Art by Kalalokki
col49
Favorite Pokemon: Slurpuff
Most used Pokemon: Metagross
Most known for: Being one of the most diverse builders in the tier, besides playing in official tours and being one of the oldest members of the community
After finally saving enough money, I managed to go to New Jersey to meet with my agent. However upon my arrival, I wasn't received by anyone.
3 weeks passed and I found myself walking around aimlessly once again, this time with no clues to go on. It wasn't until a sunday night that I met this eloquent fella playing magic the gathering.
He had this different vibe around him and he kept using words too complicated for my understanding. Turns out this was the man I was supposed to meet all along, so I questioned him why he decided to john me till sunday, he just looked at me and said "Hell yea" and walked away.
I sighed and went after him...
Hey col, how is it going?
Can’t complain man, how you living?
Chill as usual
Contrasting from the previously interviewed people, I actually dont really know much about you other than the fact that you are a prominent force when it comes to building teams
Would you mind telling me about yourself?
Shoot, that so? Well, I’m 24 years old and I guess I technically started playing in 2009, right about when Netbattle was starting to fade out in favor of Pokémon Online. My friend irl showed me the server, we made a terrible Baton Pass team and raged at someone who ran Skarmory to the point where we added a Magnezone just for him. Finally started playing on my own right about when BW1 started on Pokémon Online on some super small server where I started to self-teach how to actually build and play, met one of my longest Pokémon friends in Tokyo Tom, then Alan, and eventually joined a clan by the name of The Gang /[G$] once I started to get decent. Made some connections there (GarytheGengar and Void were members, for some names of folks still around) and started idling around the IDM room, after enough time I was convinced to make a Smogon account. Started up about right at the inception of RU, and frankly I decided to give it a shot just on the basis that everyone was bound to be as new to it as me so no harm, no foul. I was pretty bad for a minute, but after grinding a bit on the low I finally got decent around BW2; started QCing, took part in the now-defunct mentorship program, got rotating council for laddering like 7 alts into the top 40 using variations of the same HO with each alt, etc. Took it pretty slow during XY, but around the time of SPL VI I decided to take a swing at playing and was given a shot by Cryonicles off a vote of confidence from Dice and since-quit Ubers player Sweep, which was a lot of fun. That progressed into a great deal of hype for my next season, where honestly I wasn’t feeling it so much but I was hype and did it anyway, getting retained for an exorbitant sum and promptly falling short of everyone’s expectations, teaching me a valuable lesson about how much you should invest in a past time like this. Past that I think it’s all been pretty clear-cut; been helping out Europe during Wcop on account of East being way too stacked, getting involved with most other team tours directly, and telling people not to ladder in between.
Epic story
So the image I have of you is an old good player who went on the down low and recently came back to play at the top level, what made you start playing again for real?
Honestly I’d love to know myself. Feel like I’m well past the point of getting hyped about winning, I basically only sign up for team tours at this point because I can’t maintain interest in a solo tour whatsoever. I suppose I just enjoy the part of this game that allows you to mess around with friends, put together something cool, and in an ideal world put on a good show for whoever happens to catch it live.
Would you mind telling me a bit about your backstory?
I can’t imagine it’s anything too special really, NJ middle class suburbanite. I managed to grow in that special “TV will melt your brain” era of parenting, and incidentally both my first time watching television and owning a video game were Pokémon-based, being the surfing Pikachu episode of the original series and Leaf Green, respectively. Got grounded the very first day with it too, tried to push through Rock Tunnel without Flash on a school day when I was supposed to go to bed, good times. I did fairly well in school but never quite made things click in college, realizing a bit too late I’d probably be most motivated to get a degree in the arts but having the good fiscal sense to realize I don’t want to sink money into a decree in the arts this late. Nowadays I work for UPS plus whatever odd jobs to fill my midday hours, though in the near future I’m hoping to make the transition to driving because being not even 25 with back pains isn’t fun.
Other than mons, what else do you do on your freetime?
In terms of other games, I tend to lean towards RPGs more than most; the Fire Emblem series was something I’ve been following since the GBA era, From Software has been putting out a lot that I’ve liked though I’m a pretty late adopter honestly, Fallout’s not even been that good this decade but I enjoy it nonetheless. Play my fair deal of Magic The Gathering, I think a lot of the deck brewing there has a similar appeal to that of Pokémon and the way a good player with a cool deck can go off is super dope to me. I’ve sunk a lot of time into film and music as well, the art of storytelling on the whole is something I’m pretty fascinated in. Probably listen to rap more than anything else, which is woat where I’m at right now because nobody in central jersey’s listening to rap like that but I’ll give a shot to just about anything. Right now I don’t think I could aptly categorize myself as a film buff, but I’ve been soaking up featurettes and interviews with directors of films I enjoy and beginning to find the words for why I find, say, Funny Games so fascinating while Endgame was such a bore.
rofl I'm playing through Fire Emblem awakening as we speak, favorite Fire Emblem game?
Also favorite rapper? You are not allowed to say Ajna
Ah, nice, I’m just a couple months into Part 2 myself. I’ve enjoyed Three Houses so far, and the writing is a lot better to me than most installments, but for my money the original GBA title and Path of Radiance are the best. Best blend of challenge and enjoyment, but that’s mostly if you’re going to it for a purist strategy game experience which it really isn’t as much with the newer titles. As for rappers I usually default to Ghostface for lifetime (Fishscale was one of the albums that got me into rap in the first place, like 3.5 classic solos albums and some of the best verses off 36 Chambers) and Danny Brown in terms of more current ones, but Billy Woods hasn’t had a real miss yet for me and is up there.
Nice, so col tell me a thing
In the latest snake draft tournament you signed up to play NU/UU, is there a specific reason you opted not to play RU?
Well the primary goal of that was to avoid dealing with Ajna, so I guess I’m already messed up. However, I would say more than anything I just felt I would enjoy it more, play against a different pool of opponents and build different teams. Plus, if you’ve known me long enough you’ll know I don’t consider myself to be a particularly good player, just enough so to get by really, and at a point like this me RUing would see me way too overhyped for my liking. Getting picked up by around 3 for a tier I’ve got a net 3 tour games in is insane, but in the same breath I feel like I’m not crust enough to not sign up because I think tours like these should ideally feature interesting games and I feel like I should be doing my part to give back to the community in some way. That may make no sense, but it felt like my best bet at balancing a continued enjoyment in touring and avoiding this assessment as some kinda wunderkid I never really was haha.
What are your thoughts on the snake RU players?
I think there’s a lot of promise in the pool right now. I was surprised to see so many teams put so much faith full swing into ‘mains’ given the history of the tier in tours, but a lot of the players have developed to the point where that’s viable which is cool. That all said, a ton of slots here look super volatile, be it by way of just not having much in terms of ‘big’ tour experience or just wild variance in performance, so being able to accurately predict how the season goes is sort of a crapshoot to me.
Feel the same, I like that more mains got picked this time around
What do you think about the current player base? Both veterans and newcomers
I like where we’re at right now. There was a time a year or two ago where convincing anyone, vet or otherwise, to use something outside the Top 15 felt like pulling teeth. Fortunately, thanks to the inclusion of vocal newcomers and changes in stance from players like Ajna this no longer feels like the case. I’m generally quite happy with our current playerbase, and the fact that so many are getting looks as evidenced by the recent draft is an indicator that we’re in a good place competitively too.
What about the current meta? How do you feel about it? Would you change something from it?
In terms of bans? Not at all, I find everything to be pretty stable, though stealing some picks from UU could hardly hurt. I guess I could say that the manner in which people have been tackling the metagame has gotten a bit dull, and I stand by the fact that basically the only thing keeping Donphan as good as it is would be everyone’s adamant refusal to adapt to it being a relevant Pokémon. Not that it would suddenly become awful otherwise, point being I would love to people to take this willingness to try new things that I touched on earlier and applying it to 1-upping current meta standards, that’s what makes building so fun imo.
Why and how is it possible that slurpuff is your favorite pokemon?
that’s my aesthetic. In fairness, it was Kangashkan for the longest, given a nostalgic connection being this Pokémon I had to spent too much time in the Safari Zone trying to nab after seeing Giovanni use it and the fact that it’s a shout-out to my Australian roots, but if we’re being real I do like Slurpluff’s design more. It’s so gaudy and adorable, anything that can walk that line where it knows how goofy it is without being ridiculous will earn points with me. Plus it’s one of those Pokémon that’s just, like, almost good, you know? Making a consistent Slurpluff team can feel like the impossible dream at so many times, and that’s always going to interest me.
lmfao I never though I'd see someone say Slurpuff was their fav mon
Would you mind dropping a team that better represents your style and explain your thought process behind it?
You'll have to understand that some of the spicier stuff has to stay hush-hush for the next couple months, but this was a concept I pulled together in considering how I felt it best to adapt Zygarde use in a metagame that has grown far less kind to it in the past year or so. Ultimately my conclusion was to opt for Adamant alongside Stone Edge > Outrage; frankly not enough people seem to like Shaymin right now regardless, and that sequence where you're forced to lock Outrage to revenge-kill Virizion was everybody's least favorite thing to be doing with it in the first place, so I decided to instead focus on its strengths. Adamant Zygarde is very playable in my personal experience, making more of its free turns vs balance and making the ExtremeSpeed clean vs offense far more doable at the expense of missing out on what I'd deem to be very acceptable benchmarks (the nigh-unseen Mismagius, Espeon which now takes ballpark 65-80% from ExtremeSpeed, and Virizion, which for the purposes of this experiment is now best hit by the priority move anyway). Edge + Toxic serves to keep pressure on what are now the most conventional responses to Zygarde, being some combination of Slowbro, Donphan, PDef Mandibuzz, Golisopod, or perhaps a Cresselia, which are all Pokemon that can in turn be exploited nicely. Necrozma was a Pokemon I felt to be highly cohesive with this adjusted Zygarde, both capitalizing on on its ability to bait many of the Pokemon I listed prior to an extent and serving to regulate what I might deem to be the proper 'pace' of a team such as this, which I feel is an oft overlooked aspect of building. I got to mess around with a host of weirdo picks for this to coalesce though, which is part of why I felt it worth showcasing here, including the Venusaur as token Fighting-type check and utility with which to help break down Registeel balance, Fly Z Mantine as an initial Donphan switch and bulky Water-type that doesn't get bullied by Roserade offenses nearly as badly, and Return Poryzon2 more than anything because I think Raikou has the ability to shred teams like this super hard on paper even if that usually fails to happen in practice (but also its useful for 2HKOing Salazzle clean and other misc things). Pretty easy to pilot, lots of fun I feel, just be wary about how you play your status.
You are definitely one of the few people I know who takes tailor made EV spreads to another level, what has been your focus when doing all these intricate EVs?
Ok, so I can realize how from an outside perspective it can look all kinds of crazy, but at its core every decision I make with things like that are rooted in a very basic idea: every Pokemon should do the best possible job at what it's meant to be doing for a specific team. Perhaps the best way to explain it is to go through a very basic exercise, let's say we want a Noivern that above all else is meant to switch into Ninetales to some extent. So for this to work a few basic requirements need to be filled, including a [semi-]safe switch under reasonable conditions and the ability to thereafter respond to it. Obviously stalling it out is out of the question, so we need it to be a bit more active in it's role, basically ruling out Rocky Helmet sets from the jump. That narrows down the 'goal' of the set to switching in, outspeeding and KOing it consistently. From here we establish all the items and moves that can OHKO Ninetales after Stealth Rock: Z / Choice Specs Draco Meteor @ 56 SpA, Z Hurricane @ 108 SpA, and Life Orb @ 200 SpA. On principle I would rule out non-Z Hurricane as an option for the assumed risks of expecting results primarily vs a Sun inducer, so from this point I would narrow down what exactly I can afford of this Noivern; can I make it my Z move user, is the team paced in such a way that I can make my primary Ninetales answer a Choice user and if so, will I be able properly capitalize on what it offers through it's breaking ability and / or use of Switcheroo? After settling on this, I would try to apply the same standards to the process of switching in, and with the obvious conceit of a Choice Specs HP Ice on the switch the worst case scenario here is a +1 Overheat after Stealth Rock. Fortunately, the threshold for surviving this is rather low, just 48 SpD EVs, and to that end the most a Noivern looking exclusively to serve the role of Ninetales switch for bulky offense is ??? SpA (depending on item choice made, as stated) / 48 SpD / 72 Spe, Timid nature. Of course, trying to find what's best for your team becomes more than that, because odds are good you'd want a Pokemon doing more than just that, but in recognizing the minimum threshold for doing what you want most of a Pokemon, you get a better baseline for where you can push the margins and eek every last bit of value out of those 508 EVs. Really the best advice I can give is to just start tinkering, I genuinely don't think what I do is some special talent as much as it is a byproduct of messing around with calcs and having a clear idea of what I want each Pokemon to be doing.
Hella cool, I do think it's amazing how you can twist the given EVs so much, all I normally focus on is speed creep and seeing your spreads makes me wish to just mess up with stuff
What's the origin behind your username?
Well back on Pokémon Online I was getting to a point where I was thinking to ‘break out’ past that smaller server I was thinking about. After mulling it over for a while, I settled on converting an old alt, 49th Parallel. Coincidentally, I happened to actually be reading at the time, so I was left in a unique position where I could have a two-fer, with it standing both Circle Of Latitude and [The] Crying Of Lot 49, the Thomas Pynchon novel. I’d highly recommend it, real interesting read and pretty short.
Is there anything else you'd like to tell the fans?
So Much Fun out on all streaming services
rofl alright, thanks for your time col
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Feel free to ask col49 any questions you want!
If you have any reccomendations I'll be more than happy to read them, just PM me!
Next time on FeliInterviews...
Feel free to ask col49 any questions you want!
If you have any reccomendations I'll be more than happy to read them, just PM me!
Next time on FeliInterviews...
