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With the end of MOMPL, we invite you all to share the teams you used during the tournament. this is to help the devlopment of the Metagames and for newer players to see what is used in tournament play. Feel free to leave explanations to your teams. Thanks already for everyone sharing their teams here in advance.
The pre-finals teams I used are the intellectual property of Leaf and Fent, so I'm just gonna drop the one I used in finals against jackuzzler. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9monotype-2576104932-v23g9erf3ni8t8bf4whlwc8v3enfw20pw
I took the CAP Bug that infests my scout and, at the suggestion of my co-managers, swapped out the notorious flaming moth for the oft-overlooked aura farming moth (and adjusted Snael's spread), making it so that the team has every CAP Bug. Even without Quiver Dance, Tail Glow + Weak Armor makes Aurumoth a deadly setup sweeper, and its breadth of coverage, both physical and special, makes it unpredictable. Its Psychic typing and decent physical bulk let it check threats to Bug like Iron Hands, Arghonaut, Revenankh, Urshifu. Hydro Pump was chosen to target threatening fire and ground types, like Heatran, Hemogoblin, and Equilibra. Close Combat was considered to 2HKO Hoodra and Equilibra at 100% accuracy, but was swapped out for Shadow Ball to murder Gholdengo.
For the others, Kleavor and Scizor are standard sets from regular Gen 9 Monotype. Syclant is another potent and unpredictable mon, as its stats and movepool make the opponent unsure if it's physical or special, set-up or choice or all-out-attacker until revealed. With its immunity to Stealth Rock, a Focus Sash usually ensures it can get a Tail Glow boost before attacking. Miasmaw is a great wallbreaker with Neutralizing Gas and Outrage. It can U-Turn for chip while pivoting, First Impression to revenge kill, and Earthquake to kill poison mons, Hemogoblin, Equilibra. Snaelstrom is a super role compression mon. It's a mixed bulk fire-neutral mon with recovery, that can absorb statuses, set Sticky Web, remove hazards with Rapid Spin, and pivot.
https://pokepast.es/82d2baec0902c786 my builder for dou
most of these went unused
i'd like to take this post to talk about something I think should be deleted from the tier:
Expanding Force
As expressed by multiple players in this format, Expanding Force is kinda nuts. It's what makes Psychic so great. While normally this doesn't sound like an issue since you can just "run a Dark-type", it really is a big issue since you can't just "run a Dark-type"; its Monotype. Setting different terrain with Rillaboom isn't possible either, considering how horrendous Grass is in this format. Abusers like Iron Crown and Hatterene can freely blast through some teams that don't even stand a chance. Types like Water, Fairy, Normal, and Rock have no viable or maybe 1 or 2 viable Dark-types available and, if accidentally loaded into something non-Psychic, they may often just do nothing.
I do see the anti-ban argument being something along the lines of "psychic is nothing without Expanding Force". While I get the complaint, considering how much it has truly done to this tier, I don't think that'll matter much. This tier would be much healthier with Expanding Force gone in my opinion (this is definitely not a ploy to get poison some more credibility). Also, Dark is super common and beats Psychic, though running it too much in fear of Psychic can be easily called out.
To prevent this thread from just being leafally gloating about how they built every week, have some Pengairxan teams instead. I was basically just building LC, while I provided some help in ADV and Ubers, ADV was mostly a panda showing and Ubers clearly wasn't enough if we kept losing.
Week 1 Ice:
Going up against July I realistically went in with the following thought "They were so anti Poison last MOMPL, There not going to load Fighting into me, they're gonna try to fucking load Ground, or Psychic if they're crazy enough" So I went Ice instead. Ice is a personal guilty pleasure type cause it does just hard lose to Fighting, I don't think there is a way to make the MU reasonably good. But outside of that I'm confident this type can matchup and play an at worst neutral MU into everything else. Also if you're wondering about the naming scheme, It was a last minute thing but I realized I needed one and saw Cubchoo's name went "Thats cubfan135 Hermitcraft" and went from there.
Week 2 Water:
Okay, now for Mole, I tried probably the hardest out of anyone in the tour cause in my mind, and still now, leafally was the team to beat, they're the best team in the tour player wise. Originally I wanted to spruce up my old basic water which I had been using since DLC1 but frankly, it needed a lot more. Wooper spread was just to make it a bit specially bulkier and was provided by TTK and was able what pushed me towards Lorb Wingull and Surskit webs. Shellder was added over Corphish later for a few reasons, but the main two was I was rarely ever clicking with Craw outside of Aqua Jet and Grass was basically an L on preview and Shell gives that MU a real chance of being playable. Air Slash was also added on later, mainly to improve the fighting MU as it gives a reliable end game option that is safe without having to risk Hurricane misses.
Week 3/4 Poison:
Another team, this time coming mostly from home, god its old. I'm not joking. This team was a slapped together mess for a room tour and I have done only basic changes since. Updating movesets, replacing I think Glimmet for Koffing, I don't remember but that sounds right to me and changing some shinnies around, but other than that. This team is the exact same. Life Orb Stunky is an insanely good breaker as it 2HKOs basically everything making it rough to swtich into. I did flirt with the idea of loading Glimmet > Grimer and running Eviolite stunky but, you see how the games turned out, it worked for me.
Week 5 Flying:
The first of two teams created just for this tour, funny. This spawned from one simple fact.
I wanted to prove Molemitts wrong.
During a convo I had with Mole lost to the sands of time, we were discussing LC's unviabile types and flying came up, I looked at what it had and thought it had something going for it. And well, uhh, it did. I'll just post some screenshots from the Discord because my initial thoughts were a scrambled mess.
If you're asking why a notepad was used, pokepaste was being a bitch at the time.
Fuck you STAB.
And of course, the most important development.
This was meant to be "I will now only speak in Emoji Wincon!" but it broke so hard.
So yeah, this was the dumbest team of the entire tour without a doubt. But to fair, flying isn't that horrible. Most of the tier lacks a brave bird response outside of "Fuck" as the combined total of Resists from Steels (Pawn, Diglett, Sandshrew) Rocks (Glimmet) and Electrics (Chinchou) that are spread outside across the tier are insanely limited meaning its super free (any steels, rocks, and electrics not listed are either not resists like Volt-H or are stuck on types that resist flying already like Mag). Originally Starly was also ed Banded but I found out that it just wasn't doing shit so I went scarf instead.
That being said, this team sucked in testing, Kraken kept beating me but I gave such a little shit about the week overall that I just went with it anyway and got my opp to throw turn 1.
Week Semifinals: https://pokepast.es/22b0adbdcf07c5cc
The only team that lost. My prep for this week was entirelly "They look weak to SR" and I went for it. I tunnel visioned too much on a vision and didn't really, do much else about it. I do think Sandless Ground can work. I've modified this team since and its actually been proving to be a success with a double trapper core. Flamethrower was also on Numel as I found out a really funny thing in testing, this team loses to Poison otherwise because it just, cannot beat Koffing so flamethrower was a must.
Thoughts on Mono LC:
After this tour I've come away with some not as great thoughts about the current state of Water:
I think Water might be a bit dumb. Maybe its my growing distaste for Webs from CAP or suffering from the Shellder Suspect, but both of these together don't feel great in the tier as I feel like if people bothered to give this tier time, we could see this legitimately balloon into a proper problem. Water's sheer oppression already forces Ground out of the meta, but playing against non Shellder teams, the matchup feels very doable and it doesn't help that Shellder does so much breaking into other types like Ice, Fighting, and Poison as well if its got even a half decent idea for its moveset and finds the right mon to setup on and usually forces a sack in response to deal with it. Webs meanwhile just compounds the issue by making revenging anything on water a hell of a lot worse and its just not fun to play against.
