelure. Biggest issue here is that the only speed control is munkidori, but there is enough bulk to cover most things. Nearly won this game but essentially lost a sucker punch endgame. (Had to double to a weakened chandy on vaporeon to win and got the turn wrong)
DPP NU vs Elodin
In the scout medicham looked very strong and hit basically all of their common leads so I wanted to build with it. Floatzel also looked strong. With these strong attackers I went with a hazard stack angle with regirock + cacturn + spinblocking in dusclops. Last mon needed to be a drifblim check and medi + tauros is already a thing so I went with chople tauros. No scarfer but lots of natural speed and prio. I did win this game (!) but honestly I probably shouldn't have, kinda got bailed by the freeze vs gastro since I think I misplayed that sequence. In practice its pretty important to keep cacturn around vs slowking users as well.
DPP NU vs Drud
Scout had a lot of skunk as the main drifblim check and I liked the idea of overwhelming it with ghost spam + sd meganium. Sub on meganium is neat to ease predictions and pick on wisp dusclops. Cool set for sure and meganium just kind of vibe checks some teams. Haunter has dbond to hopefully remove their ghost check to open up for drifblim + hazards late game. In practice this didn't really work out and I got the dbond turn wrong (calced rock slide on cradily instead of stone edge so I waited a turn too long to click it.) Kind of a riskier team but fun when it works!
NUFL
ORAS NU vs Estra
Not my team but here is the replay!
ORAS NU vs RarelyMe
Pyroar is great and fun to use so I built around it here. We have 2 strong lo attackers here and hwish mesprit to give them more chances to hit. Honestly didn't respect the fighting type matchup enough here. Good offensive synergy here though.
ORAS NU vs ParPar
I feel like this team was pretty solid, a touch weak to fires though. Scarf primeape does a good job positioning rotom and liepard to annoy and/or trap things. Traping ghosts and psychics lets ape click more, and removing psychics helps plume. Choked this game by not just wisp -> hexing the plume as it does struggle to break plume a bit after xatu is weakened.
SV NU Shadow079 vs Sirwings
NP tornadus is seriously underrated. On top of being strong and great at forcing progress, np + groundblast is a great way to lure/take out amuk to free up munkidori. It also hits diancie for incineroar. Munki torn incin is strong offensive core, and the rest of the guys fill out the balance team. Shadow played well but ultimately wiffed a heat way to lose the end game (and that miss took us out of semifinals tiebreaker.) Sad finish but it's a fun team! Might need some edits for rhyperior now (maybe a different terablast on torn?)
While I didn't have the best record (only game I won was one of the dpp games) I had a great time and enjoyed participating in both! I spent a good amount of time supporting in a variety of teams. Looking forward to the next nu team tour!
NUPL
SV NU vs Fusien
I wanted to build with scrafty since its such a good breaker and I landed on this fairly fat team. It also has elements of status spam (munki, beli, altaria) with cm hex chandelure. Biggest issue here is that the only speed control is munkidori, but there is enough bulk to cover most things. Nearly won this game but essentially lost a sucker punch endgame. (Had to double to a weakened chandy on vaporeon to win and got the turn wrong)
DPP NU vs Elodin
In the scout medicham looked very strong and hit basically all of their common leads so I wanted to build with it. Floatzel also looked strong. With these strong attackers I went with a hazard stack angle with regirock + cacturn + spinblocking in dusclops. Last mon needed to be a drifblim check and medi + tauros is already a thing so I went with chople tauros. No scarfer but lots of natural speed and prio. I did win this game (!) but honestly I probably shouldn't have, kinda got bailed by the freeze vs gastro since I think I misplayed that sequence. In practice its pretty important to keep cacturn around vs slowking users as well.
DPP NU vs Drud
Scout had a lot of skunk as the main drifblim check and I liked the idea of overwhelming it with ghost spam + sd meganium. Sub on meganium is neat to ease predictions and pick on wisp dusclops. Cool set for sure and meganium just kind of vibe checks some teams. Haunter has dbond to hopefully remove their ghost check to open up for drifblim + hazards late game. In practice this didn't really work out and I got the dbond turn wrong (calced rock slide on cradily instead of stone edge so I waited a turn too long to click it.) Kind of a riskier team but fun when it works!
NUFL
ORAS NU vs Estra
Not my team but here is the replay!
ORAS NU vs RarelyMe
Pyroar is great and fun to use so I built around it here. We have 2 strong lo attackers here and hwish mesprit to give them more chances to hit. Honestly didn't respect the fighting type matchup enough here. Good offensive synergy here though.
ORAS NU vs ParPar
I feel like this team was pretty solid, a touch weak to fires though. Scarf primeape does a good job positioning rotom and liepard to annoy and/or trap things. Traping ghosts and psychics lets ape click more, and removing psychics helps plume. Choked this game by not just wisp -> hexing the plume as it does struggle to break plume a bit after xatu is weakened.
SV NU Shadow079 vs Sirwings
NP tornadus is seriously underrated. On top of being strong and great at forcing progress, np + groundblast is a great way to lure/take out amuk to free up munkidori. It also hits diancie for incineroar. Munki torn incin is strong offensive core, and the rest of the guys fill out the balance team. Shadow played well but ultimately wiffed a heat way to lose the end game (and that miss took us out of semifinals tiebreaker.) Sad finish but it's a fun team! Might need some edits for rhyperior now (maybe a different terablast on torn?)
While I didn't have the best record (only game I won was one of the dpp games) I had a great time and enjoyed participating in both! I spent a good amount of time supporting in a variety of teams. Looking forward to the next nu team tour!
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