posted with approval from Arcticblast dont fight me
Two years ago, US West took it's first title, led by DOU Villain [redacted], all time great manager Fespy, and DOU Legend Stax and featuring future US West Staples such as ESM, myself, Lemurro, and zom. One year ago, a less enthusiastic US West took an exit in the semifinals after a sequence of unfortunate events. Today, US West has won its 2nd title in three years. It took a lot to get back to this point. I figured I'd make a very extensive post and go over both the story of how West rebounded from last year as well as the story of SV's development over the last year- I may be a heavily biased narrator but I hope in the future when looking back at this era this post can provide good contextualization for the way the tier developed (as this is often a question I have about prior metas). Full disclosure: I will be providing many more teams from the later part of the year because these are obviously of more interest and I have more to say about them because I can actually remember building them. Public teams that had an influential effect on the tier will also be included with context (with proper credits of course). Without further ado, let me start at the very beginning: the end of last years world cup and the release of the second DLC for SV.Chapter 1: DPL X (January-March 2024)
The DLC 1 era of SV ended in a very offensive state, with many of the final games of DWCOP IV and SCL III featuring very offensive Torn/Lando-T/Flutter/Wellspring teams. This trend was minimally affected by the release of DLC 2, as many of the new mons were unable to stand up to this archetype. The most important additions would end up being Incineroar, Raging Bolt, Archaludon, Gouging Fire, and Iron Crown. We'll discuss how these mons affected the tier throughout the last year, as all of these mons had moments where they were at the height of metagame development.With DPL set for a very early start date in January, we were assured to get a large amount of metagame development. Very quickly, it became apparent that Deoxys-Attack was ridiculous for clicking an expanding force that was beyond overpower compared to the power level of the rest of the mons in the tier. However, Flutter Mane was also topic of contentious debate, having been arguably problematic for months by this point and narrowly dodging a ban by one vote back in October 2023. Both Deo-A and Flutter were widely agreed upon to be banworthy. Flutter Mane's suspect arrived first, and it was banned in early Feburary. Deoxys-Attack soon followed, being banned by a huge margin in early March. These suspects would go on to define the tier going forward, particularly with regards to Flutter. Flutter Mane was easily the number one pokemon in the tier and had a huge amount of influence and centralization associated with it. Following its removal, mons like Raging Bolt, Archaludon, and Ting-Lu all received a massive buff in no longer having to contend with the massive fairy damage it outputted. Deo-A's ban would have less widespread effects, as its usage wasn't particularly high to begin with. However, its ban meant Iron Crown took its place as the premier psyspam option and meant Iron Crown would see significant usage for the rest of the year.
Personally, I was very supportive of both tiering actions, having become extremely burnt out on the tier after building the majority of US West's teams in the preceding world cup. However, the changes would not be enough to restore my passion for the tier I had spent pretty much all of 2023 playing. This would go on to be the beginning of a long break from actively playing SV DOU. I had already not signed up for DPL (and OSDT which started around a month later) and would therefore not be super on top of the metagame for a fairly long while.
Some teams I built from from this era:
(I no longer remember who these were built for)
PTPL
DPL
apparently I only have one team (I think zom used this)
Chapter Two: OSDT IV (February-June 2024)
I didn't play in OSDT but this trophy tour, the biggest DOU individual, contained some of the most significant metagame developments of the entire year. This tournament/time of year primarily led to the development of two archetypes that would go on to remain key players for the rest of the year. The first of these archetypes, snow, had existed in various forms throughout SV, mostly notably prior to this tour in the form of Fangame10's Frosty Fanroom:
(credits: Fangame's signature)However, the time around OSDT led to several new variations of the archetype, pushing it further into viability. Some of these versions used Snow Cloak Articuno, taking after Tyo's winning team from the Utrecht special event. While Articuno didn't have the raw power of Kyurem, it's high bulk and access to Snow Cloak allowed it to capitalize off of strong Tera Ice Blizzards, as well as teams choosing to run it as a tailwind setter. However, Articuno's Snow Cloak led to some funny moments and kickstarted a months-long campaign to remove evasion abilities from the tier. Regardless, the Snow archetype was highly effective at beating down Tornadus/Landorus compositions (hereafter referred to as Genies). Archetypes that were highly punishing of Genies would see usage throughout the year since Genies was always towards the top of the usage and was simply the most effective and consistent offensive core. Probably the most influential Snow construction was an Ann team that Frixel spammed en route to his OSDT win, a team that eventually became a sample:
(credits: Ann/Frixel/it's a sample)This team saw a lot of success throughout the middle part of 2024, and it's not too difficult to see why- this is a generally bulky team that's able to consistently generate game-winning positions for Kingambit while using Kyurem and Landorus' complimentary offensive coverage to break through teams. However, I never actually felt this team was much stronger than Fangame's version, although it was maybe a little bit more balanced in the way it was constructed with the teams typings.
The other archetype that emerged as a strong contender around this time was Gouging Fire/Ting Lu Physical offense. As mentioned earlier, Ting-Lu benefitted greatly from Flutter's removal and the presence of essentially no fairy types. This archetype was also (generally) very strong into Genies, as Ting-Lu's Vessel of Ruin made it very difficult for Torn/Lando to make progress and these teams often carried Chien-Pao. A good example of this archetype comes with another of Frixel's OSDT-winning teams, which also became a sample:
(credits: frixel/it's a sample)I actually just hated this archetype completely. It felt very durdle whenever I used it but was just very annoying to play against. However, when I started playing the tour more actively around the time of World Cup this year, I discovered this archetype wasn't that scary- more on that in a bit...
Some teams from this period- I didn't really put a whole lot of effort into paying attention to the metagame during this time. I played in like pspl and blt but I barely put in any serious prep and mostly just brought teams i thought were funny- this was not particularly successful (xD) but at the time i didn't really care because I was busy with other stuff + was kinda waiting for the scl/dwcop time of the year to put in more effort
PSPL:
this is the only team i remember, it was really funny and won the game
BLT: (I will only post the teams that were well built)
xD
(if anyone really wants the teams from this they're in this paste but the only interesting thing in here is specs archaludon)
Chapter 3: The Derby Metagame (May-August 2024)
A few weeks before the beginning of DOU's third teamtour were relatively busy. First, there was an Archaludon suspect test. Archaludon had emerged as a contender for one of the strongest mons in the tier following Flutter Mane's removal. Arch rain was really powerful but was heavily commital, whereas some other non-rain sets had also seen usage, such as a somewhat-popular Iron Defense Body Press set. To be perfectly this Iron Press set was pretty terrible imo. If these non-rain sets had been stronger, Archaludon probably would've been banned, but the general consensus was that not enough metagame development had occurred to show that Archaludon was broken rather than simply a strong Rain staple. As it stood, the support just wasn't there for a ban and Archaludon remained in the tier by a very convincing margin. This wouldn't mark the end of the Archaludon debate, however. Far more optimized rain teams would pop up during SCL and these teams make for a much stronger case for banning Archaludon than anything that was being run at the time, although the mon being essentially limited to rain makes it a lot less splashable and it remains highly unlikely to be banned imo. Regardless, one of the dumbst Archaludon teams being run at the time was a Schister creation that would somewhat consistently use baton pass to pass calm boosts from Espathra to Archaludon:
(credits: schister's dpl team report)This team was really dangerous and was widely cited around the time as one of the primary examples of a broken/uncompetitive arch team, although other variations such as a former bagel sample and a Ratpacker psychic seed Archaludon were also strong.
The other main event for US West (and myself) during May was the Los Angeles Regional Championship which deserves some discussion because I feel like it and it helped lay the foundations for this year's iteration of US West. The regional took place in the one restricted Reg G format and was a few weeks after Keanu had his first big regional result (top 8 at the Indianapolis regional with ESM's Zamazenta team). Prior to this event I really wanted to day 2 because I knew it was well within reach and I had missed it off of resistance the previous year at Fresno with a team that didn't have tera types. That being said, I kinda refused to put time into prep but settled on Zacian relatively quickly. Schister and I were pretty sure Scarf Lando-I was gas even with minimal games in the tier (we were right). The night before I left for the event with Rayenith I found a Suicune in my boxes in game and I needed a water type. Here's how the team was formed:
--> I needed speed control --> 
--> Gouging Fire was bad --> --> Pelipper was bad --> the final team: This team was insanely fun to play and was enough to get me into day 2 and finish top 16 at the regional which was one of the highlights of my year. I'm ngl this team is kinda bad and has no amoonguss mu, However, this year I didn't really care too much about placements besides day 2ing so the best part of the regional was of course getting to see my friends that I see once or twice a year. It was at this event that I met 5ft5 after playing him in one of the early day 2 rounds and srvoltmike while hanging around with Keanu towards the end of the event (I'd actually already met mike through some challenge cup tour but i didn't really pay attention to that tour so this was essentially my first introduction LOL). I knew west was going to have many roster slots open after last year's debacle + several people retiring so I knew pretty much right away that I wanted these guys to be on the team. The event was overall a W for US West, with zom placing 2nd and ESM and I both placing in the top 16.
Anyways yea May was a busy month. When Derby finally started, it would mark a much more offensive metagame than the ones that had come before it. Regidrago/Gholdengo/Tornadus teams finally came together into a more formal archetype and performed very well throughout the tour, particularly in the hands of players like Waffle (who had an undefeated tour). Generally, I think one can get a get feel for the way this metagame was over the summer this year by taking a look at two bagel sample teams from this time:
(credits: bagel/it's a sample)
(credits: bagel/it's a sample)Both of these teams had a heavy offensive emphasis and feature a Farigiraf, a mon that was seeing an uptick in usage thanks to its synergy with Tornadus offense, allowing Torn to more freely set tailwind in the face of the big three fake out mons (Rillaboom, Incineroar, and Iron Hands), while also allowing these offensive teams to have a slower trick room option, often with Ursaluna-Bloodmoon. I don't have a whole lot to say about this part of the year because the main things were these more offensive Regidrago and Sun teams, as well as a continuation of previous OSDT and DPL trends. There were also a few individual tours in this period but I pretty much just used samples because I still generally not in the mood to touch SV, as I knew I'd need to spend a lot more time on the tier in the fall thanks to SCL and DWCOP coming up and being the main tours of the year for me. That being said, I did build a few things for my team in derby:
This was kinda just a generic offensive team that I gave to 5ft5 and others as a team to ladder with and learn the tier in preparation for world cup. It kind of just has the pieces to do well as a ladder team and win games if you know how to pilot it: fake out, redirection, multiple forms of speed control, setup option. Farigiraf was doing well at the time and although I wasn't a super big fan of it or Rillaboom's matchups into the metagame this team was good enough and I would probably still use it as an introductory DOU ladder team since I'd say it's relatively easy to pilot.
I was kind of interested in resist berries at the time and Kingambit seemed really strong except for its ground weakness- fire is also a good tera for it except for keeping the ground weakness. I can't really remember why it's low kick but this was just a fairly strong genies team with a tr component.
This was a fun snow team that used heatran and Galarian Moltres to decent effect as a way to cover matchups that are problematic for snow. Built this for Jonas but I don't think he ended up using it. This is a pretty solid team- it would probably have to be Kyurem now instead of Articuno with the snow cloak ban by the ideas here look solid even in today's metagame- I'm a big fan of sub heatran + a bunch of guys to annoy Lando-I.
A genies team featuring an aggressive SD hearthflame. Kind of just offense.png it tested fine iirc. A bit of a precursor to some of the Genies teams we'd build in world cup as this team just felt really powerful if you hit your moves.
alternate version to the above farig/bloodmoon team
An early derby meta hyper offensive snow team- pretty fun to use and probably holds up at least a little bit. (I don't remember the specific context of this team but I'm pretty sure I won some throwaway games with it across individuals that i didn't build for)
Scanning the Kingdras server for this section made me realize the insane number of natdex teams I haven't posted- if you're interested in that tier there may be a plethora of team pastes coming soon!
Chapter 4: SCL (August-November 2024)
I had the pleasure of teaming with nails for this scl. We had an ok-ish season but I don't think either of us really had much fun with the tier during SCL. There were only a few teams I built that I'll post here (because these couple teams were built mostly by myself). I was probably not as tapped into the metagame as I should have been at this point since I was kinda busy with school. The SCL metagame saw a few major shifts. Most notably, Genies (once again) found a new way to get itself countered, with Chien-Pao rising to the forefront of the metagame. Pao's rise essentially washed away some of the metagame changes from derby, with a lot of those Genies teams getting kind of owned by offensive Pao/Hands/Gholdengo compositions that helped propel Spurrific to a 8-1 regular season record.Another key development was further development of Ting-Lu teams, such as the teams GMA discusses in this post. I won't go into too much detail here because there's similar ideas to the ones that I discussed earlier but GMA's post does a great job describing how this archetype functions/developed.
On the other hand, rain teams finally became more fleshed out, thanks in large part to the rediscovery (?) of Sinistcha. Sinistcha had seen usage in the DLC 1 metagame but had largely faded into obsurity following DLC 2's release and many of the metagame developments throughout the year not favoring it. However, it turns out that allowing your Archaludon to live forever is pretty good! Sinistcha became included on several rain iterations, such as this zee team that Spurrific used multiple times to success in SCL:
(credits: zee- also a sample now)This style of rain team was a bit of a continuation of earlier rain teams that used scarf Landorus. Sinistcha's typing synergizes excellently with Archaludon and allows it to get greater defensive value out of stamina boosts, allowing Archaludon to feel even more oppressive if you don't position carefully around it. Overall, this is a solid rain team that simply wins- we considered it a few times in DWCOP when we really needed to win a game.
I'd say the team nails and I most succeeded with building was another rain iteration that was more centered around the TR mode, adding a P2:
This team was cool for a few reasons. While lacking a Landorus for offensive capabilities, this team focused more on the water type damage- however, it is worth noting how this team struggles a bit more into Raging Bolt/opposing Archaludon as a result. However, in return, this team becomes very strong into the rest of the metagame, with Archaludon being as slow as possible to allow for a) maximum TR benefit and b) Incineroar to click parting shot to set up the rain before Archaludon clicks Electro Shot. Wisp Incin ended up becoming a set I really liked as a result of this team, as it allows the team to be even more anchored down into physical mons. However, I was never really fully satisfied with this Basculegion set, so I had other versions of the paste, such as this one with CB Basc or later versions that would revamp more of the team and use Kingdra instead (more on that later).
Some other teams I had significant input on (that I can specifically remember) were:
This was a snow team that was simultaneously heavily committed to Ice attackers and mixed with Genies. This team struggled heavily to deal with a tera'd Wellspring when Nails brought it but I think there were some ideas here. An earlier version I also liked was:
which had specs Kyurem and Glimmora for further disruption.
Another scrapped team that I personally liked but was a little inconsistent with matchups was
Which was kind of our attempt at looking at the Ting-Lu stuff. This pult set was interesting so I would use this team for some tests in World Cup later, hence its inclusion.
This was the team I brought in the game where I subbed in in week 9 vs Spurrific. The game didn't matter much so I just brought something I thought was funny but Manaphy was laughable during the game, failing to break an Archaludon with two tera fairy +3 pixie plate DGleams. Don't regret bringing it but also don't see myself using Manaphy again any time soon...
I vaguely remember building this sometime later in the season but it never saw the light of day. Kind of a cool 6, I remember Latios seemed really fun into whoever we were playing and could side flip turn to proc Diancie's policy. That's about all I remember lol.
Chapter 5: The Run-up to DWCOP (October 2024)
Finally, the fun part. For a lot of us on US West, this is generally the biggest tour of the year and much preparation goes into the tour. However, entering this tour, there was a lot of uncertainty. For one, I hadn't seriously tryharded sv in almost a year, basically since the end of the previous world cup when I got super burnt out from building all of our teams. Further, I wasn't much of a fan of the metagame and neither was a lot of our players (especially Schister which was creating a positive feedback loop between the two of us where each of us was hating on the metagame excessively for months for varying reasons). We also had a bunch of new players for whom it was up in the air how well they'd adjust to DOU from vgc. However, we had a lot of things going for us. Our roster was really strong on paper and basically all of our players were relatively fresh on play so there wasn't much of a risk of burnout. I started building for the tour a few weeks out, mostly to get back into teambuilding form. This ended up leading to a lot of dud teams or teams that were funny but just didn't have a chance to get used. First, I'll share these teams and then I'll get more into the full story of the regular season.I've included a small description for most of these but not as much as will come for the later teams that were under more real consideration for usage. I'm posting these teams because there's some fun half-finished ideas here that some people might be interested in + they helped lay the groundwork for how I ended up building many of the teams during the tour.
A fun sun team dreamed up by esm + myself. Scarf Bolt just barely gets over Chien-Pao and can do really funny stuff with tera fire weather ball (such as ohko Lando-I). Salazzle is a weird pick but one that genuinely seemed to close out the team the best out of all the options, compressing fake out with the ability to support other attackers on the team. Overall this was a whacky team that was basically straight out of US West 2023.
MEGA DIANCIE LARP. I spammed this team to decent success prior to the tour. The logic was that Diamond Storm is the best move in the game! This was the beginning of a trend that will soon be explained...
Similar to the last team, this team was also an exploration of fast Diancie. This one didn't have the same level of pop as MEGA DIANCIE LARP so it didn't see a whole lot of use in tests, whereas the previous team was used in tests for months.
More standard Spectrier Genies team, this time with a more standard Diancie set to give the team another dimension.
Another crazy team. I think it originated from the same VC as the Scarf Bolt team with the idea of setting up Jirachi to the point of it just completely cleaning games. It's definitely very jank and probably would not have passed the tests to be brought to the tour but it won some tests (otherwise it would have probably been deleted from the folder).
(dragon cheer) 
The idea here was using Luvdisc for entrainment swift swim and soak to give Archaludon even more ways to win. In the worse case, this is just a rain team with 5 Pokemon but if you can position it swift swim Archaludon is game ending.
An adaptation of an idea Schister had that I thought was interesting but could be stronger. Curse Goodra is pretty fun and hits some cool calcs with Gyro ball while being difficult to remove. Schister thought this was really good and I saw it do some good stuff so I added Comfey to help suppor the Goodra even more and even click Giga Drain to proc Sap Sipper.
<- I'm not sure why this is still in the folder but it's funny so I'm posting it
Actually one of the first more real teams I built for this tour. Definitely has some questionable mons choices but was mostly inspired by Reg H with a couple better Pokemon to round out the team. Garganacl think he's on the team but rest of it is fun!
A team I was actually pretty proud of but never got the chance to load because it was simply built a few weeks too early. Ninetales has such a great deep movepool and Howl seemed underexplored. Garchomp becomes pretty solid into Genies with AV, and access to liquidation gives it more offensive pressure into a few mons. Moltres and Heatran, similarly to the previous snow team in the derby section, round out the team by providing bulkier options.
/ 
A recreation/reworking of Hugo's infamous fullroom team, this time with scarf Hoopa because a certain user inspired me.
I was really obsessed with the idea of soak + archaludon, which manifested one last time with this team. The idea is clicking soak can be done on both the opponent and potentially on Archaludon. This is understandably gimmicky but a cool idea I still think could have merit. Walking Wake was also an interesting inclusion to help seal this teams matchup into sun.
I was interested prior to the tour in Corviknight since its typing is so incredible and I figured it could maybe be cool for snow. The results were a little middling but this team was pretty cool.
I actually consider Tinkaton to be a semi-real mon, with a good typing and multiple good abilities and a move that's strong enough to let it do a few things into mons it has a good typing into. This team was using it primarily for support but Grimmsnarl's swagger + own tempo allows it to put in a lot of work into frailerC teams. This was a cool team- I usually don't like Grimmsnarl but this team tested fine. Raging Bolt can be really annoying behind screens which was the primary reason this team had value.
I was interested in trying scarf okidogi because I figured it could get a lot of work in just clicking strong gunk shots next to Pao and being immune to intimidate. It's a cool set with a lot of potential but struggles with picking a move to lock into a lot of the time. Eventually, during world cup I realized I might as well just use sneasler for this role instead and that led to some good teams but this was the start of all that.
A cm Sini paste that I forgot I built. I think big root has a lot of potential with CM, allowing Matcha Gotcha to do even more dumb things. This team is probably trying to do too many things at the same time and it's a bit of a shame that I never really revisited the Sini set, I totally just forgot about it until now- could be cool!
What if Ninetales wasn't the one clicking the Aurora Veil? Bundle is an interesting mon with a speed tier higher than the entire metagame and I was interested in using it more for support. I think specs versions are probably just better after testing this- prior to world cup I was testing a lot of specs Ninetales because it had seen some usage in VGC but eventually I kind of just wrote it off after it disappointed me a few times. The conclusion is Ninetales should still be the one clicking screens :thumbsup:
I was interested in the synergy between Valiant and Ting-Lu, with Ting-Lu helping aid Valiant's abyssmal spdef and Valiant providing coaching support for Ting-Lu. At the time the team actually felt pretty solid, but mainly because Hearthflame was putting in a lot of work- this would be the impetus for my interest in Crit Hearthflame in the early stages of DWCOP.
Chapter 6: DWCOP Pools (early november 2024)
As the tournament started, I had a few thoughts. The main question was still how I was going to build for a team that had a lot of players that didn't enjoy the tier and a few players that had minimal experience with the tier in general, especially considering I was not a fan of the tier myself. The main answer I came up with? Diancie.I was pretty convinced Diancie was broken after the testing I had been doing in the previous weeks. Having access to such high defenses, one of the best moves in the game, and (most importantly) tera at the same time felt really powerful in many of my games. It had a few negative matchups where it couldn't really do much and was basically fodder, most notably Ghold and Arch Rain, but these shortcomings seemed pretty reasonable to compensate for in the builder. Lando-I was also annoying for it but can still be damaged heavily under TR so I wasn't as concerned about that, especially considering the many metagame developments that had arisen to punish Lando throughout the year. I would go on to build a lot of Diancie teams throughout the tour, to pretty decent success, although I had us avoid using it in significant amounts in semis and finals since we'd loaded it a LOT in the previous parts of the tour.
My next thought was that alternative Mew sets were really cool, particularly ones that leveraged icy wind support to help deal with Lando. I thought up this very interesting AV Mew set that I was really into for a few days:
View attachment 699027
- 252 SpA Tornadus Bleakwind Storm vs. 252 HP / 144+ SpD Assault Vest Mew: 63-75 (15.5 - 18.5%) -- possible 6HKO
- 112 SpA Mew Icy Wind vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Landorus: 160-192 (50.1 - 60.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
The third set I was interested in ended up flopping really badly across several of our early games in pools. Crit Hearthflame with Focus Energy seemed really strong into the metagame but we just kept losing with it so I essentially just banned us from using it after like the first 10 games. Hearthflame is still a really cool mon with a lot of upside but I think setting it up is just a little too difficult in a metagame dominated by Bleakwind Storm.
Anyways, with these ideas in hand I went into the builder for DWCOP. I scheduled all of my games within the first week to have more time to devote to helping prep the rest of the team.
eragon vs 1platanazo
I scheduled this game very early and needed to come up with a team fast. I just wanted something to click with and somehow I quickly threw this together with minimal effort. Scarf Mew seemed like a vibe and I got the win for west's first game.
eragon vs binu
Due to time zone differences I made the mistake of scheduling this game for like 7 am and then stayed up late. The team was originally the AV Mew set but I foolishly changed it at the last second after finally seeing a replay from my opponent. Changing the set and playing poorly cost me this one but this team was definitely interesting prior to the change. I dropped to 1-1 and west dropped to 1-2 after Zom had rfn'd with a bad team.
There were a few more games in the meantime, pretty much all of which went bad for west. I hadn't been super involved in building for everyone else as I'd been building for my own 3 games but by the time I played next we were 1-4.
eragon vs rilo and mike vs charmdi
This was a really successful Diancie team that paired Diancie with Snow to help deal with the Landorus issue. AV Bloodmoon was critical to the team, giving it a much needed backbone into Ghold and Arch (the team is still weak to these but is pretty solid into just about anything else). This team was perfect for pools, with multiple ways to play the game and play against opponents who on average probably wouldn't have a whole lot of DOU experience. I'm a big fan of WP Kyurem, it had gotten me some nice wins this year and I felt the team needed a little bit more of a punch. Vacuum wave from the Bear can Self-Proc it but it's not uncommon for your opponent to do it for you. Anyways, this team got us some critical wins but we were still in a really bad spot.
Following Mike's win vs Hopeless, we were actually in a really negative spot at 3-7 and a lot of the teams that had been used were simply not succeeding. We needed to quickly right things to make playoffs I decided I needed to take a bit of a more hands on approach with the rest of the games. This is when a lot of the more serious building and I made an announcement to try to refocus the team.
5ft5 vs staraptor44
We subbed zom out cuz he wasn't feeling the tier so it was time for the goat to sub in. We liked the look of Diancie into the scout so we threw together a relatively standard paste in call. Acorn was like "we should run SD Incin" as a joke but then I discovered Incin had baton pass and the rest is history. The idea was basically if you manage to give your diancie +2 attack you probably win even if it's a bit difficult to position. This was definitely a funny gimmick but we got it done- SD even got clicked in the game!
Lemurro vs Seawolfmikes
Lem was pretty much self sufficient but he asked for the rain paste from SCL with P2 (that I linked earlier) and basically just changed one tera (basc to grass). The team is broken so he got the win pretty easily- Archaludon moment.
Keanu vs Tyo
Another snow team with Heatran + Moltres. Classic. Keanu changed the Diancie to body press and maybe took off flip turn on bundle but it was 99% accurate to the original. Specs Bundle is really fun on snow and I'd definitely consider it a real option, the speed is really nice and physical attackers really struggle to deal with it in snow behind veil. Sinistcha + Goltres is a classic duo and Keanu got a solid win where Diancie put it a bunch of work.
Shiloh vs Ratpacker
The only game AV Mew actually got brought. This team was actually really cool but shiloh didn't really get a chance to play the game with this one so unfortunately the technology didn't get a chance to shine.
Mike vs Ann
This was one of my favorite teams we came up with in this tour. I was originally looking into Okidogi for mike for this game but sneasler just seemed really good into the scout too so I switched it up and added some generally bulky mons. Schister suggested electabuzz in the last slot and the team kinda just came together. We went back and forth a lot on the fourth move on sneasler, we gave it fake out cuz the move is broken but previous iterations had acid spray, coaching, and throat chop before we eventually decided fake out was just better. This is one of the most scuffed games of DOU I've ever watched but the team is a lot of fun to use even before considering the dumb stuff Sneasler is capable of doing.
Shiloh vs Papiloco
Some version of Diancie + psyspam seemed really good into Papiloco so I went back into the sample archives and modified an old Actuarily sample that had double terrain. Once again AV Bloodmoon put in work next to Diancie and this team got Shiloh on the board after a couple of unfortunate preceding games.
Schister vs Entrocefalo
Schister was feeling slightly uninspired so I looked at the opponents scout, briefly determined that fast bear looked goated, and build this pretty quickly. Pretty much just a standard-ish offense team with specs Ghold and schister was able to pilot it to a win. I can't remember why this Incin specifically was taunt but I did a lot of messing around with Incin sets in this tour depending on what I saw in the scout- if people had a lot of setup stuff I wasn't afraid to slap on taunt or wisp, in this case taunt.
Keanu vs QOB
I don't specifically remember building this but it's in my folder so I think we (being myself + kunal) mostly worked off of a draft keanu had and changed a few sets. This team is basically good offense mons paired with cm bolt for another way to win games. We were kinda interested in booster cm bolt and sub lando seemed like a call here so that was kind of the changes we made. Keanu was playing really well so we just had to make sure what he was using was solid and it worked out.
After putting a lot more effort in and getting some good wins, we pulled off a fantastic recovery and ended up winning 12 out of our last 14 pools games to comfortably make playoffs with a pools record that surpassed many of our previous ones (15-9). I was really proud of how our team recovered and things were looking up for playoffs, especially considering emilio was about to come off the bench. Here's the rest of the teams I built during pools (again less description for each):
I was inspired by misty seed zapdos in sm to build grassy seed fezandipiti in SV as a really bulky tailwind setter that could sustain itself over time. Schister and I had thought up this P2 spread as a way to annoy Genies and the rest of the team aimed to take advantage of those two mons. Cool team, this was probably better than a couple of the teams I brought to pools but I never had a scout that seemed optimal for it.
The quintessential AV Mew team. I didn't really like the teams overreliance on special offense but otherwise was a fun team that I used a lot during tests during pools.
Clicking coaching next to Diancie with a mon slower than it is broken. Meloetta is also a really specially bulky trick room setter which further compliments Diancie. I love this team it's hilarious and honestly pretty ok.
<- inspired by chris numbers 
One day I was walking between classes and thought of specs Necrozma. It actually has a funny calc where it ohko's Lando I with photon geyser so I filled out the rest of the team and ran some games with it. Schister also provided some input, this team is aight but probably not the best way to flesh out this idea (I got bored and moved on).
no comment
Rotom has some cool matchups into Genies + pao which is neat because most mons aren't great into both. This is a pretty good team but it was a team that wasn't built for anything in particular so unfortunately I forgot about it LOL.
Chapter 7: Quarterfinals vs Brazil
After a great recovery, we were set to play Brazil in quarterfinals (we were like the 3rd or 4th seed or something I forgot). This was a busy week- I had multiple midterms and Sacramento regionals to build for in addition to my game. I don't actually remember a whole lot about the prep off the top of my head but I'll just paste whatever's in my builder. For this week, a lot of people just built their own stuff (a lot of people were going to the regional so not a whole lot of attention was paid) so I don't have a whole lot but that's ok because there's also a regional to cover 
:eragon vs brg1
For world cup, I was playing brg1, who'd come out of basically nowhere to put up a 3-0 record in pools. I decided that it was just time to load broken rain. I was never super impressed with the Basculegion that had been on the other rain team so I decided to try Kingdra. I had two versions (one with sini, one with amoon):
/// These teams both felt really good but Sinistcha felt more consistent. Diancie is an unconventional choice for rain but allows the team to function even better in TR which is really nice for Arch/Sini stuff. By this point I was in full "spam Diancie" season although I was somewhat aware I could probably not get away with this for much longer. I ended up queueing into some ting lu stuff and the game felt unloseable (funny how ting-lu is a ground that loses to arch! Definitely a good pokemon!)
We did a fair amount of looking into our self scout following pools for this week and noticed that we were winning pretty much every game we brought incineroar- a trend that would continue for the entire tour. Kunal determined that the best six in the format was:
(credits: Kunal)and I pretty much agreed. Kunal threw together the above 6 and this would be kind of our default team to test against for the rest of the tour. It's just a Genies team with Ghold for some extra insurance for some bulkier teams that could be annoying and Incin/Hands/Sini for positioning. As it turned out, we gave this 6 to Emilio for his semis game and he clinched us a semis appearance with the deciding game.
There was also a regional to prep for. I ended up deciding on a bit of a half-assed Whims/Bloodmoon team like the day before the event with Harcanine to seal the sun matchup because I hate the move sleep powder! Arcanine turned out to be terrible in my run and I brought it to like one game but the team was still pretty fun to play:
I was able to day 2 with this team which was fun but mostly it was just cool to meet up with the rest of the west guys, which was especially funny since it was the middle of the tour. We had almost the entire team there except for people for whom it was too far to come and then we had like 7 of us day 2 which was super funny until none of us top cut xD. Definitely a 10/10 regional experience though! I won't say I knew we were going to win the tour after this event but the vibes were definitely very good, as we moved on to semis after a relatively clean quarterfinals victory. However, one of the other matchups went to tiebreak so there was a week to kill so I made a few more teams that never got the chance to be used.
Not entirely sure what this was but this is basically just DiancieTeam.png.
I knew we'd play Europe next so I thought it'd be funny to build the most anti-hugo team of all time- the problem is that this team commits to the bit so hard it ceases to be a good team.
I took another look at eerie impulse P2 because I really like the set concept. This team has the standard Incin/Amoonguss/P2 balance core with Bloodmoon and Ghold as the primary attackers.
Chapter 8: Semifinals vs Europe
After a relatively stress-free week against Brazil where we were able to reach a comfortable lead early on and cruise to victory, we were in for a bumpy ride against Europe. Europe is always one of the strongest teams in this tour so right off the bat we knew this would be a tough week. However, I don't think I could have predicted just how crazy this was set was so I'll try to convey the excitement as best as I can. From here on out, I paid heavy attention to every slot, as we well into the tour by this point and I was pretty much fully locked in so there'll be a fair amount of commentary here.First up was Shiloh, who wanted to play as early as possible and was queued into Fran. Chien Pao + Dragonite looked really powerful into this scout but there was some Glimmora usage, so I modified a Kunal team and added a scarf Iron Crown that was specifically to tech for the Glimm matchup, with Psyshock to capitalize off of Sword of Ruin:
Unfortunately, certain other members of west were haters (smh) and doubted that Glimmora would come and argued that Scarf Gholdengo would be better. I pretty heavily disagreed because I thought the team really needed the Crown or else it would auto-fold to Glimmora, but I didn't feel like fighting over it so we made this alternative paste:
This team was fine but I felt it lacked the sauce that made the original team work. Sure enough, we queued into Glimmora and the matchup was significantly worse than if we had Crown to get around sash Glimmora. However, some clever game pathing from Shiloh's end and a double protect at the end of the game allowed us to advance to 1-0. This was a lucky win but we soon payed the price for it.
Next, Lem would play and lose in a close game to Yoda. Soon after, I was set to play against Amaranth. To be honest I'd had a bit of trouble figuring out what I wanted to run this week. I'd started out with an interesting scarf Kyurem idea:
This was honestly fine but I'd just run rain the previous week so it didn't really seem like the call and I also wasn't super excited about running it. I'd also thrown together this Power herb Arch Genies team:
Realistically I should have loaded this. It had all the necessary tools and a fun offense style that would've been fine into the scout and been a change up from what I'd been loading. For whatever reason, I just decided against this one which was probably a mistake. There was also reg h brainrot, a team that I'd built in the aftermath of Sacramento after taking inspiration from the typical reg H dnite set:
However, even though this had tested well I wasn't super confident in it and its whack Diancie set. I was anticipating my opponent, Amaranth, would probably tech hard for Diancie after I'd brought it like the last 5 tour games I'd played. I still wanted to bring Diancie because the mon is just so stupid in this format and I kinda wanted to greed it one more week before putting it away for finals. I was pretty confident Gholdengo would be coming so I decided to test Wide Guard stuff and settled on Gurdurr, whose speed is just low enough to let it support Diancie with coaching under TR. AV Bax was another cool mon that I settled on, choosing tera Electric to tera in front of Gholdengo and be pretty annoying for it. This was probably my favorite team from the tour and it was testing really well, even into the Ghold stuff I was worried about. Unfortunately, this was one of the unluckiest games I had in a while and both of my mons that were insurance into Ghold got crit and we dropped to 1-2.
Next, we had Keanu's game to build for. For whatever reason, we thought Registeel looked really good into Madara's scout, so I initially built a team with fast registeel to attempt to capitalize on this:
However, Keanu was struggling to pilot this team in tests so we instead threw together an aggressive Iron Crown team the night before his game, which would hopefully be simpler to pilot and be more consistent with matchups across the board- the teams of Madara's that looked good into Crown looked weak to Hands and vice versa:
However, I don't think we were able to spend enough time refining this team and it didn't help that Keanu queued into the most botted matchup of the entire tour (dragon dance ground move roaring moon, which completely sat on this team). We dropped to being down 1-3 and things were looking dire. Luckily, we had Mike, ESM, Emilio, and Schister playing the next day so a comeback was entirely possible.
For Mike's game, I really like the look of scarf Drago into Ninjasnapple's scout. I built two versions of a snow team with Drago:
I was pretty sure the hands version was better, and after some testing Mike came to the conclusion. Queueing into glimmora with this 6 was the main thing I was worried about but Mike was able to pilot this team very well after getting games with it and got this win. We were now down 2-3.
Mike was yapping about bringing Hugo room so I built Hugo room but epic:
I mostly just had the idea to try to use Hyperspace Hole in conjunction with expanding force, which in Generation 9 means using the little Hoopa, which is ok because it's still very strong, is slower, and has a more fun typing.
I mostly just had the idea to try to use Hyperspace Hole in conjunction with expanding force, which in Generation 9 means using the little Hoopa, which is ok because it's still very strong, is slower, and has a more fun typing.
Next, Emilio won with a pretty standard Pao/Gouging Fire team he made, evening out the score at 3-3. Unfortunately, ESM lost a close game against Flying Beagle, which was enough for me to essentially ban Iron Crown from being on the table after Keanu's game. This set up maybe the most stressful match of the whole tournament (it was the only elimination game we faced). Schister was playing against Entrocefalo, who he'd already beaten in pools, with US West down 3-4.
Smudge was interested in Hydreigon after seeing a successful vgc team with it so I built this out:
This saw a bit of testing but ultimately Emilio built his own team this week so it was pretty unnecessary.
This saw a bit of testing but ultimately Emilio built his own team this week so it was pretty unnecessary.
Once again, Schister had been unmotivated to build against Entrocefalo so I'd built something for him. This team was pretty heat but we were a little bit afraid to bring it after seeing the teams they brought into the rest of us:
This team was testing pretty well- Brute Bonnet replaces Amoonguss on this team as a way to help account for Gholdengo usage and add a damage source. Bundle is really dangerous in this tier so I'm a fan. Ultimately, we decided it was better for Schister to use comfort for a deciding game like this, so he loaded a Keldeo team he'd been holding on for months, and got the win in one of the games of all time to force tiebreak.
