This is probably going to end up being more of a shoutout post than a team dump so :catleaf:
So, as most people hopefully know I managed UK and built with Snapple in DOU;
Week 1:
I think this was the first real taste of a no Goth meta since both teams agreed not to bring it (Thanks eragon, ly). This being at the tailend of my derby season with eragon, I had a very good idea of stuff he liked to use and what he was likely to bring after running God knows how many test games with him. I can't be bothered to find/remake it but I know we originally wanted to run some Ferro stuff into eragon but opted out in the end.
Even though we didn't bring it, I am pretty proud of this team, I took very heavy inspiration from Glimmer's Normal Z BMLuna team, which I've really liked for a while as just a fun and good team, for this and kind of just made it more up to date and made a couple changes I thought Snapple would be able to play better with.
Snapple ended up deciding on this, spoke more about it in a seperate post:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...week-2-diancie-not-mega.3760092/post-10481815
We ended up pulling a pretty nice matchup vs eragon and Snapple won the game.
Week 2:
I think going into this week me and Snapple realised that we probably were not going to have a week we weren't working overtime in the slot to secure the win, going into this one we saw Zee's scout was pretty all over the place and based of other things he's said I don't think we had a reason to worry about either of our self-scouts. We ended up with just a strong offense team with consistent weather matchups, probably should of been Sunny Day over Taunt on Tornadus to enable Flutter and Chi-Yu a bit more but it worked well since Snapple won the game.
Team is good, nice and strong fast paced offense team that denied risky endgames for us leaving little room for Zee to pull some miracle play and win the game off of that, but Snapple is her so this part is kind of larp.
Got a nice mu and played solid, no more to be said.
Week 3:
Kind used previous knowledge of how Terekusai loads from playing him in other tours and suggested Rain so we went with that idea and ran it, originally we planned on going with the exact BD team I ran into Terekusai, but Snapple improved on it like the goat she is.
Standard Rain structure, not much beyond that, in hindsight Arch + Bascu is very greedy for the difference in structure and play they need.
Rough loss after we lost MSciz early game, we just didn't have the tools to break through in the late game and Terekusai took it home.
Week 4:
Voltix was on a very good streak in both derby and going into the week here, so we needed to come up with a bit of a fishy team style into his scout, playing him in derby the week prior I had a very good idea of what sort of stuff would be consistent into him to get us a win.
Snapple came up with this which stuck to our original idea for a structure, team just support Bolt setting up and getting off damage to win the game after things are chipped.
Snapple played out a really good endgame to claim the win with nice chipping from LandoT to win it.
Week 5:
We were assuming Jello would end up playing here, but
Bacon Pig slotted instead, had a rough idea that they would just load a solid team so me and Snapple wanted to cover that sort of thing as well as possible and outplay to win.
This is probably the most standard six in the tier right now, if not ever, very customisable with stuff like going Z Hands, whether you want to use CM Fini, or DD Mence.
I think we just got a bit too passive with how we played this game and Pig punished us pretty well for it.
Shoutouts:
NinjaSnapple Not mentioning you first after speaking about you for the prior part of the post would be kind of wild LMAO, I had a lot of fun testing and building with you, really hope to play with you again soon and see you go undefeated like you deserve bestie.
TTK Insane Mono as always really happy that you had such a well deserved run this year with the work you put in, and like you will probably hear ever time you play in this tour, really sorry nobody else knows Mono and you have to do a lot of prep work on your own LMAO.
Stareal Undisputed goat in SSND, seeing you play this for the past two years has been so fire, I really enjoy your thought process on the game and just having such a strong spot around on the team is always really nice knowing we'll probably have at least one win every week.
Roginald Unc... Happy you came out of the retirement home to play for us, very happy to see you still have it, if you're still around when we run it back next year, I'd be very happy to have you play again.
Joeshh Putting you above Dan to purely annoy him, was really nice to see the amount of work and effort you were willing to put in this tour, sorry it didn't work out too well, know you're unhappy with you're record, but you can just go undefeated next year to even it out goat. s/o CAP.
jawabarat (Also known as the self proclaimed UU, ND OU, ND RU, and BDSP Jesus), was really fun to see you interact with other people and start kicking off at someone every 10 minutes into winning your game every week, thanks for dodging co-manning me when I asked and then coming to play anyways.
Rasche I dont know how I ended up passing you teams for singles most weeks, but it worked out, I was actually so hyped when you said you were down to play for this, sorry for allegedly, accidently, almost subbing you out vs ima LMAO, was really cool to team with you after knowing about you for two-ish? years.
Aso I think you put most of our SV slots on your back this tour, and your record does not reflect that at all which really sucks, when we were talking in PRC about this tour before the season started I was looking at my monitor for a good minute wondering if you were being deadass or not. Really nice to team with you finally though bestie, next time I'll try not having you play the other team's strongest OU every week. But you probably deserved it for making me play however many test games for OU and saying shit about Your Throne LMAO.
Pokemonrainer Sorry that exams fell on you mid tour, thanks for subbing in for Jawa while he was away and getting solid games in, really appreciate your presence in the teamcord.
Cow Sorry for dragging you back into the teamcord and then not having you play a single game LMAO, didn't speak to you a ton, but you were fire from the few times we chatted.
Medasus Sorry that you only got slotted once into an unwinnable matchup, I've said it before but you're really cool to just have around in a cord to see shit talk Sami.
TBIC106 The third part of the magic love triangle with Dan and Joesh, sorry that life happened, don't think I've ever said but you are one of the people I have the most fun prepping with, especially NDFL when you were actually around LMAO.
Baddy Sorry for annoying you to play this tour like 50 times, was fun to see you pop up in teamcord now and again, hope you come back and play next year or at least hang around a bit more goat.
Zpice I think you said like 5 lines, but thanks for joining and s/o big GSC NU or whatever it is. Fuck with you heavy goat.
Too lazy to find everyone that signed up to play or just joined the teamcord to hang around and give little bits advice, but want to let you all know I really appreciate the support, even though it was probably under 30 lines collectively LMAO.
LORD SAGIS ibleachyourskin I don't think I can thank you two enough for passing on the torch to myself and Sami, this was some of the most fun I've ever had playing mons, hope you can both hang around more next year.
Sami Last but not least, my co-man, don't know how you put up with me for the past five weeks, but you were probably more integral to this team than me, checking up on slots and being able to do scouts while I was getting in from college at like 5PM on a Monday LMAO, the past couple of weeks. Really appreciate getting to know you beyond that one ND Ubers guy that brings shit like MVenu, you're a really fun dude, would love to run it back with you next year. Best of luck with your exams goat.
Final thoughts:
Sucks that we fell just short in the end after such a tight series in week 5, but I had loads of fun managing and generally interacting with this team and getting to know everyone, as nice as two more weeks and a custom could have been. Very happy with how we did in terms of prep, play, and placement in this tour both retroactively looking back at our run last year and comparatively to other teams in the pool getting third after being seen as a dead region with a team that was comfortably put last on most power rankings pre-season all in my first time managing a team tour is amazing, and you lot should all be really proud of yourselves.
Sorry on not being the manager you guys deserve, and even more thank you for tolerating and carrying me for the past few weeks, but let's run it back stronger and win next year, GO UK!
