Project National Dex POTW #10 - hex, sealoo, and kdca

[about15gals]

any fun shitmons you've tried building in ndru?

what's a pokemon you hate seeing your opponent bring, broken or not?

 

[salmonelephant]

whats your fav team in the lower tiers you play?

Semi-room is my favorite archetype and this one for UU is so easy to just click teleport with bro and go into ursa or blaceph and nuke something.

are you the best georgia-located natdex lower tier players?

I'm an honest man, and to that I can attest that out of the many candidates eligible for this title, Runo is the Powercrept Wojak Tauros and I am the Everadapting Chad Gholdengo. If he wants to dispute the title of Sealoo School of Thought's best student, he can challenge me in a bo5 grudge match (ou, uu, ru, ssndou, VGC15).

whos your favorite teammate / person to prep with?

Hands down gotta be SapoDaG30, He's pretty cool and always wanting to push the boundaries of the meta and bring something new to the table. SSNDPL and NDPL were both great times because it's just a bunch of us yapping about RU.

any fun shitmons you've tried building in ndru?

This team is all over the place but you can U-turn with maus to scout for helmets, and go into mega doom or slither to threaten the steel types that love to sit on maus. It's worse than mega pidgey in many ways, but who can resist a family of mice pelting people with their children?

also tried Alolem with mono cane pidgey but there's actually no hope for that guy.

what's a pokemon you hate seeing your opponent bring, broken or not?

Mega-Venu; it's not every day you see it in OU or UU, but that dude always has the most annoying set on deck when you're least prepared for it.

 

[Dead by Daylight]

what's your most underrated NDRU shitmon?

 

[salmonelephant]

what's your most underrated NDRU shitmon?

I think both spikes set and and demon set could be used could be used to varying success, especially now that fat has re-entered the metagame and it doesn't have to get poisoned by dogi.

also peep this
36 Atk Deoxys-Defense All-Out Pummeling (190 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Cyclizar: 304-358 (88.3 - 104%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

 

[Illouri]

No more long delays! Welcome back to POTW! There's a lot of content for this one, so I'm gonna spare you all from a long intro. This week I'm interviewing hex, sealoo, and kDCA, the managers of the Wealthy Weaviles!

- me
- hex
- sealoo
- kdca

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...NOW PLAYING: LIARA, BY DEVON HENDRYX

​

What do you do outside of smogon?

I'm a college student, and most of my time is eaten up by that. If I'm not doing schoolwork I'm probably either larping on Discord or going out to bars with my friends as much as our schedule allows it
im a 19yo college student from maryland (born in illinois tho) + disciple of Mike for work currently pursuing a degree in public health and looking to do something medically w that but not a doctor cause im too dumb and lazy for medschool. overwatch 2 is prob my most played game outside of pokemon and im a big nfl fan (especially my bears who are 9-3 as of rn!!) as well as dog person with the current 6 we have
I used to work towards becoming a pilot, however I have since pivoted to more political and international affairs based fields. I still love aviation, but I really enjoy feeling much more connected and involved in current events

What got you into mons as a whole?

When I was about 4(?) years old I had gotten surgery and it had a long recovery period, during that time my Dad got me a Nintendo DS with Nintendogs on it (LMAO fuck me that's such a long time ago). I guess I really liked it and asked for more DS games and the next thing I knew I had bought Pokemon Pearl and somehow gotten my hands on a copy of Pokemon Ruby. I always kept up with Pokemon after that and then down the line watching Poketubers eventually got me into competitive mons
imma do more of a full background but my first pokemon game was XY that my mom got for me at the local gamestop in like 2014, and i played that + sm + usum until 2018 when i discovered ps. to me, the concept of being able to use shinies and whatever mon u wanted was INSANE and i would play on my moms work computer + with a family friend at his house sometimes. i played sparingly until about 2020 when i played a bit of ss ou after seeing blunder vids on youtube but decided that shit was garbage and went to go play natdex like a lot of ppl at the time, eventually registering my smogon in april 2020 and was a 1200s boblow trolling a lot (eventually culminating in a nd cord ban actually) in like december 2020 as well as a jerkcord with some ppl who dont play anymore like ghostyshibe sockzz piley avery (:AWARE:) that i talked with most the time. i came back in july 2022 cause i was bored and remembered this game existed through youtube i think and was primarily active again in nd room where i met some close friends in hidin sulo gamer but swag and turban by yeat (aka yam) and got me into playing more seriously in tournaments and whatnot. eventually when sv came out, me hidin gamer and yam would grind a ton and play on call almost daily, eventually winning the trios tour + debuting in wc for everyone courtesy of big sulo nepo besides NE soldier Yam. ive been pretty active in the scene ever since altho i still trolled a lot in 2022/2023 but reformed into CLoo now
I did some random ladders like ubers on ps in 2015, but really only got back into mons during covid where my friends dragged me onto a pixelmon server and a spark reiginited, and in 2022 I for practical reasons entered my first tour on smogon


What is the origin of your username?

I've gone by a lottt of names on Smogon over the years that I've been here. In this order: 52Gambit -> Miraage (LOL) -> cy -> sasha -> hex. Rapid fire TLDRs for each one: I've been bad at coming up with names (fork found in kitchen) so my friend came up with 52Gambit for me. I got bored of it and made Miraage after a song I had really loved during that time but Mirage was unavailable. Then I was like ok fuck it everyone just calls me by my irl name so I'll just go by cy. Then I transitioned and picked the name sasha, and then I took nearly a year long break from Smogon and then decided I don't want my usernames to be any sort of irl identity. I bounced different names around for a while but eventually decided I liked hex a lot. No particular reason I guess? I could go on and on about the symbolism but when I thought about the name it just "clicked" and I've loved it since
seals are my favorite animal and i think i sorta stole it from the mon sealeo
relating back to question one where I used to work towards becoming a pilot, "KDCA" is an airport code. There really isnt much more to it, just that I really love aviation and is just a reference to the airport I'm closest to. I usually go by DCA though

How was your overall PL experience (Draft Plans, Playing, Prepping, etc.)?

It was pretty good. I admittedly took more of a back seat as a manager (this will be a common theme throughout the rest of my answers prob) as I was really busy and almost didn't manage the PL altogether. Which was a weird change of pace for me since I'm usually super involved. After pestering Sealoo a bunch about managing he eventually approached me and asked if I'd be willing to help the Mono slot. I was fine with that since it meant I was only responsible for one tier and if I had time/wanted to help other slots I could, without being expected to
PL was very fun working with the SV + UU slots that did super well overall and having a strong performance personally en route to the ring. it was a bit of a struggle to actually assemble this trio with dca being unsure and this causing me to not have a definitive answer for hex for a minute. pre-draft we went hard for hellom cus he was like the only rly good sv in the pool + had p much a guarantee 3k axzel who we knew would farm; micaiah and luthier retains were also very strong choices altho both went negative sadly. im glad it all worked out, especially since all of us have been playing in this shit for like 3-4 years and had no tt wins
I knew going into this tour that prep wise, I would be a lot less active, but during draft planning I was still the usual me. Last year went a lot more according to plan, as a few of our initial targets this year went a bit over what I could pay, which made flexxing slots like UU which we didnt have too much backup for a bit weird, but it worked out and basically everyone we got was on the board one way or another.

Which team gave you the hardest time with prep?

Tbh none really. I feel like I have a decent grasp on how to prep Monotype and the only time Monotype feels "hard" to prep is when you're building something you either have this dread that the team loses to something randomly or you go insane trying to fix or cover the one thing you lose to which is sometimes just not possible in the tier
this is a bit of a tough question, but id probably give it to the victinis to my recollection in SV because the trends seemed pretty random/nonexistant + limited sample overall + had very minimal prior games vs 1yr to reference when thinking what they may want to bring. This culminated in a pretty shitty week of prep from me and we prob shouldve been 1-2 in it w/o luck in hellom lulu game. In uu, it was the slowpokes because the slot was a rotating door and had extremely limited sample + no clear mind behind the prep, also our own subbing around made picking out a team hella difficult even tho we ultimately rolled a good mu
Probably boomers team. He has my builder and has worked with me many times over the years, and especially in finals when I knew they had multiple chefs in the SS kitchen it was hard to take an approach I thought would land a great MU. In finals only 1 SS game was played, but I was confident in what we were going towards in the prep game

Which week was the most fun for you?

Finals. Not even because we won (it certainly helps for sure) but because we started playing minigames with discord server bots and did stupid shit like play gartic phone and skribbl which was super fun. It's been a while since I've been in a team cord where people were willing to take time out of their day to fuck around like that so it was pretty fun and of course memorable. I would be shocked if Sealoo and dca answer differently here :sob:
most fun week is a toss-up between w1 vs phoenix and semis vs absols. the phoenix plotline was very obvious with the finals and wc semis rematch vs ryuji/tuthur particularly, and we really wanted to put out a statement. in terms of prep tho it was a lot more simple since its just week 1 and a big lack of info means more general calls instead of specified stuff as the season goes on. super hype week that we dominated overall. semis vs absols was another fun one because i felt like with our new lu, we were peaking at just the right time and were lowkey a mismatch for the absols (just like how i think the basculegions were a mismatch for us tbh), evidenced by our prior reg season meeting. it started off rough but chaining together a ton of weekend wins and being able to bring home the dub for us was mad fun (think we went from 0-2 to like 6-3)
Probably finals. Not anything with the games, but at 2-0 with about every other slot having 0 prep locked in, we all started doing a bunch of skribbl.io's, gartic phones, discord games, and it was hella fun

Which tier was your favorite throughout the tour (Prepping and Spectating)?

NDOU and kind of UU? NDOU just because I was pretty uninvolved with that prep and seeing what Sealoo cooked up for those slots was entertaining. I also liked NDUU just because the tier seemed interesting and made me want to play it myself tbh. I missed a lot of the RU games which sucks cuz I like NDRU as well but it is what it is
uu is my favorite tier cause i have a lot of ideas for it as opposed to sv which ive been constantly building for sooo long, tier dynamics are p fun and skill based too imo
SSND and UU were the only ones I was involved in, so defo those. Although prepping SSND gets more annoying as the years go on, so maybe not that in the prep department

Any stand out performances from one of your players that you’d like to shout out?

Our entire team is shiest so it's hard to pick out one person but PixelBob was a great sub, super active and great to hang out with and I think managers throughout ND tours and outside should draft him if they want someone whos a good teammate
i think Axzel is one of the best pure clickers out there, and i particularly need to give xinnobu a lot of credit for delivering multiple crunch time wins off the bench and revitalizing our ubers slot down the stretch. pixelbob is a big engine for activity and all the day-to-day shit that goes into a team asw, highly recommend buying in any tour
He is lowkey buns at the game by not slotting sv1 once (probably) and then talking shit, but I gotta give him his flowers for his phenomenal improvement over the years, sealoo is defo the weavile cornerstone player atp, and his performance both in game and in prep channels were the reason we won. it was somewhat impressive, i guess

Any rising stars we should keep an eye out for in the future?

crow crumbs is one of my besties but also I think they're quite good at the game and picks up tiers pretty fast. Might flop I guess as we all sometimes do, but I enjoy watching them prep and play the game. Same with Nuxl also think he has a good eye for the game. Obviously biased as these are my good friends but I'd love to see them in more tours in general
generally luuanfps has some incredibly impressive games, he is mad good and plays like hes been a staple forever despite being a debut tournament. Clawed Winter is more established but seeing him have a rly strong campaign this pl with mafia after benching for us last year was great to see. for sv, my boy slopcat had a lot of impact on a great season for the basculegion for someone making their pl debut, thats never easy
I didnt really watch ndpl games too much this year (or most other nd tour games), so anything I say is genuinely just speaking out of my ass, refer to sealoo for a better answer as this dude lives ND

Which team has the best name? (Not including yourself)?

& Three Gogoats.
ill give it to the vics, one of the 3 longstanding ND franchises and i like vic as a mon

What are your thoughts on OU right now?

Seems chill. SSOU is so boring to watch because it's just SMOU teams being recycled and I think SMOU #SUCKS. SVOU I have no comment on the games seemed pretty entertaining though I think theres just so much going on you cant cover everything in builder which can feel a little overwhelming at times
i like it, feels pretty skillful and stable
Not gonna answer for SVND, but I think SS NDOU is in a pretty good shape, perhaps a bit stale if anything. Its pretty hard to push innovation in this tier, a lot of innovation I see is kinda just ass or weird fishing rather than a development that can take on meta consistently. I think meta has gotten a lot more rewarding for offense, which is a shakeup I think is a lot better for the tiers health as the fat shit of the cg and initial post cg era was pretty bad for the tiers rep amongst newer nd players

Favorite “junk food” mon?

Um..........I play PU and Monotype I feel like I'm pretty used to using shit mons and when I play OU I don't really experiment too much. I guess I'd have to say Mega Gyara even tho it's not a shit mon but I spam it on HO for the stall matchup
mega gardevoir is a rly solid antimeta rn with its mu vs ting/bird structures and being a nightmare mu for kyurem
(ssnd) probably mega aero. its speed tier is fire for revenging in this tier, lowkey can tech tons of coverage, fast taunt is great, and can realistically fit on offensive teams to check annoying fires which otherwise is hard to do. it has a big opportunity cost but is pretty damn fun to use

Favorite mon as a whole? Any teams you’d like to share? (Any tier)

It switches around a lot so I'll give a top 5 that stays pretty consistent: (In no particular order) Bombirdier, Aurorus, Kilowattrel, Krookodile, Mega Chimecho
my favorite mon is sealeo or spheal but in the realm of more viable stuff, i really like mega scizor and hisui samurott both for their design and gameplay for the latter more so. hsam is such a great mon for playing aggressive, has everything you could want p much to force progress and has easy ins on plenty. msciz is a mon i kinda hate building with but it usually doesnt disappoint in game (uturn sciz always does work for me but building w it is annoying af idk)
(ssnd again) in a tier so close to sm but lacking mage and no large steela presence, lele is one of the most fun mons i think you can use. i dont think lele will ever not get value, and with so many viable sets (never forget SSND pushed the av lele agenda), you always can be in the drivers seat with that mon. even then its not in the top 3 for the tier, but its just one of the mons that makes me enjoy playing the game. For a team to send, this is pretty old but i dont ever have an excuse to send it these days and i would defo make updates to it but i will send for the culture one of my fav teams i ever made in this tier. i made it in 2022 after making winners finals in my first ssnl in prep for a wc meta (i did not make the wc roster tho), but it was heavily influenced by the storm zone eleki rain that was blowing up in ssou at the time. eleki was not common but had very solid speed tier and revengability in this tier, team uses av lele since kyurem during this age was rampant, and has a crazy golt spread to live modest nmi kyurem ice beam (also relevant at the time), and get other decent rolls vs passive fairies that u can just set up on to win games. back during cg, this was one of the few teams i hit 2k+ with on ladder, and another close friend of mine hit 2k with it as well, and in tour it put up pretty good numbers. 3-2 I believe, with one of the losses being a sunny day zone cteam that even then needed to get lucky to win, so it did me good.If you are looking here for a team to load in tours, I would recommend the weavile rain structures . It doesnt really matter how public it is, everyone would know the sets on preview anyways, and the tools here can really take on so much of the meta consistently imo

Favorite Song?

Keep Holding On - Snow Strippers

Killing Time - Magdalena Bay

Into the Endless Night - Live - Parannoul

Thought’s on the NatDex community as a whole?

It's fun! I've made some good friends here so far and I can't complain. If you asked me in 2023 when I was getting ragebaited by the community I would've given a wildly different answer.
definitely has its moments especially with how young it generally is but this community/tier is favorite on the site and that will never change. im glad i can start being the bitter old man now instead of the newcomer for the next generation of players...
Natdex community has evolved a lot since when I started. I have never really been that involved in the more mainstream natdex community ever, so Im probably not the best person to judge state of community, but the scene has become a lot less elitist, and I think there are more opportunities to be seen than ever if you are seeking more action. Obviously some curious actors, but thats in every community

What’s next for you? What are you focusing on?

After winning NDPL, that marks 2/3 "bucket list" (lol cringeee!) tours that I want to win. MPL was the other tour I won, but the last one I'm gunning for is PUPL (or well a PU tournament in general). After that I'm not sure? I guess I'll think about it when the time comes
with my semester ending, i currently have signed up for a lot of tours in the coming winter months though i dont really enjoy any tier to the degree that i do nd so ive been pivoting away from non-natdex stuff in recent times. i suppose i just wanna keep getting better/more consistent at natdex as a whole and dabble in some other stuff i enjoy like mono; my big goal is currently on circuit and winning a ndwc behind that. for the tier in its entirety, i want to hopefully have it grow and become more respected but the latter is admittedly pretty hard ive learned...
I'm not sure what I'll do next for natdex. I'm like 60/40 on doing ndwc, and have no plans to continue NDPL currently. Most of my focus is going towards different formats and tours, but also have a lot of non mons things on my plate. NDWC will likely be my last natdex tour indefinitely, should I sign up for it. never say never i guess though

Any closing statements?

kDCA PixelBob Taka 5 stack when
major s/o's to all my friends in PRC, i never expected the server to grow so much but i rly enjoy interacting with yall and what we've made in there. seth hidin kayzn gamer but swag yonmd for being my best friends on this site for a good long while, appreciate & cherish you guys a lot
If you are new and want to get onto a bigger ND stage as a player, don't be discouraged by things not going your way early on if you are looking for your first break. this tier can be a solid place to grow as a player, use ladder and test games to improve consistency, get good placements in tours, and get your run back on any doubters

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And with that, we have reached the end of yet another interview :) This interview was by far my favorite to make behind the scenes, so thank you dca, hex, and sealoo for participating! This was pretty ambitious from me, as this was the largest interview I've done. I've added more questions to the interview that I plan to keep as mainstay questions for future interviews and this was POTW's first ever triple interview! This won't be the last, so stick around for the next interview. Until then, feel free to drop any additional question you may have for these three. Thank you all for reading, and I'll see you all for the next interview!

 

[Comett7778]

What’s your favorite replay from this PL?

 

[Sami]

worst team from pl?

 

[bumboclaat]

Congrats on the NDPL win! Couple of questions for all of y'all:

1. Anything you're excited about in particular when Gen 10 rolls around?

2. What is / are your favourite(s) non ND section(s)?