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Mirror Matches in Competitive Play

I like the smeargle strategy, however you are just as lost as your opponent. You guys are overlooking one particular strategy that is fairly failsafe and at worst comes down to a couple of speed ties. At best an easy win.

I am personally going to be using this strategy and therefore I am not going to share it because that would make the battle even when I can give myself a clear advantage.
 
ILoveLiza said:
I like the smeargle strategy, however you are just as lost as your opponent. You guys are overlooking one particular strategy that is fairly failsafe and at worst comes down to a couple of speed ties. At best an easy win.

I am personally going to be using this strategy and therefore I am not going to share it because that would make the battle even when I can give myself a clear advantage.
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You're going to have to post the team publicly in the tournament thread in a few days anyway, and since the teams will be exactly the same.. at best you've got slightly more time to think about the strategy than your foe.

Also, about nicknaming multiple Pokemon of the same species, both players must be consistent. e.g. if one player gives each Scizor different names, the foe must as well. Like everything else it will be selected by the teambuilder, I will clarify this in the rules thread.
 
eric the espeon said:
You're going to have to post the team publicly in the tournament thread in a few days anyway, and since the teams will be exactly the same.. at best you've got slightly more time to think about the strategy than your foe.

Also, about nicknaming multiple Pokemon of the same species, both players must be consistent. e.g. if one player gives each Scizor different names, the foe must as well. Like everything else it will be selected by the teambuilder, I will clarify this in the rules thread.
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I think it might be slightly better to let the people put a number after the next name, or something minor to differentiate the two, simply so that people know who won a speed tie.
 
Generally you can either figure out who won the speed tie due to things like actually getting the KO or it really doesn't matter. If two Scizor's both use Brick Break against each other and neither one gets KOd, it really doesn't matter who went first. It's the same if they used Swords Dance as well. If two Azelf leads Taunt each other, you tell which one was Taunted by hovering your cursor over the Pokemon. I can't think of a situation where you can't easily tell who went first that matters.
 
A team I thought of would be something that really maximizes prediction. Example, a 6-cycle pokeset. Something like Fire/Water/Grass, Dark/Fighting/Psychic/ Grass/Ice/Rock (although ice doesn't resist anything), Poison/Grass/Ground. However, to ensure that these matches won't last forever, it could help if each of the pokes were forced to induce damage on themselves. i.e. something with Toxic Orb. There could also be a chance for

So something like:

Meganium/Blastoise/Blaziken/Sceptile/Infernape/Feraligatr

and the only moves allowed would be a type that's super effective to fire, one for SE damage to water, and one for SE damage to grass. To add on pressure, none of the moves can have any sort of recovery. The idea is to emphasize the importance of offense in the metagame and to keep momentum. Allow some of the slower pokes to outspeed the others: ban Sceptile and Ape from having any speed (0 Speed IV, 0 EVs) to ensure that there will be no mass sweep from either of those two. (This will require investments in speed for Gatr and Blastoise to outspeed sceptile, but that will be up to the team builder to decide.)

Glass cannon teams might also provide a similar idea.
 
speed ties will definitely play a large role in this tourney.

i would like to see stall vs stall mirror play itd be interesting
 
eric the espeon said:
You're going to have to post the team publicly in the tournament thread in a few days anyway, and since the teams will be exactly the same.. at best you've got slightly more time to think about the strategy than your foe.

Also, about nicknaming multiple Pokemon of the same species, both players must be consistent. e.g. if one player gives each Scizor different names, the foe must as well. Like everything else it will be selected by the teambuilder, I will clarify this in the rules thread.
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I was refering to something I was going to do to the team to make myself have a better than even chance of winning.
 
Hrm, it seems like a good non-gimmicky way to do things is just to make a solid team where every Poke has good coverage and/or pure neutrality against it's partners. Because with perfect information and a strong team getting an advantage becomes an "I know that you know that she knows that we know" prediction game. Speed ties would be something to watch out for though, as would making sure none of your teammates can sweep the other teammates.

I could be totally wrong on this though.
 
Building on the idea of a slight asymmetry in the speed stats to break the speed tie, you could do the following:

Have two "sets" of each Pokemon, where one of each has their speed EVs reduced by 4 (and redistributed elsewhere). Then, each competitor gets three from each set on their team, that is, three "pefect" pokemon and three with reduced speed. Which trainer gets which "perfect" pokemon could be decided randomly or as a back-and-forth thing, with a coin toss deciding who chooses first (to be fair, you might want to do something like: Trainer A chooses 1st and 3rd, Trainer B chooses 2nd, 4th and 5th).


Something I haven't really seen discussed yet in this thread is the team-building aspect. You're not going to be building standard sets, where Pokemon A is worried about out-running a large part of a given tier, all Pokemon A is going to be worried about out-running is the other five members of its team, which means those speed EVs can be redistributed elsewhere. The same idea can be applied to ANY of the stats--you're not worried about OHKOing Blissey if Blissey isn't on your team, so maybe you want to make your Pokemon more defensive...which will mean that the pokemon on your team that's there as a counter might need to be more OFFENSIVE. I could imagine this getting quite complicated.
 
Finally someone gets the best way to beat Mirror Match. All these people using their favorite teams aren't in a very good spot. They are making the game even. i suppose they are staying in their comfort zone but they aren't playing the game per se. To truely play the game you need to make a Mirror Match specific team. The idea is to make the team confusing so that your opponent is lost as well as making sure that you have a game breaking strategy based on the specifics of each Pokemon you are using.
 
ILoveLiza said:
Finally someone gets the best way to beat Mirror Match. All these people using their favorite teams aren't in a very good spot. They are making the game even. i suppose they are staying in their comfort zone but they aren't playing the game per se. To truely play the game you need to make a Mirror Match specific team. The idea is to make the team confusing so that your opponent is lost as well as making sure that you have a game breaking strategy based on the specifics of each Pokemon you are using.
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You see, that isn't entirely true, for your opponent also has perfect knowledge of your team. Unless you rush it in at the buzzer, they're going to have a few days to study it and figure out how it ticks, which either a) allows them to figure out your killer app or b) create their own killer app with your team. Then, you have the neutral team to worry about. Even though most of the standard Smogon rules are broken, solid OU/Uber/whatever teams are solid for a reason: they work. I feel you underestimate the intelligence of your given opponent(s).
 
You would be stupid to not include a back up strategy. Depending on the speed tie at the start with the leads depends on which way I go with the game plan. There are enough ways to input a 'safety fuse' into the team. There are so many ways to manipulate the team via team building.
 
This is why I think people shouldn't make their own teams, but be forced to use teams made/chosen by the tournament host, because no matter HOW much time you give people to study the teams, the person who built it should always be more familiar with it, especially if they're being devious and embedding a hidden strategy in there somewhere.

I would say that, in the tournament, there should be one team for each round, so in a single-loss elimination, that's log(N)/log(2) (rounded up) teams, which shouldn't go up very fast, even as tournament size increases. And, the great thing is, they don't even have to be particularly GOOD teams--if the host creates a crappy team, it doesn't matter, because EVERYONE will be using that crappy team.
 
True. However team building is a very big part of being good at competitive Pokemon and the tounament is designed to test battlers on an even playing field. This way it is even as both people get to make a team.
 
The team builder will generally try to make a team that their foe is not familiar with, but they are (for example, most Ubers players seem to have built Ubers teams, LCers seem to be using LC teams, etc) or something that is very unusual to throw both players off (sheddy teams, mono species). However, this advantage is limited. There are several days between you seeing your foe's team and the latest time you could play them in round one, easily enough to figure out the little tricks they could pull. Even long enough to get a general feel for the metagame, and have a fair number of test matches.

You could run a Mirror Tourney with only host teams, but I think that would stretch people less. Forcing someone to get to grips with a mini metagame in order to have a good chance using their opponent's team should teach you something, and choosing your own one will make you think carefully about your own strengths and weaknesses as a trainer.

Edit:
also
Unless you rush it in at the buzzer, they're going to have a few days to study it and figure out how it ticks, which either a) allows them to figure out your killer app or b) create their own killer app with your team.
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It's perfectly acceptable to ask your opponent to wait a day or two before playing them, and since the deadline for posting teams is much tighter than the one for getting matches done it should not cause anyone to miss the final deadline.
 
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