FBK INTERVIEWS
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Metallica126
Favorite Pokémon: Metagross
Most used Pokémon: Zoroark-Hisui
Most known for: cooking in ru tours. Leading China to their first ever RUWC final.
A lead on the feliburn chronicles had led me to the [REDACTED] hills, a rather small mountain range where I was told i'd find the "key" to the vault containing volume 1.
After a full week of scouring the place however, I was none the wiser on the possible location of said key. Clearly, the information i had been given was useless. Dejected, I gathered up my gear and prepared to drop the investigation altogether when-
THUD
A massive ball of spinning ice crushed the base camp. All of a sudden, it was like I was caught in a blizzard, with snow piling up everywhere, and icicles crashing down from above. This wasnt normal. These hills werent nearly tall enough for snowfall to occur! The snow was nearly knee deep now. I was running out of options fast, and running out of time faster. All possible escape routes had been cut off, and all communication lines were destroyed. Just as everything looked hopeless however, the blizzard cleared.
An ethereal spirit manifested before my eyes, its staff made of an icy rock.
"I am the keystone of these hills, and this snowscape is my warning. What is your business with me, traveller?"
Hah. Maybe the information I'd extracted was correct after all. Grinning, I decided to press the key for some answers.
Hi! How are you doing?
I'm fine,preparing for some real life exams and many tours
I see, good luck with your exams and tours bro. Would you like to introduce yourself to the fans?
Hi, I'm Metallica126, 19 years old from Beijing, China. My main tiers are RU and ORAS OU, I'm playing in SCL for the shoguns as a sub.
And what got you into pokemon in the first place?
My first contact with Pokemon was in kindergarten, back then the TV was screening pokemon that i know like Ash, Pikachu, Charizard and so on
Oh thats sick my first exposure to pokemon was through the anime as well lol. So then how did you pivot from the pokemon anime to ps! and smogon?
After some years, I played some pokemon games, emerald is the first game i touched. In China some edit versions are popular so i tried them. Specifically, I came across some battle videos on the domestic Bilibili platform and learned about Pokemon Showdown. Starting from 2018's summer i started playing PS.
After playing for over a year and getting in touch with domestic platforms, I learned about smogon through some players, so i created a smogon account in 2020.
What made you pick RU as one of your main tiers to play?
The player who introduced me to pokemon battling was called ash lovers, he was an ru main and got success in SM/SS RU ladder and had a friendship with mac3, but that time i did not touch ru(learning ORAS). In 2020 he captained team china for RUWC but team does bad, at that time i touched a bit of SS RU and helped my teammates. Real exposure to RU came in 2022, I was captain and drafted myself in Chinese Dragon League(it was the biggest team tour in Chinese Forum), I had been thinking about playing RU for some time. Around that period RUSD was going on so I watched many replays, built teams and climbed to top 4 on ladder, that was my first experience of the RU tier.
Thats actually quite cool. Since you really got invested in the tier during the transition from gen 8 to gen 9, how do you feel about both those RU metagames and are there any interesting differences you find?
I think both of them are interesting tiers, in my opinion a tier that can make bulky offense do well, that tier is good. I have some habits to building so it's not very objective, In my subjective opinion they don't have too difference, but sv's game is more offensive than ss, more cheese and less fat It's my feeling, and Tera.
Speaking of tera, how do you find the mechanic to work with, both while building and playing?
I like tera But I don't use it often, especially tera blast. I think tera is a good way to defensive counterattack, for example when thundy was not gone, I used dd tera ground gyara/salamence to block thundy's thunder wave. To be honest, I don't like to bring tera blast, but some mons bring it and are annoying like yanmega, gyara, etc. Some mons that bring tera blast are still healthy like volcanion and mag.
Thats fair honestly random tera blasts can be super annoying, especially now that stuff like tera blast krook has picked up. I do want to ask you though, what is your go to approach when building a team?
Pick a core mon, finding some teammates can cover most of the metagame,not easily lose to cheese and make me play comfortable. at last the team shouldnt look too ugly.
LMAO you're very correct about that "too ugly" part
To add some more, team should not be too passive.
gotchu gotchu
China's having a great run at this year's RUWC. How different is it to captain a world cup team in comparision to managing/playing in normal teamtours?
I will take any competition seriously. Building/stealing teams, testing and play are the regular steps, but world cup is more important. I have been watching Pokemon Team China's matches since middle school. At that time, I wanted to become a member on team China. At least being the captain this time has been tough, I'm building more than 80% of SV teams and preparing for my game,giving teams for SM, ORAS and BW, except ADV i've never touched so i only can help my teammates test, I really did quite a bit of the rest. Playing the World Cup mostly represents Chinese Pokemon players, so i think cannot lose face or lose too easy,but being captain was really a bit tiring
I mean hey, all that effort from you and the team has borne fruit because china have looked like a force this year. You've already mentioned a few players who helped you early on. Who else would you consider big inspirations from the community?
RU community or Chinese community?
Feel free to list both dw
I want to mention so many people, but i will share some players who gave me alot of help in RU. First is eifo. Before this year, I had never really taken SV RU seriously, but Chinese Dragon League was coming again and i would have to play RU. I had accumulated some interpersonal relationships during this period of competition and eifo was the most familiar for me, so i called him to help me learn sv ru. i also thank him for telling me to build more aggresive teams, when i want to bring some mon like scream tail, he stops me from using it lol. Because of him, I know this metagame and he changed some bad habits of my building.
Second is Beraldo, he is the captain of my RUPL team. Due to some reasons, I was a sub in Rupl for three years. In his team though i could show my talent. His aggresive offense building style changed my building habits again, he helped me build almost every team and gave many good suggestions to help me play comfortably. He is a very responsible captain, supports the whole team and gives many good suggestions to help all teammates, He is even more the GOAT of RU.
I also want to mention my French community friends(Astro, rarelyme, pcd, haxxsel), EviGaro, Lime, BluBirD and GoldCat in RU community but writing too much is not good. Anyway, these people have been very helpful to me.
Oh and who among the newer ru players can you see making a name for themselves in the community?
All my teammates in RUWC. I saw the traits of never giving up and unity from them. Due to language, time difference, and other reasons, it is not possible to be so domestically activity in smogon,they just lack a chance to show their talent. RUWC is a big chance to make more good chinese players touch smogon. I hope next year's rupl captain can consider them. In addition,ming,tsuki and chungler are good too, I have high expectations of them.
We've had some good talent breakout this year yeah. You've already talked about your teambuilding tendencies so would you like to share a team that you built with us?
Both in SV and SS?
Feel free bro. The more the merrier
https://pokepast.es/1115448cfadd1629
This is my best ss team building this year for my RUPL Week 2 game vs QWILY
Take us through the building process please
QWILY is a good player but their team was likely to be built by Franklin/Floss. My goat Beraldo gave me some suggestions like CB Flygon that could break Franklin/Floss's team, Jellicent+Heal Bell can do well into fat so a simple and rough team was pieced together. After that i used aero as my rocker and tsar as my spinner,they did well, aero is a good flying resist and can do defensive counterattack when the opponent switches in togekiss and sigi, tsar is the best spinner, pressures water types and gives the team knock, at last i used offense gross to be this team's plume answer. This team won in RUPL and SSPL when i sub in BluBirD. I also brought it to win vs GoldCat.
In SV i want to share:
https://pokepast.es/13632aee7810c442
this team's building was simpler and rougher. Suicune can 6-0 many balances, gyara can 6-0 many balances so i brought both of them. After that i fitted band krook to help double water overwhelm both water and grass types . When i built this team,dogi was still in RU so i used glowbro as my fighting resist, at last I used jirachi and cyclizar because they are very good. In this metagame i prefer tera blast flying over eq on gyara because thundy is gone. I usually don't think too much about teaming up, I just come up with ideas when I'm inspired . I really enjoy the teambuilding, especially when my friends win with my team, that's all.
True fr you feel great if someone you've lent a team to performs well with it. I was wondering, is there a pokemon in cg ru that you think is a little underexplored?
So many like gyara, it has good defensive typing to help setup and when it sets up it can 6-0 many MU but not many players use it.
Alright before we close I've got a non-competitive question for you. If you could bring a pokemon into real life what would it be?
Idk,some mons are too dangerous lol i prefer sylveon. Very cute, can bring good mood, and won't affect others(if you don't let it use hyper voice lol)
That's smart honestly you won't have to worry about thieves at all. Anyways thank you very much for your time and insight metallica it was a pleasure to interview you
Np i'm also happy about this
Do you wanna say something to the fans as a parting gift?
Next game is best and i will do better
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Feel free to ask
Metallica126 any questions you want!
If you have any suggestions, kindly DM me!
