I will say as a user of Stick Farfetch'd on my first team ever (before they called it the Leek) the allure of guaranteed crits is real but generally impractical these days compared to just pumping raw Attack. But also it is pretty cathartic and more memorable when your outs actually get played, and I feel like winning against the double Magearna meta at -2 offenses may be one of the most impactful recorded showings of Farfetch'd carrying, with its signature Cut finisher to boot.
(Fortunately I actually linked this replay in this thread, because most of my Gen 7 bookmarks did not carry over across computers at some point.)
Crits: That takes me back to my first team. With mine I only committed with 1 Farfetch'd and used super luck for 100%. Hopefully Sirfetchd can revive the dream.
This is my most clutch classic crit Farfetch'd replay. Eve
rythi
ng has to line up in place, but when it does...
Hosted by InkyDarkBird and doipy hooves. Approved by A Cake Wearing A Hat.
Thanks to greenandgrey77 for the banner.
Metronome: Steel ‘Mon Run
7.5 long years ago during Sun and Moon, Steel Pokemon were banned for wreaking havoc upon Metronome Battles. The extreme usage of tanky bulwarks such as Steelix and Melmetal were too much for the metagame to handle, resisting 10 other types and being immune to dastardly Poison status moves. However, since the introduction of Terastallization in Scarlet and Violet, both Tera...
Speaking of double Magearna, the Steel 'Mon Run finals (thread also contains the semifinals) have recently concluded with
cchang21 winning with using one team of double Weakness Policy Flame Body Magearna the whole way through, royally representing the past age of Metronome Battles. I will also shout out finalist
lcalvexx for other varied teams, representing post-Gen 7 mons like Hisuian Goodra and Z-A megas like Skarmory and Excadrill alike, as well as Electric Surge/Seed strats that actually affected quite the procs in semifinals game 5 vs Lectrys with Spore, Terrain Pulse, and Thunderbolt all being used while relevant.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9doublescustomgame-2695766328
I may be considering going over all the replays sometime this week (if not later today) and listing out all the mons by usage like the past Welcome to Metro Nome tournament (and also maybe monthly stats while I'm at it), but did just want to highlight this as a unique set and interactions I noticed. If nothing else I do recommend checking out the last 4 finals replays as they do get pretty close. Lastly thanks to everyone that showed up and
InkyDarkBird for being the main proposer behind this tournament. My role as being requested as the required cohost ended up mostly involved in beta reading the intro and also running the bracketmaker/tags, which is kind of unneeded now because he actually earned a badge right after semifinals. As a first time cohost, this was pretty much just as new an experience to me too.
Incidentally, this tournament talk actually brings me to another tangent I had planned once upon a time about the unbanning of Normalium Z and its unique nature as an item, but didn't get around to it because Champions didn't actually reintroduce Z-moves yet and I ended up basically being on an unofficial hiatus. But today is actually a rather relevant time to talk about this though, because the tournament to "retest" Normalium Z happened 7 years ago on this day and a lot of history around this time went unrecorded because of their short natures.
Post "in" to participate.
This tournament is slated to start at
9:30 am EDT (in ~15 minutes).
Please do note that today's tour is Metronome Battle! Alongside the regular rules, Normalium Z is unbanned for the tournament. Winner earns exclusive voting rights for the Normalium Z unban. More info on Normalium Z: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/metronome-battles.3632075/post-8248481
Additonally, note that this will be an actual Pokémon Showdown single elimination tournament held in a groupchat room on Smogtours. Please only join the...
Nowadays it's a pretty unimpactful item, but Normalium Z was originally banned under initial Metronome rules in 2018, for what I can only imagine is its unparalleled power to call offensive Z-moves, raising up most weak moves into a 100 BP move and raising most other offensive moves to almost double their powers still. Yet Z-Metronome may have the most unwieldy limitations of any item with how it can only be used once and has no effect when rolling a status move, being the most gambling-type item in a gambler's metagame, while also locking a mon out of other general generational mechanics like dynamax and Tera. Z-Moves may have perfect accuracy, but can also still be wasted on hitting into immunities and losing other beneficial secondary effects or attributes like spread damage.
There are some niche use cases that could make it a hypothetical game changer like turning Explosion into Breakneck Blitz or breaking through a Taunt on the same turn you get Taunted (but not afterwards because you can't open the Fight menu), but the whole idea behind Normalium Z is that you have to call your shot ahead of time and you only get one chance to make good use of it, unlike Dynamax or Tera which can be used defensively/reactively and persist longer than 1 turn with more impact. However, if one could predict the future, and/or play in a world where RNG abuse is still possible, then Normalium Z could be one of the most important items for player control because it's one of the few ways to add a button to press that would notably affect the RNG.
But that future did not come to pass, and so Normalium Z ended up being rather forgotten and taken for granted in the depths of history.
(Also ingame you actually get to see what original move you called from Metronome before it becomes the Z-move, unlike PS which only shows the Z-move name, which I think is more fun to know though doesn't really affect the outcome of the game.)
But back in 2019, there were a few posts in the thread asking about unbanning Normalium Z in January and August (after change of ownership), because it was there, and finally Ivy ended up proposing a retest tournament (because back then Gen 7 Metronome was still an unrated format, so you couldn't really have suspect reqs with no ladder).
So, with a little experimentation, I've found that Normalium Z is really not worth the quickban it received at the start of the generation. The most important thing to consider here is the fact that any status move called by it is simply the regular status move—applying any Z-effects (like omniboost from Z-Conversion) is skipped entirely. In essence, the Z-Metronome is only useful as a one-time trick up the sleeve for a somewhat better chance at a 100+ BP damaging move to finish off one foe, and in doing so, it still sacrifices the item slot that could run something more broadly...
Formalizing the Normalium Z retest here. Reasoning is as described in my previous post; additionally, the item was permitted in the Battle Spot Special 15 and hardly even saw use there (albeit largely due to much more pressing issues like Cursed Body Gengar).
The suspect tour dates will be tomorrow, Monday, October 7th 4PM EST, and Friday, October 11th 9:30AM EST. These tournaments are to be held on the Smogtours server in the Lobby room as an actual PS single elimination tournament (not a regular live tournament due to the Normalium unban); the winner and finalist will...
Now there were 2 scheduled (you had to be there live) tournaments mentioned there and the one I linked above was "Live Tour 2". Live Tour 1 ended up being cancelled because there were only 2 signups, myself and TheJ3estPenguin (who would not appear in the 2nd run). The main impact of this first tournament on October 7 was that I think I registered the "doipy hooves" username on Showdown to play officially, but apparently did not save any public replays and I have potentially forgotten the password of off the top of my head.
Post "in" to participate.
This tournament is slated to start at
4:00 pm EDT (in ~15 minutes).
Please do note that today's tour is Metronome Battle! Alongside the regular rules, Normalium Z is unbanned for the tournament. Winner and finalist earn exclusive voting rights for the Normalium Z unban. More info on Normalium Z: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/metronome-battles.3632075/post-8248481
Additonally, note that this will be an actual Pokémon Showdown single elimination tournament held in the Lobby room on Smogtours courtesy of...
This is cancelled due to low turnout. Stay tuned for the next scheduled one on this upcoming Friday at 9:30 AM EDT!
Back to the tournament that actually did happen on October 11 2019, there were a few posts leading up to it but no context on how it actually went down, so I figure I would write out some of my sparse memories from 7 years ago as some kind of record.
- The first tournament's time would have fit well after school for me, and the second tournament I want to say was before school, but was actually later than I thought based on the time. I can't imagine skipping school for the tournament and I also didn't have the means to play mid-class, so I can only assume I was either sick or had a late start or break period or something. So this was pretty close to fit in because the 2nd tournament only even got 3 signups in the end too.
Update: Tours in groupchats are disabled on Smogtours, so this will be done on the PS main server instead!
- I believe there was a bit of uncertain time waiting on everyone to move from smogtours to main and hoping we still had the minimum 3 people, but it ended up working out somehow.
- I think the actual tournament ended up being a round robin with @Yuiichi at least going 2-0 against the other players to win definitively, as noted by the title. I want to say I went 1-1 but don't want to shade
Aloopuriza because I have very little recollection of playing those 2 battles. Technically the winner got exclusive voting rights but I think the participants and Ivy present in the chat all agreed Normalium Z was fine, because I don't think it actually ended up doing anything. Like I believe I might have been the only one who actually brought Normalium Z and used it once with Landorus-T and it was a wasted move, but this is all anecdotal and neither other player seems to be recently active to ask if they would remember more.
In the end, Normalium Z didn't actually get unbanned until around a month later on November 22 2019, a week after SWSH's official release, making the first time Normalium Z was playable on the Gen 8 public ladder ironically after Gen 7's time had passed. It was a rather sparse time for not very much gain, but it was never done before and fun in some regard.
F. I assume Sand Spit is getting blown away too, sorry for banning all your new teams
fwqef but the chip damage is too good. Imagine this unchecked and taking over ladder, with fights for the future determined by Magic Guard and Safety Goggles.
I felt Ice Scales was very strong for tanking from Turn 1 with its full potential (stacking multipliers w/ Eviolite), with single digit percentages being common, but Dauntless Shield seemed close performance-wise. In hindsight, most of my experiences may have been against imperfect EVs anyway.
I also have to concede on Libero for similar...
In other Smogon news,
CAP 38 is shaping up to be a mini-Uber (inspired by Eternatus), and so far they've decided on a Grass/Poison type with Flower Veil which I have to point out for the Flower Veil representation, and also a potentially faster Mega Venusaur at best or so with how it's looking for the need to outspeed. And in general PS news, with all the talk of bots lately, I just want to say that if things ever get to the point of a robot uprising with the fate of all Smogon and Showdown on the line, out of any PS format to challenge the bots, I would stand my ground with Metronome Battles. Thanks for your reading.
