Aight so OMPL finally ended
a week ago, I'm here to share my teams and also use this opportunity to mention some cores I've been enjoying lately.
This post ended up long so brace thyself.
Pretty much every team was build around a tech that either would catch my opponent by surprise or just be really good against them generally. Not that the teams rely entirely on that and they're all good teams in other aspects, but I do value surprise factor in tour.
Team built around Heat Wave mglo Arch. I knew
Osake preferred safe teams/pivot balance. Arch was also broken at that point in time and Heat Wave crushed every reliable long term answer (no swampert and chomp were not long term answers) and would probably catch Osake off-guard. It also paired really well with Band Zarude offensively as almost everyone's answer to it at this point was Cobal or Corv.
I struggled to build for the first week so ended up ditching all my drafts and building a CorvBlissPert after seeing UnnerfTalon's post with the exception of running Bounce Chans to not get owned by broketran.
Shaky start but I knew the tech was gonna work so I played safe until Cobal was removed and the game was pretty much won from here. I also baited an early wisp on my roost Kiss in the beginning which was super valuable for the end game:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1354226846-92p1tmd3l8x7qvqsbef6n2mbtz1ti6upw
The Number Man is another pivot balance + breakers builder and his teams typically had excellent matchups against my HOs because he ran a lot of Pex, Unaware Chansey and scarf Fini. Taunt Gapdos is guaranteed progress vs fat in theory and you weaken everything with tkick + uturn. There's a couple of good offensive synergies I had toyed around with here such as Heatran + Kiss, Heatran + Barra and Barra + Whirlpool Pert which is
extremely heat since ppl always stay in with Cobal to taunt or get rocks up. In theory trapping Cobal or Fini makes Barra a nightmare to deal with. Despite having good tools to make progress this is easily my least favourite team of the tour, I couldn't figure out how to satisfyingly round it off and Kiss really shouldn't be on this team imo.
This game was my most unfortunate game of the tour, the very hype moment where the whirlpool tech works and I get an early lead from the get go while the chat goes crazy unfortunately did not happen as wp missed turn 1 and Cobal got the freest of rocks up. It was an uphill battle from here, tnm probably had his best build of the tour and I hadn't considered Talon in prep at all. My lackluster meta knowledge is obvious in this game as I had a couple shaky plays and there were also a couple paths to victory that I had failed to consider. But I did get to talk with tnm a lot after this and we continued playing together and discussing ideas for the rest of the tour so perhaps it was actually a dub in the long run?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1357502102-pfmj11trboaowfokfsxnbvr36tzz8l0pw
Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking
"wow motherlove, this team is mad heat I'm impressed!" and I'm glad we agree on this. I spend a lot of time crafting a quality team around mixed Kommo-o before ditching it because it was garbage,
building a webs team in 5 minutes and beating Osake about 12 times in a row in tests. For context,
Atha almost got smashed by Osake's HO the week prior and Noivern was a recent ban in AAA since the last time I had built webs (old sample) which made it a ton easier. I'm not entirely sure what the main even is here but the two main offensive cores are Lucario + Mence and Azelf + Blace. Blace and Azelf can both boom on eachother's checks to allow the other to sweep while also providing defensive utility against various stuff. Boom webs also lets you keep offensive momentum and prevent defog. Eforce Blace is a very potent Toxapex bait as if you can double around (Azelf -> Lucario -> Blace) to have Blace vs full Pex, most sane people would stay in and knock, not expecting to get OHKOd by eforce. Adapt Lucario pretends to not be mixed by taking life orb damage, before destroying intim corv or dshield mew with its special coverage move (steel beam also acts as pseudo boom on defoggers such as zapdos). God Mence is a grass spam check, zapdos bait (for Lucario) and all-around excellent mon. This set doesn't have roost because I wanted eq to get rid of Heatran faster and Lucario should take care of Corv and mew in theory. Bullet punch Lucario and Primsea Koko are the main ways I prepped vs flying types and weavile. I was honestly very confident in winning this week as this team smashed everyone in tests, had a lot of surprise factor and gave me a lot of room to outplay.
The matchup was actually quite rough, but Lucario came through big time and carved big wholes in atha's team which ultimately fell apart. It was a hype game:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1361695165
Geerat and I were coming up with goofy HO and were trying to find a good Corv bait. Settled on building with Galv Boomburst Rillaboom in a grasspam team. Team was build fairly fast and I challenged Osake to test, I sent Rilla on a swampert Uturn and Osake brough in his Intim Corv. Words cannot describe how excited I was at this moment, I invited Geerat to the game, OHKO Corv with Boomburst and slipped off my chair from all the moisture. I had build a bunch of "proper" teams that didn't seem to work outin tests and in my mind I had already pictured Rilla boombursting a corv in OMPL so decided to go for this team after some testing and polishing. The Metagross set is actually really good and won me a lot of end games, I'm still very pleased with that set. On paper I thought my main weakness was mew.
Anyway the tech did not work out and Rilla is actually super ass outside surprise factor.
Fc had a much faster team than I anticipated and I hadn't faced offensive Cobalion in tests so didn't realise how weak I was to it. Annoyingly I also couldn't kill Genesect from full with any of my mons. There was a major miss in this game as Cobalion dodged a Power Whip that would've OHKOd it and opened the door for Bulu (or Metagross if Prim gets any chip whatsoever). The end game would've been super hard for both of us so I cannot say who would've come out on top for sure but I think they were favoured either way. Shoutouts to them they had a very cool team.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1365802242
I actually improved on this team later on by removing Rilla and it's pretty decent, it's posted below.
Team built around demon mew which was yet unseen in AAA. I opted for life orb mew to beat pex and unaware Blob. At the time I couldn't figure out the best way to support demon mew (I know now, it's screens HO) and figured you would like a longer game with hazards up. Zarude and Blace were the mons I needed a hard counter to, I came up with ff Zarude as the most reliable way to beat Toxic Heatran and Koff Blace. It also pairs really well defensively with Physdef regen scarf Gapdos whom acts as my Zarude answer. Defensive scarf Gapdos was a set
PandaDoux used to run and it's a pretty consistent check to Zarude. While this defensive core is good in and off itself it's actually kinda hard to fit on slower teams that want harder check to stuff like koko and Garchomp, so the rest of the team was pretty awkward. I came up with Magma + idef press Heatran to get rocks on teams with bounce blobs. Nihi is kinda off shoot but it checks triage fairies (in theory), gets me tspikes up, can surprise cripple psychics, walls talon and covers Bug Buzz Volcarona. Koko offsets the ground weakness of the team. I built a gazzilion versions of this team before having something I was half satisfied with and it all looks fairly solid on paper, but the team is massively weak to psyshock fairies which is why I'm not a huge fan of it, kind of a shame because it's a pretty cool team otherwise.
As far as the game goes I ran into a 100-0 matchup and won without much trouble. Coincidentally
MZ also had a pretty cool steam engine mew set but that unfortunately didn't really work out this game
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1369976441
I started prepping for
Jrdn immidiately when the tournament started so this team was in the works for 6 weeks so I'm not gonna go through the entire building process but basically I knew I wanted to run Unburden because Jrdn had a habit of running garbage speed control. My defensive core is composed of mons that heavily pressure other defensive mons which helps pave the way for Necrozma. I opted for wisp Talon to cripple lando, chomp and pert because it kinda fit better than blitz on this team. Honestly this is the best team I've built this tour, I'm proud of it and I'm delighted to see how well it worked.
Really enjoyed this game, every member put in the work and Necro closed it off nicely:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1374365596
So here's the thing, at the beginning of the week I inexplicably started beating everyone with Charge beam Heliolisk? I was winning too much and too consistently for it to just be a stroke of luck, so I then spent the entire week building the best Heliolisk team I could muster. I then replaced Heliolisk because it's not that good and went with TC Zarude to abuse this insanely good Dhelmise set that may or may not come from unfortunate living conditions.
I kept a really tight control on the game and the double grass core showed its worth:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1379638662
I've been working everyone's name in the post for now but didn't say much here so... shoutouts queso :3
Second game vs Osake, I figured after spending weeks testing vs him that he'd be scared of Latios or Psyspam and run a rachi or smt. I started building around Specs Blace + Wandering spirit corv which would always make progress vs Osake's builds, but it made for teams that were too slow and I noticed
Think had been running Inteleon (which is a mon I had dismissed prior) who also does well vs psyspam prep in general. I quite like the defensive core on this one and corv gave me a pretty good answer to Latios which Osake kinda likes. This team is kinda standard but it's honestly very good, everyone makes progress but mostly azelf breaks apart defensive answers to Inteleon. It's a very fast team with a lot of pivoting so it allows you to keep control on the game quite well.
Call it good prep or smt but Osake did end up pulling up with Incineroar and regen genesect as psyspam prep. I could tell from preview that lando was water absorb and I don't think Osake expected that, his team started falling apart afterwards
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1382762488
Revenge vs FC, this team kinda just covers a lot of the stuff FC has been running this OMPL. Water absorb Talon is an
aesf tech, it traps fini so that Barra can win. Bounce meant I could also afford Incineroar which rounds off the defensive core quite nicely. I then needed hazard control and settled with Excadrill I don't remember why. The matchup vs moldy heatran is quite rough unless I can trick it, but overall the team had a good blend of solid gameplan and surprise factor that I've had success with. Since I built it about an hour before the actual game I didn't have too much time to play around. I was only hoping not to face a Zarude (which I ended up facing anyway) but we pulled through.
Very pleased about how I played this one, all the key turns I needed to get right to win I managed to get right. So even thought it didn't at all go according to plan and I had a big scare when mew got crit, I managed to walk away with my revenge:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1392802724
That about concludes the teams I've run in OMPL but I'll share a few other that I couldn't showcase any other way if it can help anyone get inspiration or just steal it for ladder.
Other teams
I put the ones I prefer first
Screens HO I used for OML, it's honestly mad good, I used it on both my AAALT ladder runs, do steal.
OML Bounce Celebi + Blace team I mentionned prior, fun team, pretty good vs fatter builds
Very fun E-terrain team, albeit not super consistent
The good version of Grass spam
That specs Blace + WS corv team I mentionned
Pre-OMPL team that somehow still wins all the time
Last OML team, built around aesf's idea of regen breaker + heal bell
This is just the Helio team when it still had Helio
Psyspam team
Think mentionned a Zarude + Zygarde team so I made this
Rain as best as I can make it
Magnemite stall
band Terrak + Future sight rachi
Boom Licky goated
3 musketeers 3 genies
I figured everyone needs a standard TR in their builder
Cinderace 3 hazard stall
The only time I've built with Weavile
I've called this team "All tapus" until I remembered Bulu existed :/
Think I'd like to see the grass spam one and the J-Rock webs one in samples pls pretty pls kthanku :3
At this point I had planned to share some of the cores I think are underrated and more ppl should try, but sharing shitloads of teams kinda does that already so I'll just tell everyone to use Fini + DShield Kommo-o + Gterrain support (optional) or just Coba + Dhelmise and call it a Terrak counter.
Don't ban psy terrain it's not broke and it would make me very sad. Kbye.