My week 3 game vs TDK
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8uu-650655
I will try to go over this live on
twitch sometime on Tuesday
Lead and Match Up
View attachment 454939
I get basically the exact match up I was hoping for although I took a bit too many precautions which made my match up merely "OK", not necessarily good. The idea is that I have a breaker that can make progress all by itself in conjunction with Wish support so it lives forever vs fat. So Mamoswine vs no Ice resist should be good theoretically + he reveals non Levitate Weezing and specially defensive Skarmory later, but my issue is that Mamoswine can't come in easily against anything. However, SD Cobalion is also very good after Quagsire somehow dies.
Anyways, considering the length of this game, this won't be formatted as nicely but I will try to put as much content as possible on a turn by turn
t1 - I'm anticipating my opponent to lead with Tangrowth to try and make progress with Knock off quickly, Chansey doesn't really mind losing it's item vs stall (although Power Whip and body press hurt a lot more), so I am planning to use Chansey to scout it's set and paralyze Tangrowth to help my odds later.
t2 - rocks help progress obviously
t3 - I will SD here to permanently scare Mantine but my lack of Stone Edge means I will just try to bluff it
t5 - Chansey better than Tang on Quagsire bc I can't heal Toxic on Tangrowth
t6 - probably could have statused him, my idea was I didn't wanna get corrosive gassed but I am planning to let Chansey get knocked by Tangrowth anyways, staying in might be better, but Toxic damage does hurt because Natural cure won't work vs Ngas weezing, I am pretty happy to see it still though because it makes Mamo extremely good
t8 - i could have scouted for toxic but assumed it was Haze mantine since that's common on stall, not sure he really needed haze with quag though so maybe could have scouted
t11 - i actually did want slowking burned so i could avoid being toxiced
t14 - the way to make progress? knock stuff off to make mamo's life easier later, getting rid of skarm's lefties is obviously huge for mamo
t16 - pretty lucky toxic miss here for me although he gets me later anyways as i can't really tolerate spikes
t17 - this is called a pivot btw, when you try to bait your opponent to use a move to get a mon in safely by switching twice in a row - switching to cobalion can't beat skarm but it baits bpress which slowking switches in safely in, i still end up getting toxiced so whatever, i do learn he is spdef skarm at the end of this though
t25 - which is what motivates me to flame, he probably thinks he can take a flame and heal later, which he can, so i just flame right away to put him in 2hko range and force him out. if i defog first, he could just spam roost and let poison slowly kill me - move order matters.
t30 - scouting to see if chansey is faster than tang to activate natural cure before gweezing comes in
t34 - same thing but scouting his chansey now - i end up thinking he is faster but later on he reveals its a tie
turns until t42 - the cycle here is actually benefitting me - all that's happening is me slowly bleeding out his defogs, he has to switch up strategy which he does now by staying in with slowking with mantine. not to reveal sets, but slowking can't touch mantine.
turns trying to burn skarmory until t53 - this was important for mamo to sweep later
t60 - later on, i would try to icicle crash/knock here since the recover is beyond obvious, almost no risk to go for flinch/item removal, but i didn't feel the need to go for it yet, protect is a bit of a surprise
t62 - i let quag heal but get rid of the status on my chansey finally
t67 - sludge bomb gweezing doesnt kill tang anyways although its a bit risky considering he has ngas, worked out tho
t70 - i'm sure the wish was unpleasant for him to see, it gets rid of all the progress he made on cobalion, but he probably expected it considering how i was playing
t73 - i anticipated mant but this works kekkity
turns until t79 - i was trying to get a burn on skarm again although didn't get it now, defogging eventually became more important
t93 - losing rocky helmet aint great, i didn't really know what his moves were, never guessed it was sd tang until the end, i'd try to respect his tang more but i have little else to take the knock anyways
t94 rlly didn't see double knock coming but it makes sense as it was risk free, he had quag in the back anyways
t100 - bit surprised he let me knock his mantine, i was trying to catch skarm to pressure it here i think, that said, he probably though i was already pressuring him and he had to make concessions OR he could keep SR off permanently anyways
t103 - actually quite critical - do i let tang get toxiced in exchange for getting rid of chansey's eviolite (and mamo gets even stronger?) - i choose not to since toxic is obvious and cobalion gets a tad more guaranteed progress here. yes a knocked chansey is great but tang put in a lot of work too
t106 - he didn't have to give up the helmet on tang, unsure why he did
t112 - his skarm is para and I have rocks, finally tryna make progress with mamo - maybe he should have stayed in with chansey here but getting rid of protect quag's leftovers is good for me, i can 2hko it later with eq
t118 - pretty interesting that he evaluates my SR is more annoying than his 2 spikes, it doesn't put anything in range afaik, quagsire is still 2hko by eq even with rocks off, but i suppose it makes his play easier. in general, stall would prefer to play with no hazards than mutual hazards because switching to counters is more important for stall
t128 lucky scald burn although he didn't have to go tang, i assume he wanted progress with it, but my cobalion does counter his set and he already took my spiny headgear off
t132 and 133 - i get some progress off mantine, not sure why he let me, maybe he was trying to toxic me in which case i agree with his play although i got lucky, i did say i thought he was haze before though and he never toxics the whole game
t134 - tried to get leech seed recovery
t142 - the sequences with SR now are more effective since he might be full para on a defog turn
t158 - efficient aromas are hot but mamo can predict to get a kill finally and i do so, however, mamo is too weak now and needs wish support, probably will get toxiced later
t168 - which i accepted on this turn although i dodge the toxic entirely - i decide to slow play it and attack later, not wanting to trade eviolite for toxic
t178 - i just want a bit of damage on quag to put it in 2hko range of icicle crash
t184 - i could be more ambitious here, i doubt quag stays in after i try to giga its ass
t194 - not much to say here but to be clear - after skarmory dies and still at this point, I have an overwhelming advantage. I would expect to win this position basically all the time against anyone so it's extremely disappointing it went wrong for me
t196 - probably could have softboiled in case i miss twave, harder to heal chansey, but still not that hard
t200 - the big error is here - now cobalion cannot be healed on chansey anymore and it's a bit too difficult for me to keep chansey low. i had to keep cobalion above 100 hp in order to have a safe advantage. at the end of this turn, i think most, but not all, of my advantage has slipped. it might have been better to go chansey, even on turn 200, which is a sad concession but still maintains a big advantage. or tang on turn 200.
t204 - should giga to keep mantine low, poor play by me
t209 - tough 50 50, but tougher for tdk - he gets it right
t210 - another tough turn for him, he gets it right and now slowking is hard to heal, but still over 100 hp
t211 - another tough turn for him which he gets right again
t212 - another very good turn by tdk which lets him heal chansey, i heal something too but it's not as important as i cant heal cobalion. i decide to launch a mamo attack instead
t214 - an echo of turn 200 - damage on chansey that i can't really preserve in exchange for one of my win cons being critically injured, by toxic now, knock off superior here
t215 - yet another good turn by tdk although it was pretty safe since icicle crash wont ko, at this point, i don't think i have an advantage anymore, i think tdk has a small advantage
t219 - a tough 50 50 for me now - i want to heal cobalion but am too worried to die to stoss and decide to get a mamo attack
t220 - finally get some turns right starting here
t222 - no clue why quagsire was sacked here, however, it makes more sense when i realize his tang didnt have sludge bomb, maybe this should have tipped me off, my tang is actually a big threat for him, i think i reclaim a big advantage here again
t226 - i believe tang is so good i heal it over mamo (again, too scared to heal cobalion) - but he starts outplaying me again
t234 - smartly prevents a mamo attack
t249 - i get another mamo attack and he correctly predicts around it
t253 - he starts outplaying my tangrowth again
t259 - yet another chance to knock his chansey but he still fucking outplays me, it's so infuriating, at this point, may as well just flip coins instead of making my own choices, nobody can predict a fair coin
turns until 264 - finally i start outplaying again and keep weezing low + get my own rocks up
t275 - should i crash again? maybe. but chansey could come in and then mantine could come in and my mamo could no longer heal on anything + it's toxiced, so i basically only get one more shot with him AND i don't get a singleko with it. not what I wanted to have, thought I had an advantage still so I could play it safer.
t276 - i rlly should use a coin at this point
t277 - salamence is idiotic, i forgot i lost hdb
t305 - i think i was quite a lot worse up until this point, but letting me para mantine gives me some hope to both kill it with para hax but also like, it's just much less reliable, i dont think he had to let it get para. he had many chances to go tang and heal with regen
t310 - he lives life on the edge for whatever reason, i get the one full para i needed and my posiiton seems okay again, although not amazing. i want chansey to die on something as i wish, then cobalion gets healed by forcing something out.
turns until mamo dies on t318 - very depressing, i get basically the bare minimum from this interaction, knocking chansey off, at least this puts it in cobalion range if it's slightly hurt, which means i can try the wish tactic on turn 310
t319 - not a bluff, just a panic by me as i make the move with probably 1 or 2 seconds on the timer
t320- defog to die and set up the tactic i talked about
t323 - this isnt making progress, chansey maybe better
t327 - try for the tactic and don't get it
t344 - chansey a bit obvious - what i could try here instead is go cobalion. he actually has one problem in addition to the cobalion sweep, my tang might sweep him if chansey dies as well, although i would need to play perfectly against synthesis and my remaining sludge bombs or get a lot of para hax.
t354 - idk if iron head or sd (or even cc) is better here, i may try to calculate it a bit more in depth later, regardless, i don't get enough and i lose
Overall...
It was a very difficult game made more painful because I knew I was much better at more than one point, I was extremely happy both right after Skarmory and right after Quagsire died. Definitely the critical error in my view was on turn 200 after Cobalion went into Stoss range without sufficient concessions from TDK. But besides that, all the credit in the world to him for playing extremely soundly against my Tangrowth in particular, winning I'd say at least 80 or 90% of the 50-50s my play induced. Also credit to him for keeping Chansey's Eviolite until the very end of the game, which was related to him outplaying Tangrowth.
This game also unfortunately lost my team the week. Part of the disappoint is numbed because were already 0-5, although that's not a particularly good reason, but to be honest, it doesn't numb it that much. I've seen 0-5 turn to 5-5 before and that's no longer possible because I played worse this game.
Despite that, I did have a very difficult start to this tournament, not necessarily because I played the top 3 seeds in the first 3 weeks (although that's part of it), but because I always had difficulties with TDK, Poek and PDT anyways - before this tournament, I lost to them respectively in uu classic, uu champs, and uupl. So while I probably would have been happy before the tournament started to go 2/3 in the group, I am pretty disappointed now after a loss.
Next week I'll have to pick up my efforts again, I do think these posts help me compartmentalize and forget about the loss until my next game, which will be brand new of course. Thanks for the support to my friends.
[SHO] Poek vs LNumbers [BRE]
- hasn't been very impressive but he'll be trying at least
[GIB] bb skarm vs Highways [FOX]
- better builder and more consistent battling
[DYN] KSt3ve vs Lyss [TER]
- above
[TMS] pokemonisfun vs TDK [PLA]
- TDK has had to face lackluster teams so far and I think if he tries to pull something like Golurk it will fall flat against the active community member pif. That being said, if pif doesn't pull matchup like last week I don't see him winning. 
!
