Welcome back to the third episode of Draft Player Interviews! I'm your hostess with the mostess, the superstar of your screen, Tidal! Looks like Christmas is coming a day early for you lucky bunch, I'm meant to be on my contractual fruit-flavoured vacation right now but it's important to give the fans what they want! Today's special guest is a mainstay of our community and one of the undisputed best draft players and captains of all time, and also a really big fan of Ponyta! Apparently! Everyone give a round of applause to GeniusX!
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Good evening GeniusX! First question, tell us a little bit about yourself for those at home who may not know who you are!
Hey! thanks for having me. If you clicked on this interview you probably know who I am but I'm geniusx. Currently a law student that's been playing draft since 2015. Obviously enjoy competitive mons a lot but my friends in the community is moreso the reason I've been playing so long. High level draft is also my favorite way to play mons. Outside of mons I like to watch a lot of sports like football (the real one), tennis, baseball, and basketball. I also used to play tennis at a semi high level back in high school but I've kinda stopped now lmao. I also play a lot of jrpgs and read a lot in the meantime. Some of my favourite series are Xenoblade and Nier. Also really enjoyed Persona 5 Royal and a variety of fire emblem games. Currently I'm playing Silksong and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance! Not currently reading anything but I recently finished notes from underground by dostoevsky which was quite fun.
A man of many talents and hobbies! Really cool that you used to play tennis at a high level, and I think you have a lot in common with a good group of draft players when it comes to the games department! I still need to play Silksong over my vacation...As such a big presence in the draft league circle that you are, im sure people are curious to know: How were you originally introduced to Pokemon, and from there Draft League? 2015 was quite close to its conception, so you can tell us a little bit of what it was like back then too!
So I remember quite clearly what got me into competitive pokemon. I always played a lot of mons games since I was young starting with HGSS and platinum. I didn't play BW but I played a lot of explorers of sky and blue rescue team so I ended up getting XY alongside a new DS with a good friend of mine. One day I was over at his place and we decided to battle thru our DS and he smoked me with curse payback umbreon and qd volcarona and that was kinda my catalyst for getting into competetive pokemon. I started watching shadypenguinn wifi battles and was introduced to showdown and then I started watching his GBA vids. For those who don't know GBA was kinda the inception of draft and was created by a youtuber m4gnitude. One day on ps I was playing rands and a user (sand22, oldheads will know who this is LOOL) randomly messaged me out of nowhere asking if I wanted to join a draft league. I got invited to a skype group chat and ended up winning the entire thing with like mega metagross florges entei +friends. This skype group introduced me to a few people and then a user named thunderflight introduced me to discord and that was how I discovered the larger draft scene.
It's so cool seeing so many people get into the draft scene through YouTubers mainly, and it makes a lot of sense too considering the publicity. Insane to think Mega Metagross was still allowed in leagues back then aand the fact that was over 10 years ago is crazy, my ass was just starting what I think people like to call middle school.Fun to see that winning a whole lot was also a trend of yours since you began playing, as you've cemented yourself as one of the greatest as both a player and also more recent success by winning DCL with ZFG. Looking back on your career, what were some of your best or favourite moments as either a captain and a player?
It's quite hard to narrow down specific moments since i've been playing for so long but I think for me my success as a captain has always meant more to me than my success as a player. I also think being so successful in individual leagues and tours has diluted the moments whenever I win since it doesn't feel that special to me anymore. I think my favourite moments have to just be working on builds with people in draft team tours and shooting the shit with everyone. When everyone is invested and aiming for the same goal it does make these tours that much more enjoyable. Personally I've always the happiest when players I draft breakout and do well. Since I've been in the community for so long I've had the pleasure of managing a lot of ppls first team tour experiences such as sage, tj, rye, sean, addi, jricky, hycrox just to name a few. It's always makes me happy when they are still making a name for themselves as minbids and their effort is rewarded with successful seasons. The process of helping them along the way is genuinely very enjoyable.
Very sentimental and admirable! Team tours are definitely the highlight of the draft scene, and it really is cool seeing how many of those players are now highly regarded in the community as players and members. Going off of that, what are some of your favourite drafts that you've used recently across the gens that you've played and why?
It's funny since back in the SM and SS days I was always known as a terrible drafter and how that would always hold me back. A very funny example was when I faced KCric12 once in a SS league and he had Celesteela, Koko, Fini, Victini, Buzzwole, Nihilego + a bunch of other strong mons and I had R1 Melmetal, R2 Reuniclus, R3 Hawlucha (I still won this game btw). In SV I've gotten good enough to win with these shitty drafts such as winning the first SV seasonal with no fairy resist and r1 Palafin. That being said I don't really have favorite drafts since I just move on from tours after they're done.
The only one that jumps out is this SM M-Sab draft from the most recent DCL that I was the architect of. SM has always been a extremely volatile meta that makes it hard for unique drafts to succeed, so it ends up revolving around certain offensive cores that you see drafted every tour such as Diancie Zyg/Steela, Koko/Zera Uxie Offense, Xard Toise/Mie, Lade Fini etc. This draft takes a completely different route and uses 3 Regen Mons while being strong offensively still. Torn-T and KB have always been strong pokemon balanced by the existence of rocks, and M Sab exists as the rocks deterrent. Before there has always been this misconception that Sab only works with pokemon that needs rocks off such as Dnite and Volcarona, Torn-T and KB are good pokemon with rocks on but amazing pokemon with rocks off. It is extremely fun to build with and requires a completely different skillset from piloting traditional offense. Extremely positional and the user has to be aware of when they can squeeze out mileage from regen at all times during a game. I still remember it took Undead a long time to get used to builds kcric and I gave him since they're not intuitive at all. I genuinely think this is one of the best SM drafts of all time and also requires a lot of skill to build and use. In a meta dominated by offense it was a breath of fresh air seeing this team succeed week after week.
It's interesting to see that everyone has at least some kind of weakness that they can improve upon and overcome, and it's hopefully something that people can find inspiration from to become even stronger players and captains! I won't stand for Yanmega being slighted though, thats a technical foul. I loved hearing the break down of USUM though as one of the newer USUM players on the scene as well, but that Mega Sableye draft was pure innovation that we can hopefully see come in DWL too! Speaking of, with your experience, do you have any important words of encouragement or advice to players on the come up or trying to prove themselves in DWL, or managers looking to do the best to win a chip?
I think one thing I've noticed a lot for both up and coming players and veteran players is a sense of entitlement that they "deserved to win a game" or a game was "lost because of luck". Imo this mentality leads into the idea that you did everything you can or that your prep was good enough and thus you don't look for places to improve or places you could have done better. Draft is a a unique format imo where any matchup can be won, and it is always crucial to look for places of improvement in any given match you play. Ask yourself, was there a better series of plays to prevent myself from having to click triple axel in order to win? Was focus blast a necessary click on x turn or was there a better midground? Could I have positoned to not have my paraed pokemon have to break through to win this end game? Is hydro pump a mandatory bring here that is crucial to my gameplan or can I bring something different? I ask myself these questions to this very day even for games I win. At first a lot of the time you might think you HAD to do x, but it is very rarely the case that you played and prepped a perfect game, so keep on looking. Once you get rid of the sense of entitlement that you deserved something in a game of pokemon you will be able to see places of improvement much more clearly. There are many more things I could touch on but this is a mindset that I think plagues a lot of players imo.
I think that this is a very solid perspective that you've given us, and I'll personally be keeping this in my mind going forward. Draft is such a fun format because of the ability to always improve upon a match up and always do better, and its something that people should continue to look at in the way that they prep and play, both captains and players. For some funner, short questions before we wrap things up! Favourite meal? Top 5 favourite mons? If you were left on an island with no one else but 1 other draft player of your choice to try and survive a week, who would you pick?
Favorite meal - Yakitori (grilled chicken skewers) I tend to like some of the more unique parts and textures such as cartilage, tail, gizzard, heart or neck.
Favorite mons - My top 5 changes all the time depending on how i feel but my #1 will always be Milotic. Still remember fishing up the Feebas in Mt Coronet and feeding it shit ton of berries? poffins? But I think even before then I liked Milotic for reasons I don't remember. The rest is probably rounded out by like Scizor, Ninetales or Vulpix, and Roserade.
Stranded Island - The logical answer would be KCric12 since hes my best friend in the community and we've been through a lot, arguably surviving DPL S3 is worse than being stranded on an island for a week. But that guy is 100% useless when it comes to survival skills on a island SO my gut would prob say like Almighty Rye. I feel like he would know what to do to survive idk why. Or a deep cut is reconjack since bro was like a marine or smth and would be able to survive on a island for as long as he needs and can probably 1v1 a wild bear.
Thank you so much for making the time to be on the show! Any closing words?
Thanks to whoever read all of this and thanks Tidal for taking the time to do the interview! Mons has been a huge part of my life but I can definitely feel myself drifting away from the competitive aspect of it as life gets busier. I know I don't come off as the nicest individual in chats due to my headstrong opinions but hopefully this interview can make me seem nicer? idk. I'll probably still ghost 80% of ppl who dm me out of nowhere. Hopefully this was fun to read and I do wish for the draft community to flourish as it welcomes this new batch of players. Gl to everyone playing in DWL.
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Thus ends the third episode's main interviewing stage, and now comes your chance to fire away any questions you'd like answered! As promised this would come right before Christmas day, so happy holidays and have a wonderful rest of the year! Our next episode will come out around the middle of January, so stay tuned, and stay fresh!
