Project CAPPL IX Team / Set Dump Thread

[shnowshner]

approved by shnowshner

With Semis beginning, we might as well get this thread up and going. I won't reveal too much of our own builds yet just to be safe, but I will share a now-illegal team I made that may or may not have cost Joeshh his CAP 32 Playtest run.

desc

This squad was a direct reaction to me seeing the infamous "OU Quick Claw" HO team that generated a lot of buzz last month, and asking, "how would we do this in CAP?" The general goal of these teams is less about trying to cheese with Quick Claw (though that does happen) and moreso using broken Light Clay Screens to enable your bulky setup sweepers to bulldoze the opposing team. Quick Claw isn't optimal, but it is funny and can give you a very sudden, irreversible advantage over your opponent to keep the snowball rolling when you otherwise may have failed.

Iron Hands @ Quick Claw
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 88 HP / 216 Atk / 204 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Wild Charge
- Ice Punch
- Swords Dance

Stolen from the original team, with the EVs messed around to have better Special bulk. CC and Wild Charge are run to maximize damage and Ice Punch covers most everything else. Not exactly sure what Tera Ghost was for but it is funny: Flying or Fire could be better options in this slot.

Hemogoblin @ Quick Claw
Ability: Pixilate
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpA
Quiet Nature
- Boomburst
- Fiery Dance
- Psyshock
- Extreme Speed

The set that makes this team illegal. Boomburst was strong enough to nuke a ton of Pokemon off the map, especially if you accrued a Fiery Dance boost beforehand. Psyshock is there largely for random AV Pex / AV Glowking / Blissey. Extreme Speed still comes in clutch here with Tera Fairy as it gives the team extra security versus fast threats like Iron Valiant and Dragapult.

Kingambit @ Quick Claw
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Kowtow Cleave
- Iron Head
- Low Kick
- Swords Dance

It's Kingambit. You can run this on any team that isn't stall/semi-stall and it would work.

Venomicon @ Quick Claw
Ability: Stamina
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hurricane
- Sludge Bomb
- Dark Pulse
- Nasty Plot

I wanted to have fun with this one and felt that with Hemogoblin the team was too Ground-weak. Venom adds a lot of defensive utility to the team, lives a stupid amount of hits under Screens, and can be a real pain to wall out when Hurricane can Confuse targets. It is somewhat Gambit food, but the rest of the team can handle that mon anyway. Tera Dark blocks incoming Psychic attacks and boosts Dark Pulse, which is great neutral coverage against most Steels, especially Gholdengo, and was nice to catch opponents off-guard. The flinch chance is huge too and provides yet another way for you to outskill your opponent.

Ursaluna @ Quick Claw
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Headlong Rush
- Facade
- Crunch
- Swords Dance

Guts with no Flame Orb is silly, and you could definitely justify Body Slam over Facade here as such. I just stole this from the original team. It still enjoys switching into status for the team and that's always helpful.

Astrolotl @ Light Clay
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Reflect
- Light Screen
- Taunt
- Fire Lash

Grimmsnarl is often preferred for its Prankster Taunt, but Astro felt like a nice Taunt lead as well for many reasons. It's naturally fast and can Taunt most setters, has Regenerator to provide additional flexibility (perhaps setting Screens multiple times), and has Fire Lash, a great move that lets it build up pressure on whatever is infront of it. It's worse into stray faster setters and Hisuian Samurott, but has more of an offensive presence than Grimm while adding additional defensive utility thanks to Regen + Speed.

 

[velvet]

Despite the weeks being short they were pretty good ones this cappl, didn’t play for the first two weeks but the last three were pretty intense in the kitchen. Unfortunately we are out but hopefully next year your streak continues anew Fragments. Ty to Da Pizza Man and Concept Everything that helped cook teams in nearly every slot, if anyone wants chefs next year for either CL or PL these are your guys.

Week 3 (SS):
https://pokepast.es/88216668e1fa58cd

The whole idea for this team is to basically revolve around pyroak as during prep i would notice the usage of ferro/pex throughout their replays. Argh for phys hitters, Scarf lele moment, the bird that couldn’t seem to land its moves, etc. Didn’t expect caribolt from my opp but luckily pyroak served as a check as I had nothing else for it. I think the team feels fun to use and luckily got me the win for this week.

Week (SS):
https://pokepast.es/0159f88d47d5c8ac

For this week the whole getup was to have pult come in as much as possible and act as a surprise non specs set to hit mons like heatran/fini/pex/lando/ferro/libra/argh all at once (made it modest during the game). Before going in I knew I’d have a weakness to clef so I packed both equil + kartana as both are amazing in the tier for different reasons. Originally kartana was sd lo but last minute I had changed to toxic band in case I ran into zapdos which did end up happening. Unfortunately pult was not revealed for that week since zap + kart sorta took care of their team instead.

Week 5 (SS):
https://pokepast.es/23c20fc36a22d7cf

For TNM I knew right away to load in ttar as in their past replays they have a history of using ninetales HO, so that was p much the goal for this week to win vs HO. I wanted to bring the pult set back as I didn’t reveal it the previous week and felt it can still serve as a surprise factor for this week also. For ttar I also wanted it to be something different from reg band ttar, I wanted to surprise any chomp/dnite/lando usage based on their replays. Argh + lando are back again to do their part as usual here. Lastly for zera I wanted to just be able to set up and hopefully sweep if I did face HO which luckily it did, added blaze kick here to help better my matchup vs caribolts as that was pretty popular throughout this cappl for this Gen.

Ty Fragments and Clementine for drafting me this time around, we were close for sure but Ik next time if we team up again we will win it.

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Week 1:

(SV)

(Used by The Strap) (L) (No longer legal)

This is about the most barebones Psyspam team that you can really get. I wanted to bring this as I noticed that Joeshh's record against Psyspam wasn't really great, and I figured that people would be spamming Hemogoblin this tournament (Which, shockingly enough, was what happened). Ultimately though, I do think that I sort of overestimated just how much Hemogoblin gets crippled by Psychic Terrain, as it ended up putting in a lot of work against this team during that match despite Psychic Terrain being up for pretty much the entire thing.

(Used by Elfuseon) (W) (No longer legal)

Fairly basic rain team all things considered. We decided fairly early on that we were going to bring Rain in this slot, and Concept Everything gave me the idea to try Zamazenta Crowned on the team and I think it ended up turning out pretty well. The EVs on Zamazenta-Crowned allow it to OHKO Jumbao with Behemoth Bash after rocks while also ensuring that it ouspeeds Adamant Chien-Pao.

(Used by Inder) (W)

This was probably one of my favorite teams that I've built this whole tournament. Hazard Stack is really strong right now thanks to Hisuian Samurott, and Hemogoblin largely finds itself right at home with the archetype, as it heavily benefits off of spikes support wearing down some of its more common switch-ins, and it also has tools to at least threaten most hazard setters in the metagame, even if it can't really beat them 1v1. One thing I was worried about with this team was that I initially thought it was quite weak to book (And I still do, but not to the same extent as I originally thought), but this didn't really end up mattering too much in the match since our opponent didn't end up bringing it. I guess if I could do one thing to improve the book matchup though, it would be to make Rotom Tera Electric and replace Thunder Wave with Discharge or Thunderbolt. Also, this will be a recourring theme for pretty much every team featured in this post, but the Hemogoblin EV Spread is outdated. I don't remember what it did off the top of my head, it was just copy-pasted from the set I used in the inaguration battle with spoo. Also, while the team is admittedly on the slower side, I do think that there are enough forms of speed control (Between Scarf Gholdengo, twave support from Rotom-Wash, and Hemogoblin) that this isn't a super big issue for the team. Overall, this team is overall quite effective and quite fun to pilot, and I still have it in my builder as one of my go-to teams for matches.

(SS)

(Used by ChrisPBacon) (L)

I decided to focus on Saharaja since I noticed that a fair number of teams that Fogbound Lake brought in the past didn't really have too many super solid checks to it outside of Arghonaut, and I decided to put Rillaboom on the team as a secondary wincon both because it beats Arghonaut pretty easily and because I wanted grassy terrain support so I could better keep Saharaja alive during the match, since it was also serving as my only real form of removal on this team. I do think this team turned out fairly decent for what it was, even if it wasn't really my favorite team, and I don't think our loss in this slot was a result of it being poorly built, more just that we loaded into a not so great matchup against a fairly solid player while Chris was still trying to get a grasp on the meta as a whole.

Week 2:

(SV)

(Used by Inder) (W)

Going into this week, me and Concept Everything sort of decided to go with the idea of spamming Iron Hands as we noticed that many players on the NFTs tended to bring teams that were weak to it. I already knew in advance that Concept Everything was likely going to build Bulky Offense in the other slots, so I decided to go with Trick Room to try to shake things up for our opponents. The Iron Hands set I used was stolen from a pre-HOME team that was built by Garrett for CAPCL, and I decided to go with mixed Hoopa-Unbound because I found a fair amount of success with it when just dicking around in roomtours and in the couple tests that I did. The EV Spread on Hoopa-Unbound ensures that Psychic always OHKOs Arghonaut.

Week 3:

(SV)

(Used by Elfuseon) (W)

Double Dragon Hyper Offense. I really don't have a whole lot to say in regards to this team. I really just wanted to bring Miasmaw since this was around the time where it started showing back up on a lot of teams, and the rest of the mons in this slot were basically just picked with their synergy with Miasmaw in mind. Also, I went with Azelf as a suicide lead, and I do not remember why. Might of just been that I wanted something with Explosion, but your guess is as good as mine.

(SS)

(Used by velvet) (W)

This is the original version of the team that velvet brought for this week that I built, and has some changes from the version she actually brought (which is in her post).

• Weavile is Adamant as opposed to Jolly, and has Triple Axel over Icicle Crash (I think Icicle Crash is overrated garbage)
• Pyroak's EV spread is different
• Torn-T has the Assault Vest set instead of the Nasty Plot set
• Tapu Lele is Modest as opposed to Timid, and has Aromatherapy over Future Sight

Originally, this was built for ChrisPBacon's Week 2 match, as we figured that many of RSQ's teams tend to be weak to Weavile, and Pyroak dealt with most of the stuff that Chris was worrying about (Ferro, Melm, and PhysDef Heatran were the big ones iirc). However, we later decided to go with a different team that featured the same core and sort of shelved this team. Later on, I decided to just pass this to velvet since she wanted to bring Pyroak that week and I already had this in my builder.

Week 4:

(SV)

(Used by Elfuseon) (W)

This team was designed pretty much solely with the intention to cteam Taka as hard as possible. Up to this point, every team that Taka has loaded in a CAP Tournament has been some sort of variant of HO. At first, my plan was to bring Unaware Spam, but the main issue with this approach was that this was right after Miasmaw's biggest week in the tournament, so I instead decided to get a bit creative. I decided that I would stick with the plan of packing something with Unaware, but to ensure that it could deal with Miasmaw, I decided that I wanted to go with an Unaware mon with Ability Shield. Dondozo was the best (and pretty much only) candidate, since of all of the major Unaware mons, it's pretty much the only one that isn't super reliant on its item. I figured that this would be a good way to catch Taka off guard, and if that plan failed, I could always fall back on stuff like Hemogoblin and Kingambit which also tend to do decently well in to HO. Whoever was building for Taka that week must have subconsciously knew my plans though, since this ended up being the sole game in his time playing in CAP Tournaments that he didn't load HO. Thankfully though, Elfuseon is a fairly good player, and I think that this team was built good enough in general that we were still able to clutch the victory in spite of this setback. Also, the Dondozo ended up doing literally nothing that entire game, which was kinda sad.

(Used by The Strap) (L)

Somehow Strap managed to talk me into building with Delphox, and this was the result. I went with a Sun team because I figured that's were Delphox would shine best for fairly obvious reason. Malaconda was used as the Sun Setter because I really didn't like how the rest of the team (Apart from Tusk I guess) faired into Galarian Slowking, and I didn't want to make that problem worse by loading up Jumbao. Honestly, while the team is kinda gimmicky, I don't actually think it's all that bad, and while it didn't win the match, it still had a fairly decent showing (I repeat, one Sludge Bomb poison on that Argh and that game was ours). That being said, I think if I am ever sort of put into a position where I have to build a lot of the teams again, I should probably put my teammates ideas under a bit more scrutiny. But hey, at least it wasn't ORAS Emboar. Also as a disclaimer, this team might not work as originally showcased in the match soon, really depends on when the fix for the Eject Pack/Magician interaction is implemented on Showdown (Fuck Gamefreak for not implementing it like how we did by the way. This interaction was legitimately really cool and the day it no longer works is going to be a sad day indeed).

(Used by Inder) (L)

I'm going to be honest, I'm not a super big fan of this team. When this team was built, it was fairly late into Saturday, and I was fairly busy this weekend so I was largely trying to rely on Concept Everything to build something for this slot, and when I saw that Concept Everything didn't post anything in the channel for this slot I sort of panicked and put something together fairly hastily. Overall, I think this was a mistake on my part, as I really don't think that the end product turned out super well. I guess my main issue with the team is just that it's really passive, which largely just comes down to the fact that most of the offensive Pokemon that are on this team aren't super hard to apply some pressure towards.

Week 5:

(SV)

(Used by The Strap) (L)

This team will forever go down in infamy as the team that was nearly 6-0d by Lead Book, and it's honestly kind of a shame, since I don't really think it's all that bad. While this wasn't really caused by the team just being completely unable to deal with book more so as Strap playing that game questionably, for the lack of a better word, I do think that I could have made the book matchup for this team a bit better in hindsight. Anyways, I wanted to build with Cawmodore for this week as I noticed that for pretty much every game since Week 2, avarice has brought the same basic team structure in all of his games, all of which tended to lack some sort of check to the infamous bird. I went with Tera Fire instead of the standard Tera Flying because it made pretty much made Fire-types unable to deal with Cawmodore outside of like Tera Ground Iron Moth behind screens or something, and I went with a Suicide Lead Great Tusk to try to bait out a Dragapult Flamethrower that we could use to set up on. Most of the rest of the team is fairly standard stuff that you would find on CAP HO outside of maybe having a Miasmaw or something. This team performed fairly well in the couple of tests that I did, so it's honestly a shame that it's showcase in the tournament was as botched as it was. The EV Spread on Great Tusk allows it to always survive a Close Combat from Mixed Iron Valiant.

Misc Unused Teams:

(SV)



Quick Claw Spam. This was built during Week 4, which is pretty much right when this strategy sort of started taking off in OU. I was considering planning to pass this to Inder, since he was the only SV player at the time I didn't at least have an idea of what I wanted to build for their slot, but Concept Everything shot the idea down nearly immediately (I put the screenshot of this in the spoiler tag since the exchange is kinda funny). In hindsight, he was right, as I really don't think that strategy as a whole has done much outside of be a weekly fad and something that that the dorks in the OU Discussion thread constantly argue about.

Spoiler

Geeta's team with a Lechonk. This team was a joke team that I passed to Concept Everything once we knew that we were out of the tournament, and I wanted to build the stupidest thing that I could think of and see if he would end up loading it. Originally this was going to be a complete carbon copy of Geeta's team, but I forgot that she had an Espathra, so I needed something to replace it with, and Concept Everything brought up Lechonk as a joke so that's what I decided to go with. Also, I didn't bother with any of the Tera Types because I figured that if it was brought, Glimmora was always going to go Tera Rock anyways. If for some god forsaken reason you actually want to load this team semi-seriously, here's what I would recommend:

1. Lechonk: Steel
2. Gogoat: Water
3. Veluza: Water
4. Avalugg: Fighting
5. Kingambit: Fire
6. Glimmora: Fairy

(SS)



Ghost Spam Balance. This was originally going to be the team that I would pass ChrisPBacon for Week 3, as we both figured that Mimikyu Stardust tended to not really run all that many Ghost resists, so going with Ghost spam would naturally give us a fairly decent matchup. Both the team that I built for him and the team that he actually brought were made pretty much entirely separate from each other, and the fact that they ended up being very similar to each other was a coincidence.



This was in my builder for pretty much the entire tournament, as was something I was intending to Chris pretty much the first moment we figured that loading Stall was going to be a good idea. Originally, I proposed the idea that we would bring Stall during Week 5, but I sort of forgot about this team and ended up working on something else (Which I will not be posting since I intend to keep it a secret for now). Because we ended up deadgaming this slot, this team was never featured, and even if this game were to be played, I think we ended up deciding to just bring the same team that velvet brought vs tnm instead. Anyways, I built Stall with Bulky Dragon Dance Dragonite instead of the utility version since I already had a Heal Bell user in Clefable, and I sort of wanted to go with something that could maybe catch my opponent off guard in the middle of the game, plus Bulky Dragon Dance Dragonite offers a fair amount of Defensive utility anyways, so it's not really out of place on a team like this. The Amoonguss was originally a Toxapex, and I forget the reason why I changed this.

(ORAS)



This team was mostly just built for fun, and also just so I could have something in case I was ever slotted in ORAS (Was thinking this was a possibility later on since Kate wasn't doing so hot in the tournament, and I didn't really know how familiar either Concept Everything or Clementine were with ORAS CAP). I don't really remember the building process for this all that much apart from the fact that I just really wanted to do something with Mega Garchomp, and sand was the most obvious route to take for that.

 

[SHSP]

Week 1 vs Clem-

Coming into week 1 and looking at my last season (and prior) loads, I wasn't entirely sure what to bring and decided to push outside the box a bit. I've never been a big scizor user, but it came to mind early in the week and iterating on it definitely made a solid team I was happy with. Sciz is a lot more fun than I remember it being the last time I used it 80900000 years ago.

Week 2 vs Lily-

Wanted to cover two things mainly in this slot: Reunitar classic sort of structures and rain. I'll take legitimately every opportunity to run Gallade in these kinda spots, and ebutton Pex+turn on Gliscor to bring it in pretty consistently, alongside the Z-Koko. Another team I like a lot, though I 100% fumbled in game against rain.

Week 3 vs QWILY-

I knew I wanted to HO this week after the two earlier brings QWILY loaded, and I knew it had to be something that wasn't Test HO going up into a very aware Spoo and D2. Enter this, probably my favorite build of the whole tour. Cawm in SM is a weird mon, but it definitely was there as an aggressive fish, and I was also able to make use of another one of my favorite HO options in Mewnium Mew.

Week 4 vs Pannu-

Pannu is a nightmare to build against. This was easily the week Wulf and I worked on the most, running through plenty of ideas- Mega Latios, Hoopa, other Kit teams- before settling on an edit of a Jordy paste that we figured would have a good matchup. Kit's definitely underrated in SM, even if it only almost does everything I want it to do. It's really great into most of the Psychics pannu was bringing a lot of (helps cover Medi and the special ones in a single slot, and Shadow Strike makes Reuni's life pretty hellish). Unfortunately I got read to filth by pannu and Spitfire and this game was decided on preview (check out the RMT for that week the team's incredible btw- https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sm-cap-pink-tape-a-fairy-spam-bulky-offense.3724220/)

Week 5 vs Kenix-

Really needed to snap the loss streak I was having here to have momentum going into a potential playoffs series, and honestly I had no clue what I was going to load here for a while. Paj was something I hadn't ran all year and fit the profile of what I was looking to load into, and pairing it with Maw was a really fun starter. Sylvi mentioned running sub punches and I ran with it, absolutely one of the more fun sets I've ran.

I'll let pannu post the final two teams if they want to, they were absolutely the engine behind semis and finals brings.

thoughts and shoutouts

The more I sit to write about this season the less I can figure out what to say. Comparing this year to last year, I definitely felt like I regressed in a number of ways through the first half of the season. I was playing like crap, SV was not clicking for me, and I wasn't sure I was being the manager we needed. I have to give massive props to the team to keep their heads straight and push through amazingly, it was genuinely one of the best environments I've found myself a part of and 100% helped me in a million different ways, both in and out of the game.

shoutouts in no particular order (might be draft order idr)

clean - Having you back for this season was amazing after how epic the Rajas were, and I'm beyond glad you had such an amazing run this time through. There are really very few praises I can't sing here- you're a damn hard worker, amazing in and out of the game, and really are just a joy to talk with and be around.

Fogbound Lake - I think clean called you the protagonist in one of the playoff weeks, and that absolutely sums it up. 100% the engine behind so much of what made us great, I'm ecstatic you're finding so much success. Nobody deserves it more than you, man. I still get stressed when you Dr. Strange your timer down to 15 seconds tho LOL

Joeshh - It was so fucking fun teaming with you, dude. I know the season was a little hit or miss but you 100% helped across every SV slot, innovated, were super super positive and just an awesome dude. Eventually I'm making a CAP-adjacent lolesports shitpost server so you and lasen can make fun of my NA darlings lmfao

Sylvi - You stepped into a really tough role with us having... lackluster ORAS abilities and went above and beyond. You really have a great way of viewing the game- just watching a few games with you in call I think have already made me a better player and thinker about this. You are goddamn great and I cannot wait to see the great stuff that'll come your way sooner as opposed to later.

AtraX Madara - Down the stretch, you 100% became a backbone of the team of sorts, not just in the building and playing departments but in just keeping the great atmosphere going. Totally a joy working with you, I enjoyed every minute, you're amazing.

TGA - BW god TGA. You were an epic teammate in plenty of ways, be it self-sustaining the BW slot, helping with tests in others, or keeping up with every game that happened while you were around. One of the most fun folks I've ever teamed with, oh and shoutouts to rainless rain

Liimpy - I know the season didn't go quite as you hoped record wise, but you were absolutely one of the people keeping the energy up in the best way possible. Great things are on the horizon for sure, I'm dead certain of that. I really can't thank you enough for giving your all for us this tour.

Trogba Trogba - I had a good feeling the moment I saw your discord avi LOL. Through an up and down season you kept your head up and kicked ass both in prep help and in game. I'm very confident in saying the best is yet to come and it's been a blast loading cinderace having you be introduced to CAP with us.

kenn - 1-0 legend! You're such a fantastic presence that anyone would be lucky to have around, I think CAP as a whole is so much better off with you in it. I know we as a team certainly were. One of the best teammates I've ever had, I'd say, and I'm excited to see what comes next!

Sificon - You definitely came alive a bit more in the cord in the last few weeks, and I'm super thankful to have you around as well. I wish I could have gotten you a game, apologies for not letting you get an in boss. Nevertheless you were there for us through the end of the year and were awesome to hang with.

Beraldo - I appreciate you stepping up for us a ton when we needed ya, apologies both times were pretty shotgun-y and didn't give you a great shot at picking up CAP and what not. You still played damn fantastically and I hope you stick around and play some more, it's been awesome talking to you when we've been around.

shnowshner - wondersub shnowshner old bay addict etc. You massively stepped up to fill holes for us twice and showed you absolutely can hang. I'm so damn glad we could get you a dub this year. If I see another bald emote I'm going to lose the little hair I have left. love ya bossman

hidin - You remain the only viable Eagles fan (go Giants). You are a riot, dude, genuinely one of the funnier people I've ran into on this site and are a total blast to be around. We'll make Voodoom work for summer ssnl y/y?

Lasen - a huge help down the line in plenty of places, and ofc one of my favorite people that exist on this site. who wins top 1v1 tho, Evi or Armut?

pannu - Engine of the playoffs SM brings, you were epic help and I can't wait to get my revenge on you next time we're paired in SM.

Wulfanator - oh captain my captain. Can't believe the random "hm maybe I should manage again"-> "wanna run it back" combo a day before manager signups went up led to this again, lmfao. It's always amazing managing with you and you're always gonna be one of my favorite people period. Much love, man, you're the absolute damn best.

 

[Lasen]

Lasen - a huge help down the line in plenty of places, and ofc one of my favorite people that exist on this site. who wins top 1v1 tho, Evi or Armut?

next time you have me, Armut and Evi in the same sentence I am making sure 100T re-signs Ry0ma and then gets Adrien as support.

 

[shnowshner]

SS

Week 3 vs Baloor –

SS was the one meta I had some actual credit in, of course with our two SS slots being more than self sufficient between each other and our managers there wasn't much for me to do, until Fogbound took off W3 to focus on WCoP and I subbed in. Scouting for Baloor was tricky not only because spoo and D2 could decide to load any bullshit they want and find a path to victory, but also because of loor's very limited amount of CAP SS games to look through. We originally wanted to bring Stall since there was the angle of "just tilt him by playing a 100+ turn match and hope for throw," but I wasn't comfortable running Stall as I never use the style. (Baloor would end up loading Stall so if we did this it would have been the worst set in the whole tournament.) Eventually Wulf and I built this in call and it really clicked with me, the defensive backbone is very strong and still quite threatening in its own right, while Koko provides Speed control + chip and Paj does its thing. Nature's Madness was decided as we felt Gleam was only really useful into Chomp/Colo and getting nice chip onto every Ground could be huge. Rest of the team is super standard IMO but it certainly worked, granted I did load CB Pajantom into stall lmao. Very happy with how that match played out, correctly identifying a weakness in the team where Corv was 2HKO'd by Shackle after two rounds of SR so I had to play super aggressively to force switches as much as possible, and once Corv was down it was a matter of winning the hazard war and playing carefully around Clef + Demon Mew.



This was another team we built that worked alright, again it's very standard though Toxic on Zeraora to wear down checks is neat. Melm's one of my goats in SS and GTerrain + ProtectLefties lets you pretend you have Recovery.



Here's one of the Stall team builds I had worked on after the intial three mon were passed around and suggestions for the last slots were given. Again, this teamstyle is pretty foreign to me and I'm not sure on its validity, but it's most likely the one I would have wanted to load.

SV (open at your own risk)



teaming with shsp compelled me to make a "test ho" of my own, this did work in the one game i played with it against kenn. cursed body screens curse dragapult gotta be the sv moment of all time. loaded dice caribolt with bullet seed was mainly to break sash hamurott, not deal with accuracy issues, maybe helpful for stray helmet/flame body (volc was legal) or whatever, you do miss magnet though. tera blast ghost moth was like, dirge + avoid circle throw argh + idk probably something else. the team is very silly.



i'm not sorry about this.


s/o section

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Wulfanator SHSP thanks for drafting me and putting up with my endless bullshit, playing in a teamtour was fun even as a sideliner that was usually busy and mostly just chimed in, venoms cord was a blast to be in, please make sure to restrict emoji privileges to a role that only i don't have next time (this is for everyone). chatting in call with you 2 was always a good time

Joeshh great guy, hard worker, and all around fantastic team presence, sucks that sv went south but its a fake meta anyway. ambushing your alt on showdown and watching the panic seep in as you realized i was running cap monoclaw was a highlight fs

Trogba Trogba Beraldo thanks for putting up with us cappers and giving it a shot, wish i was around more to help out but timezone dif and job often got in the way

AtraX Madara idk what happened but near the end of the season this dude pulled all the stops, participating in like every channel and pushing motivation at every corner, wp my guy you clinched it in finals

kenn 3k support buys stick together 3k 2-6 salvagers stick together

Fogbound Lake you don't fully understand the power of fogbound lake until you see his entire teambuilding and playing process. 100% the protagonist of this tour with insane plays and sometimes just as insane luck, oh well we take those lmfao

clean cannot believe i ranked you mid in the retains power rankings, absolutely killed it and W3 doesn't count as that was the scripted losing week to keep the plot engaging, the SS record wouldn't have been close to as good as it was without you

Sylvi the amount of disrespect this one has for every opponent and every capmon is hilarious, a shame a lot of weeks didn't go your way but your building and thinking process is fascinating to me and shows your breadth of knowledge in the game

TGA every time i look at the syclant winrate i laugh, having that independent BW slot was clutch for us and you absolutely delivered, truly the bw cap goat

hidin Liimpy Sificon idt we ever interacted in any way but that's an important role to play when my dumbass is feeding intrusive thoughts into the channel, gz and thanks for helping out as much as you did

pannu the turmoil that took over when pannu joined was great as was the immense oldgens support, pls remember that every time i make fun of you its because it's really easy and not because i think you're unviable

Lasen greek. our memes channel was p dead until lasen joined so there's that

not sure when the next time will be when i signup, really wished i could have been more active but life gets in the way like that, and if i start hosting these like i want to it'll probably be a good while lol

 

[pannu]

I'll let pannu post the final two teams if they want to, they were absolutely the engine behind semis and finals brings.

In the event that i had to play qwily (i didn't, thank u for stealing my games only to go negative billy) i always thought that krill + support looked really good into his capless teams. Krill + Weav have really good synergy as anything that walls / hinders krill rlly fucking hates having weav in against it for a free knock / pursuit, mlati, chans, etc come to mind. Twave lati helps the team shore up its weakness against offense, in my head i think qwily and spoo both rlly like leaning toward really offensive or rlly fat builds so i wanted to make sure the team was fine against those. Gliscor just helps the team a ton against defensive builds and also against voltturn teams so you don't get outpaced, and toxapex is just a cool water resist that helps the rest of the defensive core not get overwhelmed.



Idk why shsp didn't post this one himself, he basically built it himself. This time we prepped a bit heavier, shsp posted a scout and a lot of her recent builds seemed really weak against offensive psychic types, Specs Lele was an obvious bring. Ive been liking modest lele with a bit of bulk to turn lele into a melm-esque trade machine, which is the spread i suggested here. Jumbao was then a nice partner that could help chip down, counter, and check answers like Av Torn, Heatran, Ferrothorn, etc. Very nice offensive synergy. This offensive core does however leave a lot of the usual wants on a team like rocks, defog, libra check, bao check, psychic answer etc left unticked so we needed to figure out the last 4 that could make the team actually playable which was very hard, we played around with ideas like mlop torn lando, glisc argh lati etc. Eventually we settled on Washer as a water resist, libra check, and general pivot, libra as a steel check and removal, also helps a lot against psychics and stuff like jumbao, then mega tar for rocks and the further shore up the match up against mlati balances. which scarf lando last as speed control. I really like this team even tho i didn't build all of it

shout out shsp for letting me fulfill my carnal desire to prep sm cap

 

[clean]

so i won again. feels really good this time around considering my performance and playoff wins. the games were not perfect, but i'm generally happy with how i played the majority of the time. given this, i will share my teams and brief insight into the prep process for each week. kinda late tho, so probably won't write a ton.

W1:

kate is a tough person to prep against, various teams with 6 CAPs and a lot of crackhead shit. given the scout, i thought syclant looked pretty potent. taunt on rev is mostly for breaking through argh which can annoy this team quite a bit. pjab on pex is required to have a playable mu against cm fini. in tests i actually found syclant to be a bit awkward to click buttons with, it dies to a lot of shit and relies on predictions quite often. click well and it can carry. team is a bit questionable into zeraora and sd garchomp. use with care.

W2:

one look at tnm's scout and it looked glaringly obvious to me that sand would be a good bring here. sand is a super comfortable playstyle for me and it worked perfectly in game, rolled a pretty unlosable mu. solid all around team, not a lot of holes. sd drill is a pretty bad breaker in this tier between getting walled by argh, libra, defensive zapdos, etc - toxic works to cripple a lot of its would be checks. get ttar in and click buttons, argh can be annoying but this team has more than enough tools to deal with it.

W3:

i dont really remember too much about the prep going into this game. in the actual game i got owned by colo and one of the most vile dragapult sets i had ever seen. this would be the first and last time i was punished for spamming argh in this tour. main idea of the team is to trade torn hp to toxic defensive zapdos - once it is crippled, stuff like veno and mel should have a much easier time breaking through.

W4:

this team is stolen from ewin after he used it in the money tour (with a few optimizations). busy week for me so i didnt think too hard about prep. figured HO is pretty unexpected from me and i dont think i had ever loaded a cawm before. game went about as well as expected - ho overwhelmed a standard balance.

W5:

daves were out this week - sorta was expecting some kind of HO or cheese shit. what i ended up with was a status spam sorta balance with hex pult. astro might be one of the most annoying mons on the planet to pick moves on - i wanted all of encore heal bell spikes wisp lash tantrum... so you can change it as you please if you value something else over the current moveset. no rocks can be a little weird but i valued having removal on my lando instead. i did end up facing ho in my game - choked the endgame and got bailed out by static so... is what it is.

side note: after my game against jon, spoo made a comment about how all my teams lose to zeraora in the CAP discord. while i think zeraora is absolutely terrible, he wasn't necessarily wrong... this actually impacted my prep going forward in the tour so i thought it would be funny to mention (literally no one brought a zera against me)

Semis:

fog is mostly responsible for this creation. this team is just another addition to a long list of janky but effective stall/semi-stall teams that fog likes to use. very potent against balance and has good/solid matchups against a lot of the HOs commonly used in this tier. not so good against some niche stuff like necro or the apparent adamant life orb garchomp that was almost used in this slot against me... im not really known for using fat teams so i figured that possibility would be mostly ignored in prep. got the matchup i wanted ingame more or less - was not perfectly played by me but got the job done.

Finals:

early in the week i knew i wanted to bring mag lele melm in this slot. generally solid core that you really dont see too often in cap. i also find the majority of steels used in this tier to be very vunerable to zone. at the end of the day this is just a slightly edited OU team with lando > chomp and argh > fini to improve some mus. apparently my opponent had literally the exact same idea and i rolled a near mirror in the decider game for finals. the game itself was a little messy. me having a lando instead of chomp was very beneficial. was a bit lucky at some points and got some turns right at the end to seal it.

s/os

Spoiler

SHSP / Wulfanator

I was very happy to be retained by you guys after our win last year. My performance in that tour was pretty sub-par, but I believed I had gotten a lot better between that tour and this one. Glad to see you both agreed. Thank you to SHSP for being literally the only person I tested with all tour and being a soundboard for ideas. Thank you to Wulf for your various contributions across almost every tier in the tour - I swear I would log onto discord after work and see your messages in almost every channel. You both are very competent managers in both prep help and fostering an effective team environment. Would love to team with the both of you again may the opportunity arise.

Fogbound Lake

The protagonist of CAP. Despite your timer always being below 20 seconds and your games always looking nearly unwinnable, you somehow manage to never fucking lose in this tier. The 13-1 SS record we had is due very much in part to your performance and contributions to my slot all season long. If it wasn't outright building the bases for a lot of my teams, your input and psychotic EVing was always appreciated.

AtraX Madara

My goatlius... I feel like I didn't see you around much in the teamcord until you were thrown to the wolves in SV late in the season. After that, you ascended into a bonafide CAP main with the amount of effort you were putting into prepping and testing. All the last minute prepping and polishing in your prep paid off with that incredibly clutch finals win. Now let's win ZUPL my brotha.

Joeshh

Not exactly the season you hoped for most likely, but I was still confident in your playing/prepping ability ahead of every game. I think you have a very interesting approach to building in this tier - hopefully the results will showcase that better next time. Also - I didn't contribute a ton in SV prep, but hopefully me telling you to use tera poison on everything was of some service to you.

TGA

I remember SHSP and Wulf mentioning how little they knew about BW CAP before the tour. Something they focused on was getting a mostly self sufficient player for this tier. And boy - did they ever make the right decision. You had a great run in what looked like a pretty volatile tier from the seven total games I watched all season, so hats off to you.

Sylvi

I definitely didn't have any messages in the ORAS channel this season - but watching you schizo prep was very entertaining Thanks for spamming "PREP!" in my channel every other week, I probably wouldn't have prepped if not for those. Anyways, thanks for being a fun chat presence and for clutching up with a heinous team in finals.

Sificon hidin Beraldo Trogba Trogba kenn Beraldo shnowshner Liimpy

I was mostly sitting in the SS channels prepping with fog and shsp for most of the season - so if you didn't chime in there then we probably didn't interact a ton. It's also midnight and im getting tired of writing this post. Didn't interact with y'all a ton this season, but thank you for your various contributions and for being good teammates.

Lasen pannu

thanks for joining in playoffs and helping in tiers i dont play. i guess.

Garrett

for being a fatass and motivating me in dms by calling me bad


not sure if i will play CAP again but this run of two tours was a lot of fun, peace.

 

[Sylvi]

My Teams from CAPPL:

W1 - JayHeaven (W)


So going in the tour I was told I face the strongest player in the pool by week 1, nothing new for me so this time rather playing something fair I decided to play an HO approach to come up with my non CAP Experience. I thought with some ol' reliable ORAS Strats (took neidder's mpinsir HO as inspiration) I will be fine, so I wanted to play Bish for his Cruci Spam and Mscizor and Scarf Kiss for the Kerf Spam. Manaphy with hp fire was the tech for ferro spam and being walled by dragons did not scare me since i just predicted him to not bring latis in cruci meta. mamo is my lead since I figured it will always get up against colo/drill and is most consitent one into taunt toma while dealing damage.

W2 - SteamBuns (W)


During one of my walks I was figuring, can't I just modfiy an ORAS Scarf TTar Fat with Colo instead and call i genuis? And this is what I did! I stole the Team from punny and edited one cap. Did my moves and EVs, not quite happy but were good enough, wished I could have tested the Team more (or more than 3 times). Nothing to say just classic Gastro Spikes Fat with Suit Support for original Lati's and some general scenarios, we take the Starmie Suit as well!

W3 - Seasons (L)


I didn't have time to continue scizo prep so i just asked London and Garay for a team with Mega Venu since I was feeling it. Just some fat with Alo wish nothing more, nothing less. team straightforward

W4 - Spitfire (L)


I wanted to go back to HO and thought Maltria Screens (nearly copied a whole sample Team) it is since figured with Sub looks really good into the Scout, ofc had to take Bisharp on my HO as usual. Landorus with Imprison for Lead Choice this Time to mix it up and didn't have removal. Team is not the best one, it just some speed building, Bisharp continues to be broken in the CAP Meta despite getting last turn wrong.

Semis - Seasons (L)


This Time back to scizo prep, thankfully with a bit more Tests. Decided to run Tspikes Semi-Stall since figured would be nice into Seasons. I really fell in love with the Toma Taunt Set, shutdowns so many things and with Helmet and Tspikes up, walls half the tier. Back to broken Colo, just a very good Suiter in the "Suit is broken" Metagame. Wanted to run speedcontrol as Tests showed and why not just slap 3 Caps into one Team! Originally tested with Mega Cruci Coil which I liked but couldn't solve the Team around it. Chansey was necessary as my Test shown and had to replace the Clefable that was there. Slowbro Mega was there for tanking and providing immediate damage which felt more important instead of some slow CM Setup.

Finals - SteamBuns (W)


I did so many Teams and Ideas, with ORAS Teams and Cap Ideas, like Lasen described my journey over going 4+ different archetypes. In the end I knew SteamBuns prob. frustrated from Week2 going to load some cheesy / non traditional Team for which he is known tbf. In Fear of running into some random stuff with Balance I couldn't test to my liking a, I decided to on YouTube and go thru old ORAS Tournament Replays to seek inspiration. On Sunday then I found a Roro Team that he brought to Stours Final and I knew instantly I will use it. Quickly in 10 Minutes I adapted the team with my ideas I got from my previous days aka. changing serp to necturna which with Sub I started to love. Made infernape lead to have Taunt Acces and still beating Colo / Drill. Being walled by Ghosts is rough but I figure most Ghosts suck into V-Create Tini and will get with Turn 1 Setup around it anyways, took the risk. Throwing away 3+ days of prep for a cheese felt dangerous but I was so sure he not bringing something good, rather a cteam and just believed I will just outplay other Matchups (I learned that from our SS Slots). So the Final Gambit into Copycat with 3 broken Setupers was set to go... In a quick test I demolished stall so I was sure it gonna work and paid off in practise!

Closing Thoughts

I enjoy the Meta with CAP Mons, nothing feels to powerful. Only Colo can be annoying with absurd Pursuit Potential but u can deal with it. I am fine how I played and going neutral (3-3). Not the best but some nice improvement in my first year on smogon, looking forward for next opportunity to play ORAS CAP. Making a tier list and some thoughts in the corresponding thread the next days. That concludes my Team Dump, thanks for reading! ^^

 

[Steam Buns]

Despite my excessive complaining about everything, I did love building for this tour as always. Too lazy to do writeups but I still want to share what I made, there are a handful of teams missing and some I built earlier this year that I don't feel like looking for, but this is most of them.

ORAS !!!

BW !!!

thanks again to dex and the team aswell as spitfire spoo pannu jay lasen and everyone else who helped me out with tests and such, now that It's over I'm going to do my best to fix dpp and bw and sort out long overdue resource updates, so if anyone would like to help, please message me.... please

 

[Darek]

Ok so basically



Week 1 of CAPPL I knew I wanted to try Sun in the new post-home meta, and this was my first go at it. Home provided a number of boons to Sun in several strong Fire types to choose from, as well as the return of Walking Wake to CAP, who I looked at and was like "This mf is definitely still broken". Unfortunately Home also provided a number of answers to Sun as well, notably the return of Heatran, Chilly Reception Glowking, and the coinciding release of Hemogoblin. Taking all this into account, I elected to go with Arcanine-Hisui + Walking Wake as my breaking core of choice, as Arcanine had the capability of brute forcing through specially defensive Slowking/Glowking and the fire immune Heatran, while also resisting Hemogoblin's ESpeed and threatening an OHKO back. Tusk Heatran and Roaring Moon are pretty standard fare for bulk, hazard control, and speed control. I kind of threw my Week 1 game but still a solid team, except for the fact that Jumbao is actually bad.



Week 2 Dex suggested I bring Banded Zama and I decided to roll with it. Future Sight is naturally a great pairing for Zama and Slowking seemed like solid choice into Libra, Venom, and opposing Sun teams. Hemo is there because it's another solid Future Sight abuser while also providing the myriad of boons Hemo provides to all teams. Venom and Libra provide a defensive backbone to the team(252 224+ physdef Venom lets it survive last mon Kingambit Kowtow at +2). Baxcalibur is in the last slot because of its ability to check Krilowatt, abuse Hail + FS, and act as another wincon for the team. Pretty good team methinks



Week 3 I wanted to bring Sun again, as I still found Walking Wake to be an incredibly strong mon, and Booster Moth seemed like an easy way to answer Hemo on Sun. Despite their power, these mons struggled to break through a few mons, specifically specially defensive bulky waters like Slowking, Tera Water Glowking, SpDef Argh, and AV Pex. Miasmaw seemed like the perfect answer to punish these threats, and I'm a bit of a Miasmaw fan. From there Tusk provides the role compression, and Kingambit is broken and a Pult check. Honestly kind of a jank team not the biggest fan in retrospect.



Week 4 is when I decided to end my friendship with Jumbao and have Malaconda be my new best friend. I wanted to try Tera Fire Hemo on Sun because it sounded very funny and could cheese past stuff like Venom. I put sub because I thought it would be funny to cheese non-Curse Garg but it's not actually a good option. Walking Wake is there because he clicks funny Water move. Glowking gives solid defensive support, as does Heatran(don't ask why it's full physdef I think I just decided I especially disliked Hemo). Last slot I decided I wanted to do a wincon + Ice Spinner Tusk to so that Hemo + Tusk could push past Venom together and I thought the set was funny. Ngl this team is kind of bad but Tera Fire Hemo in Sun is broken and it beat an AV Pex and a Dirge.



Week 5 I went for a bit of a different angle because I knew at this point my opponent was going to try and cteam my typical Sun team builds with Walking Wake. So instead of not bringing Sun, I decided to bring Sandy Shocks, since I suspected a Sun cteam would try to stack bulky waters. I went with Modest Life Orb because hitting neutral targets hard seemed very useful, and Modest still outran Jolly Tusk/Bax. Fire Tera blast lets you destroy Levitate Libra while also being very strong in its own right when Sun is up. Hemogoblin is there because he's just that guy, again with Sub because I thought I was funny. I went with Venom this time because I wanted a mon that could check Tusk and provide pivoting power to get Sandy Shocks in to play; Roaring Moon is there for speed control and the ability to tank special hits. Scream Tail last I kind of chose on a whim; I wanted a Rocker that could provide some utility for the team, and Proto Speed Encore seemed like a great choice. I went with TWave to not be completely useless into Hemo switchins. This team performed surprisingly well and I'm actually quite proud of it.



Finals I expected Joeshh to bring something fat so I wanted to focus on hitting hard and dismantling the standard Venom/Libra/Argh/Garg sort of cores. Krilowatt excels at doing so, but can't do much against certain checks like Glowking and Clodsire, so I thought with Hoopa-U as well the pairing would be very difficult to wall. Hemo and Zama provided much-needed speed control to supplement the pairing, while Venom and Libra provide their standard defensive utility. Solid team, did not get the matchup I expected but still pulled through in the end.

BONUS:



Originally I had built this team to fight Joeshh but then Dex politely asked me to not bring Sun to finals so this team ended up going unused. I didn't even test it but I thought it was cool so here we are. Again, I wanted to focus on breaking through fat as well as Sun's typical answers. I figured Slither Wing would be a great choice for the task; it can drop Venom with one good Flare Blitz read and can brute force through most everything else, while having solid points of entry into mons like Equilibra. Iron Moth is also incredibly powerful, and can cover Slither Wing's weaknesses to Venomicon and Hemogoblin, while Slither Wing could come in on Garg when it recovers. Garg felt very strong to bring against Joeshh, as it helps greatly into opposing offensive Fire types while threatening a wincon in of itself. I also wanted Scream Tail here as well after how well it had performed the previous week, and I figured Wish support could go a long way with how easily Slither Wing can come in on Libra and Iron Moth on Hemogoblin. Great Tusk kind of serves to fill the gaps of acting as a rocker, pivot, and speed control.

Overall a very fun tour, disappointed we couldn't win but I did enjoy building for this tier and the team was very cool

 

[TGA]

My teams from CAPPL:

W1 - vs fakee (W)

For the first 4 weeks I was hyping syclant, so for the first week i went with reliable tomo hawk ho with syclant. It didnt do much this game but its always good against rain and other ho teams.

W2 - vs Splash (W)


So funny story, this team orignally had a jellicent before a gastrodon but at like 12am when i was trying to sleep i went like, hmm maybe 3 atk gastro is better on the team. The next day i had the game so woke up and changed the jellicent to gastro. (Gastro got 3 kills that game)
Its a Classic sand stack with cm reuni.

W3 - vs SEA (L)


Felt like going with rain against sea, wanted to go with memento latios into syclant win. Not the best team but now that i think about it smth like krillo would have been better than keldeo.

W4 - vs Wait2seconds (W)



Another tomohawk ho but no garchomp edition.

No syclant from here, sorry guys i lied about using syclant all tour.

W5 - vs tier (W)



Seeing the scout, I thought rain volt turn would be good here, i would say this team is pretty good used it in final as well. After the final game i realised that scarf latios is better than keldeo here so theres that.

Semis - vs SEA (W)

BEHOLD RAINLESS RAIN!


So i was thinking of using kyurem black cause its an amazing wallbreaker, orignally i wanted to use it on rain but quickly realised that rain has not enough slots to have kyurem-black. So my brain went ''what if we had rain but no rain setter?'' and we have this abomination, i would say its a very good team, kyurem-black is a great wallbreaker against sun and sand teams, and scarf keldeo provides a great scarfer against ho teams while your deffensive core of skarm and mollux are good enough defesnive core.

Final - vs Splash (L)



Same team as one used in week 5. Against i realise now that lati is better than keldeo here.

Thoughts:
This tier is a big mess, but i quite enjoy it.
I am thinking of making a vr post cause lots of thing doesnt feel right on it.

So/s

Spoiler

Wulfanator SHSP you two are the goat managers, always helping with tests and SHSP with the scouts! Would love to team with you guys again, thanks for drafting me!

Fogbound Lake clean
Protagonists of the team! That record is fire, both of you carried the team.

Sylvi
Those oras teams were something, from stall to scarf clefable. Great chat presence, that final game was the funniest game in the whole tour.

The tour was fun and the chat was very active, thank you all on the team.

 

[Mada]

I never make posts in Dump Threads but considering I only build a couple of teams this time I will.

W1 vs Darek

Out of 3 different teams I made, this is the one I chose to load. Being one of my first CAP games in a tour against a manner, I knew offense could be harder to fish and even a good fish itself, whereas it has a pretty nice MU against sun which Darek spammed a lot prior to CAPPL. Revenakh has a funny set that can do very well against Sun and surprise mons like Jumbao and eventually try to beat Hemogoblin if I already have a couple of boosts and Shuca Berry was for Great Tusk, even tho I considered using Passho for Wake. The rest is just strong standard breakers with standard Meow lead to eventually be able to get a Koff or some Taunt against other leads or Jumbao, as Samu and Glimmora can have a harder time. I didn't load into Sun and I proceeded losing the game on a 50-50 against a Baxcalibur Tera, which made me sad I had been very busy and didn't knew some people actually started using Poison Tera which later make sense to me discovering Hemogoblin.

W5 vs Hacker

We needed to win this week but Hacker's team was already out so we expecting them to recycle some team or to use Offense to end the game pretty quickly. AV Azu is very strong against offense and so can be Hemogoblin, constantly threatening revenge killing the setup sweepers. I was also somewhat scared of fat which Glowking can handle very well and Block Garg can also be very annoying as they can start getting some kill against most of the mons. Blaze Ace has been standard in OU this gen and people forgot about Libero, which apparently wasn't too popular in CAP while I thought that it can be a very nice Hazard Control that can also soft-check Hemogoblin which is what basically happened in my game as well.

Semifinals vs Potatochan

I haven't played the game as we won the semifinals before me playing but I am not 100% sure what I was going to load. Potato kept spamming basically the same core of 4 mons with only a few changes, and my first idea was to use some NP ghold + Zapdos + Block Garg to punish those teams pretty easily, but as I have been spamming Gterrain in 4-5 tiers this gen, I also really wanted to try this team. It's pretty standard and I stole some ideas from OU sets, Caribolt can be very strong whereas Mew is able to punish most of the mons. I also considered Tera Ghost on Mew to troll Arghonaut as Potato loves it but in the end I didn't got the chance to play so I don't know what could have happened.

Finals vs lax

I struggled finding a team as I wanted to reload the Grassy Terrain team as I played a lot with those cores, but I also have been willing to use Gholdengo for the whole tour as I think it's a very strong mon. By watching their SV Scout it was clear that lax liked offense in this tier but by being a better player I was scared of some BO / Fat team, so it ended up that I revamped some W5 ideas 1h before the game with my main idea being CB Dnite + AV Azu + Unaware doing extremely well against Offense, and CB Dnite + NP Gholdengo destroy fat, whereas NP Gholdengo usually is very strong against BO and Offense. In their scout Equilibra wasn't very popular but they revelead Bulletproof a couple of times so for Gholdengo to not get walled like a monkey I had to run some Tera Blast move, and I wanted to use either Ghost or Water. Ghost can block Spin which I didn't thought was that useful but Water can OHKO Tran and Equilibra and it can deny recovery to Hemogoblin. I also had tested Thunderbolt + Tera Blast a lot to beat Unaware mons but being completely walled by Baxcalibur wasn't that nice, also not being able to properly hit Glowking and other Gholdengo only to heat Arghonaut which they had never used, and Water Gacl when I still had Covert Cloak.

Other Teams I made during the weeks


Those are the 2 other teams I considered against Darek that did well against Sun, but by not being used to SV CAP I wasn't properly aware of all threats so I opted for the Offense team.


As I really think Gholdengo is underestimated in CAP cause its walled by Libra, I still thought a voltturn core with this random CAP I saw was nice. Specs Gholdengo can hit very hardly and can claim a kill in most of BO / Balanced / Fat teams whereas Baxca can clean up very easily or just break through teams after a SD and constant pivoting.

Team was amazing but I would also like to thank velvet entrocefalo Inder Elfuseon for helping or being available for help during Finals, and especially pannu for the hundreds of test games they played with me​

 

[spoo]

Cba to do minisprites

SV

https://pokepast.es/c7c4a870b88263a5 Battle Stadium Singles. Goofy HO team that was a joint effort between taka and I w1, I think he got subbed in with less than 24hrs before the game so I speedbuilt some cheese and he made a few edits. Double final gambit HO is pretty fun to bring vs cap newcomers (lax was the opponent) bc they rarely ever forsee the suicide leads. If you can get both gambits off and secure the 4v4 then you're gonna be heavily favored in most games with this lineup of sweepers. Extra points if you trade 3 for 3 with boom hemo.

https://pokepast.es/06dbfa881f9c4f7b Bog standard SV balance, toxic gking is the only semi interesting thing about this team, but these 6 are very good.

https://pokepast.es/40353a93a5aa2252 We loaded this twice and unfortunately it lost both times but I still think it's pretty solid. Future sight + cb zama/kingambit is really dangerous vs most balance teams, especially with krilowatt in the mix. Might make some edits to the gking set if I were to rebuild this team from scratch but the one in the paste does the trick just fine

https://pokepast.es/8557f84c5f2479d9 Behold, peak SV CAP. Hemo/pult/argh insulate you super well vs HO and most cheese, and the team functions as you would expect vs everything else. Overall this is an extremely consistent team, probably my favorite SV load from the tour despite it being truly as standard as you can get. Can go covert cloak on argh if you care about having a garg switchin but I think the team is capable of pressuring it fine enough.

https://pokepast.es/2b58c40c719f442f Triple fairy screens HO I made for taka w5 that he made a couple edits to. We figured our opps would prep for HO so I had the brilliant idea to cook ANTI ANTI-HO HO (trust me it makes sense). Basic idea was to cteam a lot of common HO countermeasures like hemo/pult/argh/gambit and so on. I think gren is on par or better than hisuian samu as a lead bc of its superior speed, 100% accurate spikes, and isn't vulnerable to stuff like volt -> helmet mon denying hazards. You can't lead great into opposing hamu (as seen in the game) but trading 3 spikes is a mostly fine outcome, especially since you get to scout for scarf/band/etc. Screens cruci was a cool anti-hemogoblin tech that also baits in ground types for teammates to easily set up on. I'd make a couple moveset changes for generalized use but these were taka's preferences into the scout - overall pretty happy with the team though, it's a lot of fun.

https://pokepast.es/4b79beb4acd9aba9 Another one of my favorites, this one being loosely inspired by the german 6 that was heavily spammed in wcop. Sub dd bax is a total menace and can even beat argh without too much difficulty - none of its moves break your sub after tera and you can sorta just stall out recovers with tera ground EQ. Def helps to knock argh's lefties, ideally waste one or two recovers beforehand, and depends a bit on EV spread, but yea it's quite an insecure answer longterm. Rest of the team is just standard goodstuff featuring broken ass 3atk progress venom.

Think these were the only teams that I solo-built (mostly) in SV but I had varying degrees of creative input in every slot each week. It's generally an enjoyable and balanced meta right now, just a little stale if anything. Venom > hemo = pult > gambit > the rest. Hopefully I'll get around to making a meta discussion post with some longer thoughts but SV is pretty cool atm.

SS

https://pokepast.es/988a8e7cf56fda02 SS goodstuff, I like this team a lot. Bit weak to SD grass types but it's playable. If all else fails then the forbidden wincon of double delayed moves + double phazers will carry

https://pokepast.es/b331cd309e6b0447 We wanted to load blaziken, either d2 or dlc said it would be cool with koko, we slapped it on a proven archetype and the rest is history

https://pokepast.es/df4f1088d64408c4 Expected ho/cheese, this team beats ho/cheese. We loaded into rain and really should've won this game but jon was still in balls mode at the time. Happy with this team overall

https://pokepast.es/0cb1f187cf1c9dae As powerful as it is infamous. The Dragapult that changed fate itself. And the team that put clean nuts into retirement. Maybe my favorite SS load this tour, partly because it's hilarious, partly because it's kinda good. Offense in SS has a lot of room to grow and I think colossoil is really underrated in general. Handle with caution.

https://pokepast.es/8c45a670734133f8 Double spookies team I passed entro with some changes he made to the zap/libra sets. Ghost types are busted, the team works well enough, not much more to say.

https://pokepast.es/12cc0534adadb97b Solid pyroak team we reused from last CAPPL

https://pokepast.es/a6c05b2a0cf09a82 The long forgotten SS archetype of CM clef spikes. It can be sort of awkward to fit CM clef when utility sets are crazy good and you have to decide between flame/tbolt coverage, but if you can make room for it then it's as good as ever. We made some changes to this team last minute that kinda bit us in the ass - it was originally taunt>toxic tran and toxic>hwave torn, and we considered pain split>protect libra right before the game, but ultimately we landed on the sets in the paste. Minor moveset details aside, I enjoy this team quite a bit.

https://pokepast.es/a0cb159d09e68f8c Jon was finally out of balls mode going into semis so the natural decision was to pass some bullshit HO. Spikes lead syclant was something I came up with this week and I think it's really cool - spikes are better than rocks on most HOs (cawm stuff probably wants rocks), and clant's speed, coverage, access to taunt, and matchup into nearly every good remover means it's very easy to get up layers. Sadly, no HO lead in SS is perfect, so you do have some suboptimal matchups - e.g. you have to play taunt games to deny rocks vs lead heatran, and melmetal can deny spikes outright (free focus blast damage can be just as important though, as shown in the game), but I think the mon is for sure solid in this role. This game was robbed blind from us, but the team was a lot of fun to build.

ORAS

https://pokepast.es/be020eea4f36b58c Thought process for this week was just to be safe vs HO and other assorted random shit bc we were facing lasen, we got kinda outprepped but the team is fine

https://pokepast.es/ae8aa72bf6a81575 I wasn't sure how thoroughly I was being scouted, nor was I sure of what sylvi would bring since he loaded HO and mega fat the first two weeks, so my priority was just to pass seasons something outside of my usual comfort zone that still had a good stall/offense matchup. Building for this week was pretty easy - I had a skeleton with these 6 in my builder from last CAPPL and only had to flesh out the sets. Quite satisfied with how this team ended up.

https://pokepast.es/d7f1639f7eeb3dce Once again tried to get out of my comfort zone and pass some new stuff. Also the first and only time I've ever loaded or passed someone heatran in this tier. I think this team is pretty good but just be aware that your mega lop check is three protect users.

https://pokepast.es/1495343f4bf20ce4 Similar gliscor fat to last week, though this is generally a more consistent team. Just an unused build from CAPPL that looked good to me. There are at least two nearly identical structures floating around in this tier but I like this version the most.

https://pokepast.es/8335425c0b18a0fd Ngl I was very unsure of what to prep this week, but we hadn't used mmeta or offense all tour so I figured why not both. This is just an edit of a pannu team from CAPCL that I thought was pretty cool. It's even cooler now too bc my changes made it better. Crazy how that works. We loaded into kind of an ass matchup but thankfully seasons is God

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I don't love the way we were eliminated from this tour, but on the whole, it was a great ride. Already did a shoutout post of sorts in the teamcord so I'm not gonna rehash that entirely here - just know y'all are appreciated. This was a lot more fun than last year and I look forward to improving on our semifinals finish in the next edition.

 

[Concept]

A little late, I dislike making long posts or descriptions, so I’m keeping everything as brief as possible while also making fun descriptions.

Clementine Fragments I greatly appreciate picking me up for CAPPL, it was a great experience and you were both fantastic team captains that I would love to work with in the future in any capacity. It may have been a coincidence when Clem asked me mid draft if I could build but it was nice nonetheless. Initially I was planning to just help
Dj Breloominati♬ with teams and prep because I really didn’t feel like reaching out or quite frankly playing at all due to being busy IRL. it was great to be apart of the team even though the stocks eventually had to plummet.

Da Pizza Man Is a great asset to have for any future CAP tours, he can build and gives great advice, I would highly recommend picking him up. Although he builds some fraud mons sometimes

LordDoesOtherStuff Although he didn’t get drafted this PL I saw how much he liked BW CAP, I reached out and invited him to the team discord. I would highly recommend checking him out next time, he’s a competent player who can build some good teams!

Elfuseon Inder The Strap velvet Kate JayHeaven Fakee ChrisPBacon Although we didn’t end up winning it was great working with you all, for any future tours if you need any help with prep or scouting just let me know and I’ll be more than happy to help! (I know some of these pings won’t go through but know the sentiment is there).

W2 - The Legendary Strap vs The Timer (W)


“Banded Hemo is broken.” - Me

W2 - The Start of the CAP “Fraud” Goatseon and Piyush learns a lesson in CTeaming (W)


I knew Piyush would bring bulky setup, so I had to bring out the great Don Bozo

W3 - The Strap ft “The Four Brokens.” (W)

I was right

W3 - Inder becomes my Icon (W)

I had a singular mission after our scout

Stole the meme from Wulfanator

W3 - Fakee Raises the Stocks (W)

This matchup was honestly the easiest to build for, although Tier is the goat he builds similiar play styles and never uses certain mons. This made building very easy for me.

W4 - Fakee learns what Rebound does (W)

The initial team had a scarf chandelure on it, after discussion we decided it was too weak to Keldeo and threw a Jellicent on it. He handled the change himself so I don’t know the actual set he used, but I assume it was standard SpD. I have kept the original name to showcase the issue.

W5 - The end of the CAP “Fraud” (4-1) (L)

This was 100% my worst team I’ve built, I was busy this week and really should have put more into building.

W5 - There was a Porygon2 (L)

We were already out so this team wasn’t really anything serious. If we were still in the running at this point I would have built something else.

W5 -The Greatest Oricorio that ever was featuring DJ “Dogmelon” Ditto (W)

I wanted to play Oricorio as a gimmick answer to Hemogoblin (it worked) This was also the time where I noticed Da Pizza Man showed me Dogmelon (adding it to the teamcord).