SM OU has alot of problems with Matchup but Idt that’s a problem with the tier itself and moreso a result of having so many options and variety with Z moves Megas and having the full Dex which became a privilege after CG SM ended I think the problem with Matchup isn’t rlly a problem in itself that u can fix and while it may be anoyying to prep in this kind of metagame it also rewards the ppl that actually care and build day & night in this tier because they understand what works and what doesn’t
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OU SPL XVII SM Discussion
- Thread starter Drachenkeule
- Start date
Won vs self proclaimed goat (fraud) in 2 gg
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ou-906477
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ou-906501
BAHHHHHHHHHHHH
IM THE FUCKING GOAT
shoutout LB for his spotify playlist. shoutout zRyan74 for always hating on me for fckin no reason
biggest likewhore oat?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ou-906477
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ou-906501
BAHHHHHHHHHHHH
IM THE FUCKING GOAT
shoutout LB for his spotify playlist. shoutout zRyan74 for always hating on me for fckin no reason
biggest likewhore oat?
Okay, it wasn't my intention to post about this subject again, but I realized there was a lot of confusion and misunderstanding in the text, which is perhaps my fault for not delving deeper into the subject.
It's also important to point out that my post wasn't an attack on any of the players; in fact, I saw some other bizarre teams that could easily be discussed here, but I don't see the point in doing so.
Initially, my main point is about the Fish. I'm not against bringing Fish in BO1 games; it's actually useful and should be used. The difference between the two approaches is that you can't bring six random Pokémon with flawed sets and call that Fish or whatever. ALTHOUGH both Mega Manectric teams lost, my complaint about this style would have come even with a victory. After all, I believe that even BAD teams can win games. Incidentally, the complaint isn't about the Manectric Pokémon itself, but about the lack of SYNERGY, BUILD, and PREP.
To add another point about the fish, I would like to bring up another Charmflash team that was seen in the W1 of the SPL vs Robjr, where an interesting set of Tapu Fini Z-Nature Madness with Brine in the rain was used.We can say that this set is also a fish,
that there are other, better things in metagame, however, I can see MEANING, there is a purpose for that Pokémon and that set to be present, although in the game it hadn't shown its full potential, it is still a set that has a PURPOSE.
Another one from Charm? Okay, in the game against Vert, in W4 although I really think Charm's team was lacking some things, like Fast Gliscor in a fat team, I also understand Muk-Alolan's presence when facing a player of Vert's style.
Ultimately, my post wasn't about not fishing or anything like that; perhaps the way it was written gave that impression, although I really think Treeman clarified practically all the points in his post. I just responding to the comments I received.
Another point to highlight is the protection of SPL players, where you are attacked as soon as you make a post or any complaint about what happened in the game/build. I would say I received more attacks than arguments.
I plan to make another post commenting on some gameplay of certain games in the future, but for now that's all.
I hope that's clear.
It's also important to point out that my post wasn't an attack on any of the players; in fact, I saw some other bizarre teams that could easily be discussed here, but I don't see the point in doing so.
Initially, my main point is about the Fish. I'm not against bringing Fish in BO1 games; it's actually useful and should be used. The difference between the two approaches is that you can't bring six random Pokémon with flawed sets and call that Fish or whatever. ALTHOUGH both Mega Manectric teams lost, my complaint about this style would have come even with a victory. After all, I believe that even BAD teams can win games. Incidentally, the complaint isn't about the Manectric Pokémon itself, but about the lack of SYNERGY, BUILD, and PREP.
To add another point about the fish, I would like to bring up another Charmflash team that was seen in the W1 of the SPL vs Robjr, where an interesting set of Tapu Fini Z-Nature Madness with Brine in the rain was used.We can say that this set is also a fish,
that there are other, better things in metagame, however, I can see MEANING, there is a purpose for that Pokémon and that set to be present, although in the game it hadn't shown its full potential, it is still a set that has a PURPOSE.
Another one from Charm? Okay, in the game against Vert, in W4 although I really think Charm's team was lacking some things, like Fast Gliscor in a fat team, I also understand Muk-Alolan's presence when facing a player of Vert's style.
Ultimately, my post wasn't about not fishing or anything like that; perhaps the way it was written gave that impression, although I really think Treeman clarified practically all the points in his post. I just responding to the comments I received.
Another point to highlight is the protection of SPL players, where you are attacked as soon as you make a post or any complaint about what happened in the game/build. I would say I received more attacks than arguments.
I plan to make another post commenting on some gameplay of certain games in the future, but for now that's all.
I hope that's clear.
The matchup fishing part of my post was mainly directed at this proftreez' quote I just did a poor job replying to people invidivudally I guess
"But what are we doing loading 6-0 or get 6-0d sixes? Are we really resorting to this level of match-up fishing in what supposedly is the most prestigious team tour on the site? Is this the skill level that should be indicative of the competitive standard? Why are we fucking fishing while forfeiting some of the most important match-ups in the tier? Oh, whoops, the opponent loaded a VIABLE team, guess I'll roll over and die."
I also explained, although briefly, my prep thoughts vs genesisx in my post. Overload anti-offense, bait the Ground-type with any of 1. pdef invested manectric 2. pdef beam gear 3. shuca koko. and win with Volt Switches in electric terrain. In tests, the team has been doing well into most matchups aside from ground/water types and superfat chansey teams which is what I chose to ignore in prep (you have to choose something with the current state of sm). You are free to criticise the team of course, I dont think its the best team I've made either but it did have a purpose at least in my mind lol.
Also, I dont know who "attacked" you but needless to say that would be a ridiculous thing to do for you engaging in game/pregame discussion if it actually happened. If they simply voiced their disagreements with your statements that would again be completely reasonable tho
Charmflash with midseason approaching lets run the bo3 if i win you give up ur spot
Yo, I wanted to talk about our prep process in the SM slot this season since I think we brought some pretty interesting stuff. I think SM as a tier in SPL has been in a bad spot since 2021 or so when relous debuted the ABR HO (vs. me lol...) and a bizarre combination of nobody really knowing the tier and also the general playerbase being lazy and complacent made the tier quite boring and stagnant for a long time. The only person who was making new teams to my knowledge was skype whose made some pretty cool stuff and directly responsible for the popularity of cress, though I've also seen some cool stuff from the newer SM people like proftreez and whoever cooked up that nasty subtectkyu+scarfgear team. During SPL 13 and 14 while I did support the SM slot, I didn't really make anything new or great (aside from welliou's semifinals team which is pretty standard and gondra's finals team vs skype, which is also not that interesting and medi hoopa is kind of a silly core in hindsight) so I was unhappy with this since SM is my favorite tier and where I got my start as a player in these tournaments. This season I was excited to finally work with Deej since we've been working together for over a decade now and click very well in terms of ideas and building synergy. It was also a personal goal of mine to make interesting SM teams and Deej was the perfect player to pilot these since he is also extremely creative himself. Our prep process in sharks went like this: Deej and I would build a team and I would ask Fdmw to make teams we think the opponent would bring for testing purposes, and then final comments from Santu would help polish it up. Below I'm gonna talk about our general thought process each week and go over the teambuilding process + include some logs which provide more context and detail (edit: apparently I messed up the images and I'm lazy to fix them so I'll remove em for now), and briefly go over other potential options we considered. Listen to this as you read.
Week 1: vs. Metallica
Metallica had a ton of sand and lando/fini/steel style offenses in his scout so we wanted to keep this in mind while being mindful of deej's master's scout which had been somewhat susceptible to HO/tspikes/z dragons/zone/seismitoad. Some ideas we initially tossed around were NP Z-thundyt and bulky zrock lando-t and then Deej suggested building around seismitoad to block his high rotom-w and zapdos usage and also generally annoy sand by being able to come in on tar and celes. Magearna and zapdos were natural fits that cover toad's defensive shortcomings and we put on a zrock fog lando for extra insurance into zardx and is just really hard to keep hazards up against. This 6 just lost to a volcarona so I had the idea of adding cbnite since it could do all of: take a hit from volc, revenge w espeed if chipped a bit, and is overall a decently powerful mon in its own right; also checked zardy as a bonus (though I saw somebody use wisp recently lol). We ended up with this:
In terms of sets, we experimented with a lot of 4ths on gear like bell but eventually landed on twave since the 4th wasn't too relevant and twave is randomly useful since the team is slow outside of zam. For zam, we didn't really care about recover and tried utility moves like taunt / encore but decided on knock since it made zam the most self-sufficient for breaking past its own checks. Lando spread lets it tank
252 SpA Charizard-Mega-Y Flamethrower vs. 76 HP / 64 SpD Landorus-Therian in Sun: 286-337 (84.6 - 99.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
and by extension it tanks some other moves pretty nicely, like unboosted ice from koko. The lando set itself is an extremely good breaker in its own right and most teams struggle to have good counterplay to it aside from mlatias/cress. In hindsight, it should probably be knock toad + encore zam and that would've been better in the actual game.
The other option we had for this week was this:
This 6 has a lotta flaws but did bring to our attention that thundy-t is pretty good.
Week 2: vs. Charmflash
Surprisingly, the prep this week was pretty simple. We were fairly certain that we were facing some flavor of cheese, whether its HO or fat and wanted a brainless way to break through it but also use a ditto-proof breaker that can get past unaware mons like quag and pyuku. NP thundyt + pursuit is an idea I've wanted to try for a long time and pursuit sciz is a set that I thought is pretty underrated since it's one of the few mons that reliably traps zam (aside from ben's heat scarf weav ofc). Funnily enough, it seems that bea had the same idea that week of using thundyt + pursuit sciz and had a more offensive take on it. For us, the reasoning was that suit sciz removes two of thundy-t's best answers in mlatias and zam while being a great defensive partner. Charm's mlati usage was significant so chipping it with pursuit into range for thundy-t was pretty relevant. Toxapex is a natural partner since it checks half the tier on its own. Starting w these 3, we were insanely weak to offensive grounds but didn't want a passive check into them like skarm; I had the idea of scarf fini and deej had a similar idea but suggested scarf cress which, while usually on more offensive teams, plays a crucial role here. Even more appealing was the fact that cress was a glisc check that isn't susceptible to spikes and lunar giving us 2 thundy-t's just seals the game vs fat. The natural finishing pair was glisc + clef since we wanted all of: a ground type, sr, fog, dark resist, etc etc. So we ended up with this:
Thundy-t spread lives mlatias ice beam after rocks and cress spread was for jolly nite. Helmet on clefable worked out best in testing since we liked the extra chip vs HO, lot of sequences where zard has to blitz + take moon + helmet and what not. Not much to change on this team in hindsight but we do kinda get 6-0d by a swampert so maybe counter on clef could help; other than that flame > twave is probably cool.
Other options we had for this week were:
The gren version was somehow worse vs offense in testing (and also worse vs non-choice lele and spikes, which kinda mandated payapa pex and hwish clef to reliably beat fat) and the kyub koko dedicated to beating fat struggled to get past chansey... so yeah these were not it but they look pretty cool. Good ideas in there but it's tough to make koko + kyub work beyond putting a sciz on or using that ben 6 of maw zap koko exca.
Week 3: vs. Gondra
Thankfully this week prep was simple yet again. I knew gondra pretty well and had said even before the w2 game was played that we will be facing rain. Some SM players have become similar to BW players in the sense that they kinda recycle standard from week to week - in BW you need to pick which weeks you will sand offense, sand fat, rain, HO, etc. And SM players had a similar approach in that some weeks they'll HO, some week rain, others glisc fat, and so on. I was super confident that rain was coming so we just wanted to pretty much have an autowin match up into it. Unfortunately our ideas weren't really working out so we just settled on rolling with a DDTar offense while having mons generally nice into rain such as kommo, rotom, and ferro. The building process here was simple: DD MTar wants a partner that gets damage on physical tanks like lando/ferro and overload its only counters in skarm and hippo; the core of lando + ferro + water-type is tried and true and rotom-w was the preferred one here for its ability to maintain momentum while still retaining some of the defensive utility; tini patched up the msciz/gear weakness. Final team was:
The kommo was initially sd z elec but pex proved too troublesome even with sub on ddtar so we swapped the z to rotom who turned out to be really really good at pressuring all kinds of teams. Chople ferro is a necessary emergency stop to lucha/lop/medi/zam and could even help against keld if whip > iron. Also, lefties on kommo let it potentially bluff a bulkier set. Since playing around bulky kommo is vastly different from playing around offensive kommo, lefties felt valuable beyond the passive healing as it allowed us to punish certain sequences pretty hard, biggest example being tapu fini who loves to come in on kommo only to get hit hard by a +2 thunderpunch. The ability to net surprise ko's or force progress vs. pex, fini, and glisc even was pretty nice. While we would've liked overcoat to avoid sand chip, soundproof was needed to cover other zclanger and deal with swarm volc better.
Other options this week were:
Subdrum kommo is very cool but way too inconsistent to be brought to a real game. Lucha is really good but hard to get a team that isn't the standard lucha stuff; this one was decent but didn't really have a good way to win beyond set up a lucha sweep which isn't exactly reliable either.
Week 4: vs. robjr
I also knew rob pretty well from our years of teaming and figured he'd lean into offense; the only bulky team I remember him using is that sciz ditto hydrei one. Since we expected offense, we explored stuff like MAggron but ultimately decided on trying to build around spdef exca. A ground type that's not vulnerable to coverage from volt switchers like koko/gear was ideal here. Exca needs a lot of support defensively so slowbro / kommo were good adds to immediately cover grounds/special fires/etc. We couldn't really figure out a good way to check zam without the team being super slow so deej suggested avtorn, which was a solid midpoint. Zone helps a ton with the ferro/skarm match up since exca lets them in easily and bro would need to be flame, so the idea of zone trap ferro -> exca spin for perma off was pretty nice. Scarf lele was kind of a random idea I had that worked pretty nicely once we thought about it a bit more. Landed on this 6:
Fun fact: we actually scrapped the team since it seemed too zam weak but deej tested it out and found that zone -> lele sweep was pretty sick. On exca, the main thing of note was deciding between protect or iron head. This team is clef weak on paper but tect proved to be very useful since we could scout stuff like scarf lando-t and generally increase drill's longevity; cm bro helps against clef anyway and subzone is insane into clef structures in general. Aroma lele cus lele doesn't have a super useful 4th on scarf anyway, that utility is nice on a fatter 6 like this, especially cus it allows rest kommo which hard counters tran/zardy/rotom, who become problematic in a longer game.
Other options this week were:
The kyub koko zardy ft. alolan muk which is kinda heat and in line with the idea of using a spdef exca but did not work out too well. The aggron team is a revamp of deej's aggron/chans/cress/seis/torn/bulu but this was just a worse version of it.
Week 5: vs. Drachenkeule
At this point we had been pretty weak to spikes and bulkier teams and I felt certain that either mlatias + spikes was coming or hard stall. This immediately led us to the idea of using SR dia and just pairing it with breakers who can smoke stall once sr is up. We explored different breakers like whirl fini and sd zfight kart but eventually landed on cbhoopa. Fini + wish rachi is a classic core and wish rachi helped keep hoopa healthy in longer games. Zap played a crucial defensive role while also pressuring bulkier teams with ztbolt and toxic. Final team was this:
The main thing here is the zapdos set which is completely insane into teams without a gliscor. Even clefable as the status absorb isn't reliable since tbolt -> z wipes it out. More generally, I think mons with toxic + good fire type coverage are always very difficult to handle. Sort of a random aside: but back during SM PU, I came up with subtoxtect flame skuntank which put me on to using similar sets on other mons (kumiko came up with sr heat wave necrozma in SM UU though I don't remember if it had toxic or not). In OU it's usually heatran doing that, who usually can't afford to run sub but still, fire coverage + toxic is awesome especially if you have a way to get past clefable. Lando-t spread 2hkos the standard glisc while guaranteeing the ohko on mawile. Zapdos is also ev'd to live flamethrower from zardy and guarantee the ohko on pex.
Other options for this week were:
SD Zfight kart is an extremely potent breaker and I'm surprised it isn't used as much as other sets, especially considering people are getting pretty lazy around it since choiced is the most common.
Week 6: vs GeniusX
Frankly, I don't know geniusx very well aside from his w1 game in spl 15 which was crazy. On the surface he just seemed to be someone who uses offense and makes crazy plays so we didn't really put much thought this week aside from wanting to use HO and just going offense vs. offense. We explored all the possible leads like dia/sash lando/gren/mew and settled on gren being the best one since setting spikes and tspikes immediately is such a forcing sequence against other offense. A lot of teams don't care about rocks that much / are willing to wait to remove it if they have a volc or zard in the back but nobody really wants to play with a tspike up. Gren was also just the best at keeping up vs all forms of removal unlike the other mons (dia vs fog glisc is awkward, mew is just kinda bad and overprepped for, as everyone knows how to sequence against it, and sash lando is probably the worst lead ever). We also thought MGyara was super good into the defensive structures genx liked, mainly mons like bro/gear/pex/chans/glisc. Gyara fits best on HO so we rolled with that. Team was:
The 6 kinda filled itself out and was pretty similar to the skype team but played differently/more linearly since gren was sash lead and we had volc > tini. Main things to note here are ada scarf kart and zfire volc. Ada scarf is something deej has been wanting to try for a while and these calcs are a compelling reason as to why:
Zfire volc completely flips certain interactions - ohkoing bulky lando at +0 to prevent fog/sr is a gamechanging interaction for offense. Other notable things are lando-t being ev'd to live specs ice from koko and having ice > uturn. This team prefers shutting down other SR lando and chipping it for kart/gyara over grabbing momentum.
No other options for this week, we decided on HO early on and stuck with it.
Week 7: vs. Vert
While we were aware of the general reuniclus weakness of our SM scout, we incorrectly decided to ignore everything else and focus completely on beating offense this week. Ditto was the clear pick here. Common mons that give ditto trouble are zardy/kyub/glisc/msciz/lucha/zgyara so we started out with a zblizz pex as a partner. Since this was already doing in a bulkier direction we foresaw mawile as a problem and aggron is a natural fit to help with that. Torn brings some much needed speed and fog while seis and shuca gear patched up the weakness to electrics and SD grounds.
Final result was:
The pex set ended up as liquid/tox/tspikes which is a set drach and whyad showed me last spl, and I thought it's a very cool way to be able to beat volc without haze and also fit tox + tspikes which is broken into a lot of teams. It was originally zliquid but santu suggested payapa since we were very weak to medi and wanted the extra help vs lele. Aggron can do insane things like:
+1 252 Atk Tough Claws Charizard-Mega-X Flare Blitz vs. 240 HP / 16 Def Filter Aggron-Mega: 270-319 (79.1 - 93.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
and dtail on aggron has nice synergy with tspikes and is also generally useful to phase out threats like gyara or lucha who might attempt to set up on aggron. Also, avalanche > dtail is an option for gliscor. Ditto is HP Ice for thundy-t but it can be changed to ground for zone. In hindsight, toad should be physdef to handle pert and exca better.
We didn't seriously consider other options this week but we had put together and tested:
which was kinda heat. TR + volt gear to bring in daunt was fun and the gear can even boom for more momentum...
Week 8: vs Tace
We were pretty certain that a bulkier mlatias team was coming and possibly reuni as well so we settled on using a msableye pretty quickly but didn't want to full stall since stall is generally pretty fishy. Heatran is a good partner (aside from chansey) to help out with fairies. The serp that genx used appealed to me a lot as a way to be able to switch into waters while still maintaining a lot of offensive pressure. With those 3, we needed a good answer to offensive grounds (zfly lando, exca for example) and we hadn't used a skarm yet, plus spikes + sableye is kinda broken. We still wanted a way to cover ground volc, have some speed, avoid serp having to defog, and not be awful into zardx. The combination of scarf lando + sap sipper azu fulfilled all of this. Ended up with:
Metal burst helps with the passivity issue, being able to trade with dangerous offense mons is super valuable and eliminating something like dia helps tran/skarm a ton. With sab/tran, we didn't care about hitting ferro/celes so ground was most optimal to hit opposing tran and zardx. I'm not a believer in zserp after seeing +2 zhyperbeam failing to ko an amoonguss, so we decided zskarm is most practical. SD zbrave bird is a set I first saw used by kumiko a long time ago and it's been on my mind ever since.It allows skarm to actually beat gliscor, since last mon glisc can get past whirlwind sets or stall out roost pp / play around counter, while also proactively dealing with gyara. Overall it's a pretty good set and should be explored on other structures more.
Other option this week was:
which is just a worse version of the above team, but slowking is kinda heat.
Week 9: vs. Lazuli
Classy were out and Lazuli didn't really play SM outside of a few games in masters which were all destroyed by dd zelec kommo so the prep this week was simple: just roll up with a cool offense team with it. We landed on:
Specs on gren was a momentum sap and this team didn't care to have spikes at all. With zardx we mostly want to keep hazards off so getting our own spikes up felt counterintuitive. Taunt is vital to deter ferro and pex, while denying opposing set up such as gyara. Mystic water bluffs specs while giving favorable rolls vs clef with modest. Sub DD Zardx is an insanely insanely broken set, especially given how many lando's just don't run edge anymore making it complete set up bait. Outrage is unfairly strong and just OHKOs scarf land-t at +0 and destroys traditional zard x checks like pex, m tar and slowbro. Lando is knock to neutralize celesteela to an extent since we don't have a leech seed switch in. Knocking clef / ferro is also helpful for gren.
Semifinals: vs. Eternal Spirit
Honestly could not come up with a 6 we felt comfortable with so we ended up rolling up with a ben gay team with taunt on torn to help against tspikes pex. We did explore a bunch of stuff like:
but they all had some issues.
DeeJ - you were the first friend I've made through pokemon and it's extremely surreal to think about the fact that we met when I was still a teenager and we practically grew up together. Building and playing with you is something I'd look forward to getting home after school and now I was getting excited to build and test after work... it's sick how we maintained this connection over all this time. Teaming with you was half the motivation I had to manage this year and whenever I think I've lost interest in the game, helping you prep for masters has always brought me back. A lot of the joy I got from this game is thanks to knowing you. Will appreciate you forever my brother.
Fdmw - I really really wish we could've gotten you in for some SM games in the season. You're a sick player and awesome builder. I don't really trust others to pump out competent SM teams but you always had stuff ready to test whenever I asked. I hope you understand how pivotal you were for our SM prep and I'm sure you're gonna smoke the competition in SPL whatever tier you play.
Santu - thanks a ton for the advice you'd give which helped tighten up and polish the team. Can't think of a better way to spend 32.5k...
And also need to shoutout bute one more time who sometimes helped but mostly kept me mentally sane.
I hope you all enjoyed reading and I hope this encourages other SM players to post interesting stuff they used!
Week 1: vs. Metallica
Metallica had a ton of sand and lando/fini/steel style offenses in his scout so we wanted to keep this in mind while being mindful of deej's master's scout which had been somewhat susceptible to HO/tspikes/z dragons/zone/seismitoad. Some ideas we initially tossed around were NP Z-thundyt and bulky zrock lando-t and then Deej suggested building around seismitoad to block his high rotom-w and zapdos usage and also generally annoy sand by being able to come in on tar and celes. Magearna and zapdos were natural fits that cover toad's defensive shortcomings and we put on a zrock fog lando for extra insurance into zardx and is just really hard to keep hazards up against. This 6 just lost to a volcarona so I had the idea of adding cbnite since it could do all of: take a hit from volc, revenge w espeed if chipped a bit, and is overall a decently powerful mon in its own right; also checked zardy as a bonus (though I saw somebody use wisp recently lol). We ended up with this:
In terms of sets, we experimented with a lot of 4ths on gear like bell but eventually landed on twave since the 4th wasn't too relevant and twave is randomly useful since the team is slow outside of zam. For zam, we didn't really care about recover and tried utility moves like taunt / encore but decided on knock since it made zam the most self-sufficient for breaking past its own checks. Lando spread lets it tank
252 SpA Charizard-Mega-Y Flamethrower vs. 76 HP / 64 SpD Landorus-Therian in Sun: 286-337 (84.6 - 99.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
and by extension it tanks some other moves pretty nicely, like unboosted ice from koko. The lando set itself is an extremely good breaker in its own right and most teams struggle to have good counterplay to it aside from mlatias/cress. In hindsight, it should probably be knock toad + encore zam and that would've been better in the actual game.
The other option we had for this week was this:
This 6 has a lotta flaws but did bring to our attention that thundy-t is pretty good.
Week 2: vs. Charmflash
Surprisingly, the prep this week was pretty simple. We were fairly certain that we were facing some flavor of cheese, whether its HO or fat and wanted a brainless way to break through it but also use a ditto-proof breaker that can get past unaware mons like quag and pyuku. NP thundyt + pursuit is an idea I've wanted to try for a long time and pursuit sciz is a set that I thought is pretty underrated since it's one of the few mons that reliably traps zam (aside from ben's heat scarf weav ofc). Funnily enough, it seems that bea had the same idea that week of using thundyt + pursuit sciz and had a more offensive take on it. For us, the reasoning was that suit sciz removes two of thundy-t's best answers in mlatias and zam while being a great defensive partner. Charm's mlati usage was significant so chipping it with pursuit into range for thundy-t was pretty relevant. Toxapex is a natural partner since it checks half the tier on its own. Starting w these 3, we were insanely weak to offensive grounds but didn't want a passive check into them like skarm; I had the idea of scarf fini and deej had a similar idea but suggested scarf cress which, while usually on more offensive teams, plays a crucial role here. Even more appealing was the fact that cress was a glisc check that isn't susceptible to spikes and lunar giving us 2 thundy-t's just seals the game vs fat. The natural finishing pair was glisc + clef since we wanted all of: a ground type, sr, fog, dark resist, etc etc. So we ended up with this:
Thundy-t spread lives mlatias ice beam after rocks and cress spread was for jolly nite. Helmet on clefable worked out best in testing since we liked the extra chip vs HO, lot of sequences where zard has to blitz + take moon + helmet and what not. Not much to change on this team in hindsight but we do kinda get 6-0d by a swampert so maybe counter on clef could help; other than that flame > twave is probably cool.
Other options we had for this week were:
The gren version was somehow worse vs offense in testing (and also worse vs non-choice lele and spikes, which kinda mandated payapa pex and hwish clef to reliably beat fat) and the kyub koko dedicated to beating fat struggled to get past chansey... so yeah these were not it but they look pretty cool. Good ideas in there but it's tough to make koko + kyub work beyond putting a sciz on or using that ben 6 of maw zap koko exca.
Week 3: vs. Gondra
Thankfully this week prep was simple yet again. I knew gondra pretty well and had said even before the w2 game was played that we will be facing rain. Some SM players have become similar to BW players in the sense that they kinda recycle standard from week to week - in BW you need to pick which weeks you will sand offense, sand fat, rain, HO, etc. And SM players had a similar approach in that some weeks they'll HO, some week rain, others glisc fat, and so on. I was super confident that rain was coming so we just wanted to pretty much have an autowin match up into it. Unfortunately our ideas weren't really working out so we just settled on rolling with a DDTar offense while having mons generally nice into rain such as kommo, rotom, and ferro. The building process here was simple: DD MTar wants a partner that gets damage on physical tanks like lando/ferro and overload its only counters in skarm and hippo; the core of lando + ferro + water-type is tried and true and rotom-w was the preferred one here for its ability to maintain momentum while still retaining some of the defensive utility; tini patched up the msciz/gear weakness. Final team was:
The kommo was initially sd z elec but pex proved too troublesome even with sub on ddtar so we swapped the z to rotom who turned out to be really really good at pressuring all kinds of teams. Chople ferro is a necessary emergency stop to lucha/lop/medi/zam and could even help against keld if whip > iron. Also, lefties on kommo let it potentially bluff a bulkier set. Since playing around bulky kommo is vastly different from playing around offensive kommo, lefties felt valuable beyond the passive healing as it allowed us to punish certain sequences pretty hard, biggest example being tapu fini who loves to come in on kommo only to get hit hard by a +2 thunderpunch. The ability to net surprise ko's or force progress vs. pex, fini, and glisc even was pretty nice. While we would've liked overcoat to avoid sand chip, soundproof was needed to cover other zclanger and deal with swarm volc better.
Other options this week were:
Subdrum kommo is very cool but way too inconsistent to be brought to a real game. Lucha is really good but hard to get a team that isn't the standard lucha stuff; this one was decent but didn't really have a good way to win beyond set up a lucha sweep which isn't exactly reliable either.
Week 4: vs. robjr
I also knew rob pretty well from our years of teaming and figured he'd lean into offense; the only bulky team I remember him using is that sciz ditto hydrei one. Since we expected offense, we explored stuff like MAggron but ultimately decided on trying to build around spdef exca. A ground type that's not vulnerable to coverage from volt switchers like koko/gear was ideal here. Exca needs a lot of support defensively so slowbro / kommo were good adds to immediately cover grounds/special fires/etc. We couldn't really figure out a good way to check zam without the team being super slow so deej suggested avtorn, which was a solid midpoint. Zone helps a ton with the ferro/skarm match up since exca lets them in easily and bro would need to be flame, so the idea of zone trap ferro -> exca spin for perma off was pretty nice. Scarf lele was kind of a random idea I had that worked pretty nicely once we thought about it a bit more. Landed on this 6:
Fun fact: we actually scrapped the team since it seemed too zam weak but deej tested it out and found that zone -> lele sweep was pretty sick. On exca, the main thing of note was deciding between protect or iron head. This team is clef weak on paper but tect proved to be very useful since we could scout stuff like scarf lando-t and generally increase drill's longevity; cm bro helps against clef anyway and subzone is insane into clef structures in general. Aroma lele cus lele doesn't have a super useful 4th on scarf anyway, that utility is nice on a fatter 6 like this, especially cus it allows rest kommo which hard counters tran/zardy/rotom, who become problematic in a longer game.
Other options this week were:
The kyub koko zardy ft. alolan muk which is kinda heat and in line with the idea of using a spdef exca but did not work out too well. The aggron team is a revamp of deej's aggron/chans/cress/seis/torn/bulu but this was just a worse version of it.
Week 5: vs. Drachenkeule
At this point we had been pretty weak to spikes and bulkier teams and I felt certain that either mlatias + spikes was coming or hard stall. This immediately led us to the idea of using SR dia and just pairing it with breakers who can smoke stall once sr is up. We explored different breakers like whirl fini and sd zfight kart but eventually landed on cbhoopa. Fini + wish rachi is a classic core and wish rachi helped keep hoopa healthy in longer games. Zap played a crucial defensive role while also pressuring bulkier teams with ztbolt and toxic. Final team was this:
The main thing here is the zapdos set which is completely insane into teams without a gliscor. Even clefable as the status absorb isn't reliable since tbolt -> z wipes it out. More generally, I think mons with toxic + good fire type coverage are always very difficult to handle. Sort of a random aside: but back during SM PU, I came up with subtoxtect flame skuntank which put me on to using similar sets on other mons (kumiko came up with sr heat wave necrozma in SM UU though I don't remember if it had toxic or not). In OU it's usually heatran doing that, who usually can't afford to run sub but still, fire coverage + toxic is awesome especially if you have a way to get past clefable. Lando-t spread 2hkos the standard glisc while guaranteeing the ohko on mawile. Zapdos is also ev'd to live flamethrower from zardy and guarantee the ohko on pex.
Other options for this week were:
SD Zfight kart is an extremely potent breaker and I'm surprised it isn't used as much as other sets, especially considering people are getting pretty lazy around it since choiced is the most common.
Week 6: vs GeniusX
Frankly, I don't know geniusx very well aside from his w1 game in spl 15 which was crazy. On the surface he just seemed to be someone who uses offense and makes crazy plays so we didn't really put much thought this week aside from wanting to use HO and just going offense vs. offense. We explored all the possible leads like dia/sash lando/gren/mew and settled on gren being the best one since setting spikes and tspikes immediately is such a forcing sequence against other offense. A lot of teams don't care about rocks that much / are willing to wait to remove it if they have a volc or zard in the back but nobody really wants to play with a tspike up. Gren was also just the best at keeping up vs all forms of removal unlike the other mons (dia vs fog glisc is awkward, mew is just kinda bad and overprepped for, as everyone knows how to sequence against it, and sash lando is probably the worst lead ever). We also thought MGyara was super good into the defensive structures genx liked, mainly mons like bro/gear/pex/chans/glisc. Gyara fits best on HO so we rolled with that. Team was:
The 6 kinda filled itself out and was pretty similar to the skype team but played differently/more linearly since gren was sash lead and we had volc > tini. Main things to note here are ada scarf kart and zfire volc. Ada scarf is something deej has been wanting to try for a while and these calcs are a compelling reason as to why:
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 8 HP / 4 Def Tapu Koko: 237-280 (83.7 - 98.9%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Gliscor: 172-204 (48.7 - 57.7%) -- 95.3% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Poison Heal
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 252 HP / 36 Def Toxapex: 141-166 (46.3 - 54.6%) -- 98.4% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Medicham-Mega: 238-282 (91.1 - 108%) -- guaranteed OHKO after 1 layer of Spikes
252+ Atk Kartana Smart Strike vs. 240 HP / 64 Def Tornadus-Therian: 180-213 (50.1 - 59.3%) --
-1 252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 0 HP / 68 Def Landorus-Therian: 141-166 (44.2 - 52%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Kartana Knock Off vs. 248 HP / 8 Def Latias-Mega: 170-202 (46.8 - 55.6%) -- 69.5% chance to 2HKO
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 416-492 (103.2 - 122%) --
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Gyarados: 253-298 (76.4 - 90%) --
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Hoopa-Unbound: 313-370 (103.9 - 122.9%) --
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Suicune: 372-438 (92 - 108.4%) -- 50% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Kartana Sacred Sword vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Heatran: 262-310 (81.1 - 95.9%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro-Mega: 198-234 (50.2 - 59.3%) --
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Gliscor: 172-204 (48.7 - 57.7%) -- 95.3% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Poison Heal
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 252 HP / 36 Def Toxapex: 141-166 (46.3 - 54.6%) -- 98.4% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Medicham-Mega: 238-282 (91.1 - 108%) -- guaranteed OHKO after 1 layer of Spikes
252+ Atk Kartana Smart Strike vs. 240 HP / 64 Def Tornadus-Therian: 180-213 (50.1 - 59.3%) --
-1 252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 0 HP / 68 Def Landorus-Therian: 141-166 (44.2 - 52%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Kartana Knock Off vs. 248 HP / 8 Def Latias-Mega: 170-202 (46.8 - 55.6%) -- 69.5% chance to 2HKO
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 416-492 (103.2 - 122%) --
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Gyarados: 253-298 (76.4 - 90%) --
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Hoopa-Unbound: 313-370 (103.9 - 122.9%) --
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Suicune: 372-438 (92 - 108.4%) -- 50% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Kartana Sacred Sword vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Heatran: 262-310 (81.1 - 95.9%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Kartana Leaf Blade vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro-Mega: 198-234 (50.2 - 59.3%) --
No other options for this week, we decided on HO early on and stuck with it.
Week 7: vs. Vert
While we were aware of the general reuniclus weakness of our SM scout, we incorrectly decided to ignore everything else and focus completely on beating offense this week. Ditto was the clear pick here. Common mons that give ditto trouble are zardy/kyub/glisc/msciz/lucha/zgyara so we started out with a zblizz pex as a partner. Since this was already doing in a bulkier direction we foresaw mawile as a problem and aggron is a natural fit to help with that. Torn brings some much needed speed and fog while seis and shuca gear patched up the weakness to electrics and SD grounds.
Final result was:
The pex set ended up as liquid/tox/tspikes which is a set drach and whyad showed me last spl, and I thought it's a very cool way to be able to beat volc without haze and also fit tox + tspikes which is broken into a lot of teams. It was originally zliquid but santu suggested payapa since we were very weak to medi and wanted the extra help vs lele. Aggron can do insane things like:
+1 252 Atk Tough Claws Charizard-Mega-X Flare Blitz vs. 240 HP / 16 Def Filter Aggron-Mega: 270-319 (79.1 - 93.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
and dtail on aggron has nice synergy with tspikes and is also generally useful to phase out threats like gyara or lucha who might attempt to set up on aggron. Also, avalanche > dtail is an option for gliscor. Ditto is HP Ice for thundy-t but it can be changed to ground for zone. In hindsight, toad should be physdef to handle pert and exca better.
We didn't seriously consider other options this week but we had put together and tested:
which was kinda heat. TR + volt gear to bring in daunt was fun and the gear can even boom for more momentum...
Week 8: vs Tace
We were pretty certain that a bulkier mlatias team was coming and possibly reuni as well so we settled on using a msableye pretty quickly but didn't want to full stall since stall is generally pretty fishy. Heatran is a good partner (aside from chansey) to help out with fairies. The serp that genx used appealed to me a lot as a way to be able to switch into waters while still maintaining a lot of offensive pressure. With those 3, we needed a good answer to offensive grounds (zfly lando, exca for example) and we hadn't used a skarm yet, plus spikes + sableye is kinda broken. We still wanted a way to cover ground volc, have some speed, avoid serp having to defog, and not be awful into zardx. The combination of scarf lando + sap sipper azu fulfilled all of this. Ended up with:
Metal burst helps with the passivity issue, being able to trade with dangerous offense mons is super valuable and eliminating something like dia helps tran/skarm a ton. With sab/tran, we didn't care about hitting ferro/celes so ground was most optimal to hit opposing tran and zardx. I'm not a believer in zserp after seeing +2 zhyperbeam failing to ko an amoonguss, so we decided zskarm is most practical. SD zbrave bird is a set I first saw used by kumiko a long time ago and it's been on my mind ever since.It allows skarm to actually beat gliscor, since last mon glisc can get past whirlwind sets or stall out roost pp / play around counter, while also proactively dealing with gyara. Overall it's a pretty good set and should be explored on other structures more.
Other option this week was:
which is just a worse version of the above team, but slowking is kinda heat.
Week 9: vs. Lazuli
Classy were out and Lazuli didn't really play SM outside of a few games in masters which were all destroyed by dd zelec kommo so the prep this week was simple: just roll up with a cool offense team with it. We landed on:
Specs on gren was a momentum sap and this team didn't care to have spikes at all. With zardx we mostly want to keep hazards off so getting our own spikes up felt counterintuitive. Taunt is vital to deter ferro and pex, while denying opposing set up such as gyara. Mystic water bluffs specs while giving favorable rolls vs clef with modest. Sub DD Zardx is an insanely insanely broken set, especially given how many lando's just don't run edge anymore making it complete set up bait. Outrage is unfairly strong and just OHKOs scarf land-t at +0 and destroys traditional zard x checks like pex, m tar and slowbro. Lando is knock to neutralize celesteela to an extent since we don't have a leech seed switch in. Knocking clef / ferro is also helpful for gren.
Semifinals: vs. Eternal Spirit
Honestly could not come up with a 6 we felt comfortable with so we ended up rolling up with a ben gay team with taunt on torn to help against tspikes pex. We did explore a bunch of stuff like:
but they all had some issues.
DeeJ - you were the first friend I've made through pokemon and it's extremely surreal to think about the fact that we met when I was still a teenager and we practically grew up together. Building and playing with you is something I'd look forward to getting home after school and now I was getting excited to build and test after work... it's sick how we maintained this connection over all this time. Teaming with you was half the motivation I had to manage this year and whenever I think I've lost interest in the game, helping you prep for masters has always brought me back. A lot of the joy I got from this game is thanks to knowing you. Will appreciate you forever my brother.
Fdmw - I really really wish we could've gotten you in for some SM games in the season. You're a sick player and awesome builder. I don't really trust others to pump out competent SM teams but you always had stuff ready to test whenever I asked. I hope you understand how pivotal you were for our SM prep and I'm sure you're gonna smoke the competition in SPL whatever tier you play.
Santu - thanks a ton for the advice you'd give which helped tighten up and polish the team. Can't think of a better way to spend 32.5k...
And also need to shoutout bute one more time who sometimes helped but mostly kept me mentally sane.
I hope you all enjoyed reading and I hope this encourages other SM players to post interesting stuff they used!
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