OU SPL XVII SM Discussion

[Ske]

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

 

[Lsa]

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?

 

[Sanos]

Good job on making this begining of spl more exciting

 

[Brandonlee1]

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.

 

[Charmflash]

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.

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

 

[Lsa]

Charmflash with midseason approaching lets run the bo3 if i win you give up ur spot

 

[Charmflash]

Charmflash with midseason approaching lets run the bo3 if i win you give up ur spot

 

[obii]

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:

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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%) --

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!

 

[GeniusX]

yo, I wanted to write a bit about my prep process during this SPL despite not being very happy with my overall performance. As the community itself is also in a very hostile state as demonstrated by this thread, I thought sharing some of what I think to be interesting ideas can contribute to the community positively and perhaps inspire newer players who are intimidated by the thought of building in SM. Also obii post inspired me and since I don't plan on playing SM in wcop I feel fine sharing most of this stuff :)

Week 1 vs Spitfire
Spitfire regularly asked me for tests during wcop so I was quite familiar with the type of archetypes he was comfortable with, namely stuff that is on the bulkier side. I decided pretty much immediately I wanted to bring sub seed serp due to his non-existent torn usage. As his comfort also leans on the bulkier side, his scout also features bulkier lot of waters such as slowbro, pex, and fini which were targets to get a sub. Notably sub seed serp functions best when rocks are on the opposing side of the field due to forcing switches with leech, it also commonly needs to find a turn of entry where these bulky waters can't status it on switchin. I decided to use rocker mttar with fire ice coverage as it threatens or trades with the common foggers of the tier and was inspired by ben's safeguard pex which functionally becomes a fini in being able to bring in pokemon that usually fear scald or tox on entry, in this case being mttar and serp. The team kinda filled itself out from there as the common sand cores felt fitting. Notable changes being utilizing av steela over leech steela since I liked it's trading capacities into offense more + CB kart was added as an immediate power option that can utilize safeguard support as well. Physdef pex as fighting check to stuff like lop and weav by extension as well.


Week 2 vs Metallica
Metallica is also someone that tested with me quite regularly when he played sm last spl so I was fairly familiar with his style as well. I was confident that he wouldn't be bringing any especially bulky archetypes that utilized pokemon such as skarm pex or chans so I mainly wanted to cover bo and ho. Initially I wanted to build something around mslowbro + counter chans to remove his key piece and play a slower game but I couldn't land on anything I liked so I shifted gears and wanted to use Z TR Mag. I also remembered messing around with zaza's defensive ddnite on more offensive structures before the season started and was really impressed by how strong it was vs these fini/ferro bo structures. Obligatory mdia to try and alleviate rocks weak. Weav was nice here as it pressured and removed items from mons such as fini, super berry mage, lefties keld etc and made winning with dnite and mage easier. Dnite didn't necessarily need like lefties gone on these waters to beat them 1v1 but it made it much easier. One notable thing about roost dnite is that it also has a incredible defensive profile especially if you can keep rocks off the field, being able to act as a grass fire water resist vs mons like yard and ashgren is super valuable. Ferro Scarf Lando key pieces of the known Z Nite Dia team. This shit is 6-0ed by sd msciz so I threw on hp fire on both mage and diancie as an attempt to bait it. (It worked in tests trust)


Week 3 vs Charmflash
Wanted to make sure I cover different types of cheese ranging from grass spam to stall. I also figured celestial alignment wouldn't come since I just 6-0ed it in masters a couple weeks before spl. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ou-891097 Fast taunt Z tran looked great into all the aforementioned structures and I chose steelium over firium for the latis. I also have been testing this serp set for a while and I've been really impressed by it. Miracle Seed Taunt Synth Leaf Storm is a phenomenal stallbreaker that can pretty much 6-0 a lot of fat structures by itself with the only limitation being leaf storm pp. It also acts as a great pivot on water types that can keep itself healthy. Yard felt like it fit these two guys perfectly and Serp Sun is something I've been impressed using for a while. It was pretty hard to fill out the remaining defensive holes as well as fitting rocks and defog and etc. Ended up with Glisc as the status absorber and fogger, toad as the water immune + koko check, and cress as the everything check. lunar dance was especially nice for matchups where serp would run out of pp because sometimes 2 of these serps auto win a game. mental herb was a cool tech on cress since charm loved using taunt torns + i wanted to ease matchups vs taunt psyspams by being able to para mzams even thought I didn't expect psyspam. Protect is super important on toad here to greed extra lefties whenever possible since it functions as the ashgren check on a team with no dark resists. (charm had not a single physical dark such as weavile, mega gyara or mega ttar across 3 spls)


Week 4 vs Gondra
This was probably my favorite team I built this season and its a shame I wasn't able to convert a extremely winning position to do this team justice. Gondra was bringing a lot of older structures and I wanted to cover stuff like lati double steel structures, sd glisc structures, chansey cm gear stuff etc. Landed on this really cool buzzwole set with max attack ada that still checks many physical attackers like weav gyara drill lop while being able to ohko stuff like sd gliscor, spdef pex, bulky mage. Having z on it means even mons such as clefable have to respect it as eq into z can 2hko. Ground Ice Bug/Fight coverage is extremely hard to switch into in general with passive structures + It and pex forms a great defensive core alone. Added Jirachi to cover psyspam weakness as well as to provide wish support, mttar for pursuit as team valued removing mons such as tini. It's also quite spdef here to tank stuff like +1 celebrate tini fblast and timid zam fblast as a potential out. Lando and Ash gren rounds the team out as a physical fire check and way to make progress/speed respectively. I also really liked the idea of body slam para fishing + dark pulse spam.

Buzzwole calcs

252+ Atk Buzzwole Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 252 HP / 36 Def Toxapex: 306-362 (100.6 - 119%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Buzzwole Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 36 Def Toxapex: 170-202 (55.9 - 66.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
252+ Atk Buzzwole Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 28 Def Magearna: 392-462 (107.9 - 127.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Buzzwole Ice Punch vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Gliscor: 316-372 (89.5 - 105.3%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Buzzwole Leech Life vs. 252 HP / 92+ Def Cresselia: 218-258 (49 - 58.1%) -- 54.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Weavile Icicle Crash vs. 184 HP / 0 Def Buzzwole: 148-175 (36.9 - 43.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

While the team I bought to the game had drain>leech due to a last minute change, the paste below uses leech as I believe its much better to hit mons such as cress, slowbro, and reuni than to hit ferrothorn slightly stronger. If i didn't make this change this set would have 6-0ed on lead :(


Week 5 vs Rob
I was quite demoralized this week since I felt I should be 4-0 instead of 2-2 as I failed to convert 2 winning positions. This led to me being quite lazy in prep and defaulting to comfort. This was also kinda the "psyspam week" and I figured rob was probably going to lean towards offense. I had a psyspam I built for Giannis to use in masters semis vs c0mp that features TR Mag so I decided to just edit that a bit. Keldeo > AV KB as the fire check and Tran as the rocker and the team was set.


Week 6 vs DeeJ
Another demoralizing week after losing to a last turn roll that was quite favored for me after finding out robs spread. I initially wanted to build something around AOA Ada M-Pinsir since it had nice entry points into deej's scout that has high kommo usage and can bait mons like zapdos with edge but honestly couldn't really motivate myself to test and didn't land on anything I liked. Ended up just editing a team I bought last year vs punny that uses mega diancie + eject cress. eject cress isn't anything new but I found last year that pairing it with dia (even better if with tect) let you eject on mons such as pex and ferro more consistently since they're hesitant to click hazards or status while also still being able to generate momentum on stuff like u-turn lando. This was also the idea I bought in stours vs xav as well. Decided I'd recycle the serp I bought W2 as the abuser and also z psychic volc since I felt like it's quite likely for me to see a dragon such as xard dnite or kommo.


Week 7 vs Drachenkeule
For this week I kinda just messed around in the builder earlier in the week with the goal of just building something I found cool. Ended up landing on something and all I said in chat wasView attachment 820446. Turns out it was shiest af and it kept on impressing in tests. Initially I wanted to explore a rest chesto tg surf psychic manaphy paired with hp fire m-latios and toxic celesteela to abuse mons such as gastrodon which drach has used. Toxic steela also has a cool niche of being able generate greater progress vs mons such as fog torn, slowbro, bulkier set up dragons such as roost xard and dnite. These guys who can usually recover/regen off leech and switch out and come back can't afford to that vs toxic. Also you can bluff flame a lot of times as well by just not revealing a moveslot. Deej's usage of adament kart from last week also inspired me to explore ada/modest scarfers and I really liked modest scarf serps profile. The damage difference was super noticable due to storm boosting you alongside attacking and leads to some cool rolls such as 2hkoing max hp torn after rocks. I was also confident that if Drach wanted to rain me he'd be using adament mega pert as my speed control is usually limited to scarf lando. I ended up making the manaphy custap 3a since ferrothorns switching in on mana was still annoying and hp fire latios wasn't able to consistently weaker it like I anticipated. This change weakens the team comp vs fatter structures as rest mana was intended to be able to 1v1 mons like toxic chansey. Exca compressed roles nicely as well as being a koko check and Dnite is broken as always. This team was genuinely doing extremely well in tests even vs strong dark types and I can't even explain why. Never struggled with ash gren unless multiple flinches or vs the other strong dark in the tiers.


Week 8 vs Vert
Wanted to build around flame charge Yard and CB Dnite to capitalize on vert's offense brings but couldn't land on anything really liked. If you're curious this was what i had https://pokepast.es/70b57dbfcf976f8a but there were still a lot of issues this paste had that I didn't have time to figure out. Day before the game I ended up changing a lot of this paste into what I ended up bringing including overheat>flame charge as well as just making dnite Z. This frankly just isn't a good team, and it got punished in game by Vert's creative Work Up Ash Gren. What is funny is that flame charge Yard probably would have gone crazy in the actual game.


Week 9 vs Tace
This felt like a zone week since Tace had high usage of steels such as ferro steela and sciz. I also tested some other stuff like av special kb and a maw build that I was happy with as well but ultimately I found in my builder a team I built back in early 2025? around zone + crunch dd tar and scarf rachi that I felt was strong here. Healing wish support is always fun with mons such as mega ttar and it has tpunch since regular gyara was on the rise then. I changed the serp from hp fire to hp rock to cover volcs and zards better and decided to just roll with the team. Rest of the team is pretty standard fini for misty support and z lando will always be strong no matter what. Tace also had pretty high bulky psychic usage so crunch dd tar was a strong bring into him as well.


Overall this was a very stressful season for me since I didn't have ample amount of time like I did in undergrad to be able to have mons as my priority every week. Even though I wasn't fully satisfied with my play this season I thought I still had some cool ideas throughout the season and do think SM is in a very good place right now for builders to exercise more creativity. I don't want to go into a large section about my thoughts on the entire meta but I did wanna just point out a few things I think is very relevant right now.

Choice Scarf

Scarfers are in a really weird place right now in the meta. The old king of scarf kartana is especially hard to fit due to the rise in so many set up mons that feasts on moves such as locked leaf blade. The most notable one being the rise of dnite but this also applies to mons like volc and xard. In a meta that's more offensive than ever giving up a free turn can very well be a death sentence which is ironic for a mon that used to be the king of revenging set up mons. We've seen innovation such as scarf magearna pop up that is very cool as well. Last year I was of the mindset that landorus is pretty much the only consistent scarf user due to its access to u-turn and intimidate, being able to revenge pokemon such as m-zam without having losing momentum. However I believe the meta is in a shifting point where it greatly appreciates scarfers that float around the base 100/100+ range. In my experimentations with pokemon such as serp, jirachi, garchomp, blacephalon and many more I've found these guys to be very consistent as scarfers for one reason or another. Whether that is due to self generating boosts such as serp and blace, having uturn such as jirachi, or just being natrually strong against current users of set up in the tier. (Outrage/stone edge chomp being good into dd dragons and mons like volc and gyara) I think teams should consider incorporating and trying different scarfers in their builds and I guarantee you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Serp

This mon is extremely good right now in SM. As the meta has shifted to become more offensive in recent years this mon also has had many places to shine similarly to how it functions in ORAS. Its numerous amounts of sets ranging from stallbreaking with subseed/taunt, utility with glare, wincon with scarf and many more makes it one of the most dangerous mons in the tier right now. I found myself leaning into it a lot during the teambuilding process as can be seen from my 5/9 uses in SPL as it also has a very strong speed tier.

Shoutout to Giannis Antetokommo-o Mako Brandonlee1 kDCA for giving me lots of tests throughout the season as well as everyone else that gave me games here and there. There's a lot of you but know that I do greatly appreciate it.

Hope you all enjoyed reading!

 

[Sanos]

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[Ske]

how much do you charge for your full sm dump

I can steal them for you for a discounted price

 

[Drachenkeule]

Another year of SPL is over and it was once again a pleasure being part of it. This is actually my second draft because I was too stupid to save my first draft ._. I’d like to share the teams I used this season, my general prepping approach in a tour like SPL, and also a bit of my general opinion about the meta itself. Before I start, I’d like to thank all of you who supported me during the season. I got some really kind messages and it makes me really happy to be in a situation where I can help people improve. I’d like to shout out some of my friends who supported me during the long and draining journey.

shoutouts

DIYUSI You were the guy who carried my prep in multiple weeks. You are probably one of the players with the best SM meta knowledge itself. In addition, you stopped me multiple times from loading some absolute dogshit (probably not always successfully).

zRyan Abele SASAGEYO CM Reuniclus Maktyum You guys were insane. Thank you for all the test games I could play against you and/or all the prepping input you gave me during the whole season. It really helped me throughout the weeks, and I would definitely have had a way harder time without you.

@scooters Even if most of you weren’t really familiar with the meta itself, you really tried to provide me with the best support you could give. I really enjoyed the team chemistry. Also, all the motivational support you gave me during the whole season was actually insane and really helped me in some difficult situations. You probably believed more in my playing skills than I did.

obii One thing I really want to mention is obii’s insane work as a manager. I got drafted last season as a rookie in SM, and the way he pushed and supported me throughout the whole last season is actually insane. It’s really sad that you are planning to not manage SPL anymore, but I think the way you scout and motivate new SPL rookies throughout the whole season and not just look at the sheet and history is actually something more managers should do.

Alright enough kind words, time for prepping stuff. I was the only one in the whole SM SPL lineup who played the whole SM Circuit and also stuff like Tier PL, so my scout was automatically a bit bigger. My scout was kinda offensedominated with a huge tendency towards Kyu B and modern offense archetypes. In general, I was aware of the fact that weather is really tempting against me (+ in general weather is just stupid in the current SM meta), so I automatically tried to cover weather as well as possible.

In general, SM is a horrible meta right now, resulting in a lot of matchup-based situations. You can’t cover everything, especially in an offense-dominated weather meta like SM, so you need to think about which weaknesses are okay to have against your opponent and how you could cover potential weaknesses with specific sets. For example, if your offense is weak against Sun, try to fit Volc or Shift Gear Z Focus Blast Mag, etc. Of course, it depends a bit on which opponent you are facing, but having team and set variety is kinda crucial in such a volatile meta like SM.

Of course, I also built some teams based on my opponent’s weaknesses, but I think managing your own weaknesses and the possible loads of your opponent is more important than having the one mon or team that destroys the opposing scout.

Week 1 vs. Gondra (L)


First week against an SPL fossil, the last time Gondra played SM in SPL was already 3 years ago. So we didn’t have any data, but he was actually known to load some boring stuff, so standard Sun or Sand was a possibility, looking at my scout. So we kinda tried to cover the cheap anti-offense teams. Storm came up with Koko Rain and it was actually really interesting. You are trading Manaphy’s breaking power for a better matchup against stuff like standard Sun, and even Psyspam is doable with the Koko version. After editing some sets, the team felt pretty solid in test games and I still think that the team is a cool rain variant, improving some bad matchups in exchange for some harder matchups against balance (still doable, you just need to get some turns right and play really carefully with Koko). I think the Koko set is a really interesting alternative option to Skype’s stallbreaker Koko. You have a nuke against the dragons and some other stuff that is a bit chipped (M-Ttar, Serp for example) in exchange for HP Ice, which is expendable due to the lower Gliscor usage and the lack of Lando recovery.

Week 2 vs. Tace (W)


Tace is kinda known for loading proven structures without a lot of innovation, so same situation as last week, trying to cover weather, anti-offense, and in addition T-Spikes balance as well as possible. We tried to build something with Reuniclus because it’s really scary against all weather structures and also punishes Tace’s passive balance teams in his scout. After a lot of testing, I changed the Reuni approach to a CM Z Thunder Clef, which does a similar job but felt more solid against Rain and offense structures. The structure itself is kinda old and has existed in 100 different variants already, but I think this version is still unique due to the Knock + Toxic Pex instead of a second fast mon like Torn-T, Weavile, or whatever. The Pex is kinda expendable in this structure, so you can use it to make a ton of progress by knocking and toxicing everything without really caring about Pex’s health, because the Pex role can be done by the other mons as well. So you can also use it more as a pivot than in other structures where Pex’s health is way more important (obviously depends on the matchup itself). You can even think about trading Pex against stuff like Heatran chip + knocking Leftovers so you enable a M-Lati late game and midgame Clefable progress. The team has obvious flaws like CM 3 Attacks Mag and Psyspam, but I think overall it’s really cool, especially if you expect weather or randomly face a passive Rotom balance hehe.

Week 3 vs. Robjr (L)


This week was tough. I was sick almost the whole week and after losing almost every test game with the first sketch (Volcarona Screens HO) I kinda took the simplest anti-offense team you could take DMC. Robjr is a non-mainer that spams offense structures, so I overfocused on having a good matchup against offense and just tested 100 games sitting sick in my bed and playing against every offense that actually exists (s/o zRyan). The DMC version I even loaded was okayish against usual Sand structures. I tried to cover Sand with the bulky Dnite that uses Steela as setup fodder and Z-Celebrate Tini that usually makes a ton of progress against Sand structures. In the end I faced Slowbro Sand and yeah it was basically decided on preview. Kinda amusing that the Volc structure just 6:0ed Robjr’s load, but happens I guess. In the end I overreacted during prep and also concentrated too much on covering every possible offense structure without following my guts.

Week 4 vs. Spitfire (W)


A new week, a new failed try to build around Volcarona. It’s just so rough to get something solid done with Volcarona. I kinda decided pretty early to HO Spitfire. Spitfire is known for his aggressive plays, so HO seems like a good way to punish aggressive plays due to the lack of planning the game, and he seemed really weak to Volcarona. I built an interesting M-Scizor HO together with my prepping circle, but threw it into the bin because it was kinda unreliable. I’ll still link this team as well, because I think it has some potential and maybe someone can build something more solid with the idea. After removing the Volc sketch, I came up with Shift Gear Mag as a strong wincon and tried to build around this. The HO structure is also kinda similar to some other HO teams, but has one main difference, the role compression in the squad. Skype came up with Rocks + Defog Lando last year in SPL so he could fit SubSeed Serp in everything, and yeah understandable, this thing is fucking broken. But one main difference between this and all the other squads is that I put a wincon Mag into this kind of structure instead of CM 3 Attacks, which fits particularly well. You don’t need the huge amount of stallbreaking anymore (like NM + Taunt Koko with SubSeed Serp and CM 3 Attacks Mag) in my opinion, so Serp and Zard are enough, and you have a stronger late-game wincon angle with Mag. The Cress set is kinda needed so it can check Lele (Taunt Lele is super standard in the modern SM meta) and can surprise Wave Taunt Torn. Depending on the opposing scout, Button or Helmet are valid options as well. Cune is also an interesting mon in the squad, providing the Water resist while being a threat against rain teams, and you can keep the Z-move on Mag. Keldeo is also a possible fit into the squad.

alternative team:


Week 5 vs. DeeJ (W)


Probably my first time ever playing M Mawile in a tournament, but it looked insanely good against DeeJ. He tends to use a lot of BO or balance structures and almost no HO or offense, which is great for a mon like M Maw. In addition, hazard spam seemed extremely tempting against DeeJ, but it’s still a completely different approach than hazard stack balance, so not 100% predictable. The base of the team was a team Maktyum built some months ago with Keldeo > Gren and Chomp > Kommo-o. After a lot of testing I came up with these 6. Being able to fit T-Spikes Gren in a BO structure is really interesting, and in addition it has the surprising Z-Extrasensory to snipe Pex and also Kommo-o, which had an insanely high appearance in DeeJ’s scout. SpDef Kommo-o is normally not a really good mon in the current meta, especially due to the insanely high usage of Fini nowadays, but it surprisingly fits really well in the 6 due to the hazard spam, Protean Gren that scares Fini + spreads T-Spikes, and the Roar move itself. In addition, it provides the bulky Fire/Water/Dark resist, which is definitely required in the squad. Overall, I think the squad is cool against balance or BO spammers, but it surely has some problems against offense or HO (just pray if you are facing Zard X).

Week 6 vs. PZZ (W)


After debuting with M Mawile it was time for my first M Venu tournament usage. Shoutouts to Diyusi who basically carried the prep, because I wasn’t at home the whole week. We prepped for the typical old PZZ offense team structure and we basically got the matchup we wanted. Idk what to say about these 6 honestly, it’s basically a known structure with Reuni > Cresselia and another Koko set. I think the Shuca CM Koko is a really great mon in this meta, being a massive threat against a ton of offense structures. The reason for using Shed Shell Skarm was my high Ferro/Skarm usage in the recent games, so I wanted to prep for Zone. Please just play Rocky Helmet Skarm if you use this team.

Week 7 vs. GeniusX (L)


The one and only team that I built before SPL, and some people actually really hated me for it. Yes, this team is passive, and yes, this team is status weak, but I still don’t regret loading and building it, and I still think that the team itself is interesting for some opponents. The base idea of this team is to enable Bossnite as well as possible due to the huge amount of status spam, with trapping Zone in addition, without being forced to load Pyukumuku + M Sableye stall, which are way more passive and don’t help Bossnite as much as M Bro and Zone do. Of course, the hazard game can be really tough, but I still think that Toxic Gliscor is okay against most of the rockers (of course Rocks + SD Z-Move is rough, but this would be the same if there’s an M Sableye anyway), so you get one more slot for Zone due to the M Bro > Sableye/Pyukumuku change. M Slowbro itself is a complete beast, being able to 1v1 every physical attacker even after setting up +2 with a Z-Move, so it’s okay against the physical setup beasts and Pyuku is not 100% needed. The team itself trades way more than the stall structure does and gets Dnite into better late-game positions imo. Speedy Gliscor is also really good in the meta nowadays, mine even outspeeds Exca, so you are still outspeeding a bunch of threats like DD M Ttar, Modest Lele, Exca, most Kyurem-Black, and M Gyara/Gyara. Honestly, I was pretty sure that Genius X wanted to load some Zard X stuff because my brings were really weak to it. In addition, he tended to load interesting pivot Gliscor offense structures, which would be Dragonite food number 1. In the end I got demolished by Toxic Celesteela, which ripped my Dnite game plan apart. Yes, I could trap Steela in-game, but there was no 100% need in my head because a normal Steela is just setup fodder for Bossnite. I still think that the game was kinda unfortunate due to the M Lati EQ roll against Chansey, but yeah happens.

Week 8 vs. Gama (L)


Probably the week I played the worst ingame. I think I played pretty passively, which is kinda unfortunate because the team is actually really cool. Bulky Zard X provides a really nice defensive profile, helping against a lot of stuff like Zard Y, Volc, Kart, Mag, Vic, etc., and survives some surprising hits due to the unexpected bulk. The combination of Pursuit trap + Beat Up Weavile with SD Zard and SD Z-Move Lando is actually really cool and helps Kartana a lot to clean the game. I think you can even consider loading something like Trick Room Mag in these 6 as well. I am not sure if it was the right choice against Gama though. In general, Scarf Kart + SD Z-Move Lando looked really good against him, especially with Pursuit support, and they were threatening in the end, but I’m not sure if it’s the right choice against aggressive offense archetypes in general. I probably needed to play more games with the team against offense to get a better feeling for these matchups. In the end, Kartana had a great matchup, but I couldn’t prepare everything due to the poorly played early/mid game. The Fini Nature’s Madness miss was unfortunate as well of course, but I think it was overall a deserved win for Gama.

Week 9 vs. Vert (W)


Last week against the selfproclaimed pro, and yeah his loads were actually really interesting with the greediest stuff you could imagine. After thinking about completely fishing with Venu Sun, we decided to outoffense him with some interesting sets in combination with a lot of speed control provided by double Scarf, Prio M Medi, and Trick Room cleaning Mag. So basically just completely destroy him with randomness before getting destroyed by randomness (shoutouts Work Up Z Dark Pulse Gren). I think the team shows that double Scarf is a really fair thing in the current SM meta due to the huge amount of offense teams, you just need to fit it somehow (._.). The Fini itself is probably a set I wouldn’t play against anyone else than Vert. It’s really good against offense teams, but Madness + Taunt is probably the overall better option just to at least prevent T-Spikes, which I honestly kinda ignored in the prep (T-Spikes are probably still fine, you just need to use the terrain and play way more aggressively). The reason for the Victini set is simple, you need two fast mons that can actually do damage and Tini’s defensive profile helps during the whole game, so you definitely won’t spam Final Gambit every game. Bolt Strike is a nice tool sniping mons like Ninja (especially if you reveal Scarf Kart already and connect the Bolt Strike hust). Speed is for greedy base 100 Adamant/Modest, against other opponents than Vert I would probably take base 95 Adamant/Modest and play with more Attack.

the end

In the end it was a really cool season. My personal goal was 6-3, so not exactly what I achieved, but I think my overall performance was okay this season. As I already mentioned before, SM is in a really matchup-based situation, and it feels like the whole community is a bit split. I for myself think that you kinda need to fish a bit due to the volatility of the tier. Of course you can try to play with your “solid structures,” but sometimes you need to change some main components and “ignore” some weaknesses so you don’t get too predictable. Of course there were definitely some teams this season that were just way too much, but I think sometimes it’s fair to go for a squad without a Dark resist to cover exactly the matchups you want to cover. I think we should think about the meta itself and consider some drastic changes that reduce the huge necessity to overprepare the squad to not lose against some cheap tier staples, instead of ripping some players apart where you have way less insider information about the prepping approach itself (there’ll be a survey soon and I’ll definitely write something about the situation as well). We should definitely reconsider the way of thinking that old gens don’t need any changes or only with putting an unreal amount of effort into tiering action.

Another thing I want to mention, which honestly annoyed me during the season, was the crazy judgment of some users against some SPL players that already achieved way more than they ever have. It’s important to criticize players when they make suboptimal plays, but sometimes it feels kinda cheap reading about players trashtalking individual players all the time while relaxing in their chairs without playing with this huge amount of stress during the whole week. It’s still important to rank players based on their current performance, and I honestly think that managers should give more SM rookies a chance, especially this year there were some players where I was shocked that they stayed undrafted, but there are still some players that are getting way more hate than they actually deserve.