While it's still up in the air if my team will pull through and win LTPL in the tiebreaker, I have done my part and finished 7-2, a much better score than I ever could've hoped for given my pessimism about the state of the meta throughout most of the tournament. I slowly came into my own in the builder and I think it showed as my games progressively got better. I'd like to share my teams from this tournament and give some thoughts on why and how I built these teams. Click on the sprites for importables.
Week 1 vs Evigaro
The importable for this week actually is an old one that I posted in our discord's PU channel since I don't have the updated team anymore and I'm too lazy to change it given that the team is entirely illegal anyway - the only edit I made to my recollection is that I put Leek over Choice Band on Sirfetch'd since I found the ability to change moves useful but Life Orb sucks, and Leek grants you a solid 50% chance to get a x1.5 boost. This turned out to be a lifesaver vs Evigaro, since I needed a crit in the lategame to get past her Grassy Seed Sigilyph. Because this is an old meta team I don't have too much to say about it, I essentially just wanted to use something that abused the brokens while still having a good matchup vs all the brokens myself, which is how Vaporeon and Scarf Persian-A ended up on this team. Klutz Trick SR Golurk by the way was one of my favorite "gimmicks" in this meta, it already smacks pretty much everything with its STABs alone so the ability to cripple a wall by giving it something like Assault Vest or Toxic Orb is very funny.
Week 2 vs atomicllamas
Again, old meta so the importable is old and has Sleep Powder > Synthesis on Roserade (sorry but Synthesis was always the better move on Rose) and Scarf Togedemaru instead of Scarf Duraludon, which I ended up using because it meant I could fit rocks on this team and also Duraludon was incredibly broken. The idea here was to abuse Tauros + Roserade since Tauros had few checks and even fewer with Spikes up, meanwhile Roserade could come in on most of the few checks Tauros did have (Palossand, Jellicent, Vaporeon etc). Eject Pack Rose was a very fun set to play around with and it helped in the game by getting a big hit off on Sdef Scrafty and ejecting out so as to prevent it from clicking Rest on the next turn. Unfortunately lost this game, got a bit unlucky and was just not quite in my element in this crazy meta. Still, I enjoyed this team.
Week 3 vs Chloe
Following the big wave of bans in January I found myself wanting to try out some Fighting spam since it seemed to me like it would be very difficult for people to account for Scrafty and Toxicroak at the same time, especially given that a lot of the Fairy types that would usually deal with BU Scrafty were not very popular yet. Things turned out differently since Chloe had checks for both and more importantly had an unchoiced Basculin with Psychic Fangs vs a team where the only Water resist was Toxicroak. Mostly a funny team to show because of my attempt to make bulky Defog Rotom a thing in this meta, doesn't seem like it has caught on whatsoever.
Week 4 vs MZ
Final week of the Rose meta and I decided to take advantage of it. I basically started off trying to build a good balance core that supported Roserade, ended up with Coalossal/Jelli/Toge since the core provided good synergy and role compression while not being overly passive vs threats like Toxicroak (NP still destroys the core but that's just how it is with that mon). Passimian was a natural fit as a Scarfer that could punish Defog and I ended up putting QD Ribombee in last since it helped vs several Fighting types and looked like a good lategame sweeper on this team. Ended up getting a good matchup with it, put a lot of pressure on MZ's team with my hazard setters early on and ended up killing Talonflame as it was forced to Defog, after that it was a pretty smooth ride.
Week 5 vs LST
New meta and I was not entirely sure what to do in the builder so I ended up using a team gum made which served its purpose. Ended up in the sample teams thread which you can find
here. The replay nicely demonstrates how hard it can be to break Aromatisse, also shoutouts to AoA Lycanroc which lured Passimian and sealed the deal for me here.
Week 6
I was still lost in the builder and given that my team was almost guaranteed to make playoffs I did not try really hard, ended up letting Ark play in my stead (
link). I gave him a screens team in the form of
- frankly not a team I recommend, it's incredibly inconsistent but does stack several threats that "just win" in certain matchups if you play your cards right. I also tried laddering with this for the suspect test but it only worked so well, screens aren't very reliable on ladder compared to teams with more defensive backbone.
Week 7 vs Kink
During this week I sorta figured out where I wanted to go with building for this meta, although this team still has its issues I liked it a lot better than what I had been building in Crown Tundra meta up to this point bar maybe my week 4 team vs MZ. I recognized Kink likes building very wonky teams that systematically ignore to cover for a few types on the defensive end. I saw a lot of teams that lacked solid Water resists so I knew building with Kingler was the way to go since it hits ridiculously hard and can even function as a cleaner. Heliolisk seemed like a solid teammate, giving me a switchin to bulky Waters that annoy Kingler, and from there on I just filled the team out with some of my favorite offensive glues in the form of Talon + Whimsi, Claydol as a rocker with some key resists and Teleport to preserve momentum, and Kabutops to combine Scarf + Spin + Talonflame switchin in one slot. If I redid the team I would probably make Whimsi or Talonflame a Defog set, change Kabutops to Togedemaru, and change Claydol to an offensive rocker like Aggron or Omastar, which as you will be able to tell from my next few teams is sorta how I generally approach my teams in this meta. As for the game itself, I basically got the exact kind of matchup I was hoping for, Kink's team was very fast and offensive and lacked any counterplay to Agility Kingler if it ever got an opportunity to set up - that is, bar Flame Body Talonflame which burned me and ruined an early sweep, but after that my Talonflame and Kabutops could both basically roll up the rest of his team so it was not a big problem.
Semifinals vs Ren-Chon
I did not specifically prep for anything in particular this week, since I did not know if I had to expect another Kink team, something Ren-chon built for himself, or someone else's team. Instead I just made this and figured it was solid enough, given that mixed Virizion is a really nasty breaker that can practically always put in work if you get your predictions right. Talonflame/Lanturn/Weezing was added as a defensive core that covers for most threats without being overly passive or lacking in utility. After that I decided to go with Aggron as an unorthodox SR setter with some key resists and a lot of offensive presence, since I was worried the team might falter in certain matchups if Virizion is the only thing on the team doing serious damage. Whimsicott was added in last primarily to deal with Dark types like BU Scrafty which was looking to be a big issue for this team, unfortunately could not fit a decent Scarfer on this team without compromising my matchup vs threats like that one so I revived the classic Encore Whimsi to prevent something like Omastar from setting up and running through my team. Ended up being a great asset as it managed to Encore Ren-chon's Froslass, preventing it from doing anything useful early on in the match and forcing him to eat a Knock with Talonflame, putting me way ahead immediately. The takeaway here is that Whimsicott is an incredible mon with an incredible movepool, it's very rewarding to experiment with sets for it.
Finals vs Punny 1
Finals vs Punny 2
I decided to group these two together since they're both finals games and as you can see are pretty similar. These teams will be discussed in the next untier talk and I may also submit at least one of them as a sample team, but in any case what I can say on these teams is that I've found that this kind of offense is quite simply the most reliable stuff in the meta currently. There are a lot of threats in this meta that are very difficult to account for and what I've found is that as soon as you try to answer threats like Virizion, Archeops etc defensively you paint yourself into a corner. Using passive mons like Vaporeon may seem like a reliable way of dealing with a slew of scary breakers, but at the same time you give other scary breakers like NP Toxicroak free turns. What I've found is that as soon as you go passive, you have to go all the way since you otherwise expose yourself to nigh-unwinnable matchups vs specific threats, and at that point what you are left with is often a team without reliable breaking power. Instead, my teams end up being stacked with mostly fast and offensively inclined threats that still provide defensive utility through their typings and abilities, minimizing how much the opponent can switch in their own offensive threats. I think both games show very well how these teams have an advantage vs the more passive style of team that Punny had been using during LTPL. In the first game, the presence of Vaporeon + lack of a real NP Croak check was always going to make things difficult for him, and to boot he didn't really have much to break my team with beyond a wacky Silvally-Fairy set that caught a weirdly great matchup because I hadn't put any EVs into Talonflame's special defense, allowing Silvally's Surf to do upward of 50% - this has been fixed in the importable. In the second game, I took advantage of the fact that bulky teams often still fail to resist certain things, with Ghost-types being especially problematic, and CB Lass basically was gonna go ham extremely hard were it not for some unfortunate misses that made the game closer than it otherwise would have been. Here you can see the difference between being weak to a certain type on balance vs offense by the way: although I had no Ghost resists, the constant offensive pressure meant that Gourgeist could only do so much vs my team and I only ended up having to sac my Whimsi to it before later eating a Poltergeist with Croak and picking it off with Shadow Ball. I never had to let an integral part of the team in this matchup die, something that's much harder to do when your team is more passive and you need all of your team members alive so as not to lose to breaker/sweeper X.
Bonus: snaga vs ninjadog
I have not been building much for teammates in this tour because it was hard enough to complete 1 solid team a week for me, but I did pass some teams to snaga during finals and he liked the look of this one so he ended up using it. As you can see, this is what happens to my builds when I'm trying to go more bulky: offensive presence is very low, practically this borders on semistall. Luckily it got an incredible matchup, although I think the team is pretty solid for what it's trying to do anyhow. I basically just wanted to try and build a hazard stacking team around shuffler Guzzlord, since it gets Knock to remove Boots and is very hard to deal with if you lack a Fairy. Garbodor was a natural fit as a spiker that can exploit Fairy types and punish U-Turn with Rocky Helmet (maybe make it Sdef though, NP Croak sorta bones you otherwise I think); Miltank was added as a durable rocker with Heal Bell (Scrappy so you don't lose to Froslass); Tsareena to Spin, remove Boots on Talonflame, and generally provide offensive presence on an otherwise passive team; Iron Defense Cofagrigus as a spinblocker and secondary Fighting check as well as an underrated lategame wincon (maybe change the item to Ghost/Dark resist Berry or even Boots); and Scarf Togedemaru as a fast thing that provides Electric immunity + Ice resist.
LordST vs Drud 
Lyss vs TJ 
Kink vs MZ 
EviGaro vs termi 
