Hello!
It’s me again! This time, it’s a report on the M4A Premier League, detailing my personal experiences as a manager and giving a big shoutout to not only Bolivia for establishing this amazing tournament experience but also to my team who, despite the loss in the finals, managed to come this far when not many people would have expected it, especially given the drafting of many powerful individuals on other teams.
It’s me again! This time, it’s a report on the M4A Premier League, detailing my personal experiences as a manager and giving a big shoutout to not only Bolivia for establishing this amazing tournament experience but also to my team who, despite the loss in the finals, managed to come this far when not many people would have expected it, especially given the drafting of many powerful individuals on other teams.
If there is a lesson to be drawn from this, I would argue that great players are nurtured with love, respect, and a healthy dose of proper training. That was my approach as a manager, making sure to create a positive environment where everyone would feel at home, and finding a balance between fun and competitive play. After all, the purpose of the M4A Premier League is to include as many people as possible, create a fun experience, and elevate their skills at teambuilding and playing. I hope you all could take something from this!
While this learning curve and experience might come off one-sided for the players, it actually wasn’t for me because managers too learn a lot about managing a team and how they grow as an individual. This couldn’t have been made possible if it weren’t for the amazing support of all team members! It’s been a wild journey. At times, I felt like Joachim Löw, the trainer of the German national football team, who, in a few instances, would get a heart attack when events didn’t happpen the way he envisioned. I now know how it’s like to be a football fan.
That said, controlling your emotions, letting go of frustrations, staying calm and collected throughout the weeks, that’s quite a challenge since a team relies a lot on its manager to navigate it. At the same time, as I came to realize, stress management was an important topic to deal with. I mean when you play in a team rather than for yourself alone, naturally, you don’t want to disappoint your comrades and you want to make sure to give your best. The fact you are playing on the highest level of competitive where one loss could mean the end for the team also doesn’t help making you feel good. And I get that, the M4A Premier League gets to you, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. We are all humans, after all. Every time I see you guys struggling and hurting, I get emotional as well. Because it means you really love the team. It means, as a manager and individual, you develop compassion and a good understanding of people. Being human, isn’t that a beautiful thing? That’s life for you!
Hehe, I digress. Now, I don’t know how the other managers deal with stress management and what’s the best way to handle it, but I think to keep believing in your team and encouraging it is a start to make progress. Analyzing games to find out why someone didn’t perform the way they usually would outside of tournament matches and providing enough opportunities to make players used to different battling styles and strategies can go a long way as well, I believe. I’d be curious if anyone wants to share their advices on stress management.
Moving on, my modus operandi as a manager consisted of continually assessing the skills of each player, their strengths and weaknesses. What are the reasons for their success? Did they manage to overcome their obstacles? What kind of training can I offer to each player? And can I keep introducing new strategies to challenge them? To raise the level of each player, I decided on two ideas, one of them being a focus on group work and the other being a differential take. In the case of the former, players have the chance to challlenge different opponents but me so that they don’t feel pressured by their trainer and are exposed to different playing styles and strategies. Moreover, in a group, you can get a lot of things done much more efficient and faster. For instance, if you have a problem and can’t see the solution to it yourself but then suddenly, someone comes up with an amazing idea. In the case of the differential approach, I decided to offer long, private tutor sessions to each player to make sure they know I want to spend my time with them, as an individual, and focus on their progress. The sessions often involves an analysis on the game and teambuilding. Don’t hesitate to explain and praise a player’s progress but also don’t forget to explain and point out flaws. Do so in a respectable manner.
As the players continue to grow, you, as a manager, also need to grow to keep up with them. If you are training them, it means you need to update your Pokémon teams and build new ones (if possible) to avoid boredom and stagnance. This was very notable in the Retricted format. Each week, you were only allowed to use one of the five megas of the week. In order to reduce most work for my players, I decided to build teams for almost every mega of the week so that, once they had created their own version of the mega of their choice, they coud test it against them.
In VGC, I took a different approach. Teambuilding and training is the hardest part out of all the formats we have, I would argue. That is because, while your team needs to be able to handle a variety of different strategies, as a player you need to learn to get proper readings on the opponent’s team and find the most appropriate lead to beat them. One small mistake can quickly lead to a loss, especially in a very fast paced format. And oftentimes, while you might think your team isn’t effective enough to handle specific archetypes, I recommend actually taking your time to do the testing to be really sure of that. I remember how JosJet struggled a lot against my Hail team at first, and it looked like his Rain team had an unfavorable match he could not hope to win. However, after the 10th atttempt or so, we finally found the most ideal leads that could get him a win against my Hail team. And from that on, the battles went smoother. A propos leads, there’s a tool I’ve found on reddit that can help you to find the most efficient leads and take notes of your progress. It’s been very helpful for my VGC main player, Indigo, and me. Here, the link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RzgMEz8kK_kRhFMgF1fXZKhkKWvgIrI2_1Uy5ncdHxI/edit?usp=sharing
Of course, because we didn’t have enough time to be that dedicated (after all, who wants to play 50 games for one team? XD), we decided to play as many games as possible and draw conclusions from them, which was still useful as we could remove some big flaws of teambuilding and plays.
As you can see, you need a lot of patience as a manager and player and give them a break from time to time, otherwise they’ll get burned out very fast. Also, real life comes first! The M4A Premier League shouldn’t be the constant main focus of your life. Enjoy your time with your friends, familyand/or significant other!
With that being said, there’s not much else I can add except giving a bit shoutout to Bolivia again! Seriously, I’m super impressed by your management skills and the fact that your team went undefeated throughout the tournament. From the moment you’ve chosen your players, I knew you had, without doubt, the most consistent team even when another team, the Kiloude Krookodile, had the most powerful individual players. But your players have grown very quickly and well and could remain strong week for week. I don’t know what you’ve fed them but seriously, your management skills are something to be proud of!
Last but not least, I want to say thank you to my team. Thank you for being so patient with me. Thank you for being kind and awesome people as you keep supporting and motivating each other, even in bad times! Thank you for contributing to the lore and giving our opponents one hell of a match, making sure we are not to be underestimated. Without you guys, we wouldn’t have made it into the finals! When I drafted you, I wanted to make sure to have players that have a lot of untapped potential waiting to be explored rather than choosing mostly players who were already super experienced in tournaments and good. You guys are proof that great players, no matter their origins and inexperiences, are made. I’m so proud of you. Each one of you!
Harmony, I got the chance to see you grow as an individual. You became a lot more assertive and confident in teambuilding and playing. Moreover, your cheerful nature helped a lot to create a positive and healthy environment where we would be at ease and at home. Thanks for putting your trust in the team and being an amazing person!
Spiderlino and Etlon, even though we didn’t interact with each other much, which is totally fine!, I can confidently say I enjoyed a lot the few times I had with you. Spiderlino, you’ve been quite the gem oft he SSSD. I could learn a lot from your stall teams and hyper offense teams, archetypes I’m very unfamilliar with, and you’ve been a really, really tough opponent in testing. I would go so far as to say you were the most difficult player in Singles on my team as you kept playing consistently well. I hope the M4A Premier League could show to the people what you are made of. Etlon, despite your inexperience in Monotype, you’ve been quite amazing at teambuilding and navigating your teams. That’s super impressive, and it shows you really wanted to spend your time on your teams, making sure they work they way you envisioned. I hope you had a lot of fun during the M4A Premier League!
Next, I want to praise you, Indigo, but also apologize to you for all the haxxes you had to endure ;.;
You’ve been quite innovative with your teams, entertaining with your gimmicks and nicknames, especially those from team evil (shudder), and it was quite a pleasure talking to you, getting to know you, and seeing you getting more confident and familiar with the team! Moreover, you’ve been a huge help to the team with your efforts to help out whenever you could and write amazing speeches to motivate us. I’ll be missing our long talks about VGC and our training sessions.
That reminds me, JosJet, the time we had with Indigo, they were amazing. Your appreciation of VGC and willingness to learn means a lot to me. You’ve been very patient and kind with all of us. Also, it’s always heartwarming to get us all to laugh! You are awesome, and keep being true to your core!
Bekama, I’m super impressed by your progress. Training must have been quite hard for you but you were always very patient and willing to learn, without complains. Your efforts didn’t go to waste as you started to defeat difficult opponents. Furthermore, you are a shining example oft he SSSD’s values: Fairness and respect. You displayed them when facing pupugugu. Despite the loss, I was extremely touched by your human heart and kindness. You are amazing and you can be proud of that!
Sticky, the SUPER JESTER, you are another person who’s always been patient with the team. Your jokes, as fitting of your title, were much appreciated to take away some stress of us. Moreover, I’m in awe of your dedication. Analyzing one game after another one, creating many different teams and revising them until we were satisfied, that was super impressive. I enjoyed the heat teams you brought to our training and the immense help you offered to the team in general. Thank you very much! Thank you for your kind words and encouragement!
Last but not least, Ninjacid. You really grew on me, you grew on me so much that I consider you my successor when I retire, whenever that might be. Your trolling on DH was quite entertaining, as expected from someone who’s Bit’s brother, and I loved all the precious moments we had together. I’ve been super impressed by your calm and consistent plays, in training and in the league battles. You’ve been a clutch in two important battles and demonstrated your great skills. Your instincts were impeccable!
And now, I’ve finally come to an end. As Jean de la Fontaine once said, „Sadness flies away on the wings of time“. It’s an odd feeling to no longer have anything to do with the M4A Premier League. The time we all spent with each other, I will never forget it and always remember it fondly. I’m really sad the story of our rise and fall has come to an end. I’ve never considered myself a princess as the lore would have you all believed it. I’ve always been a captain at heart and consider you my precious crew. I’m soooo proud of you (which I probably mentioned a hundred times XD). You stayed strong throughout the storm. While this is the end of our era, don’t feel sad about it. Take pride in yourself, in your achievements. And now, let us all sail towards a future free of the tyranny of the Dark Lord.
IsoCon, bless you!
While this learning curve and experience might come off one-sided for the players, it actually wasn’t for me because managers too learn a lot about managing a team and how they grow as an individual. This couldn’t have been made possible if it weren’t for the amazing support of all team members! It’s been a wild journey. At times, I felt like Joachim Löw, the trainer of the German national football team, who, in a few instances, would get a heart attack when events didn’t happpen the way he envisioned. I now know how it’s like to be a football fan.
That said, controlling your emotions, letting go of frustrations, staying calm and collected throughout the weeks, that’s quite a challenge since a team relies a lot on its manager to navigate it. At the same time, as I came to realize, stress management was an important topic to deal with. I mean when you play in a team rather than for yourself alone, naturally, you don’t want to disappoint your comrades and you want to make sure to give your best. The fact you are playing on the highest level of competitive where one loss could mean the end for the team also doesn’t help making you feel good. And I get that, the M4A Premier League gets to you, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. We are all humans, after all. Every time I see you guys struggling and hurting, I get emotional as well. Because it means you really love the team. It means, as a manager and individual, you develop compassion and a good understanding of people. Being human, isn’t that a beautiful thing? That’s life for you!
Hehe, I digress. Now, I don’t know how the other managers deal with stress management and what’s the best way to handle it, but I think to keep believing in your team and encouraging it is a start to make progress. Analyzing games to find out why someone didn’t perform the way they usually would outside of tournament matches and providing enough opportunities to make players used to different battling styles and strategies can go a long way as well, I believe. I’d be curious if anyone wants to share their advices on stress management.
Moving on, my modus operandi as a manager consisted of continually assessing the skills of each player, their strengths and weaknesses. What are the reasons for their success? Did they manage to overcome their obstacles? What kind of training can I offer to each player? And can I keep introducing new strategies to challenge them? To raise the level of each player, I decided on two ideas, one of them being a focus on group work and the other being a differential take. In the case of the former, players have the chance to challlenge different opponents but me so that they don’t feel pressured by their trainer and are exposed to different playing styles and strategies. Moreover, in a group, you can get a lot of things done much more efficient and faster. For instance, if you have a problem and can’t see the solution to it yourself but then suddenly, someone comes up with an amazing idea. In the case of the differential approach, I decided to offer long, private tutor sessions to each player to make sure they know I want to spend my time with them, as an individual, and focus on their progress. The sessions often involves an analysis on the game and teambuilding. Don’t hesitate to explain and praise a player’s progress but also don’t forget to explain and point out flaws. Do so in a respectable manner.
As the players continue to grow, you, as a manager, also need to grow to keep up with them. If you are training them, it means you need to update your Pokémon teams and build new ones (if possible) to avoid boredom and stagnance. This was very notable in the Retricted format. Each week, you were only allowed to use one of the five megas of the week. In order to reduce most work for my players, I decided to build teams for almost every mega of the week so that, once they had created their own version of the mega of their choice, they coud test it against them.
In VGC, I took a different approach. Teambuilding and training is the hardest part out of all the formats we have, I would argue. That is because, while your team needs to be able to handle a variety of different strategies, as a player you need to learn to get proper readings on the opponent’s team and find the most appropriate lead to beat them. One small mistake can quickly lead to a loss, especially in a very fast paced format. And oftentimes, while you might think your team isn’t effective enough to handle specific archetypes, I recommend actually taking your time to do the testing to be really sure of that. I remember how JosJet struggled a lot against my Hail team at first, and it looked like his Rain team had an unfavorable match he could not hope to win. However, after the 10th atttempt or so, we finally found the most ideal leads that could get him a win against my Hail team. And from that on, the battles went smoother. A propos leads, there’s a tool I’ve found on reddit that can help you to find the most efficient leads and take notes of your progress. It’s been very helpful for my VGC main player, Indigo, and me. Here, the link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RzgMEz8kK_kRhFMgF1fXZKhkKWvgIrI2_1Uy5ncdHxI/edit?usp=sharing
Of course, because we didn’t have enough time to be that dedicated (after all, who wants to play 50 games for one team? XD), we decided to play as many games as possible and draw conclusions from them, which was still useful as we could remove some big flaws of teambuilding and plays.
As you can see, you need a lot of patience as a manager and player and give them a break from time to time, otherwise they’ll get burned out very fast. Also, real life comes first! The M4A Premier League shouldn’t be the constant main focus of your life. Enjoy your time with your friends, familyand/or significant other!
With that being said, there’s not much else I can add except giving a bit shoutout to Bolivia again! Seriously, I’m super impressed by your management skills and the fact that your team went undefeated throughout the tournament. From the moment you’ve chosen your players, I knew you had, without doubt, the most consistent team even when another team, the Kiloude Krookodile, had the most powerful individual players. But your players have grown very quickly and well and could remain strong week for week. I don’t know what you’ve fed them but seriously, your management skills are something to be proud of!
Last but not least, I want to say thank you to my team. Thank you for being so patient with me. Thank you for being kind and awesome people as you keep supporting and motivating each other, even in bad times! Thank you for contributing to the lore and giving our opponents one hell of a match, making sure we are not to be underestimated. Without you guys, we wouldn’t have made it into the finals! When I drafted you, I wanted to make sure to have players that have a lot of untapped potential waiting to be explored rather than choosing mostly players who were already super experienced in tournaments and good. You guys are proof that great players, no matter their origins and inexperiences, are made. I’m so proud of you. Each one of you!
Harmony, I got the chance to see you grow as an individual. You became a lot more assertive and confident in teambuilding and playing. Moreover, your cheerful nature helped a lot to create a positive and healthy environment where we would be at ease and at home. Thanks for putting your trust in the team and being an amazing person!
Spiderlino and Etlon, even though we didn’t interact with each other much, which is totally fine!, I can confidently say I enjoyed a lot the few times I had with you. Spiderlino, you’ve been quite the gem oft he SSSD. I could learn a lot from your stall teams and hyper offense teams, archetypes I’m very unfamilliar with, and you’ve been a really, really tough opponent in testing. I would go so far as to say you were the most difficult player in Singles on my team as you kept playing consistently well. I hope the M4A Premier League could show to the people what you are made of. Etlon, despite your inexperience in Monotype, you’ve been quite amazing at teambuilding and navigating your teams. That’s super impressive, and it shows you really wanted to spend your time on your teams, making sure they work they way you envisioned. I hope you had a lot of fun during the M4A Premier League!
Next, I want to praise you, Indigo, but also apologize to you for all the haxxes you had to endure ;.;
You’ve been quite innovative with your teams, entertaining with your gimmicks and nicknames, especially those from team evil (shudder), and it was quite a pleasure talking to you, getting to know you, and seeing you getting more confident and familiar with the team! Moreover, you’ve been a huge help to the team with your efforts to help out whenever you could and write amazing speeches to motivate us. I’ll be missing our long talks about VGC and our training sessions.
That reminds me, JosJet, the time we had with Indigo, they were amazing. Your appreciation of VGC and willingness to learn means a lot to me. You’ve been very patient and kind with all of us. Also, it’s always heartwarming to get us all to laugh! You are awesome, and keep being true to your core!
Bekama, I’m super impressed by your progress. Training must have been quite hard for you but you were always very patient and willing to learn, without complains. Your efforts didn’t go to waste as you started to defeat difficult opponents. Furthermore, you are a shining example oft he SSSD’s values: Fairness and respect. You displayed them when facing pupugugu. Despite the loss, I was extremely touched by your human heart and kindness. You are amazing and you can be proud of that!
Sticky, the SUPER JESTER, you are another person who’s always been patient with the team. Your jokes, as fitting of your title, were much appreciated to take away some stress of us. Moreover, I’m in awe of your dedication. Analyzing one game after another one, creating many different teams and revising them until we were satisfied, that was super impressive. I enjoyed the heat teams you brought to our training and the immense help you offered to the team in general. Thank you very much! Thank you for your kind words and encouragement!
Last but not least, Ninjacid. You really grew on me, you grew on me so much that I consider you my successor when I retire, whenever that might be. Your trolling on DH was quite entertaining, as expected from someone who’s Bit’s brother, and I loved all the precious moments we had together. I’ve been super impressed by your calm and consistent plays, in training and in the league battles. You’ve been a clutch in two important battles and demonstrated your great skills. Your instincts were impeccable!
And now, I’ve finally come to an end. As Jean de la Fontaine once said, „Sadness flies away on the wings of time“. It’s an odd feeling to no longer have anything to do with the M4A Premier League. The time we all spent with each other, I will never forget it and always remember it fondly. I’m really sad the story of our rise and fall has come to an end. I’ve never considered myself a princess as the lore would have you all believed it. I’ve always been a captain at heart and consider you my precious crew. I’m soooo proud of you (which I probably mentioned a hundred times XD). You stayed strong throughout the storm. While this is the end of our era, don’t feel sad about it. Take pride in yourself, in your achievements. And now, let us all sail towards a future free of the tyranny of the Dark Lord.
IsoCon, bless you!
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Mega Electrode
Mega Glourk
Mega Silvally
Bolivia wow, this was a genius idea dude. And not only was it a great idea, but you were the best host anybody could ask for, fair, polite, justified. You took all the insanity of the peoples and turned it into a great experience for everybody that participated or even stayed on the sidelines. And on top of that, you drafted impeccably, you managed swaggingly” and you played “egregiously” well(despite what you’ll say.) but outside of the PL in this time I’ve had a lot of fun hanging with you, talking about competitive as a whole and managing and everything and you have quickly become one of my best friends on smogon. Swag To All.
, I don’t think it’s really romantic love, it’s love but not romantic love yknow(jk, unless). You’re honestly one of the best people I’ve ever met, and you managed your team amazingly. You always talked to me about how much you were excited about your team and were always so positive. You really deserved to be in finals, and I felt like I lost when you lost. I loved building with you, training with you playing you, and just like Princess Blue and the Ruby Samurai escaping into our own little world with you. (Also let’s bring bandana to more tours) Eventually I’ll defeat you in battle and they’ll marry.
