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Hello. With my exhibition over I thought I'd make a series posts around PU to try to help the fellow connoisseurs of the best SM tier try to understand what's goin on in the head of THE UNDISPUTED PU GOAT, since I have limited interaction with the communities outside of UU but from what I've gathered me. Doing good this tour didn't exactly get the warmest welcome (though it's far from hostile so ). For what it's worth, I came out with a good record but I'm not too impressed with my actual performance during the tour since failed to pullt through in the 2 games I did lose which ended up being the games that really mattered the most.
I'll start here with going through my games, so get ready for an incoming essay.
What a god-like matchup LOL. I brought Life Orb Drain Punch Crabominable with max Speed which basically crushed his team from preview, had a rocker that was basically immune to death and beat the defogger handily, and had excellent pivots to take status, even packing an extremely sturdy rock resist to combat the random Aggron. At turn 13 I could have ended the game much sooner but I was pretty nervous so I ended up being incapable of doing the math in my head to determine -1 crab was still faster than Spritomb (which I shoulda known from DPP UU lmfao) and didn't wanna risk a potential Will-O-Wisp early on. After that, I didn't play aggressive as I could have but in the end I didn't really need to since I had all the tools to win easily. Changing Darkinium to Grassium on Shiftry at the last second was pretty dumb on my part in hindsight, but it didn't really matyer all too much in the end, but woulda also made the game a hundred times easier if i coulda killed the Tangela early. I probably coulda been a bit more aggressive and not made this game last 100 turns but at the end of the day I'd have to have an extreme stroke to lose this game. Fortunately for week 2 TSR, his crippling tism didn't kick in until much later in the tour. On a side note, Clefairy was packing Encore as a means of holding off ghost Oricorio, and I was terrified of potential SubCM Aurorus sets early on before I realized everyone was gonna spam offensive rocks and Specs.
http://pokepast.es/ce1180b8025090f3
Crabominable @ Life Orb
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Ice Hammer
- Close Combat
- Drain Punch
- Earthquake
Not much to say about this, but it terrorizes anything remotely fat and basically shredded Reje's team from preview.
Gave up Flamethrower on Altaria to use Dragon Breath just to maybe grab some paras which slow random offensive stuff down to get blasted by Crab later.
Gave Gastrodon a small chunk of Speed to creep Gurdurr and stall it with Clear Smog, which was nice so I had the extra option of not switching Clefairy into a bad Knock Off.
I've known Sam here long enough to know he'd almost assuredly roll up with something really offensive so I thought a hail core would be the way to go since both Aurorus and Sandslash are straight up unfair against anything that cant OHKO them lmao. The matchup turns out to be about even outside of his Pyroar which was kinda scary because I didn't use a fire resist this game which I've now realized is a pretty grave oversight on 99% of teams (if you couldnt tell by me using Altaria literally every week afterwards LOL). The Pyroar was bad but I could kinda deal with it, everything could punish Scarf and i gave Claydol a chunk of SDef for the Specs Fire Blast, and I always had the Mach Punch in the back. Unfortunately the Pyroar ended up being a Z-Sunny Day variant which combined all the most dangerous aspects of Scarf and Specs, and I probably shoulda lost this battle if not for the misclick with the regular Sunny Day at the end of the game. I was using CM + Rock Polish Aurorus since I wanted to use something offbeat, while i figured Rock Polish would let me punish some of the middle speed offensive mons in the tier, while it could retain some of the ferocious breaking power of Specs if I needed it. Sacking Gurdurr was about the worst play I could make in the end but I really wasnt expecting the Z-Sunny Day so I thought I had the game under control, guess I was wrong. Ended up lucking out here I guess.
http://pokepast.es/88ec487b991ec47b this team's pretty bad I hope no one actully uses it
Claydol @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 176 Def / 24 SpD / 56 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Earth Power
- Psychic
- Rapid Spin
Nice role compression, Rocks, Spin, and an Aggron check (though I had Gurdurr). Iapapa Berry comes with inspiration from Sacri's favorite Rotom-W set before it rose from UU, giving it a nice chunk of proactive recovery rather than tiny little bits via Lefties.
Aurorus @ Groundium Z
Ability: Snow Warning
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Blizzard
- Earth Power
- Rock Polish
CM Z Earth Power pretty much nukes every common water that wants to come in and try to eat Blizzards. Not very easy to set up both but I figured I'd be wanting to use one or the other in most situations.
As much as TSpikes are nice, I figured I'd try to fit Memento somewhere on the team to give Aurorus some easier setup, while providing it with a nice pivot for fighters that wanna hit it. Didnt end up coming into play which was unfortunate because I might've been able to set up if I got the Rock Polish off safely.
I didn't bring a Fire resist again but this time I was fully aware of how I was going to deal with Pyroar and Magmortar on this team this time around. I noticed that Taskr almost always uses somewhat exploitable hazard removers, so I decided to roll up with Webs with the Standard spinblock + Defiant support. I was wondering how I could really screw Altaria since it was the biggest obstacle to setting up Webs in most cases, and then I found Grasswhistle on Leavanny. Electroweb means I could screw Swanna, and Pawniard + SD Flame Charge Ghost Silvally kept em up vs the rest. Not sure why Taskr Overheated in the end since it basically guaranteed a win for me while Fire Blasting made it come down to rolls, even if I was the Specs / LO AoA Mesprit he might have been expecting. I really wished I had found a decent opportunity to get rocks up in this game, but Sandslash was pretty important for busting through the team as well, so for most of the game I found myself in a position where I'd rather be clicking Icicle Crash and Earthquake instead of Stealth Rock.
This entire team is pretty much one long string of the jank unsets mentioned above, so I might as well post it and mention some interesting stuff. https://pokepast.es/93dd1af26be8be24
SD + Rocks Sandslash, Specs Flash Cannon Aurorus because I was actually that worried about the ditto, SD Explosion Ghostvally to bring some additional Defog Blocking, CM Mesprit and an actual Pawniard. As I've learned from my last game in this tour, HP Fighting is probably an overall superior option to Fire simply because Hail cores put such a gigantic strain on offensive playstyles.
After spending the better part of 2018 on an EGL (Italian forum) team, I really can't fiigure out any better way to describe Raiza's team here as just calling it Italian (after seeing my teammate Luck bring jank Sun multiple weeks and destroy people with Volcarona) ._. Random rocks lead with no setup sweepers, random hard hitting stuff and a couple oddly placed defensive mons. Regardless, this was probably the best game I had playing wise, where most of the stuff came down to the wire until Raiza misplayed at the end, but can't really blame him for not expecting the sets I was running . Hail was problematic but somewhat manageable thanks to the Aurorus being a Sash lead set and this infinitely less threatening. Carracosta also had a pretty good matchup since I was an offensive rocks set with HP Fire to bait Ferroseeds and a Chople Berry, meaning I could blast most of the team in a 1v1 and set rocks on everything in this matchup. I noticed Raiza's previous replays having a distinct lack of good Electric resists outside of Lanturn so that inspired me to bring NP Psyshock Raichu which could punish the shit out of his usually AV Lanturns. The 100% usage of some pursuiter he had at the time was problematic, so I equipped Raichu with Sub in its last slot to dodge the Suckers from everything except Spiritomb which I figured I'd just have to outplay. From there I just filled in generic bulky offense holes with some interesting options. I used Scarf Magmortar which basically won me the game when he sacked his Passimian to it (which I was lucky to get the burn, since the roll was pretty highly in my favor to kill here and I missed it). From there, Raichu didn't even need to plot to clean through the rest of the team. Came down to the wire and I came out on top because of the sets I was using, which again points to my teambuilding carrying more than my actual playing ability. gg Raiza, this was a particularly fun one.
This team had hella techs. 48 SpD on Raichu to set up on Altaria Flamethrower. I didn't like switching into Weezing all too much so I created this Torterra set to eat Sludge Bomb with the Sub and Leech Seed it down much like how Serperior can do to Alolan Muk in UU. Made it fast as hell too since it was the Rock resist and Aggron could be dicey otherwise. Decided to roll with vest on Spritomb over the standard Aguav since I could tank a ton of netural hits way better such as Electric Z Raichu and Skystrike from Sensu Oricorio without playing 50/50s. The EVs don't do anything in particular benchmark-wise, but did let me tank a few other hits pretty comfortably like Toxic Boost Zangoose Knock Off and punish the shit out of it with Foul Play. Chople HP Fire Carracosta was there to try and help me nail Ferroseeds for Raichu, and a Scarf Magmortar which is a decently fast Scarfer faster than Mesprit and Passimian while also being immune to sleep to help deal with Jynx a bit. Try it out!
Not gonna use the little sprite icons since they aren't there in the logs and replays anymore, and 11 PM lazy etc. Anyway, I don't wanna talk about this game because ugh I can be really shit sometimes. I brought cool stuff like SubCharge Lanturn and Adamant Scarf Dugtrio I guess. The game plays out exactly how you'd expect, SubCharge Lanturn taking lives in an excellent matchup for it, Kingler (Pokemon) being awful once again, mono-attacking Spiritomb falling flat again, Taunt Z Magmortar being barely played around because balanced, etc. I was stupid with Pyroar early game since I was attempting to punish a Defog from Skuntank which was a dumb idea on my part since I hd perfectly viable ways of doiung so without sacking my Pyroar to a Poison. If you couldn't tell, I horribly choked an esaily won endgame which is just a grave reminder to me that I can't ever tell if I've actually improved in almost 3 years of playing on Smogon. Turned out to be important too, since the army would clinched playoffs had we won that week. Oh well
http://pokepast.es/db5cbde3a8bd0eda
Lanturn @ Leftovers
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 52 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 200 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Hydro Pump
- Charge Beam
- Hidden Power [Grass]
Works as a setup sweeper that can shit on Altaria because of Sub, and also smack Gastrodon and other Lanturn around with HP Grass. I made it super fast because of Abomasnow, even though I can't really kill it, getting a hit off on it with this team was always welcome.
Regirock @ Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 252 HP / 224 SpD / 32 Spe
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Rock Slide
- Ice Punch
- Toxic
I was weak to Alolan Exeggutor.
Dugtrio-Alola @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Tangling Hair
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Iron Head
- Pursuit
- Stone Edge
Good strong Scarfer that's fast as shit with Jolly but can be bumped down to Adamant, since it still outpaces Primeape and Jynx by 2 points. Didn't think I needed the extra speed since I had Regirock for Pyroar.
Literally not enough to talk about here to justify a hide tag, Stakatakas were out so Robert Alfons brought mono Electric with no good way to break my Clefairy and I won. Didn't get to show off offensive Articuno too well because he brought 6 Flying resists, so that happened. Should also point out that Alolan Rat + Gurdurr is a pretty slick offensive core that bust down their usual counters pretty well though use of a lot of Knock Off. cuno set squaaaa for anyone interested: http://pokepast.es/44caac332d0c3205
Me winning against him the first time apparently didn't phase Raiza into using actual electric checks for the remainder of the regular season, so I thought I'd do it again, this time with Electrium Z Electivire. Unfortunately he finally used the hardest possible counter to Electivire this one game in Gastrodon, which immediately presented a big issue. Hail was also horrible for my team, I had a mixed defense Metang with Brick Break (just to do more to Sandslash) to try to keep it in check but it got overloaded very quickly. I knew from team preview that he's likely make the assumption that my Electivire was Scarf, so I took the gamble of leading Pyroar, the real Scarfer, in an attempt to catch Primeape (which also was great for him in this matchup) early. I did catch it but the Overheat roll, which was about a 60-40 in my favor to OHKO, didn't work out, and Raiza took full advantage of it and saved Primeape until the very last stages of the game where it could clean my team; excellently played on his part. I coulda done a lot more on my end this game to try to salvage the matchup, though. In the second sequence of Metang vs. Altaria I caught it with a Toxic on the switch, since I knew in the long run his Gastrodon being Toxic'd was much more valuable to me than my Metang being weakened was to him. He seems to have realized this as well, and switching Altaria in should have probably told me to spam rocks since they'd be extremely useful to chip Aurorus into Mesprit range and also come with the advantage of picking off Primeape lategame. That's the part of this game I regret most by far, since I end up passively switching Metang out and lose Rocks for good earlier than I should have. Rough matchup for me but there's a lot I coulda done better for this game, maybe even setting up my HC Archeops early on to force a big chunk of damage on Gastrodon and maybe playing it from there. GGs to Raiza again, both games I played vs you were some pretty good ones and some of my favorite of the tour.
Wrapping this up, I had a lot of fun because I finally did exceptionally well rather than average or bad in a teamtour for the first time (nuke uupl 5, last pocl and rupl where both decent at best for me). As much as people took our team as a joke, the army was by far the best team tour environment I've had up until now, with Anti and Finch being good supportive managers as well as a whole slew of 15+ people at any given time there cheering you on, even though in all honesty I was kinda on my own for most of the season when it came to building and testing. Also ended up being a nice tour since my "cliché anime-style rival that's always doing better than me" Kushalos ended up with the same record as me technically (since he has the chance to win one more game) so we've finally got on some even footing lmao, could go with an edgy "I'll see you in UUPL" but he's probably gonna be dpping and I'll be stuck in SM Anyway, dont get me wrong, the moral support in the army was more than there. I'm looking foward to PU hopefully getting some official tour representation this gen, since it's really shaping up to be a great tier that's actually leagues more playable than the rest of SM so far. Hopefully I find the motivation to do another one of these posts since I've been pretty silent and I've wanted to drop some of my opinions on the Viability Rankings and the metgame as a whole as seen from my apparently extremely unorthodox perspective. Been lit, hopefully I didn't make too many brains implode here yet. Lookin forward to talking more around here, till next time.
e: since everyone else did it I just posted all my teams too
Hi so since cute user TSR decided to be an alpha and post here first, Ill post here second to keep things rolling. It would be super cool if we could get the main PU players in the tour to all post their teams and thoughts, as well as some outsider perspectives who maybe weren't involved directly with the tour too. So yeah, I had quite a bit of pressure on me this tour considering snag dropped the 10k bomb on me (quite high considering how the auction mapped out), and I was basically entrusted along with Sam I Yam in being the main duo to carry the PU results throughout the entire tour. luckily for us two, Neo was more than capable of winning and building in PU. I was extremely impressed with his ability to make teams that retained offensive pressure so, power to you bud, hope you stick around PU for the future buddy. I'll also add my general thoughts about the tournament at the end. Now onto the teams!
So going into preparing for Kushalos, by this we had sorta known that this was gonna be the last opportunity to use Qwilfish before it rose up to NU by usage, so i deemed this to be the perfect opportunity to set myself a precedent for this tour so that people who build for me know that I'm not gonna be scared of bringing a really offensive archetype. So I built with SD Lycanroc as my main breaker with stuff like eelektross and life orb abomasnow to really pressure its main switchins like Ferroseed and Gastrodon. I was definately expecting more bulk than offense. Kush's team turned out to be much better than mine as an overall team though, it had the perfect mix between bulk and offense and despite on okay early few turns, I played a bit too formulaic, a bit too scared, which sorta showed when i wasted the Z-Move on Lycanroc because I wasn't killing Eel with Stone Edge from there. Kush really took the reigns from that point onwards, I had a real difficulty dealing with the support around Primeape too. Overall, I could have played the game much better, but I mainly put this initial loss down to not building well enough. If id have brought a standard FerroClef team to this match, I would have really really fancied my chances at pulling off a victory, much more so than the offense team I actually brought.
So this week was by far the most building intensive week for me, Robert Alfons, as proved during my ssnl games vs him, is capable of bringing literally any playstyle possible, whether it be full stall, straight HO or something in the middle, alfons had already done it before. This made him, at least for me, a nightmare to build for. I really really wanted to stay away from the passive mons like ferroseed and clefairy, I knew he'd have at least 1 tech to turn my life using that into a nightmare, so as far as I was concerned, it was off the table. Recently, Aurorus and AlolaSlash dropped to PU from NU too, so that was an option that I ended up taking after failing with a ton of builds which were either too biased vs balance or too biased vs offense. I ended up picking Hail and trying to predict a Hyper Offense match up. Alfons seasonal matches vs me kinda implied I had the upper limp on a Balance vs Balance mu, and bringing stall is a surefire way of making things close, also considering his boner mon Steelvally left the tier at that point too, I was pretty certain he wouldnt bring stall which left us with HO. Having AlolaSlash and Scarf Abomasnow would really provide us with a great HO match up. Come into the game, and he brings a very phat ass bitch team. CM Phys Def Clef was clearly a CT, but at that point he didnt know I was sub sd sandslash. The game played out and he eventually sacked his main offensive pressure unneccesarily, which opened the door for AlolaSlash to go in, in the late game. It felt good to get my campaign up and running, and to do so with one of my favourite teams I built for this tour, and also inspired others that hail was pretty decent as an archetype and definately that subsd sandslash is the way to go.
This was also one of my favourite teams I built during Exhibition. I built this with the mareanies in mind, and I expected either something i'd see before, or some janky shit. My way of combating the janky shit was just running scarf ada passimian with a ton of support and seeing how it ended up. I didn't really bother thinking that they would counter team me, tbh, I didnt even think they had that capability (outside of maybe TSR) in building anything really good for the meta. The team was ridiculously consistent in testers, and gave me a sense of winning before the match started, which was really what i was going for. Come into the game and it was an advantage well in my favour, as expected in a team without PU mains; I didnt play optimally, but I played well enough to win. Passimian really showing how disgusting it was bulk wise. Psychic spiritomb set is such good support for it, I really appreciate Megazard opening up my eyes to it (the now standard aguav tomb).
So yeah, I was supposed to play amber this week, but literally on my way to the place where I was gonna play him, I got into a minor car accident. So I messaged snag to tell him to sub me out, because I had to go hospital just to check nothing was wrong with me. I gave Bushtush the team I was gonna use, which was this really grim dual fighter dual pursuit + hwish support team i'd been working with throughout the week. The team was from a pre-passimian pre-spiritomb era, so i swapped out the primeape for the passimian and the then dusknoir for spiritomb and voila, you had a broken team in my eyes. Come to the game, Bushtush made a misplay on stout but apart from that the game was a wrap from preview, there was no way stoutland on its own was stopping type: null from winning the entire game, especially on a team with support from rocky helmet after math skunk, it was a question of just playing carefully and not making losing plays, which bush did expertly. Seeing the match up made me quite annoyed, I thought I stood a great chance of playing amber and beating him if the mu was the same (inner greed coming thru), I was just glad bush banaged to clutch at this point.
For my game vs Ted, I had massive fucking builders block. I had no clue what I wanted to bring the entire weak, I didn't have any elaborate plans for him, so I thought id just wing it. Bring a core im comfortable with, with enough winconditions and speed such that I could challenge teddeh no matter the match up, and If i won, I won. I decided to bring a ferroclef team with the notorious altaria+cuno defog core, to gurantee the hazards game into my favour. On top of this, an old ORAS RU semistall set in cm snarl wisp spiritomb with pressure to create a fantastic heal bell pressure stalling core with cuno was made, and last slot rotom-frost because i needed speed control and ummm, idk really. Trick is cool for playing balance i guess :shrug:. Come into the game, It was a friday night and I just wanted the game to be over with, because I really wasn't building anything decent. Luckily for me, I had a super amazing match up. I almost threw this match up, but as per every other game i played, really did just enough to win the game. Ted has always been a great friend of mine; beating him in a somewhat big setting like exhibition was pretty fun, silence a few of the haters a little bit.
Week 6
Was never gonna play this week; had a few assignments due in at university that I would rather have focused on, but since it was Evan I was playing, I just waited for him to contact me so I could tell him I wasn't playing. Told my managers to not sub me out until I got contacted, and boom, Sunday night it was. Sam I Yam got subbed in (aka the most opposite player to me in the entire face of this universe) and literally claimed the free'est win of his life in the face of a pretty bad anti-balance counter team. And this kids, is why we contact and schedule early.
Other then that, I passed over one of my teams for Neo just incase he wasn't comfortable with anything that he'd built up until that point:
Kangaskhan @ Normalium Z
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Double-Edge
- Earthquake
- Sucker Punch
Its literally ferroclef, ghost, spinner (thats supported well by the ghost thanks to pursuit), kangaskhan and scarf aurorus. Team that kinda shits on meta stuff without recovery. Neo decided not to bring this team (which is good because he also won his fixture with an arguably better team) but the option was still there for him, just incase c:.
Lampent @ Eviolite
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 16 Def / 228 SpD / 16 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Fire Blast
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hex
- Pain Split
Yay memes are fun. So for the last week, everyone had qualified pretty much so our team decided to switch up the slots and bring memes in week 7. Wanka wanted some fire pu shit and was duely given this master piece. It was inspired from neomon and his NU pikachu teams and Eternally always calling PU pikachu used. So i duely built this team around nasty plot breaker pikachu to break shit like stall and what have you, until i realised this mon is absolutely awful and changed it to volt tackle espeed instead of nasty plot tbolt. I paired it with its electric rat friend togedemaru who would provide speed control and something to abuse the imminent void pikachu creates. I then paired them up with agility kingler (one that beats altaria) because it would core really nicely with everything until that point. I added the 2 best pokemon in the tier, 1 to provide stealth rocks and healing wish, and 1 to provide a sorta be all switchin to everything and defog mon. Last pokemon lampent to shit on fire types like pyroar who pikachu doesnt really appreciate as well as add another fighting resist to the complex. Game was fun to watch, wanka played like he didnt know how PU worked, which is fair because he probably didnt, but ended up coming through with the W after lampent seemingly forced 10 sacks after it dodged edge and altaria successfully lured by kingler.
Pyroar @ Firium Z
Ability: Unnerve
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Sunny Day
- Fire Blast
- Hyper Voice
- Solar Beam
Id officially run out of building steam at this point, so I asked sam to pass me one of his trademark offense teams, and he duely obliged, passing me this team. I was expecting a Ursaring / Alola Rat, ya know, one of those really disgusting breakers you could have never even tried to prep for OR some janky shit like rain, tr, hail or more likely than all of those stall. I decided to go down the preparing for the offense team with disgusting breaker route, which is why nothing on the team really relieves too much momentum. I really liked sub agility kingler with rock slide as the filler too, makes beating altaria and others so much simpler. The reason I believed lax would bring ursa or alola rat was because of the game he had in PUPL finals where he fucked over teddehs balance team using the same idea, so I thought he would try similar with me. Game time comes along and worst case scenario, he brings stall, with like a perfect check to each individual pokemon on my team. I lost as soon as I clicked okay to join the battle pretty much. I managed to kill 1 thing tho, which is better than nothing i guess ;). It was good foresight on lax's part, since he probably was thinking he could outbulk my bulky teams anyway, which is a fair consideration. I was definately not a happy bunny after this game however. I felt cheated out of a game at the time and was kinda craving revenge; and then tiebreak happened.
Crabominable @ Life Orb
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Ice Hammer
- Close Combat
- Power-Up Punch
- Earthquake
Ursaring @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Facade
- Close Combat
- Play Rough
- Protect
Exeggutor-Alola @ Dragonium Z
Ability: Frisk
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Draco Meteor
- Energy Ball
- Flamethrower
I basically my harnessed my inner devil and brought the thing that Taskr and I both knew was his achilles heel, Trick Room. Now, im a massive fucking hypocrite for using this team vs anyone, Ive always been an advocate for destroying TR at any given opportunity because I believe its a hugely match up reliant tactic and essentially you throw the game into a state of craziness willingly. Its what I call an autopilot team where you dont really need to think too hard to use it, it kinda plays itself, and your there along for the ride. But I had to deter Offense somehow, and as a balance player, TR and Hail are some of the only devices we can use to deter people from bringing 6 wallbreakers vs us and winning that way. I genuinely believed Taskr would have done similar, and since id used Hail earlier in the tournament, I didn't want to use it again, but more because I wanted to use TR more and get revenge for my earlier matchup vs stall. As expected, the match up was excellent, and I should have won much more comfortably than I actually did, but its whatever, the tiebreak came down to Kingler vs Heysup for the Finals opportunity vs Untier University and we ended up losing
It was a cool journey, playing PU again in another team tour after LTPL was a great opportunity to show the tier had some excellent competition within it, and was more than worthy of any official tournament representation. Exhibition as a tournament sorta died Week 4-5 onwards, and it was definately dragging considering there were 6 teams and 7 weeks of regular season (+2 additional weeks of playoffs). Looking at who played in the tier, the competition amongst PU mains was immense, and I personally believe it to be a great showing for the tier in a team tour setting. I did quite well myself, 4-2 isnt a bad record individually and i was glad to be able to win in the tiebreak, although it probably could have been better looking back at the games I lost and my naivety in both of them. Also another personal note is that i've made playoffs in the last 4 pu team tours ive been a part in (pupl2, ltpl, pupl3 and exhibition, even tho exhibition had 4 playoff teams out of 6 lol). Special shout out to Sam I Yam for being a fucking legend, Neo for being a really good player and great support throughout the tour, even when he wasnt starting snagaaChill Shadow for putting a lot of faith in me as a player and obviously the rest of the blacephelons, it was a super fun tour and a shame we couldn't go all the way and win it. Hope the rest of the PU players take the time to show us some of their teams and thought processes too <3
Stoutland @ Normalium Z
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Work Up
- Return
- Superpower
- Giga Impact
This is the most creative thing I used and its pretty good at luring stuff like gurdurr, regirock and ferroseed. At the time especcially no one had proper stoutland checks and I used this over CB since its about as good and I thought the 33 ppl team might just run stall which this shits on. Also is an excellent partner to smash costa since it lures ferro and gurdurr. You really don't need a 3rd coverage move so z-gi is worth it for the power (ig sub or like iron head of youre afraid of carbink)
Togedemaru @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Zing Zap
- U-turn
- Toxic
- Encore
Stoutland @ Normalium Z
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Work Up
- Return
- Superpower
- Giga Impact
Mesprit @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 30 Spe
- Stealth Rock
- Psychic
- U-turn
- Healing Wish
Primeape @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- U-turn
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake
Carracosta @ White Herb
Ability: Solid Rock
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
- Shell Smash
- Hydro Pump
- Stone Edge
- Aqua Jet
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7nu-341493
Pretty normal team, wasnt in prep for anything specific since their team had no PU players. Silvally poison since the team was weak to passimian. The game was alright and stout did work - finished off regirock and put gurdurr in costa jet/primeape range.
Lycanroc @ Lycanium Z
Ability: Sand Rush
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Stone Edge
- Accelerock
- Fire Fang
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7pu-699178934
I used this vs kushalos since his teams were pretty lycanroc weak, and the actual team he used was. Sableye, Haunter and Cradily are also pretty cool mons which generally versed well vs him since idt he used skuntank much. The sab set is dumb as shit and I thought it might be good vs gurdurr since haunter isnt reliable in case of pursuit, and metal burst doesnt have -ve priority lol (i also accidently used inner focus - not even stall lol). Passimian is broken as shit so i had to use him, and i really like a-slash and it was the first week where he came down so I wanted to use it and it sorta lures and weakens some fights. The game went similar as I imagined as a-slash weakened his cb pass, and lycanroc coulda sweeped but he protected on the right turn and I assumed Z into edge would kill with toxic stack :( but it was a good game otherwise
The other team I used was pretty dong so i dont think its worth noting
hey man, i technically played one and to my credit actually did prep for the other games in spite of ducking the actual playing aspect. figure now would also be as good a time as any to apologize for that btw; feels like especially under the pre-conceptions that faced my team that my actions would pretty soundly reaffirm all suspicions about how seriously we were taking your tier. to be entirely clear, this was exclusively a problem to me as a player, my engagement in the tour scene on the whole is pretty shaky (i've opted out of spl games before, whole nine yards), and frankly i think this tier is pretty cool! it's a shame there is derision of some nature, but i hope that it doesn't sour your opinions of players like tsr, who was super dedicated and i couldn't be happier that he was able to perform and bring what i'd consider to be a pretty interesting 'take' on this, that, and the other.
idt my teams on the whole were worth breaking down b.c i ended up going a little too far left w/a couple of my concepts (the team i prepped for hjad had a payapa muk), but i liked a couple that felt unexplored to the point of touching down on here
in my prep work for my game v.anty i was striving to hone in on a means of hazard control that didn't necessarily concede momentum or grant excessive freedoms to your typical sr setters (i had wanted to work around lo pinsir, who i noted as an issue for many of his teams in being able to outpace the general base speed of his team whilst disallowing his speed control a 'free switch'). in contrast to swanna, i find silvally water has far more leniency in sneaking itself in, and while flamethrower was at that time far more of a tool to deter abomasnow (which is a guaranteed ohko w/the given spread), the utility of applying pressure to ferroseed is now pretty rad as well. obviously the frankenstein evs are a bit unsightly, but they allow it a fairly distinct niche in the meta imo, outpacing neutral speed magmortar and avoiding the 2hko from the old 28 atk lo carracosta @ +2 after sr, as well as a more traditional max white herb ~80% of the time under the same conditions.
Miltank @ Leftovers
Ability: Scrappy / Thick Fat
EVs: 252 HP / 32 Def / 160 SpD / 64 Spe
Careful Nature
- Milk Drink
- Power-Up Punch
- Substitute
- Body Slam
i pushed for the use of this set a couple times, idt it ever happened though =( i think that miltank on the whole is pretty nuts in how much it can be doing between recovery, 3 great abilities and the stats / movepool to tech to whatever you could ask for, but this was a fave of mine. ostensibly every defensive rock- or steel-type can have its primary stab out and left as set-up bait for this set much in the way that bu braviary functioned in its respective lower tiers, with the possible exceptions of guys like scald costa and perhaps heavily atk invested regirock. scrappy is obviously the pick for self-sufficiency's sake, but lately i've been a huge advocate for cb skuntank (easily the best skunk, you have to invest more in your predictions but the pay-off is so much higher on the whole) and for how potent the ice- and fire-types are i'd be a fool to overlook a good thick fat user
Kangaskhan @ Binding Band
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 252 HP / 152 SpD / 104 Spe
Careful Nature
- Whirlpool
- Rest
- Return
- Power-Up Punch
last pup mon, promise. used this v.kush in anticipation of a standard-ass balance that i could just bluff the silk scarf set and pick up a freebie then force another mon to trade for damage, but his iteration of standard-ass balance had a rocker / bulky water configuration that disallowed me from doing anything gainful enough to be worth engaging in so it just got foddered. however, i do like and endorse these types of sets in any meta that so often rewards builders for adopting somewhat clunkier, more passive defensive pieces. to be clear, this is more of an adaptation of an oras nu set that i believe advantage popularized (if that's not the case feel free to lmk, my timeline is not that good frankly), as i felt a non-leftovers item (and ofc team comp, which i think i pulled off decently) was quintessential in establishing a successful bluff. the basic notion is that you wring out a more passive pokemon that'd otherwise be safe in taking up recovery sequences v.you. this similarly makes metronome standard a pretty solid pick and one ig my final product could have gone for, but by that time i had already built around the understanding that this could play into an eel just fine
beyond that idt anything was too worth sharing. my arch was scarf which is nifty more as a "1-upping pretty much every other scarfer and still being able to u-turn" type deal, and cm tect grumpig isn't by any means awful but more a product of necessary compression on a team that couldn't quite afford the ice / fire neutrality of mesprit. draft me @ pupl managers, odds are good i play at least two games for that one
Hey guys! Exhibition was my first foray into PU and I'm glad that I got the chance to play this fun tier. I only ended up playing 3 weeks and overall I think I did well; 3-0 for 3k is a pretty good deal you gotta agree! As a newcomer to the PU scene, I didn't try anything too fancy in my games and stuck to basic offensive cores. On to the teams (expect a lot of
Really wanted to try offensive Silvally-Dragon, and it didn't disappoint. Grass pledge was a Gastrodon lure which TJ didn't bring but still Silvally put in good work. Other than that pretty standard offensive build with Scarf Toge, defensive rocks Mesprit, Blackglasses Spiritomb with Pursuit to trap Psychic/Ghost and other weakened mons which allows BU Gurdurr to clean late game, and Guts Ursaring as my wallbreaker. I found Toge to be one of the better scarfers in PU since its faster than scarf Primeape/+1 Jynx/+1 Lilligant and 30% flinch chance on Zing zap/Iron head is always handy, also its ADORABLE like come on, you can't hate on Togedemaru
Spiritomb @ Leftovers
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
- Calm Mind
- Dark Pulse
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
I was supposed to play Anty but got stuck in a rally so Sam got subbed in and got the win for us. I built this team around SD Steelium Z Absol which is a strong wallbreaker, threatening offensive and defensive teams alike; paired it with LO Kingler (in hindsight, Ice Beam/Rock Slide were better coverage options). Crotomb was my late-game wincon and it really punishes passive teams, other than that standard defensive Mesprit/SpDef defog Altaria and Scarf Passimian rounded up the team.
Week 6 vs TSR:
Spiritomb @ Leftovers
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
- Calm Mind
- Dark Pulse
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
Togedemaru @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Zing Zap
- U-turn
- Iron Head
- Toxic
Kingler @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Agility
- Liquidation
- Superpower
- Knock Off
Mesprit @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 168 HP / 244 Def / 96 Spe
Bold Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Psychic
- U-turn
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
Initially I had no idea what to bring vs TSR as he was 4-0 and going strong. I was sort of paranoid about webs/hail so I changed the Mesprit EV spread to outspeed Adamant Pawniard and added HP Fighting > Healing Wish (which would come to bite me in the ass). Fightinium Z Mag is a great stallbreaker with taunt, Skuntank for defog & priority, LO Agility Kingler as a nuke+late game offense cleaner which beats hail teams, and Scarf Togedemaru as speed control. As it turned out he brought neither webs nor hail, instead he had a solid BO team which was kinda problematic for me to face. Got flexxed on by Charge Beam Lanturn (brilliant set btw, kudos) which annihilated my Crotomb (which was probably not the best fit on that team but I wanted to try it out regardless). Intense endgame where he choked and I got the win barely with Kingler
Another team I had during this week:
Lanturn @ Assault Vest
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 252 SpA / 56 SpD / 200 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Volt Switch
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power [Fire]
Togedemaru @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Zing Zap
- U-turn
- Iron Head
- Toxic
Palossand @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Water Compaction
EVs: 252 HP / 248 Def / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Shore Up
- Shadow Ball
- Earth Power
Dual Electric Voltturn with AV Lanturn+Scarf Togedemaru along with defensive twave/HW mesprit, Defog Skuntank with Pursuit, SR Palossand and LO Agility Kingler (yes I love this mon too) with Ice Beam for Altaria.
As this was playoffs I wanted to use something I haven't brought before, so in comes Specs Pyroar+Rockium Z Kabutops. Rest of the team was pretty standard with defensive SR Mesprit/Scarf Toge (again)/BU Gurdurr and Aguav Spiritomb with Pursuit and Psychic (wasn't too comfortable with only Mesprit as my fighting check as it gets chipped very easily, and this Spiritomb can 1v1 Gurdurr+trap psychics). Specs Pyroar hits like a truck and rockium z Kabu is a nuke and provided me with another priority+spin support. It performed decently in test games but in the end I decided not to bring this, instead used one of Sam's fire offensive teams (me and HJAD both used Sam's teams this week, you're a legend bro)
Another one of Sam's trademark offensive teams, with dual Electric voltturn and Specs Magmortar as the nuke. I was expecting Taskr to bring offense as well like he has done throughout the tour and I wasn't disappointed; turned out to be one of the better games I've played. First time i was using Oricorio-Sensu, can't say I was disappointed.
Overall this was a great experience, and I'm glad I got involved in arguably the best and most enjoyable SM tier. Shoutouts to my old PO frens snagaa & Chill Shadow for letting me participate (snaga is a terrible manager btw NEVER let him manage again), HJAD for being a PU legend and a cool guy, helped me a lot in the early weeks Sam I Yam for being a legend as well, and for the great support throughout our run, love you both; and to the rest of the Blacephelons: we got lucked on a few occasions and could've been in finals easily but that's the game we play, it was a fun run and hopefully I'll be able to play with you guys again in future . Cheers.
Thought of this before the tour started but nobody ever got to use it until the very last week where it would've cleaned nicely w/out a crit (still won though hehe). Lurantis has mostly run HP Ice or Fire to handle random grasses/steels/dragons/etc but it turns out that just superpower does nicely vs almost all of its checks. It's a great way to hit Ferroseed, Drampa, Miltank, Pyroar, Magmortar, Alolan Sandslash, Skuntank, Lilligant, Togedemaru... like I said pretty much every check. Absolutely no need to go fully physical either, Leaf Storm is still the most threatening move you got by virtue of becoming really strong after just one use. Lurantis was cool before Alt left but now that it's gone, I really think this mon is gonna need a lot more exploring so give it a shot imo https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7pu-718104086
Hey so now that exhibition is over i'll be posting all my teams I used here and sharing my thoughts about how it went. I ended up going a pretty average 4-4 after doing well early on in the tour and then getting put on tilt by HJAD smh.
So week 1 I remember looking a lot at ambers teams that he used in pu ssnl and noticed he liked using steels such as Aggron and Togedemaru along with defoggers like Altaria and Skuntank so I definitely knew I needed a rocker that could beat or threaten those. I ended up using offensive Ice Beam + HP Ground Mesprit which is actuallly a set that I came up with during the last pupl but didn't get to use it and I thought it would be perfect vs amber. Qwilfish was a really cool spiker and was on a lot of my previous successful builds and Spikes helps this team a lot with breaking down fat stuff in general. Taunt Firium Pyroar gave me a one time nuke as well as a special breaker that also worked well vs Altaria and Clef. Rest of the team is pretty generic apart from maybe Haunter which basically just acted as a spinblocker and was insurance vs bulkier builds. The battle went pretty well as he brought pretty much what I expected and I managed to catch his Aggron off guard early on which put me in a good position.
I knew Kush really likes his balance builds in the best so I really wanted stuff to pressure that kind of team which is why I decided to bring Dugtrio as it's really annoying for balance to face as it just toxics and wears everything down. Taunt Skunk was there to help the team deal with gastro and other bulky stuff to prevent them from healing but it came in handy as it was able to stop his crustle from setting up layers early on. Specs Aurorus has like 2 switchins so I thought that was a safe bet too. HP Fire Mesprit is kinda cool and good vs opposing alola sandslash and threatening ferro. Game also went well as I managed to dodge a stone edge with skunk which helped quite a bit but after that dug ended up putting in a lot of work to get the w.
I think HJAD already said that rob is capable of bringing anything so it was pretty hard to prep for this week tbh. I ended up making a judgement call that he was going to bring some kind of offense since he brought fat the week before and I was kind of right except he brought fat offense with stuff like gurdurr and lanturn so I had kind of a rough match-up this week in my opinion. The team is pretty straight forward, it's just standard rain with shuca alolan sandslash which helped the team against opposing hail and stuff like archeops outside of rain. The game was pretty tough and came down to whether I hit a stone edge or not and we didn't even get to find out bc he timed out :(
Although I lost this week, this is one of my favourite teams that I made in this tour. The idea was to use Z-Solar beam Aggron to lure bulky ground types like gastrodon and palossand so that Manectric and Pyroar could freely click Tbolt and Fire Blast respectively. The match-up wasn't how I wanted it and credit to TSR for prepping well although i kinda choked by not Fire Blasting bc I completely forgot CM mes was a thing.
This week I really didnt know what obii was going to bring as he doesn't typically play pu so I decided to just build around offensive Mawile as I think its a pretty underrated mon and it was something I wanted to try out. Never-Melt Ice Aurorus allowed me to somewhat bluff specs Aurorus and defensive rocks Mawile kinda at preview which is cool but it was also nice to switch up between Blizzard and Freeze-dry against his lanturn. Scarf Alola Rat is cool as it can pursuit trap things pretty well and pivot with U-turn and thats the only reason i used it over Absol. The game went well as Mawile had a great matchup at preview and his choice locked haunter struggled to revenge kill my mons with raticate in the back.
Clefairy @ Eviolite
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Moonblast
- Soft-Boiled
- Calm Mind
- Cosmic Power
Absol @ Life Orb
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Knock Off
- Swords Dance
- Superpower
- Sucker Punch
This is the part were my run went downhill tbh, again I wasn't really sure what Neo would bring but I knew he had HJAD with him so I needed to make sure I could break some of the fat balance he likes to use and I also wanted something I was pretty comfortable with and good vs most matchups hence the Swanna and Absol. CM Cosmic power Clefairy is probably the most interesting point of the team and is a cool win condition against bulkier stuff. I got caught off-guard by Specs Magmortar which turned out to be a bitch to play around but I don't think I played this game as well as I could've and I ended up losing.
So I was pretty sure HJAD was going to try and cteam my style but I felt like this team could outplay most matchups anyway as this is the team I used to get reqs for the Passimian suspect test and I was really comfortable with it. HJAD brought trick room which was a bit of a pain in the arse to deal with but the game came down really close and I lost because of one silly misplay on my part.
Here is the final team I made during exhibition and its probably one of the coolest. For this week yogibears was invited to help me prep and came up with quite a few interesting ideas. Probopass was a cool should as its a rocker that is great against birds can could trap stuff like ferroseed which troubled the team. Originally I had Lilligant over Leafeon which would have had a really good matchup but I changed it last minute because I wanted a strong physcial attacker and it checked Kingler better which he brought in the past. I actually really enjoyed this game even though I lost but it was very close and in the end it came down to a 50/50 which I lost.
Overall although the tour kinda died down towards the end it was still a pretty fun experience and I think that the concept was really cool. Quick thanks to Arii Stella and ggggd for drafting me and s/o to Many, Arifeen, Bouff for helping with prep and the rest of the lunalas for being nice people.
). For what it's worth, I came out with a good record but I'm not too impressed with my actual performance during the tour since failed to pullt through in the 2 games I did lose which ended up being the games that really mattered the most.
. Hail was problematic but somewhat manageable thanks to the Aurorus being a Sash lead set and this infinitely less threatening. Carracosta also had a pretty good matchup since I was an offensive rocks set with HP Fire to bait Ferroseeds and a Chople Berry, meaning I could blast most of the team in a 1v1 and set rocks on everything in this matchup. I noticed Raiza's previous replays having a distinct lack of good Electric resists outside of Lanturn so that inspired me to bring NP Psyshock Raichu which could punish the shit out of his usually AV Lanturns. The 100% usage of some pursuiter he had at the time was problematic, so I equipped Raichu with Sub in its last slot to dodge the Suckers from everything except Spiritomb which I figured I'd just have to outplay. From there I just filled in generic bulky offense holes with some interesting options. I used Scarf Magmortar which basically won me the game when he sacked his Passimian to it (which I was lucky to get the burn, since the roll was pretty highly in my favor to kill here and I missed it). From there, Raichu didn't even need to plot to clean through the rest of the team. Came down to the wire and I came out on top because of the sets I was using, which again points to my teambuilding carrying more than my actual playing ability. gg Raiza, this was a particularly fun one.
Anyway, dont get me wrong, the moral support in the army was more than there. I'm looking foward to PU hopefully getting some official tour representation this gen, since it's really shaping up to be a great tier that's actually leagues more playable than the rest of SM so far. Hopefully I find the motivation to do another one of these posts since I've been pretty silent and I've wanted to drop some of my opinions on the Viability Rankings and the metgame as a whole as seen from my apparently extremely unorthodox perspective. Been lit, hopefully I didn't make too many brains implode here yet. Lookin forward to talking more around here, till next time.
