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Want to share all of the teams you have built for HPL II? Want to give shoutouts or send memes? Want to question my sanity after telling everyone choose a shrimp? Here is the thread to do everything mentioned and more in. From Rex and I, thank you to all of the players and managers for participating, thank you to all of the spectators for watching all of this play out, and also huge thanks to Chessking345 for the usage stats thread, helping when it comes to tour guidelines, and so much more. Rex and I had a lot of fun hosting and watching the weeks play out, and we hope it was just as much fun for the rest of you to participate and/or spectate.
Not the way I wanted to go out, but ORAS PH is volatile enough that I'm kinda relieved that this tour's finally over. Prior to HPL II (and I) I believed tournament ORAS gameplay to be overall less enjoyable to build for than in a ladder environment, and I'd say that viewpoint has reinforced itself throughout this tour. It's simply impossible to account for every potential cheese pick in the builder (my 2nd game vs Glory in semis is a decent example), and different cheese varieties take advantage of different teambuilding patterns, meaning that option is available to a surprisingly high amount of people in a tour environment. Even if we restrict discussion to "meta" sets, there isn't realistic hard counterplay to Mold Breaker Chatter, and even the dynamics against opposing Mold Breaker users requires you to either get turns right (Prankster Encore), get type matchup (Poison Heal/to a large extent also Prankster), or extend your time to counteract opposing threats by using revenge killers with defensive utility. This isn't really healthy for a metagame, since mindgames are prioritized over positioning, and it felt as though I was autopiloting in my games because of the tediousness of playing in the exact same way, every single time. Any other playstyle is much less consistent against whatever people are using. In short, playing tournament ORAS PH felt boring and building for it was a nightmare.
If it wasn't clear I intend to take a break from PH, I haven't felt sustained enjoyment building or playing any PH meta for a while now. Thanks to everyone on the team, I feel like our draft was extremely strong and we would've made it all the way had everything not gone wrong, y'all were nice to interact with and I learned a lot about Hackmons metas I was previously unfamiliar with. Also thanks to others who assisted with prep (Glorylag=badaidan amoongusPenultimateToast) and others who simply hanged around (BahamutentrocefaloIndulge in dreamsrealaccountami?RichardMillePlainScipioklolThe Hisui Region), even if you didn't interact you helped make this experience more bearable. ORAS PH/SV BH/USUM BH teams are below; no USUM PH ones since I learned my lesson from last year. Cheers
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ORAS PH
W1 G1 (W) – – Game
Glory wanted me to stall so I did. However, stall felt like a good bring anyway because of the flexibility in-game against the surprise-factor but maybe less effective sets I sometimes observe N using. Not much to say about the team, it's very proven and easily the best take on ORAS stall out there imo. This matchup was very interesting, and definitely could've gone either way on preview – because of the threats I would potentially need to conserve mons against on preview as well as the dynamics of N's mons, I elected to play proactively, constantly make calculated doubles, and gradually tilt the game further in my favor. Great game to analyze if you'd like to get better at piloting stall
W1 G2 / teamo W4 G3 (W/W) – – 1 | 2
An old team from my builder since I didn't feel like building 3 teams this week and N would be unfamiliar with it. Rayquaza was actually EQ last which I think is a pretty neat tech but of course it wasn't useful in the actual game. Talonflame is also genuinely solid, since faster mons are either team-specific or mid and your typing is pretty convenient vs. coverage spam. This team is far more consistent than it looks and is easily sample worthy imo.
W2: Glory and I gentlemanned to no non-Spore/Sing sleep and no Chatter, which strongly influenced my teams:
W2 G1 (W) – – Game
Edited version of an old team in my builder (Groudon --> Latios). Blissey apparently just BARELY Improofs Lati after 1 Tail Glow (can midground Audino to likely come in on Earth Power instead of Spacial Rend as well), Gyarados outspeeds max speed Aegislash, and Psystrike Deo-S hits a surprising amount of things for decent damage thanks to limited EVs, and outspeeds and OHKOes both Gengar and Beedrill. Latios outspeeds neutral 90s. HP invest Latios is actually insanely bulky on the special side, letting it trade for positive value in all sorts of misc. situations, as happened in the game. Matchup looked near-impossible on preview, but risks taken early game and maybe some suboptimal piloting by Glory gave me a large enough advantage to secure the win.
W2 G2 (W) – – Game
Very matchup-fishy by my standards – STAG Primal Groudon, Mold Breaker Gengar/Gira-O, Fire or Ground coverage Latios/Xerneas/Diancie etc. give this team a tough time. In banless ORAS PH Regen is rightfully taboo because of the inability to genuinely check much of anything running Dark Void, but with that out of the picture some usable and interesting sets emerge. Metagross checks most Rayquaza sets well enough, and the ones it loses to are checked by Imposter so it works out. Fast Giratina is cool for Choice Band/Belly Drum Groudon – you need Steam Eruption over Scald to OHKO the former though. Low Kick/Encore/Spikes/Perish Song STAG MMX has been slept on for a while, and as demonstrated in the game is very good vs. passive archetypes that require at least one vulnerable mon to be effective. Matchup here was very advantageous for me and I essentially autopiloted my way through the game.
Given how dogshit my g3 team would've been I likely would have just reused something in my builder had the set gone to 3.
Ballfire W3 g1 / damflame W4 (W/W) – Aegi Dual MMX – 1 | 2
Only changes from the sample are Bolt Strike over Fusion Bolt on WG MMX for the first game, and Stealth Rock over Spikes for the second. From Iguana/Excaliju's scouts they didn't seem to respect opposing Dual MMX in the builder very well, and as we all know Dual MMX (with this kinda team structure) is broken.
teamo W3 / teamo W4 G2 (W/L) – – 1 | 2
Older Magic Bounce balance style that's still relatively consistent. No one's used 3a Mold Breaker Fairies before but it was essentially perfect into lag's scout, which relied on resists to defensively answer Mold Breakers (think WG Ferrothorn, Bounce Registeel/Aegislash, etc.) as opposed to Prankster users, and also had relatively little Gale Wings Rayquaza. Also very easy to Improof without concessions to breaking power. Rest of the team is oriented towards supporting it and properly answering the mu fish mons (WG Beedrill, fast Huge Power Gyarados, Prankster Metagross, etc.). No Guard SubPass is also just broken. Team wasn't fine-tuned for vs. jb so the matchup wasn't the cleanest, which coupled by some misplays explains the loss.
teamo W4 G1 (W) – – Game
Edit of my w2 g1 team vs. Glory above – Mold Breaker Xerneas is generally very strong into jb builds and is not significantly less consistent than other candidates for that slot. In the actual game the team worked about as expected, denying significant progress from jb's side and resulting in Xern breaking through the main "check" in Ferrothorn without fearing Imposter due to improofing via Plate.
Semis G1 (W) – – Game
AeroBee balance. Obviously not very consistent but this team takes advantage of Glory's tendencies through adequate counterplay to the more extreme playstyles. Jolly Tyranitar outspeeds 240 Speed Aegislash, Giratina speedcreeping for Adamant Huge Power Gyarados, and most importantly Shadow Tag Slaking/Regigigas. Hidden Power allows you to Improof without an item or Ability slot, and it's obviously weak but has applications on Shell Smash WGs and, extremely rarely, specific structures with mons that genuinely make use of all four of item/Ability/Improofing/60bp coverage, like on this team. Aerodactyl is deceptively bulky and lives 2 Xerneas Moonblasts, 2 +2 Oblivion Wings, and Improofs Rayquaza up to +2 (so 1 Quiver possible against opposing Imposter).
Semis G2 (L) – – Game
Kinda threw this one. Band Huge Power Pursuit is actually diabolical because you can nearly guarantee a Pursuit trap KO against specific targets (though some require slight chip), provided your set is unrevealed. Suicune over Kyogre since you live +2 Thousand Arrows after Stealth Rock, though that screwed me badly in the actual game as Scald didn't hit hard enough to break the opposing Substitute. Tail Glow Arceus is Improofed by Giratina and is generally quite solid into Prankster-less slower teams. I think my matchup was actually fine but in-game I got complacent and unnecessarily got Xerneas KOed when otherwise I was in a much better spot.
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SV BH
Unlike last time I actually built here. Too lazy to really flesh out builds but they surprisingly weren't that bad – mainstream stuff is extremely boring so mostly offbeat structures/ideas. Ghostceus is fucking broken btw
Wanted an attacker that could break through almost any FurScales bastard with one turn of setup. Explosion Lando is self-proofed in that opposing Imposter trading is usually a positive outcome for this team, while Explosion Lopunny is soft-proofed if you lose the tie and Aerodactyl is healthy (2 Helmet procs and one PopBomb use result in a dead Imp). Simple Flutter is also hella broken if you lack offensive counterplay to it. Not fully optimized though, maybe some Eject Button/Healing Wish support could work?
Really fun team to use, and also my first attempt at building something other than snoozefest slop. Spikes/Mortal Regen Ghostceus is actually really nice and the SpD mons complement each other well enough that you don't really need Scales or AV (though opposing special breakers are annoying if you don't limit opportunities for them to come in). Probably my favorite team out of the ones I made in HPL
(can also be Aegislash)
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USUM BH
Main idea was the Garchomp (original was Mold Breaker Precipice/Outrage/Bolt Strike/Rocks) but altogether an aggregate of multiple different ideas that seemed to mesh well together. I don't know if Refrigerate Kyogre is used at all but I personally found it solid at, well, everything. Unblockable Spin on Arceus is also quite nice but the Improofing is rather sketchy though fundamentally there isn't really a way to fix that. Kyogre doesn't actually OHKO EvioImp Garchomp so Counter Chansey is another method of (crude) Improofing. Didn't really get any outside help (besides early advice from quojova/Chessking) so there might be a few crappy matchups but I found building for this meta to be a fun exercise.
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Underrated ORAS PH sets. Until semis we had the best ORAS PH record by a significant amount so I feel justified in saying these are legit
Belly Drum Primal Groudon is ordinarily pretty annoying for stall when it's often hard to discern it from the standard Shell Smash set and going Poison Heal Giratina on an unrevealed set usually comes with the acceptance that you'll have to sack vs. Belly Drum. This Giratina just opts to outspeed it, as well as other residual matchups like 241 Speed Gyarados and most Yveltal – +6 Ice Shard from Groudon deals around 90% max. Of course, it isn't always easy to keep Giratina that healthy, but it is possible if you play intelligently. From the below calcs, you handle Shell Smash/Choice Band Primal Groudon reasonably well anyway:
+6 252+ Atk Groudon-Primal Ice Shard vs. 252 HP / 100 Def Giratina: 384-454 (76.1 - 90%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal
+2 252+ Atk Groudon-Primal Thousand Arrows vs. 252 HP / 100 Def Giratina: 324-382 (64.2 - 75.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal
252+ Atk Choice Band Groudon-Primal Thousand Arrows vs. 252 HP / 100 Def Giratina: 243-286 (48.2 - 56.7%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO after Poison Heal
252+ Atk Choice Band Groudon-Primal Precipice Blades vs. 252 HP / 100 Def Giratina: 324-382 (64.2 - 75.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal
252+ Atk Choice Band Groudon-Primal Precipice Blades vs. +3 252 HP / 100 Def Giratina: 130-154 (25.7 - 30.5%) -- possible 5HKO
0 SpA Giratina Scald vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Groudon-Primal: 252-300 (73.9 - 87.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0 SpA Giratina Scald vs. -1 0 HP / 0 SpD Groudon-Primal: 380-448 (111.4 - 131.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Harder to maintain Giratina's HP with less physical bulk but this is a realistic solution to finding a defensive Belly Drum Primal Groudon check. Ballfire brought this in their HPL W2 game, but this scenario did not come up.
Aegislash / Giratina @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 252 HP / X Def/SpD / high Spe
- Curse
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
- Recover
Not sure if you noticed but every single team posted above includes a Magic Bounce Ghost-type. This greatly increases these teams' consistency, making them much stronger against WG Beedrill, misc. Taunters, passive/checked hazard setters, etc. You can also favorably interact with opposing Prankster Giratina since you favor Leftovers and they often will not. Also good against Parting Shot. This means that you can't fit Prankster users in as easily but that downside is also less relevant with the (misguided) increased centralization in Mold Breaker users, which makes winning interactions due to positive type matchups (i.e. Poison Heal users/misc. priority) less inconsistent. You also can fit Imposter, another hugely underrated meta piece, even more easily than on non-Bounce structures due to how Bounce/Imposter together so thorough bully the passive defensive mons necessarily ran for offensive threats. Aegislash in particular is a bit riskier to run as people have began to consider extremely speedcrept (>240 raw Speed) Gyarados but Giratina can speedcreep past that, which makes it an attractive choice if you want to maximize consistency.
Dark @ Lum Berry / Black Glasses (/ Choice Scarf)
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 252 Atk / Speed invest
Adamant / Jolly Nature
- Pursuit
- Sucker Punch
- Beat Up
- Filler
Won't fit on every team, but you can justify significant Speed investment on Huge Power Pursuit users thanks to their newfound ability to trap Speed invested Aegislash, Giratina, etc. Mega Tyranitar in particular is pretty nice since even without HP investment you still check Mold Breaker Rayquaza decently enough in the short-term, while Gyarados misses out on quite a lot of bulk thresholds without max HP and Yveltal similarly lacks relevant resists outside of Ghost-type. Importantly, running enough Speed for Shadow Tag Normals allows you to surprise KO them if they're chipped or Beat Up is simply strong enough.
Relatively Fast Mon w/ Defensive Utility @ Leftovers
Ability: Shadow Tag / Arena Trap
EVs: 252 HP / dump in defenses / Speed threshold
- Encore
- Perish Song
- Spikes / Recover / Filler
- Filler
This type of set has been dismissed for a while as overly matchup-fishy due to their hit-or-miss nature (hoping for a non-Shed Shell/Ghost/Bounce mon to trap), but I think they have overlooked applications on bulkier teams. It is true that Encore + Perish Song alone is rather fishy (even with team support), but you have two customizable moveslots and there are quite a few faster mons that possess nonzero defensive utility against various attackers, like MMX/Arceus/Diancie/even Aerodactyl. MMX is the best one by far because it beats Gyarados in a 1v1, picks off weakened offensive mons with a generally powerful Low Kick, and is bulky enough with investment to take a few hits. However other mons can fulfill similar roles as needed – see my semis g1 team vs. Glory earlier in this post.
The "standard" Mold Breaker Fairy set runs Dark Void/King's Shield/Recover etc. as its 4th move, but the incorporation of a Fire move in Fairies' offensive toolkit makes them significantly harder to defensively check, since one can no longer rely on Ferrothorn or soft-check with Aegislash/Registeel. You also hit WG Blissey quite hard which helps with consistency even if it's fallen off completely. You can still check this with Tentacruel but that means you are committing to a Fissure-weak WG and Earth Power over Steam Eruption is an option if you're fine with being walled by Ho-Oh.
etc.
Fast Mon @ Leftovers / Black Sludge
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Sheer Cold
- Dark Void / Hypnosis
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
No Guard SubPass has been underrated for a long time now, it is brutally effective at its function and is really only annoyed by Whirlwind WGs (which, on most teams, are impractical to fit) and faster WGs if they get the turn right. Unlike OHKO/Sing/hazard/Ability removal you're not as annoyed by Imposter or STAG Slaking/Regigigas and are generally more reliable in that passing Substitutes is a more realistic prospect than stacking hazards and catching an opposing WG with OHKO when the most likely scenario is they pivot to their revenger and you're in an awkward spot. The best user is Gengar since it's resilient against raw and Pixilate FakeSpeed as well as a decent enough WG Xerneas switch-in, though of course the user is customizable.
In the same vein, Latios has crazy raw power that allows it to shred through defensive counterplay regardless of type matchup. Potential competitors like MMY fail to keep up because you still need defensive utility vs. revenge killers (hence King's Shield/Substitute), otherwise you risk Pursuit 50/50s and trapping from opposing STAG Normals. Latios also has crazy special bulk, in one of my tour games it ate Ghost Judgment from Gengar from full to retaliate back. Obviously not on Rayquaza's level but it's an apparently forgotten mon that's improved quite a bit with what people are running these days. Mold Breaker Arceus and Tail Glow/Ghost Judgment/Sludge Wave/Baton Pass Gengar are also much better though those two are less initially dangerous because they do not match Latios' power-defensive utility combination.
High Attack Mon @ Choice Band
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 252 Atk
Adamant Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Water Shuriken / Ice Shard
- Pursuit
- Beat Up / Knock Off / Precipice Blades / Anything else that OHKOes Giratina
High Attack Mon @ Mental Herb
Ability: Mold Breaker
EVs: 252 Atk
Adamant / Jolly Nature
- Belly Drum
- Extreme Speed
- Ice Shard
- Thousand Arrows / Earthquake / Beat Up / Anything else that OHKOes Giratina
Surprise factor! The opponent does not know your set and both types of sets effectively punish the opponent for just one turn of vulnerability. The best way to use Band Huge Power is to disguise the user as a different set. For example, Diancie commonly runs Pixilate, which immediately forces opposing Giratina out. However, assuming Giratina is slightly chipped Diancie has a near-completely safe opportunity to straight-up KO with an extremely strong Pursuit. Similar calcs exist against MMX/Mega Rayquaza/Primal Groudon after Shell Smash, so it's not like you're targeting one mon either. Belly Drum Mold Breaker Primal Groudon is decently common at this point but you can run similar sets on different mons – Diancie/Rayquaza are both common specially biased Mold Breaker users so gaining that one turn of setup is trivial. Kyurem-B/Banette cleanly OHKO Giratina with a boosting item so they have a more customizable 4th move. Very annoying to account for in tournament play without a universal check like Imposter.
Ticked up in usage but still underrated. I don't see very much Lefties Imposter but it's almost as good as Eviolite and takes advantage of SubPass WGs lacking recovery, makes Imposter much more solid vs. most Curse Ghosts, and mitigates hazard damage so as to not get pressured in that way. Sleep Talk + Whirlwind was created by [redacted] and it's genuinely pretty nice, why didn't I think of that? Pixie Plate is also okay enough these days but you should only really run it with para support since otherwise you rely on speed ties. I see people complain about how hard Imposter is to fit but it's really not – a lot of structures can fit 2 near-dedicated revenge killers and Imposter actually works really well with Huge Power Gyarados, Gale Wings Rayquaza, Band Huge Power etc.
tour was fun lol. i'm okay with 3-3 record cause kyogres are kind of a bad team for ph ngl. managers basically had ph channels muted so my primary usum support was gloom and ptoast, which went as well as you'd expect
i probably would've been fine with it if i wasn't promised usum support before getting drafted lol. when i switched to oras i actually got even less support, excaliju is no builder and jb is inactive. i loaded my semis team with 0 tests at all, managers wouldn't even comment on oras teams until the game started for the whole tour so like the entire team had no idea what i was bringing until the link hit the teamcord. so if anyone was wondering why i wasn't taking advantage of support, i had none! also usum is fun to fuck with but so cancer to actually prep for, in future tours i'm sticking to oras/adv/gsc
USUM
vs cscl W1 (L)
this team's pretty weirdo but i like it. phero was supposed to stop annoying mg and beat out hazard leads, i wasn't really intending to suicide lead with it tbh. dual mg is here cause he relied on innards a lot and because i didn't want to be coma weak. bullet seed and crabhammer on kart hit his commonly used mgs (sash ashgren / ho-oh) although neither ended up coming. slak was just kinda generic but he just didn't run a lot of espeed tanks. cscl stags all missed msciz and his special threats disrespected bliss so i figured that core was pretty obvious. i also predicted wg kart coming so i prepped with pheal pogre, which i got right. i figured that because i run a lot of offense, cscl was more likely to run speed control stuff that didn't do as much damage, which pogre would take advantage of. he also barely had goggles use so that's why it has spore. i never saw cscl paste, but from sets i knew / preview i'm sure i had a pretty nice mu here. i was rly annoyed that the game turned out so one sided bc cscl stayed in with scarf pbond mmx locked into photon vs kart, partly because literally one missed turn cost the entire game and partly because people decided i built bad because of it
vs betathunder W2 / Podra W4 (W/W)
this team is honestly top 3 teams i've ever made lmao it's so fucked up. idea here was to use illusion cause it was broken and nobody was really trying it. i went hoopa cause psychic/dark is op offensively when people don't try to spam fimp at you. mold mgar is a really fucked up lead, this was the day i realized sparksurfer is a broken move. harv mgar is the closest we're getting to new usum cancer, this mon ohkoes every ghost resist after rocks and sets up easily. i kept changing 4ths, it was webs/spiky/imprison/moonsault at different points. mmx was to make sure i wouldn't die to stuff mgar couldn't set up on, double prio is nice for keeping momentum. smash hp slak is underrated, top tier cleaner in general and i reused cc here. doublade is 100% underrated, i thought it was bad for a while but it's basically the only thing that reliably switches in on the best leppa mmx sets. also para is broken, people need to spam it more
vs aidan W3 (L)
i like this team too, though it's different than how i usually build. bounce hoopa was basically an elaborate line to bait opposing ng lead into status/hazards, and it's just a hard mon to wall in general. i went lsf + flame judge mmx to lure in answers to the usual mmx i load, which worked well since i fought double kart. ring trick mmy was cause pixie usually just runs one dark + innards as mmy answers, which i wanted to punish. genesis supernova setting psyterrain was also nice since i was prioless. fc ygod was not sap in the game, it was triple kick cause of an elaborate lure for innards bliss, but it sucks cause at +4 innards just gets ohkoed anyway. with sap this mon is fucking awesome, you can 1v1 a ton of phys breakers and just set up on them with no problem. in the game i definitely could have won but i was totally tapped out that week so i was playing really bad
don't ask
vs Treeko W5 (L)
both teams are total cooks. i didn't bring kart at all so i decided to mix it up and bring two, since these guys bait a lot of bad lines from offense. dialga and ho-oh are because opposing scout liked mixed sweepers / double moldy a lot, which those two dealt with pretty well. mg dialga doesn't exactly lure innards, it's more to make mind blown a total nuke. both lasts are pretty good, i went with mmx in the end because my team felt weak to opposing mmx/mgar and i wanted to lure them out. i was really sad about losing this week, because treeko ignored scout and loaded mmx spam which my scout decimates. it wasn't even good mmx spam there were like 4 huge powers. regardless this was probably my favorite team to come out of hpl, even though i think the double mgar one is better this one is just so much fun to play with
vs aidan Semis (L)
i didn't actually play this i just built it for ptoast. building vs nihilegos was always really rough because my only good support this tour was pixie, who knows how i build usum better than how i know pixie builds usum. my idea was to go scarf mmx to deny hazard leads that they ran before, like mmy/phero/kyuw. i knew kart wouldn't have good answers since i barely bring spore. i also figured wg ygod would do well into usual anti offense stuff like imp and scarf pbond, but it actually didn't work out great cause aidan had a lot of fairy moves. blace wasn't picked for mind blown stab, but instead cause mgar pursuit didn't kill bliss. the mu was like evenish until ptoast sacked the wincon but what can i do
ORAS
vs GhastlyPixie Semis (W)
this was the one i actually played. i ran plate imp here but i didn't even particularly expect plate molds, it's just that they're fucking cancer to prep for so i loaded plate imp to ignore it. ng pdon was bc pixie's pdon switchins are either tina or 4x weak to freeze dry, and i decided to improof it with wg pdon to make it harder to predict ng. mold mmy seemed great here bc the prio from scout was exclusively espeed/shard. unfortunately it's impossible to improof so i had to run a crazy mgross, but i actually love this set now. red card owns subpass and psychics can't play the game. also if pdon ever got glared it sucked way worse vs my team, which was great bc i had no counterplay to that mon lmao. wg gigas was just generic 2nd wg + prio. this is like really cteamy and also loaded into triple water move but it worked out
ok shoutouts time
GhastlyPixie somehow my biggest shoutout by miles is not a kyogre? but i have a lot to thank you for. i can thank you for being like my only dedicated support, or for testing, but your real help was being bestie outside of the tour. if there's one thing i'm gonna miss it'll be talking about hpl prep in dms with you. i didn't think our phpl dynamic was gonna lead to us getting this close but it's really made hpl special. i also knew you'd own this tour, i already knew you were a ph goat and now everyone else knows too!
Mewtwo's Greatest Soldier there were times when it felt like you were the actual manager lmao. your activity in all channels, not just ph, was really admirable. ik i bashed my support but i can confidently say we would have been worse off without you, you really put more than 3k in. hopefully managers will wake up and draft you next phpl
FlamPokeNightEdge thanks for carrying lol, you guys helped us run the sv slots every week. we got you guys for 9k total and you went 8-2 combined, crazy output. i hope my tests helped out, i only have 1 basic mblaze team but anything for the win
PenultimateToast thanks for slotting usum in semis so i didn't have to play tour usum anymore
rumia thanks for building and playing all 8 slots every week and going 8-0 six times, i didn't even know TOs allowed that? also when i first talked to you in teamcord i cried a little please accept my frq
jb291 thanks for being self sufficient in bo3 cause it would have been a pain in the ass otherwise
maybca thanks for putting lots of effort into the tour, idt your record reflects it well. sorry you had to play ndbh
AnsonIsTheBest thanks for reminding me replay scouter was a thing lol, also you were really helpful w1
Akiracityscapes thanks for drafting, loved that you guys were active in bh slots because it meant i didn't have to help them prep lmao. and NO i'm not going to get on you for burning out of ph, it has the highest burnout rate ever. i was honestly gonna pop anyone who said the word "ph" to me during w4
An unfortunate finish from such a strong Round Robin phase performance. This year's HPL compared to last year's did feel more tame, possibly due to less novelty and metas staling comparatively. Though I did find the games to be more interesting for the most part, particularly new stuff showing up for SS and SM shoutouts to those players.
I wasn't planning on playing originally since I already dodged OMPL, but after looking at the pool I figured it would be useful to self buy for flexibility and also count as a major tour to not completely dodge every tour this year. Didn't turn out well since I think I'm at a plateau in terms of building where the tier has too many threats that I get paranoid over accounting for everything (impossible task) that I can't make teams I'm satisfied with for tour environments, even though I'm supposed to just look in a greater scope for counterplay blah blah. Still have interest in just messing around with some ideas and sets to make for fun teams though so I'll still be around (unfortunately). Team dumps will be in the respective meta posts since I also need to drop some older stuff from OMPL.
aerobee Thanks for carrying everything again, from supporting the dominant PH performance while also helping out the BH slots and also doing the managerial stuff. You should come back for next year this was just a fluke :)
quojova You are really really strong and I'm glad to have finally had the opportunity to team up. Always interesting to see your building thoughts and ideas and how solid and effective teams end up. That HO team is one of the coolest concept teams I have seen.
damflame 3 Thanks for helping cover up for me with your tier versatility, you are an absolutely incredible player (I still don't think I've seen someone consistently make so many accurate plays in difficult situations or even 50/50s).
Taka Massive apologies for being pretty useless support throughout the tour, I'm sure with better support you would've gotten a good record as several games were just terrible matchups. Hopefully you are still interested in the tier to see you around in the future.
shadowpea 5.5k shadowpea insane steal (also important so I don't lose to you twice again). Unfortunately we didn't get to play you that much with the deadgame and ND being a popular tier to request but you still came it clutch week 1 cleanly handing FraudTech's only loss.
annoyed at how i did this tour, played only once and did pretty badly in the one game i did end up playing, but i'm assuming it just kinda goes like that sometimes, especially when this is the first team tour i've participated in. didn't put as much effort into it as i wish, my heart wasn't really in it due to joining late and helping a different team than the one i ended up joining throughout the first half of the tour. glad we got to playoffs though!
not shouting out all of the kyogres cause i didn't interact with a lot of them much (i really only talked in the ph channels iirc), don't take it personally if i don't shout you out it's probably just cause i didn't talk to you much
adriancosmoem carried usum and ended up clutching in oras as well, nice job
Mewtwo's Greatest Soldier carried the fuck out of our team, i think you were active in like every channel iirc, crazy work
Akiracityscapes cool managers wish i got to talk to you guys more
misc shoutouts
aerobee learned a lot from you when i was helping for necrozmas, thanks for letting me help for the first half of the tour
diemond35472Darktrix ik you guys don't really use smogon but i feel like i have to shout you two out, thx for letting me ramble about whatever related to the tour and even outside of hpl you two are probably my closest friends from the ph community
probably forgot someone but oh well i'll add em later if i remember them
I don't want to say too much because as time of writing the finals are 2-2, but first tournament I have ever been involved in and sure I went 0-1 in the games I played, but I really hope I helped out the team as much as I realistically could. I definitely have room to grow, but I learned things ranging from what mu means to ways to build better (and the importance of having hazard removal or at least the pressure to force removal). Glad I got to help with test games and one of the teams from my builder was used with success in the finals bo3.
I am not 100% sure how to do the thing where is says names, but shoutouts:
- Sheep Liver: They convinced me to sign up for the tour and due to their lobby tours got me into ORAS to begin with. Can't say I won't be excited to face you in some future tour, be it lobby or a real tour.
- Archey: I wasn't picked on the draft, but they wanted me as a helper and without that decision, I probably wouldn't have ended up at all involved in the tournament.
- lag=bad: Sure you beat me, but you beating me had me build teams which ended up having what is now one of my best teams I built. If we don't end up a team next time, I will try to give you a reason to fear me :P
- GhastlyPixie: Being around you has definitely taught me things. Whether said things are good or not is debatable, but I really feel you were really nice to talk to, be it about mons or just other stuff. I hope you enjoy an ORAS break and thank you for being a good manager.
- QT: Despite being a BH goat, you did help in PH a good bit. Just generally thanks for being a good manager and helping with my team the week I played. Just watch out for fairy aura torb xern please.
- NToTheN: I just want to thank you for being good at ORAS and helping me learn some to the point where you used a team I built to win game 1 of the finals bo3. Glad I got to help you test and honestly hoping I can learn more from being around you before next tour.
- The rest of the Nihilegos: I would have more specific things to say here if I knew more about things that aren't ORAS pure hackmons, but unfortunately I am limited in my knowledge, but thank you all for your hard work and even if I didn't understand all the games, seeing the replays or games live was a nice experience. Thank you for all your work.
Teams I Am Responsible for: Week V Team (L) v lag=bad
honestly flawed team, learned from it though https://pokepast.es/ac90c03c6ca762d4 NToTheN (W) v LycanrocWastaken (Game 1)
Gave that team to N as an option and they liked it enough to use in finals. I don't know if/how many edits they did to it, but it performed well enough to win game one nonetheless. Kinda proud of the team and can say it will be in my lobby usage teams for the forseeable future.
Once finals results are in I will have an art to share which I will edit onto here.
We made it a hell of a lot farther than I thought we would. Definitely a fun tour even tho I threw pretty badly in oras (and ss bh too).
I definitely have some people to give shoutouts to for all of their help this tour.
QT thank you for managing with me and being one of the best supports possible in every tier, managing with you definitely made this a lot easier and all around more enjoyable. I will definitely miss our banter during matches
adriancosmoem We really became besties during this tour and I am so grateful for our friendship. You’ve been an anchor for me in many moments here lately and I can’t wait to meet you! Aside from you being amazing, I seriously don’t think I could’ve best CSCL without you. We both had so much banter over our usum builds and it killed is in semis not being able to discuss what we were cooking.
NToTheN you weren’t super active in the team cord but you put on a good show in oras and I’m happy we got to be on the same team this tour.
pannu You played pretty well in hpl and I’m glad QT drafted you.
TTTech you are always one of my favorite goats and you played really well for most of the tour, some of your games made me actually interested in ndbh.
other misc shoutouts will be Clodsie, Rudi, One Last Kiss and Tanny (can’t ping y’all).
I built a lot of teams this tour with varying results.
QT asked me to build them a team in finals since they built me a team in finals and I built this but we decided not to load it due to other teams most likely being more reliable into ph pogre, xern and shed.
Loaded this Week 2 into CSCL, cosmoem helped me heavily with this build as well as QT. I knew CSCL would try to cteam me so I tried to build a bit different than I typically do and it worked out.
Built this week 3 to face AdrianCosmoem. My thought process here was that we needed to out offense Adrian, we needed to stop them before they could start.
Made this for Aidan to play ptoast with and it worked wonderfully.
For finals against Glory, I noticed that CSCL joined giraffe cord so I wanted to take that into account while building since I didn’t think Glory would actually build and I wanted to cover my ring target truck weakness while not losing to fairy stag so I passed Aidan this team: https://pokepast.es/5fe777ec4d6637d9 Honestly one of my least favorite teams I’ve built. Not a big psyspam fan. Ultimately the harvest yvel mu was lacking and Aidan didn’t see their winning lines so we ended up losing.
Built this for Rudi in week 2 against sheep liver. QT suggested the mgar set and the rest I put together and it worked beautifully into sheep as I expected.
Built this week 3 for Tuffstuff I remember not really knowing how to prep for them so I decided to just load something consistent which lead me to this altered Aerobee stall but we ultimately decided not to load this in favor of this team N built for me: https://pokepast.es/4867bebbbb7b126e Unfortunately the matchup wasn’t the most favorable and I made some misplays so I lost this week.
Built 4 teams to face Sussy in my bo3. Unfortunately I had an ok matchup but threw horribly because I was dealing with a flare up from my health issues.
Me and Clodsie built this team together for week 5, we really wanted to make sure we didn’t lose to pdon or mray. I didn’t like the team but it was something they felt comfortable piloting.
Built two potential teams to load into Adrian and ended up using the first team. We were mostly evenly matched but after some misplaying on my end, the victory went to them.
But it was revealed I was facing sussy so I built this: https://pokepast.es/5eba356041d7e426 Which actually seemed cool into a lot of what they load, stag mchomp hard counters sub pass mmane. QT passed me a team I thought was really cool tho so we decided to go with this: https://pokepast.es/d381dac3da43abad
But they made another version for more sub pass counter play and we went with this: https://pokepast.es/2d27c883f998b686 Ultimately I loaded into a rough matchup and played incorrectly with my breakers.
I feel really tragic about the way this ended but such is life. GGs Giraffes, was a close one.
I did a lot of work this tour, mostly in SM and SV but also supporting SS and PH tiers. I ended up making a lot of teams this tournament, so I'll go through them, starting with my own games: Week 1 SMBH vs Damflame - W https://pokepast.es/a4d8ea08c187de88
Basic bitch team. Basically a reuse of a team I had in my builder, I made some minor edits and then hopped on with it because I wasnt very inspired. Team ended up pretty weak to pdon which was unfortunate because I faces a pdon but luckily I managed to pull through a win in the end anyway. Its a general magic bounce hooh structure, I was also a little weak to enemy mbounce hooh because I was using it too improof too many of my own pokemon oops but luckily that one didnt materialize either.
Week 2 SMBH vs Anaconja - W https://pokepast.es/3b20cd56a2ead819
Having learned from my mistake last week, I loaded up this week with a zygarde + double imp for pdon and made sure my Xerneas had earth power. I was a little more shed weak than I liked but they didnt load it so it was fine. In game I ended up losing my regenvest zyg to a really unfortunate crit but luckily I managed to trap the mirror twice and win both of them so it worked out, s/o zghost hooh.
Week 3 SMBH vs Mickle - W https://pokepast.es/c64a7f43717540fe
TG normalize is cool because you can just blow away the normal revdance and bounce slop checks just fine. Ended up letting me basically kill a pogre in game which was neat. I fucked up tossing my xerneas ealy but luckily they handed me their xern back so it worked out in the end. Also features specs rock move diancie which is a fun set that was surprisingly not relevant despite the fact that their diancie check was weak to rock because diancie is just that broken ig.
Week 4 SMBH vs Jasprose - L https://pokepast.es/30b44ff70d102027
Idea here is shed is a demon and then you just support him and win if they didnt prep for shed. Problem was a) the team I brought had fairy aura xern, B) ice shard was legitimately greeding as fuck, C), sometimes they will decide to run shed checks randomly, and then D) I got a bit unlucky. Such is life tho, I deserved it for the builder issues. https://pokepast.es/3f40846d2db831c8 is the good version of the team and its legitimately cracked.
Week 5 SMBH vs Ineros - W
No paste this week because I forgot to post it in my prep channel and my PC crashed, team idea was double imp + regenvest zyg + im pretty sure it was rocks ph mmx and ph spin xern but im not 100% sure, definitely prankster aegi tho. Unfortunately I also won the game too quickly to be able to check sets there. Team was pretty suspicious but it was at the point in the tour where I had cottoned on to double imposter being legitimately busted and other people hadn't cottoned on that they needed to improof their PH guys and they weren't trying very hard anyway so it worked out.
Playoffs SMBH vs Rumia - W
Like I said, people needed to improof their PH guys better, so I took my own advice and ran imprison qd ogre who is cracked. Didnt end up getting the core enforcer PH check like I was fishing for but it didnt even matter. Sets were my usual double imp, regenvest zyg, pretty sure scarf trick mgar but I might have been greeding with specs instead, either way it was the cool adapt set. Paste is lost for same reason as last week.
FInals SMBH vs Jasprose - W https://pokepast.es/508f153062655546
Another week, another example of me bringing the exact same comp with minor changes because its cracked and I was busy supporting other slots. I thought this might be the week I played subph so I loaded haze + topsy chansey, thats pretty much the only really creative decision here. Almost trolled the game to lucky punch chansey but luckily it was fine.
In terms of stuff for other slots, I did a bunch of PH support, but only ended up making two teams instead of just ideas used on teams and only one got brought.
First team is https://pokepast.es/225baeaf7627980e , which has the idea of magic bounce is really good in some mus but godawful in others so what if we only had magic bounce in the matchups where it was good? Also has cool sets like bulky setup mray and diancie the actually reliable mray check (also doesnt get trapped by bullet punch normals which is really funny).
Second team has two versions, https://pokepast.es/4af6babc2c933355https://pokepast.es/2d27c883f998b686, second is the one that got brought. This team is one of my proudest creations but unfortunately mray got sacked and then it was really tough from there in game.
I still don't like playing pure hackmons but building it was okay.
SS BH had a lot of my sets but the only person who ended up bringing one of my teams outright was someone on another team, who also removed nicknames, tossed, and lost a great matchup, so im gonna pretend it didnt happen and just say that Tanny was a goat even if she was dedicated to giving me a heart attack whenever I watched.
As for shoutouts GhastlyPixie thanks for managing with me, your health issues were rough and after Archeyy bailed we ended up not actually being able to put you in SMPH like you wanted but I still had fun. Tanny89k you did your level best to give me a heart attack every week but your long grinding out endgame lines were always goated, I'm really glad I got to draft you and then build and test with you. Wouldn’t have blamed you if you spent half the tour just reusing teams but you came up with fun stuff every week. NToTheN ORAS PH Bo3 is a metagame I am very happy I never had to consider playing and thats pretty much entirely thanks to you. I'd have gone crazy in that slot lmao. aidan amoongus your record is only so-so but I am firmly confident that doesn't reflect your skil, we just needed to get some more test games in and maybe work through the lines a bit and im confident you would be at the top of the pool. Codename C.A.T you have a bad habit of panicking in game and then clicking buttons, which lead to some rough endgames, but if you figure out how to calm down and think through lines I'd be happy to draft you again in another tour. Sorry that we ended up having to sub you out. One Last Kiss It was unfortunate things didnt work out, but you did a good job filling in after our initial SV2 plans fell through and I don't hold your losses against you. pannu im sorry I didnt end up supporting you as much as I probably should of, you had a pretty rough season and some of that could have been mitigated in the builder (and some of it was just my own bad calls there). Dabob95 Thanks for filling in even though we didnt draft you at first, was fun to have your energy on the team and it was a relief knowing we could sub you in if pixie's health issues flared up. Wasn't really your year this time but I'm confident we'll be seeing more of you in the future. TTTech Still a bit annoyed abt how finals ended but other than that you did a pretty good job of putting in Ws week after week, and while I would have happily given you more support if you needed it I won't lie and say it wasn't a relief that you didn't. Thanks for joining us this season. BoingKxdRudi.exe hey you were both there I guess oops, bit of an awkward consequence of how our draft ended up working out. Sorry about that, and sorry that we couldn't carry you to a finals win.
first off i'd like to thank my amazing managers QT and GhastlyPixie for drafting me, it was a great experience and I'd like to thank you for that
i'd also like to thank QT for doing their best to help support ph tiers even with limited knowledge
GhastlyPixie for being awesome and passing amazing teams even though I threw every game Dabob95 for being amazing and stepping up, you were 0-1 but was active I saw in oras ph with tests, ideas, teams etc.
others - ntothen, Pannu, cat, olk, tttech, etc.
for carrying me to the finals
At the time I started writing this, the finals result is 1-1. So hopefully someone clutches.
I'm gonna do lots of s/o here and team dump + explanation for teams in Old Gens Discussions for Hackmons after this is all over, I am definitely gonna procrastinate that though. Starting with misc shoutouts here (test help): PixieToastScipioklolDiemondIsacandyBlahpy, thanks for tests! Yoko: You're a great co-manager. Thanks for the tests. It may not look like it, but in our tests, even if you kept using (??????) and won lots of games via MU FISHING , I was able to practice with the team I was planning to use FREQUENTLY (3 TIMES DAILY XD), which helped me a lot in making decisions/predicts in-game, or just simply building + loading consistent enough teams which are pretty fun to use as well. You're definitely the core person to why I went positive this tour. I am thankful for your test games, you're a fantastic co-manager and I would definitely gladly work under you again. Treeko: Bud, you are insane. You are a really, really, really good pilot. Great record, congrats. You adapted my 7ph PsySurge team to fit your playstyle (Ring Target MMY LOL) and played extremely well. I do not think anyone would believe that you have not played this meta before HPL2 at all. You won a nearly unwinnable MU. Insane. Anyways, even though I have absolutely no knowledge in BH, your games were definitely entertaining and pretty fun to watch. Once again, congrats on this unbeaten run!
Edit from September 22: Thanks for carrying me in finals!!!! Seraphz: I am sorry I didn't do enough scouts for your game against Ballfire to give you a good MU. Gave you a Glory team but with MSwampert over Xern in case of Bounce, which he did in fact bring in Aegislash. The game was really rough after MMetagross fell asleep but nonetheless, wp and nice try, it was really nice meeting you! Iguana, Lag=bad: Thanks for all your suggestions and sometimes tests for my teams, they did in fact help and also made my teams more solid! Ransei: You were a great person to talk to no matter it was about mons or not during this tour. Thanks for helping me both in HPL tests and outside of HPL, glad we had those conversations! Christus Rex Est! Glory, Sussy, Aerobee: Every suggestion you guys gave to my team worked. The one time I didn't listen to Glory's suggestion, I gave myself a rough MU....Thanks for helping me with ideas, suggestions and team cores. You guys are GOATs.
Edit from September 22: Thanks for carrying me in finals!!!! Ballfire: I'm sorry for that insanely rough MU in playoffs. Other than that, you were really fun to talk to during the tour and post-tour. cscl: We pretty much tested every week in 7ph except the week we played and the week you faced the Nihilegos. Your teams were fun to test against and you also helped me learn a bit more about tour teambuilding in that meta. RC, Clas, Fish, Jasprose, Zane, Jqlove, Wheaty: We didn't communicate much, but it was nice being around y'all. Thanks for being awesome teammates!
Edit from September 22: Thanks for carrying me in finals!!!! Lastly, thanks to Electra and Rex for hosting this tour, I had a lot of fun!
w1 vs tttech (w)
thought speed boost ghostceus was a good bring into tttech. ph kyogre to spike + pressure sdef guys especially scale zacian and vest zygarde and then 4 guys to like not die idk. i dont like this team much since its kinda reliant on arc/kyo carrying but turns out tg ghost is nuts who knew.
w3 vs don bork (w)
wanted to build mgyara since he can just sit there and click buttons against more passive stuff that i expected team hallward might bring. i like the spikes set more but ended up picking dd into this particular scout so it can be dumber against laxer ph counterplay which i was also expecting. we loaded into toxic orb imp which means someone there knows exactly what i like but evidently don bork forgot because it got paralyzed instantly xd.
semis vs clas (l)
wanted pursuit zacian since i was expecting one of the ridiculous fast attackers from clas (mmx/mmy/gengar) and we were kinda right except the fast attacker was barraskewda LOL. vest espeed regigigas was to tinfoil deoxys-a and also does a couple of neat things like denying mmx an entry point if i manage to chip it with pursuit (although the mmy/gar counterplay mightve been overkill here). pursuit put in the work in test games and also limited the fish to one kill but i did not respect pdon enough in the builder, at least i shouldve paralyzed him when i had the chance.
Chessking345aerobee ty for drafting me and obviously having at least some degree of faith in me and ty chess in particular for basically being 90% of my prep help for the tour. apologies for not being as active as i could have, id like to say life got in the way but that was only rly true for the first two weeks then i went and played silksong lol.
Ballfire tysm for helping prep vs clas that last day it was genuinely the most fun part of the tour for me, i wish i had more of this is tour and its only on me that i wasnt as active as i couldve been. its a lot more fun throwing stupid ideas at people actually listening. also thanks for the catpics :>
rest of team i didnt interact with yall very much but yall are cool, damflame 3Taka i genuinely admire your respective energies and your channels are always cool to look into. quojova i love checking into your channel and even though we didnt directly interact much it was awesome trying to understand ssbh more with the best player around. ph slots i basically stayed away from but apparently our oras core was slightly broken in regular season so that was fun.
am looking forward to ssnl where i can be far less serious and bring whatever i want. cheers.
Was forced to make a post so hear we go! rightclicker ty for managing with someone as dumb as me, truly do not understand how we actually won this tournament but we did so.
Glory even tho sometimes I felt u were being a bit lazy by not building stuff I still really am thankful for you and your contributions, hope u can start liking the metagame now.
WheatyTreeko928 Actual GOATS of Sv BH, we wouldn't have won without either of you too, both of you bouncing off each others ideas was so cool to watch that it kinda revived my bh mind lmao. Anyways Bomb squad is the best team oat.
Jqlovejasprose time for old gens appreciation! Even tho both of you weren't the most active in the cord watching you two play was the most entertaining shit ever. Hope we do it again next hpl <3
Clas Sorry you had to be stuck in ndbh hell for most of the tour lmao but still I remember watching Ur game vs tech at 6am right after I awoke and was jumping when I saw you won :D just goat behaviour it seems
sussyamongusdrip ngl u were probably the most entertaining person I had the pleasure to interact with during this hpl, the ideas you had in both ph were like crazy (I doubted some of them tbf) but you still piloted them and somehow won?!? At this rate you'll be leading the tier :s
seraphzZane(Bifloofendoofen)Fish Gaming sorry couldn't give you all more opportunities to shine throughout this hpl :c but you all did well in the weeks you started so. Stand Proud.
LycanrocWastaken said:
@Yoko : You're a great co-manager. Thanks for the tests. It may not look like it, but in our tests, even if you kept using (??????) and won lots of games via MU FISHING , I was able to practice with the team I was planning to use FREQUENTLY (3 TIMES DAILY XD), which helped me a lot in making decisions/predicts in-game, or just simply building + loading consistent enough teams which are pretty fun to use as well. You're definitely the core person to why I went positive this tour. I am thankful for your test games, you're a fantastic co-manager and I would definitely gladly work under you again.
Ok bud don't disrespect my goat kyurem like that, if you would've ran it vs jb and n like I said you unironically probably had a chance to go 6-0, also MU FISHING?!?! Skill issue imo, u lost to zap plate wg Kyogre like who even does that :d. Seriously tho even tho you were annoying at times u were a great help in winning and I'm truly happy for that
Writing this at 12 am so if some words get mixed up I do apologise but words cannot express how happy I am by winning this tournament, every single player who helped us along our journey was so instrumental as well like GhastlyPixie (<3) and aerobee and the many others who joined later on
hey all. this tournament was a lot of fun this year and i’m quite happy with my performance. the whole experience got me feeling real wistful and reflective, and if you’d care to listen i’d like to share some of those reflections with you here.
going into this tournament i had planned to really put my all into it, like i did when i was younger, playing in ompl and hungry to prove myself against the veteran bw players. i wanted to thoroughly scout all my opponents, build multiple teams per week, test extensively with lots of different players, help out with building for sv and sm, the whole shebang. but when things actually got rolling, i found that i didn’t quite have the energy, time, or motivation that i’d hoped for. i ended up doing zero scouting, building one team each week and basically not testing at all, and i wasn’t able to help out with other gens nearly as much as i or my teammates would have liked.
i’m just not who i was back then. i started playing bh nearly 12 years ago, in my summer holiday at the end of 2013 (southern hemisphere, so summer is december-february), which was right after x and y released. at the time i had just recently turned 15, and now i’m 26. i look back on who i was and what i was doing when i started playing bh and i hardly recognise myself, and for his part i’m sure 15 year old me would have a hard time believing that he could grow up to be who i am now. i’ve changed as a person in most of the ways a person can change, and yet i’m still here playing balanced hackmons. i find myself thinking about my early bh ‘career’ as a fond memory from my youth now, and that’s a strange thing to grapple with.
the amount of time i spent as a teenager and young adult playing bh, thinking about bh, talking about bh, and writing about bh doesn’t bear thinking about. i was a shut-in, deeply depressed, crippled by social anxiety, and convinced that i would never be a ‘normal person’ able to live a full life and enjoy all the joys that society has to offer. i had convinced myself i was just an introvert, someone who was happier being alone, but that was cope. i was just lonely. for a long time, bh was an escape, a way to seek validation. winning tournament matches, getting likes on my posts in the thread, topping the ladder, and seeing others use teams and sets that i’d created made me feel like i was a part of something meaningful (and i was!), made me feel worthwhile. it kept me going for a bit, and i’m so grateful for that. now i’m an adult, with a job and a degree. i have an active social life, i’m in a relationship, i’m known in my community. at 15 i thought i’d be dead by now.
the issue this tournament isn’t that i didn’t have time for bh, because i still have time in abundance. my schedule is flexible, my work is part time and low-key enough that i could build teams on the clock if i wanted. i could’ve made the time to put what i wanted to into this tournament, that wouldn’t have been an issue. i think the problem for me is that i’ve only ever engaged with bh as an autistic hyperfixation, one that comes and goes. i know how to put my entire soul into bh, and i know how to not think about bh at all, but i found it difficult to go halfway, to balance bh with all the other things going on in my life. so it goes.
i feel like i’ll probably be done with bh for good soon. my interest in bh has always been sporadic: for a while it would take up most of my free time, then i would burn out and not log into smogon for months. that’s how i am with most of my interests, and i don’t beat myself up about it anymore. lately the periods where i’m into bh have been shorter and less intense, and the gaps between them longer and longer. i don’t enjoy sv bh much at all, and i don’t see myself ever wanting to play it again. maybe i’ll pop in for gen 10, maybe not. we’ll see.
as for the games themselves, most of them weren't all that interesting, and i feel that i mostly won and lost on matchup. i don't think this is the fault of ss bh, which is the coolest and most skillful bh metagame of all time, i think i just rolled low this tournament in that respect.
hallward, bless his heart, spent much of this tournament trying to get me to bring this double kyurem + volt absorb toxapex core he'd cooked up. i didn't think the core was very good, but i liked the idea of toxapex, which i feel has long been an underappreciated mon in ss bh. it's not great at anything, but it does a bunch of little things just well enough to be worthwhile. it's an extremely reliable way to switch in, scout, and get momentum on zama-c, while also coming in on many variants of xern, ho-oh, kyu-b, and kartana. it's difficult to ohko, so it always gets a chance to come in and click some annoying buttons. the rest of the team is fairly basic and leans almost entirely on cb groudon + spikes + paralysis to break.
this was the one match i played this tournament where the matchup felt even and i thought the game could've realistically gone either way. i was fortunate that jqlove sacrificed his xerneas, because this was a far more complex matchup if that had stuck around. i was worried that this game would come down to me having to switch groudon into mewtwo's volt switch, but jqlove gave up momentum with a couple of overpredictions, which let me get up a spike, knock out chansey, and then get the damage on mewtwo to close out the game. fun match, had me sweating.
basic, aggressive, balance breaking voltturn spikes team. not much to say about the building process on this one, i just really wanted to bring specs xern and then slapped on some other guys. this team is very dubious defensively, particularly against setup and plot etern (which for some reason didn't get brought this tournament like at all despite being a top 3 breaker).
played this match on my phone at a friend's place, which is why i kept disconnecting. this game felt like it largely came down to matchup, as osake simply didn't have any real counterplay to aerilate celesteela. if not for the unfortunate full para against ferro, it would have gotten like 3 kills. as it was, just trading for the ferro was enough to leave him without realistic xern counterplay.
more hallward inspo this week. i liked this magic guard kyu-b set he'd posted, and built a pretty basic balance team around it, once again with a lazy defensive backbone.
can't even be mad about this game, i'd been bringing a lot of imposterless, pranksterless stuff for a while and ho was a great call on quojova's part to punish me for it. so it goes. loved the weakness policy tech on mewtwo. the dpunch hax didn't really matter at all because i lost to darm at preview lol
proud to be responsible for registeel's 0% winrate this tour
quickly threw this together right before the match based on an abandoned draft from the previous week with the same kyu-b set: i was busy all weekend so i had to schedule the match for early in the week, and a friend emergency left me with basically no time for teambuilding before the match. regardless i think this team is quite solid besides its hideous weakness to ho and very poor kyogre improofing. i like the kyogre set here, provides a ton of defensive utility while being very tricky for most teams to switch into. beats most of the offensive meta 1v1 because it's impossible to ohko and hits really hard. also heal bell is awesome and people should use it a lot more
nihilslave, perhaps expecting me to overcorrect for last week and bring something slower, brought exactly the kind of fat passive teams that are preyed upon by my usual builds, including this one. i kinda wanted to play this one out because i think it would've taken like 400 turns and i would've gotten to pp stall 2 guys out of recovery by hitting them with rapid spin 60 times, not something you get to do every day. heal bell worked out great!
i had this pult + ooze kart concept cooking for the whole tournament and had considered bringing it in previous rounds, but i didn't find a supporting structure that i liked enough until the very end. the core of ooze kart to set hazards and lure bouncers to make way for a pult sweep is very powerful but requires quite careful positioning and information management. i felt like pixie might try to ho me so i wanted something solid into that, and pult dunks on a ton of typical ho builds. the team is like 4 huge matchup fishes stuck together (pult, ooze, orb imposter, double regen) but somehow it feels like it comes together as a pretty cohesive unit with good options into most matchups.
i think i had a great matchup here, as pixie didn't have any reliably counterplay to magearna, and in a long game i could've brought in kartana repeatedly with zygarde-c make consistent progress and eventually lure in and take out zama-c, at which point there was no way for them to stop pult. i benefitted from some metagame unfamiliarity on pixie's part, as they sacked multiple pokemon to magearna when they could've forced me out with zama-c. i played a lazy endgame, but once xern went down i had more wincons than i knew what to do with.
thanks for reading! shoutouts to the reshirams, all chillers. see you next time, whenever that may be
Overall I had a fun experience in this tour although I can't lie I wished for a bit more out of the games themselves. I think my approach to prep was the best it's ever been though so I'll focus more on that.
Going into this tour I didn't expect to build very much. Before week one I had said "tbh like everything possible in this tier has already been tried." Coming out of this tour though I feel very differently. Anyway for week one this mentality was very much alive so I just brought an old Ivar team I liked with a couple changes based on my preferences in this meta.
Going in I felt that spike + knock/nuzzle + flip turn gigas was the best consistent gigas set so I changed SD gigas to that. Evidently this was a popular opinion from how many people ended up using a gigas set like this. Don't use uturn though, you want actual chip with flip on zamac and desoland hooh coming in is not real. Also I put low kick > tkick on zamac because imo low kick is really the best move to punish gigas, that 90 base power on tkick feels like too little damage in a lot of situations. You miss out on kart but that's about it.
This was the closest game of the tour for me. To win I had to sack a lot of hp on gigas to knock imp and dialga, because without that xern wasn't breaking. A big annoyance came from Tanny having a bouncer and me not having one. This game reaffirmed for me that bounce and ph are by far the top 2 abilities on balance in SS and I would generally default to having both on my future balance teams.
The starting inspiration for this team came from a game I played last HPL against tea guzzler. One surprise I had this game was how easily his regenvest gigas invalidated my plate modest xern, so I wanted to use a similar thing here. I put on fc giratina and bounce zamac because gigas is scary. Zamac is imo the best bouncer, fc, and scales mon in the tier so I use it on basically every balance unless I have a good reason not to. It does open you up a bit to triage owing and pixi/aero boombursts though. This rocks knock quiver xern set looks terrible into bounce hooh but imo bounce hooh was really trending down at this point with the popularity of spike gigas. I also wasn't too worried about finding other ways to win in that matchup anyway. I used a standard band don set because I didn't need any more defensive utility really but breaking power and an extra nuzzle immune was nice to have. The game was pretty much won off matchup. Jolly regenvest gigas was definitely a great asset into specs xern although it wasn't as free as plate/boots xern.
This team was my primary reason for making this post. I think it's lowkey the best SS bh team I've ever made, or maybe even across all tiers. It's an iteration on a team I used last hpl. Etern + lunala + zamac are fantastic: Zamac guaranteed ohkos bold hooh without even running super-effective coverage or adamant nature which is absurd. SNR lunala does what it always does and can gambit away some pranks and scales for you if it doesn't autowin. Simple lum etern is broken as usual and can annoy pranks with core. The issue is the rest of this original team isn't really very good. The gigas set is stolen from city and is very funny but on a team like this it doesn't really pave the way for other mons on the team in any meaningful way. The idea behind the yveltal set is to force in imposter and glare it so that the big 3 brokens can beat it. But it's not really scary enough on its own to force this consistently: you do ohko xern with v-create but get heavily dropped after, and can just lose to like fc mons. Screens on this team feel awkward, they take too long to set up when you want to start breaking immediately and they don't even help the 3 brokens with imposter.
The updated version of the team fixes all these issues. Ladder demon GEOMANCY DARM ZEN forces in imp and pranks because nothing else walls it and glares them so the 3 brokens can win on the spot. It also wins itself on the spot if the opponent doesn't have any of those. But it was actually added primarily as a support mon with glare to improve the imposter/prank matchup, not to fish to avoid those. Chessking made the genius suggestion of having no guard on the team, for which I used another ladder mon in mewtwo. If you played on the SS bh ladder at all you know the experience of your opponent leading off with this and getting some annoying progress that immediately puts you in an awkward position. On the ladder your opponent using this is probably 1300 rated and using 5 bad other pokemon so you usually recover the position and win anyway. But with 4 broken sweepers in the back it's very scary to recover from. Mewtwo also gets paras on imp/pranks to assist the 3 brokens. Weakness policy was a last minute pick to punish common responses to this in knock/uturn/spectral (you keep the boosts). It actually triggers in every game it's insane. Your opponent might also try to nuzzle this. I think if you use this team in the future you could change it to lum and the fact that the opponent has to respect both items is very scary. Despite both being psychic types, mewtwo and darm are both pretty good into spectral thief: mewtwo gets the weakness policy boost and darm underspeeds the first spectral a lot of time and ohkos back after boosting.
Teams like this have often featured random last mons as the prank (shoutouts sevag's carkol) and this team is no different. Pert is the pick here to come in on paralyzed impostered mewtwo and eject out with a safeguard to a spdef booster. You may also be able to late game safeguard against nuzzle mons. Topsy + encore is a great combo because a common response to getting topsyed is to boost back to neutral, which encore punishes. You definitely don't need recover on this mon.
On the topic of improofing, you have the whole paralyze imposter gameplan but also the 3 brokens on their own can speed tie imp and win that way in the worst case. Lunala also has sash of course. Unfortunately I never got to test the improofing of this team because in the two test games I played my opponents used the same sample team (they were funny games tho):
If this meta ever comes back like next HPL I hope this team gets used at least once. imo this tier has a slight rock papers scissors dynamic between greed balance > safe balance > HO > greed balance where greed balance uses ph mons, hazard wincons, bouncers and safe balance uses pranks and imp and HO looks like this. HO is by far the hardest to build while maintaining some kind of consistent gameplan vs imp so no one uses it, and thus imo greed balance really dominates in these tours as seen by teams like MAMP's that capitalize on the HO underusage. The game was pretty much won off this HO vs greed balance matchup skew.
Our team was already locked in playoffs so I wanted to play SM this week. Tbh I was having trouble coming up with good defensive cores in a tier where tail glow exists and can be used with triage owing among other big threats. It also felt like imp was too good to pass up with mewtwo softchecking properties. On top of that hazard removal in this tier seems really bad. So I just shamelessly copied QT's defensive core from one of their games except I changed up some of the progress makers. I really like this duo of xern + gar, you make progress on all bouncers and are very resilient to chip damage (get the poison on bounce hooh and it can't do anything to you). Yea the game was won off matchup.
I think any mon with prankster is generally quite bad into greed balances but I wanted to use it this week purely to represent that I could bring prank haze in playoffs and reduce the chance of getting cheesed (this did not work). Prank don imo is the best user of a bad ability (darm zen is also decent due to sap blocking). Because of prank don being dead weight into greed balances, I needed a mon that could really grind these teams down, which was ph ogre. Ph ogre struggles with gigas because if both mons are in from a neutral position you're going to lose that interaction 1v1, so bounce zamac and fc gira again was natural. This gira set would look dumb if you were playing when this tier was current gen and everyone was spamming pixi spin xern. But I think now players have really started to realize that pixi spin xern is almost always the most exploitable part of balances that use it, and usually the first falling domino of their defensive core. You just can't get the spin off without losing big hp or taking status, and even if you can you're going to get chipped down and sapblocked. Ph spin xern though is amazing, although it doesn't really make any progress itself. Scales trick sludge etern is used because I'm weak defensively on the special side but also need some additional progress making in a slower matchup. The resulting team looks extremely MAMP-like. Nihil brought cheese so the game was won off matchup with groudon.
I used a team like this last HPL with regenvest celesteela over imp. The team was pretty strong imo but extremely greedy. Andyboy brought a simple np etern in that game and the only reason I didn't get cooked by it was that it had earth power over blue flare. So I changed it to have imp to be better into setup mons like this, although np etern is still scary. This darm set I think is pretty underrated. The main issue is if your opponent brings ph waters, but otherwise it makes progress on anything and is a self-improofed regen. Gigas doesn't like coming in on a magma and dealing with helmet fc zamac or bounce zyg after. Regen etern is a great pivot and addresses those ph waters. Overall a pretty strong team imo. In the game I got fullpass cheesed and played a bit too impatient trying to force progress. A better line in the midgame was to sit back a bit and reset with chansey more often after getting those initial knocks and nuzzles. Hopefully bpass is banned if we ever do this tier in HPL again because facing this in the last two weeks was a little depressing.
shoutouts to people that helped in the ss team channel: ballfire, shadowpea, taka, damflame, aerobee. you guys made this tour experience a lot better and more fun. aerobee I knew you were good before, but the way you think and talk about the game is very cool and I hope this isn't the last time we team together.
chessking in particular, thanks for being honestly the best support I've ever had in a bh teamtour. I think our styles really vibe with each other and that triple psychic HO team would not have turned out that well without your suggestion of no guard. Also the regular season didn't go your way but you played well and you were the only one of us to get it done when it actually mattered in playoffs LOL. I don't have any desire to play gen 9 bh right now but I might be back when gen 10 comes around.
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vs aidan W3 (L)
vs aidan Semis (L)
, I was able to practice with the team I was planning to use FREQUENTLY (3 TIMES DAILY XD), which helped me a lot in making decisions/predicts in-game, or just simply building + loading consistent enough teams which are pretty fun to use as well. You're definitely the core person to why I went positive this tour. I am thankful for your test games, you're a fantastic co-manager and I would definitely gladly work under you again.
