AESF'S RACOOL's MAMP's OMPL BH Review AAA EDITION: Week 2
Ok so im subbing in for aesf this week (unfortunately for you all lol) and as I have even less creativity than aesf, im copying his copy of MAMP's bh review :')
itskimbo vs dragonillis
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1102720585
Kimbo's redemption arc gets off to a flying start here, with some pretty cool anti-pex prep in the form of black sludge storm drain gengar (with the added bonus of being a decent trick switchin as gengar doesnt mind a choice scarf/specs ngl, although thats pretty hard to execute) which matched up insanely well into dragonillis's stall. Mild heart attacks were induced, especially for jrdn, when kimbo forgot doom desire was up and sacked his gar in the lategame, but fortunately it was past the point where gar was strictly necessary to close out that game. I'd roast him for this.... but the amount of times ive forgotten future sight/doom desire was up in various tests is quite high and its pretty easy to do especially in a 100+ turn stall match. Teams wise kimbo brought a pretty classic kimbo style team with janky sets and some random ass immunities which paid off here, but I am not totally sold on this ngl, as from my personal experience relying on multiple immunity abilities so satisfy your role compression often ends up feeling a bit lacking unless you land yourself a really ideal mu. On the flip side, looks amazing when the mu is nice, cos the sets just flex so hard lol. Meanwhile in dragonillis's case I was pretty upset to see stall as I just don't really rate it much especially on the competitive scene in aaa rn. Stall just feels over the top passive right now which aesf kinda alluded to in his week 1 review. Also I think the addition of clef into most standard offence and balance's has made stall even less viable ngl, cos offence and balance gain so much more longevity now to the point where stall really cant do much at all. So yeah, don't bring stall folks. I was actually quite impressed with drago in his week 1 match vs rozes, where he did acc make the match pretty close, and like he didn't misplay much in this one, just had an unwinnable mu, so yeah im looking forward too playing him this week, should be fun! As for kimbo, v gassed that he got his long awaited win, hopefully this the start of a revenge tour !!
rozes vs aesf
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8almostanyability-494157
On paper this is up there as the biggest aaa tie this tour, and im desperately hoping that we get a rerun of this sometime in playoffs ngl, hopefully they even treat us to a bo3, that'd be fire. Getting into this one, off preview, its clear to see matchup is very much in rozes's corner. His coba looks a lot more threatening than aesf's coba especially going under the assumption that its mixed because coba usually is. Furthermore dracozolt and draga are 2 pretty scary mons at preview, cos its difficult to pinpoint theyr set. Draco has the fear factor of being magpull, which keeps aesf's coba firmly at bay, while also potentially being band adapt which is scary as fuck for aesf cos he doesnt have an electric immunity. We later find out that rozes's coba is in fact purely special, and his zolt is scarf adapt, knowledge which would have made aesf's life infinitely easier as elecvally comfortably handles both reasonably well if it keeps its vest, but unfortunately thats not how mons work, so rozes was able to apply a lot of pressure from preview itself. Finally, aesf's main breaker on this team is band tinted golis... which is pretty scary in a lot of matchups, but not nearly as much in this one vs dauntless mew + prank pex, which yeah isnt helping here. Last week we were witness to a masterclass from aesf on how to play your way out of a meh matchup with perfect offensive pressure.... the main difference here was he was playing rozes not megazard. Rozes is the one player in this pool who you reallllly dont wanna be in a matchup disadvantage against, cos he doesnt really give you an inch, just keeps the pressure up till you lose. Getting into the match, aesf had a couple of early unnecessary plays which kind of killed this one tbh. The first one was letting Vally get knocked which was imo pretty avoidable here, at least this early. The second one was sacking clef. Clef probably bounce here (which I dont really like regardless ngl, doesnt feel like it offers anywhere close to what ph offers) so aesf was most likely overpredicting rocks here trying to get a nice bounce which would have definitely helped him claw his way out of this one as it allows golis to start pressuring a lot more, but I honestly dont think the risk vs reward here was worth it especially this early into the match. After this the match ends up just rolling towards rozes pretty cleanly, with aesf managing to nab a nice kill but in the end not really having a way out of this one without rozes throwing somehow. Overall, it wasn't a bad match, but I think aesf's team could have been a bit better tbh and his early game could definitely have been better. As I said in the beginning, im very much looking forward to a potential rematch between these 2 titans, as both of them are only gonna keep improving in the builder as this tour goes on (especially aesf as hes nearly done with work, so hes gonna properly have time to prep, scary as fuck to think this was aesf stretched for time lmfao).
Racool vs Sabella
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8almostanyability-495937
So I ended up having pretty much no time last week to prep, and the few things I tried to throw together felt pretty bad, so I ended up recycling my g2 rain team I used in week 1 vs QT. I thought this was pretty safe as I didnt actually reveal much of that team in that game and the team actually has pretty good counterplay vs loads of different team comps particularly because of wish port clef allowing you to reset so freely. My final slot on that team ended up being the most important, as I had a feeling sabella would bring some type of balance with a triage sweeper like golis/celebi/togekiss, so I went for scarf dazzling terrak giving me speed control and triage control and an ability to force ferro out all in the same slot. With all that out of the way, the game ended up being really favourable for me matchup wise, as rain + specs prima literally 6-0'd.... but I managed to fuck that up pretty quickly. Tried to play early game safe with prima, clicking surf instead of pump cos I didn't want a miss and I didnt see a switchin unless he was regenvest milotic..... which he was lol. Then I proceeded to forget milotic gets mirror coat which ended with me needlessly sacking an easy Wincon in prima. That being said, the matchup was still pretty firmly in my favour because swift swim rotom matched up very strongly regardless. Sab was probably playing togekiss as his Wincon which made perfect sense as if he didnt know terrak was dazzling, kiss straight up won at this point. However I was able to successfully bait his kiss with terrak and close out this one. Definitely benefitted a lot here from matchup and sabella not being as familiar with the meta, don't think the outcome might have been the same if this was like week 5 ngl.
Thinkerino vs Mzard
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1103879296
This one was an odd one ngl. Im very glad think got his first dub of his ompl debut vs a v solid opponent in mzard, hopefully this really propels think for the rest of the tour as hes got a win under his belt (although this week vs rozes is quite a tough ask). Getting into this game though, think's team off preview looks like magpull with noivern and salazzle as the abusers, with a fairly solid defensive pivot backbone of mew + corvi + mandi. Mzard brought a stresh team which is built mostly around knock mamo + terrak which is cool when facing like Levi doublade especially, but the team's struggle as we will see is a reliable way of breaking through dauntless mew. The game opened with think revealing desoland salazzle, while mzard went into pex to get up a tspike. I think this was deffo the right gameplan for mz, as the best way to pressure this team was getting a spike up and then trying to pressure with terrak while the spike is up, cos think cant go into mew then. As we will see, this ends up happening exactly, and think is forced to sack his noivern, which was definitely a threat for stresh if rotom managed to trapkill corv. However while this was good for mzard, im not sure about his play to not heal up his prank pex in front of the salazzle after it dropped an overheat. As far as I can tell, there was no way salazzle was breaking through pex cos overheat pp is only 8 and I dont think salazzle has any coverage to punish pex? Not to mention salazzle was lo. Although that being said, mz might have just wanted to initiate pressure before think even had a chance to reset and defog away, and like it netted a result of a dead noivern turn 5 so u cant really argue with that result. However after this turn everything started going pretty downhill for mz, the next few turns mz was trying to pivot around to heal up his pex and presumably try the tspike + terrak combo again.... but think's volt turn was slower than mz's preventing mz from getting pex safely in on something it could recover on. In the end mz tried to recover with pex in front of rotom, probably hoping for a volt switch which wouldnt have killed, but think called mz well and nabbed the pex with tbolt. At this point the match effectively ended as without pex and tspike mz had legitimately no real way to kill mew and pressure corv aside from crits/flinches. He ended up getting a few of those which made the game closer in the end, but think was able to close this one out regardless. Think for his part played this pretty solidly despite losing noivern so early, while mz had a decent initial gameplan but wasn't able to completely execute it well enough to dig himself out of a rough matchup. MZ is still a very strong and scary aaa opponent, like dude did win aaa open, and im looking forward to seeing his return to the aaa slot later this tour perhaps with teams he feels more comfortable with. That being said im hyped af for stresh rotating into the aaa slot as stresh teams are infinitely scarier with big brain stresh playing them lol :P
Metagame Observations
These are gonna be a lot worse than aesf's were last week btw:
A big surprise for me was the complete and utter lack of both doublade and snorlax this week. Lax being one of the most threatening mons and highest ranked mons on the VR right now, and doublade being one of the best defensive hard counters to lax and terrak while offering solid offensive presence, it was no surprise to see them both feature often in week 1. However this week neither featured on any of the 8 teams brought. I feel like this an anomaly more than a trend though, as both are still extremely splashable, and there isn't like a strong reason to avoid running them so yeah, expect that to get more balanced this week.
Another surprise was clef going 1-3 this week, despite feeling like the most annoying mon in the meta at least from my perspective in tests. However I think that was less to do with clef, and more to do with the team around it/the matchup + the fact that there were a few clef v clef matchups. Kimbo's flash fire clef kinda confused me a bit because I didnt really see what it particularly helped with - cinderace gets gunk shot, and stuff like chandy is still bopping you with shadow ball. It ended up helping by blocking wow, but the same can be done much better with ph, which after quite a bit of testing I think is by far and away the best clef (although I could be missing something obvious in regards to ff). Aesf also didn't run ph clef, and I think its safe to assume it was bounce. Bounce heal bell seems cool, but I think ph just offers far more tbh. Being knock immune is huge, the extra 6% each turn compared to lefties is massive, and you're such a nuisance spamming wish tect cos of the 25% recovery across tect, while tect itself is really strong right now cos its one of the few ways to safely scout stuff like draga/choiced terrak/choiced tricks from noivern and rotom.
One big takeaway from last week for me was draga's continued dominance though. That mon is currently stomping left right and centre, and is one of the toughest mons in the meta to safely scout for. This week rozes brought specs wow adapt which proved to be v effective in his match. This mon is really fucking good ngl.
Cool mons/sets from this week:
Coba is pretty cool right now as a pick into clef spam, cos you really force clef into an annoying position every time it wishes with the threat of steel beam but also rocks and cc. Viable mixed sets tend to be the most threatening in the current meta by far, because of how difficult it is to safely scout, but rozes also used full special coba to pretty good effect last week. It also has pretty nice physical bulk and the ability to pivot is its most redeeming feature.
Offensive Golis seems to making a comeback currently too which is cool to see. Golis kinda benefits a lot from the meta adapting to terrak cos its main stabs hit the current main terrak answers (mew, hippo, and doublade) pretty damn hard. Aesf's band tinted golis deffo had its moments, although my favourite offensive golis from last week was one jrdn brought in a few tests vs me in fact, although idk if im allowed to reveal that, so ig ask him if ur curious :shrug:
Storm drain gengar as I mentioned earlier was some pretty cool anti-pex tech which I quite liked, although what I find curious is that all of main aaa builders find gengar to be one of the if not the most headache inducing mon to prep for because of its sflo/noguard/normalize sets.... yet none of these have actually been showing up in matches. Kinda mirrors how tini was the most broken mon last ompl but was rarely brought (although tini was far more broken than gar lol). Im predicting gar usage to rise though because a fair few teams were really lacking on counterplay.
Finally, once more stall featured exactly once this week, and did not have a great showing at all, so to echo aesf last week, hopefully this is enough of an incentive for people to not run stall anymore atm lol. Like yes its possible to cheese with stall, but ur by far more likely building balance with actual wincons and trying to outplay lol.
Yeah I really cba to do upcoming matches, already procrastinated uni work enough writing this up, but yeah this weeks matches look p cool. Excited mostly for think vs rozes, and stresh's aaa debut vs sabella, predicting stresh and rozes to come out on top there but ill be interested to watch those matches for sure!
I think aesf should be back with this next week which is a W for everyone rofl, tried my best to cover this time but looking back over this, I've rambled lots and haven't actually made that many precise and good points so yeah my bad. Congratulations if you managed to get through this lmfao.
