OU GOD RILEY CHAN — 02/26/2022 @everyone I WON IN SPL

emma · Jun 3, 2022

Hello everyone, and welcome to the show.

Following my pattern of late team dumps, it has been 62 days since I won SPL XIII with the Team Raiders and it is finally time to talk about my one (1) week playing RBY OU this season.

I had not logged into Smogon for two weeks before the SPL XIII draft and probably would not have for a bit longer if I was not drafted, which is what I was expecting. I didn't think anyone was picking a dedicated RBY substitute, and I wasn't good enough to start, but I was proven wrong. I spent the first half of the season helping the RBY slot prepare and doing numerous scouts for other slots. However, about halfway through the season, I became very depressed (which led to me eventually stepping down), and my activity was minimal besides Week 8, where I was subbed in for my first official team tournament match.

Preparation is one of my strengths, and I knew gaining a massive edge before the game even started was my only way to steal a set since I was the worst player playing RBY in SPL XIII. Thankfully, after putting hours into my prep, I did just that to become 1-0 on the sheet. Hopefully, everyone reading this can learn a bit about preparing for official team tournaments since the same concepts apply to every tier.

SPL XIII Week 8 vs. Mako

The first thing I did was gather all her relevant replays in high-stakes tournaments - even if I didn't end up using them when diving into her usage statistics or playing tendencies. This includes her games from SPL XIII, RBY Invitational II, and SPL XII.

Next, I took her most important games (SPL XIII) and made a graphic using the Pokémon Showdown! teambuilder of everything she's brought used to find patterns in her teams to exploit and gain an advantage. Reorganizing the Pokémon so they visually line up is a great way to identify trends in a player's teambuilding style. I didn't do this for RBY Invitational II or SPL XII because they were a bit outdated, while I already had a significant amount of data from this season.

I also ran usage statistics of all her teams (and leads) to make sure I didn't miss anything. Furthermore, I compared her numbers to those of SPL XIII overall, SPL XII, and the RBY Invitational II to see where the biggest discrepancies were.

Usage Statistics
Legend: [Pokémon: % of all Pokémon (108) | % of all teams (18)]
Chansey: 16.667% | 100.000%
Snorlax: 16.667% | 100.000%
Tauros: 16.667% | 100.000%
Starmie: 13.889% | 83.333%
Exeggutor: 8.333% | 50.000%
Alakazam: 8.333% | 50.000%
Jynx: 6.481% | 38.889%
Gengar: 3.704% | 22.222%
Rhydon: 3.704% | 22.222%
Jolteon: 2.778% | 16.667%
Lapras: 0.926% | 5.556%
Zapdos: 0.926% | 5.556%
Cloyster: 0.926% | 5.556%

Lead Usage
Starmie - 4 (22%)
Alakazam - 5 (28%)
Jynx - 6 (33%)
Gengar - 1 (6%)
Exeggutor - 1 (6%)
Jolteon - 1 (6%)

Pokemon - Mako vs. SPL XIII vs. SPL XII vs. RBY Invitational II
Lead Starmie - 22% vs. 34% vs. 35% vs. 46%
Lead Alakazam - 28% vs. 17% vs. 25% vs. 17%
Lead Jynx - 33% vs. 24% vs. 23% vs. 21%
Lead Gengar - 6% vs. 16% vs. 9% vs. 9%

Zapdos - 5% vs. 15% vs. 14% vs. 16%
Rhydon - 22% vs. 27% vs. 22% vs. 19%
Jolteon - 17% vs. 15% vs. 15% vs. 18%
Zapdos / Jolteon -- 19% vs. 30% vs. 29% vs. 34%
Rhydon / Jolteon -- 39% vs. 42% vs. 37% vs. 37%

Exeggutor - 50% vs. 43% vs. 52% vs. 48%
Cloyster / Lapras - 10% vs. 21% vs. 12% vs. 20%
Gengar - 22% vs. 23% vs. 14% vs. 14%

The biggest things that stood out from just the teams she brought were one Zapdos (and only two Jolteon) and one Cloyster (but one Lapras too). She was also near 100% Starmie usage and lots of Exeggutor, Alakazam, and Jynx. Now (basically) not using two of the top nine Pokémon in the format is a massive hole in someone's teambuilding spread and something I could take advantage of. This was a breath of fresh air when preparing for Heroic Troller, who I specifically remember did not have any gaping holes in his SPL XIII teams.

While I immediately had some ideas I thought were pretty solid, the next thing I did was comprehensively analyze every one of her SPL XIII games to find patterns in her playstyle to exploit and gain an advantage from (sound familiar?). This took a long time and involved me taking color-coded notes of eighteen RBY games since she apparently decided to go to Game 3 every week. While it took up most of my free time, this was the most important part of my prep process, and watching high-level games is a great way to improve as a player.

Below are all the notes I took. Some might be inaccurate or irrelevant - I'm not a top-tier RBYer! - but overall, I think they got the job done, and it was a lot of fun to get into my element and in-depth prepare for my games. Preparation in official team tournaments is half the battle, after all! I also included what her opponents brought against her for potential inspiration - haha!

My main takeaways were she never scouts for Counter unless she is Earthquake Snorlax, she is an aggressive clicker who never uses timer and does things like Body Slam twice with Tauros on Snorlax and goes to Tauros whenever a sleeping Pokémon is in, she has used a few set openings trying to go up 5-4 and has rushed and fumbled endgames, and she was a bit unfamiliar playing against some niche Pokémon.

My first idea was using Starmie - Cloyster - Alakazam with Counter Chansey. Mako never scouted for Counter with Snorlax if she wasn't running Earthquake, and she probably wouldn't even be thinking of Counter on Chansey with Cloyster. If she was running Earthquake and I couldn't get the Counter off, then I had Cloyster to beat Earthquake Snorlax. Furthermore, since she didn't use Zapdos, I could afford to use Alakazam over the common Jolteon and likely not get punished. I really do believe preparation is 50% of playing in official team tournaments, and you can find a lot of success by simply putting in the effort and trying a lot harder than your opponent.

I also wanted to use a typical Jynx team with Counter Chansey since lead Jynx is another way to get unparalyzed Chansey in on Snorlax and hopefully click Counter successfully. This was probably the idea I ended up being least excited about since trying to Counter the Snorlax is where the "prep" with this team ends - past that, it's just a solid team with Jynx that might win me the game Turn 2 if I'm lucky.

My last initial idea was using the Nails team because my immediate thought was Amnesia / Ice Beam / Reflect / Rest Snorlax would own non-Cloyster teams, but then I realized while playing (and Serpi also expressed the same concern) that the team is not good against back Starmie, which Mako had a lot of so I eventually scrapped the idea.

My next step was utilizing my clout and friendships on this website to ask top-tier RBY players for advice! Unfortunately, I did not have 74% of the SPL XIII RBY players with me in a single Discord like I did for DOU in SCL, but I was friends with the likes of Amaranth, Serpi, and Nails, who I all went to for help at some point during the week. This included asking what to bring based on her scout, notes from when they played Mako, and even how to pilot certain compositions. As the great Spurrific would say: having friends is broken.

Amaranth was very kind to pass me all his prep from when he played Mako in Week 2. It let me not have to watch all her pre-SPL XIII replays and take notes since he already did the work for me. His biggest suggestion was bringing Slowbro + Rest Exeggutor since it slays teams with no Zapdos. Mako also seemed unfamiliar against more niche Pokémon (she struggled against the same Slowbro when she played Amaranth as well as Porygon against Heroic Troller last SPL), usually boomed her Exeggutor early, which takes away an Explosion option for Slowbro, and she also uses no Cloyster and below-average Gengar so even less Explosion options.

As mentioned before, Serpi pushed me away from using the Nails team, and Amaranth passed me the modified Nails team with the same Snorlax set but with Starmie - Exeggutor - Zapdos. Amaranth explained how this was a better team if I wanted to use the mono-ice Snorlax set since it actually beats back Starmie with Zapdos, and against back Starmie + Rhydon, you have Mega Drain Exeggutor to take care of business. I wanted to use the Snorlax set, and this team flowed much better, so I loved this pick.

These are the four teams I ended up locking in as options, and I ended up bringing the first two, which were both built by Amaranth. Amaranth was an absolute godsend this week in preparation. He passed me both teams I used, discussed heaps of bounds of RBY with me all week, played numerous test games, and helped me calm down when I was freaking out throughout. I absolutely do not win without him, so once again, I wanted to say thank you so much for helping me get my first SPL win!

Riley♡ — 02/01/2022
ill prob get to sub into rby this season, maybe i win one singular game and grow super attached to like zapdos

^ absolute prophet by the way

I won't actually get into my games - I'm really only interested in talking about my preparation - but they are linked in the screencaps if you are interested. I definitely played sub-optimally at moments, but my massive preparation advantage let me make numerous mistakes and still come out on top since I entered with such a huge head start. While she brought Cloyster twice, she did not bring Zapdos, which was the biggest flaw in her season-long preparation trends.

Winning in SPL is definitely my favorite moment on Smogon - I was nervous for only the fourth time in the past six years right before I had to play (my hands were shaking while trying to click), and I started screaming when I won. Going 1-0 and winning SPL is one of the best outcomes possible, so I am quite happy I got a trophy - something a vast majority of players on this site will never accomplish. I might never get to play in SPL again, but at least I'll forever be a SPL champion.

OU GOD RILEY CHAN — 02/26/2022 @everyone I WON IN SPL

emma

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