ND UUBERS (EWWWWWW!)(Teamdump)
tbh this format feels kinda buns at times, but winning games is a hell of a drug so i didnt mind it too much for most of the tour. imo HO is kinda the only common archetype i think is super valid, fatter or fat stuff cant get around crumbling if it rolls any number of threats. individual mons wise i think NDW is great, i rly like otr (cause HO is so good and otr is both good on and against it, setup poisonceus check is nice asw) but i reckon cm stuff or even an idef cm mono stored set reminiscent of dusk mane in sv could potentially work and that overall it should be explored more (assuming it doesnt get banned cause ik some ppl want that). i think hamu is slept on as a HO lead, its a lead that beats other hazard leads like deo, has encore, and spreads chip while just settings its layers. i rly like lorb phero, mostly ada but with pao rising jolly is prob a good option, poisonceus is a pain cause no ground z but that mon just doesnt pop up enough to a point where its annoying. i think eleceus is pretty cracked, i mostly ran ekiller supercell (no gira usage lets this thing destroy teams) but cm bolt beam is also great (modest on webs is super strong). i personally am not a huge landot enjoyer, i think it is pretty exploitable as a defensive piece, due both to lack of recovery and t fly making it fodder, but i do recognise how it can feel needed as ground answers r kinda sparse (for that reason i dont dislike scarf landot as much since eq can whack a lot of stuff). i think pao is vry good asw, but is can however feel a bit hit or miss as it finding an sd is far from ez, and if u run into a mag ur getting ur +2 darkinium chip and then ur done. it can however also clean up or break amazingly when it gets the right mu so it kinda balances out. if the meta does someone reach a point where balance is the dominant team style band would prob be op but i also doubt such a point will ever occur so kind of a non point. i think webs is a bit mu fishy if more defog mons start seeing use with the move but atm that isnt rly the case so it mostly gets all its upsides without the downside of needing ghold or every mon to have taunt on its set, NDW (or spect maybe) and some t ghosts is fine enough for now, i also just think t ghost is great cause ekiller is just insane vs so many teams and a t ghost is a very fittable thorn in its side. ive run out of yap now time for team dump.
Week 1
The first week was a pretty weird, there had been pmuch zero acivity in the tiers tour scene for a hot minute (i remember seeing an open for the tier somewhere but idt it was super recent or high lvl) so was tryna build in the dark more or less. given this i mostly just picked some mons i knew to be good in SV, iceus, hamu, NDW (b4 it got banned), gouging, and then slapped them on webs and added a ground answer in landot (b4 i realised i dont like this mon). hp steel was for mega dia cause i felt like being goofy. mystic water hamu is an old sv ou set that i wanted to try out cause +2 t water mystic does have some nice calcs, sash was prob just better and it did not work out in the game. goug was sub t fly to fodder opposing lando and iceus was taunt for defog stuff. game went pretty poorly but it was only week 1 in a format that i didnt know very well (idt anyone did) so idrm.
Week 2
This week I started to understand the meta a lil bit more. After the first week I didn't want to load webs again so no bee, and wasnt super keen on loading another hamu, partly cause fishy knows i love hamu in sv and when u expect a hamu u can def tech for it, and also just cause itd be mid the prior week. This was the week I fell in love with lorb phero, taxel double kick lets it prevent both bee and hamu from setting their hazards, and cc is just insanely strong, threatened 2hko and forced t fly vs the physdef mag that swapped into it during the game. taunt is nice since the limited coverage means u can potentially give set up oppurtunities. i chose cloyster because; A) i expected a HO load from fishy, B) tspikes r nice in this tier since poisonceus is the only super common absorber and its not always there since any other arc means its not coming, and lastly C) because fishy loaded it in SV and it was funny. i chose the nicknames as a joke, with every nickname (minus goug cause i couldnt think of one) larping as a different set;
u see me rocking (Landot): pretty obvious, bluffing rocks
the shiniest rock (NDW): rock polish rather than tr
judge(ment) + jury (Eleceus): bolt beam cm
RowRow FightDaPow (Cloyster): iykyk but bluffing t ground drill run or at least just drill run, i didnt rly expect him to get it just thought the name was funny
e speed me (Phero): kinda double bluff in a way, but was larping t ghost
Game wasn't super pretty with it being a win with me getting lucky in the last few turns but i fs did think i was starting to understand the tier better.
Week 3
im p sure this was the week pao dropped (mightve been the week b4) but regardless i knew i wanted to use it. this week i left building much too late so i ended taking the team i saw fishy load earlier in the week and just recreating then editing it. only real changes were making pao the z user and changing phero to my beloved lorb anti lead set. i was in such a rush however that i forgot to double check stuff and forgot to set tera types on hamu and eleceus (i think i had my eleceus as z electric at some point when editing then forgot to make it normal when pao became the z user, for hamu im just dumb). fishy has an obsession with genesect which i cant understand so i dropped it for red card lugia, its smthing which has seen slight use in sv and is just a nice anti HO tech, a style i thought i was very weak too. this is the first week where i actually have a decent recollection of what happened so a bit more detail 4 the game. the missing teras and dropping genesect didnt end up mattering in the end as pao went brazy scaring every mon with sucker and managing to get multiple SDs off my opponent didnt attack into it, its z move also came in clutch nuking the opposing mag from 50. i forget what happened exactly but it ended up coming down to my NDW not getting crash flinched by a pao, but thxfully it didnt nd it eneded up as a win. this was the first week where i felt i played well (better*, debatable whether it was played well).
Week 4
This week i once again left prep late, starting to see a trend smth smth, but i actually did put an original team together this week, in fact i put 2 together. initially i had another basic webs build somewhat similar to my week 1 team but then i thought to myself
'I've loaded HO 3 weeks in a row now, maybe i should switch it up before i get cteamed', and thxfully i did as that lead me to tossing together a palafin rain team. id considered trying to fit palafin on my initial HO build as i felt it had a great mu with my opp having limited water resists in past weeks plus a good mu vs HO generally. the other mons were kinda just filler, mandatory drizzle mon in peli, swift swim non in pert, hazard denial and setting with hatt and phero, and a special rain abuser in porigin, nothing super interesting with the sets, only other option i rly considered was scale shot t water on the porigin but i felt pala prio and swift swim was enough speed control/general speed already. it is no exaggeration to say i was shocked to see the mu when i loaded into the game, a weather war was fs not what i was expecting to play that week, but weather def was a pretty decent plan into my prior HO spam. at preview i thought the game was pretty cooked, i didnt expect to able to break wake with pala and i was worried poisonceus would just sweep at some point. t1 i managed to get a t wave on poisonceus with porigin which was big and made me feel a lot better bout the mu (it ended up not even being dd so it wasnt actually that big but i didnt know that yet). pert eq ended up putting in big work early vs no ground resist and then porigin dominated the later part of the with sub meaning i didnt have to make any preds. felt i played fine enough this week, dont think too much can be read into with the absurd teams.
Week 5
not super much to say about this week, my team was already qualled for poffs, and we were locked either 2nd or 3rd seed so we would play the same team in the semi finals regardless. ended up retooling my 2nd week team, dropping cloyster for the saner pick of hamu, and dropping fraudo therian for mega luc. ended up loading into tr (suprised it didnt happen sooner) and missing ceaseless t1 so not much to say lol.
Semi-Finals
i had initially planned to build my first non HO build for this game, given it was semis and i'd been punished so hard for HO the week prior, so i started doing some prep earlier in the week with a bit of ideas dump figuring i'd get back round 2 it eventually given i had 5 more days till the game. then those 5 days turned to 3, those 3 turned to 1, and that 1 turned to 2 hours, and i was back to building right b4 my game. given i was nearly outa time i managed to convince myself that since they cteamed me so hard the week b4 (our semis opp was our week 5 opp) they wouldnt do so again, expecting me to learn from my mistake, unfort for them i dont learn from my mistakes. i mentioned it earlier but i didnt initially plan to use rain week 4, instead having a webs team, i decided to take that base and update it, the team already had my week 1 combo of bee-hamu-NDW for webs, spikes, and spin-blocking, and i then attatched some of the mons that i had grown to like over the weeks since, eleceus, phegoatmosa, and z pao. i dropped the crack head hp steel bee from week 1 for skill swap, in mainly due to hatt dropping in the weeks since. hamu also became sash encore rather than sd mystic water cause i wanted an actual reliable set. i initially planned to use sd eleceus again but ultimately changed it so thered be at least one curve ball, i also made it modest over timid which came in nice to guarentee a ko on pao for the battle, and to help win a cm war with a steelceus. upon seeing mu for the game initially i was pretty certain i was cooked as i more or less forgot to include a palafin answer, and 5 min b4 the game i had also changed my eleceus from t water to t ghost which i was kicking myself for. the t ghost in actuality ended up coming up huge for me, giving me an answer to my opps boots pheromosa that constantly threatened to remove webs or clean my whole team. despite the whole game being played on knife's edge with me trying desperately to keep my hamu eleceus out of t water jet punch range ko range, lest it win the entire game, i managed to come thru off the back of some eleceus heavy lifting in the midgame and pao cleaning up in the endgame. i feel this was my best played match of the tour, so while it is sad it was the last im happy i went out on a somewhat highnote.
Closing Thoughts
I initially signed up 4 this tour cause space bugged me about it and then forgot about the tour until i recieved the teamcord invite, but it actually eneded up being very fun. team enviroment was chill (until it wasnt) even if it was slightly dead at times. its a shame we went out the way we did considering our finals hopes were looking promising but stuff happens and what r u gonna do. obligatory manager s/o
SpaceSpeakers LordBox for drafting me, even if space did become my top opp, even telling me to cancer the tour following wk5, truly a meanie oat, and even if box did whomegalul me b4 the tour. this is my easily my longest spiel so if u read thru it all my condolences, and if u didnt np thx for reading this part.
edit: space continues to harass me despite our tour run being over, so to appease him s/o
SpaceSpeakers for being a fun manager to team with, it was very fun fking around with u throughout the tour and i hope i can josh around with u more in the future.
i liked the tier, natdex lc's bigger amount of possibilities in the builder felt really refreshing and was a nice change of pace compared to sv where it's not very unlikely to see 5 of the same mons on both sides lul. i wanna quickly shoutout the goat 
btw if someone wants to play godly gift just hmu! i love this tier
:Deoxys...
