approved by monotype forum mods
inspired by this and this
brand new art made by Finchely
royal | 
hex | 
adjustments | 
mushamu
*adjustments already had an interview so a few of his answers are recycled
First of all thanks for taking the time to do this, I'm sure the community will be interested in hearing from the recent MPL winning managers, would you mind telling us a bit about yourself?
Of course! I'm hex (duh). I'm currently a college student and I major in Fashion with a minor in Business. When I'm not yapping on Discord and playing Pokemon, I enjoy learning more about the world of fashion and fragrances. Fragrances were a random hyper fixation of mine one day and I spent time learning about colognes/perfumes and how they worked and how to understand the language used to describe different scents. Over the years I discovered more about fashion since fragrances are slightly intertwined with it and became captivated by both worlds. I'd like to say I enjoy reading, or at least I do when I'm able to actually sit down and lock in. Growing up I used to be a pretty big bookworm but since we went into quarantine in 2020 and the internet advanced I spent most of my time online doing stupid shit (I blame Smogon, as I got into it literally right as quarantine hit LOL) and fried my attention span. So slowly but surely I'm trying to read more here and there. Circling back to Pokemon related things though, I'm trying to get into collecting Pokemon cards but scalpers make that scene very uninteresting right now. Though, if I'm not doing any of the nerdy stuff above I'm probably just out going to bars with friends or having house parties with 'em.
hi i'm adjustments, i'm a college student studying economics and public health in the state of PA. i think people forget, or don't know that i'm a little bit of a boomer myself in this community, i got into PS back in 2016 and got recruited to a league off of the OU ladder which is how i got into monotype. i wasn't fully assimilated into smogon until about 2020 though when leagues fully died off for good. i've played the video games casually since i was like 7 or 8 years old though, platinum was my first game. outside of mons i like to do martial arts, i've earned a black belt in tang soo do, which is a korean martial art and i've trained in it for about 13 or 14 years now. i also enjoy watching anime and playing chess lol but i think i am better at mons than chess... my favorite pokemon are probably turtwig, goomy and azumarill, in no particular order.
I'm mushamu, I have been playing Monotype Pokemon since 2015. I used to be more active back in the day and even used to be tier leader but my activity has died down as I had to focus on other ventures like college. Outside of Pokemon I am a fifth year transfer student majoring in Psychology and I enjoy drawing and sleeping in my free time. (college moment) I am trying to find more hobbies to get into and I also have 3 cats. I don't have a lot about myself outside of Pokemon but I'm trying to explore the world more and am trying to break out of my shell.
How did you get introduced / involved with the Monotype community?
The first video game I ever played was Pokemon, so it was natural for me to discover competitive Pokemon as time went on. I ended up finding myself on a Pokemon app called PokeAmino (horrible app..) and met a lot of people there. I played in tournaments there but I didn't really know what I was doing since I was young. There was this tournament called CIV that was hosted and it was a Monotype tournament where there were 18 teams (each type was a team) and it was a cteam/draft format. So lets say there was Team Fairy vs. Team Normal and each team would have to cteam eachother. I've actually hosted this tournament on Discord years after Amino died and some people in the current Monotype community have played it and etc. Since it was 18 teams the tournament would have like upwards of 200 people playing lol. My first time playing that tournament I captained and won it which kinda ignited my passion for playing this game competitively. Anyway, I have always really been into the idea of Monotype since when I was younger I always thought Gym Leaders / Elite 4 characters from Pokemon games had aura. I met devin from Amino and he introduced me to Smogon and that's pretty much history from there. Shoutout to my other Amino guys Kyo Lustre TezGreninja
leagues at their peak were an extremely fun time. you got to be a gym leader, elite four or professor but had to complete different challenges to earn your title and it was a little bit of roleplay but the beefing and toxicity was far worse than what we have going on during team tours now. people typically honed in on mastering just 1 type which is a thing of the total past now, you've gotta know how to play everything now and can't just main 1 type. i started as a psychic gym leader and eventually became a fairy gym leader staple for many leagues back then. some of my friends from that era are still around and seeing everyone evolve from type maining and roleplay has been pretty cool, it was a fun thing when we were younger but we've all grown up now.
after the last side server hit record low activity levels in March/April 2020, i ended up leaving there but wanted to stay in touch with all of the people i knew that left that era behind. one of my friends got me an invite to an old private room on the main server, where i met a lot of the people who ditched side servers. we mostly played mafia and i didn't really focus on taking my game to the next level until Splash, someone i knew of somewhat at the time, offered to tutor me and get me in shape for MPL. it was an enticing offer because he mentioned that he was tutored by Eien, which is someone my younger self thought very highly of. i took him up on that offer and i ended up getting a lot out of it. he hooked me up with Wanka and LuckyPiper who picked me up on the first iteration of the Treeckos in MPL 6. since then, i've been a pretty consistent face in tournaments and the like.
I got involved with Monotype early on when leagues were still around. I've always been a pretty creative person, so when I was introduced to Pokemon Showdown I thought it would be cool to make an all bug team and ladder with it on the ORAS OU ladder (the current generation at the time). Admin Drew, the leader for the Aphro league saw me on the ladder and recruited me to the Aphro league, where I was a Ghost gym leader and later Elite 4. During this time I didn't really go on main Showdown that much since I just played on side servers with my friends but as time went on I got involved with the Monotype room, eventually becoming authed there and started trying to get drafted for MPL.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-290937952
This is one of my artistic creations on the ORAS OU ladder (I'm Denispig). I remember wanting to use Illumise since she had Prankster and I thought that was super broken since you could take advantage of Pokemon trying to set up.
Do you have a favorite moment or memory that sticks out from your time on Smogon / PS?
Hmm. I would say winning MWP 4 and this most recent MPL (shocking). Winning MWP 4 was special to me because it was my first tournament I ever managed on Smogon and I wanted to break into the Monotype scene somehow. That being said, I ate shit that tour. I've never considered myself a good player but I do think I'm a skilled manager. Winning that tournament helped me prove to myself that Pokemon is a game you can be good at even if you aren't the best at clicking buttons. Not to mention it was so fun winning that with all my friends. Those same friends (adjustments and mushamu :3) joined up with me for one last dance this MPL where we also won! Otherwise I'd say the most memorable moment was meeting Pangoro (please change your fucking name) since he introduced me to all my current day Smogon friends that I cherish so much!!
i rate my time on the MPL 6 Treeckos and MWP 4 Spirits about equally. the underdog finals run the Treeckos went on in MPL 6 was a fantastic first experience for me, and having really active teammates that helped me even further improve my game helped me out. if the replays still exist, i recommend go checking out all of the tiebreak games the Treeckos played in MPL 6- as a new face to the scene they were totally insane to me in an exciting/nervy way. we ended up playing among us in voice call in our team cord down 0-3 in finals and got swept by the Krows. Spirits actually followed through with winning the tournament but we had a very joking and unserious mentality for a lot of that time- deez nuts and bitches jokes were running rampant in the cord but the feeling of winning is like no other. we were rated very low on the power rankings but it didn't feel like that at all and we just had fun. (this was before he won mpl so idk thats probably up there now)
I think it would be when hex adjustments and I won MWP on the Seafolk Spirits. After several failed managing attempts I was about to call it quits on leading a team ever again and was planning on just going to auction but hex dmed me before the tournament and asked me if I wanted to manage together. The win was overall very satisfying for the entire team because of how hard we worked to take the tournament, and the fact that we were not ranked very high on the power rankings (I think 7-8th?). But despite our team not being anything too crazy on paper, we still pulled through in the end and really synergized together for the win. It was along the time where I was trying to improve as a player too, and being able to win the tournament with my friends while also putting up a pretty good 6-3 record (going undefeated in playoffs) felt very rewarding as both a player and manager.
Big congratulations on your MPL win, do you mind telling us about that? How did you and your co-managers decide to team up? How did you approach the draft?
A year ago during MFPL adjustments and I managed together and wanted to create our own franchise that we would bring to MPL the following year. However, IRL got in the way and we decided to part ways for reasons I don't entirely remember. We both signed up with different people to manage MPL and then the Monotype leadership jump scared everyone by adding a 3rd manager slot so I came up with the idea of assembling our old trio. Under normal circumstances I'd never change up plans on someone last second but this was basically a one in a lifetime chance considering how our lives are lining up at the moment since we're getting older and commitments are making it hard for all three of us to enjoy this game together. Going into the draft I had one thing I was sticking by and that was getting cheap pilots who were going to get wins. Other than that, we just dropped money on big names that came up in auction. Proven players are always going to win in Monotype, but if you as a manager can scout out newbies who can perform then Monotype tournaments are heavily skewed in your favor. Shout out to crow crumbs Dusk Hacker and LogIce for proving this to be true and for being great players + teammates!
thanks, i would love to share my perspective of everything that went down the past few months. my solo interview goes more in depth on this stuff about my friends but i've known hex and decem for a while. i've known decem for about 8 years since our earliest days of playing this game and he's a really good friend of mine. i only met hex back in 2022 in MWP 4 but that team was just so great we've been friends since then. hex and i both agreed to bring the Dreamchasers to MPL to redeem ourselves after our defeat in MFPL finals last year, then we both kind of flaked on each other as we went to go manage with other people, then randomly i get a dm from hex asking me about my activity and what i would do if decem got revived. the rest from there is history. but man i was literally tweaking out from excitement when i first heard that one of my best PS friends would be active in mons again.
in terms of the draft- i'm not some auction master but i knew for sure that we wanted a team that just meshed well, as that was ultimately the winning formula for MWP 4. i kind of let hex take the reigns in terms getting the right skill formula down, she's historically good at putting together great drafts. we had swapped a lot of names around even on draft day iirc but ultimately ended up getting some of the heaviest hitters in the game who just also happened to be really friendly, funny teammates and people, so there were really no complaints on that front.
Hex adjustments and I have teamed before on the Spirits and the Milotics in previous Monotype team tournaments. I was feeling pretty done with Pokemon but hex decided to message me through iMessage out of the blue to manage saying that it would probably be the last time they would be trying to get a MPL ring due to irl commitments. I won't lie, I was completely absent from the time two weeks before the draft until after the players got into our team discord because I wanted to pull out of the tournament due to irl things going a bit south. I ended up not pulling out because the forum mods didn't take me out, so seeing a bunch of players join the team discord was pretty much an "adapt and learn" situation for me where I had to adapt to the players we got immediately.
How did you guys feel going into the semifinals tiebreaker? How did you prepare for a must win-scenario?
Surprisingly, I felt very at ease going into tiebreak which was weird for me because I'm usually really nervous in these scenarios. Our tiebreak lineup was an undefeated Floss, and Monotype chads DugZa and Fade. It's really hard for my anxiety to spike when these are our 3 players because in theory I think this is a tiebreak lineup that is always favored for us. That being said, the Meloetta's were respectable opponents and they had some good records. Toadow was doing really well this tour, Gelbel3c has always been consistent and Masskeau is actually someone I've been wanting to draft for a while because I'm pretty impressed whenever I watch his games. Our prep that week was pretty chill, it was mostly spent on ORAS and trying to figure out what to bring since I think as managers we actually did a pretty bad job when it came to handling ORAS all tour LOL. But the tiebreak ended before the ORAS game happened so it was mostly for naught.
i often talk a lot of trash but i personally truly did feel that we were heavily favored going into the tiebreak. i actually was recovering from being really sick when the tiebreak went up + also away on vacation the latter half of the tiebreak week but was still active enough on Discord to monitor progress and prep. we had players who were beyond capable of winning under pressure though, especially at that point in the tournament. the meloettas were a fantastic team and it was not out of the question that they would have some tricks up their sleeve. we didn't want to stray too far from what was working for us, but the playoff series vs the meloettas, and also our regular season matchup were both super crazy, with lots of crazy shiz happening on both sides. Floss was just on fire by that point so we let him kinda do his own thing- we all trusted his judgement. we knew that there was a chance of a fishy approach from the melos, especially in ORAS and BW, as dugza didn't have any BW replays and the melos already fished us with poison in ORAS in semis. fighting doesn't lose to a whole lot in BW so we tweaked an old team and i was a big breloom supporter on that team as i just had a feeling that water or ground were coming. in ORAS we bounced around a lot but the game didn't matter by the time jon was supposed to play and he built the normal team himself so we let him roll with it.
I think the most stressful part was crow crumbs's game to actually get to the semifinals tiebreaker. The tiebreaker itself I wasn't worried too much about since our tiebreak lineup was essentially broken (DugZa + Floss + Fade). I wanted to bring Flying in Floss's slot since it felt like a safe pick but Floss brought Ground and won anyways. DugZa decided on Fighting in BW and Fade wanted to use a self-built Normal team. A huge theme this tournament for me was trusting my players- I have a really bad relationship with overthinking things but in stressful situations like the semifinals I had to kind of just go like, "no matter what it will be fine" and not stress/obsess over what to bring and how to play.
Was there a team or week that was toughest for you guys to prepare for?
I don't think so really. I feel like every week we always locked in and took it seriously when we prepped. As time went on we honed our prep style and figured out what worked and what didn't and things became a lot more fluid so it was less about "how do we prep for x team" and instead we spent every week figuring out what **we** felt was the most consistent. At first I was stressing out too much about scouts but after some assurance from mushamu and twinkay I realized there's really no need to scout too hard. Just bring solid stuff and win. I mentioned it in my MPL shoutout post but the only times I get genuinely nervous about my Monotype seasons as a manager are when I'm playing against Isza's teams since I think he's a very consistent prepper and builder in this tier, but his team this MPL seemed to be pretty rocky so this time around I felt that we were genuinely the best team in the tournament. The most stressing I did was about the result of the week rather than anything prep-related.
i think this answer is going to vary amongst me and my comanagers, and as i'm writing this i don't know what they responded to this question. i know hex HATES playing isza/kaiser led teams yet i think she conquered her demons when we pummeled them in week 2. i know decem disliked facing the meloettas every time we faced them, as he would always comment on how strong of a team they were and to not sleep on them at all. but my answer to this is honestly the treeckos. i don't know if crashy just has my # like that as i've teamed with him a lot in the past or if it's black magic, whenever i face one of his teams i always get outprepped. the treeckos beat us pretty solidly this year but this also dates back to MWP 4 as well- the crashy led team was the ONLY team that beat the tour winning Spirits.
I think definitely against Isza's team since they are usually extremely competent in all slots and he's just overall a well-rounded manager to be facing off. Other than that I can't think of any particularly "tough" ones, if anything it would be finals but that goes pretty freely due to it deciding the entire tournament. I struggled with building the first few weeks because I had been gone from actually prepping for so long I started piecing together teams that didn't really win in the current metas and had to adjust accordingly.
Do you have a favorite team from the tournament (any gen) that you wouldn't mind sharing with us and explaining a bit about?
https://pokepast.es/45c38a90b4f70b64
I'm sure some people will get a headache from me sharing this team AGAIN. But I posted everything I wanted to in the team dump thread so oops! But yeah, this is the Fire that LogIce used to win the tournament. I had cooked it up earlier in the tour and like for a good 1 hr before his game he ran like every matchup with it. I think Fire is OP and consistent if you're able to play it well. I guess some people think Sub Volcarona is a bad set for whatever reason but I'm not sure what else you really need on Volcarona and it won so :shrug : Since I went the route of using Volcarona without boots AND Ceruledge I decided to do double removal. I don't even rate Ninetales that highly right now anyway and Torkoal just provides better defensive utility. But the Pokemon and their sets/etc. are pretty self explanatory otherwise.
https://pokepast.es/d8ec01239b514148
here i am linking a dark team once again. floss innovated the original variant with the fast ting lu + alolan muk. but boots hoopa is like my favorite set of this generation so i just had to include it, and i also didn't think my opponent was bringing fairy so it was safe to drop muk. i also think rock slide gren and scarf darkrai are neat little tricks on a build like that. i don't remember what those evs on gren and rai do and i'm really lazy rn and don't feel like looking it up. i know ting outspeeds skarm and corv tho.
https://pokepast.es/bce1d1abf8a0acdf
This was the SM Electric team I built for Hacker in his match against Tenebricite. We wanted to go for something that would punish misplays easily, and I was like "Electric lol" since it's actually a pretty underrated type as far as the meta goes in SM. The thing with SM Electric is that it pressure things extremely well because of the basis that 1. you have a lot of Volt Switch users, and 2. the Ground Pokemon die to coverage. As for the team, the reason why there was a Mega Manectric is because Hacker mentioned not liking choiced Pokemon in terms of breaking and Mega Manectric is basically a second Tapu Koko with different coverage and added utility in Intimidate. The team is based on just hitting super fast super hard with the only defensive Pokemon being Rotom-W, and Magnezone traps crucial Steel Pokemon to break easier. For example, trapping Klefki and Excadrill against Fairy and Steel respectively means you pretty much win on the spot with your other Pokemon. Alolan Raichu is all out attacker; usually with Z move Alolan Raichu you'd see something like Nasty Plot 3 attacks but I figured just doing 4 moves is fine because you want Focus Blast for Excadrill under sand and Grass Knot for Seismitoad (Mateeus is a huge fan of rain). The Zeraora is stallbreaker to beat Normal and the rest of the team is pretty standard. Unfortunately this does not beat Grass (we wanted to use it in semifinals but it failed the matchup in test games) but it is a pretty fun team to use overall and Mega Manectric looks super cool ingame.
Do you have any advice for newer players who want to get more involved in the community?
As far as getting involved goes, just yap, have fun in the Monotype discord, and be personable. As far as playing goes, I'm not the best person to ask since I'm not a consistent player though I wouldn't consider myself that bad nowadays. I improved a lot when I watched and watched and watched people better than me play. I spent a lot of time discussing the game with others and with people better than me and that subconsciously helped me absorb info and learn the game at a deeper level. If you're laddering, treat them like tournament games and just take your time so you can condition yourself for real tournament games. Just brainlessly clicking on ladder wont help you get better. Practice is only good practice if there is intention and meaning behind it. Mons and Smogon at the end of the day has a huge social factor. Things will come naturally if you're able to make some friends who you can both enjoy being around with and enjoy playing Pokemon with.
i don't really know what the tutoring program is like these days but that is definitely an avenue to get your foot in the door since the tutors are usually consistent faces in our tours. people often blindly recommend just reaching out to managers for tryouts and to send them introductions/accolades at the time of the tournament beginning. however, i think the prep for making these tournaments begin in the individual tournaments. to make connections you need to reach out to people, so if you are building a team for a seasonal and there's a player in MPL that you look up to/are friends with/good terms with, you should reach out to them for help in your seasonal or cup run. send them that team you are planning on bringing and just ask for a small tweak or two. if you are kind to them and work with their advice, they may be an outlet for getting your foot in the door in the future, especially if you both click on building.
Yeah, I would say try not to get involved with a lot of drama and just focus on growing as a player and contributor. It's easy to get beefing with people or let the things people say about your games get into your head but as long as you seek to improve you will. Contributing to the room and resources is also a good way to get into the community and I personally really enjoyed doing the viability rankings when I contributed. Generally try to not take losses hard on yourself, even the best players today were once learning the game and making misplays left and right. I think as long as you're kind, mindful, and receptive to criticism you will make it far.
If you could ban or unban anything in any Monotype generation, what would it be and why?
I made a decent amount of policy posts in BW around the time that Latios got banned, so I could default to that lol. But I think most/all Monotype generations are balanced. Maybe Kyurem in SS? I'm not too hung up on that though. Kyurem can just find so many angles to be annoying and luck you but at the end of the day its just luck which can happen in any game. I could make the argument that Kyurem finds ways to achieve that luck better than any other Pokemon in the SS metagame which could make it banworthy since it is quite oppressive for a lot of types that aren't named Steel.
if you read what i say in the monotype discord at all- i say some pretty crazy things about the meta. but in reality i think everything is ok right now, but with TL powers i wouldn't be able to help myself and experiment with a significant bout of unbans. i would probably free gambit and zamazenta at the very least. i preached about a full gen reset, i.e unbanning everything and retiering from scratch in the past but we are far too late for that now. thankfully i'm not the tier leader though!
This is super controversial but I would unban Kingambit in SV. I think people blew its influence out of proportion and even though a lot of people now don't really want to unban it because "the meta is fine right now" I personally do feel like it promoted healthy play. You do need to play well with Kingambit to win a game- it's a Pokemon that didn't really stick out to me as banworthy just very good when it was in the tier, kinda like Mega Diancie in SM or Galarian Moltres in SS. I also kinda liked Latios in BW and felt that it was a fine Pokemon to keep around. Similar to Kingambit, it didn't feel too bad in terms of being oppressive and Latias does do a lot of the same things that it does to a lesser degree. For example Water should be running Empoleon anyways or else you lose to Latias too.
I also think for SV Heat Rock should be looked at since Ogerpon-Hearthflame under 8 turns of sun is kinda bogus to deal with but I don't feel too strongly about that.
Thank you so much for your time and your diligent answers, I’m sure everybody will appreciate reading and learning a bit more about you. Is there anybody you would like to give a shoutout to?
I know its a lot of people I'm tagging but I wanted to make a quick mention to gum Nuxl DripLegend crow crumbs Vertigo Hacker avarice Pangoro Scarfire boomp Attribute Stories Charmriah and everyone in Golducks. I don't need to say much because you guys know how much I appreciate all of you <3. I think Smogon is amazing in the way I was able to connect with you all from across the world and I'll never forget the moments and laughs we've been able to share :3. yayy okay bye
i want to shoutout my comanagers hex and mushamu for being my bestest friends on this site that i could ask for, here's to many more legendary moments together, i love you. i also want to shoutout the people who first helped me get my feet on the ground when i was serious about taking my game to the next level Splash LuckyPiper Wanka crash, their boomer asses probably won't see this but i really appreciate what they did for me. i could list out a ton of other people but just know i really appreciate all of the people who i hang out with in all the random discord servers i'm in on a daily basis- you know who you are. lastly, i want to thank the lovely host royal for offering this opportunity for me to speak to the crowd and being a great friend as well.
My co-managers for being great teammates and friends, as well as my friends on Smogon that make playing Pokemon fun :)
inspired by this and this
brand new art made by Finchely
royal | hex | adjustments | mushamu *adjustments already had an interview so a few of his answers are recycled
First of all thanks for taking the time to do this, I'm sure the community will be interested in hearing from the recent MPL winning managers, would you mind telling us a bit about yourself?
Of course! I'm hex (duh). I'm currently a college student and I major in Fashion with a minor in Business. When I'm not yapping on Discord and playing Pokemon, I enjoy learning more about the world of fashion and fragrances. Fragrances were a random hyper fixation of mine one day and I spent time learning about colognes/perfumes and how they worked and how to understand the language used to describe different scents. Over the years I discovered more about fashion since fragrances are slightly intertwined with it and became captivated by both worlds. I'd like to say I enjoy reading, or at least I do when I'm able to actually sit down and lock in. Growing up I used to be a pretty big bookworm but since we went into quarantine in 2020 and the internet advanced I spent most of my time online doing stupid shit (I blame Smogon, as I got into it literally right as quarantine hit LOL) and fried my attention span. So slowly but surely I'm trying to read more here and there. Circling back to Pokemon related things though, I'm trying to get into collecting Pokemon cards but scalpers make that scene very uninteresting right now. Though, if I'm not doing any of the nerdy stuff above I'm probably just out going to bars with friends or having house parties with 'em.
hi i'm adjustments, i'm a college student studying economics and public health in the state of PA. i think people forget, or don't know that i'm a little bit of a boomer myself in this community, i got into PS back in 2016 and got recruited to a league off of the OU ladder which is how i got into monotype. i wasn't fully assimilated into smogon until about 2020 though when leagues fully died off for good. i've played the video games casually since i was like 7 or 8 years old though, platinum was my first game. outside of mons i like to do martial arts, i've earned a black belt in tang soo do, which is a korean martial art and i've trained in it for about 13 or 14 years now. i also enjoy watching anime and playing chess lol but i think i am better at mons than chess... my favorite pokemon are probably turtwig, goomy and azumarill, in no particular order.
I'm mushamu, I have been playing Monotype Pokemon since 2015. I used to be more active back in the day and even used to be tier leader but my activity has died down as I had to focus on other ventures like college. Outside of Pokemon I am a fifth year transfer student majoring in Psychology and I enjoy drawing and sleeping in my free time. (college moment) I am trying to find more hobbies to get into and I also have 3 cats. I don't have a lot about myself outside of Pokemon but I'm trying to explore the world more and am trying to break out of my shell.
How did you get introduced / involved with the Monotype community?
The first video game I ever played was Pokemon, so it was natural for me to discover competitive Pokemon as time went on. I ended up finding myself on a Pokemon app called PokeAmino (horrible app..) and met a lot of people there. I played in tournaments there but I didn't really know what I was doing since I was young. There was this tournament called CIV that was hosted and it was a Monotype tournament where there were 18 teams (each type was a team) and it was a cteam/draft format. So lets say there was Team Fairy vs. Team Normal and each team would have to cteam eachother. I've actually hosted this tournament on Discord years after Amino died and some people in the current Monotype community have played it and etc. Since it was 18 teams the tournament would have like upwards of 200 people playing lol. My first time playing that tournament I captained and won it which kinda ignited my passion for playing this game competitively. Anyway, I have always really been into the idea of Monotype since when I was younger I always thought Gym Leaders / Elite 4 characters from Pokemon games had aura. I met devin from Amino and he introduced me to Smogon and that's pretty much history from there. Shoutout to my other Amino guys Kyo Lustre TezGreninja
leagues at their peak were an extremely fun time. you got to be a gym leader, elite four or professor but had to complete different challenges to earn your title and it was a little bit of roleplay but the beefing and toxicity was far worse than what we have going on during team tours now. people typically honed in on mastering just 1 type which is a thing of the total past now, you've gotta know how to play everything now and can't just main 1 type. i started as a psychic gym leader and eventually became a fairy gym leader staple for many leagues back then. some of my friends from that era are still around and seeing everyone evolve from type maining and roleplay has been pretty cool, it was a fun thing when we were younger but we've all grown up now.
after the last side server hit record low activity levels in March/April 2020, i ended up leaving there but wanted to stay in touch with all of the people i knew that left that era behind. one of my friends got me an invite to an old private room on the main server, where i met a lot of the people who ditched side servers. we mostly played mafia and i didn't really focus on taking my game to the next level until Splash, someone i knew of somewhat at the time, offered to tutor me and get me in shape for MPL. it was an enticing offer because he mentioned that he was tutored by Eien, which is someone my younger self thought very highly of. i took him up on that offer and i ended up getting a lot out of it. he hooked me up with Wanka and LuckyPiper who picked me up on the first iteration of the Treeckos in MPL 6. since then, i've been a pretty consistent face in tournaments and the like.
I got involved with Monotype early on when leagues were still around. I've always been a pretty creative person, so when I was introduced to Pokemon Showdown I thought it would be cool to make an all bug team and ladder with it on the ORAS OU ladder (the current generation at the time). Admin Drew, the leader for the Aphro league saw me on the ladder and recruited me to the Aphro league, where I was a Ghost gym leader and later Elite 4. During this time I didn't really go on main Showdown that much since I just played on side servers with my friends but as time went on I got involved with the Monotype room, eventually becoming authed there and started trying to get drafted for MPL.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-290937952
This is one of my artistic creations on the ORAS OU ladder (I'm Denispig). I remember wanting to use Illumise since she had Prankster and I thought that was super broken since you could take advantage of Pokemon trying to set up.
Do you have a favorite moment or memory that sticks out from your time on Smogon / PS?
Hmm. I would say winning MWP 4 and this most recent MPL (shocking). Winning MWP 4 was special to me because it was my first tournament I ever managed on Smogon and I wanted to break into the Monotype scene somehow. That being said, I ate shit that tour. I've never considered myself a good player but I do think I'm a skilled manager. Winning that tournament helped me prove to myself that Pokemon is a game you can be good at even if you aren't the best at clicking buttons. Not to mention it was so fun winning that with all my friends. Those same friends (adjustments and mushamu :3) joined up with me for one last dance this MPL where we also won! Otherwise I'd say the most memorable moment was meeting Pangoro (please change your fucking name) since he introduced me to all my current day Smogon friends that I cherish so much!!
i rate my time on the MPL 6 Treeckos and MWP 4 Spirits about equally. the underdog finals run the Treeckos went on in MPL 6 was a fantastic first experience for me, and having really active teammates that helped me even further improve my game helped me out. if the replays still exist, i recommend go checking out all of the tiebreak games the Treeckos played in MPL 6- as a new face to the scene they were totally insane to me in an exciting/nervy way. we ended up playing among us in voice call in our team cord down 0-3 in finals and got swept by the Krows. Spirits actually followed through with winning the tournament but we had a very joking and unserious mentality for a lot of that time- deez nuts and bitches jokes were running rampant in the cord but the feeling of winning is like no other. we were rated very low on the power rankings but it didn't feel like that at all and we just had fun. (this was before he won mpl so idk thats probably up there now)
I think it would be when hex adjustments and I won MWP on the Seafolk Spirits. After several failed managing attempts I was about to call it quits on leading a team ever again and was planning on just going to auction but hex dmed me before the tournament and asked me if I wanted to manage together. The win was overall very satisfying for the entire team because of how hard we worked to take the tournament, and the fact that we were not ranked very high on the power rankings (I think 7-8th?). But despite our team not being anything too crazy on paper, we still pulled through in the end and really synergized together for the win. It was along the time where I was trying to improve as a player too, and being able to win the tournament with my friends while also putting up a pretty good 6-3 record (going undefeated in playoffs) felt very rewarding as both a player and manager.
Big congratulations on your MPL win, do you mind telling us about that? How did you and your co-managers decide to team up? How did you approach the draft?
A year ago during MFPL adjustments and I managed together and wanted to create our own franchise that we would bring to MPL the following year. However, IRL got in the way and we decided to part ways for reasons I don't entirely remember. We both signed up with different people to manage MPL and then the Monotype leadership jump scared everyone by adding a 3rd manager slot so I came up with the idea of assembling our old trio. Under normal circumstances I'd never change up plans on someone last second but this was basically a one in a lifetime chance considering how our lives are lining up at the moment since we're getting older and commitments are making it hard for all three of us to enjoy this game together. Going into the draft I had one thing I was sticking by and that was getting cheap pilots who were going to get wins. Other than that, we just dropped money on big names that came up in auction. Proven players are always going to win in Monotype, but if you as a manager can scout out newbies who can perform then Monotype tournaments are heavily skewed in your favor. Shout out to crow crumbs Dusk Hacker and LogIce for proving this to be true and for being great players + teammates!
thanks, i would love to share my perspective of everything that went down the past few months. my solo interview goes more in depth on this stuff about my friends but i've known hex and decem for a while. i've known decem for about 8 years since our earliest days of playing this game and he's a really good friend of mine. i only met hex back in 2022 in MWP 4 but that team was just so great we've been friends since then. hex and i both agreed to bring the Dreamchasers to MPL to redeem ourselves after our defeat in MFPL finals last year, then we both kind of flaked on each other as we went to go manage with other people, then randomly i get a dm from hex asking me about my activity and what i would do if decem got revived. the rest from there is history. but man i was literally tweaking out from excitement when i first heard that one of my best PS friends would be active in mons again.
in terms of the draft- i'm not some auction master but i knew for sure that we wanted a team that just meshed well, as that was ultimately the winning formula for MWP 4. i kind of let hex take the reigns in terms getting the right skill formula down, she's historically good at putting together great drafts. we had swapped a lot of names around even on draft day iirc but ultimately ended up getting some of the heaviest hitters in the game who just also happened to be really friendly, funny teammates and people, so there were really no complaints on that front.
Hex adjustments and I have teamed before on the Spirits and the Milotics in previous Monotype team tournaments. I was feeling pretty done with Pokemon but hex decided to message me through iMessage out of the blue to manage saying that it would probably be the last time they would be trying to get a MPL ring due to irl commitments. I won't lie, I was completely absent from the time two weeks before the draft until after the players got into our team discord because I wanted to pull out of the tournament due to irl things going a bit south. I ended up not pulling out because the forum mods didn't take me out, so seeing a bunch of players join the team discord was pretty much an "adapt and learn" situation for me where I had to adapt to the players we got immediately.
How did you guys feel going into the semifinals tiebreaker? How did you prepare for a must win-scenario?
Surprisingly, I felt very at ease going into tiebreak which was weird for me because I'm usually really nervous in these scenarios. Our tiebreak lineup was an undefeated Floss, and Monotype chads DugZa and Fade. It's really hard for my anxiety to spike when these are our 3 players because in theory I think this is a tiebreak lineup that is always favored for us. That being said, the Meloetta's were respectable opponents and they had some good records. Toadow was doing really well this tour, Gelbel3c has always been consistent and Masskeau is actually someone I've been wanting to draft for a while because I'm pretty impressed whenever I watch his games. Our prep that week was pretty chill, it was mostly spent on ORAS and trying to figure out what to bring since I think as managers we actually did a pretty bad job when it came to handling ORAS all tour LOL. But the tiebreak ended before the ORAS game happened so it was mostly for naught.
i often talk a lot of trash but i personally truly did feel that we were heavily favored going into the tiebreak. i actually was recovering from being really sick when the tiebreak went up + also away on vacation the latter half of the tiebreak week but was still active enough on Discord to monitor progress and prep. we had players who were beyond capable of winning under pressure though, especially at that point in the tournament. the meloettas were a fantastic team and it was not out of the question that they would have some tricks up their sleeve. we didn't want to stray too far from what was working for us, but the playoff series vs the meloettas, and also our regular season matchup were both super crazy, with lots of crazy shiz happening on both sides. Floss was just on fire by that point so we let him kinda do his own thing- we all trusted his judgement. we knew that there was a chance of a fishy approach from the melos, especially in ORAS and BW, as dugza didn't have any BW replays and the melos already fished us with poison in ORAS in semis. fighting doesn't lose to a whole lot in BW so we tweaked an old team and i was a big breloom supporter on that team as i just had a feeling that water or ground were coming. in ORAS we bounced around a lot but the game didn't matter by the time jon was supposed to play and he built the normal team himself so we let him roll with it.
I think the most stressful part was crow crumbs's game to actually get to the semifinals tiebreaker. The tiebreaker itself I wasn't worried too much about since our tiebreak lineup was essentially broken (DugZa + Floss + Fade). I wanted to bring Flying in Floss's slot since it felt like a safe pick but Floss brought Ground and won anyways. DugZa decided on Fighting in BW and Fade wanted to use a self-built Normal team. A huge theme this tournament for me was trusting my players- I have a really bad relationship with overthinking things but in stressful situations like the semifinals I had to kind of just go like, "no matter what it will be fine" and not stress/obsess over what to bring and how to play.
Was there a team or week that was toughest for you guys to prepare for?
I don't think so really. I feel like every week we always locked in and took it seriously when we prepped. As time went on we honed our prep style and figured out what worked and what didn't and things became a lot more fluid so it was less about "how do we prep for x team" and instead we spent every week figuring out what **we** felt was the most consistent. At first I was stressing out too much about scouts but after some assurance from mushamu and twinkay I realized there's really no need to scout too hard. Just bring solid stuff and win. I mentioned it in my MPL shoutout post but the only times I get genuinely nervous about my Monotype seasons as a manager are when I'm playing against Isza's teams since I think he's a very consistent prepper and builder in this tier, but his team this MPL seemed to be pretty rocky so this time around I felt that we were genuinely the best team in the tournament. The most stressing I did was about the result of the week rather than anything prep-related.
i think this answer is going to vary amongst me and my comanagers, and as i'm writing this i don't know what they responded to this question. i know hex HATES playing isza/kaiser led teams yet i think she conquered her demons when we pummeled them in week 2. i know decem disliked facing the meloettas every time we faced them, as he would always comment on how strong of a team they were and to not sleep on them at all. but my answer to this is honestly the treeckos. i don't know if crashy just has my # like that as i've teamed with him a lot in the past or if it's black magic, whenever i face one of his teams i always get outprepped. the treeckos beat us pretty solidly this year but this also dates back to MWP 4 as well- the crashy led team was the ONLY team that beat the tour winning Spirits.
I think definitely against Isza's team since they are usually extremely competent in all slots and he's just overall a well-rounded manager to be facing off. Other than that I can't think of any particularly "tough" ones, if anything it would be finals but that goes pretty freely due to it deciding the entire tournament. I struggled with building the first few weeks because I had been gone from actually prepping for so long I started piecing together teams that didn't really win in the current metas and had to adjust accordingly.
Do you have a favorite team from the tournament (any gen) that you wouldn't mind sharing with us and explaining a bit about?
https://pokepast.es/45c38a90b4f70b64
I'm sure some people will get a headache from me sharing this team AGAIN. But I posted everything I wanted to in the team dump thread so oops! But yeah, this is the Fire that LogIce used to win the tournament. I had cooked it up earlier in the tour and like for a good 1 hr before his game he ran like every matchup with it. I think Fire is OP and consistent if you're able to play it well. I guess some people think Sub Volcarona is a bad set for whatever reason but I'm not sure what else you really need on Volcarona and it won so :shrug : Since I went the route of using Volcarona without boots AND Ceruledge I decided to do double removal. I don't even rate Ninetales that highly right now anyway and Torkoal just provides better defensive utility. But the Pokemon and their sets/etc. are pretty self explanatory otherwise.
https://pokepast.es/d8ec01239b514148
here i am linking a dark team once again. floss innovated the original variant with the fast ting lu + alolan muk. but boots hoopa is like my favorite set of this generation so i just had to include it, and i also didn't think my opponent was bringing fairy so it was safe to drop muk. i also think rock slide gren and scarf darkrai are neat little tricks on a build like that. i don't remember what those evs on gren and rai do and i'm really lazy rn and don't feel like looking it up. i know ting outspeeds skarm and corv tho.
https://pokepast.es/bce1d1abf8a0acdf
This was the SM Electric team I built for Hacker in his match against Tenebricite. We wanted to go for something that would punish misplays easily, and I was like "Electric lol" since it's actually a pretty underrated type as far as the meta goes in SM. The thing with SM Electric is that it pressure things extremely well because of the basis that 1. you have a lot of Volt Switch users, and 2. the Ground Pokemon die to coverage. As for the team, the reason why there was a Mega Manectric is because Hacker mentioned not liking choiced Pokemon in terms of breaking and Mega Manectric is basically a second Tapu Koko with different coverage and added utility in Intimidate. The team is based on just hitting super fast super hard with the only defensive Pokemon being Rotom-W, and Magnezone traps crucial Steel Pokemon to break easier. For example, trapping Klefki and Excadrill against Fairy and Steel respectively means you pretty much win on the spot with your other Pokemon. Alolan Raichu is all out attacker; usually with Z move Alolan Raichu you'd see something like Nasty Plot 3 attacks but I figured just doing 4 moves is fine because you want Focus Blast for Excadrill under sand and Grass Knot for Seismitoad (Mateeus is a huge fan of rain). The Zeraora is stallbreaker to beat Normal and the rest of the team is pretty standard. Unfortunately this does not beat Grass (we wanted to use it in semifinals but it failed the matchup in test games) but it is a pretty fun team to use overall and Mega Manectric looks super cool ingame.
Do you have any advice for newer players who want to get more involved in the community?
As far as getting involved goes, just yap, have fun in the Monotype discord, and be personable. As far as playing goes, I'm not the best person to ask since I'm not a consistent player though I wouldn't consider myself that bad nowadays. I improved a lot when I watched and watched and watched people better than me play. I spent a lot of time discussing the game with others and with people better than me and that subconsciously helped me absorb info and learn the game at a deeper level. If you're laddering, treat them like tournament games and just take your time so you can condition yourself for real tournament games. Just brainlessly clicking on ladder wont help you get better. Practice is only good practice if there is intention and meaning behind it. Mons and Smogon at the end of the day has a huge social factor. Things will come naturally if you're able to make some friends who you can both enjoy being around with and enjoy playing Pokemon with.
i don't really know what the tutoring program is like these days but that is definitely an avenue to get your foot in the door since the tutors are usually consistent faces in our tours. people often blindly recommend just reaching out to managers for tryouts and to send them introductions/accolades at the time of the tournament beginning. however, i think the prep for making these tournaments begin in the individual tournaments. to make connections you need to reach out to people, so if you are building a team for a seasonal and there's a player in MPL that you look up to/are friends with/good terms with, you should reach out to them for help in your seasonal or cup run. send them that team you are planning on bringing and just ask for a small tweak or two. if you are kind to them and work with their advice, they may be an outlet for getting your foot in the door in the future, especially if you both click on building.
Yeah, I would say try not to get involved with a lot of drama and just focus on growing as a player and contributor. It's easy to get beefing with people or let the things people say about your games get into your head but as long as you seek to improve you will. Contributing to the room and resources is also a good way to get into the community and I personally really enjoyed doing the viability rankings when I contributed. Generally try to not take losses hard on yourself, even the best players today were once learning the game and making misplays left and right. I think as long as you're kind, mindful, and receptive to criticism you will make it far.
If you could ban or unban anything in any Monotype generation, what would it be and why?
I made a decent amount of policy posts in BW around the time that Latios got banned, so I could default to that lol. But I think most/all Monotype generations are balanced. Maybe Kyurem in SS? I'm not too hung up on that though. Kyurem can just find so many angles to be annoying and luck you but at the end of the day its just luck which can happen in any game. I could make the argument that Kyurem finds ways to achieve that luck better than any other Pokemon in the SS metagame which could make it banworthy since it is quite oppressive for a lot of types that aren't named Steel.
if you read what i say in the monotype discord at all- i say some pretty crazy things about the meta. but in reality i think everything is ok right now, but with TL powers i wouldn't be able to help myself and experiment with a significant bout of unbans. i would probably free gambit and zamazenta at the very least. i preached about a full gen reset, i.e unbanning everything and retiering from scratch in the past but we are far too late for that now. thankfully i'm not the tier leader though!
This is super controversial but I would unban Kingambit in SV. I think people blew its influence out of proportion and even though a lot of people now don't really want to unban it because "the meta is fine right now" I personally do feel like it promoted healthy play. You do need to play well with Kingambit to win a game- it's a Pokemon that didn't really stick out to me as banworthy just very good when it was in the tier, kinda like Mega Diancie in SM or Galarian Moltres in SS. I also kinda liked Latios in BW and felt that it was a fine Pokemon to keep around. Similar to Kingambit, it didn't feel too bad in terms of being oppressive and Latias does do a lot of the same things that it does to a lesser degree. For example Water should be running Empoleon anyways or else you lose to Latias too.
I also think for SV Heat Rock should be looked at since Ogerpon-Hearthflame under 8 turns of sun is kinda bogus to deal with but I don't feel too strongly about that.
Thank you so much for your time and your diligent answers, I’m sure everybody will appreciate reading and learning a bit more about you. Is there anybody you would like to give a shoutout to?
I know its a lot of people I'm tagging but I wanted to make a quick mention to gum Nuxl DripLegend crow crumbs Vertigo Hacker avarice Pangoro Scarfire boomp Attribute Stories Charmriah and everyone in Golducks. I don't need to say much because you guys know how much I appreciate all of you <3. I think Smogon is amazing in the way I was able to connect with you all from across the world and I'll never forget the moments and laughs we've been able to share :3. yayy okay bye
i want to shoutout my comanagers hex and mushamu for being my bestest friends on this site that i could ask for, here's to many more legendary moments together, i love you. i also want to shoutout the people who first helped me get my feet on the ground when i was serious about taking my game to the next level Splash LuckyPiper Wanka crash, their boomer asses probably won't see this but i really appreciate what they did for me. i could list out a ton of other people but just know i really appreciate all of the people who i hang out with in all the random discord servers i'm in on a daily basis- you know who you are. lastly, i want to thank the lovely host royal for offering this opportunity for me to speak to the crowd and being a great friend as well.
My co-managers for being great teammates and friends, as well as my friends on Smogon that make playing Pokemon fun :)
~~~
This thread will remain open in case anyone would like to ask hex, adjustments, and mushamu any further questions. If you have an idea for who you would like to be interviewed next, please don't hesitate to let me know!
This thread will remain open in case anyone would like to ask hex, adjustments, and mushamu any further questions. If you have an idea for who you would like to be interviewed next, please don't hesitate to let me know!
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