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How do you handle different rulesets?

Fire Electric Cat-Gonk

Hello,

How do you respond to changes in the rules of the game?

The Nintendo of Australia Connection Tours have no restrictions on Sleep at all. They're 3v3 as well, meaning that you could be facing such monstrousities as Scarfed Gengar + Sashed Milotic + (insert Poke with stat booster here). You can also use the Latis, they're not listed as Special Pokemon for some reason, and Soul Dew is allowed. Wobbuffet too! In addition, the tour is strictly L50 only, which removes Tyranitar from the equation as well as a number of other Pokemon. All this adds up to a big headache as the conventional strategies are turned on their head. Opening with CB Gyarados against Jumpluff turns into an all-but-guaranteed 3-0 loss. Ice Beam goes on everything, etc etc.

(Oh, btw, since I live in Australia we haven't quite gotten PBR yet (friend is downloading it for his american Wii as we speak) and I was wondering how sleep is handled. Is it like Stadium 1, where you can only sleep one Poke at a time and you can only be asleep for three turns max? That made a lot of sense for the present-6-pick-3 style of battling; putting a single Poke to sleep often gave quite an edge even with the nerfs.)

How do you handle an environment without a certain variable that you've grown accustomed to? Is your first reaction to exploit the holes in the rules as much as possible, or to plan around it to beat down the people that do? Would you ignore the changes from the standard online ruleset, confident in your ability to win on your own terms against people who resort to what could be considered cheating? This discussion could also be extended to the often-changing opinions of the 600-base-stat-Legendaries, such as Serebii (which was banned on GSbot due to passing DT before Evasion Clause became Evasion Ban), Jirachi, Mew, etc.



post thoughts
 
I have PBR, and I personally enjoy the satisfaction of beating teams entirely composed of ubers with my Standard team. However, I have been unfortunate enough to encounter people who actually know how to play competetively exclusively using ubers, which is really annoying, and ends in me losing indefinitely.

The lack of sleep clause on random battles just plain sucks. You don't have to be the most intelligent person in the world to know how to put more than one pokemon to sleep.

However, in a tournament situation, I would adapt to the rules and abuse the lack of sleep clause as much as possible (Choice Scarf Breloom ftw), and use the best pokemon aloud.
 
I will always try and use the best team possible under the ruleset in a competitive environment. I don't have trouble adapting, because I don't get sentimental about the rules. Moreover, as arrogant as this is going to sound, I think I'm a lot better than most people at quickly inventing a new strategy / team, so I'm not really at a disadvantage.
 
So far it seems everyone's more or less agreed on exploiting the changes.

What about the reverse; metagaming by predicting that everyone will jump over the new "sploitz"? Imagine if Sleep Clause is removed, resulting in everyone opening with Timid Sashed Gengar only to run afoul of an opening Lum Berry Wobbuffet? I fall into this category, myself.

This and Obi's post brings up another avenue of discussion: Do people prefer to play the best team, or the best team in the metagame?

To use a M:TG reference, a few PTs ago the undisputed Best Deck was White Weenie, however that deck got hated out of the format. Every single deck had sideboarded cards to destroy WW, sometimes even maindecked, and as a result WW is widely regarded as a dead deck despite being amazingly powerful if the hate is not there. Because of this WW is on the rise again, the hate goes back in the sideboards, and the circle of life continues.

A Pokemon example of this would be playing a Snorlax without Double Edge in G/S (packing Fire Blast to hate out Skarm and Earthquake for everything else), or Gyarados without Waterfall (since you'd need brain damage to send in Rhyperior).
 
I didn't say exploit the changes, I said use the best team. Sometimes the best team doesn't change under new rules. If you find it impossible to both do X strategy (and believe that to be an effective strategy) and be able to stop all Pokemon, you'll obviously be more concerned about stopping Garchomp, Tyranitar, and Salamence than Raikou, Houndoom, and Breloom, just because the latter are less common, so it will net you an overall increase in your winning to stop the first 3 than the second 3. When new things are allowed, people rush to use them, meaning it's in your interest more to counter these things for general battles (but not always when fighting other "pros").

The best team is the best team in the metagame. If your team has a 100% counter, but if that counter isn't on the team, you win, then that team is instantly the best for exactly as long as people don't use that counter. However, your success with that team will force a shift in the metagame, which in turn will reduce its effectiveness. The team didn't technically get worse, but everything else improved and it didn't, which, in effect, is a weakening of the team, so it's no longer the best.
 
Obi said:
The best team is the best team in the metagame. If your team has a 100% counter, but if that counter isn't on the team, you win, then that team is instantly the best for exactly as long as people don't use that counter. However, your success with that team will force a shift in the metagame, which in turn will reduce its effectiveness. The team didn't technically get worse, but everything else improved and it didn't, which, in effect, is a weakening of the team, so it's no longer the best.
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Sorry, I should have clarified my previous post by saying "Do people prefer to play the best team in a vacuum, or the best team in the metagame?". Both you and I appear to agree on playing the latter :toast:

By "best team" I was referring more to the team which is the best considered under its own merits (in a vacuum, as it were). This is similar to what was advocated in the "Unifying Strategy" post from a while ago; that a team shouldn't just be good for the metagame and contain a bunch of counters that can sort of stand on their own, but it should be good on its own I personally disagree with this, "play the best Pokemon in the format" is most certainly a unifying strategy, as is "beat the field based on past experience".

Ego's a factor as well, but for both schools of thought. People like me prefer to play teams that can beat the metagame primarily because they think that they're good enough to handle anything rogue based on play skill alone. However, many people prefer to play teams designed in a vacuum, believing that their strategy is solid enough to take the field without the need to resort to plans against specific things.

On the subject of metagame counters, a bit of history for everyone. One of the most extreme metagame counters I can think of was Parasyrex in RBY, a Parasect with Leech Life/Substitute(?)/Swords Dance/Spore designed for the sole purpose of killing the "grep" Mewtwo (Psychic, Substitute, Amnesia, Recover) used by the Nintendo Reps at the first Pokemon Tours. The predetermined Nintendo Rep teams (cron - starmie / sed - raichu / grep - mewtwo) simply couldn't beat it, and they had the Team To Beat. However, if you consider it by itself, it doesn't sound so appealing.
 
I have a feeling the grep mewtwo had icebeam over amnesia.. I remember it was so over analysed that you would take the icebeam, spore, then had to leech life to gain enough health to create a substitute..

But, more on topically..
Ego's a factor as well, but for both schools of thought. People like me prefer to play teams that can beat the metagame primarily because they think that they're good enough to handle anything rogue based on play skill alone. However, many people prefer to play teams designed in a vacuum, believing that their strategy is solid enough to take the field without the need to resort to plans against specific things.
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I think you have this backwards.. I definitely think I am the best. And because of that, I will use a more generic team. Based on the argument that my skill level will allow me to win so long as I dont have too huge a disadvantage at the outset.

So ideally, I would figure out every possible strategy, then figure out which strategy is not necessarily on average the least inferior, but that is as close as possible to a level footing against every strategy. Basically, I dont want to have lost before the battle even starts.. Even if I would mathematically have a disadvantage against every team I faced.

The reason I am not a big fan of metagaming too heavily in pokemon is generally, you have to play a lot of people who really arent very good. And who knows what sort of crap they are gonna be using. Also I guess, the fact that in pokemon, because you have to cover a large number of possible pokemon with only 6 pokemon of your own, there is a decent chance someone who isnt very good will just happen to have the right pokemon that beats you every single time..

Have a nice day.
 
To help with no Sleep Clause problem you can always use Rest Sleep Talkers and Nature Cure's such as Bliss and Starmie and since Lati@s is aloud maybe Starmie is a good idea.
 
For the exact tourney you are talking about, these were my first though processes;

1) Latis are allowed, have a lati, have a lati counter.
As such I looked at Weavile and Azelf among others
2) Everyone will have a Lati counter, carry counters to them
With no sleep clause and a expecting others to use Weavile on the same logic I almost chose to, a natural fit was Breloom with Mach Punch for Weavile and Sporepunching for everything else. It exploited two things at once.

There was more to it, but that was like more than 3 hours ago so its all fuzzy now. Hope I helped.
 
A small chip in but Substitutte maybe your best friend in this environment...

Nothing says GG like blocking their first sleep and sleeping them back while holding a free sub up. It actually helps you scout for what kind of player you maybe facing as well.
 
You have an idea, but this is also the kind of environment where players of varying levels of skill will be playing.

I lose count of the number of time I've switched into killing blow due to them just randomly firing off attacks with no real logic. This is the kind of enviroment where you are likely to find players who will switch a Staraptor into Gengar only to take a Thunderbolt to the face and being dazed at why you didn't use a STAB move.
 
Imagine if Sleep Clause is removed, resulting in everyone opening with Timid Sashed Gengar only to run afoul of an opening Lum Berry Wobbuffet? I fall into this category, myself.
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What does Wobbuffet do to hurt Gengar?

Anyway, as far as the main topic is concerned, of course you should exploit the changes. Exactly the same way you would and should exploit the so-called current standards in the regular metagame that so many people fall for by considering them to be virtually unbeatable.
 
going off topic a bit just to answer a few things:
I have a feeling the grep mewtwo had icebeam over amnesia.. I remember it was so over analysed that you would take the icebeam, spore, then had to leech life to gain enough health to create a substitute..
Click to expand...
That's probably correct, actually, especially since Substitute would negate Spore anyway. Haha, sorry, it's been what, ten years?

Lemmiwinks MkII said:
What does Wobbuffet do to hurt Gengar?
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Wouldn't either Safeguard on the opener or Mirror Coat on the Shadow Ball completely shut down Gengar? Sure, it's a coin toss, but so's everything in 3v3. I haven't done any testing though, so I could be wrong :justin2:

(Oh, and I was supposed to write Timid Scarfed Gengar in my second post, my bad)
 
Fire Electric Cat-Gonk said:
going off topic a bit just to answer a few things:

That's probably correct, actually, especially since Substitute would negate Spore anyway. Haha, sorry, it's been what, ten years?
Click to expand...

Pssh Gonk, you should have known better!

Yes, it had Ice Beam. It was my Mewtwo. =P I chose against Amnesia because the grep team was actually intended to lose occasionally (required to, actually). Keep in mind, the Amnesia variant was very popular later, but the teams that we were intended to use were _not_ the end-all teams. The parasect was irritating to that version of the Mewtwo, but you could take it out by being smart: Not sending out Mewtwo first. :X

Later, Amnesia/Substitute/Recover/Psychic was the norm.

I think the west coast rep team ended out being:

Mewtwo: Amnesia/Psychic/Recover/Sub
Starmie: Thunderbolt/Ice Beam/Recover/Minimize
Mew: Swords Dance/Softboiled/Double Team/Swift (Hyper Beam for some, but I felt it was weak in the face of Double Team, and a guaranteed 2HKO on Mewtwo)
 
Take it from an Aussie, and a traveler here, half the tournament is people only using their starter, Staraptor, and Luxray >_> For the people who know how to play pogeymons, a Lati@s, a Lati@s counter, and a FEAR! or a SpecsMence.
 
Wouldn't either Safeguard on the opener or Mirror Coat on the Shadow Ball completely shut down Gengar? Sure, it's a coin toss, but so's everything in 3v3. I haven't done any testing though, so I could be wrong
Click to expand...

Safeguard doesn't last forever, and so all Wobby is doing is the standard Encore trick to give another Pokemon a free turn.
 
I create a seperate team the exploits the rules, then I go about and see if I can improve my main, competitive team.
 
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