ZU ZU Summer Seasonal Round Ten! Winner's Finals

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Aaronboyer

Something Worth Fighting For
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art by dibs
Welcome to the ZU Summer Seasonal! This is the first tournament of our first season! Entering and winning in this seasonal earns you points for an overall ZU leaderboard. After four seasonals, the top 16 players on this leaderboard will enter a seeded playoffs, where the winner of the tournament will become the ZU champion!

SPECIFIC RULES
  • This is a standard Gen 7 ZU Tournament. All matches must be played in "[Gen 7] ZU".
  • This tournament will be Double Elimination.
  • All rounds will be Best of Three. You may switch teams in between battles of the same set.
  • Matches are to be played on Pokemon Showdown (or SmogTours server).
  • To encourage the development of the metagame, and so that everyone is on an even playing field, all matches must have replays recorded. If neither player posts replays of the match, regardless of whether you confirm that your opponent won, your series will be coinflipped unless you can provide replays. We will not disqualify both players, but we will coinflip the series, not because we don't believe that you played, but because the replay rule ensures everyone is on an even playing field, as stated. If you wish for your replays to stay hidden, you may PM them to me instead.
  • ZU is a usage based tier. Essentially you can use anything that is not in a higher tier; PU effectively serves as the ZU banlist. However, there are several Pokemon banned from ZU which are not in PU or a higher tier; aka ZUBL.
  • Every round, I may choose several games as the Highlight Matches.
Clauses:
  • Sleep Clause Mod: Limit one foe put to sleep
  • Species Clause: Limit one of each Pokemon
  • OHKO Clause: OHKO moves are banned
  • Moody Clause: Moody is banned
  • Evasion Moves Clause: Evasion moves are banned
  • Endless Battle Clause: Forcing endless battles is banned
  • HP Percentage Mod: HP is shown in percentages
General Tournament Rules:
  • Identity: I expect many battles to be completed under alts. This can be bad for tournament security, and thus I will make this clear: If I hear any whispers of identity theft (battling as someone you are not) or proxy battling (helping someone else battle through pm) I will not be pleased and I will take severe actions.
  • Scouting: Next, I do not want to hear anything about counterteaming, at all. Do not complain about it. I also don't want to hear about any blatant scouting. There is a difference between "[user] is known for using stall" and "let me follow [user] around all day to watch all his battles since I am his opponent". I expect a lot of the former and none of the latter. I give permission to all battlers to ask any person spectating their battle to leave if they do not want them watching. Everyone will have access to your replays from earlier rounds though.
  • Timer Clause: As for taking long between moves, if your opponent asks you to hurry up, please oblige. If you are doing a damage calc for a key turn that is one thing, but prolonging every move is suspicious and annoying. Don't do it. Furthermore, Battle Timeout is a rule for a reason. If you run out of time, you lose, simple as that. It does not matter what your opponent says. Do not battle if you think you will have to leave mid battle, and instead reschedule for a better time.
  • Disconnections: Finally, in the case of a disconnect, the decision is in the hands of the player who did not disconnect. The options are: redo the battle move for move, redo the battle with the same teams but different moves, or redo the battle with completely different teams. If the battle was without a doubt over, they may also take the win. Any suspicion that a disconnect was committed on purpose to redo a match may be appealed to me, and if I feel this happened there will be severe consequences, don't do it.

As a disclaimer: Since I plan to join this tournament, I will provide evidence of pairing randomization and/or have someone else do pairings for me each round.
This round's matchups were done by me! Here they are ladies and gentlemen.

Round Ten Matchups:

Winner's Bracket:
Megazard vs. czim
czim vs. RawMelon
RawMelon vs. Megazard

Loser's Bracket:
Jmash324 vs. CrazyStevy
CrazyStevy vs. Pohjis
Pohjis vs. Jmash324

Resources:
ZU Banlist and Tiering History
ZU Viability Rankings and Sample Sets

ZU Sample Teams
ZU Speed Tiers
ZU Role Compendium

Visual Aid of Pokemon ZU by Usage
ZU Good Cores
ZU Discord
ZU Room on Pokemon Showdown


The deadline for Round Ten Matches is Saturday, September 15th at 9pm CST.
If all games get played early, Round Eleven will start ahead of schedule!
 

5gen

jumper
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Figured I'd try my hand at predicts since I've never done any.

Megazard vs czim - Megazard hasn't really shifted this tour in terms of teambuilding where as czim has. Despite that, zard has been piloting his teams very well and has been quite consistent. I think Megazard will be able to outplay in the mid- to end-game, and that he has to watch out for czim's creativity. By no means should Czim be counted out though; I'm excited to see what they whip up and I believe they have a solid shot in this.

czim vs RawMelon - Both players have shown a diversity in what they choose to bring throughout the tour, but I think RawMelon has the edge here. His senses are sharp when it comes to capitalizing on metagame trends and he's simply a strong battler. On the other hand, czim has a thing for unorthodox threats and tends to play relatively safely. czim just needs to play in the right frame of mind, picking and choosing when to play aggressively. Overall, I believe that RawMelon is the superior player and that their patience will be a key factor this game. Especially looking forward to this one.

RawMelon vs Megazard - RawMelon and Megazard should be pretty familiar with one another's playing ability, seeing as how they go way back to ORAS. In terms of playing ability, this game should be relatively tight. Once again though, I believe RawMelon edges out his opponent in terms of meta knowledge and capitalizing on meta trends. If Megazard builds or acquires some fresh teams for this round, this game becomes much more interesting imo. However, Megazard was able to beat Pohjis, someone who has been bringing solid and interesting teams all tour. To me that in itself should give Megazard confidence coming into this matchup. Could go either way, but I'm picking RawMelon as the winner here.


Jmash324 vs. CrazyStevy - There has been talk about CrazyStevy becoming less motivated in regards to this tour, but I wouldn't expect anything less from them come game time. CrazyStevy is a solid player and has been fairly consistent in ZU. However, I'm picking Jmash as the favourite here because they've been facing elimination all tour long and have played really well to make it this far. Jmash hasn't had room for error all tour, and their teams have been solid as well. Going to have to go with Jmash.

CrazyStevy vs. Pohjis - Pohjis has been impressive all tour long; they've had an impressive showing in both playing ability and the quality of their teams. CrazyStevy has a tough opponent in Pohjis, but nothing that can't be overcome. Pohjis has spiced it up throughout the tour which is something to be wary of, and I think that gives them another advantage in this matchup. Not counting Stevy out, though I do favor Pohjis here.

Pohjis vs. Jmash324 - This might be the closest series this round. In this ZU setting, I think Jmash and Pohjis have similar playing abilities and quality of teams. Both players typically bring variants of offense, so I believe these games will come down to execution. Pohjis has had such a solid showing in winner's bracket and Jmash has still been impressive despite entering loser's in earlier rounds. Ultimately, this game appears to be very close to call so I'm going with my gut feeling and giving Jmash the slight edge.
 

MZ

And now for something completely different
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I'll be playing Rawmelon Thursday somewhere between 8-9pm est, and then czim later at 10pm est, so come 'round for ZU party night :pimp:
 
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