Metagame SCL I UU Discussion

[pokemonisfun]

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8uu-588742

Low effort analysis Week 7 game between SiTuM and Askov

Usual disclaimers this is just for fun

I realize I’ve run out of energy and effort to do longer analysis and frankly huge long posts might intimidate people. I’m just giving my thoughts, politely, so others please feel free to join in.

Situm brought a standard HO with Excadrill lead. Askov brought a Slowking bulky offense with Salazzle and Conkeldurr. Who has the MU advantage - well it’s clear as the game goes on.

Askov gets the lead pretty much correct and limits Situm to only gettin SR, while Askov manages to start 6-5 and activate his Conkeldurr’s Flame Orb (important vs hyper offense to get a stronger Mach Punch). But Situm can’t be too disappointed - Excadrill is after all a suicide lead.

Askov continues to pretty much inarguably get the next several turns correct - switching Excadrill in on Goltres’ Flying STAB, and finishing off by going 6-4 by turn 6 by correctly playing around Aegislash.

Situm though nicely sees a Gyarados opportunity and takes it - perhaps a mistake by Askov if the Salazzle had Toxic, he likely should have went for it? Or maybe see if Sludge Wave + Draco Meteor KOs? It’s at least interesting for us spectators since don’t know Salazzle’s set.

We don’t know the Togekiss spread either but it barely lives a Waterfall on turn 10, meaning it was KOd Ice Flinch but Situm didn’t really know that. To those learning still - these turns are the ones absolutely critical in doing damage calcs.

Conkeldurr does manage to stop Gyarados’ rampage - notice how it had to be burned for this to work so the good lead pays off for Askov. In comes Azumarill and Askov gives up Excadrill in order to get Salazzle in safely to revenge kill - a nice find by him as it’s not too intuitive that Salazzle survives an Aqua Jet.

I’m not sure the Nasty Plot by Situm was really needed - it gave extra chances for a Thunder Wave/Ice Beam Freeze but Askov apparently didn’t have that anyways. I’m also not sure Teleport was necessary from Askov - maybe Scald Crit Burn plus Mach Punch crit was another out he had besides relying on Hurricane miss.

Nevertheless Hurricane connects and Situm wins a rather smooth, if also far from guaranteed from him. I immensely enjoyed the flow from Situm, to me it seems like he always picked the correct next sweeper to bring in. But I do think Askov played exceptionally well (as he did the other game I analyzed of him), really did well to give himself chances. It’s clear to me that Askov just had a horrid match up that he was still favored to lose despite playing so well.

 

[Accel]

Another week another vid, ty to Indigo Plateau, LNumbers, and TSR for joining me this week!

 

[pokemonisfun]

I imagine we’re all busy these days with other commitments but here’s some tournament highlights out of respect for the effort our UU finalists have - I resist putting records down because they are often an unfair representation.

HL game from Indigo Plateau: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8uu-589118 week 8

This was as close as to as perfect as you can get in Pokemon, in both play and prep and that’s truly about the highest praise I can give. IP correctly prepared against Soulwind’s Hyper Offense by brining Trick Room, notoriously effective vs Hyper Offense. IP starts off correctly noting Mesprit will get important SR and likely set up a Trick Room attack. He even shows a near technique on turn two with Encore, surely unexpected.

From there, his play can be described as relentless and accurate. In every single turn his advantage never noticeably decreases and even the “predictions” that SW get correct like turn 15 and 16 hardly do anything as he’s far too behind at this point and IP is doubtless correct for taking the route he did.

There was nothing spectacularly flashy in this game from IP except perhaps Encore, but I’d say this is the best UU game in the tournament so far from an execution and preparation perspective. If IP gets a game like this again, I’d favor him 95-5 over the best gen8uu players.

HL game from Accel:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8uu-585261 week 5

In terms of match up, this is very different from IP’s game, Robjr quite clearly has the advantage in this game although it’s not as large as IP’s advantage vs SW. The combination of Skarmory, Zarude, and Diancie should be extremely hard for Accel to break and Nidoking is extremely hard to defend against after Slowking gets Toxiced on turn 9 by Rob’s clever tactic.

This does not deter Accel who makes an incredible amount of predictions to keep positioning himself for gains. On turns 16, 21, and 29 he makes the hard call of switching Excadrill on Thunderbolt. On the three turns after those turns, he immediately gets it right again by doubling out of Skarmory or correctly killing Nidoking after Rob buckles to pressure. Even to an amateur player, it should be clear how incredible these predictions were, if any of the first 5 were wrong (turn 16, 17, 21, 22 and 29), it could have proved disastrous for Accel. This game may have had the highest ceiling for all of UU this SCL, bringing back a poor position to a completely winning position after Nidoking dies with cold, hard predictions.

What does it mean for the upcoming game?

Both of these guys have incredibly high ceilings - as I’ve said, IP played more or less a perfect game and Accel played a nearly perfect and much harder game in the two HLs (but both played 7 other games this SCL which I don’t have time to fully review). I’d say Accel was more or less perfect as well after the Slowking was Toxiced, which again was in a much harder game and therefore more impressive to me.

But that IP was able to receive such a large advantage from his prep, well, it will absolutely not bode well for Accel if it happens again here. As good as the predictions were for Accel, I believe all top players know they much rather play clear positions where they don’t have to make risky predictions to win. Nobody is going to be able to consistently make a string of 5, 10, or 15 hard predictions in a row, indeed Accel’s HL game was just that - his HL because you can’t always be that perfect.

By my count/analysis, Accel has brought bulky offense 5 times, balance 1 time, hyper offense 1 time, and stall 1 time. There's some variety here, but you'd guess Accel to bring bulky offense again.

IP has brought bulky offense 5 times, balance 1 time, hyper offense 1 time, and TR 1 time. Again, some variety but bulky offense is the clear preference of most tournament players in UU, not just these two.

I'd still give the creativity edge to IP, TR is just a great idea but IP had to use very niche mons (Marowak) for TR to be optimal unlike Accel's stall - not like Garbador was necessary. I believe IP pushes the metagame a bit more with picks like Toxtricity and Runerigus showing up in his scout.

What about their supporters? I actually do not know who is supporting them unfortunately so I cannot give insights, but Adaam is good friends with both and Jade seems to be good friends with Accel. LNumbers had IP support in his run so I imagine the favor may be returned. I don't think this is a huge factor either way.

Everything about this match up feels so even. I don't think anyone can make a justifiably confident prediction. I do believe honestly that both of these players have probably shown the highest ceilings so far in this tournament, even if LNumbers is the one with the best record. I expect that this game has the potential to be one of the best ever UU games. I eagerly await the game...best wishes to both.

 

[Indigo Plateau]

With SCL done now, it's time to post my teams as I usually do after officials. Huge thanks to people like Adaam and pokemonisfun who consistently had high-quality posts in this thread. I can't say I was a huge fan of the metagame for this tour but I tried to vary my builds as much as possible. I won't go too in-depth because I've spent way too long today looking at screens but here it goes:

Week 1 vs Adaam

Pretty straightforward team, wanted to bring Mamo vs Adam and felt that Spikes were under-explored at the time and paired really well with it. Boots Mamo is a really good mon considering a lot of the counterplay revolves around chipping it with hazards + LO. Azelf was also really neat and got to showcase how good it can be if you predict correctly.

Week 2 vs Askov

pdt played this week in the UU roulette but still used a team that I built for him. Fairies weren't used that much at the time with Prim being the only somewhat popular pick, so I thought a DragSpam team could be really neat. The backbone of Rotom-W + Amoonguss was tried & true at the time (and in previous metas) and the team was a really offensive team that had done very well in tests and fit pdt's style well.

Week 3 vs Gondra

What better way to start SCL than with 3 Kommo in a row right? Everyone was on the Spikes train now and people were ignoring Aegislash for whatever reason, so I centered this team around Tox Aegi + CM Reuni, two things that were extremely annoying for BO to deal with. Tenta was a nice fit here to help with stuff like Specs Keldeo and prevent Celsteela from walling Aegi. The core worked exactly as expected despite some Hurricane misses almost screwing me up.

Week 4 vs Bushtush

The week where I started hating my life. It felt impossible to prep for anything in this tier now and I pulled out the broken Gyarados that the Spartans had shown off Week 3. The premise was just to chip things down with Bulu + Entei for one of Gyara / Goltres to win then HW them up and do it again. Sadly Bush is ugly and brought Rain, paired together with the fact that my Bulu wasn't Lariat and I choked a win because of my 15 second timer, but the team still smashed otherwise.

Week 5 vs mncmt

I really abused the brokens by bringing Kommo 3 times in a row and then Moltres-G 3 times in a row LOL. I couldn't build anything that I liked in the new meta and my team told me to just use the broken cheese that hadn't lost in test so I did, sorry mncmt Don't really think this team needs any explanation, just SR up and then click setup moves accordingly with any of the 5 setup mons lol.

Week 6 vs LNumbers

Some unfortunate stuff happened this week irl so I couldn't fully flesh out this team, but it was just a normal BO built around LO Shao + pivots for it. I had another variation of this with SG ToxT + one other change which I fully regret not using given the insane mu it had and I think it's miles better. I ended up getting a bit unlucky in this one and it wasn't my favorite team in hindsight given how aggressively it has to be played but at least I got to showcase Blaze Kick Shao (s/o Accel).

Week 7 vs hs

Another rough week for me where I built some ugly shit because I was afraid of getting cheesed. Originally I had a Conk on this team over ToxT but then thought double electric could be cool, and just like in Week 6, I regretted changing it last minute given the amazing mu Conk had LOL. The team suffers from a lack of speed and ToxT ran into AV Glowbro (ofc), but Slowking did show how eternal it is. It's going to sound funny to say this but I really think this mon needs to be used more (and be used better).

Week 8 vs SoulWind

If you've been following UU at all this team should look really familiar. HO was flooding the waters in tour play and what better way to combat that than TR? I expected SW to get passed some type of HO and Alola Wak is impossible to switch into normally so this seemed like the perfect pick. Mesprit is a godsend for TR because it gets SR + TR + HW in one and unlike Hat, also beats lead Drill and Aegi due to Encore, which I got to show off in the game. This is probably my best built team out of the entire tour and I firmly believe it's as good as TR gets.

Semis vs Askov

Although I wasn't planning on originally using this team, I had a Sylveon + Runerigus core that I had showed the boys before and they hated on it so I wanted to try it since we had won the series already. Runerigus checks a ton of things in the tier because of its amazing typing but falls short because no recovery so pairing it with Wish support was really clutch. I learned this game that Suicune without RestTalk is trash and CM Sylveon can be dangerous if you remove your opp's Steel type

Finals vs Accel

Really sad that I didn't get to showcase this team because it had some sick sets but this was my planned team for finals. LO Starmie is borderline impossible for BO to switch into and I had double Rocky Helmet to chip things like Zarude for it. I can't fully reveal all sets here for some reasons but some of you might know them since I accidentally posted earlier in UU discord lol, but s/o LNumbers for the huge help on this one. I think if I would've gotten to use it the team would've done really well and probably would've been my 2nd/3rd favorite team this tour.

I'm sure I'll forget someone but shoutout to my wonderful teammates avarice pdt for the help throughout the tour, my two Barclay brothers Accel Adaam for making prep more enjoyable in our group chat, Amukamara Askov LNumbers mncmt Pak TSR for the random advice/tests throughout the season, and TPP you hate when I don't tag you but I guess you DID look stuff over in playoffs so here you go. I hope to keep putting up good performances for everyone in this tier and thanks to everyone who contributed to SCL UU in one way or another