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Tournament PUPL X - Set & Team Dump Thread
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just wanna do a quick dump of the stuff i've loaded this tour so far:
w1 v beraldo (L):
yo this team is ass and it mostly is scream tails fault but i had a cool idea of final gambit raptor to trade w belli for pawmot. i got gterrained and played a bit mediocre but the team is pretty mediocre too
w2 v axrtix (L):
i really like this team and I think this build is quite good post intel ban, probably even better in current meta, but aiai was targeted to break hound builds and own a lot of HO. i didnt load into hound and instead gligar, but I also forgot to load an intel check.
w3 v lax (W):
i was super convinced bruxish was her this week and it was the gastro / belli / milo / slowbro breaker. click sd and stabs w tera should kill all. i got the mu i wanted and it broke everything for migo kilo.
w4 v django (W):
took 3 weeks lol but i was finally feeling more confident in my builds. scarf melo kinda sucks but it was what i needed for this team. i also hate rocks bird but its really hard to fit rocks + scale conda without some awkwardness. eq croak breaks fat pretty well and dice sanda cleaned up this mu, despite me playing kinda funny.
w5 v ho3nconfirmed (W):
wanted to load some breaker shit that i could dictate my own pacing with. hoopa and tauros pretty much have no long term counterplay with good clicks, milo + muds act as temporary defensive pivots, and pyroar is my secondary speed control for pawmot + decid softcheck. the two breakers deleted everything in sight, not much to be said here.
w6 v tuthur (L):
pawmot looked nice in current meta especially paired with cb decid. sneasel was a nice form of speed control that could force knocks for spikestack, and triple prio was meant to make up for lack of speed control. i misplayed some turns in the endgame specifically against lazzle (which i think this team has a bad mu into overall), but the team is cool. little bit awkward on the revenging side but otherwise cool.
w7 v theia (W):
felt like I was on the right path with sneasel arc electric so i tried an HO build with it. eject pack cc on tauros brought in tox vs fat (tox just broke fat in general for the others like Hoopa). sneasel lures red + wet bull and coal for arc. hoopa was meant to be a setup sweeper with "speed-boosting" that wasnt purely prio reliant. good mu, lugg lured the gastro on lead which set up tox to kill everything after.
i very much enjoyed PU after intel ban. this tier feels very nice to play imo compared to other lower tiers, and I hope I can get more games of this tour at some point. gl to those in playoffs
w1 v beraldo (L):
yo this team is ass and it mostly is scream tails fault but i had a cool idea of final gambit raptor to trade w belli for pawmot. i got gterrained and played a bit mediocre but the team is pretty mediocre too
w2 v axrtix (L):
i really like this team and I think this build is quite good post intel ban, probably even better in current meta, but aiai was targeted to break hound builds and own a lot of HO. i didnt load into hound and instead gligar, but I also forgot to load an intel check.
w3 v lax (W):
i was super convinced bruxish was her this week and it was the gastro / belli / milo / slowbro breaker. click sd and stabs w tera should kill all. i got the mu i wanted and it broke everything for migo kilo.
w4 v django (W):
took 3 weeks lol but i was finally feeling more confident in my builds. scarf melo kinda sucks but it was what i needed for this team. i also hate rocks bird but its really hard to fit rocks + scale conda without some awkwardness. eq croak breaks fat pretty well and dice sanda cleaned up this mu, despite me playing kinda funny.
w5 v ho3nconfirmed (W):
wanted to load some breaker shit that i could dictate my own pacing with. hoopa and tauros pretty much have no long term counterplay with good clicks, milo + muds act as temporary defensive pivots, and pyroar is my secondary speed control for pawmot + decid softcheck. the two breakers deleted everything in sight, not much to be said here.
w6 v tuthur (L):
pawmot looked nice in current meta especially paired with cb decid. sneasel was a nice form of speed control that could force knocks for spikestack, and triple prio was meant to make up for lack of speed control. i misplayed some turns in the endgame specifically against lazzle (which i think this team has a bad mu into overall), but the team is cool. little bit awkward on the revenging side but otherwise cool.
w7 v theia (W):
felt like I was on the right path with sneasel arc electric so i tried an HO build with it. eject pack cc on tauros brought in tox vs fat (tox just broke fat in general for the others like Hoopa). sneasel lures red + wet bull and coal for arc. hoopa was meant to be a setup sweeper with "speed-boosting" that wasnt purely prio reliant. good mu, lugg lured the gastro on lead which set up tox to kill everything after.
i very much enjoyed PU after intel ban. this tier feels very nice to play imo compared to other lower tiers, and I hope I can get more games of this tour at some point. gl to those in playoffs
sv pu was pretty fun to play in this year, so wanted to post my stuff. i tried building a lot of different things though some weeks id just end up editing bases other people had made
pt 1 of me stanning specs meloetta. at the start of this week, i really wanted to try to use articuno galar cause i thought it was broken as shit, and it definitely is a great mon, i just ended up not getting anything i really loved with it. used specs melo instead cause normal is a nice typing i think. kind of as standard of a team as you can get, momentum core with some strong guys. zong is kind of awkward here but toxic orb sounded neat to punish random fat mons like gastro or coal. tera blast skuntank is also random but i didnt feel like i needed taunt and i wanted to nuke glowbro / other skunk if needed
managed to use guno this week, but i also wanted to try to see how to make the best use of raikou, given that it'd seemingly get banned fast. i forgot exactly what made me settle on this set, iirc some people were using sub cm tbolt aura but being walled by golurk sounded really cringe. future sight + pivoting into flamigo is scary as hell for most teams, and flamigo is really hard to punish if you click correctly unless theres a bellibolt or some rh mons on the other side of the field.
this week mightve been the last inteleon week? idr. anyway, my goal here was to try to bait gastro with tera grass kilo and then go to town with inteleon spamming water moves, and if i couldnt manage to do that, then i'd have toxic glowbro to bait it in and force it to recover more often. unfortunately the defensive profile on this team was a little suspect so it was kind of hard to get things going (got owned by specs meloetta).
wanted to switch things up a little, so ended up trying out some hyper offense. i don't think theres a really common build for this style so its hard to say what's "standard", but its essentially just set up spam at its core. kind of annoyed by coal, so you can use close combat over curse or do cc > msun and howl > curse to mitigate that mu. tera dark virizion is basically just to explode houndstone which is obviously a piece of shit for this team otherwise.
pretty similar to week 1, voltturn + specs meloetta to punch holes. this one features dd encore scrafty which is fun to take advantage of some fat teams, but honestly, you can use whatever as a last here. "boring" team i guess but it got the job done
week 6 i used a team that wasnt mine so wont be posting it
last week i wanted to just use something that i could feel comfortable with, so Again i go with specs meloetta. this time with scarf toxt supporting because boomburst is a fun move. palossand is kind of a weird mon as the dark weakness can be a little obnoxious but the spinblocking potential helps a lot. aloslash is featured here again, idk i just like it more than the other defensive steels because of spin but lately ive kinda felt like getting a lot of mileage out of it isnt necessarily HARD but between the typing and getting worn by spikes while not being as strong as copper u can kinda tell it can be awkward to play with sometimes.
this meta is in a pretty good spot rn, very enjoyable tier to play and build in. i think decidueye probably needs to get axed and the defensive cores can end up a little same-y but there's still room for creativity to be had here. thanks to everyone on my team for helping me learn the tier as well as ishtar and fish the last few weeks
pt 1 of me stanning specs meloetta. at the start of this week, i really wanted to try to use articuno galar cause i thought it was broken as shit, and it definitely is a great mon, i just ended up not getting anything i really loved with it. used specs melo instead cause normal is a nice typing i think. kind of as standard of a team as you can get, momentum core with some strong guys. zong is kind of awkward here but toxic orb sounded neat to punish random fat mons like gastro or coal. tera blast skuntank is also random but i didnt feel like i needed taunt and i wanted to nuke glowbro / other skunk if needed
managed to use guno this week, but i also wanted to try to see how to make the best use of raikou, given that it'd seemingly get banned fast. i forgot exactly what made me settle on this set, iirc some people were using sub cm tbolt aura but being walled by golurk sounded really cringe. future sight + pivoting into flamigo is scary as hell for most teams, and flamigo is really hard to punish if you click correctly unless theres a bellibolt or some rh mons on the other side of the field.
this week mightve been the last inteleon week? idr. anyway, my goal here was to try to bait gastro with tera grass kilo and then go to town with inteleon spamming water moves, and if i couldnt manage to do that, then i'd have toxic glowbro to bait it in and force it to recover more often. unfortunately the defensive profile on this team was a little suspect so it was kind of hard to get things going (got owned by specs meloetta).
wanted to switch things up a little, so ended up trying out some hyper offense. i don't think theres a really common build for this style so its hard to say what's "standard", but its essentially just set up spam at its core. kind of annoyed by coal, so you can use close combat over curse or do cc > msun and howl > curse to mitigate that mu. tera dark virizion is basically just to explode houndstone which is obviously a piece of shit for this team otherwise.
pretty similar to week 1, voltturn + specs meloetta to punch holes. this one features dd encore scrafty which is fun to take advantage of some fat teams, but honestly, you can use whatever as a last here. "boring" team i guess but it got the job done
week 6 i used a team that wasnt mine so wont be posting it
last week i wanted to just use something that i could feel comfortable with, so Again i go with specs meloetta. this time with scarf toxt supporting because boomburst is a fun move. palossand is kind of a weird mon as the dark weakness can be a little obnoxious but the spinblocking potential helps a lot. aloslash is featured here again, idk i just like it more than the other defensive steels because of spin but lately ive kinda felt like getting a lot of mileage out of it isnt necessarily HARD but between the typing and getting worn by spikes while not being as strong as copper u can kinda tell it can be awkward to play with sometimes.
this meta is in a pretty good spot rn, very enjoyable tier to play and build in. i think decidueye probably needs to get axed and the defensive cores can end up a little same-y but there's still room for creativity to be had here. thanks to everyone on my team for helping me learn the tier as well as ishtar and fish the last few weeks
Very fun and long team dump! Go lurks! Shoutout specifically to my managers Ninja and Seraphz for drafting me, justdrew for a fun time in sm, Xiri for all the tests and build ideas we bounced off eachother. Lots of new friends and most importantly to me, a much better tour than snake lol! There are many others i could shoutout but it would become longwinded, as this post already will be.
justdrew Bo3 SM teams
https://pokepast.es/f987526d0dd72e54
this team drew brought to week 5 vs suzuya! In that game victreebel rlly popped off. The idea is that Vic and Primeape really enjoy ghosts being removed, so I started with lum absol+primeape/vic and went from there. Type null is a cool pick that is a blanket special attack switchin that offers valuable uturn support for the offensive core. Stunfisk spreads para/chip for my team and in general cripples most physical attackers for the team, though I find it to be the most replaceable mon (normal resist instead can work like regirock). This bulky offense team is meant to win fairly quickly through pivots/pursuit trapping/mixed vic sneak, it's definitely about dictating the momentum of the game early and utilizing that to follow the line that breaks opponent the quickest. Drew won in 5 turns!!
https://pokepast.es/bfd834382cf3dbb0
This might be one of my fave pupl teams I built! This one is for drew for his week 6 BO3 based on z Kang, it looked really good into pdt scout to run this in a normal spam core. Z kang can really disrupt defensive cores and often trades with or kos the normal answer by end of game. Victreebel is a great offensive addition that checks the 1 of 2 fighting answers box, threatens the top answers to kang and dodrio, and is very self sufficient. Peep the silvally fairy set, it's bulky and the bulk came in clutch in Drew's bo3 game. Protect Regi is important to scout specs drampa, and is kinda necessary to help hail matchup and provide a standalone normal answer. Lastly, eel is free momentum and gives you a temporary solution to special attackers. Being another bulky offense, it is not meant to to last forever, you find the proper line early game to break the dodrio answers and try to execute it before your opponent breaks through.
This is really the only two teams I fully built for drew that he used. Not gonna lie in tbe first few weeks I don't think Drew was confident enough in SM and me giving him teams to try sm as the g2 choice at first, ending in less tom team appearances. With that said, justdrew is the goat and i loved watching him become a really competent sm player and building/testing for him. I really hope to build for Bo3 slot in sm next tour, because it was really fun! And the drew+tom combo is S tier for SM Bo3 call me delusional but we popped off at the end of this season!
tom holland SM teams
https://pokepast.es/70185233bbf9a740
I used this week 6 of PUPL vs ManOfMany and lost. With that said, I love this team and still believe in this haunter set lol. The haunter is ev'd to always survive 2 primeape stone edges, and the spdef is for sub to survive hp fire from victreebel. The idea behind the team is an unorthodox spikestack that abuses spikes+subdisable haunter and nonchoice drampa. The idea behind z drampa is that it can afford to go z move with spikes on opponent field, which allows me to bluff specs and have a one time meganuke. The idea behind this haunter is that it acts as very good glue, providing spinblock, forces switches on many pokemon, is a reliable primeape answer, stallbreaks, etc. The rest is a defensive backbone that can win hazard war and primeape as a Defiant cleaner. I lost because it was my first game in teamtour since shake snake, and an ancient power aurorus got the boost turn 2 and I tilted after. I definitely think it deserved a better played game from myself!
https://pokepast.es/fc55eb58fc2301aa
I used this vs PTF and won with some small fortune and good plays, i also won vs royal in sm cup with this. Zangoose looked really good into PTF scout so I wanted to build something with it that wasn't webs/HO. This set is an AoA and is meant to either break early game through the normal answer, clean late game, or both. Z Groundium is a surprise nuke that can often even claim most the health of a regirock which is huge for the rest of the team. The speed is to outspeed drampa and ohko with z move or cc after chip. I highly recommend it in this drampa meta.
Bonus SM Cup teams I am not using for rest of tour
https://pokepast.es/e499123b345c8b67
This one is another spikestack but with z rock primeape instead of scarf. This set rewards aggressive play like successfully predicting a defog and breaking with the boosts. It can bait scarf really well and this often ends in a free ko. Scarf alolachu provides momentum and most importantly outscarfs primeape mu. The rest is a very bread and butter tom spikestack core.
https://pokepast.es/78b017ed16c3feb2
This team I'm pretty sure has a 2-0 record as well and features the icon herself subcoil eel. Absol is valuable pursuit support, pursuiting many eel answers over course of game. The rest is just defensive core+OTR jellicent to mitigate slowness of team. Check out this cool replay
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7pu-785504
https://pokepast.es/a708c762eb4ba93b
This one features only stored power Musharna, a very underrated threat in the meta. If you vs a non dark team, musharna almost always is the line to run with it. Z granbull is actually pretty nice here, part of a drampa protect core to handle specs drampa. It also heals status for musharna and pals, z move gives it one time max potion, and it's attack makes it an actual tank.
https://pokepast.es/00c432be3c2cfc51
This is just a very basic (or is it?) tom spikestack that features z future sight Mr mime with healing wish (very good set btw). It features band primeape, a very underrated breaker that can bluff scarf and deal tons of damage and even pursuit trap. Scarf lanturn is underrated and beats nearly all simisear sets.
justdrew Bo3 SM teams
https://pokepast.es/f987526d0dd72e54
this team drew brought to week 5 vs suzuya! In that game victreebel rlly popped off. The idea is that Vic and Primeape really enjoy ghosts being removed, so I started with lum absol+primeape/vic and went from there. Type null is a cool pick that is a blanket special attack switchin that offers valuable uturn support for the offensive core. Stunfisk spreads para/chip for my team and in general cripples most physical attackers for the team, though I find it to be the most replaceable mon (normal resist instead can work like regirock). This bulky offense team is meant to win fairly quickly through pivots/pursuit trapping/mixed vic sneak, it's definitely about dictating the momentum of the game early and utilizing that to follow the line that breaks opponent the quickest. Drew won in 5 turns!!
https://pokepast.es/bfd834382cf3dbb0
This might be one of my fave pupl teams I built! This one is for drew for his week 6 BO3 based on z Kang, it looked really good into pdt scout to run this in a normal spam core. Z kang can really disrupt defensive cores and often trades with or kos the normal answer by end of game. Victreebel is a great offensive addition that checks the 1 of 2 fighting answers box, threatens the top answers to kang and dodrio, and is very self sufficient. Peep the silvally fairy set, it's bulky and the bulk came in clutch in Drew's bo3 game. Protect Regi is important to scout specs drampa, and is kinda necessary to help hail matchup and provide a standalone normal answer. Lastly, eel is free momentum and gives you a temporary solution to special attackers. Being another bulky offense, it is not meant to to last forever, you find the proper line early game to break the dodrio answers and try to execute it before your opponent breaks through.
This is really the only two teams I fully built for drew that he used. Not gonna lie in tbe first few weeks I don't think Drew was confident enough in SM and me giving him teams to try sm as the g2 choice at first, ending in less tom team appearances. With that said, justdrew is the goat and i loved watching him become a really competent sm player and building/testing for him. I really hope to build for Bo3 slot in sm next tour, because it was really fun! And the drew+tom combo is S tier for SM Bo3 call me delusional but we popped off at the end of this season!
tom holland SM teams
https://pokepast.es/70185233bbf9a740
I used this week 6 of PUPL vs ManOfMany and lost. With that said, I love this team and still believe in this haunter set lol. The haunter is ev'd to always survive 2 primeape stone edges, and the spdef is for sub to survive hp fire from victreebel. The idea behind the team is an unorthodox spikestack that abuses spikes+subdisable haunter and nonchoice drampa. The idea behind z drampa is that it can afford to go z move with spikes on opponent field, which allows me to bluff specs and have a one time meganuke. The idea behind this haunter is that it acts as very good glue, providing spinblock, forces switches on many pokemon, is a reliable primeape answer, stallbreaks, etc. The rest is a defensive backbone that can win hazard war and primeape as a Defiant cleaner. I lost because it was my first game in teamtour since shake snake, and an ancient power aurorus got the boost turn 2 and I tilted after. I definitely think it deserved a better played game from myself!
https://pokepast.es/fc55eb58fc2301aa
I used this vs PTF and won with some small fortune and good plays, i also won vs royal in sm cup with this. Zangoose looked really good into PTF scout so I wanted to build something with it that wasn't webs/HO. This set is an AoA and is meant to either break early game through the normal answer, clean late game, or both. Z Groundium is a surprise nuke that can often even claim most the health of a regirock which is huge for the rest of the team. The speed is to outspeed drampa and ohko with z move or cc after chip. I highly recommend it in this drampa meta.
Bonus SM Cup teams I am not using for rest of tour
https://pokepast.es/e499123b345c8b67
This one is another spikestack but with z rock primeape instead of scarf. This set rewards aggressive play like successfully predicting a defog and breaking with the boosts. It can bait scarf really well and this often ends in a free ko. Scarf alolachu provides momentum and most importantly outscarfs primeape mu. The rest is a very bread and butter tom spikestack core.
https://pokepast.es/78b017ed16c3feb2
This team I'm pretty sure has a 2-0 record as well and features the icon herself subcoil eel. Absol is valuable pursuit support, pursuiting many eel answers over course of game. The rest is just defensive core+OTR jellicent to mitigate slowness of team. Check out this cool replay
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7pu-785504
https://pokepast.es/a708c762eb4ba93b
This one features only stored power Musharna, a very underrated threat in the meta. If you vs a non dark team, musharna almost always is the line to run with it. Z granbull is actually pretty nice here, part of a drampa protect core to handle specs drampa. It also heals status for musharna and pals, z move gives it one time max potion, and it's attack makes it an actual tank.
https://pokepast.es/00c432be3c2cfc51
This is just a very basic (or is it?) tom spikestack that features z future sight Mr mime with healing wish (very good set btw). It features band primeape, a very underrated breaker that can bluff scarf and deal tons of damage and even pursuit trap. Scarf lanturn is underrated and beats nearly all simisear sets.
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Went into this tour expecting to mostly build ADV but my teammate Parpar was super self sufficient there and I really hope he posts some of his teams as he did great for having relatively low experience with the tier, especially compared to some of his opponents. This left me building/playing BW which is fine for me as my second favorite old gen (even thought I didn't win a single game). Most of my teams were pretty trash but I did want to highlight the one I'm the most proud of.
I have never been a stall lover, but lax brought up the idea of using Spikes+Duosion, which made me really want to lean into stall when fleshing out the rest of the team. Stunfisk/Maractus/Duosion was the main core we started with, opting for Signal Beam>Acid Armor to have a better shot at beating Bronzor/Beheeyem and the like as well as not being blanked by Shiftry and Scraggy. Maractus was also a little faster and more offensively based to handle Torterra and Waters. Stunfisk is the catch-all physical check, mainly for Monferno but also setting rocks for the team. From there, every stall team needs Audino for the Wish passing and Heal Bell support. Luxray was added as a phazer to help shuffle things around with Spikes up and also add another check to physical mons while giving us some momentum with Volt Switch (though lax changed it to Tbolt before the game which actually worked out pretty nicely too). Frillish acted as another hard Monferno check (which ended up not being needed but still did some work checking Simisear) and its Taunt helped shut down Bronzor, which actually did come into play. Lax was able to pilot this team perfectly to take a win from arguably one of if not the best BW players.
Overall disappointed in my 0-5 BW run (edit: actually it was 0-4 bc of an activity win but I’m not counting that as a real win) this tour, but I think if I had just brought this team every week I could've definitely pulled out at least one win for myself. Unfortunately, hindsight is 20-20 and I still had a lot of fun playing. This is likely my last tour for a while and I'm super proud of my LOORS for making the playoff race so close even if we couldn't make it ourselves.
I have never been a stall lover, but lax brought up the idea of using Spikes+Duosion, which made me really want to lean into stall when fleshing out the rest of the team. Stunfisk/Maractus/Duosion was the main core we started with, opting for Signal Beam>Acid Armor to have a better shot at beating Bronzor/Beheeyem and the like as well as not being blanked by Shiftry and Scraggy. Maractus was also a little faster and more offensively based to handle Torterra and Waters. Stunfisk is the catch-all physical check, mainly for Monferno but also setting rocks for the team. From there, every stall team needs Audino for the Wish passing and Heal Bell support. Luxray was added as a phazer to help shuffle things around with Spikes up and also add another check to physical mons while giving us some momentum with Volt Switch (though lax changed it to Tbolt before the game which actually worked out pretty nicely too). Frillish acted as another hard Monferno check (which ended up not being needed but still did some work checking Simisear) and its Taunt helped shut down Bronzor, which actually did come into play. Lax was able to pilot this team perfectly to take a win from arguably one of if not the best BW players.
Overall disappointed in my 0-5 BW run (edit: actually it was 0-4 bc of an activity win but I’m not counting that as a real win) this tour, but I think if I had just brought this team every week I could've definitely pulled out at least one win for myself. Unfortunately, hindsight is 20-20 and I still had a lot of fun playing. This is likely my last tour for a while and I'm super proud of my LOORS for making the playoff race so close even if we couldn't make it ourselves.
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Got 5-2 in ADV PU with no real tier experience outside just being consistent in adv metas. Prep mainly consisted of me watching replays, posting a team, and getting approval from SergioRules before the game. LOL Through the tour I got more confident and decided to build as such. Overall had a great time. GO LOORS!
Cringe game. This was winnable but I lacked metagame knowledge against one of better players in the pool led to the L. unfort. Also this team was trash too looking back LOL
Watched more replays and crafted a better standard team. MU was pretty good as well got a more comfortable win. No abra gaming :(
After the convincing W2 win I thought I could get more free in the builder. I used Gloom > Ivy for the stun spore. SubEndeavor Larion also looked cool to use b/c I was gonna enable it with para. Got lucky vs the trapinch which led into weakening the Swalot but I feel like gastly would of still closed it.
Me and Ty shared the same wavelength coming into this game b/c we pretty much had the same team LOL. I just played like ass b/c of the personal stuff leading up to the game that day oh well.
I thought spikes would be good into Lily and jeez I would be correct. Spikes + Furret pretty much gave the win. No shelgon gaming :(
Wanted to try out Porygon on another para clicking squad. It's only just dragonair with a gimmicky ability with no weakness because of fighting stab being non existent. It went crazy along side its partners.
Last week and we really needed to lock in but I wanted use psychic spam so I did :moyai: I see Abra highly as a mon. Smoochum itself also has crazy stabs and should do well with para support. Sadly Arbok went down early dude to Trapinch but para in return really helped to secure the game later on. Got bailed with the psychic crit on skull but it was a roll regardless. Glad I secured the 100% smoochum winrate.
Cringe game. This was winnable but I lacked metagame knowledge against one of better players in the pool led to the L. unfort. Also this team was trash too looking back LOL
Watched more replays and crafted a better standard team. MU was pretty good as well got a more comfortable win. No abra gaming :(
After the convincing W2 win I thought I could get more free in the builder. I used Gloom > Ivy for the stun spore. SubEndeavor Larion also looked cool to use b/c I was gonna enable it with para. Got lucky vs the trapinch which led into weakening the Swalot but I feel like gastly would of still closed it.
Me and Ty shared the same wavelength coming into this game b/c we pretty much had the same team LOL. I just played like ass b/c of the personal stuff leading up to the game that day oh well.
I thought spikes would be good into Lily and jeez I would be correct. Spikes + Furret pretty much gave the win. No shelgon gaming :(
Wanted to try out Porygon on another para clicking squad. It's only just dragonair with a gimmicky ability with no weakness because of fighting stab being non existent. It went crazy along side its partners.
Last week and we really needed to lock in but I wanted use psychic spam so I did :moyai: I see Abra highly as a mon. Smoochum itself also has crazy stabs and should do well with para support. Sadly Arbok went down early dude to Trapinch but para in return really helped to secure the game later on. Got bailed with the psychic crit on skull but it was a roll regardless. Glad I secured the 100% smoochum winrate.
[w1] SCREAM KING:
had this team before the tournament started. The idea was to have Pawmot as a revenge killer/revival tool but also having a team worth reviving. At some point it was Klawf over Coal because regenerator and revival blessing pair very well, but i needed hazard removal. Toucannon is there because i needed something with extra survivability that could comfortably switch on Decidueye. It was surprisingly a good fit and i've got pretty good results. Ultimately lost on team preview anyways.
[w2] edgy:
After being humbled w1 i've decided to go more conservative. Built around Toxtricity and overloading fighting resists. Grimmsnarl fit very well inviting both Toxtricity and Tauros prey. In the end my game plan was completely different as i noted that by removing Bombirdier and teraing Gastro i would've won but overall very solid team.
[w3] not so edgy:
Slight variation of the previous team, i wasn't liking how tough it was to choose the move toxtricity used, so decided to change into something more conventional and to try for the first time band Decidueye. Decidueye/Meloetta/Flamigo u-turn core is amazing as one invite each other's prey.
[w4] world wide sticky web:
Upon joining PU discord server i've read some messages inclunding my name and noticed how some people wondered why nobody prepared against me and how i always use balance. Well, MZ was one of them, so i've defied myself to use something 100% different from my history and it paid off. Idea was Sticky Web + Suicidal Duraludon if needed + Double Ghost core to avoid spin and as we know it's very difficult to properly deal with ghost types rn. Skuntank as a taunter/knocker providing utility and Tauros because nobody loves switching into it, even more knowing it's speed will be dropped. Duraludon happens to be an emergency Staraptor check in some cases.
[w5] glaring weakness:
One of my most successful on tests, reaching 88 GXE which is very rare for PU. The idea is that Glare is broken, so i decided to exploit it with Grimmsnarl to also spread some status and Hex + Boomburst on offense Dudunsparce in order to abuse my odds. In the end Beraldo played perfectly, one of the highlights of the season so no complaints, but the team is very fun to use and probably even better given Inteleon ban.
[w6] live nascar wo-chien reaction:
First team after Inteleon ban. This wasn't the original idea, i've had Sandslash over Tatsugiri and Wauros over Meloetta, but i freaked out when 2 other players used my team before me so decided to tweak it a bit. The idea was to exploit Inteleon ban, suddenly you don't need that much bulk on Wo-Chien, so why not use it on the offensive side? I'm convinced this is the best Wo (even +Spe variants to outspeed Decidueye). Also Salazzle suddenly became more attractive given it's stellar speed tier. Idea is to Spread Toxic/Toxic Spikes, pick opponents off guard with speedy Wo and clean everything up in the end. I strongly believe if it wasn't for Wo burn i would've won. Even with the burn i had a shot as Gligar was tera ghost, but knowing the team leaked i was afraid he knew it and haven't gone for Tera. Anyway, it is what it is.
[w7] goofy missile:
My magnum opus, I can't remember the last time i've enjoyed using a team that much. Fast games and ultra consistent winrate. My favorite part of pokemon is teambuilding, and i really like to make teams that plays for itself and that i don't need to think that much. This one definitely achieves it. Besides Pawmot which is our gateway to a second chance and Scream Tail that is our late game sweeper/speed control, everything else can be disposed as you'll have a second chance. Main focus is: Spread residual damage/status so your wincons can sweep later. I've used suicidal Duraludon for disallowing spin/defog and take advantage of Revival, but found out that Body Press is just better overall given Copperajah is a pain. Also despite my 3 opportunity disastrous throw, you can see how absolutely enjoyable this team was.
Overall enjoyed the tournament and the dynamics, after half of it i realized that the way i build and test was definitely more suitable for individual tournaments so huge learning and i believe next year/next team tournament i'll do much better given my newly acquired knowledge. And finally thanks zS and Baloor for drafting and trusting me. Loved our preps specially in the last few weeks when things started clicking. Also thanks lax for trusting my builds and providing solid ideas. And finally thanks to the goat eternal ocean loved our collabs and your fresh ideas. Hope we play together soon!!!
anyways, enjoy
had this team before the tournament started. The idea was to have Pawmot as a revenge killer/revival tool but also having a team worth reviving. At some point it was Klawf over Coal because regenerator and revival blessing pair very well, but i needed hazard removal. Toucannon is there because i needed something with extra survivability that could comfortably switch on Decidueye. It was surprisingly a good fit and i've got pretty good results. Ultimately lost on team preview anyways.
[w2] edgy:
After being humbled w1 i've decided to go more conservative. Built around Toxtricity and overloading fighting resists. Grimmsnarl fit very well inviting both Toxtricity and Tauros prey. In the end my game plan was completely different as i noted that by removing Bombirdier and teraing Gastro i would've won but overall very solid team.
[w3] not so edgy:
Slight variation of the previous team, i wasn't liking how tough it was to choose the move toxtricity used, so decided to change into something more conventional and to try for the first time band Decidueye. Decidueye/Meloetta/Flamigo u-turn core is amazing as one invite each other's prey.
[w4] world wide sticky web:
Upon joining PU discord server i've read some messages inclunding my name and noticed how some people wondered why nobody prepared against me and how i always use balance. Well, MZ was one of them, so i've defied myself to use something 100% different from my history and it paid off. Idea was Sticky Web + Suicidal Duraludon if needed + Double Ghost core to avoid spin and as we know it's very difficult to properly deal with ghost types rn. Skuntank as a taunter/knocker providing utility and Tauros because nobody loves switching into it, even more knowing it's speed will be dropped. Duraludon happens to be an emergency Staraptor check in some cases.
[w5] glaring weakness:
One of my most successful on tests, reaching 88 GXE which is very rare for PU. The idea is that Glare is broken, so i decided to exploit it with Grimmsnarl to also spread some status and Hex + Boomburst on offense Dudunsparce in order to abuse my odds. In the end Beraldo played perfectly, one of the highlights of the season so no complaints, but the team is very fun to use and probably even better given Inteleon ban.
[w6] live nascar wo-chien reaction:
First team after Inteleon ban. This wasn't the original idea, i've had Sandslash over Tatsugiri and Wauros over Meloetta, but i freaked out when 2 other players used my team before me so decided to tweak it a bit. The idea was to exploit Inteleon ban, suddenly you don't need that much bulk on Wo-Chien, so why not use it on the offensive side? I'm convinced this is the best Wo (even +Spe variants to outspeed Decidueye). Also Salazzle suddenly became more attractive given it's stellar speed tier. Idea is to Spread Toxic/Toxic Spikes, pick opponents off guard with speedy Wo and clean everything up in the end. I strongly believe if it wasn't for Wo burn i would've won. Even with the burn i had a shot as Gligar was tera ghost, but knowing the team leaked i was afraid he knew it and haven't gone for Tera. Anyway, it is what it is.
[w7] goofy missile:
My magnum opus, I can't remember the last time i've enjoyed using a team that much. Fast games and ultra consistent winrate. My favorite part of pokemon is teambuilding, and i really like to make teams that plays for itself and that i don't need to think that much. This one definitely achieves it. Besides Pawmot which is our gateway to a second chance and Scream Tail that is our late game sweeper/speed control, everything else can be disposed as you'll have a second chance. Main focus is: Spread residual damage/status so your wincons can sweep later. I've used suicidal Duraludon for disallowing spin/defog and take advantage of Revival, but found out that Body Press is just better overall given Copperajah is a pain. Also despite my 3 opportunity disastrous throw, you can see how absolutely enjoyable this team was.
Overall enjoyed the tournament and the dynamics, after half of it i realized that the way i build and test was definitely more suitable for individual tournaments so huge learning and i believe next year/next team tournament i'll do much better given my newly acquired knowledge. And finally thanks zS and Baloor for drafting and trusting me. Loved our preps specially in the last few weeks when things started clicking. Also thanks lax for trusting my builds and providing solid ideas. And finally thanks to the goat eternal ocean loved our collabs and your fresh ideas. Hope we play together soon!!!
anyways, enjoy
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So I really wanted to do well in pupl since before sign ups just because it was the lower tier I was jamming with the most. I definitely was not prepared to manage as I only have played SV and bits of SS and BW. Then one day I kinda woke up and was manager despite not signing up to somehow for reasons that nobody can explain but we ball. This experience was really stressful for me because trying to help out in a tour where I am not familiar with the majority of tiers was something I really was not prepared for and it didnt affect me irl a good bit since it was a lot on my plate but I was dedicated to get through it and I tried my best to help people when they needed it. Overall, I think we got pretty close and am proud of it. Obviously, we didnt make playoffs but we were damn close. I think me getting progressively more comfortable managing this tour and our results if you look at our early weeks vs later on are pretty reflective. Im very grateful for everybody we drafted and proud of what everybody was able to do. I also want to thank everybody for their patience as sometimes they werent getting the help they needed due to my lack of knowledge in some of these tiers, I've already apologized for this in my team cord but I understand how frustrating that mightve been to some.
w1
- NeN team, not giving paste unless he makes it public
Ngl, not a lot to talk about here. I hadnt played the tier since PUWC, let alone build it so i asked for a team. I wanted to be good into offense (grimm) and have some strong breakers that may not be prepped for (arbo and bull). Worked out kind of as I expected just because I knew how jango would approach the week from nupl.
w2
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)
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I wanted to use the new drops because I always loved copper and I thought raikou was super broken from playing on ladder. Aimed to go for a more straight forward team with some "techs" since I thought I got just outplayed Ampha. Unfortunately I got absolutely mauled by an opposing raikou. I thought some of the tools I had would be enough to deal with it but apparently not lol. I made a few other versions after the raikou and intel bans just for the sake of having legal teams.
this is the first case youll see me use 52 speed on gastro, this is to outrun bellibolt. i didnt replace all the evs in the team dump but the spread nen and I came out with as ideal with 52 speed gastro is EVs: 216 HP / 228 Def / 12 SpD / 52 Spe with a bold nature,
w3
I terrorized zs saying that if I lost last week I'd bring specs goodra, and well I lost that last week. Specs goodra ended up looking pretty solid into their team scout and Nen really wanted me to load up ambi. This was my first attempt at building something with a bit more gameplan thought into it as the previous week as more slapping drops and top mons on one team. I pulled a really strong matchup and the game was pretty easy to play. Ambi I feel is a bit underrated, yes it doesnt offer much defensively outside of being immune to ghost moves but I feel the sentiment of being a "noobtrap" is a bit overblown. With the current meta having a lot of decidueye and spikes being so easy to place on teams, ambi being a knocker that doesnt fear flame body and can pressure rockers is pretty nice. While offense isnt super good, ambi is also really strong into the playstyle so having that safety is nice.
w4
lots of the teams coming out of the dugza factory were very balance orientated so I wanted to use skunk + band decidueye + spikes. I was having a bit of a hard time settling on a 6th mon and I knew with the structure I had I wouldnt be able to fit speed control + breaker + steel. I took a big gamble on loading sd hera and relying on kilo for speed control, praying I dont play dura. I loaded into scarf dura lol. This game was really weird honestly, a decent bit unlucky, some big missplays from both sides and then I choke the endgame after not realizing a path that I had to win. Was pretty annoying but this happens and its impossible for all your games to be clean. I later made the heracross scarf after seeing a game from mence, it fixes a decent amount of the issues with the team and is def better than the original version I loaded.
w5
in terms of the team with the most thought out gameplan, this is probably the best to come out of me from this season. Larrys scout was super duper standard to this point and I originally was considering tatsu + pauros since they on paper were able to overwhelm the scout. Later in the week we shifted to this silly pawmot set with seed bomb, the goal is to if you face sole water resist gastro seed bomb it then win with bu pauros, alternatively, if theres no gastro, youre able to threaten and pawmot and pauros checks with each other. I made slowbro gknot for extra insurance in the endgame vs gastro. In game wise I uh, dont really know what this game was. Larrys team was cracked the fuck out and confused me, mid game I had a family issue happen and I lost all my focus so I kinda choked bad and tossed. Not much else to say, was really upset after the game.
w6
- Fish team remake, not giving paste unless he provides original
must win week mentally for me and for the team as a whole. life orb zoro looked really strong into the scout and I hadnt used k9 up till this point. I tried building this zoro set all week but just couldnt come up with something I liked. Night before the game I caved in and just rebuilt this fish team from a few replays. game went exactly how I wanted which was nice.
w7
tuthur was only loading balance so that game quite a few options. Nen really wanted me to use heattom and band decidueye this game. I figured a milotic since it looked good vs my scout and would be something tuthur would use. I started looking into yama/hera/croak and built a good bit of teams. I came out with this team after I merged the yama idea and nen idea. this team is fairly standard but worked really well and tuthur loaded pretty much on the lines of what we expected.
----------------------
a few teams I didnt end up using but want to showcase because there is lore I want to talk about. anything that isnt from the actual used team section above might be a little unpolished? just a fyi.
made this when venu dropped and when I was trying to build zoro. I couldnt use it vs ax since venu wasnt legal and decided agaisnt it vs tuthur because I dont wanna run into a super overprepped for venu team considering I loaded raikou and copper as soon as they dropped previously. I got to 1600s with this which is the highest I managed to be during this entire tour and am bit upset I never loaded it lol.
venu evs are kinda zs pilled but 24 spa apparently helps in the venu 1v1!
didnt use traditional offense at all during the tour so this is another team I was considering vs tuthur, idea was just boom minior vs potential milo/k9 shared check and then hopefully clean up with k9. not a lot of thought really and offense in real test games vs on ladder just feels way different so I didnt feel too comfy in going into a game that I really wanted to win for myself with this.
()
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:)
Sun chronicles. I made these just for fun tbh but they felt pretty good? Sun is weird bc I think the optimal route is to just avoid having removal but with how strong spikes are in this tier I just had a big problem with it. Its fun for sure but can be wonky. I know Ampha and Gulch ended up repurposing these for their own game in w7 (i needed them to win in w7 ;()
clawitzer chronicles lol. you know how I mentioned that water spam looked solid into larry? claw is a sub idea nen and I had off that initial analysis lol. these teams are just really funny and I did try really fucking hard to make the claw work just because I wanted to make a shrimp fried rice winpost joke. In a vacuum I think the shrimp is actually good but it doesnt offer anything defensively and is really slow and with what the tier demands in the builder.
I forget what week this was for but I remember danny mentioning tb ground scyther to me and this is one of the outcomes I had. Its really fun when it works but also can be sorta awkward into its bad matchups. I kind put this here so I can briefly say that I think no steel teams can work since I do think the tier has a lot of risk v reward moments in mandatory corner cutting in the builder. the steels in this tier can be hard to fit at times because theyre not the most splashable mons compared to steels in other tiers, so I think there is value in cutting that corner at times to be more diverse.
look another runner up for the tuthur game lol. I think this squad is actually good but wasnt exactly what I was looking for. this is different from what I was usually using so I wanted to show it visually. Florges is def good but in the same vein as I mentioned about the steel types, it can be awkward to fit sometimes. theres actually quite a few "top tier mons" that I feel arent the most flexible things in the builder unless you specifically start out with them as your starting point like I did here (florg + croak).
this is just here because I had fun with it, it use to be sand bc i figured sand might have some value after intel ban but it wasnt the most consistent so i kept the funny lycan i ripped from some ladder guy and just turned hound + sanda into gastro and added toxtricity. just a cool team with some things that are a little different from what I previously showed.
I am really happy with coming out of the regular season 4-3, i do think I couldve done better especially if I wasnt managing and was more self focused but with managing I was able to pick up building better than I probably wouldve otherwise. I think the tier is pretty good, closet thing to suspect worthy to be is probably decidueye as there is a argument that can be made for the reliance on dark/normal types in building and correlation between spikes being so strong being results of decidueye being very good. Other than that, like I mentioned building can be frustrating sometimes because it feels the tier has a lot of "mandatory" slots so I think cutting corners sometimes can have its benefits. I want to thank zS kyuss Danny eternal ocean gulch ishtar for helping build and testing with me the extent that they did.
Heres a pokepast.es of things I deemed worth sharing that I built over the season. Not everything I built is included because then we would have my many glaceon attempts in there. Like I mentioned above anything that wasnt straight up used might not be super polished so feel free to look through and make edits that might make things better.
https://pokepast.es/47f5a764b645a603
w1
- NeN team, not giving paste unless he makes it publicNgl, not a lot to talk about here. I hadnt played the tier since PUWC, let alone build it so i asked for a team. I wanted to be good into offense (grimm) and have some strong breakers that may not be prepped for (arbo and bull). Worked out kind of as I expected just because I knew how jango would approach the week from nupl.
w2
(
)(
)I wanted to use the new drops because I always loved copper and I thought raikou was super broken from playing on ladder. Aimed to go for a more straight forward team with some "techs" since I thought I got just outplayed Ampha. Unfortunately I got absolutely mauled by an opposing raikou. I thought some of the tools I had would be enough to deal with it but apparently not lol. I made a few other versions after the raikou and intel bans just for the sake of having legal teams.
this is the first case youll see me use 52 speed on gastro, this is to outrun bellibolt. i didnt replace all the evs in the team dump but the spread nen and I came out with as ideal with 52 speed gastro is EVs: 216 HP / 228 Def / 12 SpD / 52 Spe with a bold nature,
w3
I terrorized zs saying that if I lost last week I'd bring specs goodra, and well I lost that last week. Specs goodra ended up looking pretty solid into their team scout and Nen really wanted me to load up ambi. This was my first attempt at building something with a bit more gameplan thought into it as the previous week as more slapping drops and top mons on one team. I pulled a really strong matchup and the game was pretty easy to play. Ambi I feel is a bit underrated, yes it doesnt offer much defensively outside of being immune to ghost moves but I feel the sentiment of being a "noobtrap" is a bit overblown. With the current meta having a lot of decidueye and spikes being so easy to place on teams, ambi being a knocker that doesnt fear flame body and can pressure rockers is pretty nice. While offense isnt super good, ambi is also really strong into the playstyle so having that safety is nice.
w4
lots of the teams coming out of the dugza factory were very balance orientated so I wanted to use skunk + band decidueye + spikes. I was having a bit of a hard time settling on a 6th mon and I knew with the structure I had I wouldnt be able to fit speed control + breaker + steel. I took a big gamble on loading sd hera and relying on kilo for speed control, praying I dont play dura. I loaded into scarf dura lol. This game was really weird honestly, a decent bit unlucky, some big missplays from both sides and then I choke the endgame after not realizing a path that I had to win. Was pretty annoying but this happens and its impossible for all your games to be clean. I later made the heracross scarf after seeing a game from mence, it fixes a decent amount of the issues with the team and is def better than the original version I loaded.
w5
in terms of the team with the most thought out gameplan, this is probably the best to come out of me from this season. Larrys scout was super duper standard to this point and I originally was considering tatsu + pauros since they on paper were able to overwhelm the scout. Later in the week we shifted to this silly pawmot set with seed bomb, the goal is to if you face sole water resist gastro seed bomb it then win with bu pauros, alternatively, if theres no gastro, youre able to threaten and pawmot and pauros checks with each other. I made slowbro gknot for extra insurance in the endgame vs gastro. In game wise I uh, dont really know what this game was. Larrys team was cracked the fuck out and confused me, mid game I had a family issue happen and I lost all my focus so I kinda choked bad and tossed. Not much else to say, was really upset after the game.
w6
- Fish team remake, not giving paste unless he provides originalmust win week mentally for me and for the team as a whole. life orb zoro looked really strong into the scout and I hadnt used k9 up till this point. I tried building this zoro set all week but just couldnt come up with something I liked. Night before the game I caved in and just rebuilt this fish team from a few replays. game went exactly how I wanted which was nice.
w7
tuthur was only loading balance so that game quite a few options. Nen really wanted me to use heattom and band decidueye this game. I figured a milotic since it looked good vs my scout and would be something tuthur would use. I started looking into yama/hera/croak and built a good bit of teams. I came out with this team after I merged the yama idea and nen idea. this team is fairly standard but worked really well and tuthur loaded pretty much on the lines of what we expected.
----------------------
a few teams I didnt end up using but want to showcase because there is lore I want to talk about. anything that isnt from the actual used team section above might be a little unpolished? just a fyi.
made this when venu dropped and when I was trying to build zoro. I couldnt use it vs ax since venu wasnt legal and decided agaisnt it vs tuthur because I dont wanna run into a super overprepped for venu team considering I loaded raikou and copper as soon as they dropped previously. I got to 1600s with this which is the highest I managed to be during this entire tour and am bit upset I never loaded it lol.
venu evs are kinda zs pilled but 24 spa apparently helps in the venu 1v1!
didnt use traditional offense at all during the tour so this is another team I was considering vs tuthur, idea was just boom minior vs potential milo/k9 shared check and then hopefully clean up with k9. not a lot of thought really and offense in real test games vs on ladder just feels way different so I didnt feel too comfy in going into a game that I really wanted to win for myself with this.
(
)(
:)Sun chronicles. I made these just for fun tbh but they felt pretty good? Sun is weird bc I think the optimal route is to just avoid having removal but with how strong spikes are in this tier I just had a big problem with it. Its fun for sure but can be wonky. I know Ampha and Gulch ended up repurposing these for their own game in w7 (i needed them to win in w7 ;()
clawitzer chronicles lol. you know how I mentioned that water spam looked solid into larry? claw is a sub idea nen and I had off that initial analysis lol. these teams are just really funny and I did try really fucking hard to make the claw work just because I wanted to make a shrimp fried rice winpost joke. In a vacuum I think the shrimp is actually good but it doesnt offer anything defensively and is really slow and with what the tier demands in the builder.
I forget what week this was for but I remember danny mentioning tb ground scyther to me and this is one of the outcomes I had. Its really fun when it works but also can be sorta awkward into its bad matchups. I kind put this here so I can briefly say that I think no steel teams can work since I do think the tier has a lot of risk v reward moments in mandatory corner cutting in the builder. the steels in this tier can be hard to fit at times because theyre not the most splashable mons compared to steels in other tiers, so I think there is value in cutting that corner at times to be more diverse.
look another runner up for the tuthur game lol. I think this squad is actually good but wasnt exactly what I was looking for. this is different from what I was usually using so I wanted to show it visually. Florges is def good but in the same vein as I mentioned about the steel types, it can be awkward to fit sometimes. theres actually quite a few "top tier mons" that I feel arent the most flexible things in the builder unless you specifically start out with them as your starting point like I did here (florg + croak).
this is just here because I had fun with it, it use to be sand bc i figured sand might have some value after intel ban but it wasnt the most consistent so i kept the funny lycan i ripped from some ladder guy and just turned hound + sanda into gastro and added toxtricity. just a cool team with some things that are a little different from what I previously showed.
I am really happy with coming out of the regular season 4-3, i do think I couldve done better especially if I wasnt managing and was more self focused but with managing I was able to pick up building better than I probably wouldve otherwise. I think the tier is pretty good, closet thing to suspect worthy to be is probably decidueye as there is a argument that can be made for the reliance on dark/normal types in building and correlation between spikes being so strong being results of decidueye being very good. Other than that, like I mentioned building can be frustrating sometimes because it feels the tier has a lot of "mandatory" slots so I think cutting corners sometimes can have its benefits. I want to thank zS kyuss Danny eternal ocean gulch ishtar for helping build and testing with me the extent that they did.
Heres a pokepast.es of things I deemed worth sharing that I built over the season. Not everything I built is included because then we would have my many glaceon attempts in there. Like I mentioned above anything that wasnt straight up used might not be super polished so feel free to look through and make edits that might make things better.
https://pokepast.es/47f5a764b645a603
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My Team Dump
Went into PUPL doubtful but generally, pretty happy with how I ended up doing in this tournament at 5-3. ADV PU is one of my favourite metagames of course so I was very thankful to play it and it felt great to redeem myself in the tier after my performance in ADVPL. I wish we were able to go further in the tournament to finals but sometimes that's just the way it is and either way I enjoyed myself a lot in this tournament. There were also a lot more Pokemon I wanted to use but eventually sidelined for other Pokemon, but we'll see if I decide to use them in future tournaments.
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Teams
Week 1 (Goldmason) - Won
Coming off ADVPL's nightmare run and a fairly shallow scout, I wanted to go back to the basics. I took a little bit of inspiration from what others were using from replays and made this balance team. I was very paranoid of Trapinch when making it since that Pokemon ruined me last time so I chose to use Pokemon that were not that vulnerable to it. Apart from Arbok, everyone else here is not so simple for Trapinch to trap. Other than that, it's your average ADV PU team.
Week 2 (Parpar) - Loss
I really wanted to use Charmeleon since I liked the Pokemon and even though again Parpar's scout was very shallow, the one team they did load was very weak to Charmeleon. Unfortunately, this didn't pan out very well because I didn't really put a dedicated special wall and after Marshtomp died I was at the mercy of Hidden Power Ice Minun so I would probably change Sealeo into something else with the knowledge I have of the tier now.
Week 3 (slowbroth) - Won
I had heard from some very reputable sources that slowbroth doesn't like facing Sealeo so it was the main focus of the team alongside Seviper which I had also heard to be quite good into slowbroth as well. Graveler was to switch things up a bit since I had been using Mawile a lot here but I didn't want something too passive like Duskull who isn't really that good into slowbroth anyway. These choices did pay off a lot and it ended up taking a pretty important week to win for my ADV PU journey.
Week 4 (Monai) - Won
My first Trapinch week. I wanted to pair Seadra with Trapinch to trap any bulky Pokemon that would be able to stop Seadra while also giving Seadra a Peteya berry and Hydro Pump to OHKO Minun at +1, meaning after I trapped a bulky Pokemon I didn't have to worry about anything dealing with Seadra as long as I got it in safely and Substituted down to my berry. At least, that would be the case but I did run into bulky Minun which lives a hit even at +1 meaning I wasn't able to do this in practice, but it all worked out in the end.
Week 5 (A plague doc) - Won
I noticed Pineco picking up quite a bit in the last weeks so my brain went to a pretty immediate combination; Furret. Normal-resists don't really exist when Spikes are up since even on Double Edge they take quite a lot, meaning Furret can just spam it's STAB move. Mawile was also needed more than ever this week considering Furret struggles to get in on most Pokemon so a pivot is needed to make the best use out of it. This week I also switched up my special wall to Swalot since I didn't want to rely on Dragonair too much or eventually I was going to get hit hard by Sealeo.
Week 6 (TyCarter) - Won
The second try of Charmeleon. I wanted to lead Charmeleon since Pineco has a 100% winrate last week and I was expecting it to pop up in the lead. It didn't quite turn out that way but it didn't really matter in the end. Trapinch works well will Charmeleon of course getting rid of Swalot, Lickitung, and Dragonair and i'm running a good bit of paralysis to support it as well. This is also my first Lickitung week and it's here mostly because I felt I wanted more longevity in my wall this time round, which worked well.
Week 7 (Lily) - Loss
Another Pineco week, I really wanted to see other Pokemon when combined with Spikes and Kingler was someone I was quite interested to see. Spikes chips Pokemon like Mawile down quite heavily and Kingler already OHKO's Duskull at +2 with Hidden Power Ghost. Spikes also helps into Tangela making Ice Beam ranges a lot easier for it. I also was half expecting a Wartortle or other spinner so I ran specially defensive Duskull to try and block Rapid Spin to keep Spikes up for Kingler. Sadly, the matchup was just not really working for it but I was still happy with the team made.
Semifinals (slowbroth) - Loss
Admittedly, I was getting really cheeky with Pineco now and in hindsight I probably shouldn't have because I was read like a book. The team was based around the breaking core of Arbok and Seadra who break for each other pretty well with Arbok coming on Swalot basically for free on most sets and both are really big abusers of Spikes. The team is very anti Marshtomp too with me slapping basically everything with Grass coverage as my only check was Seadra. By the time me and broth played my team was out unfortunately and I played quite sloppy.
I think it was a good learning experience though for me as it taught me that Pineco should be used more as a offbeat pick instead of a more consistent pick, otherwise you'll get counterlead and Pineco in the back is a lot harder to get Spikes with in some match ups.
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Shoutouts
I want to say a huge thank you to gulch and Ampha for being an absolutely wonderful managers; I am so glad you gave me a chance in this tour and I hope sometime in the future that we can do a snatchers run back. Additionally, thank you feen for supporting me alongside gulch and everyone else I had the luxury to test with. I couldn't have gotten this far without you all and I look forward to taking care of this perfect tier.
Went into PUPL doubtful but generally, pretty happy with how I ended up doing in this tournament at 5-3. ADV PU is one of my favourite metagames of course so I was very thankful to play it and it felt great to redeem myself in the tier after my performance in ADVPL. I wish we were able to go further in the tournament to finals but sometimes that's just the way it is and either way I enjoyed myself a lot in this tournament. There were also a lot more Pokemon I wanted to use but eventually sidelined for other Pokemon, but we'll see if I decide to use them in future tournaments.
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Teams
Week 1 (Goldmason) - Won
Coming off ADVPL's nightmare run and a fairly shallow scout, I wanted to go back to the basics. I took a little bit of inspiration from what others were using from replays and made this balance team. I was very paranoid of Trapinch when making it since that Pokemon ruined me last time so I chose to use Pokemon that were not that vulnerable to it. Apart from Arbok, everyone else here is not so simple for Trapinch to trap. Other than that, it's your average ADV PU team.
Week 2 (Parpar) - Loss
I really wanted to use Charmeleon since I liked the Pokemon and even though again Parpar's scout was very shallow, the one team they did load was very weak to Charmeleon. Unfortunately, this didn't pan out very well because I didn't really put a dedicated special wall and after Marshtomp died I was at the mercy of Hidden Power Ice Minun so I would probably change Sealeo into something else with the knowledge I have of the tier now.
Week 3 (slowbroth) - Won
I had heard from some very reputable sources that slowbroth doesn't like facing Sealeo so it was the main focus of the team alongside Seviper which I had also heard to be quite good into slowbroth as well. Graveler was to switch things up a bit since I had been using Mawile a lot here but I didn't want something too passive like Duskull who isn't really that good into slowbroth anyway. These choices did pay off a lot and it ended up taking a pretty important week to win for my ADV PU journey.
Week 4 (Monai) - Won
My first Trapinch week. I wanted to pair Seadra with Trapinch to trap any bulky Pokemon that would be able to stop Seadra while also giving Seadra a Peteya berry and Hydro Pump to OHKO Minun at +1, meaning after I trapped a bulky Pokemon I didn't have to worry about anything dealing with Seadra as long as I got it in safely and Substituted down to my berry. At least, that would be the case but I did run into bulky Minun which lives a hit even at +1 meaning I wasn't able to do this in practice, but it all worked out in the end.
Week 5 (A plague doc) - Won
I noticed Pineco picking up quite a bit in the last weeks so my brain went to a pretty immediate combination; Furret. Normal-resists don't really exist when Spikes are up since even on Double Edge they take quite a lot, meaning Furret can just spam it's STAB move. Mawile was also needed more than ever this week considering Furret struggles to get in on most Pokemon so a pivot is needed to make the best use out of it. This week I also switched up my special wall to Swalot since I didn't want to rely on Dragonair too much or eventually I was going to get hit hard by Sealeo.
Week 6 (TyCarter) - Won
The second try of Charmeleon. I wanted to lead Charmeleon since Pineco has a 100% winrate last week and I was expecting it to pop up in the lead. It didn't quite turn out that way but it didn't really matter in the end. Trapinch works well will Charmeleon of course getting rid of Swalot, Lickitung, and Dragonair and i'm running a good bit of paralysis to support it as well. This is also my first Lickitung week and it's here mostly because I felt I wanted more longevity in my wall this time round, which worked well.
Week 7 (Lily) - Loss
Another Pineco week, I really wanted to see other Pokemon when combined with Spikes and Kingler was someone I was quite interested to see. Spikes chips Pokemon like Mawile down quite heavily and Kingler already OHKO's Duskull at +2 with Hidden Power Ghost. Spikes also helps into Tangela making Ice Beam ranges a lot easier for it. I also was half expecting a Wartortle or other spinner so I ran specially defensive Duskull to try and block Rapid Spin to keep Spikes up for Kingler. Sadly, the matchup was just not really working for it but I was still happy with the team made.
Semifinals (slowbroth) - Loss
Admittedly, I was getting really cheeky with Pineco now and in hindsight I probably shouldn't have because I was read like a book. The team was based around the breaking core of Arbok and Seadra who break for each other pretty well with Arbok coming on Swalot basically for free on most sets and both are really big abusers of Spikes. The team is very anti Marshtomp too with me slapping basically everything with Grass coverage as my only check was Seadra. By the time me and broth played my team was out unfortunately and I played quite sloppy.
I think it was a good learning experience though for me as it taught me that Pineco should be used more as a offbeat pick instead of a more consistent pick, otherwise you'll get counterlead and Pineco in the back is a lot harder to get Spikes with in some match ups.
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Shoutouts
I want to say a huge thank you to gulch and Ampha for being an absolutely wonderful managers; I am so glad you gave me a chance in this tour and I hope sometime in the future that we can do a snatchers run back. Additionally, thank you feen for supporting me alongside gulch and everyone else I had the luxury to test with. I couldn't have gotten this far without you all and I look forward to taking care of this perfect tier.
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Had a lot of fun building this tour, especially SV; the tier is in an amazing spot right and easily the best of the four usage based tiers. Probably a bad idea to post all my teams here with SCL being so soon but I didn't post last year either for the same reason so whatevz, we can deal with SCL later! Not really gonna do a lot of explanations but I'll post the teams I used myself and then everything I made for other slots. I didn't really build much the week Raikou dropped so won't see any teams with Raikou in this post.
I was actually gonna bring this vs. Danny in week 3 but the game didn't happen; the original team has Kilo over Helectrode but Danny showed me the team he was gonna use and it had a SG Toxtricity which absolutely mauled this team so I changed to Sounproof Helectrode to improve that MU. TWave as last move is to spread paras which is nice for Crab since it's quite slow but nonetheless hits very hard. Ice-types in general looked nice at the time, however most options didn't particularly look great but AV Crab just clicked. I don't remember why I had ID Glowbro, probably for Scrafty but realistically I probably just wanted to do something funny and ended up with that.
Another week of using a ZU Pokemon; I always wanted to try Mabostiff just because Dark is very spammable type and the ability is really cool. Originally made this for Open but never got used; pretty straightforward, paired with a lot of pivots that can force out Pokemon that Mabostiff can take advantage of (Whimsicott U-turning on Glowbro, Gligar switching in and U-turning vs. Decidueye, etc.). Speed tier is also not thaaaat bad, just a fun idea I wanted to try and it got a great MU and worked out well.
I really really like this team; main reason I wanted to use Orthworm was because it was one of the few decednt Venusaur checks; at least if they weren't running Knock which most weren't. All that speed is probably unnecessary but I got fixated on the idea of sniping a Toxtricity turn 1 and yeah never changed. Water-Pauros in general fell off a bit with Venusaur dropping but I really like 4 Atks Muscle Band; saw it in Open first I think but they used Tera Water but I wanted Tera Ground to snipe a Bellibolt or defensive Glowbro but it came into play in a different way during the game which worked out nicely. Wish Florges so it pairs better with Orthworm and Coal. Big fan of RestTalk Skuntank as well, used it in a team we used in a previous week as well but has a lot of utility like being able to switch into Decidueye, Glowbro, Milotic etc. somewhat consistently.
--
I made a lot of teams for other slots, some got used some didn't but cool teams nonetheless which I've compiled below.
Floss wasn't comfortable building his own team yet for week 1 so I made this for him; he wanted something with Bellibolt + breaker that can come in by volting on AV Glowbro switch-ins and who better for that than Golurk. Rest of the team is pretty self-explanatory but a bunch of Pokemon like Duraludon and Scyther that I hadn't used much of up until then so was a nice change to make something different.
This is a team I made for early rounds of Open I think but it was doing pretty well even during PUPL meta so we ended up going with this, pretty self explanatory; very strong defensive core + Inteleon and Scrafty. This team got used a lot throughout PUPL and Open with some changes at times but yeah this was the original team we used.
Another team I made for the early rounds of PU open; mostly self-explanatory stuff. Toxicroak is very underrated imo, especially the set I used with EQ + Ice Punch pretty much caught everyone off guard coz no one expects two coverage moves not named Sucker. This team also got a win in PU Open finals when SoulWind used it.
Tatsugiri was picking up in usage as an offensive spinner during this time so I wanted to try it as well and ended up with this. The Arcanine set is probably the most unique part about this team; the idea is to completely own (most) Glowbro sets and also take advantage of Bellibolt and Gligar that switch-in to Toxic it. You're also favored in the 1v1 vs. opposing Normal Curse Arcanine (bar crits obviously) but ye pretty fun set to take advantage of Flash Fire well.
Another team that I really liked; this is the first time I used RestTalk Skuntank and it felt very nicely on this. Original team had AV Glowbro over Copper but lack of Flying resist was really annoying, made the Galarticuno MU in particular very annoying and as a result ended up changing it to Copper. Dudun is pretty cool in general too, use it more!!
Another team I made a while ago; general idea was to pair Toxtricity with two good pivots to give it as much entry as possible. Nothing crazy about this team.
This game didn't get played unfortunately but tko posted an NU team from an older meta and asked if that could be recreated in the current PU and this is what I came up with. Haven't tried it out properly but it could probably be decent in the current meta.
Made this team at some point during the tour but it didn't get used. Double Dance Bronzong seemed interesting but the only issue was Milotic spamming Haze so paired it with Toxicroak to take advantage of Milotics that like to come in on Zong. Although in hindsight, the band Decidueye MU is probably awful but it wasn't really a thing at the time so could've been fine then.
Some other teams I made that are not very good for anyone interested anyway: https://pokepast.es/cbede72bc4083a6a
--
All in all it was a fun season managing with Floss again even though we couldn't make it all the way and retaining MZ at the last minute was probably the best decision we made; he was very fun to work with and easily served as the third manager on the team making sure everything was going well at all times and supporting multiple slots week in week out. Shout-outs to everyone else on the team as well for putting in the effort and making it a fun tour.
I was actually gonna bring this vs. Danny in week 3 but the game didn't happen; the original team has Kilo over Helectrode but Danny showed me the team he was gonna use and it had a SG Toxtricity which absolutely mauled this team so I changed to Sounproof Helectrode to improve that MU. TWave as last move is to spread paras which is nice for Crab since it's quite slow but nonetheless hits very hard. Ice-types in general looked nice at the time, however most options didn't particularly look great but AV Crab just clicked. I don't remember why I had ID Glowbro, probably for Scrafty but realistically I probably just wanted to do something funny and ended up with that.
Another week of using a ZU Pokemon; I always wanted to try Mabostiff just because Dark is very spammable type and the ability is really cool. Originally made this for Open but never got used; pretty straightforward, paired with a lot of pivots that can force out Pokemon that Mabostiff can take advantage of (Whimsicott U-turning on Glowbro, Gligar switching in and U-turning vs. Decidueye, etc.). Speed tier is also not thaaaat bad, just a fun idea I wanted to try and it got a great MU and worked out well.
I really really like this team; main reason I wanted to use Orthworm was because it was one of the few decednt Venusaur checks; at least if they weren't running Knock which most weren't. All that speed is probably unnecessary but I got fixated on the idea of sniping a Toxtricity turn 1 and yeah never changed. Water-Pauros in general fell off a bit with Venusaur dropping but I really like 4 Atks Muscle Band; saw it in Open first I think but they used Tera Water but I wanted Tera Ground to snipe a Bellibolt or defensive Glowbro but it came into play in a different way during the game which worked out nicely. Wish Florges so it pairs better with Orthworm and Coal. Big fan of RestTalk Skuntank as well, used it in a team we used in a previous week as well but has a lot of utility like being able to switch into Decidueye, Glowbro, Milotic etc. somewhat consistently.
--
I made a lot of teams for other slots, some got used some didn't but cool teams nonetheless which I've compiled below.
Floss wasn't comfortable building his own team yet for week 1 so I made this for him; he wanted something with Bellibolt + breaker that can come in by volting on AV Glowbro switch-ins and who better for that than Golurk. Rest of the team is pretty self-explanatory but a bunch of Pokemon like Duraludon and Scyther that I hadn't used much of up until then so was a nice change to make something different.
This is a team I made for early rounds of Open I think but it was doing pretty well even during PUPL meta so we ended up going with this, pretty self explanatory; very strong defensive core + Inteleon and Scrafty. This team got used a lot throughout PUPL and Open with some changes at times but yeah this was the original team we used.
Another team I made for the early rounds of PU open; mostly self-explanatory stuff. Toxicroak is very underrated imo, especially the set I used with EQ + Ice Punch pretty much caught everyone off guard coz no one expects two coverage moves not named Sucker. This team also got a win in PU Open finals when SoulWind used it.
Tatsugiri was picking up in usage as an offensive spinner during this time so I wanted to try it as well and ended up with this. The Arcanine set is probably the most unique part about this team; the idea is to completely own (most) Glowbro sets and also take advantage of Bellibolt and Gligar that switch-in to Toxic it. You're also favored in the 1v1 vs. opposing Normal Curse Arcanine (bar crits obviously) but ye pretty fun set to take advantage of Flash Fire well.
Another team that I really liked; this is the first time I used RestTalk Skuntank and it felt very nicely on this. Original team had AV Glowbro over Copper but lack of Flying resist was really annoying, made the Galarticuno MU in particular very annoying and as a result ended up changing it to Copper. Dudun is pretty cool in general too, use it more!!
Another team I made a while ago; general idea was to pair Toxtricity with two good pivots to give it as much entry as possible. Nothing crazy about this team.
This game didn't get played unfortunately but tko posted an NU team from an older meta and asked if that could be recreated in the current PU and this is what I came up with. Haven't tried it out properly but it could probably be decent in the current meta.
Made this team at some point during the tour but it didn't get used. Double Dance Bronzong seemed interesting but the only issue was Milotic spamming Haze so paired it with Toxicroak to take advantage of Milotics that like to come in on Zong. Although in hindsight, the band Decidueye MU is probably awful but it wasn't really a thing at the time so could've been fine then.
Some other teams I made that are not very good for anyone interested anyway: https://pokepast.es/cbede72bc4083a6a
--
All in all it was a fun season managing with Floss again even though we couldn't make it all the way and retaining MZ at the last minute was probably the best decision we made; he was very fun to work with and easily served as the third manager on the team making sure everything was going well at all times and supporting multiple slots week in week out. Shout-outs to everyone else on the team as well for putting in the effort and making it a fun tour.
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Snatcher season is over, so it's time to do a dump of stuff I made! Keeping a few things in the chamber and some of this is also pre-Inteleon ban so take with a grain of salt.
Ampha W1 (W)
I asked Ampha what he wanted to use first week and his answer was Band Grimmsnarl, so that's what we did. Speed was to be able to hit things like Golurk and Scrafty without having to click Sucker. It actually does a LOT of damage and Crunch and Spirit Break are both really annoying with their secondary effects, this set is a huge pain in the ass to switch into between that and Prankster-boosted Trick and I totally recommend it. No spikes so went with Defog Altaria as the removal to add some backbone to this team, which paired well with Milotic and helped to sort of sponge hits from Tauros-W. Delphox was around to fuck with Steels on the odd occasion Duraludon showed up and Grimmsnarl couldn't really position since it destroyed Bronzong anyway, while also giving the team some room to breathe with Encore and blasting stuff like Mudsdale. Shaymin was a big tony creation, and turned out to be really effective - it's just fat enough to eat a hit or two and just strong enough to dish out some really crazy damage while having super clutch coverage, plus Seed Flare's Sp.Def drop chances make it really easy to soften up things that want to just statcheck you and totally steal games. Very happy with this team, it showed up and played out almost perfectly. No notes.
Ampha W2 (W)
Raikou week! Tera Grass for the defensive matchups, Shadow Ball for Decidueye and Golurk, SubCM with Leftovers to stall out big button STABs with Pressure. Black Glasses Skuntank was mostly for revenge killing purposes as the team was a bit weak to Inteleon if Raikou wasn't boosted up a bit, and being able to force progress on a lot and spread damage with Toxic meant it would afford a lot of setup opportunities. STABless Coalossal to shore up the Florges matchup and still be workable into Steels and other Coalossal, Band Wetbull to pound shit, Decidueye to steal games. Acid Spray Goodra was mostly in the case of Florges trying to switch in and to stop other CM Raikou from running away with the game by neutering their defensive profile, shame that didn't get to come out more.
Ampha W3 (W)
Hisuian Avalugg is awesome :) Kinda just wanted to abuse the brokens here, Decidueye is fucked up, Scrafty is fucked up, Inteleon was fucked up, and Hisuian Avalugg is really good at immediately threatening and removing the checks to those while keeping up momentum and winning the hazard game. Rotom-Heat is also pretty cool, I really like having a Fire and an Electric that (usually) beats Gastrodon. Game was a little bit rocky, Scrafty kinda got thrown away for no reason whatsoever and we had to rely on Decidueye to clutch up, but a win is a win! Please use the Lugg, it's such a good mon.
Ampha W4 (L)
Not revealing the paste for this one since the Poliwrath is a zS spread and he hasn't made it public yet. It's uh... it's a spread though! We did not double check that it would outspeed Gligar and that lost us the game, but this was an example of really shoddy cooking from me too. Double Electric for no good reason, double Choice user for no good reason (Scarf Florges when I already had speed control??? or I could have just gotten rid of Kilowattrel???), leaning on Decidueye way too hard which ended up getting Ampha CT'd, Stealth Rock Copperajah... this was a fucking disaster lmao. In hindsight this was a huge failure from me as a support and a manager, I should NOT have allowed this shit through without double checking it a lot more.
feen W6 (W)
This was an old ass team, I made it back in Inteleon meta and there was a TOTW post about it. I think I even submitted this to samples? TL:DR, very old, very public. Set up the rocks and beat ass. Scarf Staraptor is a mon I was originally super high on and have kind of evened out on as time has gone by, even with Bellibolt and Coalossal becoming less and less common. I just think the meta has overall been a lot less kind to it due to Normal checks being way more common for things like Meloetta and Toxtricity, Double-Edge is nowhere near as free of a click as it used to be and that makes the guessing games on your end much harder. Virizion is an awesome mon though, Tera Blast Ghost is really cool to muscle through a lot of things and it gives you a weirdly playable Arcanine matchup. Super cool if you don't mind having to spend the Tera on it (which this team can't really do, but alas).
Fragments W7 (L)
Man, I'm so sad this team ended up losing, I really do believe in it a lot and think it's very good. Not Fragments' fault, just had a couple rocky turns and some shit luck. Tera Blast Ghost is such a good move in this tier, the offensive profile is somehow even better than normal for Ghost moves and that applies double to a lot of the users since it lets them truck through most of their defensive checks. This was originally made for feen in an earlier week to exploit a large count of Scream Tail in the scout but he wasn't feeling it so we stored it in the chamber and I spent WEEKS trying to convince everyone playing SV on the team to use it. Finally got to do it at least! The main concept is just that you have a solid backbone, ways to deter HO, and the ability to continuously force progress all at once, while most teams can't stand up to hazards + constant harassment from Whimsicott, Bombirdier, and Ambipom while also staying healthy enough to stand up to Toxtricity. May submit this to samples to be honest.
Ampha W1 (W)
I asked Ampha what he wanted to use first week and his answer was Band Grimmsnarl, so that's what we did. Speed was to be able to hit things like Golurk and Scrafty without having to click Sucker. It actually does a LOT of damage and Crunch and Spirit Break are both really annoying with their secondary effects, this set is a huge pain in the ass to switch into between that and Prankster-boosted Trick and I totally recommend it. No spikes so went with Defog Altaria as the removal to add some backbone to this team, which paired well with Milotic and helped to sort of sponge hits from Tauros-W. Delphox was around to fuck with Steels on the odd occasion Duraludon showed up and Grimmsnarl couldn't really position since it destroyed Bronzong anyway, while also giving the team some room to breathe with Encore and blasting stuff like Mudsdale. Shaymin was a big tony creation, and turned out to be really effective - it's just fat enough to eat a hit or two and just strong enough to dish out some really crazy damage while having super clutch coverage, plus Seed Flare's Sp.Def drop chances make it really easy to soften up things that want to just statcheck you and totally steal games. Very happy with this team, it showed up and played out almost perfectly. No notes.
Ampha W2 (W)
Raikou week! Tera Grass for the defensive matchups, Shadow Ball for Decidueye and Golurk, SubCM with Leftovers to stall out big button STABs with Pressure. Black Glasses Skuntank was mostly for revenge killing purposes as the team was a bit weak to Inteleon if Raikou wasn't boosted up a bit, and being able to force progress on a lot and spread damage with Toxic meant it would afford a lot of setup opportunities. STABless Coalossal to shore up the Florges matchup and still be workable into Steels and other Coalossal, Band Wetbull to pound shit, Decidueye to steal games. Acid Spray Goodra was mostly in the case of Florges trying to switch in and to stop other CM Raikou from running away with the game by neutering their defensive profile, shame that didn't get to come out more.
Ampha W3 (W)
Hisuian Avalugg is awesome :) Kinda just wanted to abuse the brokens here, Decidueye is fucked up, Scrafty is fucked up, Inteleon was fucked up, and Hisuian Avalugg is really good at immediately threatening and removing the checks to those while keeping up momentum and winning the hazard game. Rotom-Heat is also pretty cool, I really like having a Fire and an Electric that (usually) beats Gastrodon. Game was a little bit rocky, Scrafty kinda got thrown away for no reason whatsoever and we had to rely on Decidueye to clutch up, but a win is a win! Please use the Lugg, it's such a good mon.
Ampha W4 (L)
Not revealing the paste for this one since the Poliwrath is a zS spread and he hasn't made it public yet. It's uh... it's a spread though! We did not double check that it would outspeed Gligar and that lost us the game, but this was an example of really shoddy cooking from me too. Double Electric for no good reason, double Choice user for no good reason (Scarf Florges when I already had speed control??? or I could have just gotten rid of Kilowattrel???), leaning on Decidueye way too hard which ended up getting Ampha CT'd, Stealth Rock Copperajah... this was a fucking disaster lmao. In hindsight this was a huge failure from me as a support and a manager, I should NOT have allowed this shit through without double checking it a lot more.
feen W6 (W)
This was an old ass team, I made it back in Inteleon meta and there was a TOTW post about it. I think I even submitted this to samples? TL:DR, very old, very public. Set up the rocks and beat ass. Scarf Staraptor is a mon I was originally super high on and have kind of evened out on as time has gone by, even with Bellibolt and Coalossal becoming less and less common. I just think the meta has overall been a lot less kind to it due to Normal checks being way more common for things like Meloetta and Toxtricity, Double-Edge is nowhere near as free of a click as it used to be and that makes the guessing games on your end much harder. Virizion is an awesome mon though, Tera Blast Ghost is really cool to muscle through a lot of things and it gives you a weirdly playable Arcanine matchup. Super cool if you don't mind having to spend the Tera on it (which this team can't really do, but alas).
Fragments W7 (L)
Man, I'm so sad this team ended up losing, I really do believe in it a lot and think it's very good. Not Fragments' fault, just had a couple rocky turns and some shit luck. Tera Blast Ghost is such a good move in this tier, the offensive profile is somehow even better than normal for Ghost moves and that applies double to a lot of the users since it lets them truck through most of their defensive checks. This was originally made for feen in an earlier week to exploit a large count of Scream Tail in the scout but he wasn't feeling it so we stored it in the chamber and I spent WEEKS trying to convince everyone playing SV on the team to use it. Finally got to do it at least! The main concept is just that you have a solid backbone, ways to deter HO, and the ability to continuously force progress all at once, while most teams can't stand up to hazards + constant harassment from Whimsicott, Bombirdier, and Ambipom while also staying healthy enough to stand up to Toxtricity. May submit this to samples to be honest.
Here we go (my English is not very good, so I hope you will forgive me if I have any spelling mistakes.)
The truth is that I signed up for the tournament without any expectations, I just wanted to play new metagames that I hadn't played before. I thank Floss and DugZa for signing me up and giving me the opportunity to learn such a fun and interesting metagame as BW PU.
My experience in low tiers of bw comes from the 2 years I've been playing bw ru. When I opened the builder to start building I quickly realized one thing, if it is already difficult to remove hazards in bw ru due to the few spinners for the large amount of pokemon with hazards, in bw pu this is even more exaggerated.
In bw pu, besides having less spinners, there are barely 1 or 2 viable spinblockers, so you tend to play with hazards on the field. As a counterpoint to this, there are hardly any viable spikers either, which makes the hazard stack a bit more difficult. With this in mind I started to build.
WEEK 1 vs Stories (W)
SUB CUNO STALL (pokepast.es)
My first official game of the tier and I wanted to go with something I felt comfortable with, and what better way than with a stall. So when I was worried about the hazards at first, I decided to go with a double magic guard composition. Plus spin support and toxic spikes to help me in a slow battle. Finally, Articuno seemed like a great mon in the tier with its huge bulk, decent speed and that double stab that hits almost every meta.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-776826
WEEK 2 and WEEK 5 vs Hacker (W) and EviGaro (W)
ROAR CUNO HAZARD STACK (pokepast.es)
As I gained confidence after week one I decided to go for one of my favourite structures in this type of tiers, hazard stack. Simple idea, place the hazards, keep them for the whole battle and take advantage of their wear and tear by orienting the team towards them.
As I said, spikers are not good in this tier, but I decided to give Trubbish a chance, with Drilbur playing the double role of rocker + spinner. A spin blocker as a frillish to close the core and exploit it, dragonair with dragon tail, articuno with roar and a duosion as a set up sweeper to take advantage of the damage generated in the late game.
I then repeated the team as we had already won the week.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-778136
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-783014
WEEK 3 vs Feaniix (L)
HUNTAIL HO (pokepast.es)
This week, worried about a possible counterteam due to my previous weeks trend of slow and passive structures, we decided to go with a HO. I share the paste, there is little to explain here.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-779549
WEEK 4 vs SergioRules (W)
COIL DTAIL ARBOK HAZARD STACK (pokepast.es)
Having lost the previous week in this way, I refocused on building a hazard stack with a different structure. Then I decided to give the opportunity to another spiker like Shelmet, another roar + heal bell user like Leafeon, and a set up sweeper covering the phazer function in Arbok with a rare set with coil and dragon tail. The team worked great.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-781658
WEEK 6 and WEEK 7 vs Tack (L) and LpZ (L)
SCARF TRICK VOLBEAT STALL (pokepast.es)
By these weeks our team was practically qualified and as I was more relaxed I decided to build a stall around an idea that I thought could work, scarf trick volbeat. In addition to locking up the possible set up sweepers with encore, I also locked up one more pokemon with the trick.
I was 4-1 at this point and wanted to finish with a good record, but the team wasn't quite solid, I lost both battles, Tack and LpZ prepared well against my playstyle and beat me well.
Still, I think that by changing some details of the team the initial idea can work.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-783539
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-784829
SEMIS vs Triple Axel Blaze (W)
SEMIS SLOW TURN EEL + ORB URSA (pokepast.es)
For the semifinals I had to go with something different, since the opponents would probably be prepared against my passive playstyle (like the previous 2 weeks). I came up with the idea of building around a pokemon with a slow u-turn and a wallbreaker, and the combination turned out to be eviolite Eelektrik + Toxic Orb Ursaring. I finished the team with a scarf Swanna as revenge killer, Seaking as set up sweeper and Zebstrika check, Solrock as rocker and Maructus as spiker was the first idea.
And at this point of the team building I have to thank Floss and skrimps , who helped me to finish the team to make it solid. We changed Eel's moveset and spread, to guarantee the ohko to huntail after the rocks, as well as making him slower than stun for the slow u-turn, and the moveset ended up being a rest talk tbolt u-turn, turning out to be a really good pivot.
We also changed maractus for monferno as a second pivot, the spikes were not so important in the test games.
The team looked great and if it wasn't for how bad I played the end game, I would have won well (sorry to TAB for that final crit).
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-785725
---
Finally, I would like to thank again Floss and DugZa for giving me this opportunity, especially Floss for always being willing to help both in testing and teambuilding. I would also like to thank the rest of the teammates for the good atmosphere that has been maintained, MZ for being the third captain and Skrimps, Tenebricite and Avendesora for their help in the teambuilding and testing process. Thank you all and best wishes for future tournaments.
The truth is that I signed up for the tournament without any expectations, I just wanted to play new metagames that I hadn't played before. I thank Floss and DugZa for signing me up and giving me the opportunity to learn such a fun and interesting metagame as BW PU.
My experience in low tiers of bw comes from the 2 years I've been playing bw ru. When I opened the builder to start building I quickly realized one thing, if it is already difficult to remove hazards in bw ru due to the few spinners for the large amount of pokemon with hazards, in bw pu this is even more exaggerated.
In bw pu, besides having less spinners, there are barely 1 or 2 viable spinblockers, so you tend to play with hazards on the field. As a counterpoint to this, there are hardly any viable spikers either, which makes the hazard stack a bit more difficult. With this in mind I started to build.
WEEK 1 vs Stories (W)
SUB CUNO STALL (pokepast.es)
My first official game of the tier and I wanted to go with something I felt comfortable with, and what better way than with a stall. So when I was worried about the hazards at first, I decided to go with a double magic guard composition. Plus spin support and toxic spikes to help me in a slow battle. Finally, Articuno seemed like a great mon in the tier with its huge bulk, decent speed and that double stab that hits almost every meta.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-776826
WEEK 2 and WEEK 5 vs Hacker (W) and EviGaro (W)
ROAR CUNO HAZARD STACK (pokepast.es)
As I gained confidence after week one I decided to go for one of my favourite structures in this type of tiers, hazard stack. Simple idea, place the hazards, keep them for the whole battle and take advantage of their wear and tear by orienting the team towards them.
As I said, spikers are not good in this tier, but I decided to give Trubbish a chance, with Drilbur playing the double role of rocker + spinner. A spin blocker as a frillish to close the core and exploit it, dragonair with dragon tail, articuno with roar and a duosion as a set up sweeper to take advantage of the damage generated in the late game.
I then repeated the team as we had already won the week.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-778136
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-783014
WEEK 3 vs Feaniix (L)
HUNTAIL HO (pokepast.es)
This week, worried about a possible counterteam due to my previous weeks trend of slow and passive structures, we decided to go with a HO. I share the paste, there is little to explain here.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-779549
WEEK 4 vs SergioRules (W)
COIL DTAIL ARBOK HAZARD STACK (pokepast.es)
Having lost the previous week in this way, I refocused on building a hazard stack with a different structure. Then I decided to give the opportunity to another spiker like Shelmet, another roar + heal bell user like Leafeon, and a set up sweeper covering the phazer function in Arbok with a rare set with coil and dragon tail. The team worked great.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-781658
WEEK 6 and WEEK 7 vs Tack (L) and LpZ (L)
SCARF TRICK VOLBEAT STALL (pokepast.es)
By these weeks our team was practically qualified and as I was more relaxed I decided to build a stall around an idea that I thought could work, scarf trick volbeat. In addition to locking up the possible set up sweepers with encore, I also locked up one more pokemon with the trick.
I was 4-1 at this point and wanted to finish with a good record, but the team wasn't quite solid, I lost both battles, Tack and LpZ prepared well against my playstyle and beat me well.
Still, I think that by changing some details of the team the initial idea can work.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-783539
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-784829
SEMIS vs Triple Axel Blaze (W)
SEMIS SLOW TURN EEL + ORB URSA (pokepast.es)
For the semifinals I had to go with something different, since the opponents would probably be prepared against my passive playstyle (like the previous 2 weeks). I came up with the idea of building around a pokemon with a slow u-turn and a wallbreaker, and the combination turned out to be eviolite Eelektrik + Toxic Orb Ursaring. I finished the team with a scarf Swanna as revenge killer, Seaking as set up sweeper and Zebstrika check, Solrock as rocker and Maructus as spiker was the first idea.
And at this point of the team building I have to thank Floss and skrimps , who helped me to finish the team to make it solid. We changed Eel's moveset and spread, to guarantee the ohko to huntail after the rocks, as well as making him slower than stun for the slow u-turn, and the moveset ended up being a rest talk tbolt u-turn, turning out to be a really good pivot.
We also changed maractus for monferno as a second pivot, the spikes were not so important in the test games.
The team looked great and if it wasn't for how bad I played the end game, I would have won well (sorry to TAB for that final crit).
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5pu-785725
---
Finally, I would like to thank again Floss and DugZa for giving me this opportunity, especially Floss for always being willing to help both in testing and teambuilding. I would also like to thank the rest of the teammates for the good atmosphere that has been maintained, MZ for being the third captain and Skrimps, Tenebricite and Avendesora for their help in the teambuilding and testing process. Thank you all and best wishes for future tournaments.
Don't wanna link Pokepastes cuz I'm lazy but this meta isn't particularly hard to rip teams from so n_n. Anyway, this tour really tested my ability as a builder and I have been notorious for only being able to build Hyper Offense cheese and nothing else. Being able to build teams that put up a great record felt really good. Typed this on a whim so ignore any typos or gibberish pls t_t
Pre-Tour
Just as a preface for the rest of the post, before the tour started, I wanted to start testing and building and just seeing what was up with the tier since I didn't have any SV experience. This team I made was literally just the same 6 Danny made around the same time that became pretty popular. I ended up being so proud just to find out I made the most standard team ever LMAO
Week 2
(W)
I also built this HO team pre-tour (shocker) but I felt like people didn't really capitalize on HO. I think it just absolutely crushes the same-y 6 balances everyone is using and can be really good if built correctly. The Salazzle tera ended up working in the game this was used (mncmt vs DugZa) so that made me pop off when I saw it happen. Sash Lazzle is huge on HO if you can keep off since you're basically guaranteed free progress and like...if boots Lazzle is getting one shot by everything anyway so like if you lose Sash its whatever imo.
(W)
This was also the dreaded Raikou week. I ended up at least wanting to use it (duh it was broken) and wanted to use Raikou / Scrafty as breakers to either break for the other or allow Decidueye to get a Scarf sweep in the endgame, it also acted as a soft check to pre-tera Raikou.
Week 3
(L)
Golurk was something I really wanted to use and I ended up giving this to Larry. On paper Golurk always looks really stupid but in practice it's kind of whatever but I do really like this team. We ended up having to sub out Larry and I myself / most people on my team agree it was a won game but some misplays happened and it ended up in a loss but I think it was pretty hard to play around this team at the time, though Altaria is unfortunately ass.
Week 4
(W)
This is another Inteleon standard team kinda, I wanted to use Tera Grass Intel just for surprise factor. Sniper ended up coming in clutch too during the game which was funny but I'm sure Beraldo's opponent was not happy LOL. Not much to say about the team.
(W)
This was around the time people started to look into Hoopa I think, and I always thought NP looked really broken since nothing really resists Psychic + Ghost STAB combo with Fairy coverage unlocked via tera. Speed tier obviously brings it down but its still really good. This team also doesn't have a ground resist LMFAO but yeah you can fix that however you want if you use this.
Week 6
(W)
Larry's opponent (Django iirc) used next to no Dragon resists besides Aloslash which is easy to play against so Drip suggested Specs Goodra. I opted for Firebull just to also help vs those annoying Steels incase he brought something that wasn't Alolaslash but yeah. Made it Timid to make sure you always outspeed Decid which could've mattered in his game too though Django's Decid was probably Ada.
(W)
I still felt atp that people were not experimenting with HO and we were the only team to use it consistently and also win consistently with it. I thought we were the first team to bring webs this tour but then I saw kyuss also brought webs though I didn't see this until a few days ago. Hoopa spinblocks Tatsu relatively okay, the rest is just setup spam. Mence won with it in this week and also won with it in Slam which was nice to see!
Week 7
(L)
Another week where Larry was lazy so Morge subbed in. I really liked Migo spikestack into Ampha but this is when Venu was introduced and we got sun'd. We kinda shoulve won the game IMO but a hasty U-turn over Brave Bird sealed the game for us. I only like Migo on Spikestack, wouldn't use it on any other structure. Never liked the mon in general which might be a weird take but regardless was a cool team!
Semifinals
(W)
Looking at scouter I really really liked some weird Skunk or Toxi into MZ. I forgot why exactly but the premise of luring Coal with Tera Ground Skunk was great for some future sight bullshit. It ended up working and admittedly we got a bit lucky in this game but this is probably one of my favorite teams I made. Beraldo also didn't end up using this either...I just didn't know what to build for Drip so I ended up telling him to use this.
Finals
(L)
Larry basically built this team. He told me what he wanted to use and I just rounded out the defensive core so I won't comment too much on it since it wasn't an original idea. Though the loss is definitely not indicative of an issue with the team since he played the game well.
(W)
I realized Tnunes used very flimsy or zero Normal resists, so I went with Toxi here. Mence kept saying it looked random but it nailed the MU we wanted so that teached him to never doubt me again :joyjoy:
Unused stuff
Stuff we didn't bring just because I felt it wasn't fleshed out enough or Gum ended up building a team for the slot instead or Mence sent something etc. So I won't really comment on them
If TLs/forum mods want to use any of these as a samples I would be honored and happy enough to send the actual pokepastes (from the actual tested teams, not the unused obvi).
I really like this meta, it's shaping up to be one of my favorite tiers of all time to be honest. I am sad that there isn't an SV tour for a while since I love building it (there's swiss but I mean in a team tour context). Would love to get a chance in SCL just to be able to have more fun with it or support someone I know if they get picked up cuz god knows I won't LMAO. Thanks for reading
.
edit: someone told me we had the best sv record in the tour, idk if thats true but if we did then go team! even more happy about that:)
Pre-Tour
Just as a preface for the rest of the post, before the tour started, I wanted to start testing and building and just seeing what was up with the tier since I didn't have any SV experience. This team I made was literally just the same 6 Danny made around the same time that became pretty popular. I ended up being so proud just to find out I made the most standard team ever LMAO
Week 2
(W)I also built this HO team pre-tour (shocker) but I felt like people didn't really capitalize on HO. I think it just absolutely crushes the same-y 6 balances everyone is using and can be really good if built correctly. The Salazzle tera ended up working in the game this was used (mncmt vs DugZa) so that made me pop off when I saw it happen. Sash Lazzle is huge on HO if you can keep off since you're basically guaranteed free progress and like...if boots Lazzle is getting one shot by everything anyway so like if you lose Sash its whatever imo.
(W)This was also the dreaded Raikou week. I ended up at least wanting to use it (duh it was broken) and wanted to use Raikou / Scrafty as breakers to either break for the other or allow Decidueye to get a Scarf sweep in the endgame, it also acted as a soft check to pre-tera Raikou.
Week 3
(L)Golurk was something I really wanted to use and I ended up giving this to Larry. On paper Golurk always looks really stupid but in practice it's kind of whatever but I do really like this team. We ended up having to sub out Larry and I myself / most people on my team agree it was a won game but some misplays happened and it ended up in a loss but I think it was pretty hard to play around this team at the time, though Altaria is unfortunately ass.
Week 4
(W)This is another Inteleon standard team kinda, I wanted to use Tera Grass Intel just for surprise factor. Sniper ended up coming in clutch too during the game which was funny but I'm sure Beraldo's opponent was not happy LOL. Not much to say about the team.
(W)This was around the time people started to look into Hoopa I think, and I always thought NP looked really broken since nothing really resists Psychic + Ghost STAB combo with Fairy coverage unlocked via tera. Speed tier obviously brings it down but its still really good. This team also doesn't have a ground resist LMFAO but yeah you can fix that however you want if you use this.
Week 6
(W)Larry's opponent (Django iirc) used next to no Dragon resists besides Aloslash which is easy to play against so Drip suggested Specs Goodra. I opted for Firebull just to also help vs those annoying Steels incase he brought something that wasn't Alolaslash but yeah. Made it Timid to make sure you always outspeed Decid which could've mattered in his game too though Django's Decid was probably Ada.
(W)I still felt atp that people were not experimenting with HO and we were the only team to use it consistently and also win consistently with it. I thought we were the first team to bring webs this tour but then I saw kyuss also brought webs though I didn't see this until a few days ago. Hoopa spinblocks Tatsu relatively okay, the rest is just setup spam. Mence won with it in this week and also won with it in Slam which was nice to see!
Week 7
(L)Another week where Larry was lazy so Morge subbed in. I really liked Migo spikestack into Ampha but this is when Venu was introduced and we got sun'd. We kinda shoulve won the game IMO but a hasty U-turn over Brave Bird sealed the game for us. I only like Migo on Spikestack, wouldn't use it on any other structure. Never liked the mon in general which might be a weird take but regardless was a cool team!
Semifinals
(W)Looking at scouter I really really liked some weird Skunk or Toxi into MZ. I forgot why exactly but the premise of luring Coal with Tera Ground Skunk was great for some future sight bullshit. It ended up working and admittedly we got a bit lucky in this game but this is probably one of my favorite teams I made. Beraldo also didn't end up using this either...I just didn't know what to build for Drip so I ended up telling him to use this.
Finals
(L)Larry basically built this team. He told me what he wanted to use and I just rounded out the defensive core so I won't comment too much on it since it wasn't an original idea. Though the loss is definitely not indicative of an issue with the team since he played the game well.
(W)I realized Tnunes used very flimsy or zero Normal resists, so I went with Toxi here. Mence kept saying it looked random but it nailed the MU we wanted so that teached him to never doubt me again :joyjoy:
Unused stuff
Stuff we didn't bring just because I felt it wasn't fleshed out enough or Gum ended up building a team for the slot instead or Mence sent something etc. So I won't really comment on them
If TLs/forum mods want to use any of these as a samples I would be honored and happy enough to send the actual pokepastes (from the actual tested teams, not the unused obvi).
I really like this meta, it's shaping up to be one of my favorite tiers of all time to be honest. I am sad that there isn't an SV tour for a while since I love building it (there's swiss but I mean in a team tour context). Would love to get a chance in SCL just to be able to have more fun with it or support someone I know if they get picked up cuz god knows I won't LMAO. Thanks for reading
.edit: someone told me we had the best sv record in the tour, idk if thats true but if we did then go team! even more happy about that:)
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Though it was a little frustrating at times trying to make certain Pokemon/ideas work, I had a lot of fun building in SV PU this year. I enjoy the tier and think it still has plenty of room for development, so it was interesting trying newer stuff out. Here are the teams I used this season (not including teams I made for others, though there aren't *too* many of those), some unused teams, and.. maybe even more?? Might edit the formatting later, don't have too much time for that now.
I knew I wanted to use an actual wallbreaker against kyuss after how our ladder tour set went, and I landed on Choice Specs Toxtricity. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of how awkward teams with it end up being, though that might be because I went for a bulkier approach than you'd expect from a Toxtricity team. Other than SpDef Calm Mind Florges, which was purely for Inteleon, the team is pretty normal—not much else to say. My matchup ended up being really good, and I won.
Vs fish, I just wanted a normal bulky offense team with pivots and good tools against most teams. None of the sets here are anything crazy, though I don't think there was much non-Calm Mind Raikou this week. I figured fish wouldn't use Gastrodon (but fsr used Stone Edge Redbull as if he likes Altaria..), so I felt like it was fine not to use Calm Mind or Tera Blast Grass. I'm still a little annoyed I let this one slip away, but it was a really fun game.
This wasn't the team I was originally going to use, but Meri suggested giving it a try and it worked out in the real game, so props to her. I don't use HO much, so I wanted to go all in and make the weirdest, normal looking HO possible. Tera Electric Scrafty wasn't super common and still isn't, and I wanted to use it because every HO team needs counterplay to Flying-types + the team is fine vs Fairies anyway. Endeavor Salazzle and Custap Berry Glastrier cheese out kills, and Roar Scream Tail is for denying phazing attempts from Mudsdale and opposing setup from Florges. I don't think my actual matchup was that crazy, but needing to pivot around Milotic early and not Endeavoring the AV Emboar were both big setbacks.
Darkrai (4 attacks Zoroark) was a fun idea fish mentioned to me, and I wanted to try it out this week. This is another pretty normal team, don't have much to say other than that throwing away Glowbro like I did was a huge mistake. Not U-turning against the ~30% Tatsugiri with Flamigo was also stupid. The crit on Darkrai was brutal obviously, but I know that the game was still winnable in spite of it; my positioning vs the Choice Scarf Toxtricity just wasn't it.
Choice Specs Florges is something I've used in the past, just not on any team I'd bring to tournament. MZ's teams had been light on Fairy resists, which made the idea very appealing. I also wanted to use a bunch of different Pokemon than I had so far, was relying a lot on stuff like Gligar, Tatsu, AV Copper, etc, which is how I got the current version of the team. Florges would've definitely did more if I didn't Trick T1, Salazzle isn't enough of a resist to Moonblast to where I absolutely needed to do that.
Hariyama looked like a safe bet against a lot of Drip's teams, and Fighting-types always pair well with Darkrai. Choice Scarf Hoopa is fun and very different compared to my normal speed control guys, plus it does well cleaning with how good the two breakers are at smashing things. The Speed on Altaria is for Decidueye, which otherwise swagbliterates this team. I don't like this team much now, but it was doing okay in testing and has stuff I like, so I can't hate on it too hard.
The break I got between the end of week 6 and finals was much, much appreciated; I don't know if I could've won without it. The idea here is blowing things up with Venusaur and Wetbull so that Grimmsnarl can sweep. All three Pokemon looked insanely good against Larry's teams, and the first two put in overtime in the actual game. Wetbull is Adamant because it didn't need Jolly to outspeed anything in the scout, and you already outspeed most things with Choice Scarf anyway. Tera Fire Grimmsnarl and Soak Bellibolt were there to exploit all the Coalossal and Sticky Hold Gastrodon he'd been using. This team was incredibly satisfying to come up with after the mental block I was having, and I'm happy it helped the Goodras get the goopy gold.
~~~
For every game I played, I probably have like two or three unused teams or ideas, and these are mainly the only ones I find interesting. I won't spend too much time dwelling on any individual team or idea, but I think they speak to my earlier point about there still being tons of room for development in the meta.
NP Glowbro is cool, but offensive NP is cooler (read: worse) than defensive NP. It's good at trucking through walls while still playing a bit of defense, which I like. I kept trying to make this set work and landed on a few different teams with it, mainly these ones, but it wasn't meant to be.
Boring VoltTurn team with Tera Blast Ground Scyther to catch Glowbro, Bellibolt, Coal, etc. Ignore the weird Copper spread, was still trying to figure out which one was best.
Choice Specs Raikou is the worst "not bad" set ever, but it breaks well enough for Scream Tail alongside Tatsugiri. Psyshock was and still is pretty uncommon on STail; cute option for catching opposing Calm Mind users, mainly Raikou and Florges.
Fun, reliable enough team that would've been a fine backup in case I couldn't come up with anything else.
Paraspam with Inteleon and three setup sweepers. I think I was going to use this before Meri suggested using the HO team.
Alternate version of Zoroark idea, nothing to note.
Alternate version of Florges idea, nothing to note.
Mudsdale @ Choice Band
Ability: Stamina
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 24 HP / 252 Atk / 148 SpD / 84 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Heavy Slam
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
Yeehaw.
Primeape is funny and from Gen 1.
Heracross @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Knock Off
- Earthquake
Heracross @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Dark / Rock
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Knock Off
- Spikes
- Close Combat
- Earthquake / Stone Edge
I know this mon is good, but God does Heracross suck to try and actually use. Legit went through like five or six different teams (here are some of them) trying to make it work before just not needing to play. Still, Hera has a lot of cool qualities, especially sponging Knock Off and handily thrashing most defensive cores.
Stuff I considered using against Ampha.
I don't know how people use Braviary-H, but I was genuinely considering it throughout the later stages of the tour, especially finals.
Setup Bronzong is fine and didn't look the worst against Larry either, though its inconsistency in testing + Django bringing it and losing made me drop it from the final team. LOrb Pawmot was also something I wanted to bring for speed and power, though Wetbull was 100% the better choice on what I did end up using in finals.
~~~
... is none other than the one that trusted me the whole time, helped me extensively, and gave me room to make mistakes. Thank you to ishtar and Meri for being the best managers I could ever ask for. I wasn't able to watch the draft, but it was such a great feeling coming home to see that I'd be teaming with the Sliggoomfies again. Thank you to the Goodras as a whole for being so much fun to work with and support, including those that joined us later as cheerleaders. You're all part of the Goomily in my eyes. I couldn't see myself anywhere else, even if we were knocked out and in eighth. It took a lot of work to get here, especially when things looked dire vs the Pranksters in week 6, and I'm so very happy we brought it home. It's been an honor working with you all, and I hope I get opportunities to team with each of you in other tournaments as well.
Thank you to everyone for making it a fun and memorable PUPL and to everyone for reading this far. I hope to see everyone next year!
I knew I wanted to use an actual wallbreaker against kyuss after how our ladder tour set went, and I landed on Choice Specs Toxtricity. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of how awkward teams with it end up being, though that might be because I went for a bulkier approach than you'd expect from a Toxtricity team. Other than SpDef Calm Mind Florges, which was purely for Inteleon, the team is pretty normal—not much else to say. My matchup ended up being really good, and I won.
Vs fish, I just wanted a normal bulky offense team with pivots and good tools against most teams. None of the sets here are anything crazy, though I don't think there was much non-Calm Mind Raikou this week. I figured fish wouldn't use Gastrodon (but fsr used Stone Edge Redbull as if he likes Altaria..), so I felt like it was fine not to use Calm Mind or Tera Blast Grass. I'm still a little annoyed I let this one slip away, but it was a really fun game.
This wasn't the team I was originally going to use, but Meri suggested giving it a try and it worked out in the real game, so props to her. I don't use HO much, so I wanted to go all in and make the weirdest, normal looking HO possible. Tera Electric Scrafty wasn't super common and still isn't, and I wanted to use it because every HO team needs counterplay to Flying-types + the team is fine vs Fairies anyway. Endeavor Salazzle and Custap Berry Glastrier cheese out kills, and Roar Scream Tail is for denying phazing attempts from Mudsdale and opposing setup from Florges. I don't think my actual matchup was that crazy, but needing to pivot around Milotic early and not Endeavoring the AV Emboar were both big setbacks.
Darkrai (4 attacks Zoroark) was a fun idea fish mentioned to me, and I wanted to try it out this week. This is another pretty normal team, don't have much to say other than that throwing away Glowbro like I did was a huge mistake. Not U-turning against the ~30% Tatsugiri with Flamigo was also stupid. The crit on Darkrai was brutal obviously, but I know that the game was still winnable in spite of it; my positioning vs the Choice Scarf Toxtricity just wasn't it.
Choice Specs Florges is something I've used in the past, just not on any team I'd bring to tournament. MZ's teams had been light on Fairy resists, which made the idea very appealing. I also wanted to use a bunch of different Pokemon than I had so far, was relying a lot on stuff like Gligar, Tatsu, AV Copper, etc, which is how I got the current version of the team. Florges would've definitely did more if I didn't Trick T1, Salazzle isn't enough of a resist to Moonblast to where I absolutely needed to do that.
Hariyama looked like a safe bet against a lot of Drip's teams, and Fighting-types always pair well with Darkrai. Choice Scarf Hoopa is fun and very different compared to my normal speed control guys, plus it does well cleaning with how good the two breakers are at smashing things. The Speed on Altaria is for Decidueye, which otherwise swagbliterates this team. I don't like this team much now, but it was doing okay in testing and has stuff I like, so I can't hate on it too hard.
The break I got between the end of week 6 and finals was much, much appreciated; I don't know if I could've won without it. The idea here is blowing things up with Venusaur and Wetbull so that Grimmsnarl can sweep. All three Pokemon looked insanely good against Larry's teams, and the first two put in overtime in the actual game. Wetbull is Adamant because it didn't need Jolly to outspeed anything in the scout, and you already outspeed most things with Choice Scarf anyway. Tera Fire Grimmsnarl and Soak Bellibolt were there to exploit all the Coalossal and Sticky Hold Gastrodon he'd been using. This team was incredibly satisfying to come up with after the mental block I was having, and I'm happy it helped the Goodras get the goopy gold.
~~~
For every game I played, I probably have like two or three unused teams or ideas, and these are mainly the only ones I find interesting. I won't spend too much time dwelling on any individual team or idea, but I think they speak to my earlier point about there still being tons of room for development in the meta.
NP Glowbro is cool, but offensive NP is cooler (read: worse) than defensive NP. It's good at trucking through walls while still playing a bit of defense, which I like. I kept trying to make this set work and landed on a few different teams with it, mainly these ones, but it wasn't meant to be.
Boring VoltTurn team with Tera Blast Ground Scyther to catch Glowbro, Bellibolt, Coal, etc. Ignore the weird Copper spread, was still trying to figure out which one was best.
Choice Specs Raikou is the worst "not bad" set ever, but it breaks well enough for Scream Tail alongside Tatsugiri. Psyshock was and still is pretty uncommon on STail; cute option for catching opposing Calm Mind users, mainly Raikou and Florges.
Fun, reliable enough team that would've been a fine backup in case I couldn't come up with anything else.
Paraspam with Inteleon and three setup sweepers. I think I was going to use this before Meri suggested using the HO team.
Alternate version of Zoroark idea, nothing to note.
Alternate version of Florges idea, nothing to note.
Mudsdale @ Choice Band
Ability: Stamina
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 24 HP / 252 Atk / 148 SpD / 84 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Heavy Slam
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
Yeehaw.
Primeape is funny and from Gen 1.
Heracross @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Knock Off
- Earthquake
Heracross @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Dark / Rock
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Knock Off
- Spikes
- Close Combat
- Earthquake / Stone Edge
I know this mon is good, but God does Heracross suck to try and actually use. Legit went through like five or six different teams (here are some of them) trying to make it work before just not needing to play. Still, Hera has a lot of cool qualities, especially sponging Knock Off and handily thrashing most defensive cores.
Stuff I considered using against Ampha.
I don't know how people use Braviary-H, but I was genuinely considering it throughout the later stages of the tour, especially finals.
Setup Bronzong is fine and didn't look the worst against Larry either, though its inconsistency in testing + Django bringing it and losing made me drop it from the final team. LOrb Pawmot was also something I wanted to bring for speed and power, though Wetbull was 100% the better choice on what I did end up using in finals.
... is none other than the one that trusted me the whole time, helped me extensively, and gave me room to make mistakes. Thank you to ishtar and Meri for being the best managers I could ever ask for. I wasn't able to watch the draft, but it was such a great feeling coming home to see that I'd be teaming with the Sliggoomfies again. Thank you to the Goodras as a whole for being so much fun to work with and support, including those that joined us later as cheerleaders. You're all part of the Goomily in my eyes. I couldn't see myself anywhere else, even if we were knocked out and in eighth. It took a lot of work to get here, especially when things looked dire vs the Pranksters in week 6, and I'm so very happy we brought it home. It's been an honor working with you all, and I hope I get opportunities to team with each of you in other tournaments as well.
tour is over so it's time for a team dump and for me to ramble a bit x
week 1 vs hera | gallade + pivot spikes | win
i didn't really know what to use this week, i just knew i wanted to use vikavolt cuz it's one of my favourite mons to use and i felt like it was a safe enough pick vs hera. gallade is a natural partner really, appreciates vikavolt pivoting. i thought spikes would be good alongside this core, and to maximize how much progress i'd get to make with hazards, i decided to use ninjask. i think it's very underrated tbh, it's a great offensive pivot that can overwhelm its answers in longer games and also matches up well against ho. and then i added gigaslash! with physdef vikavolt i didn't feel like having a lot of bulk on sandslash was necessary, and i appreciated this spread having an easier time pressuring gourgeist between knock, hazards, and toxic. gallade is av with rock slide to help against charizard and centiskorch, even being able to 1v1 ribombee if needed, but it can be made shadow sneak if u prefer the priority
matchup looked okay, tspikes were annoying but hera's team was pretty slow so it looked possible to overwhelm it with ninjask + vikavolt. vikavolt in particular looked great and it ended up winning me the game, but i knew i needed to keep hazards up if i wanted to win
week 2 vs mj | fire spam + cosmic power claydol | win
this was the week after we lost rupl so i didn't really gaf about mons at this point, i thought of this 6 pretty quickly and that was that. i don't remember the idea behind it, if there was even one, but i think i just wanted to use centiskorch and manage to stay away from rapid spinners so that forced me into using charizard lol..! i didn't use ribombee week 1 so i had to use it week 2, tangela is pretty cool and with synthesis it 1v1s gourgeist and also avoids neutralizing gas weezing shenanigans. and then idk i wanted a volt absorber and decided claydol could be fun to try out
claydol ended up doing a lot of the work early game, i got a bit lucky with it but i also could've preserved it the turn it got crit as i was rest last so i was always getting another opportunity against what was left of that 6. another game of my weezing mu being suboptimal but that thing is fake and bad anyway. from there though, charizard and centiskorch both looked very good and they ended up doing a lot of the work, even if i messed up that late game i knew it was won as long as i didn't get crit so i got impatient cuz honestly this was a really boring game
week 3 vs dj breloominati | scarf bee stall | loss
i had a couple of other ideas this week, one of which i ended up bringing a couple of weeks later, but cy and i both thought stall looked cute (:ribbon:) into dj's scout so i just went with that. i didn't want to use the classic stall 6 (MY 6 btw. not excal's.) of elde / audino / coal / doublade / alt / quag, but that team would've had a better matchup so..! i think this team is essentially just a walmart version of that other stall so i would advise against using this one
i had a feeling i'd run into stall before the game and then it actually happened and it turned out i forgot to make my ribombee trick. this was stall vs stall but it still wasn't the most boring game i played this season honestly, which is an achievement. i liked dj's bring, i think i'm generally pretty stall weak just cuz everyone is too scared to stall and it paid off for him
week 5 vs mada | rhydon + guno | win
this was a 6 i built 2 weeks prior, and i came up with a lottt of different versions. the main idea was audino + doublade, because i think doublade is really good at outlasting its answers and audino makes sure you can actually do that. i (unsurprisingly) started with a lot of gigalith versions but then i found it awkward to fit everything i wanted, so i decided to try out rhydon. this left me weaker to certain pokémon but between audino, rhydon, and doublade, i was confident i could manage most special attackers anyway. and then eldegoss is a spinner and semi-reliable doublade answer, guno is an eq immune..! and future sight is a really fun move, especially with doublade + rhydon as it eases setup for the former and makes the latter a lot more threatening under the right circumstances. i felt like i needed scarf bee here for offensive sandslash as at +2 it kinda just swept my entire team, and i never feel fully comfy without aromatherapy on one of my mons. probably my fav team i've used all season, it's offensive enough while having a solid backbone
game went pretty smoothly, guno was able to pressure his team a lot and with toxic audino his gourgeist couldn't do all that much. not sure why that was ice punch gallade, but honestly once weezing died + gourgeist ate a toxic the game was over. only thing i regret is not making it roar rhydon over heat crash as it meant i got a free roar turn 3 and a potential kill, which would've been more fun but i guess it didn't matter
week 6 vs meru | hattrem + itemless jask | win
this 6 is ass. but our team vibes weren't all that good at this point so i just wanted to have fun this week, especially as i was playing wednesday and didn't really have much time to prep. this is an edited version of a 6 i built all the way back in 2022, i changed like 2 slots and called it a day. this loses to a lot though, and despite having a ninjask it's actually 6-0ed by terrain cuz i don't like using protect jask with hattrem support. this also has no good scald resist, and is 6-0ed by magneton
mu looked annoying, there was a weezing and i realized i sorta lost to everything as ninjask wasn't able to make a ton of progress by itself. i had to double around early on to make sure i didn't lose by turn 10, and was able to bring this game to a 50/50. going to sound annoying but i think this was my best played game all season, and i'm happy i was able to win with a more fun team! x
week 7 vs oranberryblissey10 | semi-terrain | win
i thought we were out so i wanted to have more fun and just click buttons. aurorus looked really good into obb's scout and i wanted to end the season on a high note so i actually did somewhat try this week. double meteor beam is fun and i realized that, in 2 pupls, i had never used ho. i decided to go all out and add some terrain, with an av gallade to sit pretty + act as a gigalith anti-lead and potential quagsire lure. sd steelvally cuz obb relies a lot on like, centiskorch for his steel resist + terrain answer from what i remember seeing on the scout, so if i could overwhelm it with something the other sweeper should have an easier time
i was a bit worried going into the game cuz before this i don't think i've ever won vs obb, but i think he wasn't really expecting the terrain bring considering what he used. the team worked pretty well, for some reason i was worried about physical skunk all game (sv trauma) and so didn't preserve my steelvally when it won by itself. thankfully aurorus was still able to sweep
semis vs mj | vika + runerigus | loss
this is the team i was the least confident in this year, but i wanted to use vikavolt because it looked good into the scout. i just struggled to come up with something i really liked, i had a version with sd qwilfish that would've won i think but mnc veto'd it so FUCK him. runerigus is just a fun mon i haven't used in forever and paired pretty well with vikavolt, gigalith and elde don't require an explanation, and i thought ninjask would be able to overwhelm the sort of teams he liked to use. cm guno is a fun set i've never brought before, and it was another pokemon i thought could overwhelm his typical stuff
going into the game and seeing a glastrier was nottt tea, but i figured tspikes could at least do stuff. glastrier unsurprisingly ended up doing a lot of the heavy lifting for him. i think i didn't play optimally with my guno, as it looked really good despite everything, but i'm going to blame that on being hungover + driplegend just because. glastrier is one of many mons i decide to not acknowledge in the builder because no one uses it, and i think it was a great bring into me considering i very rarely use bulky waters
finals vs meru | specs bee + subsd bouff | win
semester started so i had considerably less time to prep, but i liked the idea of 3 attacks specs bee cuz i typically use mono-moonblast on mine and i knew goobers most likely knew that cuz they have a lottt of my teams. was talking to OranBerryBlissey10 (thank u for the help btw) for ideas and he mentioned normal types as being great partners for this bee set and i agreed. bouffalant looked good into meru's scout, and from there i also knew i wanted to use tspikes as i rarely ever use them. gigabee is self-explanatory, and zard was here to help vs centiskorch and weezing all at once without being particularly great against either. i had some other ideas, some that i think would've done much better in the actual game, but i only lost once with this team out of many, many test games so it was pretty hard to argue against that. i'd say that i wasn't fully confident in this 6 either, and if there's lesson i learned from these playoffs, it's that i should trust myself more in the builder
my matchup looked fine but unideal, aggron was something i knew the team was weak to but i remembered meru saying he didn't like it at all so i didn't think i'd run into it. his charizard answer wasn't really present so i knew i could force progress with it if i clicked right (i didn't BTW), and his team was slow which meant bouff could apply a lot of pressures. sadly it was neutralizing gas weezing which meant i had to be very careful with elde, and ironically enough my ribombee didn't end up clicking anything but moonblast. i thought it was over once he caught my double, but thankfully allah loves me :angel:. i think that was an unnecessary risk from him though, and once it happened i realized i had a real path with eldegoss. despite what someone said in tour discussion, hitting 8 head smashes is actually a rare occurence, only having a 16% chance of happening! so i wouldn't say the miss "sucked", really. not the happiest with my prep or play this week, i think both were fine enough but it does take away a bit from winning when it happens this way. still glad i was able to keep the prankster dream going a bit longer though <3
--
had a fair amount of fun this season doing some building and revisiting some past ideas, i feel like at this point in the tier's life i've already tried out most of what can be tried out but i still decided to use things that are a bit more out of my comfort zone to make things a bit less monotone. i'm overall pretty happy with my brings this year, as well as how i've played, and i'm happy i was able to live up to the prs. somewhat fun fact, i went 6-0 against weezing, and both of my losses were when my opponents did not use it against me
very quick s/os, thank u to sasha and mncmt for getting me, i had fun despite all my yapping about wanting to cancer (though in all fairness i probably would've done it by week 4 if i didn't end up getting drafted by friends:ribbon:) and i'll always appreciate my friendship with u two and i hope u both know i'm always around to chat
special s/os to Hacker, DripLegend, and Larry, never teamed w any of u before but u were rly fun to have around and ur bisexual teas are so valid. i hope to maybe see u around next year!! (drip u can ignore that last part ns)
i think the tier is in a good place, and i don't think any sort of tiering action would do much to improve the tier. i can sorta empathize with the complaints regarding grassy terrain because of its nature as a playstyle, but terrain has not been an issue before and i think wanting to take action right now is shortsighted. we have the tools to adapt, and to also build teams that don't lose to terrain while keeping a good mu vs the rest of the metagame. i think some of the complaints come from people building subpar teams*, but also from people who i don't think fully grasp the impact a terrain ban would have on the tier.
firstly, it's very difficult to pinpoint what exactly is the issue with terrain, if there's even one. is it thievul or hitmonlee, or rather a combination of both? as individual pokémon, neither are very hard to answer and have plenty of checks/counters. is it grassy seed, and if so, how do you justify banning an item over a singular pokémon? is it thwackey, and if so, how do we know one of pincurchin or grookey won't just take its niche? but what about just banning terrain extender to avoid that? you'd still have to prove the item is the problem to get there. tiering terrain is very difficult, especially now that the main terrain structures are back to being semi-terrain ones. is the issue even terrain? what if it's something like archeops, qwilfish, or doublade instead, since it's pretty impossible to pinpoint a single terrain abuser or element as being the undesirable element?
i think part of this is because terrain, much like every form of heavy offense, has like goal to overwhelm the opponent's team by clicking buttons on shared checks, then allowing something else to win. but terrain doesn't do this particularly better than other forms of heavy offense, nor is it good to a problematic degree. common structures and pokémon (centiskorch, vikavolt, weezing, audino, charizard, gallade, and even gigalith!) are able to tackle terrain to varying degrees of success, and i think it's rare for terrain to win on preview. i'd even say that if terrain wins on preview, you're using a bad team/fishing, as like any other playstyle, it's one you must consider in the builder.
another issue i have with trying to nerf / eliminate terrain is that there's a good chance a new form of heavy offense takes its place. i mentioned grookey and pincurchin as potential alternatives on terrain, and while i don't believe they'd be as good as thwackey and would limit what you can do, they function the same when it comes to supporting the various breakers/sweepers present on those structures. pincurchin would also allow for another layer, as it supports rising voltage pokémon and can support its teammates with hazards. grassy terrain matches up well against "regular" heavy offense because you get 2 extremely fast pokémon that hit hard against a team with frail pokémon, but a terrain nerf would obviously change those dynamics; you can't limit how much froslass + archeops + 4 structures do as well, for example. i don't think those structures are broken either, as a good balance should have tools to tackle them, but rather that i think the main issue people have with terrain seems to be the fact that it's heavy offense, ignoring the fact that this playstyle is inherent to the game we play and will continue to exist.
*want to make it known that i think this is fine/good and sometimes even necessary in a bo1 setting, but that this is also a conscious choice you take in the builder and shouldn't be something used to demonstrate that there's an issue with terrain
firstly, it's very difficult to pinpoint what exactly is the issue with terrain, if there's even one. is it thievul or hitmonlee, or rather a combination of both? as individual pokémon, neither are very hard to answer and have plenty of checks/counters. is it grassy seed, and if so, how do you justify banning an item over a singular pokémon? is it thwackey, and if so, how do we know one of pincurchin or grookey won't just take its niche? but what about just banning terrain extender to avoid that? you'd still have to prove the item is the problem to get there. tiering terrain is very difficult, especially now that the main terrain structures are back to being semi-terrain ones. is the issue even terrain? what if it's something like archeops, qwilfish, or doublade instead, since it's pretty impossible to pinpoint a single terrain abuser or element as being the undesirable element?
i think part of this is because terrain, much like every form of heavy offense, has like goal to overwhelm the opponent's team by clicking buttons on shared checks, then allowing something else to win. but terrain doesn't do this particularly better than other forms of heavy offense, nor is it good to a problematic degree. common structures and pokémon (centiskorch, vikavolt, weezing, audino, charizard, gallade, and even gigalith!) are able to tackle terrain to varying degrees of success, and i think it's rare for terrain to win on preview. i'd even say that if terrain wins on preview, you're using a bad team/fishing, as like any other playstyle, it's one you must consider in the builder.
another issue i have with trying to nerf / eliminate terrain is that there's a good chance a new form of heavy offense takes its place. i mentioned grookey and pincurchin as potential alternatives on terrain, and while i don't believe they'd be as good as thwackey and would limit what you can do, they function the same when it comes to supporting the various breakers/sweepers present on those structures. pincurchin would also allow for another layer, as it supports rising voltage pokémon and can support its teammates with hazards. grassy terrain matches up well against "regular" heavy offense because you get 2 extremely fast pokémon that hit hard against a team with frail pokémon, but a terrain nerf would obviously change those dynamics; you can't limit how much froslass + archeops + 4 structures do as well, for example. i don't think those structures are broken either, as a good balance should have tools to tackle them, but rather that i think the main issue people have with terrain seems to be the fact that it's heavy offense, ignoring the fact that this playstyle is inherent to the game we play and will continue to exist.
*want to make it known that i think this is fine/good and sometimes even necessary in a bo1 setting, but that this is also a conscious choice you take in the builder and shouldn't be something used to demonstrate that there's an issue with terrain
week 1 vs hera | gallade + pivot spikes | win
i didn't really know what to use this week, i just knew i wanted to use vikavolt cuz it's one of my favourite mons to use and i felt like it was a safe enough pick vs hera. gallade is a natural partner really, appreciates vikavolt pivoting. i thought spikes would be good alongside this core, and to maximize how much progress i'd get to make with hazards, i decided to use ninjask. i think it's very underrated tbh, it's a great offensive pivot that can overwhelm its answers in longer games and also matches up well against ho. and then i added gigaslash! with physdef vikavolt i didn't feel like having a lot of bulk on sandslash was necessary, and i appreciated this spread having an easier time pressuring gourgeist between knock, hazards, and toxic. gallade is av with rock slide to help against charizard and centiskorch, even being able to 1v1 ribombee if needed, but it can be made shadow sneak if u prefer the priority
matchup looked okay, tspikes were annoying but hera's team was pretty slow so it looked possible to overwhelm it with ninjask + vikavolt. vikavolt in particular looked great and it ended up winning me the game, but i knew i needed to keep hazards up if i wanted to win
week 2 vs mj | fire spam + cosmic power claydol | win
this was the week after we lost rupl so i didn't really gaf about mons at this point, i thought of this 6 pretty quickly and that was that. i don't remember the idea behind it, if there was even one, but i think i just wanted to use centiskorch and manage to stay away from rapid spinners so that forced me into using charizard lol..! i didn't use ribombee week 1 so i had to use it week 2, tangela is pretty cool and with synthesis it 1v1s gourgeist and also avoids neutralizing gas weezing shenanigans. and then idk i wanted a volt absorber and decided claydol could be fun to try out
claydol ended up doing a lot of the work early game, i got a bit lucky with it but i also could've preserved it the turn it got crit as i was rest last so i was always getting another opportunity against what was left of that 6. another game of my weezing mu being suboptimal but that thing is fake and bad anyway. from there though, charizard and centiskorch both looked very good and they ended up doing a lot of the work, even if i messed up that late game i knew it was won as long as i didn't get crit so i got impatient cuz honestly this was a really boring game
week 3 vs dj breloominati | scarf bee stall | loss
i had a couple of other ideas this week, one of which i ended up bringing a couple of weeks later, but cy and i both thought stall looked cute (:ribbon:) into dj's scout so i just went with that. i didn't want to use the classic stall 6 (MY 6 btw. not excal's.) of elde / audino / coal / doublade / alt / quag, but that team would've had a better matchup so..! i think this team is essentially just a walmart version of that other stall so i would advise against using this one
i had a feeling i'd run into stall before the game and then it actually happened and it turned out i forgot to make my ribombee trick. this was stall vs stall but it still wasn't the most boring game i played this season honestly, which is an achievement. i liked dj's bring, i think i'm generally pretty stall weak just cuz everyone is too scared to stall and it paid off for him
week 5 vs mada | rhydon + guno | win
this was a 6 i built 2 weeks prior, and i came up with a lottt of different versions. the main idea was audino + doublade, because i think doublade is really good at outlasting its answers and audino makes sure you can actually do that. i (unsurprisingly) started with a lot of gigalith versions but then i found it awkward to fit everything i wanted, so i decided to try out rhydon. this left me weaker to certain pokémon but between audino, rhydon, and doublade, i was confident i could manage most special attackers anyway. and then eldegoss is a spinner and semi-reliable doublade answer, guno is an eq immune..! and future sight is a really fun move, especially with doublade + rhydon as it eases setup for the former and makes the latter a lot more threatening under the right circumstances. i felt like i needed scarf bee here for offensive sandslash as at +2 it kinda just swept my entire team, and i never feel fully comfy without aromatherapy on one of my mons. probably my fav team i've used all season, it's offensive enough while having a solid backbone
game went pretty smoothly, guno was able to pressure his team a lot and with toxic audino his gourgeist couldn't do all that much. not sure why that was ice punch gallade, but honestly once weezing died + gourgeist ate a toxic the game was over. only thing i regret is not making it roar rhydon over heat crash as it meant i got a free roar turn 3 and a potential kill, which would've been more fun but i guess it didn't matter
week 6 vs meru | hattrem + itemless jask | win
this 6 is ass. but our team vibes weren't all that good at this point so i just wanted to have fun this week, especially as i was playing wednesday and didn't really have much time to prep. this is an edited version of a 6 i built all the way back in 2022, i changed like 2 slots and called it a day. this loses to a lot though, and despite having a ninjask it's actually 6-0ed by terrain cuz i don't like using protect jask with hattrem support. this also has no good scald resist, and is 6-0ed by magneton
mu looked annoying, there was a weezing and i realized i sorta lost to everything as ninjask wasn't able to make a ton of progress by itself. i had to double around early on to make sure i didn't lose by turn 10, and was able to bring this game to a 50/50. going to sound annoying but i think this was my best played game all season, and i'm happy i was able to win with a more fun team! x
week 7 vs oranberryblissey10 | semi-terrain | win
i thought we were out so i wanted to have more fun and just click buttons. aurorus looked really good into obb's scout and i wanted to end the season on a high note so i actually did somewhat try this week. double meteor beam is fun and i realized that, in 2 pupls, i had never used ho. i decided to go all out and add some terrain, with an av gallade to sit pretty + act as a gigalith anti-lead and potential quagsire lure. sd steelvally cuz obb relies a lot on like, centiskorch for his steel resist + terrain answer from what i remember seeing on the scout, so if i could overwhelm it with something the other sweeper should have an easier time
i was a bit worried going into the game cuz before this i don't think i've ever won vs obb, but i think he wasn't really expecting the terrain bring considering what he used. the team worked pretty well, for some reason i was worried about physical skunk all game (sv trauma) and so didn't preserve my steelvally when it won by itself. thankfully aurorus was still able to sweep
semis vs mj | vika + runerigus | loss
this is the team i was the least confident in this year, but i wanted to use vikavolt because it looked good into the scout. i just struggled to come up with something i really liked, i had a version with sd qwilfish that would've won i think but mnc veto'd it so FUCK him. runerigus is just a fun mon i haven't used in forever and paired pretty well with vikavolt, gigalith and elde don't require an explanation, and i thought ninjask would be able to overwhelm the sort of teams he liked to use. cm guno is a fun set i've never brought before, and it was another pokemon i thought could overwhelm his typical stuff
going into the game and seeing a glastrier was nottt tea, but i figured tspikes could at least do stuff. glastrier unsurprisingly ended up doing a lot of the heavy lifting for him. i think i didn't play optimally with my guno, as it looked really good despite everything, but i'm going to blame that on being hungover + driplegend just because. glastrier is one of many mons i decide to not acknowledge in the builder because no one uses it, and i think it was a great bring into me considering i very rarely use bulky waters
finals vs meru | specs bee + subsd bouff | win
semester started so i had considerably less time to prep, but i liked the idea of 3 attacks specs bee cuz i typically use mono-moonblast on mine and i knew goobers most likely knew that cuz they have a lottt of my teams. was talking to OranBerryBlissey10 (thank u for the help btw) for ideas and he mentioned normal types as being great partners for this bee set and i agreed. bouffalant looked good into meru's scout, and from there i also knew i wanted to use tspikes as i rarely ever use them. gigabee is self-explanatory, and zard was here to help vs centiskorch and weezing all at once without being particularly great against either. i had some other ideas, some that i think would've done much better in the actual game, but i only lost once with this team out of many, many test games so it was pretty hard to argue against that. i'd say that i wasn't fully confident in this 6 either, and if there's lesson i learned from these playoffs, it's that i should trust myself more in the builder
my matchup looked fine but unideal, aggron was something i knew the team was weak to but i remembered meru saying he didn't like it at all so i didn't think i'd run into it. his charizard answer wasn't really present so i knew i could force progress with it if i clicked right (i didn't BTW), and his team was slow which meant bouff could apply a lot of pressures. sadly it was neutralizing gas weezing which meant i had to be very careful with elde, and ironically enough my ribombee didn't end up clicking anything but moonblast. i thought it was over once he caught my double, but thankfully allah loves me :angel:. i think that was an unnecessary risk from him though, and once it happened i realized i had a real path with eldegoss. despite what someone said in tour discussion, hitting 8 head smashes is actually a rare occurence, only having a 16% chance of happening! so i wouldn't say the miss "sucked", really. not the happiest with my prep or play this week, i think both were fine enough but it does take away a bit from winning when it happens this way. still glad i was able to keep the prankster dream going a bit longer though <3
--
had a fair amount of fun this season doing some building and revisiting some past ideas, i feel like at this point in the tier's life i've already tried out most of what can be tried out but i still decided to use things that are a bit more out of my comfort zone to make things a bit less monotone. i'm overall pretty happy with my brings this year, as well as how i've played, and i'm happy i was able to live up to the prs. somewhat fun fact, i went 6-0 against weezing, and both of my losses were when my opponents did not use it against me
very quick s/os, thank u to sasha and mncmt for getting me, i had fun despite all my yapping about wanting to cancer (though in all fairness i probably would've done it by week 4 if i didn't end up getting drafted by friends:ribbon:) and i'll always appreciate my friendship with u two and i hope u both know i'm always around to chat
special s/os to Hacker, DripLegend, and Larry, never teamed w any of u before but u were rly fun to have around and ur bisexual teas are so valid. i hope to maybe see u around next year!! (drip u can ignore that last part ns)
Let's share some teams! 
Team 1
This is probably the most honest team in this dump: set up hazards and spam sweepers until one of them actually sweeps. Mr. Mime is here to help with speed control and healing wish.
Team 2
Dodrio, Stoutland and mawile form an amazing physical core because they share checks and all of them hit hard. Eventually one of them will take over the game. Monferno is here as an special attacker and as an alternate plan. Golem is a pretty decent lead and also works as electric resist if needed. Swanna supports the team with defog and tailwind while having decent firepower itself with life orb.
Team 3
This team has an amazing speed control while having 3 walls on the back. Yawn prinlup is used to not lose momentum, dropping rocks because normally prinlups feels overworked as hazard control due to sharing defog and rocks. Mawile works really well as a physical wall and beheyeem as a special one while being a sweeper itself if there is a chance. Band ninjask, scarf monferno and life orb zebstrika offer amazing speed control while hitting really hard.
Team 4
Another Hyper offense with golem as a lead. This team unlike the other one relies more on special attackers. Kadabra role here is to disrupt possible annoying pokemons on the enemy team and works as an anti-sweeper really well. Rotom-Frost and Floatzel both have amazing speed tiers and hit really hard, they pair well together breaking teams. Mawile offers priority that is on demand on offenses and can really damage teams by itself. Mawile also helps our alternate wincon, dragon dance altaria by beating some of the physical checks altaria has.
Team 5
Unlike the previous teams, this one is much more defensive. Lumineon works both as physical wall and hazard removal, it uses rest for longevity. Metang is our special wall with thunder punch to put some pressure on pelipper teams. Golem works as anti-volturn and sets rocks. Altaria is there as another physical wall and offers heal bell, really useful special when lumineon doesn't have sleep talk. Rapidash and rotom-frost are the most offensive mons here, offering some pressure to enemy teams and the chance to trick a difficult to deal enemy pokemon.
Team 6
A much slower volturn than the previous one. This team relies on chatot to do crazy amount of damage to the enemy team and is helped going in by slower volt switch and uturn users like chinchou and vullaby. Chinchou is our special wall and vullaby physical one plus defog user. Tangela provides another physical wall plus sleep support. Choice scarf Monferno offers to the team speed control and another u-turn user. Golem set ups rocks and provides toxic which can be valuable on certain targets. If I were to make the team today I would put either gabite over golem or vibraba over vullaby and something else as rock setter for an improved matchup vs sword dance monferno.
Team 1
This is probably the most honest team in this dump: set up hazards and spam sweepers until one of them actually sweeps. Mr. Mime is here to help with speed control and healing wish.
Team 2
Dodrio, Stoutland and mawile form an amazing physical core because they share checks and all of them hit hard. Eventually one of them will take over the game. Monferno is here as an special attacker and as an alternate plan. Golem is a pretty decent lead and also works as electric resist if needed. Swanna supports the team with defog and tailwind while having decent firepower itself with life orb.
Team 3
This team has an amazing speed control while having 3 walls on the back. Yawn prinlup is used to not lose momentum, dropping rocks because normally prinlups feels overworked as hazard control due to sharing defog and rocks. Mawile works really well as a physical wall and beheyeem as a special one while being a sweeper itself if there is a chance. Band ninjask, scarf monferno and life orb zebstrika offer amazing speed control while hitting really hard.
Team 4
Another Hyper offense with golem as a lead. This team unlike the other one relies more on special attackers. Kadabra role here is to disrupt possible annoying pokemons on the enemy team and works as an anti-sweeper really well. Rotom-Frost and Floatzel both have amazing speed tiers and hit really hard, they pair well together breaking teams. Mawile offers priority that is on demand on offenses and can really damage teams by itself. Mawile also helps our alternate wincon, dragon dance altaria by beating some of the physical checks altaria has.
Team 5
Unlike the previous teams, this one is much more defensive. Lumineon works both as physical wall and hazard removal, it uses rest for longevity. Metang is our special wall with thunder punch to put some pressure on pelipper teams. Golem works as anti-volturn and sets rocks. Altaria is there as another physical wall and offers heal bell, really useful special when lumineon doesn't have sleep talk. Rapidash and rotom-frost are the most offensive mons here, offering some pressure to enemy teams and the chance to trick a difficult to deal enemy pokemon.
Team 6
A much slower volturn than the previous one. This team relies on chatot to do crazy amount of damage to the enemy team and is helped going in by slower volt switch and uturn users like chinchou and vullaby. Chinchou is our special wall and vullaby physical one plus defog user. Tangela provides another physical wall plus sleep support. Choice scarf Monferno offers to the team speed control and another u-turn user. Golem set ups rocks and provides toxic which can be valuable on certain targets. If I were to make the team today I would put either gabite over golem or vibraba over vullaby and something else as rock setter for an improved matchup vs sword dance monferno.
drip dump drip dump drip dump
WEEK 1
this team was bad but my team already won The Week so i felt like bringing something i was probably never loading again this tour to throw off scout/have a little fun with it. hrav lowkey has no switchins to sflo so it's fun to just click buttons with. everything else is really standard so not much else to comment on with this, loaded into a real team and lost tho you hate to see it :/
WEEK 2
this team is broken as hell. there's no way for any human to guess luza is gonna final gambit instead of trying to fillet away on something and it did exactly what it was supposed to do in this matchup. raikou was Not Fair so obviously i had to slot it on HO, i felt like i had enough to threaten grounds between hari scyther and veluza just normally clicking aqua cutter on lurk or just trading with gligar or muds so scald felt unnecessary. ghost let u sub on most of the random coverage that would be annoying for raikou and not have to worry about any boombursts either. the rest of the team is pretty standard besides scream since at this point in time i never saw anyone else use encore on cm. not sure why it wasn't that popular either but it's also OP in the right matchups since it can usually cm for free anyway and sub is fairly useless unless u find yourself against a tox mon.
WEEK 3
i also liked this team a fair amount, kinda just threw together all the mons i thought would fit cool on balance while also sticking to my kind of outline i usually need to fill before i like something in this tier (Not Sharing Now but maybe in the future). skunk is sooooo good i was addicted to making teams with this mon and since ppl were loading a lot of balance that gave skunk free entry or allowed it to come in on the common fighting resists it was really nice at abusing everything. fire bull is still good since u dont need to worry abt random flame body and it's stabs are way more annoying to switch into than waterbull imo, especially since intel was everywhere it was common loading into gastros with other blanket physical mons and it feeling stuck a lot of the time.
WEEK 4
why did i load this LMAOOOOOO. i was busy with wcop finals so i kinda just afk'd a bit more than normal and stole something random from sashas builder. normally i would give it the eye test or something of the like to make sure it was decent but since the week was decided and i wanted to make sure everything in wcop was going alright i just made sure i got the game done over anything else at that point lmfao. not putting the paste bc sasha didnt post any but this teams not good anyway so ur not missing out much.
pawmot was hella underrated at this point and a lot of teams main way of being able to deal with fightings long term was either pressuring it out or getting one of the physical proc's like static or flame body. pawmot doesnt rly care for either due to natural cure and it hits surprisingly hard with life orb. it can usually rest since it forces switches pretty easily so as long as u preserve a bit of health it can be a pain for the rest of the game depending on matchup. stuck with some standard-ish backbone of like florges coal muds and bomb was rly nice to have in balance mirrors or if i needed sucker. gbro was an alternate wincon or just something to pop tera and blow up grounds for pawmot to put in work later.
WEEK 6
this is just some other ho but with a few underrated picks like tatsu which always seems good on paper but then u load it and it never hits the same. idk i don't have a ton to comment on this weeks team since everything is pretty explanatory shoutout TERA STEEL hariyama.
WEEK 7
we were locked for playoffs wooooo! literally just took a team from blind draft and put a veluza and delphox on it and called it a day.
SEMIS
sasha did a lot of the beginning of this and we kinda just tuned it to be used for anyone but since we sourced some other stuff for the others slots this week i loaded it and it's pretty broken all things considered. guno is underrated as hell and fsight is just good when u can pair it with most random breakers to break walls down quickly. not posting this paste either since it's not my idea originally but tera ground blast skunk gooooobed.
FINALS
definitely my favorite team i was able to make this tour. zoroark is fairly antimeta after recent trends like decidueye picking up a lot in the past few weeks and it's super annoying to consider on lead even when u dont lead it. migo is nice since even if i have zoroark to pressure resists securing damage against most ghosts is good when facing hazard stack. av lurk gave me a bit more security into mons i'd want cb to come in on and the power difference wasnt super huge in most cases. this venu set's main goal was to be a fighting resist that didnt just give scrafty free turns/be able to consistently handle bulk up with or w/o tera. it ended up kinda loading into the perfect mu for it to show off so that was definitely a plus lmao.
sasha mncmt thanks to the both of you for getting me and giving me a rly fun tour after how blt went for me. even if we didnt win the chip it was a really fun environment and i'm glad you both trusted me to be a part of it.
sasha i really wish we went all the way and brought home the win since you definitely earned it. you were one of the most active and motivated managers i've had the experience of playing for and i think the rest of the team could agree this team would not have been the same without you putting so much into everything you aimed to help us with. if i knew my manager was going to be even 75% of what you were this tour thats the team i would bet on to win every time, even if it didn't work out this time i hope u realize how much your contributions gave to this team and you'll definitely get a tour one of these days.
gum crow crumbs thx for validating my tea <3 if i logged on and you two were in the chat i knew it would be a good time and we probably wouldn't get much prep done.
Beraldo ngl u made our culture the way it was this tour and idk if we would've had the same vibes if we never knew your story... hope u have fun hanging out on the sidelines in the future but it would be funny to team with you again for sure.
@ the rest of pranksters it was a really fun season and i'd be glad to team with most of you again in the future!
WEEK 1 this team was bad but my team already won The Week so i felt like bringing something i was probably never loading again this tour to throw off scout/have a little fun with it. hrav lowkey has no switchins to sflo so it's fun to just click buttons with. everything else is really standard so not much else to comment on with this, loaded into a real team and lost tho you hate to see it :/
WEEK 2this team is broken as hell. there's no way for any human to guess luza is gonna final gambit instead of trying to fillet away on something and it did exactly what it was supposed to do in this matchup. raikou was Not Fair so obviously i had to slot it on HO, i felt like i had enough to threaten grounds between hari scyther and veluza just normally clicking aqua cutter on lurk or just trading with gligar or muds so scald felt unnecessary. ghost let u sub on most of the random coverage that would be annoying for raikou and not have to worry about any boombursts either. the rest of the team is pretty standard besides scream since at this point in time i never saw anyone else use encore on cm. not sure why it wasn't that popular either but it's also OP in the right matchups since it can usually cm for free anyway and sub is fairly useless unless u find yourself against a tox mon.
WEEK 3i also liked this team a fair amount, kinda just threw together all the mons i thought would fit cool on balance while also sticking to my kind of outline i usually need to fill before i like something in this tier (Not Sharing Now but maybe in the future). skunk is sooooo good i was addicted to making teams with this mon and since ppl were loading a lot of balance that gave skunk free entry or allowed it to come in on the common fighting resists it was really nice at abusing everything. fire bull is still good since u dont need to worry abt random flame body and it's stabs are way more annoying to switch into than waterbull imo, especially since intel was everywhere it was common loading into gastros with other blanket physical mons and it feeling stuck a lot of the time.
WEEK 4why did i load this LMAOOOOOO. i was busy with wcop finals so i kinda just afk'd a bit more than normal and stole something random from sashas builder. normally i would give it the eye test or something of the like to make sure it was decent but since the week was decided and i wanted to make sure everything in wcop was going alright i just made sure i got the game done over anything else at that point lmfao. not putting the paste bc sasha didnt post any but this teams not good anyway so ur not missing out much.
pawmot was hella underrated at this point and a lot of teams main way of being able to deal with fightings long term was either pressuring it out or getting one of the physical proc's like static or flame body. pawmot doesnt rly care for either due to natural cure and it hits surprisingly hard with life orb. it can usually rest since it forces switches pretty easily so as long as u preserve a bit of health it can be a pain for the rest of the game depending on matchup. stuck with some standard-ish backbone of like florges coal muds and bomb was rly nice to have in balance mirrors or if i needed sucker. gbro was an alternate wincon or just something to pop tera and blow up grounds for pawmot to put in work later.
WEEK 6this is just some other ho but with a few underrated picks like tatsu which always seems good on paper but then u load it and it never hits the same. idk i don't have a ton to comment on this weeks team since everything is pretty explanatory shoutout TERA STEEL hariyama.
WEEK 7we were locked for playoffs wooooo! literally just took a team from blind draft and put a veluza and delphox on it and called it a day.
SEMISsasha did a lot of the beginning of this and we kinda just tuned it to be used for anyone but since we sourced some other stuff for the others slots this week i loaded it and it's pretty broken all things considered. guno is underrated as hell and fsight is just good when u can pair it with most random breakers to break walls down quickly. not posting this paste either since it's not my idea originally but tera ground blast skunk gooooobed.
FINALSdefinitely my favorite team i was able to make this tour. zoroark is fairly antimeta after recent trends like decidueye picking up a lot in the past few weeks and it's super annoying to consider on lead even when u dont lead it. migo is nice since even if i have zoroark to pressure resists securing damage against most ghosts is good when facing hazard stack. av lurk gave me a bit more security into mons i'd want cb to come in on and the power difference wasnt super huge in most cases. this venu set's main goal was to be a fighting resist that didnt just give scrafty free turns/be able to consistently handle bulk up with or w/o tera. it ended up kinda loading into the perfect mu for it to show off so that was definitely a plus lmao.
sasha mncmt thanks to the both of you for getting me and giving me a rly fun tour after how blt went for me. even if we didnt win the chip it was a really fun environment and i'm glad you both trusted me to be a part of it.
sasha i really wish we went all the way and brought home the win since you definitely earned it. you were one of the most active and motivated managers i've had the experience of playing for and i think the rest of the team could agree this team would not have been the same without you putting so much into everything you aimed to help us with. if i knew my manager was going to be even 75% of what you were this tour thats the team i would bet on to win every time, even if it didn't work out this time i hope u realize how much your contributions gave to this team and you'll definitely get a tour one of these days.
gum crow crumbs thx for validating my tea <3 if i logged on and you two were in the chat i knew it would be a good time and we probably wouldn't get much prep done.
Beraldo ngl u made our culture the way it was this tour and idk if we would've had the same vibes if we never knew your story... hope u have fun hanging out on the sidelines in the future but it would be funny to team with you again for sure.
@ the rest of pranksters it was a really fun season and i'd be glad to team with most of you again in the future!
bit late but wanted to drop some teams I was pleased with from the tour, and some I was less pleased with. I didn't build every week due to some other commitments, but it was a really enjoyable tier to build in when I did.
W4 vs Taka (L)
This is a pretty flexible BO / Balance that has a lot of paths to winning games. Melo with Relic Song can lure / break a lot of Steel types or Special walls, opening up space for CM Glowbro and Rotom. Likewise Tatsu is a scary breaker which synergises well with those mons. DD Scrafty can also end games or break walls for Glowbro or Rotom. The team is pretty standard but felt nice to play - vs Taka I massively overplayed around Sucker Punch Croak, which otherwise should have resulted in a W here.
W5 vs Floss (W)
Probably my favourite team I built this tour, which also got used by xavgb successfully in grand slam playoffs. I saw someone else using F Sight Guno with Spikes + Roar K9, and I'm not kidding when I say I'm addicted to clicking FSight and forcing something else to switch in. Everything on this team (bar Sandslash probably) punishes the Dark, Steel, and Psychic types that want to switch in to FSight. CC from Flamigo, EQ from Muds, and Knock from Skunk are all great options depending on the other team. In some games, there's a few options the opp could switch in, in which case you're better off doing FSight -> u turn -> Muds + Roar or Milotic + Dtail. vs Floss I got pretty lucky with the Dragon Tail pulling Glowbro opening up a huge hole for Flamigo, but tbh any Dragon Tail roll there would have been good. This team can struggle to break down Milotic / Gastro / Bellibolt, which Toxic Skunk helps massively with. Spikes is also an option on Slash, but without a Ghost type it doesn't feel great. I found EQ for the Coal matchup more helpful, but this choice probably depends on the team you think you're going to face.
W7 vs sufys (W)
I'd been using mostly offense so far, and felt like mixing things up a bit. Ishtar had wrecked me with some hazard stack in tests, and Houndstone is almost impossible to spin against, and the PU defoggers are kind of ass. Aurist came up with this first 6 and we played around with many different versions of it, before eventually dropping back to the original lineup. Double Protect and Double Toxic helps break down boots walls (Milotic, Gastro) that might otherwise stop wetbull eventually winning. Woch and Goodra also force loads of switches and rack up Spikes dmg. Vs Sufys, the game was sealed with an Overheat miss, but there were still some differing lines if it had hit.
Semis vs ho3n (L)
We noticed that Ho3n had lost to strong breakers, noticeably Specs Hoopa and CB bull vs Taka. I didn't really want to run a triple choice team though, so we switched Hoopa up to use Sub, which is still a super strong breaker and requires much less prediction. The EVs mean it pretty much always keeps sub vs Milotic Scald, and pops Sitrus after 2 subs so you can take advantage of Magician. Stealing an item is always fun, and just adds a bit more breaking power. After that we needed to be strong into prio users (K9, Decid) so Helmet skunk and Power Gem Coal help there. U Turn Gligar and Volt Switch Rotom help get Hoopa and Tauros in respectively, while Rotom is usually there to cleanup end game. I really liked this team, and probably played the game with ho3n tens of times on the ladder leading up to the actual game lol. Hitting Focus Blast on Bombird would have made the game a bit easier, and I didn't expect Tera to come out the turn it did. Had I not wasted my own Tera then Tera Dark Skunk would have won here, so another super close game.
Finals vs Beraldo (L)
Probably the team I'm least happy with on reflection, so it's a shame I brought it to finals lol. Looking at self scouts we noticed a real aversion to Steel types, and Demon Zong ended up performing pretty well in tests. Trick Scarf Florges can cripple walls usually prepared for Zong, and Croak shuts down Haze Milotic. Sticky Hold Boots Gastro absorbs Knock Off which is important here as there is no removal, with only Croak and Florges being vulnerable to hazards. Rotom gives some nice wallbreaking synergy, and Bombird makes a good Decid check / speed control. Overall though this team is a little too slow, and really suffers vs Fighting types. The matchup vs Beraldo was horrendous, and I'm not sure there were many plays to get out of that. I should have addressed a lot of those weaknesses we did find during tests, but I was probably a little to wedded to the idea of Demon Zong vs the reality that it's just not that good here. Somehow it's better in NU.
Thanks again to ishtar asa Aurist Bella Meri Berry for all the help building and testing this season! Goo dras
W4 vs Taka (L)
This is a pretty flexible BO / Balance that has a lot of paths to winning games. Melo with Relic Song can lure / break a lot of Steel types or Special walls, opening up space for CM Glowbro and Rotom. Likewise Tatsu is a scary breaker which synergises well with those mons. DD Scrafty can also end games or break walls for Glowbro or Rotom. The team is pretty standard but felt nice to play - vs Taka I massively overplayed around Sucker Punch Croak, which otherwise should have resulted in a W here.
W5 vs Floss (W)
Probably my favourite team I built this tour, which also got used by xavgb successfully in grand slam playoffs. I saw someone else using F Sight Guno with Spikes + Roar K9, and I'm not kidding when I say I'm addicted to clicking FSight and forcing something else to switch in. Everything on this team (bar Sandslash probably) punishes the Dark, Steel, and Psychic types that want to switch in to FSight. CC from Flamigo, EQ from Muds, and Knock from Skunk are all great options depending on the other team. In some games, there's a few options the opp could switch in, in which case you're better off doing FSight -> u turn -> Muds + Roar or Milotic + Dtail. vs Floss I got pretty lucky with the Dragon Tail pulling Glowbro opening up a huge hole for Flamigo, but tbh any Dragon Tail roll there would have been good. This team can struggle to break down Milotic / Gastro / Bellibolt, which Toxic Skunk helps massively with. Spikes is also an option on Slash, but without a Ghost type it doesn't feel great. I found EQ for the Coal matchup more helpful, but this choice probably depends on the team you think you're going to face.
W7 vs sufys (W)
I'd been using mostly offense so far, and felt like mixing things up a bit. Ishtar had wrecked me with some hazard stack in tests, and Houndstone is almost impossible to spin against, and the PU defoggers are kind of ass. Aurist came up with this first 6 and we played around with many different versions of it, before eventually dropping back to the original lineup. Double Protect and Double Toxic helps break down boots walls (Milotic, Gastro) that might otherwise stop wetbull eventually winning. Woch and Goodra also force loads of switches and rack up Spikes dmg. Vs Sufys, the game was sealed with an Overheat miss, but there were still some differing lines if it had hit.
Semis vs ho3n (L)
We noticed that Ho3n had lost to strong breakers, noticeably Specs Hoopa and CB bull vs Taka. I didn't really want to run a triple choice team though, so we switched Hoopa up to use Sub, which is still a super strong breaker and requires much less prediction. The EVs mean it pretty much always keeps sub vs Milotic Scald, and pops Sitrus after 2 subs so you can take advantage of Magician. Stealing an item is always fun, and just adds a bit more breaking power. After that we needed to be strong into prio users (K9, Decid) so Helmet skunk and Power Gem Coal help there. U Turn Gligar and Volt Switch Rotom help get Hoopa and Tauros in respectively, while Rotom is usually there to cleanup end game. I really liked this team, and probably played the game with ho3n tens of times on the ladder leading up to the actual game lol. Hitting Focus Blast on Bombird would have made the game a bit easier, and I didn't expect Tera to come out the turn it did. Had I not wasted my own Tera then Tera Dark Skunk would have won here, so another super close game.
Finals vs Beraldo (L)
Probably the team I'm least happy with on reflection, so it's a shame I brought it to finals lol. Looking at self scouts we noticed a real aversion to Steel types, and Demon Zong ended up performing pretty well in tests. Trick Scarf Florges can cripple walls usually prepared for Zong, and Croak shuts down Haze Milotic. Sticky Hold Boots Gastro absorbs Knock Off which is important here as there is no removal, with only Croak and Florges being vulnerable to hazards. Rotom gives some nice wallbreaking synergy, and Bombird makes a good Decid check / speed control. Overall though this team is a little too slow, and really suffers vs Fighting types. The matchup vs Beraldo was horrendous, and I'm not sure there were many plays to get out of that. I should have addressed a lot of those weaknesses we did find during tests, but I was probably a little to wedded to the idea of Demon Zong vs the reality that it's just not that good here. Somehow it's better in NU.
Thanks again to ishtar asa Aurist Bella Meri Berry for all the help building and testing this season! Goo dras
Attachments
Week 1: 
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(W vs Piyu)
Before the tour even started, and during week 0, I was already building. However, I clearly wasn't in my groove yet as I wasn't satisfied with any new builds, often losing to meta staples or just not being coherent enough. When week 1 started I took a look at my old teams and liked a lot of the ideas there, before remaking some concepts into something solid. The week 1, week 2, and an unrelated third team that never saw the light of the day (and deserved that fate tbh) were made this way, which reinvigorated my feel for building this tier. The concept of this particular team is fairly simple: The sand core for rocks, removal, speed control plus both offensive and defensive utility. The regen core provides both a physical and special wall, as well as a cleric, while zard is a good standalone threat that also provides some needed resists, and I also don't think enough teams respect its stab combo. Looking at these 5, the thing that annoys it the most would be Weezing. The Levitate matchup isn't great but ngas would ruin a large part of the team, and specs jelli happened to fit perfectly, giving the team a solid breaker that can abuse Weezing. At preview I am met with HO disguised as normal offense... I think? I get fairly lucky, but still only have to play straight lines as Tangela is able to ward off multiple physical sweepers with its bulk + regen. My opponent then presumably misreads the jelli set and doesn't click Agility t20, which could still win in case of sleep miss since they left Tangela in vs Vikavolt on purpose. Pretty bad game for showcasing the team's abilities but it popped off in tests and Tangela got an excellent mu.
Week 2:--
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(W vs Mada)
Probably my favorite, fun to play and feels ahead of the meta. The concept of life orb slash + goss is fairly simple, but interesting to build around. Immediately I notice Weezing once again sitting on the aforementioned duo, so the ridiculously strong specs Magneton is added. Knowing that I want to add Persian, I don't like my mu against fat and also realise my centi answer is the x button. Taunt Toxic Qwilfish covers these issues while also providing a very useful secondary fairy resist. Persian itself is not just a random anti-offense pick, allow me a little tangent. SSPU has pretty shitty ghost resists in general, this being the reason that Jellicent was S rank a year ago and Doublade is such a menace now. For the latter, people often use blanket physical checks that can hit it hard like conda, slash or quag, which can in turn be mitigated by terrain. Audino is setup fodder unless it's Encore (and it already wants to run 5 moves), Cinccinno is both useless against it and uncommon, Absol is mostly a ho pick, and any rogue cc would knock out 3 Sneasels. All of these but Audino are both uncommon and not very good at dealing with Doublade, due to being physically based and having low bulk. Last PUPL I mentioned that scraping the bottom of the barrel by using ZU dark types is effective, and nothing has changed in that regard. This is why Persian was chosen; the current team has a horrible Doublade mu while Qwilfish still technically dissuades fighting coverage. The bulk and speed also allow it to be good vs offense in general as mentioned before. In the actual game I face a team that scares me, but this fear is partially unjustified. As early as t1, my opponent switches Doublade into the Doublade answer, a gift horse I will not be looking in the mouth. On t6 I make an aggressive move that ends up working out, and by t14 I realise that Sandslash doesn't actually need sand up to get things done in this mu. On t18 I demonstrate why Superpower is the best 4th on Gigalith on a turn where he had to Heal Bell to prevent Magneton from sweeping on its own, and the game is pretty much over. The clerics are dead, everything is weakened and I safely play out the rest of the game despite a random helmet on quag preventing the epic 6-0. I also used this team for the first couple rounds of the ss cup because every single time my opponent would bring terrain g2 and get stuffed, a matchup that is significantly better than it looks at first glance.
Week 3:
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(L vs Meru)
This week reminded me of my 2022 NUPL; I expertly deduce my opponent's bring, build and bring a team with a great mu, and proceed to lose any advantage that provides through a combination of bad play and bad luck. This team obviously has a good mu into terrain, but I honestly think I should have gone harder with the cteam since it is difficult to put into words how obvious the terrain bring was to me. At this point in the tour I am 2-0 having used two semisand teams so far, while Meru is 0-2 having lost to various bullshit. Not only was grassy terrain a good choice looking at my scout, but I figured that, to some degree Meru was tired of losing with honest teams and decided to get passed some bullshit himself. Despite my w2 team being built during w1, I built a fuckton of teams w2 and w3, including 3 different versions of CB Aggron + Boots Galvantula, that for the life of them could not break fat. While some other teams would either be used later for ss cup or SSPL, it took a while to settle on the centi wishi team that performed mediocrely in tests. They support each other well typewise and wishi can slow pivot to bring in centi, goss and conda are defensive pieces, Doublade is there because it is Doublade and I just dedicated half a paragraph to gassing it up, scarf bee is there bc the team is slow as balls and I do not like terrain (some Thievuls started running Timid so this point is entirely invalid). With this safety measure, as well as centi and blade being generally good it, I don't dislike my odds at the start of the actual game. Expecting an Archeops lead instead of the hyperobvious Thwackey I get a bad lead which is not aided by a Power Whip miss into an instant poison on Eldegoss. (yes I burned Thwackey but it's just a pivot bot anyway) After colossally blundering the Thievul sequence I'm left in a pretty bad spot, and the Air Slash flinch sealed the deal. The endgame does nothing but demonstrate how a healthy Eldegoss could still have won that, which in turn was partially made possible due to the Qwilfish being high enough to feel comfortable not waterfalling the Centiskorch in the first place. The team sucks far less than both I and this game do.
Week 4:---
-
- (W vs Dj Breloominati)
Breloominati is probably the most straightforward player to prep for in this whole tour. Gigalith is THE #1, and he has some inexplicable phobia for, or categorical objection towards using it. Try to think of any miscellaneous brings that would be good if not for Gigalith, and use them anyway. Prep complete. Not only has he achieved great results, with admittedly varied teams, employing his mindset in the past, but he also lost the only game he actually brought Gigalith so far. This made me confident in my assessment and decide to comb through some of my new semisand builds that I built at 4am during week 3, and settle on this one. Not just because it does in fact contain the overrated galarticuno that benefits from spitfire's self-imposed gentleman's agreement, but also because tisse ferro weasel is a trio that I like and have used before. Looking at the team he brought I become aware of at least two things: 1. He was expecting fat sand since there is a Rhydon staring me down, 2. He was not expecting Sneasel as it absolutely rips his team apart. I lead Ferroseed bc I consider it a good midground between his special threats and Rhydon, but only after I send it out does my zu-pilled brain realise that yes, this does in fact run Heat Crash here. Despite the poorly played early-game sequence by me, I see 3 attacks on Rhydon with no other rocker, meaning that tisse is safe vs the sd-less don. Since my ghost resist is still a Sneasel however, I am forced to sack Ferroseed to the blades for two Iron Barbs hits and a defense drop. One weird galarticuno sack and positioning later, I try to let his Audino get pickpocketed by knocking my Sneasel's boots, which tragically doesn't work but does allow me to put further pressure on his team. T29 is a big turning point and honestly worthy of further analysis imo. If he attacks as I rock, my Gigalith cannot safely switch again and Ribombee has a good shot at winning the game. If I rock on him switching, he is dangerously close to getting in range of +2 Ice Shard from Sneasel. Seeing how I made the "safe" play last time and Rock Blasted, my read is he will think I'm going to risk it this time. I do not and his bee drops dead out of the sky. After that, a scarfed 33% Gigalith is pretty useless so I sack it for chip on Doublade, which later then gets sacked to Sneasel which ends the game. All I have to do after is pretend my Aromatisse is a Vaporeon and slowly but surely undo every ounce of progress he has made. Since I sack cuno to sleep I can simply keep trying to bring Sneasel back to make progress, so no amount of luck will help him here. Fun game with a fun team, not much else to add.
Week 5:---
-- (W vs Bloodace)
We face the Golurks this week, who at this point have not won a single ss game and are in the middle of frantically throwing all the subs at the wall until something sticks. I reason that none of them like their odds in a balance mirror vs me, rhetoric that is further aided by their presumable distaste of the slot. Knowing myself as well as Bloodace, I am expecting some sort of aggressive build, not necessarily but possibly HO. My teammates however, particularly ming, were reading a terrain bring. Since I am 3-0 with gigaslash and 0-1 without, surely they won't make such an obvious choice, perish the thought. Regardless, I decide on a Ninjask team as it can absolutely manhandle certain offenses while also being able to outspeed unburden sweepers. Centiskorch pairs up quite well with it and has a surprising amount of defensive utility, the sand duo also fits on almost every team and works well here. Seeing how I'm relying on double spin, and Ninjask is itemless anyway (the good set), I make the radical decision to put another item on centi (and helmet on goss but who cares). Do not let the fact that this paid off in the actual game distract you from that fact that this team hard loses to a well played Gourgeist, but I was simply not expecting such a tasteful and stylish mon from the Golurks. Speaking of the game, at preview I was disappointed but not surprised. This game has to be won, even if just for the sake of punishing the Golurks for a terrain bring. After a midground lead I dance around Thievul and take it out early, whereafter I assert my dominance by revealing sitrus centi and talking in chat. Nothing else of note happens while Bloodace's team slowly disintegrates and is unable to keep any sort of hazards up. My only regret this game is not clicking Swords Dance t38, as it would allow Ninjask to almost ohko Archeops and allow for a safer endgame where Gigalith doesn't need to risk a Rock Blast miss, while simultaneously being much more swag. Said Ninjask is ev'd to outspeed even Timid Unburden Thievul at +1, and sitrus on centi can honestly be lum or lefties too. Using this team grants +1000 aura, but facing gour causes -1000 elo.
Week 6:
--
---
(W vs mj)
For week 6 I have to play mj, who I absolutely don't want to lose to again. A combination of my record and the obscene hax he needed to defeat me last PUPL makes me confident. Frosmoth is underrated and not on my scout so far, so I decided to cook up multiple builds with it that would all end up getting used somewhere. The basic concept is similar to that of week 3's team in that wishi can slow pivot in moth while the two have great type synergy. Aggron makes an appearance because I haven't used it yet and I'm afraid of the big centipede, as some of my teams have been quite weak to it. Realizing it's significantly less unviable by replacing Protect on the standard set with Toxic, I uh... do that. Support Sandslash is so good and so nice to build with, easy hazards and hazard control. Boom, next. Something of note here is that it has Knock Off over my usually preferred Toxic, which is to help with the Doublade mu (just trust me, I know that sounds weird). It can afford this, since poisoning Eldegoss isn't as important if it can never spin because of Gourgeist anyway. Scarf bee provides some necessary defenses but also weakens moth's checks effectively. Gourgeist is needed as last since spinblocking helps a ton here and Sandslash breaks the team open effortlessly otherwise, thought about making it kasib over colbur just for Doublade but that seemed bad. I am curious to see what he will bring to this matchup, and safe to say, preview did not disappoint. While his team absolutely does look like something that one would find at around 1400 elo on the ladder, I can't even confidently say it's bad. To this day I am still unsure what the ZU, ZUBL, and should-be-ZU members are supposed to achieve, but it's not beating sand, since it kinda flounders against my favorite Gigalith set on its own. Both Perrserker and Frosmoth have a great mu so this is far from a done deal, but I do like my odds. After getting bee in I try to trick either regi or perr, but instead catch goss (maybe he predicted trickery that was a wild switch ngl). A little bit of pivoting from both sides later he reveals the Perrserker to be Choice Band Seed Bomb, which I use to get up rocks and apply longterm pressure. Wishiwashi gambling gives mixed returns and I end up staring down a boots Jolteon that outspeeds all my mons with Sandslash poisoned and at 28%, which forces both of us to trade material quickly. T25 is a key juncture, and I think he made a mistake using perr here. While I do not have any counterplay to it left, it takes hazards and pivot damage, and after triple checking it cannot be scarf or av I realise I can weaken it enough and sack bee to sweep with moth. He ends up revealing to be the bad tisse set, but his only out atp was obviously clicking Toxic and hoping I wasn't sub (the good set). He could have gone Jolteon t25 to force bee out and claim a kill, forcing me to bring out the only thing that doesn't lose to it and 50/50 between Quiver Dance on Jolteon staying in or Ice Beam into Perrserker switching in, weakening it enough. Going Aromatisse was also an option to try and 1v1 bee, even if it loses momentum. It looked bleak for him regardless, with rocks and spikes up vs a team that relies so heavily on cb perr, and no way to spin thanks to gour. Frosmoth can be an absolute monster, and there's plenty of weak special attackers that can't break Substitute, which is definitely the best 4th move unless u are running [redacted, see week 8].
Week 7:--
--
- (L vs gum)
The team that I was planning to use against gum had been ready for a while, and it was a shame we only faced the Pranksters this late. There's obviously two points of interest here, the first being Druddigon. Glare + Life Orb Outrage allows it to trade with pretty much anything, while Fire Punch and Gunk Shot are necessary for steels and fairies. Faster threats and offensive checks like Ribombee ideally get glared on switchin and nuked thereafter. It has no big offensive holes apart from being unable to significantly damage Aggron, but then I should win by virtue of my opponent using Aggron (real talk there is a slash and a ferro it just gets used as setup fodder). The other standout pick here is Skuntank, which has several interesting boons. It's a dark type that isn't weak to blade cc, its stab combo is very potent and will break down ground types over time, and with the combination of Nasty Plot and a Toxic immunity it can stallbreak efficiently (quag will eventually get poisoned and flinched). Double poison type is actually not a problem at all because Weezing and Skuntank cover each other, by only having one weakness each that the other capitalizes on. Since this was a must-win week for them, I assumed gum would bring one of their standard and safe teams, which this would do well against. However, that fact was apparently lost in communication somewhere because gum actually assumed they were out of the tour altogether and had the aim of just bringing a fun team, which brings us to the actual game. Staring down my third terrain of the tour, I lead Druddigon as it does well into pretty much every lead and can start paralyzing stuff immediately. Gallade lead scares me, and to prevent losing to Shadow Sneak I click the nuke button immediately and remove the threat. I got questioned later for sacking the Weezing to Archeops, but I absolutely think it was the right call. The three setup sweepers all abuse it simply for existing, Thwackey is not an issue, and I can't really touch steelvally which I assume is mixed anyway (so wisp into taunt wouldn't even really help). T13 is a critical juncture and I take what seems to be the right route. Skuntank is needed for Thievul and Sandslash will die to Grassy Pledge from mixedvally on terrain, so I go with the only remaining option and remove it with Gigalith (who was healthy enough bc I sacked Weezing). I play the sequence out and hope that I either get a flinch or that Aurorus is Modest so slash outspeeds, but it ends up being Rock Polish and sweeping. I kick myself for not taunting the Aurorus, but soon after found out it was Timid and would have needed a flinch regardless. Weeks later, gum posts the team and it is revealed that the steelvally is sd/multi/flame/tfang, and not at all a Work Up variant I assumed one would be on a Grassy Terrain team (or punishes the use of centi as a steel check despite gum saying that this was the main purpose). This means that 1. Weezing could have been useful vs steelvally after all (but still not beat it) and 2. I could have answered it with slash instead of giga, the former of which ended up being useless in the endgame anyway, but hindsight is 20/20 and I think I mostly made the right calls ingame. The only loss this tour that I'm not too pissed about, and with a team that is definitely worthwhile.
Semifinals:----- (L vs Meru)
For semifinals, the plan was to make bank on several trends (spoilers it didn't work out). Still paranoid of terrain despite it being kind of an obvious pick (twas obvious w3 asw, didn't stop them), I decided to bring full sand since Lycanroc under sand will outspeed and ohko Thievul. The style has some flaws but I rate it higher than most, and imo this is pretty much an optimized build. The sand trio is mandatory, Vikavolt and Whimsicott provide the necessary resists, pivoting and utility while Frosmoth is a solid tertiary sweeper that not only complements lycan and slash well, but can also catch fire and ice types off guard with Weather Ball. This alleviates one of Frosmoth's biggest weaknesses, especially two weeks after I showed an affinity for sub moth. What eventually made me settle on this particular team instead of the other one I had in mind (it was a Gallade team that ended up winning in SSPL), was the fact that I hadn't used anything close to HO all tour. With a solid mu against both terrain and standard stuff I head into the game with a lot of pressure. At preview I take a lot of time since I immediately notice they are seemingly using the exact team mj used to beat gum this week, and try to gain as much info as possible. In classic mj fashion the team once again contains a ZU, a ZUBL, and a should-be-ZU mon. Curious why meru brought a team that doesn't even do that well into my typical stuff, and isn't even his to begin with afaik I try to make the most of what I consider to be a very playable mu. Unfortunately I don't do a good job of showing off the team as my play will be riddled with mistakes. Despite looking amazing as early as t3, I don't U-turn t7 or Stone Edge t11 like I should have, instead semi tilting to the instant Shed Skin proc and thinking "the lucky bastard" will go for it again. T14 should absolutely have been a double from me, but things seem to stabilize as Frosmoth gets into a sweeping position and does manage to catch the Glastrier off guard with Weather Ball. (it either no longer had Heavy Slam or was very confident I would switch to Vikavolt) After that I needed to either Quiver Dance t31 or just switch out with moth before it gets to that point and try later. After another very annoying Shed Skin activation I lose my physical sweepers, and with it the game. Frosmoth is too low and Audino just has to clean up the stragglers. Vikavolt and Whimsicott needed to be leveraged earlier, since they were never beating Audino, to make way for either a Lycanroc or Sandslash sweep. Frustrating to lose like this (again), but just like last time with better play I could have easily won despite the luck. Idk if meru thinks meri invented Toxic Audino, but atp who really cares. Team good, obb bad. This could be the motto of the entire dump tbh.
SSPU sets itself apart from other gen 8 lower tiers by having a very dynamic hazard game, as well as the prevalence of weather in the form of semisand cores, making it interesting to build and play. I had fun innovating and optimizing it and hope to see it stay strong.Vanilluxe did nothing wrong.
----- (W vs Piyu)Before the tour even started, and during week 0, I was already building. However, I clearly wasn't in my groove yet as I wasn't satisfied with any new builds, often losing to meta staples or just not being coherent enough. When week 1 started I took a look at my old teams and liked a lot of the ideas there, before remaking some concepts into something solid. The week 1, week 2, and an unrelated third team that never saw the light of the day (and deserved that fate tbh) were made this way, which reinvigorated my feel for building this tier. The concept of this particular team is fairly simple: The sand core for rocks, removal, speed control plus both offensive and defensive utility. The regen core provides both a physical and special wall, as well as a cleric, while zard is a good standalone threat that also provides some needed resists, and I also don't think enough teams respect its stab combo. Looking at these 5, the thing that annoys it the most would be Weezing. The Levitate matchup isn't great but ngas would ruin a large part of the team, and specs jelli happened to fit perfectly, giving the team a solid breaker that can abuse Weezing. At preview I am met with HO disguised as normal offense... I think? I get fairly lucky, but still only have to play straight lines as Tangela is able to ward off multiple physical sweepers with its bulk + regen. My opponent then presumably misreads the jelli set and doesn't click Agility t20, which could still win in case of sleep miss since they left Tangela in vs Vikavolt on purpose. Pretty bad game for showcasing the team's abilities but it popped off in tests and Tangela got an excellent mu.
Week 2:
----- (W vs Mada)Probably my favorite, fun to play and feels ahead of the meta. The concept of life orb slash + goss is fairly simple, but interesting to build around. Immediately I notice Weezing once again sitting on the aforementioned duo, so the ridiculously strong specs Magneton is added. Knowing that I want to add Persian, I don't like my mu against fat and also realise my centi answer is the x button. Taunt Toxic Qwilfish covers these issues while also providing a very useful secondary fairy resist. Persian itself is not just a random anti-offense pick, allow me a little tangent. SSPU has pretty shitty ghost resists in general, this being the reason that Jellicent was S rank a year ago and Doublade is such a menace now. For the latter, people often use blanket physical checks that can hit it hard like conda, slash or quag, which can in turn be mitigated by terrain. Audino is setup fodder unless it's Encore (and it already wants to run 5 moves), Cinccinno is both useless against it and uncommon, Absol is mostly a ho pick, and any rogue cc would knock out 3 Sneasels. All of these but Audino are both uncommon and not very good at dealing with Doublade, due to being physically based and having low bulk. Last PUPL I mentioned that scraping the bottom of the barrel by using ZU dark types is effective, and nothing has changed in that regard. This is why Persian was chosen; the current team has a horrible Doublade mu while Qwilfish still technically dissuades fighting coverage. The bulk and speed also allow it to be good vs offense in general as mentioned before. In the actual game I face a team that scares me, but this fear is partially unjustified. As early as t1, my opponent switches Doublade into the Doublade answer, a gift horse I will not be looking in the mouth. On t6 I make an aggressive move that ends up working out, and by t14 I realise that Sandslash doesn't actually need sand up to get things done in this mu. On t18 I demonstrate why Superpower is the best 4th on Gigalith on a turn where he had to Heal Bell to prevent Magneton from sweeping on its own, and the game is pretty much over. The clerics are dead, everything is weakened and I safely play out the rest of the game despite a random helmet on quag preventing the epic 6-0. I also used this team for the first couple rounds of the ss cup because every single time my opponent would bring terrain g2 and get stuffed, a matchup that is significantly better than it looks at first glance.
Week 3:
----- (L vs Meru)This week reminded me of my 2022 NUPL; I expertly deduce my opponent's bring, build and bring a team with a great mu, and proceed to lose any advantage that provides through a combination of bad play and bad luck. This team obviously has a good mu into terrain, but I honestly think I should have gone harder with the cteam since it is difficult to put into words how obvious the terrain bring was to me. At this point in the tour I am 2-0 having used two semisand teams so far, while Meru is 0-2 having lost to various bullshit. Not only was grassy terrain a good choice looking at my scout, but I figured that, to some degree Meru was tired of losing with honest teams and decided to get passed some bullshit himself. Despite my w2 team being built during w1, I built a fuckton of teams w2 and w3, including 3 different versions of CB Aggron + Boots Galvantula, that for the life of them could not break fat. While some other teams would either be used later for ss cup or SSPL, it took a while to settle on the centi wishi team that performed mediocrely in tests. They support each other well typewise and wishi can slow pivot to bring in centi, goss and conda are defensive pieces, Doublade is there because it is Doublade and I just dedicated half a paragraph to gassing it up, scarf bee is there bc the team is slow as balls and I do not like terrain (some Thievuls started running Timid so this point is entirely invalid). With this safety measure, as well as centi and blade being generally good it, I don't dislike my odds at the start of the actual game. Expecting an Archeops lead instead of the hyperobvious Thwackey I get a bad lead which is not aided by a Power Whip miss into an instant poison on Eldegoss. (yes I burned Thwackey but it's just a pivot bot anyway) After colossally blundering the Thievul sequence I'm left in a pretty bad spot, and the Air Slash flinch sealed the deal. The endgame does nothing but demonstrate how a healthy Eldegoss could still have won that, which in turn was partially made possible due to the Qwilfish being high enough to feel comfortable not waterfalling the Centiskorch in the first place. The team sucks far less than both I and this game do.
Week 4:
----- (W vs Dj Breloominati)Breloominati is probably the most straightforward player to prep for in this whole tour. Gigalith is THE #1, and he has some inexplicable phobia for, or categorical objection towards using it. Try to think of any miscellaneous brings that would be good if not for Gigalith, and use them anyway. Prep complete. Not only has he achieved great results, with admittedly varied teams, employing his mindset in the past, but he also lost the only game he actually brought Gigalith so far. This made me confident in my assessment and decide to comb through some of my new semisand builds that I built at 4am during week 3, and settle on this one. Not just because it does in fact contain the overrated galarticuno that benefits from spitfire's self-imposed gentleman's agreement, but also because tisse ferro weasel is a trio that I like and have used before. Looking at the team he brought I become aware of at least two things: 1. He was expecting fat sand since there is a Rhydon staring me down, 2. He was not expecting Sneasel as it absolutely rips his team apart. I lead Ferroseed bc I consider it a good midground between his special threats and Rhydon, but only after I send it out does my zu-pilled brain realise that yes, this does in fact run Heat Crash here. Despite the poorly played early-game sequence by me, I see 3 attacks on Rhydon with no other rocker, meaning that tisse is safe vs the sd-less don. Since my ghost resist is still a Sneasel however, I am forced to sack Ferroseed to the blades for two Iron Barbs hits and a defense drop. One weird galarticuno sack and positioning later, I try to let his Audino get pickpocketed by knocking my Sneasel's boots, which tragically doesn't work but does allow me to put further pressure on his team. T29 is a big turning point and honestly worthy of further analysis imo. If he attacks as I rock, my Gigalith cannot safely switch again and Ribombee has a good shot at winning the game. If I rock on him switching, he is dangerously close to getting in range of +2 Ice Shard from Sneasel. Seeing how I made the "safe" play last time and Rock Blasted, my read is he will think I'm going to risk it this time. I do not and his bee drops dead out of the sky. After that, a scarfed 33% Gigalith is pretty useless so I sack it for chip on Doublade, which later then gets sacked to Sneasel which ends the game. All I have to do after is pretend my Aromatisse is a Vaporeon and slowly but surely undo every ounce of progress he has made. Since I sack cuno to sleep I can simply keep trying to bring Sneasel back to make progress, so no amount of luck will help him here. Fun game with a fun team, not much else to add.
Week 5:
----- (W vs Bloodace)We face the Golurks this week, who at this point have not won a single ss game and are in the middle of frantically throwing all the subs at the wall until something sticks. I reason that none of them like their odds in a balance mirror vs me, rhetoric that is further aided by their presumable distaste of the slot. Knowing myself as well as Bloodace, I am expecting some sort of aggressive build, not necessarily but possibly HO. My teammates however, particularly ming, were reading a terrain bring. Since I am 3-0 with gigaslash and 0-1 without, surely they won't make such an obvious choice, perish the thought. Regardless, I decide on a Ninjask team as it can absolutely manhandle certain offenses while also being able to outspeed unburden sweepers. Centiskorch pairs up quite well with it and has a surprising amount of defensive utility, the sand duo also fits on almost every team and works well here. Seeing how I'm relying on double spin, and Ninjask is itemless anyway (the good set), I make the radical decision to put another item on centi (and helmet on goss but who cares). Do not let the fact that this paid off in the actual game distract you from that fact that this team hard loses to a well played Gourgeist, but I was simply not expecting such a tasteful and stylish mon from the Golurks. Speaking of the game, at preview I was disappointed but not surprised. This game has to be won, even if just for the sake of punishing the Golurks for a terrain bring. After a midground lead I dance around Thievul and take it out early, whereafter I assert my dominance by revealing sitrus centi and talking in chat. Nothing else of note happens while Bloodace's team slowly disintegrates and is unable to keep any sort of hazards up. My only regret this game is not clicking Swords Dance t38, as it would allow Ninjask to almost ohko Archeops and allow for a safer endgame where Gigalith doesn't need to risk a Rock Blast miss, while simultaneously being much more swag. Said Ninjask is ev'd to outspeed even Timid Unburden Thievul at +1, and sitrus on centi can honestly be lum or lefties too. Using this team grants +1000 aura, but facing gour causes -1000 elo.
Week 6:
----- (W vs mj)For week 6 I have to play mj, who I absolutely don't want to lose to again. A combination of my record and the obscene hax he needed to defeat me last PUPL makes me confident. Frosmoth is underrated and not on my scout so far, so I decided to cook up multiple builds with it that would all end up getting used somewhere. The basic concept is similar to that of week 3's team in that wishi can slow pivot in moth while the two have great type synergy. Aggron makes an appearance because I haven't used it yet and I'm afraid of the big centipede, as some of my teams have been quite weak to it. Realizing it's significantly less unviable by replacing Protect on the standard set with Toxic, I uh... do that. Support Sandslash is so good and so nice to build with, easy hazards and hazard control. Boom, next. Something of note here is that it has Knock Off over my usually preferred Toxic, which is to help with the Doublade mu (just trust me, I know that sounds weird). It can afford this, since poisoning Eldegoss isn't as important if it can never spin because of Gourgeist anyway. Scarf bee provides some necessary defenses but also weakens moth's checks effectively. Gourgeist is needed as last since spinblocking helps a ton here and Sandslash breaks the team open effortlessly otherwise, thought about making it kasib over colbur just for Doublade but that seemed bad. I am curious to see what he will bring to this matchup, and safe to say, preview did not disappoint. While his team absolutely does look like something that one would find at around 1400 elo on the ladder, I can't even confidently say it's bad. To this day I am still unsure what the ZU, ZUBL, and should-be-ZU members are supposed to achieve, but it's not beating sand, since it kinda flounders against my favorite Gigalith set on its own. Both Perrserker and Frosmoth have a great mu so this is far from a done deal, but I do like my odds. After getting bee in I try to trick either regi or perr, but instead catch goss (maybe he predicted trickery that was a wild switch ngl). A little bit of pivoting from both sides later he reveals the Perrserker to be Choice Band Seed Bomb, which I use to get up rocks and apply longterm pressure. Wishiwashi gambling gives mixed returns and I end up staring down a boots Jolteon that outspeeds all my mons with Sandslash poisoned and at 28%, which forces both of us to trade material quickly. T25 is a key juncture, and I think he made a mistake using perr here. While I do not have any counterplay to it left, it takes hazards and pivot damage, and after triple checking it cannot be scarf or av I realise I can weaken it enough and sack bee to sweep with moth. He ends up revealing to be the bad tisse set, but his only out atp was obviously clicking Toxic and hoping I wasn't sub (the good set). He could have gone Jolteon t25 to force bee out and claim a kill, forcing me to bring out the only thing that doesn't lose to it and 50/50 between Quiver Dance on Jolteon staying in or Ice Beam into Perrserker switching in, weakening it enough. Going Aromatisse was also an option to try and 1v1 bee, even if it loses momentum. It looked bleak for him regardless, with rocks and spikes up vs a team that relies so heavily on cb perr, and no way to spin thanks to gour. Frosmoth can be an absolute monster, and there's plenty of weak special attackers that can't break Substitute, which is definitely the best 4th move unless u are running [redacted, see week 8].
Week 7:
----- (L vs gum)The team that I was planning to use against gum had been ready for a while, and it was a shame we only faced the Pranksters this late. There's obviously two points of interest here, the first being Druddigon. Glare + Life Orb Outrage allows it to trade with pretty much anything, while Fire Punch and Gunk Shot are necessary for steels and fairies. Faster threats and offensive checks like Ribombee ideally get glared on switchin and nuked thereafter. It has no big offensive holes apart from being unable to significantly damage Aggron, but then I should win by virtue of my opponent using Aggron (real talk there is a slash and a ferro it just gets used as setup fodder). The other standout pick here is Skuntank, which has several interesting boons. It's a dark type that isn't weak to blade cc, its stab combo is very potent and will break down ground types over time, and with the combination of Nasty Plot and a Toxic immunity it can stallbreak efficiently (quag will eventually get poisoned and flinched). Double poison type is actually not a problem at all because Weezing and Skuntank cover each other, by only having one weakness each that the other capitalizes on. Since this was a must-win week for them, I assumed gum would bring one of their standard and safe teams, which this would do well against. However, that fact was apparently lost in communication somewhere because gum actually assumed they were out of the tour altogether and had the aim of just bringing a fun team, which brings us to the actual game. Staring down my third terrain of the tour, I lead Druddigon as it does well into pretty much every lead and can start paralyzing stuff immediately. Gallade lead scares me, and to prevent losing to Shadow Sneak I click the nuke button immediately and remove the threat. I got questioned later for sacking the Weezing to Archeops, but I absolutely think it was the right call. The three setup sweepers all abuse it simply for existing, Thwackey is not an issue, and I can't really touch steelvally which I assume is mixed anyway (so wisp into taunt wouldn't even really help). T13 is a critical juncture and I take what seems to be the right route. Skuntank is needed for Thievul and Sandslash will die to Grassy Pledge from mixedvally on terrain, so I go with the only remaining option and remove it with Gigalith (who was healthy enough bc I sacked Weezing). I play the sequence out and hope that I either get a flinch or that Aurorus is Modest so slash outspeeds, but it ends up being Rock Polish and sweeping. I kick myself for not taunting the Aurorus, but soon after found out it was Timid and would have needed a flinch regardless. Weeks later, gum posts the team and it is revealed that the steelvally is sd/multi/flame/tfang, and not at all a Work Up variant I assumed one would be on a Grassy Terrain team (or punishes the use of centi as a steel check despite gum saying that this was the main purpose). This means that 1. Weezing could have been useful vs steelvally after all (but still not beat it) and 2. I could have answered it with slash instead of giga, the former of which ended up being useless in the endgame anyway, but hindsight is 20/20 and I think I mostly made the right calls ingame. The only loss this tour that I'm not too pissed about, and with a team that is definitely worthwhile.
Semifinals:
----- (L vs Meru)For semifinals, the plan was to make bank on several trends (spoilers it didn't work out). Still paranoid of terrain despite it being kind of an obvious pick (twas obvious w3 asw, didn't stop them), I decided to bring full sand since Lycanroc under sand will outspeed and ohko Thievul. The style has some flaws but I rate it higher than most, and imo this is pretty much an optimized build. The sand trio is mandatory, Vikavolt and Whimsicott provide the necessary resists, pivoting and utility while Frosmoth is a solid tertiary sweeper that not only complements lycan and slash well, but can also catch fire and ice types off guard with Weather Ball. This alleviates one of Frosmoth's biggest weaknesses, especially two weeks after I showed an affinity for sub moth. What eventually made me settle on this particular team instead of the other one I had in mind (it was a Gallade team that ended up winning in SSPL), was the fact that I hadn't used anything close to HO all tour. With a solid mu against both terrain and standard stuff I head into the game with a lot of pressure. At preview I take a lot of time since I immediately notice they are seemingly using the exact team mj used to beat gum this week, and try to gain as much info as possible. In classic mj fashion the team once again contains a ZU, a ZUBL, and a should-be-ZU mon. Curious why meru brought a team that doesn't even do that well into my typical stuff, and isn't even his to begin with afaik I try to make the most of what I consider to be a very playable mu. Unfortunately I don't do a good job of showing off the team as my play will be riddled with mistakes. Despite looking amazing as early as t3, I don't U-turn t7 or Stone Edge t11 like I should have, instead semi tilting to the instant Shed Skin proc and thinking "the lucky bastard" will go for it again. T14 should absolutely have been a double from me, but things seem to stabilize as Frosmoth gets into a sweeping position and does manage to catch the Glastrier off guard with Weather Ball. (it either no longer had Heavy Slam or was very confident I would switch to Vikavolt) After that I needed to either Quiver Dance t31 or just switch out with moth before it gets to that point and try later. After another very annoying Shed Skin activation I lose my physical sweepers, and with it the game. Frosmoth is too low and Audino just has to clean up the stragglers. Vikavolt and Whimsicott needed to be leveraged earlier, since they were never beating Audino, to make way for either a Lycanroc or Sandslash sweep. Frustrating to lose like this (again), but just like last time with better play I could have easily won despite the luck. Idk if meru thinks meri invented Toxic Audino, but atp who really cares. Team good, obb bad. This could be the motto of the entire dump tbh.
SSPU sets itself apart from other gen 8 lower tiers by having a very dynamic hazard game, as well as the prevalence of weather in the form of semisand cores, making it interesting to build and play. I had fun innovating and optimizing it and hope to see it stay strong.
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