Project OM Interviews (SammyCe123 @ Post 81)

Gimmicky

(you'd prefer an astronaut)
is a Site Content Manageris a Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Metagame Resource Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Smogon Media Contributor
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Originally owned by Snaquaza. OP stolen from nv. Previously ran by lots of people at this point.

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Welcome to the OM Interviews. This is a project similar to Player of the Week, but our own OM edition. Every few weeks, a famous OM player will be interviewed. From OM staff to other prominent figures within the community, many will have the chance to be interviewed. They'll be asked about the OMs they play, their views on certain OMs and anything else of interest. Besides being fun to read, these interviews give insight for newer players, helping them get into OMs. Feel free to suggest people that you'd like to see interviewed, but I can't guarantee that I will interview them.

Gen 9:
UT's Interviews
berry’s Interviews
Fc and Guard's interview
Gimmicky's Interviews
Gen 6:
Snaquaza's Interviews
nv's Interviews

Gen 7:
Chloe's Interviews
OM's Interviews:
Gen 8:

 
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Hello everyone and and welcome back to OM Interviews! What better way to kick off the Scarlet and Violet edition than with our reigning OM Circuit Champion, Ivar57!

Ivar, welcome! First things first, want to tell us a little bit about yourself?


Thank you for the warm welcome. I'm horrible at these but let me try my best. You can just call me Ivar, I'm 23 years old, and live in the netherlands with my girlfriend and dog. I work in the field of solar energy and love playing all kinds of games

We appreciate the effort; and solar energy is a great field to be in. What do you do exactly? What does being a solar farmer look like? We will also need a photo of the dog at the end of this

I am actually starting with a new job next week. I will be selling and planning projects for a company speciallised in the installation of solar panels.

That's very cool, hope you find it enjoyable! Good luck with the onboarding! Moving onto mons, when did you start playing mons? and how did you make the jump into OMs?

Thank you, I am sure it will go well.

I started playing mons sometimes during highschool, I think it was during gen 6 at that time. A friend introduced me and showed me an unkillable sturdy shedinja in balanced hackmons and I was sold, from then on I always came back to bh, but it took me until the start of gen 8 to actually get into playing competitively

lol Sturdy Shedinja, that's a fun throwback.

Obviously a big thing for you recently was
winning the OM Circuit; what are some of your favorite memories from that? Any series or games stand out? Any funny stories?

Well I went into that tournament wanting to win but never expecting to get far, but after I won my series vs lydia (after being 2-2 and winning the decider with an aaa team you built no less) I started believing in my possibility to actually win the entire thing. I created a discord server, invited friends who could help me prep and also won the next 2 series to make me win the entire thing. I was playing well those days and practicing my skill daily by playing hc with TheCoastsOfToast lol

Ren asked me to make a Midnights-themed team LOL, I did not expect it to ever get used seriously; but glad it worked for you!

What did you learn from hackmons cup? seems like a wild format.


Nothing really, I was just having fun with playing and hanging out with TCoT, took some of the stress away for me

Stress relief is still important lol.

Have you been playing much SV OMs? How do you feel about them so far?


I actually didnt like SV OMs for a long time, so at the very beginning of the generation I was only playing randbats and hc. Wanting to compete in tours again I picked the new oms back up. So far aaa is what I have been enjoying most.

What specifically have you been enjoying about AAA? How have you found the move away from two ability clause (2AC)?

I'm not really sure what it is that made me enjoy it, but it felt fun after playing for a bit. I dont really mind the change to SAC, it allows for a more offensive metagame due to regenerator being restricted to only one mon.

Do you have any SV teams you've built that you are particularly proud of and want to talk us through how you built them? Can be AAA or another OM

I actually do not have a team I am that proud of yet. So far I have built many solid teams but none of them stand out to me as being worthy of being shown here

Well, let's fix that; set a timer for five minutes, and build a team in a meta of your choice. Let's see what you come up with on the clock!

went over time as I cannot build fast but here it is, https://pokepast.es/06b0132270a30ce0. Hazards offense which tries to keep hazards on by not allowing spin from quaqaval or defog from corviknight

probably loses to wbb corv but nobody uses that mon anyways lol

Man Flame Body Corv being real has been one of my least favorite developments Nice looking team though! I think it captures the state of the AAA meta very nicely

Other than mons, do you have any other hobbies that you enjoy?


I love playing games of any kind, me and my gf play board games nearly every day

I also really like to cook nice (vegan) food

and love watching anime or reading manga

What board games?

And any good food photos?


At the moment I mostly play settlers of catan or ticket to ride, but there are many more games I play semi regurarly. I tend to get quite competitive whenever I am playing anything so not a lot of people actually like playing with me luckily my gf gets just as competitive as I do so we have a lot of fun together.

Ticket to Ride is a great one; would also recommend checking out Wingspan and Power Grid if you’re looking for more.

Before we wrap up, is there anything else you want to share? A story the right question didn’t come up for? Thoughts on the direction of OMs? Stuff you hope to accomplish in SV?


I actually do not really have anything else to share, just have one request for you and your fellow aaa council members. Could you please slow down with the bans in aaa lol? I dont want to have to start playing aaa ubers to use any of the mons I used a few weeks ago haha

Thank you for the great questions and game suggestions, I will make sure to send you pictures of my dinner which I will go prepare now

LOL fair enough, I’ll pass that along.

Thank you for taking the time to do this!

And now feel free to ask Ivar anything below! Thankfully, they did provide the promised noodle and dog photos!

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Questions:
  1. Who's your favorite up and coming player? :woo:
  2. You could revert one set of bans from AAA immediately, which do you revert? (e.g. You can revert the Furscales ban, or the Tusk/Dhengo/etc.)
  3. What mons are you excited for on expansion/home/DLC/whatever?
  4. What's one of your favorite albums of all time?
  5. Does TCOT have the most one-sided rng in hackmons cup or what?
 
Questions:
  1. Who's your favorite up and coming player? :woo:
  2. You could revert one set of bans from AAA immediately, which do you revert? (e.g. You can revert the Furscales ban, or the Tusk/Dhengo/etc.)
  3. What mons are you excited for on expansion/home/DLC/whatever?
  4. What's one of your favorite albums of all time?
  5. Does TCOT have the most one-sided rng in hackmons cup or what?
1. Sorry if I disappoint you here, I really like teaching you stuff and you are working hard to improve but my favorite would have to go to Tea Guzzler, what they have done for the BH community during the last year cannot be understated.
2. I would have another look at the 4 bans made at the same time, I myself was not certain if all those mons were banworthy on their own, at that time the metagame was very focussed on handling the centralising threats. I feel like the bans should have maybe been made seperately to see how the meta adjusted, from there it would be much easier to prove that the mons were actually banworthy on their own.
3. I am mostly looking forward to the ubers coming back, only having koraidon and miraidon feels kinda lackluster
4. I would not be able to name even a single name of an album. I do enjoy music but most of the time listen to it from one giant playlist of my liked songs to which I add about 10 new songs a month.
5. Absolutely!
 
Hello everyone and and welcome to the second round of SV OM interviews! Today we are getting to know our newest forum moderator, KaenSoul, a little bit more! Kaen, welcome to OM Interviews!

im always here for the fans

Speaking as a fan, we appreciate it. Tell us a little bit about yourself!

starting with the hard questions it seems, well, im from chile, been a fan of the franchise since gen 1 and that means im old, i enjoy messing around in the ladders and drawing fakemons, i work with computers so you can find me during the whole day in the om room

I bet it's chilly down there sometimes. How'd you make the jump from the pokemon games to Smogon / PS?

well I got into competitive mons near the end of gen4, wanted to use my hgss mons online and while that didnt end well i got into a pokemon online (and later ps), spend some years in a spanish community and found about smogon there, and as my english got better i spend more time using smogon over any other pokemon site

I legitimately did not realize you weren't a native English speaker until you told me.

How'd you find OMs? What brought you here / what kept you here?


back in the day it was quite hard to find games in spanish around here so learning english was kind of necessary. the oldest memory i have about oms is the day tier shift become a thing, i didn't post back then but did check the forums a lot and trying out the new formats was always fun, didnt really become a regular in the community until reevo approval last year, didnt expect my first proposal ever to be approved, was expecting to fail a few times before getting my own format, and naturally that give motivation to actively find people to play with, so i landed into the om room, i think i would have become way less active after the general hype around it died, but got promoted in the room and because of it now i go there every day even when i know i wont be playing any games

Your contributions to the OM section have been nothing short of amazing, especially with the Workshop.

How did you get the idea for Re-Evo? What made you want to lead a metagame?


the workshop is fun, i like to imagine what kind of messed up stuff could happen each time someone post a new idea, for re-evo it was quite simple, after finding most of my other ideas in the commonly rejected list i ended up posting one i had a week before than i think most had at some point, what if you could do cross evo with fully evolved mons, and for it to not be awful there had to be some kind of limit, and limited mons to their own lines was the best way to keep everything under control while still having something simple. i wouldnt say i wanted to lead, what i wanted was having one of my ideas out there

Completely makes sense.

What's been your favorite part about being Re-Evo tier leader?


i wouldnt know, it was fun from the beginning, it hasnt been that long but it has been a big adventure so far, all the people that got interested when i first posted the idea, then having my own format being approved, meeting all kind of people in discussions and battles, seeing people discuss it, even when it seems like is losing popularity there is a lot of people that play it, sometimes i make a room tour and not a lot join and sometimes is full of people, is just a lot of fun

Love to hear how much fun it's been.

Obviously, you're one of the forum mods now; how has that transition been for you? Are there any changes you want to see in the section?


becoming a forum mod was quite unexpected, i still have no idea why i was chosen, even after gaining access to the staff chat and reading the conversation, but now im one and the biggest change is that sometimes i have to control myself because what i say holds the rank's weight or something dumb like that, but anyway, i like how the section is, but i want more people to try out the less known oms, i think im well known for setting up room tours every time i get a chance, i fear sometimes people get annoyed by it, but for many formats is the only form of competitive play they see while waiting for their turn to have a ladder, i cant get two million people to start playing ps so we have the user base to actually give everyone a ladder, but i can remind people that those format dont disappear when the month is over

You were chosen cause you're a great and levelheaded contributor who showed a clear interest in the section; especially, like you said, with the lesser played / workshop OMs. And cool, sounds like we can count on you for the next spotlight trios!

Other than the ones you lead, what are your favorite OMs to play? watch? Any oldgen OMs you hope still return?


i think im involved in most OMs i play, even outside of the two i lead, as im in the forte council, same with tcg, but outside of them i think it would be trademarked, but i do like to check on most other formats, i just dont get too involved on them, usually make a quick team for a room tour or to ladder a bit and then delete it to keep the list short. As for returning OMs, i want to see Linked come back, is quite fun despite how broken of a concept it is, but thats what makes it fun

Trademarked is one of my favorites too, but it's neat to hear you be interested in such a wide range.

Do you have any fun trademarked or linked teams to pique our interest?


havent had much time to build since i got parting shot banned by playing stall the pivot move restriction in trademarked, but improvised this team the other day, i like to call it "lets get thunder wave banned" https://pokepast.es/a91522a5d62fadef is quite simple, para/burn as many mons as possible and spam hex, just be careful with gholdengo, because of course that in a format about replacing your ability the most annoying mon is the one that doesnt

Man I look forward to the day cleric moves are freed.

You mentioned creating fakemons; what's that process like? any ones you are especially proud of?


art is a different process for everyone, i usually open paint, draw some random lines until i eventually get something that just inspires me, while drawing it i come up with stuff that can be part of the concept, have been doing it since i was a kid, is just for fun so sometimes i make serious designs and sometimes i turn jolteon into a bee, is difficult to just choose one that i can say im proud of or that is my favorite because they all are stuff i made and are important to me, but here is navird, is a cute little bird
Navird.png

I love birds, good choice ❤️

This has been a really nice interview; any parting words you want to say? things you want to talk about we didn't cover? shoutouts to give?


digimon is better, kaen was here kenn is a loser, say no to sleep clause mod, tell drampa's grandpa, AlexSaysBruh123 (or whatever name they use) and prunyy that i say hi, thanks Oprah i meant UT
oh and dont forget ponchlake, wonder why someone would want to punch a lake

Thank you for taking the time to do this!

And now feel free to ask Kaen anything below!
 
Pineapples on pizza? What is your preference?
Pizza on pineapples.
Ps: devuelve el huascar >:(
Obligame
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Hugely honored to have been working with you this whole time, Kaen :)

What do you think the future holds for you in the OM scene?
I will control everything from behind the scenes, far from the public eye. With no idea of what I'm doing.
I like to tryhard in tours and teambuild an insane amount, but how does kaen like to have fun with le pokemans?
I think I spend more time messing around on the actual games than in PS, I'm not all that competitive to be honest, but this place is the closer to a hard mode in Pokémon, and I enjoy our conceptually broken formats.
 
What’s your experience in the cap meta? Have you played any cap oms?
I'm not that involved in cap, have played some cap mashups in the past like with reevo, but not much beyond that.
I do like the artistic part of cap tho, tried my luck with the current cap, but my design lost in the first round :eeveehide:
Will try again next time, is a fun competition.
 
Welcome to the third iteration of Generation 9's Other Metagames Interviews. I've gotten a hold of one of Other Metagames' premiere mob bosses, Tea Guzzler. Being the Balanced Hackmons Co-TL he's obviously a pretty big target, and I was very lucky to catch him between being a corrupt BHTL taking bribes from big stall to ban offense strategies like Baton Pass for a brief interview.

Tea Guzzler. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What you do IRL, how the name tea guzzler came about, and what made you decide to join Smogon.


Hi, so i'm Tea Guzzler, and (unsurprisingly) i'm from England. I'm currently at university studying Economics, but my exams for first year are done, so waiting to hear back on those / for next uni year (although there's some marking strikes that may or may not be affecting my uni, I don't know). As for where Tea Guzzler came about, there really isn't a good reason; I was thinking of names to change to from an old childhood one that was also a self-doxx, thought of Tea Guzzler, thought it was funny, and it sorta just stuck. I originally got into showdown with Monotype after watching one of NathanLikesChicken's videos on it; I looked at the format list one day and noticed Balanced Hackmons, which sounded similar to Hackmons Roulette FFAs that I used to watch back before Gen 8. Started playing it and lurked in the OM discord until January 2022, when I first joined Smogon to submit a sample team.

You're a pretty prominent contributor on Smogon and the co-leader of the BH tier now, but like everyone, you probably started out as a lowly ladder player. What was your first BH team like, and how long did it take you to become a self-described competent player?

The last post on the Gen 8 BH thread has some of my earliest teams, with the first paste I have being an incredibly lopsided balance (?) team with Choice Band Groudon and Simple Eternatus: https://pokepast.es/b4a87e4290ebb22b. There was also one I used before another strat I stole from someone on ladder, being Swift Swim Palkia, and if I recall correctly it was paired with weird stuff like Adaptability Yveltal and Technician Kartana. No idea what the actual first team I made was, but I know it involved Intrepid Sword Groudon. As for when I think I became competent, probably around OMPL X; being on stresh's team taught me a lot, and the techniques of building the team I used in the 1 game I played carried me from that point.

Speaking of OMPL, you've stepped up this season to become both a manager and player. How did you decide to be a manager with Ponch at your side, and how is your experience with tournament games different than ladder play?

Due to the overlapping schedules between OMPL and exams, I was initially pretty hesitant to manage, and I made this quite clear. This basically just ended up with a case of ponch messaging me with "Do you want to manage?", and with me feeling reasonably confident about my exams at the time, I decided to say yes. I was approached by a few people beforehand, but I still wasn't sure with what to do at these times. Tournament play is completely different and a lot more stressful, especially given I have pretty bad anxiety to begin with. Prepping for tours places much greater emphasis on a strong matchup due to the game being a best of one, and the fact that you don't have to prep with completely random, nonsensical jank in mind (although there is still some jank, cough cough Levitate Iron Moth, that needs to still be noted). It also doesn't help that I inherently build with a really tight group of mons, so beyond a certain point, it's sort of asking for really dodgy matchups that you have to be on a different plane to play out of.

Enough about actually playing BH, how about the managerial side of the whole thing? What do you like (or dislike) about being the "face of a tier", and does being Co-TL make you think differently about the meta?

Being the face of the tier makes me proud to represent something, but it also places a good amount of pressure on me, to the point where I feel almost obligated to do well. Being co-TL doesn't really cause too drastic of a change in thinking about the tier, although it definitely does conjure up some ideas on what could theoretically be achieved with good tiering; stuff like Tera Ban + Free GTactics + retest some stuff like Miraidon has come up a few times. Being involved in tiering also brings up some of the inconveniences with it, like having to deal with conflicting council opinions or, to take a current example, having to re-suspect Tera when we haven't seen anyone trying to defend it (which I think is kinda dumb, but we can't really do anything about it now that NDOU has gone ahead with a suspect).

Occasionally when councils come to a decision, it might not make sense to the general userbase or it might not be received well. Is there anything you'd like to let BH players know about how the council works, how decisions are made, or anything else that you wish you knew about the council before you were on the council?

If there's one major thing that makes the council tick, its tournament replays; notice that Baton Pass was always a "yeah we can see it being potentially problematic but nobody's been asked to make broken teams with it", and then last week of OMPL happened. That isn't to say that we only look at tournament replays, because barely anything'd be getting done - we do keep a close eye on Discord and the PS room to see what people aren't happy with. If you have a serious complaint, by far the best way to make sure people see it is with forum posts, as these are a lot less prone to getting buried under mounds of messages. There's nothing in particular that I wish I knew before getting on council; it sorta just happened one day and I got on with it.

And what's your message / advice to a brand new player who gets rekt by something on the bh ladder and makes a smogon account just to post about it in the thread?

Usually this is the case because of a dumb setup sweeper or being reverse-swept by Imposter; both of these are relatively consistent to counter with Imposter or actual defensive mons, respectively, but if you haven't played before then it's obviously better to ask for advice on how to do these right.

Do you play any other games or have any other hobbies outside of Pokemon and BH?

I don't really have that many hobbies; personal circumstances keep me at home a decent bit, and near me there really isn't a lot of stuff to do (not the most affluent area). I play quite a few games; all-time greats for me are Terraria, Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005), Pokemon HeartGold, and Pokemon Black 2. Some stuff I play with friends are Rocket League, Phasmophobia, and Mario Kart. Currently playing through Elden Ring.

Any final thoughts or sage advice you'd like to share with the readers? Other than of course, that the next BH ban is a complex ban on Levitate+Iron Moth.

googles sage advice I've never really been one for giving sound advice, but if I had to give any, it'd probably be to do things that need doing as soon as possible, not even from a mons perspective but in general. I find that doing stuff earlier makes me feel a lot better with my time, and means I can actually enjoy the time I spend after, rather than regretting having done nothing. If you meant sage advice in terms of mons, don't be afraid to ask people for games. More often than not, they'll be more than happy to accept your challenge, and getting in games against good players is by far the easiest way to get better. Kerbstomping ladder for the 800th time teaches you to be good at kerbstomping ladder, which is good if that's your goal, but in the majority of cases this doesn't lead you far.

Unluckily enough, Tea had to run out of the room, as there was an odd knocking at the window. Odd mostly because we were on the second floor of an unmarked building, but he's a pretty big target. Might have been some ladder players climbing up who wanted a piece of him after the Baton Pass ban. The world may never know. Anyways, thank you Tea Guzzler for chatting with me this evening! I'll open the floor up for any questions from the community.
 
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