Hey everyone – I'm sharing some of the teams I used during ssndpl, along with some analysis of how each game went and my general thought process during prep each week. I played every week of this tournament, gave everything I had each week to prepare, asked for the toughest possible OU opponent assignments whenever I could get the matchups, and played the games to the best of my ability. So while it's always dissatisfying to lose, especially for the first time in the finals, there's very little I would do differently and I will let the rest of my body of work speak for itself.
Week 1 vs Sputnik (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nationaldex-846936?p2
If you follow SS then you have probably seen this team originally created by Devin countless times. Going into this week our thought process as a team was to prepare for something closer to Molly’s scout, which at that point in time was a little weak to Mega Manectric based on the heavy slow Lando + Ferro/non-AV Melm + bulky water structures he had been using, and we assumed Sputnik may be passed something similar. The team features a really potent volt-turn core that can break down fat with CB Urshifu plus Kart if you pilot it aggressively, which I am generally comfortable doing. I expected Aegislash as I know Sputnik has built several teams with it and likes the mon (I like it as well), but Diancie proved to be a bit too overwhelming as my Urshifu wasn’t scarf and I had no way to defensively contain it barring a 1v1 trade with Lando.
For the game itself, the two things I could have done differently here were to preserve Lele a bit longer since speed was probably more valuable than Kart’s health (although scarf Lando EQ was also an issue), or in hindsight I could have EQ'd the Diancie when it was left in early game vs Lando (although I really did not think it would be left in given its value, but it worked out so credit to him for the play). This matchup was always going to be difficult with Diancie even if Manec was difficult on his end, but it was an otherwise clean game.
Week 2 vs Airi (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nationaldex-848485
I had only played Airi once in SV before and never in SS, so I didn’t have as much immediate familiarity with their SS gameplay or team preferences. Based on our team's prep, we were expecting an offense build similar to a couple of the Lop + Z Gren sample teams that they had loaded and reused throughout a few prior tours. I opted to go for a more SS OU style Beat Up offense team featuring Mega Lop + Beat Up Weavile for consistent speed control surrounded by bulky hitters that would be difficult for a standard offense to overwhelm.
Really loved this team and I think it has outs against a ton of common threats in the SS meta at the moment. Unfortunately I loaded into a really well-rounded BO, again featuring Diancie with Rillaboom + Zapdos posing their own issues for the team. I played the early game well until Turn 17, and although I had a shot without the Zapdos para at the end, this midgame was sequenced wrong to begin with as Weavile + Lop should have been prioritized early game for Kart to clean better than they were. Objectively a rough matchup again, but my hax on Rotom made this artificially closer than it was and I felt I got fairly outplayed here regardless.
Week 3 vs Darkness 789 (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nationaldex-849275
Another week, another Diancie (noticing a theme?) which by this point was something I fully expected to load into. I wasn’t sure exactly what type of offensive structure they were putting Diancie on but I ended up getting the Ox the Fox hail build. I elected to load this rain build featuring all three of Mega Swampert, Specs Ash Greninja and Normalium-Z Azumarill to give me a ton of priority, speed control and some options to break down BO plus have speed and priority for offense. I had loaded this build against Kate in a money tour a while ago and felt confident in this particular version of Rain, plus I wanted to have a solid showing after not playing as well as I would have liked the prior week.
The game itself required some tricky sequencing around SD Z Lando which was pretty threatening at preview, so the goal was always to win this with Ash Gren while keeping enough rain turns + prio in the back for Diancie and Zolt. I believe the end game was sequenced correctly by both sides, don’t think the flinch mattered at the end if it was the original unedited paste since U-turn crit could not kill from Corv and Iron Head does nothing.
Week 4 vs Yonmd (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8nationaldex-2389619864-4sybdf7ve9nfqmovnhr0f44aciws6ojpw?p2
This game was highlighted already by Iride, but from my perspective, yonmd’s scout showed a very low usage of Darks (and no Ttar), with mostly balance oriented structures we felt we could overwhelm with HO and particularly psyspam. I’ve brought this type of psyspam build on a few prior occasions but I personally feel (and others may say differently) that Corv is super helpful on these builds to patch up weaknesses to Rillaboom, Urshifu Rapid, SD Chomp and Weavile, which are some of the main super-threats vs psyspam, including some others. Psychium Volc is broken if you don’t load into Heatran or the blobs, and the rest is fairly standard psyspam tec to allow Polteageist and/or Chomp to sweep.
This type of team requires the user to position very aggressively as it won’t be a long game. I feel I played the early and mid game extremely well to get the most value out of Poltea, deny Ferro getting up rocks, and then safely position in Volcarona to decimate most of his team. I would agree he sequenced terrain turns correctly and the only question was whether it was statistically more likely for me to win with Mega Chomp at the end or Poltea giga drain → sac Chomp to remove -1 def drop → second giga drain for game. I think I had greater odds with the path I chose, but it was a close one nonetheless.
Week 5 vs Kustavan (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nationaldex-852039
Going into this game, I was fairly sure I was getting stalled or hit with some type of fat team given the opponent's success with those teams plus their managers. This was a relatively more intensive prep week than the prior three and I eventually settled on a structure that I think both kdca/isza had previously popularized at various points in past tours. We settled on a Shifu + Fsight + Pursuit core which should be able to dismantle most fat teams with proper play in the long term, and volt-turn support from Zapdos and Corv to facilitate it. I was admittedly concerned that this team is still quite weak to Diancie as Corv isn't SpDef EV'd enough to stomach the hits, but we weren’t expecting this specific opponent to load Diancie against me again and we didn’t want to over-optimize for one mon.
As for the game itself, I was pretty disappointed with the RNG I got but that’s the game we play. As it was, I had no real defensive counterplay for both CB Ttar Crunch + Z Lele, so I already had limited margin for error to dance around those with the tools I did have. Ttar para into crit was extremely unfortunate but I felt I was still in a solid position once I got rid of Ferrothorn for urshifu to clean and then outplayed opposing Excadrill. Urshifu getting immediately para’d ended the game which was otherwise still very winnable at that point, not much else I could have done here but wp to Kustavan.
Week 6 vs Devin (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nationaldex-854470?p2
I agreed to try and get this game played under less than ideal circumstances for me personally instead of taking act purely out of respect for my opponent. There is nothing to analyze or reflect on in a constructive way here, I never regret playing but should have handled this differently. Definitely the most frustrated I have been in a while in a tour setting but also something I will learn from.
Week 7 vs Hiro802223001 (L)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nationaldex-856374?p2
Another week in which I spent most of the week testing and preparing to play one opponent (Abele), but ultimately had to adjust on the fly for another one with a very limited scout from any prior tours. Since I had very limited time to test and scout, I pivoted to an older team made by Isza that was familiar to me (to makeup for lack of tests) and that would let me offensively pressure the few different balance/BO team structures I could find. Diancie has been on a meteoric rise in SS and combined with Z Gren + Volc I assumed I had enough firepower to beat a standard balance structure.
On the game itself, SD Boots Weavile is an absolute menace to the team and was always going to be an issue as it outspeeds and kills nearly the entire team. Pwhip miss from Ferro against Slowbro early on meant I lost too much health early, and this opened Weavile up fully to win this endgame. Putting aside matchup and the miss though, I do think I got fairly outplayed in terms of some of the other critical sequences with Diancie and Gren getting out-pivoted, even if I was probably losing this to SD Vile anyway, and the endgame required me winning more 50/50 plays than was realistic to expect, so credit to the opponent for their superior play in this one.
Semifinal Playoffs vs Kayzn (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nationaldex-856999
Going into this semifinals game against Kayzn, I knew I was playing not only a friend, but also one of the strongest active players at the moment that had recently beaten me in a narrow NDLT series for SV. I knew I needed a structure I was fully confident in if I wanted a realistic shot at winning this round. I had not played Kayzn in SS prior to this game and studied as many replays of his gameplay as I could for this round, coupled with my assumptions about what type of builds he would be given and the holes in my self-scout I needed to be aware of. Boomer and I decided on running some type of build featuring Toxic Spikes + Ditto, but given how comfortable I was with charmflash=style fats and how well it fit what we were looking to take advantage of in his scout, we went with an edited version of the team above. This version has Sub Stored Power Mega Latias instead of the usual Shock + Beam/Sphere coverage, and we changed Chansey to Blissey given the offensive options he had been using and the team’s overall weakness to spikes/hazards without a fogger.
I felt I executed the gameplan nearly perfectly from start to finish in this game, probably due to how focused I was going into the game and the level of respect I had for my opponent. The thought process was to get up spikes early and trade hazards (realizing later that this was even more effective due to him lacking any removal as well), mitigate SD Chomp from ripping apart the team with Ditto positioning and constant hazard chip due to my lack of Ice Beam on Lati, and then preserve enough of Ditto’s remaining health to either win outright with his copied and +2 boosted Lele (missed a close roll) or take my chances with Lati as the end-game cleaner. Another very close finish here and overall a high level game on both sides – felt both sides had some matchup woes but it probably favored me 60/40 here solely due to his lack of hazard removal posing a greater long term issue for him than SD Chomp/Diancie posed to me by comparison.
Finals vs One Last Kiss (W)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8nationaldex-859336?p2
Final game against OLK. Super high level player known in the greater tournament community circles for various strong performances outside of this tier, in addition to having a strong showing during both this tournament and in NDWC leading up to this game. Even if it isn't mutual I do respect him a lot as a player and I went out of my way to try and arrange this matchup for the final game, so I was happy to play ths one regardless of the result.
It would take me too long to detail all of the prep I did for this game, but whereas I felt Kayzn would try and bring heavy anti-offense tools like CM LO Lele + Shifu and try to overwhelm me that way, I knew some type of stall or defensive HO counter-style was coming my way in some form here. I played around initially with Hoopa + Urshifu + Future Sight like in prior weeks, but it proved a bit too difficult to flesh those structures out in a way that passed quality control for a finals-caliber game. Boomer was also concerned about OLK’s notable success and usage of Demon Mew in the prior weeks, and we were trying very hard in prep to figure out how to check the combination of Stored Power+Taunt and SP+Body press Mew without resorting to things like Mega Sableye or Alolan Muk. From here, we had planned to use CM Hatterene on Screens either with terrain support (electric seed + SP) or just screens support in general to block Taunt and resist anything Mew wanted to do. I do think Hatterene is a great choice on offense but each of the HO/Screens builds we considered had flaws and I didn’t want to load something I wasn’t fully confident in.
Ultimately, I had a few other options prepared but given the circumstances surrounding this game, I wanted to use my own Weakness Policy HO team which the oldheads of National Dex surely recognize from many years ago. The team is meant to be piloted
extremely aggressively and is centered around brute forcing your way through opponents via screens support, immediately threatening boosting power from timely procs on the weakness policy boosts, and aggressive double switches to force trades. This isn't an RMT and this team will never be a sample, but the basic structure was originally Mew & Grimmsnarl for Hazards+Screens, Mega Mawile and DD Dragapult to dismantle most fat teams, and DD Necrozma + Stored Power abuser (Magearna or Latios) to force trades or significant chip onto opposing Darks, steels and other walls I needed softened for something else to sweep. DD Necrozma generally forces in and either chips or provides a telegraphed pivoting opportunity into everything that DD Pult (and now Blace) would be able to sub+DD on and usually win, hence the origin of those two as an offensive core. CM Blace is able to replicate this in most instances as it displayed very well in this game, though it has a worse matchup spread than Pult did. I made slight edits in the form of Moltres-G over Mew (due to very high Diancie usage against me and possible Sableye stall) and Taunt > Agility on G-Moltres due to the expectation of running into fat.
As for the game itself, I played aggressively enough and hit the right double switches at the right times to win, and it was anyone's game until the last turn. I want to specifically shout out
Aso for recording this game and taking the time to narrate it and show the tour some support, which was a very unexpected and very much appreciated surprise. You can check out his video
here from his original post.
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This is normally the part where I say thank you for reading my novel and see you at the next event. I have to be honest and say that it is a really disorienting feeling to win both of your playoff games against top level competition and know you were a couple plays away by your teammates from holding six team tour rings, while also knowing that you were a single recommendation away from likely not playing at all in this tournament and were picked to finish last or close to it by more than one of the teams. So I can't say for sure what comes next, but if my final performance in SS was a win in the finals of a team tour with my favorite and signature squad, I cannot have asked for more.
Until next time
.
yonmd
Xurkiyee
SHSP
