OU RBY OU Discussion Thread

Texas Cloverleaf

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Consensus in 2016 would be meaningfully different from consensus now, given the large shifts in metagame and playerbase. If it's true as Amaranth says that the meta may reach a state of stasis in which freeze and sleep are the defining outcomes in who wins a game and that practice is undesirable, then we should not dismiss out of hand possible solutions.

I'm not interested in debating whether we should or should not remove 'cleric clause', it's far too early for that. I'm simply interested in exploring what that change would look like? How might the metagame evolve? How might the strategies change? Would the outcome even be a positive one? As well as the question of whether amaranth's assertions are true.

If after that we come to a positive consensus on its effects we could consider the removal of 'cleric clause', not before.
 
A remark I would like to make here is that freeze and sleep can be defining in RBY by nature. But players have the choice in the teambuilder (and during a battle) to either go with a strategy that is part of a trend, or try to react to this trend and counteract it. So I think it's not the meta itself but the players who make those choices. There is considerable depth in the RBY metagame despite the relatively low amount of viable Pokémon.

Back in SPL X, Amaranth, who has my respect, brought Jynx/Cloyster/Articuno and I don't see many complaints about this either. And there's also an ongoing discussion in the RBY community discord which has a decent amount of tour players and even one or two who played in the last SPL and they gave a brief overview of their opinion on it. A lot of people are fine with the metagame as it is now and I am one of them.
 

Amaranth

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A remark I would like to make here is that freeze and sleep can be defining in RBY by nature. But players have the choice in the teambuilder (and during a battle) to either go with a strategy that is part of a trend, or try to react to this trend and counteract it. So I think it's not the meta itself but the players who make those choices. There is considerable depth in the RBY metagame despite the relatively low amount of viable Pokémon.

Back in SPL X, Amaranth, who has my respect, brought Jynx/Cloyster/Articuno and I don't see many complaints about this either. And there's also an ongoing discussion in the RBY community discord which has a decent amount of tour players and even one or two who played in the last SPL and they gave a brief overview of their opinion on it. A lot of people are fine with the metagame as it is now and I am one of them.
A freak one-time counterteam to a specific player's tendencies cannot be used as an example in a discussion that is speaking of broader metagame trends. To be clear, freezing something was not necessarily key to that team's functionality - it can work just fine by sleeping Starmie + exploding Chansey with Cloyster, which was the intended gameplan at the time, though if I recall that game correctly I failed to do that and did end up freezing Chansey with Articuno. But either way, the viability of a specific team in a specific game between two specific players two years ago doesn't mean the slightest thing in terms of today's trends.

You can't say "just counter freeze fishing lol" because you have a shitload of strategies you need to try to counter all at once. If you go all in on being strong against early Ice Beams (eg. using back Jynx), then well, you are using back Jynx. There's a reason it's not played very often otherwise, it's pretty weak in loads of other scenarios. With your argument, nothing is ever broken or uncompetitive because "you can just play around it lol". Which is true, you always -can- do, I mean people play Anything Goes in modern gens for heaven's sake, but it doesn't mean it's particularly healthy or competitive.

I've always been a big proponent of pushing the boundary of what's "meta" in this tier, you don't have to tell me that things have counters. I'm the first guy who will Victreebel you if you run Starmie+Rhydon too much, I'm the first guy who will Gengar you if you drop EQ on your snorlaxes, so on and so forth. This makes me all the more qualified to speak when I say I've searched far and wide for Sing Chansey counters, and the available options are generally high variance. I'm not calling for action really, but I think it is incorrect if not outright dishonest to pretend like the metagame isn't shifting in a direction that makes the better player win slightly less often than they used to. Maybe (probably) it's still within a perfectly acceptable boundary to most people, but I feel like we ought to try and agree on the facts first before deciding if they're good or bad facts
 
. I'm not calling for action really, but I think it is incorrect if not outright dishonest to pretend like the metagame isn't shifting in a direction that makes the better player win slightly less often than they used to.
My point here is that there is not such a kind of shift because those strategies were always around in the first place, and I could and maybe should have dug up a greater variety of teams to point this out.

You can't say "just counter freeze fishing lol" because you have a shitload of strategies you need to try to counter all at once. If you go all in on being strong against early Ice Beams (eg. using back Jynx), then well, you are using back Jynx. There's a reason it's not played very often otherwise, it's pretty weak in loads of other scenarios. With your argument, nothing is ever broken or uncompetitive because "you can just play around it lol". Which is true, you always -can- do, I mean people play Anything Goes in modern gens for heaven's sake, but it doesn't mean it's particularly healthy or competitive.
I'm aware of this, but like I said, each player can choose to put emphasis on covering certain threats to an extent in the teambuilder and they are
aware of the trade-offs they make in that regard...

I've always been a big proponent of pushing the boundary of what's "meta" in this tier, you don't have to tell me that things have counters. I'm the first guy who will Victreebel you if you run Starmie+Rhydon too much, I'm the first guy who will Gengar you if you drop EQ on your snorlaxes, so on and so forth.
Where did I say that you weren't aware of those? I was addressing the prestatus mod concept and the general choices of players, but I should probably have picked a variety of recent and past teams to showcase the choices of players instead of just cherry-picking one team.

I'm not calling for action really, but I think it is incorrect if not outright dishonest to pretend like the metagame isn't shifting in a direction that makes the better player win slightly less often than they used to
But what I did was merely point out that strategies like that already existed in the past? And say that players have the choice to build the team they want?
 
I wanted to chime in and say that back-Jynx isn't a great strategy (anymore), having played with it a lot in the Wrap era and then watching it fall flat on its face in 2020. Switching in to catch an Ice Beam and deny at least one chance of freeze sounds great...but back Jynx getting revealed in the first 2-3 turns is setting it up for failure long-term. Nevermind that a lot of people will run back Starmie even in a blind macthup because it is that good...you can trade sleep for para, but you don't want to do that, para is effectively an OHKO on your Jynx. Any other ice-type would be a better pick especially because para doesn't hurt them as bad and they actually have a defense stat.
I don't have an opinion on cleric clause because I've come to accept RBY for its....uniqueness.
 

Amaranth

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But what I did was merely point out that strategies like that already existed in the past? And say that players have the choice to build the team they want?
This is really all I want to reply to, so I'll keep it brief:
1) If you think these strategies already existed you are strongly misunderstanding the implications of Sing Chansey's popularity on the rest of the status game and how much Sing Chansey teams enable and encourage freeze fishing, much moreso than what it used to be when turn 1 twave was standard. If you think you have loads of examples to bring to the table, bring them all and I will shoot them down one by one. I'm sorry but you are straight up inventing things here.
2) If you choose to play teams and opening lines that are strong against lead Ice Beam Starmie (for example), you either volunteer yourself to take a huge disadvantage in other matchups to the point where it is not really worth it, or commit to fighting variance with more variance. Lead Jolteon is horrible into a lot of match ups, twaving the Starmie turn 1 puts you significantly far behind against enemy Sing Chansey; going Jynx on it works but leads to variance fishing from the other end, meeting IB Mie with another IB Mie 'works' (50% of the time) but isn't particularly skillful, and any other esoteric plays are esoteric for a reason. Player choice is very restricted, given that you are building to win across all matchups and not just against one specific brand of one specific playstyle.
 
1) If you think these strategies already existed you are strongly misunderstanding the implications of Sing Chansey's popularity on the rest of the status game and how much Sing Chansey teams enable and encourage freeze fishing, much moreso than what it used to be when turn 1 twave was standard. If you think you have loads of examples to bring to the table, bring them all and I will shoot them down one by one. I'm sorry but you are straight up inventing things here.
The subject was freeze and sleep being defining in the metagame, and freeze-fishing in specific....not only Sing Chansey. The conversation started when "freeze-fishing" by lead Starmie Blizzard was brought up.

I'm not calling for action really, but I think it is incorrect if not outright dishonest to pretend like the metagame isn't shifting in a direction that makes the better player win slightly less often than they used to
...that in your eyes was part of a metagame shift, even though "fishing for freezes" was always a thing..

In SPL VI lead Starmie Blizzard was used which was pretty standard back then (of course there was lead eggy too but they would also just go for blizzard on Chansey which is totally normal and part of the game and it still is now)

And how about some 2018 teams: - Blizzard Lapras, Blizzard lead Starmie
- Standard Jynx + Sing Lapras
 
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Amaranth

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Amaranth, I am merely looking at the history of the game and maybe you could also use some ice to cool down.
You're looking at the history of the game... by referencing games that I played. I know appeal to authority is fallacious and all, but come on now. Try to listen to what I'm saying.

Starmie with Blizzard, Lapras, whatever you want - they've always existed. Those are not the problem. The problem is that at the time you'd have your paralyzed Alakazam vibing and absorbing every Chansey Ice Beam ever clicked with 0 fear. And you had to have a paralyzed Alakazam or sometimes Starmie, because it was optimal for your opponent to click Thunder Wave turn 1, and if you instead chose to have a paralyzed Chansey it was too easy to abuse (since it didn't have Sing, and so Psychic users would be able to heavily pressure it with the help of Snorlax and all). Nowadays no one is giving you a Thunder Wave to block all those Ice Beams (due to how bad it is for sleep), and so you have -nothing- to absorb Ice Beam. You play into it and pray. If people tried to do that in 2018 or earlier, they'd just fall behind in paralysis and get pressured far too much and collapse before the freeze landed. Now that sort of quick paralysis, high pressure playstyle is highly undesirable because it loses to turn 1 Sing Chansey switchin, something that we had not found back then.
And before you get back to me by mentioning Jynx, yes, Jynx bypassess all these things. However, Jynx was garbage. Jynx winrate rose to 45% in SPLXI and finally 50% in SPLXII, right along with Sing Chansey's popularity surge.

I think I'm done with this argument, your choice if you want to listen to me or not
 
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Isa

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In SPL VI lead Starmie Blizzard was used which was pretty standard back then (of course there was lead eggy too but they would also just go for blizzard on Chansey which is totally normal and part of the game and it still is now)
hello i was the winningest player in rby in spl 6 so i feel qualified to speak on this particular matter
not only was spl 6 a _completely_ different metagame from the one currently seen, being played literally days after crystal_ discovered the body slam mechanics, but you're also making some wild assumptions here on how we played lead starmie. lead starmie was used to take paralysis with, para the opposing sleeper as you hit them with your strongest attack, and if you saw a chansey you switched out because thunderbolt on chansey was still everywhere. using blizzard on a chansey that stayed in was not a thing.
lead exeggutor was not a thing in spl 6 either. im not gonna sit around and watch all those PO replay files to count how many there were but i can assure you that there was a consensus that lead exeggutor was Not Good.
 
Hello Isa. I haven't said lead Eggy was good, I have said it was around, based on this game between Marcoasd and The_Chaser in SPL VI.
https://pastebin.com/Rk9BnbYg

but you're also making some wild assumptions here on how we played lead starmie.
But I looked at the replay before I posted that..

Start of turn 1

The_Chaser called Exeggutor back!
The_Chaser sent out Chansey!
The foe's Starmie used Blizzard!
Chansey lost 86 HP! (12% of its health)

Start of turn 2

The_Chaser called Chansey back!
The_Chaser sent out Snorlax!
The foe's Starmie used Blizzard!
Snorlax lost 114 HP! (21% of its health)
 
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emma

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I’m on my phone (while on vacation) so this will be a quick post.

I have no idea what RBY OU was like during SPL 6 since SPL 6 was in 2015 when I was 12 years old. However, when we have people like Isa who actually played in the tournament, and Amaranth who has also been around for a long time and is one of the best at documenting metagame trends, I think it’s smart to listen to them.

Yes, I’m sure there are replays where Starmie clicked Blizzard Turn 1, but that doesn’t mean it was a “thing” at the time. I think it’s pretty clear that exchanging Thunder Wave Turn 1 was very standard, and as Amaranth explained, you needed a paralyzed Alakazam or Starmie every game, which helped blocked Ice Spam. Isa made the same points, and I would consider them them pretty reliable when discussing SPL 6 since they were actually there. One replay that showcases Lead Exeggutor or Starmie clicking Blizzard does not represent the metagame; instead I would encourage you to listen to those who were there.

I would also agree that Sing Chansey is at its peak right now. I’m sure others have used it before, but it was nowhere near the popularity and strength it is today. One-off usage does not mean it is a “thing” or metagame defining.

This conversation has most likely run its course. Discussion around 1 Sleep vs. 2 Paralyzed was good, as well as talking about the current metagame trends (i.e. Sing Chansey).

Personally, I am currently working on a review of my PPL RBY OU season, where I mostly go over my prep process while also quickly analyze my games.

So far, I’m really happy about how getting our own subforum is going, and I hope we can continue to grow it :blobthumbsup:
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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I was also an active RBYer at that time and can confirm what Isa says, you would still see the occasional lead Egg but it was universally known to be the worst lead choice due to inferior matchups against everything not named Alakazam, losing your egg to an opposing sleep lead (including another Egg) was devastating. You matchup picked it sometimes against a Zam player, and even then if you ate a full para or two, your half health paralyzed egg was a big disadvantage in the game. In many ways the fall of lead Egg was the precursor to Starmie's rise and people slowly learned that the advantages Egg was thought to have for so long weren't as evident as it seemed.
 
I said I'd come back and give a few more details about Status in RBY. I had a look over every game in SPL XII and compiled a few statistics with regards to what happened in the game, who won and the general impact that Freeze and Sleep had within the game. It's very hard to capture a full game with just some statistics and given I never was properly educated...well just look at the spreadsheet lol it isn't exactly some Vapicuno masterpiece.

I did skim through every game over a period of a few hours mostly to get myself reacclimatized with RBY and how top players are approaching different situations but also doing this in the meanwhile so I'll give some commentary that can accompany the below.

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Let me talk a bit about my general feel from watching the games and the general impact of Sleep.

It's well known that Freeze is a death sentence, except for the 1 out of the 119 SPL games played where a Moltres thawed a Frozen pokemon (I honestly wasn't sure how to categorize that one) and having looked a bit more at the games I don't quite classify Sleep as the same level of a death sentence but it is somewhere very close. If there was a general trend throughout and I would have added more columns had I not already been 20 games in was that RBY OU games often boiled down to who could incapacitate more of the opponents Pokemon and I wish I had been able to capture this better. In around 50% of the games, there was a Freeze of some sort, but if you aren't getting lucky or throwing off enough Ice Beams, there is a significant impact on who is getting off a Sleep. One of the things I was interested in was in the situation where one player got his Pokemon slept whilst not reciprocating on the opponent and ended up winning, how common was that victory without getting a freeze and essentially making a 5v6 into a pseudo 5v5. Winning in the Pseudo 5v6 at least in SPL XII was at 17.65%. Granted this is a relatively small sample size but an interesting tidbit nontheless.

In general though, to no-ones surprise, Sleep is actually everywhere. Thawing was literally more common than a game where neither player got slept which in a way was a shame to see but also indicative of where RBY OU is at present. Over half of games both Players would trade Sleep at least at some point in the game. Whilst 36% of the time, a Pokemon slept would wake, this doesn't actually fill in the whole picture about how damning sleep is as a status. What would often happen in very long games is there would be 4-5 sleep data points and 2-3 wakes and the issue would be as soon as you manage to wake up your Pokemon...well something needs to go to sleep so you would end up sacking the same pokemon to sleep later on in the battle or perhaps a different pokemon depending on the state of the game. On the alternate end, there was cases of slept pokemon being KOed and then another Pokemon being slept but I found that to be less common as people generally did preserve their Sleep fodder until later on in the game where it was more imperative to try wake them up to gain an edge. If I was to make a guess, somewhere around 15-20% would be my number on "this Pokemon did get slept but woke up and had an impact on the game". I didn't do a count on how people ended up getting Slept, but really it was just a large spread and no one particular move came to mind that was particularly getting people.

Another thing I did find interesting was the fact that you were less likely to win the game if you were unable to trade a Sleep onto your opponent than if you got Frozen. Freeze is clearly the more damning status but I wonder if the lowered winrate is to do with the approach taken to the game.

Regardless, I just was bored one weekend and hence this post came to be. Have a wonderful Sunday :>
 

emma

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Quick post but here are two resources I always have up while playing RBY OU.

Speed Tiers & Critical Hit Odds

Jolteon / 130 / 25.4%
Alakazam / 120 / 23.4%
Starmie / 115 / 22.3%
Gengar, Tauros / 110 / 21.5%
Zapdos / 100 / 19.5%
Jynx / 95 / 18.6%
Moltres / 90 / 17.6%
Articuno / 85 / 16.6%
Dragonite / 80 / 15.6%
Cloyster, Victreebel / 70 / 13.7%
Lapras / 60 / 11.7%
Exeggutor / 55 / 10.7%
Chansey / 50 / 9.8%
Rhydon / 40 / 7.8%
Slowbro, Snorlax / 30 / 5.9%

Recovery Failures

Snorlax (Rest) - 268 / 51.2% or 12 / 2.3%
Chansey (Softboiled) - 448 / 63.7% or 192 / 27.3%
Starmie (Recover) - 68 / 21.1%
Exeggutor (Rest) - 138 / 35.1%
Alakazam (Recover) - 58 / 18.5%
Rhydon (Rest) - 158 / 38.3%
Cloyster (Rest) - 48 / 15.8%
Jynx (Rest) - 78 / 23.4%
Jolteon (Rest) - 78 / 23.4%
Slowbro (Rest) - 138 / 35.1%

There are some really good resources for both Speed (1, 2) and Recovery Failures (1, 2), but I like using a much smaller and personalized list so it's easy to find relevant Pokemon.

I'm really curious if other players do the same, and if they do, what resources they use. Feel free to respond with whatever resources you always have at the ready below.
 

Amaranth

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I'm really curious if other players do the same, and if they do, what resources they use. Feel free to respond with whatever resources you always have at the ready below.
Never had these up except when Tony tried to turn me into a responsible RBYer, which I am not - he gave up fairly quick

I'm firmly of the opinion that all the time and mental energy spent on building the habit to notice recovery fails could be spent in much more constructive ways, like actually learning how to play and whatnot. I've studied countless games and still learn loads any time I self-review, there is only one player in the world who could justify spending their time on this and that's because he's already mastered basically everything else. Maybe noticing it comes a lot more natural to you than it comes to me, fair enough if so, but it really doesn't look or feel worth the effort when we all collectively still suck so much

As for critrates they're helpful if you want to math out some endgames but in a majority of cases approximations will be good enough service, if I really need it I just do /math x/512 in chat - the instances in which I can fully math out an endgame are probably even rarer than the amount of times I run into a game-deciding recovery fail from either side
 

FriendOfMrGolem120

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When I play for a tournament game I always have a text file with the recovery numbers open and import sets for each decently viable pokemon from a text file into the calc to safe time later. I used to have this page with critical hit rates bookmarked but haven't used it in my recent games. I find that it can be useful for calculating if Hyper Beam from Tauros + the roll you need is more likely to happen than the effective 9% freeze chance from Blizzard, but yeah, /math x/512 works just as well.
 
I'm really curious if other players do the same, and if they do, what resources they use. Feel free to respond with whatever resources you always have at the ready below.
absolutely unequivocally not. i have no idea what the numbers are where chansey fails soft or lax fails rest either. i've sorta memorized the crits (roughly, not exactly) though which is probably a bit more important.
 

Hipmonlee

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For the recovery numbers, just remember the % and that your HP will always end in 8 (or 2 for the second one) unless your HP stat is something weird like Lapras.

Having said that, I have not put much effort into memorising the numbers. Off the top of my head its 19 for Zam, 21 for Mie and 63 for Chansey. Based on the numbers you put there I am probably wrong for one of Zam or Chansey.

Crit rates I committed to memory long ago, but have long since forgotten most of them. I know Jolt is 25, Tauros is 21 and Lax is 5.5ish and everything else sorta fits in between. So like a Lapras is probably low teens, and a Zam is gonna be a bit under 25..

Speed tiers everyone should just know, not knowing speed tiers is basically unforgivable...

When I am really putting in effort I do put together a piece of paper with a list of all the pokemon that might be on my opponents team and key moves to look out for. Then I cross things off when I rule them out. But I very rarely put in that much effort these days. Most of it just becomes intuition fairly quickly, and then you stop playing for a couple of years and you forget everything.
 
I feel like I have a very good idea of Crit Rates and I feel they are pretty important to know at least a good approximation. Crit rate is just a product of Base Speed anyways which everyone should definitely know. As for recovery fails, I see them being very niche and its better to focus on other areas of gameplay. Sometimes I will check, but generally it is based off a feeling that I am close to a number rather than having them memorised. I'm somewhat of a heretic where I use quite a lot of feel based gameplay.

I think it's pretty important to have your mind focused on the game and how best to play out the situation on your screen or what sort of read you have on your opponent. It may well be suspicion, but I think moving your eyes and brain away from the game to look at a resource makes you play worse. The only outside thing I use therefore is the Calculator.
 

EB0LA

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So with my early elimination from GC, I can now present you all with a team I think is anti current meta.

Current meta to me rn is: singibChansey, ibrefSnorlax, restCloyster, restJolteon.

Basic play is going Chansey T1 absorbing twave then proceeding to singing, followed by a barrage of frz fishing.

Now to combat this I present to you the META BUSTER, courtesy of disgraced tour banned Ortheore. I scouted this savage team from his run in the 2021 Winter Seasonal.
Replay: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-1348714893-6d1pj1v9lobre9xvkbazrhdytfjhb4apw

The Team: https://pokepast.es/3ad623d87a85ba67

TWAVING T1 IS STILL VERY VIABLE!*
*but you need to have a solid plan of action...

DOUBLE AMNESIA is that plan!

Spread Para, get max value out of Jolteon, then get to work making things like Snorlax get into rest with your reflectChasey, and switch into Snorlax and set up amnesia & it is time to get to work. They will even sack a boom to get rid of it, giving way for Slowbro. I am not proficient enough with this team yet, as I haven't practiced it much for fear of it getting scouted, and I am not the one who built it, but I think this line can shake up simple reflect/Ib spam meta. While they're fishing you're actually getting progress with twave status and setting up some serious spc stats.

Good luck & happy RBYing.
 
Ngl the current meta feels incredibly lame lol. Theres no reason to click T1 Twave, Zam cant reliably break chansey, no reason to even start talking about Psychic from starmie. You cant spread para because chansey is just sitting there trying to apply sleep and freeze, if you play offensively you get punished.

I guess it puts more emphasis on the last 4 mons that you dont plan on foddering, but then again tauros also gets stronger because it doesnt have to hax through too much stuff. The meta is probably better than the "oh I have vic and you dont have faster mons so I autowin" but still it aint good
 

emma

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Hey all, I played RBY OU in this year's edition of Pokemon Perfect League and wanted to recap my season. I didn't expect to get drafted since I had never played RBY OU in a team tournament before and am generally a subpar player, but then once player signups closed I realized basically everyone was getting picked so it looked like I was probably going to get in. What I did not expect was to go for 9k and be a starter since, again, I'm not that good, but I'm thankful it happened since it gave me a chance to play some "high stakes" (I use that very loosely) RBY. Looking at the pool, I seemed to have lucked out since a lot of big names that played last year (all of Heroic Troller, MetalGro$$, Nails, and Mako) weren't playing this year, which is probably how I ended up playing. Despite this, I still had pretty low expectations for myself, so honestly if I could get to 3 or 4 wins (in a 7 week regular season), I would have considered that a success.

I'm only going to cover Weeks 1-3 in this post because I don't want to make people read too much for something that's not going to be a groundbreaking resource, and also I haven't gotten to the other weeks yet (but I will).

Week 1 vs. SadisticNarhwal (1-0)

Going in, I was pretty scared since SadisticNarwhal is really good (went 8-1 last year, staple in SPL and other high level tournaments, etc.), while I am less good. Generally against players who better than me (which are most of them), I like using some sort of cool tech they won't expect to give me an advantage in the builder. Unfortunately, RBY has a total of 13 OU Pokemon so this isn't really a great option, especially since I'm only really comfortable with a minimal amount of archetypes. One edge I did have was the lots of public replays of him, but minimal scouting to be done for me. I went through all his SPL replays and took basic notes on what compositions he used.
Week 1
Jynx / Starmie / Rhydon
Starmie / Exeggutor / Alakazam

Week 2
Starmie / Exeggutor / Rhydon
Jynx / Starmie / Jolteon
Alakazam / Starmie / Jolteon

Week 3
Jynx / Exeggutor / Starmie
Alakazam / Exeggutor / Starmie

Week 4
Starmie / Victreebel / Rhydon
Jynx / Starmie / Alakazam
Starmie / Exeggutor / Rhydon

Week 5
Jolteon / Exeggutor / Starmie
Gengar / Exeggutor / Starmie

Week 6
Starmie / Slowbro / Rhydon
Jynx / Starmie / Rhydon
Gengar / Exeggutor / Alakazam

Week 7
Alakazam / Exeggutor / Zapdos
Alakazam / Exeggutor / Starmie

Week 8
DNP

Week 9
Starmie / Exeggutor / Rhydon
Gengar / Exeggutor / Alakazam
Gengar / Exeggutor / Starmie

Sleepers
Exeggutor: 9
Jynx: 5
Sing Chansey: 2
Gengar: 4 (all with Exeggutor)

Game 1 - Gengar / Starmie / Alakazam
Game 2 - Starmie / Cloyster / Alakazam
Game 3 - Starmie / Exeggutor / Alakazam

I saw his high Exeggutor usage, so I wanted to bring multiple variations of Sing Chansey. I decided to lead off with Gengar / Starmie / Alakazam since it's probably one of my favorite teams to use, and it also eats up Jynx teams with no back-up Sleeper. Game 2 I prepared a variation of my other favorite Sing Chansey archetype, Starmie / Cloyster / Jolteon, but swapped in Alakazam due to high Rhydon and low Zapdos usage. I accidentally brought Jolteon over Alakazam in the actual game, but it ended up helping me a ton. Game 3 I planned to switch it up by using the most common six in SPL, Starmie / Exeggutor / Alakazam, since he had decent Jynx and very low Sing Chansey usage.

Game 1, I stayed in with Gengar Turn 4 because I wanted to scout for Sing. Despite Jynx with a back-up Sleeper being generally uncommon, it was something he used in SPL and I lost little by staying in and clicking Night Shade. There was also a chance he went back to Jynx to absorb my Explosion. Turn 10, I start engaging in a Chansey Freeze War, which probably wasn't the most optimal play, but I did it anyway because I know SadisticNarwhal is better than me, and if I'm able to freeze his Chansey, I get a massive advantage. It was a risk I was willing to take, and it payed off. On Turn 21 I was able to Counter the Snorlax and at that point effectively win. Counter isn't standard (and not the best option) on the Gengar / Starmie / Alakazam archetype, but I ran it anyway to gain a surprise edge. Good players (like SadisticNarwhal) know my Chansey should be running Thunder Wave and Sing last so they don't need to scout for Counter, which let me successfully take out the Snorlax. Again, running Counter isn't optional, but I do think there's merit to switching up strategies sometimes so you don't just do the same thing over and over again. Despite freezing the Chansey and countering the Snorlax, it still came down to my Alakazam having to 1v1 Starmie (which I should eventually do), but it probably shouldn't have been this close because of my early advantages. I think my play was fine in this game, but nothing to write home about.

Game 2 I got much luckier to the point where it wasn't a real game. I went for second Double Kick critical hit in a row despite it not being the best play and got rewarded, and then got an 5-turn Sleep against Gengar. I also got bailed at the end by paralyzing into full paralyzing the Zapdos, since if he clicks Agility the end game gets a lot more complicated. I also did not "play to my strengths" much throughout the game. I kept switching Jolteon into Starmie when I had a full health Chansey which could just sit in front of it forever and fish for freezes. This lead to my Zapdos check being quite beat down before Zapdos even came into the game. I also directly switch my Snorlax into his Snorlax, despite having a full health Cloyster in the back. I don't even know what I was saving Cloyster for, since while I didn't expect Zapdos last, I was expecting Alakazam which I'm not going to use Cloyster to check exactly. Overall, it was a pretty stupid game where I played subpar and got rewarded so my apologies. Regardless, I was still excited to win Week 1 (against an SPL player too despite getting very lucky), so that was nice at least.

Week 2 vs. Frrf (1-1)

For some reason, I didn't look at his Week 1 replays, and instead relied on two sets of games my teammates linked me.
Set 1
Starmie / Exeggutor / Rhydon
Starmie / Cloyster / Jolteon

Set 2
Starmie / Exeggutor / ??
Starmie / Exeggutor / Gengar
Alakazam / Exeggutor / Lapras

Sleepers
Exeggutor: 4
Sing Chansey: 1
Gengar: 1 (with Exeggutor)

Game 1 - Starmie / Cloyster / Alakazam
Game 2 - Gengar / Starmie / Alakazam
Game 3 - Starmie / Exeggutor / Alakazam

Once again, an opponent with lots of Exeggutor and not a lot of anything else. I ended up planning the same three teams as last week, except this time swapping the order of my Games 1 and 2 teams. Part of this is SadisticNarwhal and Frrf having similar scouts, while another part of this is me only being comfortable with a limited amount of playstyles. One of my goals has a player is for sure to branch out, since me loading up the same three teams over and over again is for sure going to get me trouble if I ever actually have to play in a high stakes match. Furthermore, using different structures will definitely help me improve as a player, since I can go through new sequences and get experience in more situations.

Game 1 I wasn't able to get my Sleep off early, which seems to be the downfall of Sing Chansey teams. Instead of playing 6v5, I'm playing pseudo 4v6, since my Chansey can't effectually Sleep block at only 44%. While I would have loved to not get fully paralyzed and miss Sing for four straight turns, I definitely got greedy by not healing up Turn 3; at that point I was at 58% and just asking for trouble. He did a good job locking me out of healing up my Chansey, so I feel like this game was over very quickly. Sing Chansey (and especially with Cloyster and normally Jolteon) is a very strong archetype, but sometimes you just lose very early on either against Jynx freezing your Chansey Turn 2 or Starmie / Alakazam 1v1ing your Chansey.

In Game 2 I get bailed out very early by freezing his Chansey after mistiming my Gengar explosion, but am never able to get off a Sing with my Chansey. I had a super free Sing Turn 10, but decided to reveal I was running Counter, and then for some reason I force myself out ahainst a frozen Chansey despite me having all the momentum. I easily could have sat there and at least clicked Ice Beam and forced him to make progress, but instead I go hard Snorlax and have to sack Starmie to Sleep. After his Exeggutor boomed, I could have gone Chansey once more and picked up my free pseudo-OHKO. Turn 28 I finally am ready to click Sing, but unfortunately get critical hit and suddenly the game gets interesting, but thankfully my Alakazam doesn't get paralyzed by Body Slam, and my Tauros should be able to 1v1 a Perisan, even without the Body Slam critical hit. Again, despite the win, I definitely didn't play all too well and need to use it to improve as a player next time.

Game 3! I get very greedy early on and directly switch my Exeggutor into a Snorlax Body Slam and get paralyzed, which means I can no longer break down Jynx since I can't outspeed. I definitely should gone to my own Snorlax to force a Rest, and then bring in Exeggutor freely to get my Sleep off. Similar to Game 1, I can't get my Sleep off which makes the game extremely difficult to win. The game goes by pretty quickly since he blows up my Chansey with Snorlax and then dents my Sleeping Starmie with Gengar, to the point where he has an Articuno against no Chansey and basically no Starmie. What did help me at that point was having a healthy Alakazam, which I made sure didn't get paralyzed by leaving in my Snorlax against his Chansey. Of course, this is what opened up Articuno to come in for free, but it made sure I didn't basically auto lose when it was revealed. Now at the end, despite not being able to get my Sleep off, I was in a pretty decent position to win. Even after Jynx woke up after one turn, it had to either land a critical hit Blizzard or get a full paralysis to prevent my Exeggutor from booming on it. If I'm able to successfully boom, my fully healthy Alakazam should be able to 1v1 Articuno when factoring in full paralysis and Psychic drops, as well as the fact that I had a full health (although just having Rested) Snorlax if I need to stall Blizzard PP. Despite the mess up at the beginning, I think I played this one pretty alright and easily could have won if things went my favor at the end, but that's just part of the game.

Week 3 vs. AttackonSamurott (2-1)

Once again, I had limited replays to look at which made me quite scared! I did, however, finally find his Week 2 replays (he didn't play in Week 1) despite them not being in the Week 2 or Replays thread.
Week 2
Gengar / Zapdos / Articuno
Jolteon / Exeggutor / Starmie / Zapdos (no Chansey)

Game 1 - Jynx / Starmie / Rhydon
Game 2 - Starmie / Exeggutor / Rhydon
Game 3 - Gengar / Starmie / Alakazam

Obviously, the first thing I noticed was a Double Electric team, which I had also see him use in a Youtube video (although with Chansey), so I felt pretty confident that some variation of that was coming. I knew I wanted to use Rhydon for the first time, and I didn't mind loading it up twice since I wanted to collect my free win against the Double Electrics. I also finally whipped out Jynx, which I enjoy using since sometimes I can just click Lovely Kiss into Blizzard and win against better players in two turns. There's really not much else to say here; I knew I wanted to counterteam with Rhydon and then planned to use my favorite Gengar / Starmie / Alakazam since I'm really comfortable with it.

Game 1 was over when he lead Exeggutor, which, along with the other bad leads, Jynx claims souls against, and then the game was for sure over when I froze his Chansey Turn 4. By far my easiest game of the season, and unfortunately there was nothing my opponent could do to fight back.

After him not bringing the Double Electrics Game 1 and me not revealing Rhydon, I knew it was coming Game 2. Lo and behold, he lead Jolteon and I knew I had won the set at team preview. I didn't feel the need to go Rhydon Turn 1 since I had an Exeggutor, which let me get my Sleep off very quickly. Generally with Exeggutor teams, I think you have to be more patient (see my game last week), but against Lead Jolteon, bringing it in Turn 1 seems to be pretty safe. I was also able to boom his Exeggutor after mine did what it had to, so to go along with my Rhydon into Zapdos, I was playing 5v4. I don't know why I clicked Hyper Beam Turn 12; that was for sure my worst play during this set. Of course, I had such a huge advantage that it didn't really matter much anyway. I also got owned by his Amnesia Snorlax when mine got frozen by Blizzard, but I think it would have been fine even if he stayed in Turn 19 and killed my Tauros since I could revenge with Rhydon (which also walled his last Pokemon Zapdos), and still had a faster-than-Tauros Starmie and a full health Chansey. One play I did like was on Turn 28 when I go to Chansey on the double to Tauros. This midground covers both Zapdos attacking, and Tauros coming in on my Rhydon as long as I don't get critical hit by Hyper Beam. Of course, this play wasn't insanely great or cool, or even something to celebrate, but I thought I would mention it anyway because it made me feel good inside. All-in-all, I played very lazily and sloppy once I knew I had a free win locked up, and definitely should have been more careful throughout the game.

Part 2 soon.

I am also going to work on updating the RBY OU sample teams soon (tm), so if anyone has some great suggestions to add feel free to message me on Discord at emma#0404.
 
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Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
I was invited by BKC alongside Nails and Troller to chat about RBY metagame trends and related things, check out our conversation here!

[snip video]
When y'all do long-form voice chat, you should have the VC avatars on-screen so it's easier for people (those actually looking at the video anyway) to tell who is talking at any given moment. :blobthumbsup:
 
I think the hatred towards the meta right now is unjust and actually not shared by as many people as it seems, a vocal minority. Early sleep has been the trend for awhile and it happens to allow for more freeze fishing, but it's exaggerated to the point of sounding like the entire meta game plan is to sleep and spend every next turn looking for a freeze. This is far from true and there are many teams that can appreciate spreading paralysis after sleep. Freeze fishing is certainly more common now, but I find it rarely will ruin the game-to-game experience. I think part of it is also just appeal to age, talking about old meta highly simply because it's old. Maybe you even have some nostalgia for it. Personally, I like the new meta, and it's fine to disagree with me on that; but it's far from an evil RNG meta where you get sleep and throw the dice for a 10% OHKO every turn.
No there have been enough arguments in this thread on why its so strong to go for sleep+freeze early on in the game. RBY is in general a slower tier, so getting rid of 1-2 pokemon from the start is really huge. I dont know what you mean with "evil rng meta" but having less options makes you more prone to hax also because Tauros is waiting in the backline
 
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