Pet Mod Paleomons - Slate 12 Winners

[Spammernoob]

I'll do a team writeup since my team is out.

W1: https://pokepast.es/1e9a7f99ffe063a4 (W)
I got owned by Omastar + Carracosta fat during initial testing with Tanny. I also noticed that many broken fatmons (Skeledirge, Carracosta, Bastiodon) really appreciate Gterrain to mitigate their shared weakness to Earthquake. The meta hadn't developed, and I was very worried about Moscourge because I use a lot of Corrosion Glimmora in my main tier (CAP), so I slotted Lapras for Heal Bell support.

This team basically completely stonewalled Hats' team. Carracosta solo'd 4/6 of their team, and the combination of Omastar/Lapras would have been able to shut down the remaining 2 (Alticombat and Rampardos) regardless of misses. In hindsight, this team is very weak to Tyrantrum, and also weak to Scald Kabutops (something that started popping up later) so I wouldn't load it any more.


W2: https://pokepast.es/356fc32844d15a97 (W)
My manager passed me the Boots Swishi + Curse Carracosta combo, so I built a pretty standard Volt-turn team with Carracosta as an anchor. Archeops, Kabutops, and Armaldo are all staples on Volt-turn, and I figured Venopleura would be a reasonable last slot. To be honest, non-Electric move Venopleura seems very troll in hindsight given the prevalence of Kabutops, but for some reason I thought Spikes would be better at the time.

Both teams had a similar core of Kabutops, Armaldo, Scarf Archeops. My team had more solid defensive options, and Carracosta and Swishivish seemed very threatening, whereas opponent had largely deadweight mon in Meganium. I giga trolled and threw my Swishi away because I expected opp to know Carracosta was electric immune (oops) and switch to Armaldo, which put me pretty behind early, especially since I wanted to use Swishi to make progress on Armaldo switches. However. it allowed me to get a free turn later with Carracosta to Curse. To be honest, I did not calc the Aerodactyl but it was CB from Polt damage on Armaldo, so I should have played around the Destiny Bond to instantly win with Carracosta. In the end, game came down to crit Stone Edge to kill Kabutops, which is kinda lame but it is high crit chance I guess.


W3: https://pokepast.es/ccd705fd202e7b1c (W)
I decided to revisit the GTerrain idea in W3, but took a more offensive route. Beaf was talking about how strong Alticombat is, so I figured I'd load it. I also figured Grassy Seed + CM should let Kabutops easily farm opposing Carracosta. Bastiodon is standard broken trading mon in GTerrain, with CM because I was greedy. Goldoco is a rare Steel in the meta, and has strong utility and good coverage with Iron Head/High Horsepower (Ground is very strong offensive type here). I threw a Chople berry for opposing Alticombat primarily, as it looked quite threatening if I let Bastiodon or Kabutops get chipped. At the last second, I exchanged a BU + Sub-Salac Eleffigy for Curse Carracosta, because he's him.

Beaf brought a team that is kinda farmed by my Gourg set, as I can threaten an OHKO on most mons and a 2HKO on all. However, I did not really prep for his Crobat, which farmed me back. T2 HHP miss really sucked, and honestly I trolled by sacing Gourg on T12 instead of Carracosta (or T11 click Compactor instead of Knock... maybe a 50/50 if he NPs again?), and mismanaged Alticombat HP to check Crobat. If I didn't troll with Gourg, game would not have come down to a sac war to leverage Dark resists/Ground immunities against Crobat, but that's what ended up happening. Ultimately I get bailed by a misclick, so it worked out...

W4: https://pokepast.es/c4875b20f6c71a2e (W)
This was the first week after Kabutops lost Earth Power, but I don't think meta changed much. I was primarily preparing vs. Armaldo + Scarf Archeops + AV Kabutops, which he had loaded in 2 prior weeks. I was experimenting with a lot of ideas before the week (Crobat, Aero, Heliolisk, Tyrantrum) but settled on a Volt-turn with lead Sash Archeops and Scarf Rampardos. I had noticed THE_CHUNGLER liked AV Kabutops with Scald, so Carracosta could easily be crippled switching in; I put Heal Bell last on Yizolt to mitigate this. I chose Carriguana here over Armaldo as my SR setter, though I really couldn't tell you why now. I initially had Leech Seed as recovery on Carriguana until Beaf informed me it had Slack Off....

In game, I immediately thought I lost on preview due to the combination of Sigilyph-Ancient and defensive pivots for my Rampardos (eg. Swampert, Carracosta). T9 I realize Kabutops is extremely broken as it 2HKOs Swampert while easily eating a Thunderbolt. T14 I troll and throw my Yizolt instead of U-turning, which is a problem because I need Yizolt to chip Sigilyph for my Rampardos to kill later with Moonblast. T22 I get hard bailed by THE_CHUNGLER clicking Petroglyph vs Carriguana, allowing me to kill Sigilyph, and the rest of game is taken over by Carracosta and Rampardos. ngl not a convincing win, epic prep on THE_CHUNGLER's part (and lol 3 Curse Carracostas in a row from me), but got bailed 3 weeks in a row...

W5: https://pokepast.es/1da0ec3b62254ccd (W)
Final week, wanted to troll but team needed win to make poffs so I loaded tryhard. After W3, I was thinking about CB Gourg as it was quite potent vs Beaf's team. I also saw magialice's previous game, in which Conkeldurr carried, and wanted a strong tool into it. Additionally, I was thinking about anti-Kabutops tools, as it was proving to be a major headache so I landed on AV Bastiodon, which can easily 1v1 Kabutops. With that as the base, I built another Gterrain offense, which just aimed to trade down mons until Gourgeist or Icaruff can clean. Of course, Curse Carracosta was loaded for the 4th week in a row.

MU looked quite positive for me on preview. Curse Carracosta had pretty free lead, as it just got to set up and hit things for free. Unfortunately it got burned so I had to trade it down with Alticombat, but after that the game was pretty smooth. I had answers to every mon on opponent's team (Bastio for Aurorus, Skeledirge for Gourg, Brawlutra for Venopleura) and opponent did not have good switchins for Bastiodon, so every time it came in it made major progress. Ultimately, AV Bastiodon easily traded down the Kabutops and IcaruI felff sniped Aurorus, letting Skeledirge clean up in endgame, though Bastiodon could have just as easily won by repeatedly chipping down the opponent's Gourgeist with Dazzling/Petroglyph. Glad I got a convincing win in W5 after very narrow ones in previous 3 weeks.


Overall, fun tour. I felt like it was very easy to converge on Volt-turn or Gterrain BO due to the strength of certain mons (Armaldo, Bastiodon, Kabutops), and their best answers also fitting on those archetypes (I think as far as archetypes go, GTerrain beats Volt-turn which beats HO which beats GTerrain... mostly). Curse Carracosta is quite strong, though in later weeks Scald Kabutops and counter-techs like Encore Icaruff proved to halt it relatively easily, and NP Aurorus was able to trade well enough with it. Scald Kabutops is probably the most oppressive piece in the meta, everything else seems alright though there are a lot of shitmons that I felt would be trolling to load (basically anything that loses to Kabutops or Armaldo or Bastiodon for free without providing significant value against the others).

Some meta notes:

• Ground is crazy offensive type, kept in check by First Flight (and Armaldo, kek).
• Armaldo is actually the Lando-T of the tier. Very strong utility and good stats/flexibility. Having mons that can take advantage of it is pretty critical, or it will wall your physical mons and pivot for free.
• The only real Fairy resist that has seen much play is Kabutops (Venopleura too kinda). Good Steels are pretty rare, which is kind of interesting. However, Yizolt is still giga owned by Armaldo...
• Bastiodon is king of trading (especially AV). I expect guys to start running random Steel coverage for it (especially hazard setters).
• People should try Scarf HWish Eleffigy. It looks cool...
• Tyrantrum also looks cool, esp. DD variants. However, it is outsped at +1 by a lot of common Scarfers and unboosted Aero/Crobat, which is pretty worrying.
• Future Sight is rare (reasonably, only on Sigilyph/Omastar). Maybe can have some cool FSight combos (eg. Sigilyph + Ungabunguss, Omastar + Tyrantrum, etc.) but is made difficult by Volt-turn (it's so cheap...)
• Speed tiers here are so weird.

 

[Beaf Cultist]

hey all, sorry for the late announcement, but there will be one more balance change that's gonna take effect for semis and finals in PMPL.

Kabutops
-10 Special Attack (goes from 119 to 109)
Blood Stream now 85 BP
-Scald

Yeah this mon is still pretty insane lol. The goal here is to nerf the two most problematic sets in one go, specifically offensive Calm Mind and AV Utility sets. Scald removal and Blood Stream nerf make it a little harder for AV to make progress, while SpAtk nerf plus the Blood Stream nerf as well make Calm Mind sets significantly easier to slow down.

There are some other mons that were in consideration for nerfs as well, but after discussion with tour players it was decided that it would be best to save them until post-tour. Again, sorry for not announcing it sooner, but I figured it'd be for the best to announce this late rather than not at all.

 

[Beaf Cultist]

Week 4

Spammernoob vs THE_CHUNGLER
Spammernoob loads up a balance squad with the classic (but not yet seen in tour) Archeops+Rampardos Rockspam offensive core, with Yizolt to back it up, while THE_CHUNGLER brings another balance squad featuring the rarely-seen Sigilyph-Ancient. Spammer leads Kabutops and Flip Turns out of THE_CHUNGLER's Swampert lead, bringing in Carracosta to eat Swampert's own Flip Turn. Eleffigy comes in and Spammer goes to Carriguana, eating Knock like a champ and getting a Toxic on Eleffigy while it sets up rocks. CHUNGLER then goes to Icaruff, likely to try and threaten with Soul Wind + Defog away Rocks if Carriguana sets them, however Spammer predicts the switch and clicks Toxic again. CHUNGLER then goes out to Swampert, ig trying to threaten with Water move (maybe Icaruff wasn't actually running Soul Wind?), while Spammer brings in Kabutops.
After a few turns of nothing ever happening, Spammer elects to keep Kabutops in on a slightly weakened Swampert, eating Thunderbolt and threatening a 2HKO with Blood Stream. CHUNGLER is forced out to Carracosta and Spammer brings in Archeops, eating a Knock to the face for his trouble. Yizolt comes in on CHUNGLER's Eleffigy switch, forcing it to switch back into Costa, who takes a ton from Play Rough. However, Spammernoob gets greedy and goes for another Play Rough, missing the KO and dying to Gunk Shot in return.
Rampardos is brought in to revenge, and CHUNGLER elects to sack Swampert in order to bring in Sigilyph. Spammer brings in Archeops, dodging the Earth Power thanks to First Flight, and CHUNGLER brings in Eleffigy to eat the Close Combat. CHUNGLER then reveals Eleffigy is running Healing Wish, likely inspired by magialice's team from the week before, sacking it before bringing out Sigilyph. CHUNGLER starts setting Sigilyph up with Calm Mind while Spammer Toxics it with Carriguana. Unfortunately for CHUNGLER, Toxic damage + LO chip + Hex ends up taking Sigilyph out after only getting a single hit on Carriguana, leaving Alticombat as CHUNGLER's only remaining wincon.
Alticombat comes in and finishes off the Carriguana, letting Spammer bring in Rampardos, who clicks a hefty Moonblast into the incoming Icaruff. Spammer then swaps out to Carracosta, trying to set up Curse to finish the game, but Icaruff clicks Encore to prevent that sweep. CHUNGLER goes Carracosta while Spammer swaps into Archeops, forcing CHUNGLER out into Alticombat, who takes 40% from CC before finishing Archeops off with a CC of its own. Rampardos comes in and clears out Carracosta with Moonblast, and from there Spammer uses a combination of Kabutops and Carracosta to finish off Icaruff. There's a bit of a scare right at the end where CHUNGLER reveals they're actually running Scarf Alticombat, which means Spammer's Scarf Rampardos can't safely revenge it, however Rampardos lives CC anyway, and the game ends with a solid win for Spammernoob.
Pretty fun match to watch, both players did really well, but the biggest carry here was definitely Spammernoob's Carriguana getting a bunch of clutch Toxics and clearing out the biggest threat to his team in Sigilyph.

Beaf Cultist vs Lyna
I brought a wacky (and bad...) GTerrain team this week, featuring staples like Bastiodon alongside rarer picks like Goldoco, while Lyna brought a more standard offensive squad featuring the second Crobat appearance so far. I lead Goldoco into Lyna's Kabutops and Volt Switch out as Kabu sets rocks, bringing in Tyrantrum to put immediate offensive pressure on the field. I Dragon Dance on the next turn, which may have looked greedy as I get immediately forced out by Aerodactyl, however my thought process here was that Draconic Rend was the most obvious click, with Crunch being a close second, so DD would handle the Yizolt that could switch into both and force the opp to sack a mon.
A few turns later, Lyna's Kabutops gets a Toxic on my Swampert, but I knock Skeledirge's boots, taking big damage from an EP in order to safely pivot into Tyrantrum again. I'm not making the same mistake twice here, so I click Draconic Rend, doing a clean 80% to the Aerodactyl switch. I bring in Bastio and, realizing Lyna's Kabutops sets likely can't touch me, stay in and get rocks up while they're forced to switch to Crobat. After sacking Swampert, I bring in Tyrantrum to finish off the Yizolt that killed it (now at -1 from Gooey), but Aero comes in again to eat the Iron Head. I go Goldoco, looking to click buttons into their weakened team, and end up trading with Skeledirge, leaving Goldoco very low as Crobat comes in again. Lyna elects to clicks Spikes on the Goldoco sack, taking a clean 78% from Iron Head (honestly sad damage considering it was a STAB Banded attack from a 135 Attack mon) before finishing it off. I bring in Gourgeist and reveal Grassy Glide, surprise killing the Crobat (who was likely U-Turning). Unfortunately, there's just not much I can do into Aerodactyl + the twin Fairies at this point, especially not with so many hazards up, so I end up folding quickly.
I could've maybe won this game if I'd played more aggressively with Tyrantrum. Despite having two Fairies, Lyna didn't really have a good Rantrum switchin, and if I'd just clicked Crunch once into the Aero instead of being so fearful of Wisp, I could've potentially blown the game wide open. Regardless, Lyna saw their wincon and played for it, so kudos to them.

magialice vs jawabarat
Magialice shows up with what appears to be a stall squad, featuring the first Cradily we've seen so far, while jawabarat brings a balance squad featuring the certified Worst Mon in the Mod, Salazzle-Ancient. Alice leads Bastiodon into jaw's Armaldo, with Armaldo getting a clean 40% chip as alice elects to stay in and click Petroglyph. Alice then swaps out in order to preserve health on Bastio, bringing in... Carracosta? Yeah, no clue what the thought process was here, as the mon takes over 50% from EQ and is forced to switch out immediately. Aerodactyl comes in and finally forces Armaldo out, Wisping the Lapras switch before swapping out to Cradily, who immediately gets its Toxic Orb knocked. Cradily, as per usual, lets Kabutops in for free, and alice is forced to bring in their own Kabutops.
After a few turns of zero progress being made, jawabarat gets a lucky Burn on magialice's Kabutops, pivoting to Lapras to get some major chip from that in combination with Rough Skin + Rocky Helmet chip on Kabu's Flip Turn. Carracosta comes in and sets rocks while jaw pivots out to Armaldo, revealing it's running Toxic as it poisons the Aerodactyl switch. Jaw keeps up momentum with U-Turn and spins away the rocks pwith Kabutops, pivoting around for a couple turns before eventually getting a big Knock on Aerodactyl with Eleffigy. Eleffigy sets up rocks as Aero is forced to Roost, but Carracosta comes in and is able to heal up to full with Trash Compactor, losing its item in the process.
Jawabarat brings in Armaldo and alice elects to stay in, trying to Knock Off Armaldo's Leftovers. However, Armaldo U-Turns out to Eleffigy, and Helmet + Rough Skin chip bring Carracosta down to very low health. Alice is forced out into Cradily, taking over 50% from CC before swapping out to Aerodactyl. Jawabarat predicts the Aero will Roost and keeps it low by clicking Knock, and alice is forced to sack Carracosta in return. Dracomizer comes in and finally takes out the Eleffigy, losing its boots in the process. This lets Armaldo come in, who U-Turns out of the Aerodactyl switch (now at critical health thanks to multiple turns of rocks chip) and brings in Lapras. Lapras reveals Rest, healing itself to full, but also letting Cradily come in and heal itself with Strength Sap.
A few more turns of nothing happening, and then jawabarat brings in THE SALAZZLE, revealing Freeze-Dry to OHKO alice's Kabutops. Alice brings in Bastio on this and Rests up to full, but this let's jaw's Kabutops in, who immediately chips it back down with Scald while taking minimal damage from an Earth Power. Cradily comes in and gets rekt by Blood Stream, and at this point alice's entire remaining team loses to Kabutops, so jawabarat cleans up pretty handily.
This was one of the most lopsided matches we've seen so far. I think magialice misplayed pretty heavily into jawabarat's squad, and jaw capitalized on that to get a decisive victory here.

edit: oops i almost forgot the usage stats

Usage Stats

Pokemon	Use	Usage %	Winrate %
Kabutops	18	75%	50%
Armaldo	10	41.67%	50%
Bastiodon	10	41.67%	50%
Archeops	9	37.5%	55.56%
Alticombat	8	33.33%	50%
Carracosta	8	33.33%	50%
Gourgeist-*	6	25%	50%
Aerodactyl	6	25%	50%
Skeledirge-Ancient	5	20.83%	60%
Yizolt	5	20.83%	60%
Venopleura	4	16.67%	50%
Lapras-Abyss	4	16.67%	50%
Icaruff	4	16.67%	50%
Eleffigy	4	16.67%	50%
Sigilyph-Ancient	3	12.5%	66.67%
Cardantis	3	12.5%	66.67%
Tyrantrum	3	12.5%	33.33%
Rampardos	3	12.5%	66.67%
Swampert-Ancient	3	12.5%	0%
Hemlophosaur	2	8.33%	100%
Nurturaptor	2	8.33%	50%
Omastar	2	8.33%	100%
Meganium-Sonic	2	8.33%	0%
Heliolisk-Ancient	2	8.33%	50%
Ungabunguss	2	8.33%	50%
Carriguana	2	8.33%	50%
Goldoco	2	8.33%	50%
Crobat-Ancient	2	8.33%	50%
Dracomizer	2	8.33%	0%
Pesbasil	1	4.17%	0%
Swishivish	1	4.17%	100%
Eleffigy-Zen	1	4.17%	0%
Brawlutra	1	4.17%	0%
Aurorus	1	4.17%	0%
Conkeldurr-Conch	1	4.17%	100%
Cradily	1	4.17%	0%
Salazzle-Ancient	1	4.17%	100%

 

[Spammernoob]

Kabutops 75% usage kek.

 

[Beaf Cultist]

teamdump time

Week 1

- vs jawabarat (L)
Going into this week, I was hoping to rely on my working knowledge of the metagame to win, so I put together a squad full of known goodmons, featuring the most disgusting set in the meta at the time, LO AOA Kabutops with Rapid Spin. Lapras has a really funky set, but my goal with it was to lure and trap Carracosta, who was kind of an issue for Kabu, and I also brought Band Alticombat because the mon seemed underexplored (oh how right I was). Ended up losing to Encore Icaruff + SD Alti due to an unfortunate Speed tie, though I prob could've played better either way.


i also made this stall squad at some point but iirc it wasn't great in testing. first appearance of glide gourgeist tho????

this team was more of a teaching tool than an actual team, just to show my supports what i thought were the most broken mons in the meta at the time. i'd say this aged pretty well overall, though a lot of these mons ended up being strong but balanced

Week 2

- vs SEA (W)
The big issue with Heliolisk in pre-tour testing was that it just couldn't get past Skeledirge, but I realized you actually could beat it if you got lucky with Scale Shot rolls, while also giving you sweeping potential, so I built this team around that idea. Helio pairs pretty well with hazardstack and watching last week's games made me think bulky Cardantis could have big potential, so I built a bulky Spiker set that went off in testing but unfortunately didn't do much in the match itself. Kinda played like shit in the game but I think this is one of the more solid teams I built overall, though it'll need to be retooled post-Kabu nerf.

Week 3

- vs Spammernoob (L)
Going into this week I was shocked to find out nobody had brought Crobat yet, so I figured it'd probably be a blindspot even for someone like Spammer who was more experienced with the meta than my previous opps. This was also the invention of Rocky Helmet Brawlutra, a set that ended up getting spammed by other players for the rest of the tour (idt it's that good rlly but it does its job well enough). Anyway, team popped off in-game, Crobat did exactly what I wanted it to, and I would have won this if not for a really stupid misclick right at the end. Or I would have lost sooner if Gourgeist didn't miss HH, depends who you ask.


This was originally a Moscourge+Hemlophosaur team but Moscourge wasn't pulling its weight in testing so I swapped it out. It was kinda stupid of me to prep smth like this for the week I was facing the guy with 100% Carracosta usage, which is why I didn't end up bringing it.

Week 4

- vs Lyna (L)
Ended up bringing this wacky GTerrain squad, which lowkey sucked and I probably should have tested more so I didn't bring something so off-meta. The only real cook here is the Eleffigy set that beats Bastiodon, I think BU Eleffigy is pretty underexplored and could actually be rlly good, but the other guys just weren't it.


as you may have guessed from the team name, that squad was originally an Alti GTerrain build, but I just wasn't getting Alti to work in testing and ended up getting talked out of running it. The problem here is obvious for anyone who's played - I should've just been running GSeed, the extra bulk is way more important than whatever rolls LO changes (since you OHKO the entire meta at +4 anyway).

I was also experimenting with a Ramp+Arch squad. honestly don't remember why I didn't bring this, it looks pretty good

Week 5

- vs THE_CHUNGLER (W)
We were already guaranteed for poffs this week and I was completely outmatched by chungler, so I decided to try cheesing. Webs is definitely the best cheese HO playstyle here, but the biggest issue is Bastiodon being literally everywhere rn. Ended up winning despite loading into Bastio, mostly due to some helpful hax, but I will also say that Smash Carracosta is nasty and deserves more exploration.



I experimented with some stall builds as well but I couldn't rlly get them to work, tho I do think stall is good here

THE GREATEST TEAM I HAVE EVER BUILT. ok but fr this shit was a total meme I made out of frustration at getting torn apart by random Band mons in testing, but it actually way outperformed its meme status and was in real contention for a bring this week. Load this if u wanna have fun playing mons

I also experimented with screens but ts highkey sucks ass, don't run it

Semis

- vs THE_CHUNGLER (L)
Remember when I said I was totally outmatched by chungler? Well now I had to face him again, and winning was way more important, and he also had Spammernoob support from Slugs guilt tripping him into not supporting us. All the odds were stacked against me here, but I did my absolute best to put together as good a team as I could. VoltTurn looked really strong from all the replays I'd been watching, but the VSwitch mons all highkey suck at their job so I just stacked U-Turn/Flip Turn guys instead. Tyrantrum is absolutely turbo broken, shit has zero defensive counterplay and one wrong predict means your mon is getting blown up, so I slapped a Band on it to surprise ppl thinking Bastio lives an Iron Head or shit like that. Gourgeist-Small is also super broken and had barely been used at all this tour, so I decided to take advantage of the fact that nobody knows how insane this mon's damage output is to lure in and blow up dudes like Skeledirge and Goldoco who otherwise annoy my offensive mons. This team did rlly well in testing, I was winning games left and right, but unfortunately I just didn't prepare to counter SD GSeed Alticombat hard enough (turns out having two mons that resist all of its attacks just isn't enough), so I got rolled by it.



some other versions of the squad featuring different breakers over Gourg. these all are fine but Gourg was just more consistent in testing

Closing Thoughts

Overall I had a really shit performance this year. My building was spotty and my play was even worse, and I really feel like I let my team down as someone who was supposed to be an expert in Paleomons. That being said, nobody gives a shit about my pity party and there were a lot more good things in this tour than there were bad, so I'm gonna talk about those instead.

First off, thank you to everyone who played Paleomons this year! It's been an amazing experience to finally have one of my mods in PMPL, and I'm so glad everyone enjoyed playing with my silly little guys. I want to especially thank Spammernoob, THE_CHUNGLER, and jawabarat - watching yall's replays and discussing the meta with u was super cool, and I hope yall stick around post-tour, since there's plenty more great stuff in the works for this mod.

Secondly, I want to thank my team.

anaconja you are the greatest comanager I could ask for, thank you for convincing me to manage when I wasn't sure and thank you for absolutely carrying WUG on your back all tour long. This tour would not be the same without you and I had a blast managing with you.

ihbst you're an insane support, worth every penny we spent retaining you. I'm not sure there was a single channel you weren't active in, and you ran more test games than most of the team combined (including myself), which is just a testament to your dedication.

FlamPoke my goat. you were a great player and an even greater chat presence, really made the server fun to be in, so thank you for that. I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed playing FE, and I hope I have the opportunity to manage u again in the future.

Ineros TeraMax isn't for everyone, so I'm glad us gambling by putting you there ended up working out well for you. 5-1 is a stellar record, especially considering ur in like 4 billion other tours, so thanks for showing up and showing out

LOOR TTK feen Yall were all consistent af clickers and I never had to be worried about your slots whenever yall were in them. Big up to yall, if u ever go negative in a future Pet Mods tour it's for sure your managers' fault

rarre ty for the goated LC support, ana and I were terrified about supporting that meta going into this, so having you be able to build teams every week was an absolute godsend. Also clowning on Quinn in the rfn was awesome

Peum undefeated Vape record with a team u made urself, honestly nothing more needs to be said there. ty for supporting LC as well, though I think the meta may be slightly different from base LC. just a feeling i have

Leroipolux1 PixelBob Akira Princess Autumn ty for going through the BC meatgrinder, I'm sorry yall had to have such an awful experience this year, especially with it being the inaugural PMs tour for a lot of you, but I promise you Pet Mods only goes up from here and I hope to see yall again next year.

And to the rest of you, eldids Turn Up EeveeGirl1380 BP Dwagon earthflax Elvira Jojen holy fuck there was so many people on the team this year, and I'm sorry we couldn't slot you all, but thank you for being great chat presences and sometimes supports, yall really made the team what it was and I wouldn't change a single thing about our draft.

There were some bumps along the way, but this was absolutely my favorite PMPL as a manager, and I'm really thankful to everyone who let us come as far as we did. Next year for sure, we'll break the curse and get the crown we've rightfully earned.



Now, if you want to end things on a positive note, stop reading here. I know I have a habit of being overly negative, and I don't want to let that spoil the mood of this post, but there are some things I feel I absolutely have to talk about, so I'll be doing that below.

my rant

I had a wonderful experience this PMPL, and my team was amazing, but there was one thing that completely soured the experience for me in this past week, and that was the absolutely baffling decisions made by leadership recently.

Before I address the elephant in the room, I want to talk about something more under the radar: LOOR should not have had to play past the deadline. Both LOOR and his opp were in similar tzs, and yet his opp refused to give availability for any day that wasn't in the middle of the night, when LOOR wouldn't be able to play optimally. This is despite playing a game for a different tour on Sunday DURING A TIME HE SAID HE WAS UNAVAILABLE. I don't know what happened here, and I don't want to imply any foul play on the opponent's part, but what I do want to say is that this should have been a forced sub for the Slugmas. Our player's availability was much more reasonable, and a double sub (the decision leadership came to that led to LOOR making a concession for the late night game, which he otherwise would not have done) punishes us by forcing us to swap out our 2-0 player last minute, while Slugs swap out a 0-4. We were put between a rock and a hard place here, and I fully blame leadership for not considering the full context of the situation when making their decision.

And secondly, I think you all know I'm gonna talk about here. The Iron Fist game. This decision was rotten to its core. Firstly, the precedent. We had multiple previous games where there were issues of mechanics functioning differently from how they were said to. Copy-pasting from a message we sent to TDs here,

• In another game, a mon was found to have 0/0/0/0/0/0 stats, but the game outcome was found not to be modified regardless so it was not replayed,
• In another game, there was a visual glitch of Protosynthesis being active when it wasn't; the game was not replayed

So there's very clear precedent here of bugs/glitches not forcing replays, right? In both of these cases, the offending mechanic was fixed before the next week, and the game was counted. So why, all of the sudden, did we deviate from that clear, established precedent with anaconja v crow crumbs?

Well, there is one, and exactly one reason. The issue in this case had to do with a spreadsheet incorrectly listing an effect, and ana is the current maintainer of that spreadsheet. This is fucking ridiculous. The only way this ruling makes sense is if you imply ana intentionally and knowingly tampered with the information on the spreadsheet in order to give himself an unfair knowledge advantage, which is such an unbelievable character attack on one of THE most established and well-regarded Pet Modders of all time. It is actually so disrespectful that this was the angle Gekokeso and igiveuponaname took in their decision - Geko, you should know better. You've known ana for years, but it seems like all that goodwill was for nothing, since you can't even trust him to uphold basic integrity in the biggest tournament of the year for a community he's dedicated years of his life to.

And for those of you who want to argue "well, even if it was unintentional, there was still an unfair knowledge advantage." So what? Since when was the threshold for forcing a game to be replayed whether or not there was a "knowledge advantage"? Pet Mods is a grassroots community full of players who are intimately familiar with their mods of choice, whether by submitting to them, maintaining their resources, or even coding them directly. Anaconja has done all 3 of those for Iron Fist as well as many other mods, so of course he would know more than the average person about its mechanics. Punishing him for that is fucking absurd. Yeah, there was an error on the sheet he maintains. Yeah, that sucks for crow crumbs. But ana's roles as player and sheet operator are fully separate from each other. In any other circumstance, we would just have the offending section be corrected and move on, but instead we're penalizing ana for being involved with the mod he's playing. Do you not see what a bad standard this sets for future tournaments? We are literally telling people that their involvement in mods will be interpreted as a conflict of interest and used against them in tournament rulings, no matter how senior or well-respected they are.

I don't want to sound like a sore loser. We lost 5 games this week, and ana's wasn't even one of them. What I care more about here is integrity. From my perspective, this looked like a rushed decision in response to Slugs flooding the Pet Mods server with their members in order to bitch and complain about a 5-0 match loss, based on loose interpretations of tournament rules that weren't made to apply to Pet Mods. It's too late to overturn the ruling now, and I understand that, but I just hope that we can do better in the future, and never let a situation like this happen again. I'm very appreciative to leadership for making PMPL possible, but we have to do things better moving forward.

In closing, I again just want to emphasize everything we did well this year. This year's lineup was the strongest we've ever had, and even though there were of course some bumps, every mod leader took steps to improve their mods over the course of the tournament, and the vetting process for mods can only get better from here. I'm looking forward to next year's PMPL, and I hope to see all of you there as well.

 

[jawabarat]

Teamdump

W1 vs Beaf Cultist - W https://pokepast.es/9ab9f6beeeefaf1a
Couldn't figure out a good stall so decided let's just try and cheese since Beaf has far better tier knowledge beyond what I can bridge in a week. Boom gourgeist was just to get in threats safely but it worked out surprise killing a dirge. Bastiodon with both defenses boosted is heinous, alticombat is dumb af, and free boombursts seems really strong if opp doesn't have bastiodon (it should have been grass knot). The sigilyph is kinda balls though.

W2 vs Spammernoob - L https://pokepast.es/d8f174509d332f2f

Got too ahead of myself with the shitmons here. Meganium just isn't good, too bad a mu into too many important mons and Heliolisk contributes 0 defensively while not being an impressive enough breaker to justify it. I did lose to a stone edge crit in the end but it was only as close as it was bc I didn't know about leatherback lmao

W3 vs THE_CHUNGLER - L https://pokepast.es/529d0a914ddc0203

Still hadn't figured out building by this point. Main takeaway here is that spin + eq armaldo is mad greedy, really needs toxic or it just won't be able to keep hazards up for you or off for them in armaldo mirrors. That and don't select eleffigy-zen in builder kids. Idea was elef is gonna be sheist into bulkier comps and gourgeist + archeops will cook offense but it was not to be.

W4 vs magialice - W https://pokepast.es/13e8f75cc52ad5c6

My favourite team I made this tour - rocky helmet spam + specs Salazzle with double spin to enable them, it's a bit tough to support but you can get Salazzle in it has a lot of free clicks. I also really like pivot aero because it outspeeds and burns/threatens Alticombat.

W5 vs Lyna - W https://pokepast.es/9d573059f0e97412

Already in, didn't want to reveal new ideas or give more info for a scout for semis. Updated grassy terrain keeping what worked and switching up what didn't. I have concluded that cm + grass knot Icaruff is probably the correct bring over Nurturaptor, but the Kabutops is definitely an upgrade on Sigilyph. Not that any of this mattered bc alticombat just cooks when the only faster thing is a crobat which can't touch it.

Semi vs magialice - W https://pokepast.es/07142264f477150e

2 main ideas here are Aurorus and fairyspam - The tier has negative fairy resists so spam 2 fast strong ones. Brawlutra > Armaldo for spikes and then Aurorus spinblocks all but Carracosta really well and even him you do like half to with +2 draco. TBIC106 made me a schizo ev spread that lives all kinds of mad supereffective hits then I put more physdef on bc I was scared of Alticombat. Yizolt can be moonblast or heal bell last but I decided lets just see if I can slap a random bastiodon with iron tail.

I think Spammer's meta notes are very accurate and I agree with all of them, I was going to give some similar thoughts myself but I think he pretty much covered everything - I can only really add that Omastar is also a really good fairy resist who can also scald or knock stuff that would otherwise want to come in on it. It took me a bit to get to grips with building Paleomons and I only really started building momentum towards the end, but I've enjoyed this meta a lot and am looking forward to post-tour adjustments. There were a couple ideas I had that I didn't get to use during the tour and it generally feels to me like there's a lot more room for development in the future.

I also yapped about my games for an hour if you are so inclined