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Welcome to the Smogon Champions League 4 Discussion Thread -- OU edition! This thread will be used to discuss OU in SCL IV related topics, whether it’s about the players, general metagame trends, matches, predictions and so on.
yo, it's me, I'm making prs because I'm bored + i like farming likes, I'm gonna be as kind and gentle as possible to not make anyone sad.
Content warming: opinions + im bad
gotta say, every ou team is decently balanced outside the shoguns (lets be real the shoguns were always gonna be number 1 on the ou pr) so dont be sad if your team is last, I think any team can pull a surprise pull up. If you're still sad, consider getting into drinking + gambling
It feels so wrong putting a team with INSULT on last, considering this guy is goated af, but I think this team has the least ou centric team, and that's fine, they have their tiebreaker plan, my worries come from both BIHI and Niko. I know BIHI went positive last season, but that was DLC 1, a whole different beast. And Niko is good, but it is public information that he doesn't enjoy the tier as much as other people, which can put a dent on the mental. And finally, I don't see a lot of potential supporters, so I feel INSULT is gonna work overtime. But like I said at the start, as far as OU goes, the cores are decently balanced, and they all can triumph
9) Circuit Breakers --- eifo, M Dragon, Spurrific, Laroxyl, Lily, Mada, freezai, 3d, tko, Hiko, JUST ONE GALATINA, elodin, sabella, mimilimi, Mashing, Malekith, babyboysblues, Diamond_realms
Managers: z0mOg + zee
The Breakers in my opinion have good players with not the most amount of aura, like, don't get me wrong, they are all good, and they have support from the likes of elodin and J.O.G, and im sure laroxyl will try to get an OU game or two after farming the LC pool, but I wouldn't shit my pants if I had to face any of them in a 1v1 no shirt duel to the death. Mada will scout every last bit of info he can get, and everyone else will build a decent team to go around it
The platoon has crying which gives aura points because I love crying, they also have Santu which qualified for OLT and it's a fucking menace. I will say, im 100% unfamiliar with Watashi's ou level, as well as the amount of support potatochan can offer, so a lot of the placing is up in the air. But even then, none of this actually matters because they got THE ABSOLUTE FUCKING GOAT LOLEBRUH YOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Spartans last year were the joke of the season, with only GXE going positive, the new managers in town decided to give the franchise a new face, and I think it looks good. Finch the nator has less work in this part of the year which equals more time to grind, Thiago Nunes OU career has gone pretty far and wide, and im honestly super hyped for Eeveeto's run, I hope he gets to shiny with the Eeveeto heat. On the back seat, ACR1 as sub is well serviceable, and I'm not sure if Dugza builds his own ou teams, if he can help then I'm sure he will
The Techincal Machines have the advantage of having the second most amount of OUs for play and support, myjava, mav, stories, piyu, mimi, leng and mncmt all working together can create magic, so if one of them goes negative, you can just throw another player at the problem and hope that solves it. The star here is obviously myjava who seems unstopable ever since his OUPL breakthrough, mav is a good player and mimikyu can be good as long as he doesn't load the fucking prime pult garbage, I hope leng gets a chance to shine in this stage, I know she wants it, and I can sympathize with that. The problem here comes from an old saying "too many hands kills the baby", with too many ideas running around, the kitchen can become a mess, if this doesn't happen, I think this team can get it
The winners from last season have drafted quite an interesting team, comprised of both old members of the team and new members. Many people will simp for JJ or yovan, and while they are certaintly good, I think many will not give emforbes the amount of respect he deserves, I have seen the guy work and I think he is pretty good, so the 3 of them are on equal level to compete. For support, we have the PU goat S1nn0C0nfirmed, who can certaintly help in OU and Eternal Spirit, who apparently wants to try his hand at the tier. The highs of this team are very high
I'm biased, ill admit, and I'm gonna say it now, I'm 100% rooting for foxes this season, can you blame me? Chile representation baby vamoooo conchetumareee y vamos a empezar septiembre asi que se viene el boost del 18 kbros. If im not mistaken, this is the first time Luirromen gets to be in SCL, he has proven himself as one of the best from South America and can hold his own and even beat various of the north hemisphere, and Gtcha had a short but 2-0 world cup, the queen who sits at the throne is Mako, who had an outstanding world cup season and got into OLT, with support from both Chisato and the UU player of the team, Punny, im sure I can expect nothing but excellency, les deseo lo mejor a los miembros del septimo de linea
The terrors are tried and true, the combination of mike + xavgb means self sustainable ou players who get free wins (unless the obligatory myjava loss of the season) and idk about stareal but worse case scenario they have baloor on the kitchen, so there's support, and potentially GXE making something even tho he mostly plays ou only at world cup. TDNT can also play, and he got into OLT so you can't call him bad at the gen
this team has the ICCB duo of the well (who farmed last scl aswell as spl) and hellom (who farmed spl aswell as being a huggable hello kitty stuffie when not on ladder), and Páis, who had a great world cup run seems to want to keep the momentum ready, additional support from zioziotrip, michael, rudi, sufys and both managers AK + Clean means the team is incredibly locked and loaded
1) Showdown Shoguns --- zS, Storm Zone, CTC, Vert, fade, mind gaming, ima, TPP, Fogbound Lake, Frixel, A plague Doc, Dj Breloominati, Akaru Kokuyo, Envy1
Managers: Blunder + Lax
Oh wow number one I wonder who is it--- it's the fucking shoguns oh my god who could've seen this coming. Yeah, this one was the easiest to rank, pretty anticlimactic I know, but the shoguns are the only team with a "broken" ou core, I think It's just clearly above the rest
Like I said at the start, the OU cores this season are well-balanced and competitive, and I hope you all have a fun season, whether in victory or defeat. Good night people
Featuring a ton of new managers, this SCL auction featured plenty of curveballs with prices all over the place. Here's some introductions to the OU lineups of each team!
Gible — This is a high ceiling roster. emforbes is their most experienced option, a ridiculously sheet-positive warrior who recently qualified for OLT. He's accompanied by child prodigy JJ09LIE in the midst of a breakout year, as well as Brazilian team tour veteran and magician Eternal Spirit. STour and OLT noise-maker yovan33321 and newer team tour techie PZZ fill out the bench as high-upside substitutes. There's a mix of experienced team tour winners and new heads with high ceilings; all three starters should be able to self-sustain and the subs would be candidates for OU3 on other squads. One of my favorite lineups.
Islanders — under new management, the USAK duo retained Welli0u and hellom to start the auction with two consistently strong ICBBers that will almost certainly go positive. hellom in particular has had a megastar season with a 12-1 SV record on the year. Pais went for exceptionally cheap after a breakout SV run for Italy, with OLT qualifier xdRudi.exe a potential substitute; zioziotrip is locked out of OU but he may have teams and testing to contribute. This is a very competitive, self-sustaining core that can beat anybody, and damn near the whole OU core (managers included) qualified for OLT. As long as they don't catch 1-point infractions they'll be golden.
Platoon — a robust core with the potential for plenty of curveballs. The Platoon started with a retain on Italian sensation Santu, who is practically always at the sharp end of individuals and should be allowed to start in OU, I think. He's accompanied by crying, who loads the most ill-advised sets known to man and wins with them, and DAHLI, an all-rounder who regularly posts positive records in officials. Other potential OUers include grizzled veteran watashi (who seems likely to start in NU just looking at the roster), Kiribati's own damien the genius, Canadian season-saver Potatochan, and acclaimed supporter lolebruh. There's an interesting mix of experience, sharp newer faces, and whatever the hell crying has going on.
Terrors — this is like the third time we've seen an OU core of xavgb and oldspicemike in the last year. The two are a potent pair, with xavgb one of the top players and creative minds in the game and mike a breakout offense guru fresh off of a World Cup trophy. They're joined by TDNT, a SWSH heavyweight stepping into the next gen, and Stareal, who impressed with a deep run in the latest Smogon Tour; either or both could start in OU if xavgb flexes to another tier. Canadian builder Baloor and German wildcard Ewin round out the roster as potential substitutes. An overall high-power squad that, if you swear by The Sheet, is probably going to be like +9 by the end of the regular season. The only problem is that this roster starts down 0-1 against myjava.
Machines — this roster looks like a lot of fun. The blockbuster name is 2024 sensation myjava, who farmed SPL and World Cup to an absurd 11-2 combined record and a red trophy. He's joined by Team India ally and crafty builder MAVERICK SHOOTERS, as well as hyper-offense ladder fiend Mimikyu Stardust. leng loi deputizes as a substitute and potent builder, as well as India stalwart Piyu. There's plenty of off-the-wall teambuilding going on here, and most of these players are always laddering, so the Machines could very well be ahead of the curve in the meta as long as Mimikyu Stardust doesn't load up that goddamn Prime Pult team.
Foxes — As with the manager duo, teams Latin America and Chile combine for a potent OU roster. Mako has had a fantastic 2024 between a strong ADV run in SPL and an SV 4-0 in World Cup's main stage, and will hope to keep that momentum going. SWSH specialist Gtcha has only played a few games of SV in officials but he's won most of them; he's accompanied by LATAM teammate and OU Circuit fiend Luirromen coming off the bench. The only OUer not from South America, Suzuya, an all-rounder with a variety of solid performances across various tiers, is likely to start in OU as well. This is a great starting 3 of super-solid tour players and a strong substitute in Luirromen, lacking obvious vulnerabilities.
Dynamos — Excal and Luthier started the auction by spending a billion dollars on 5 players and then filling the roster out with 3ks; one of their high-price picks includes Northeast anchor INSULT, who pretty much always finds himself at the sharp end of current-gen tournaments and World Cup performances. Italian firebrand Niko joins as a high-upside slot, hoping to rebound his 2024 and resume his positive form from years prior. The third slot is likely to be occupied by DPP specialist Pkel SweeTforU; another potential option is Team Canada stalwart Jytcampbell, who I believe mainly plays SM and ORAS. 37k UU-locked bbeeaa is also likely to provide support despite his tenuous relationship with Tera. This roster has two experienced names who know how to win in team tours; if they can get the third slot up to speed quickly, they'll be threats to dominate the tour.
Shoguns — I think we know who's gonna be rank 1 in the OU section of PRs. Cheap retains on Storm Zone and CTC allowed managers blunder and lax to pick up two coveted starter + locked-out-support combos of US West masterminds ima + Vert and German brothers Fogbound Lake + mind gaming, although I anticipate Fogbound Lake and his 5-second timer are probably starting in a lower tier. TPP and A plague doc represent sub options as an experienced hand and a newer ladder face respectively. They've essentially assembled the Manhattan Project of SV OU and half of them aren't even allowed to play it. The extent to which they drained the OU pot makes them number 1 in the tier with a bullet. Now who the hell is slotting in the lower tiers?
Breakers — a deceptively deep roster with high levels of flexibility. There's a lot of potential OU starters, but Mada is probably a lock, a super teammate currently at 6-2 and a red trophy this year. Consistent team tour presence Laroxyl is likely to occupy a starting spot if he slots into OU, and is accompanied by Italian teammate JUST ONE GALATINA; the two made it to WCOP finals together. Malekith will hope to rebound from last year's SCL and hit the 6-1 form that helped him win World Cup in 2023. Also likely dedicated to OU are French up-and-comers Hiko and mimilimi, known for ladder achievements and off-site tournament performances. This doesn't even include OLT qualifier 3d, who cannot legally play OU but is likely to help the main core. The Breakers perhaps lack an obvious superstar, but there's a lot of moving parts here and teammates that will appreciate working together.
Spartans — a mix of steady hands and hotshots looking to take flight. SV OU kingpin Finchinator will look to repeat his outstanding form from 2023. Alongside the emperor are consistent SWSH performer Attribute making the jump, rising Argentinian talent ACR1 fresh off a 5-1 SPL, and deranged builder Eeveeto who sprinkles a shitmon onto every team. Sandy Shocks legend and serial replay unlister Thiago Nunes is a possible OU starter but may also start in NU. Finchinator is usually good for a positive record, and his experience in SV should help the tier switchers and up-and-comers thrive.
gible
ou jj09lie
ou emforbes
ou eternal spirit
uber false/lana
dou bagel + seraphz?
uu amukamara
ru feliburn
nu etern
pu sinnohconfirmed
lc hacker
islanders
ou pais
ou hellom
ou welli0u
uber richardmilleplain
dou qsns + zoe
uu pdt
ru robjr?
nu dr phd bj
pu mdb2
lc colin
platoon
ou crying
ou dahli
ou santu
uber entrocefalo
dou xrn + lunar [manager]
uu skarpherim
ru abriel
nu watashi
pu lpz
lc scottie
terrors
ou xavgb/stareal if bro goes to ru
ou oldspicemike
ou tdnt
uber reje
dou sempra + xqiht
uu lyssa
ru ampha/xavgb
nu elias psy
pu gxe
lc lokifan
machines [this roster has a billion people]
ou myjava
ou mimikyu stardust
ou maverick shooters
uber icemaster
dou nails
uu frankjosh
ru justfranco
nu stories
pu fish anemometer
lc lilyac
foxes
ou mako
ou gtcha
ou suzuya
uber 7u9i2
dou eternalsnowman + ann
uu punny
ru kushalos
nu danny
pu mz
lc quinn
dynamos
ou insult
ou pkel sweetforu
ou niko
uber kate
dou kingofmars + grandmas cookin
uu bbeeaa
ru bihi???
nu mcmeghan
pu larry
lc fille
shoguns
ou storm zone
ou ctc
ou ima
uber fade
dou akaru kokuyo + frixel
uu vert
ru fogbound lake
nu zs
pu mind gaming???
lc envy1
breakers
ou mada
ou malekith
ou laroxyl/hiko/mimilimi
uber m dragon
dou spurrific + both managers play doubles lol
uu lily
ru elodin
nu freezai
pu eifo
lc tko
spartans
ou finchinator
ou attribute
ou acr1
uber aberforth
dou jrl + tenzai
uu vivalospride
ru thefranklin
nu thiago nunes/pokeslice
pu soulwind
lc eric
As a loyal agency enthusiast I have no choice to ride for the shoguns HOWEVER I bought a Technical Machines shirt last year because they have by far the best merch so I will talk about their roster:
Myjava is a star and a great example of what can come from allowing newer talent a spot on the big stage. It's good to realize that the other members of this team are getting exactly that shot that myjava was given, and I think they have the potential to evolve from ladder and forum demons into true tournament threats. Leng loi had some very good runs in OLT despite not qualifying which some might have overlooked. Piyu has a middling record in team tours this year but experience worth something in a newer team and I think they will be a valuable add. Mav had a solid 3-1 record in world cup, improving on a 2-3 SPL. If that trend holds they are in good territory. Mimikyu also has a relatively even record this year, and even isn't bad when you're not expected to be the carry.
Outside of OU, manager mncmt has just finished second in grand slam, with a first place in the UU open, so I'm confident about the team's breadth as well as depth.
Yes people, it's me, 1LDK, the worst ou player of all time, I'm back at the game of "trying to farm that sweet community contributor badge" but this time I'm not alone, ninth will be collabing with me in this project, which makes each other's work easier, for this week tho, he is busy so all of this post is my writing only. As far as the rules of these posts, my guess is that it will get shaky since there's now 2 people collabing, we still need to work the kinks on this thing, but hey, enough yapping, let's get rolling people
match too long for me to review but look there's crying cooking, unironically the rarest mon here is the torn-t ctc brought, like seriously this thing is almost impossible to make work
Santu vs Storm Zone
Tusk trades itself for a bit of damage on both pult and oger, samu tries to set spikes but only gets 1 and gets jumped by Life Orb zama. Later Ghold claims pult, gliscors forces it out into dnite, who slams himself into moltres, activating flame body, tinkaton steals zama's life orb and twaves it, hat comes in on the rocks, then tinkaton clicks rocks again... and hat gets a free cm, gigaton hammer leaves hatt at 6hp but due to the nature of the move hatt walls her now and kisser her goodnight before recieving a goodnight kiss as well by getting her head brutally smacked in the floor until death by ogerpon. DD kyurem forces oger to tera + encore, but Santu well predicts it and goes dnite, who kills ogerpon with outrage. kyurem cleans with tera ice + spam
DAHLI vs ima
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Ima was using a crying team that was made in OLT? Anyway, pivoting early leads to Raging Bolt clicking death vs iron crown, Ima's tusk gets rocks up before dying to dpulse + rocky helmet lando. Enam kills dahli's tusk before getting crit one show by pult's sball. Ima loses the match via timer
both players try to get hazards, and while the well (rocking a questionable name) fails the free spikes button, his av allows him to fully dunk on the glimmora, the av doesn't save him from the bolt who outspeeds him tf? Anyway cinderace makes him trip and dies lmao kek what a bitch. Dnite tries to set up but zapdos stun locks him and gets forced out by darkrai. A lot of hit-and-run happens, which culminates in dnite getting quick sniped by darkrai. Gholdengo has to tera fairy and yolo to save the game, darkrai knocks his now useless shuca berry, ace forces tinkaton to be sacked. Roaring moon and gambit play sucker punch mind games, that ends with the well winning on the very last sucker punch, winning the game.
Pais vs Malekith
Enam and tusk trade some damage, crown gets damage for free on ace while he misses pyro ball on lando. kith's kyurem gets a +1 but misses a very important scale shot which puts malekith in a bad spot. Iron Valiant revenge kills zama and takes crown with it thanks to destiny bond. Pais's Kyurem nails ace, lando handles tusks with rocky helmet. Kingambit tries to yolo the endgame, but tera flying makes him take more from smack down, which kills gambit with helmet and wins the game.
xdRudi.exe vs Mada
Mada's Primarina spams like demo on dustbowl, getting reuniclus, and with the help of lando, clefable. Raging Bolt and Weavile have to be carefull when switching into Ting Lu to choke him out, Weavile knocks skarmory's helmet and raging bolt picks him off while roosting. Weavile gets on a Ruination, which allows her to knock off zama's chesto berry, combined with some back and forth Mada's zama is +3 and wins.
Early game samu successfully spams self AI generated spikes, mola gets pressured with the combo of knock off + all the hazards + sludge bomb poison proc from glowking. samu 1v1s goodra hisui by the skin of his teeth and dies to rocks not long after, glowking greatly steals ogerpon's money while avoiding Knock Off ko range. Then oh my god is that a scarf kyurem? yes ladies and gentelment it is, who recieves plot armour from God itself and rolls frame 1 freeze on the zama, getting free damage. Gholdengo packs the mola + ting lu, Moltres tries to clutch the game but bulky roost roaring moon recieves plot armour from batton pass scarf kyurem, winning the game even while burned
Niko vs JJ09LIE
JJ is using a variation of the prime pult garbage team, which overwhelms iron treads with repeated dracos, moth tries to take on bolt, but the latter wins the test of strength, he also showed intelligence by striking down the boulder looking to get in a tclap. Later claims iron moth and lets primarina handle valiant. Oger goes all in with SD + tera + trailblaze, but raging bolt doesn't bother with tclap mindgames and just trows a taser at her. Dnite cannot win the 1v5
INSULT vs Eternal Spirit
Samu and mamo trade themselves for each other, treads trades itself for massive damage on lando. Both Iron Moths psychic each other until Gamma's one wins, crown tanks the fiery dance and kills moth. Boulder combines tera fight + sd to overwhelm lando and crown. Zama clutches up vs boulder, but gholdengo protects boulder and kills zama, but not without getting a -1 def, which allows Weavile to kill it, uses tera ice to nail the tripple axel vs boulder, and takes the dnite's extreme speed, all this momentum, all of this effort, all of it, just for weavile to miss the triple axel and die like a fraud
Pult burns glowking and survives ice beam for 1 hp, glimmora loads all the hazards, and ACR1's kingambit wins vs TDNT's kingambit thanks to low kick, glowking absorbs the tspikes, tusk gets rocks, pult gets some more damage on glowking and lando before dying. TDNT's Ogerpon-w kills moth with the help of tera. Dnite uses a rare tera ground to successfully dodge lando's stone edge, clicks dd 100000000 times and wins
oldspicemike vs Finchinator
Deoxys-nator knocks hatt's eject button, and smooths walking wake to the point where Iron Mothnator gets going, rolls +1 fiery dance, and uses tera fairy dazzling gleam to yass bestie roaring moon. Mothnator tries to sub to bait the thunderclap, but Mike well predicts it and uses tera flying thunderbolt, forcing Mothnator out and essentially dead due to rocks being set up later. Ting Lu forces bolt out into tusk and gets rocks up, Ogerpon-Wellnator clicks Chicken Wings 2 times and there goes Ninetales. Bolt tries to brute force its way through Ting-Lunator, who uppercuts raging bolt with stone edge, leaving bolt very weak. Great Tusknator 1v1s Mike's tusk and hatt healing wishes Raging Bolt back into full, but Taunt blocks any chance for bolt to win and Ogerpon-Wellnator seals the deal
Stareal vs Attribute
Early game consists of Kyurem spamming icicle spear vs everything he can and Ting Lu spamming Ruination on everything he can, he eventually sacks himself for rocks + 2 layers of spikes, Moth claims pult and takes multiscale out of dnite before dying, then suddenly air balloon dragapult hits the field and kills kyurem with draco, and kills moth with hex + twave, he tries to burn pult with W-o-W but lum berry stops it and gets killed. Great Tusk spams bulk up 3 times and thats the game
Great positioning from early game Mako's zama lets her rilla crit one shot mimi's weakened zama, tera dark allows it to survive the weavile tripple axel and claims another one. Ting Lu is forced to tera in order to withstand Mako's zama, whirlwinds into scizor who takes away his helmet, then whirlwinds again into raging bolt, who 2 shots glowking thanks to a crit and claims ogerpon before getting killed by ting lu. Lando finishes Ting Lu and lets valiant wrap up the game
Suzuya vs myjava
1 layer of toxic spikes, a layer of rocks and Raging Bolt easily overwhelms ting lu, scizor overwhelms skarmory thanks to raging bolt, iron valiant kills gholdengo, greatly wears down suzuya's zama. zapdos misses 2 crucial hurricanes and gets shot down by raging bolt, ogerpon wellspring misses the play rough and myjava's zama wins
Gtcha vs Piyu
samu gets 1 layer then dies to freeze dry, Moltres hangs on vs a +2 physical valiant with liquidation, roar drags roaring moon in, who tera grounds, dds once, then kills moltres without procing flame body, the dds again, survives outrage from Gtcha's own moon and kills it with eq, Gtcha forfeits
And that would be all for this week, I hope you can give this a like and love, this takes a lot of time, and lets hope the production values keep increasing, see you next time, bye bye!
Hi there, I'm ninth! 1LDK and I are covering SCL this year, and as he's already said we're splitting the games up. Without further ado, let's get into week 2! This week saw a few interesting trends: out of 15 games and 30 teams, Great Tusk (14 brings) and Slowking-Galar (11 brings) were the most popular. We saw four Tinkaton, four Zapdos, two Hydrapple (both times on the same team as a Tinkaton), and two Scizor in terms of notable non-OU mons: if last month's 1825 stats are anything like this month's 1500 stats we could very well see Tinkaton and Zapdos in OU sooner rather than later.
You will see "ninth:" or "1LDK:" before reports, in case you're wondering who wrote what.
------ Technical Machines vs Orange Islanders ------
ninth: It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the contact-punishing birds are back. myjava's team is far more offensive, with Zapdos and Glowking supporting a physical onslaught of Wellspring/Zama/Tusk/Gambit. Pais is full-on defensive for the most part, with SD Gliscor and Zamazenta as win conditions. They mostly pivot around for the first few turns, with java getting rocks up early on, but nobody's really taking that much meaningful damage. myjava's Wellspring gets caught by a Thunder Wave from Tinkaton, and it becomes a game of trades as java pops Tinkaton's balloon but Pais gets rocks up in return. Psyshock Glowking from myjava does quite a bit of damage, putting chunks in Pais' Glowking and Tinkaton; it's enough pressure to get in his own Tusk and spin the rocks away. What follows is a ridiculous amount of offensive pressure applied by AV Glowking: it kills Tinkaton and brings Pais' Glowking low, then switches out for a bit while myjava makes a good read and Stone Edges Pais' Moltres on the switch in. Glowking then comes back in, Sludge Bombs Zamazenta until it's forced to burn Chesto Rest, and continues to Sludge Bomb it until myjava's own Zamazenta can finish it off. After removing the Kingambit checks, it's a straightforward Tera Ghost Gambit cleanup for myjava, who advances to 2-0 and now has a record of like 13-2 on the year.
ninth: Two pretty different looking teams go head-to-head. Piyu (pitfire) just has full max-speed offense; hellom's piloting what I believe to be a lordsquad previously used in OLT, featuring Keldeo and Sinistcha as special threats. hellom starts well by leading Air Balloon Tinkaton into Kyurem, who has to run for the hills, leading to Tinkaton bullying Piyu's Deoxys-Speed. It gets up rocks, paralyzes Deoxys-Speed, steals its Red Card, and eventually kills it, though Piyu's able to get up rocks and a spike. Sinistcha quickly emerges as a threat that Piyu can't hit that well, surviving Ice Spinners with ease: Piyu tries to use Roaring Moon but its booster is Whirlwinded out by Ting-Lu, though not before critting it into dying to hazards. Piyu's eventually able to hold Sinistcha down with Taunt Tusk and take it out with a mixed Expert Belt (thank you Mav for confirming the set on Youtube) Valiant, which also takes out Tinkaton. Tera Normal Dragonite comes out for hellom, and Piyu's options are quite limited between a low-health Tusk, a Kyurem, and a bunch of frail mons...until Piyu pulls out Tera Ghost Kyurem, which gets up a DD and wipes out Keldeo, which hellom switched in to scout the Tera. Icicle Spear chips Dragonite for over half, and that chip combined with a Fiery Dance Boost is enough to get Piyu's Moth over the line, killing Gliscor and barely surviving Extreme Speed.
ninth: Mimikyu Stardust's rocking a team that looks bulky but plays very offensively with threats like Scarf Lando-T and Band Scizor (second Machines Band Scizor in as many weeks, thanks leng). Welli0u's team definitely skews bulkier with Clefable/Slowking-G/Landorus forming a potent defensive rotation as well as Volcanion for anti-fat applications. Things open slowly enough, with Welli0u trading a burn on his Earth Plate Landorus for the life of Mimikyu's Cinderace, but Welli0u's Rocky Helmet Clefable quickly proves to be problematic, chipping down Weavile and removing Scizor's Band before being scared out. Welli0u gets up rocks: Mimikyu attempts to Tera Blast Ice the enemy Lando but gets a Glowking out of it instead. Tera Water Clefable is revealed for Welli0u, and it's looking difficult for Mimikyu to maneuver around both it and Volcanion while rocks are up. The turning point is when Mimikyu's Primarina, holding a Kebia Berry, easily lives a Sludge Wave from Volcanion and finishes it off: this gives Mimikyu another body and opens a path for it to later finish off Welli0u's Dragapult. From there Welli0u's squad has been thinned out too much, and the Clefable is left alone to slowly die to Landorus and Scizor. The Machines' OU army is one I was cautiously optimistic about at the start and I'm glad to see them putting wins on the board.
ninth: Congratulations to these two for the dishonorable feat of having the latest scheduled OU game of Week 2, coming in at 9:30pm GMT-4! Finchinator, surprisingly, is lacking Ting-Lu, instead going for a fast-paced offense featuring HO classic Glimmora and a bunch of mons with an average attack stat of 5000. DAHLI's team skews bulkier with Glowking and Zapdos forming a pivoting core. Things go wrong for DAHLI immediately as their Glowking dies to a critical Wisp+Hex from Dragapult, and Finch's Dragapult is able to get plenty of damage onto Darkrai and Zapdos before eventually being made to leave. Lacking a real switch-in to Wellspring besides Kyurem, DAHLI has to sacrifice their own Wellspring to force it out. DAHLI's Zapdos spreads as much paralysis as it can, but Finch Knocks it and gets rocks up after scaring it out, killing it. Their Darkrai manages to Wisp and chip Finch's Zamazenta before dying, but believe it or not, a burnt +6 Zama still oneshots things with Body Press, and the game's over. The crit Hex was unfortunate, but a well-played game from the OU overlord nonetheless. No Lu though.
ninth: You're not gonna believe this, but crying showed up to this game with an entirely sane, uncontroversial team with no ZUs or recharge moves. It's a Glowking/Moltres/Gliscor/Garg fat core, simple as. ACR1 is the only one using non-OUs (although they might be soon), bringing Hydrapple and Tinkaton to a bulky offense. Things go awry for crying early on when ACR1's Gliscor gets a Swords Dance early and hits Tera Normal, forcing crying to sacrifice her Garganacl to scout the set and find out it's walled by her Kingambit. This creates another problem: crying's Moltres answers are very limited, as all of her offenses make contact. ACR1 catches Weavile with Flame Body on a Low Kick and essentially kills it, so crying tries to set up SD Gliscor to break through, but ACR1 reveals Roar to stop that. crying has to resort to ignominiously clicking Glowking's Sludge Bomb and fishing for a poison, which works eventually, but the process just results in ACR1's Hydrapple setting up a Nasty Plot and revenge killing it. crying's Kingambit tries its best, but having had to Tera Ghost against ACR1's Tusk earlier, it's vulnerable to ACR1's Darkrai, which kills it instantly and proceeds to clean up the game. ACR1 moves to 2-0 on the season and is quietly like 7-1 in SV officials this year - don't sleep!
ninth: Two different approaches to bulky offense come together. Santu's team has a Moltres and a bunch of mons with a combined usage of 300%, but Attribute has the interesting Weezing-Galar, which has quietly been seeing more tournament usage recently. Santu Gead Loats his Kyurem against Attribute's Gliscor, forcing a switch and a bit of chip onto Attribute's Glowking; when Attribute doubles to his own Gliscor on Santu's own Glowking, they exchange EQ and Ice Beam, and both of them escape this interaction wounded but alive. Using Glowking, Santu's able to get his 4-attack Zamazenta in cleanly, which terrorizes Attribute for a bit and ultimately necessitates sacrificing Weezing in order for his own ID/Press/Crunch/Rest Chesto Zama to come in and put a stop to things. Things equalize for a bit until Santu's Kingambit and Attribute's Wellspring get into a 1v1, in which Attribute reveals Synthesis and wins the fight as a result. Wellspring later Play Roughs Kyurem to death, and Attribute's burned Zamazenta manages to take Santu's Glowking with it. Still, Santu's up 3-2 with a full health Tusk and a mostly healthy Zama, and with Tera Dragon Moltres effortlessly dueling Wellspring, it's looking rough. Except Attribute hasn't exhausted yet. And the last mon is Kingambit, which SDs up as Santu Roosts from full health. And it's Tera Fairy Tera Blast. Even burned, +2 Gambit oneshots Dragon Moltres and proceeds to kill Tusk and Zama too, flipping a game that looked pretty much over in Santu's favor before turn 52.
1LDK: The Magician is running a fucking ABR SM team lmaoooo, and just like fat balance in SM it is ridiculously hard to break. The match consists of Gama tanking and stalling Mike's offense thanks to Tspikes, Gholdengo tries to break through pex, which drives pex to the edge but never beyond. Turn 30 and Mike finally gets 2 kills with dengo thanks to a crit on gliscor, and outspeeding heatran. Rilla uses tera fire sd as a get off me move, that kills darkrai before getting zapped by bolt. Weavile forces a kill against lando, clefable blasts bolt, toxapex successfully stalls gholdengo with everything in her power and both clef + pex clean zama, this was trully a callback to the ss days when fat balance has ruined everything, trully a cinema moment in the industry of mons, ban gen 7 kart, ban gen 8 kart and pex, ban gen 9 garganacl
ninth: I'm not supposed to be covering this game but shoutouts to Eternal Spirit for loading a 2019-ass team and slapping a Gliscor on it.
ninth: You won't believe it, but JJ09LIE is using Iron Valiant. Both players are using Gholdengo/Dragonite/Valiant offensive cores; JJ's is more defensively inclined, while Stareal looks like he also wants to get up hazards but more offensively. Stareal's Treads dies instantly as its Ice Spinner fails to kill Lando, who further chips Samurott before dying, allowing it only one precious layer. The two players do the classic SV OU offense dance of going sack for sack and never switching, but notably Stareal's Valiant comes out first, which fails to kill Scarf Gholdengo with Knock Off and dies to Make It Rain, removing Stareal's speed control. When Stareal tries to set up his Dragonite, it's promptly stopped by JJ's Ting-Lu and his own Dragonite, who Tera Normals on the Ice Spinner and spins back for the kill. Now with JJ's Valiant the fastest thing remaining, Stareal's forced to Tera Fire his Zamazenta to beat it, which puts it in a good position to win as long as it can cleanly enter in a post-Booster world. The endgame comes down to Stareal's Zama and Ghold vs JJ's Ting-Lu and Dragonite, and JJ's Custap Ting-Lu (!) intentionally forgoes a kill on Gholdengo to prevent Zama from getting into position, instead getting up a spike. JJ DDs twice on the Thunder Wave and subsequent switch to Zama, and Extreme Speed just straight-up kills the 83% Zama, leading to one last EQ to finish the game. Pretty neat endgame from JJ09LIE.
1LDK: TDNT trades samu-h and deo-s for knock on glowking, rocks and 1 layer of spikes, moth takes glowking out and dengo uses tera fairy dazzling gleam to crit one shot tusk. LE HECKING UTURNEERINO ON THE GHOLDERINO SWITCHERINO ends with dnite getting killed, tusk with booster speed fakes out into moth to jumpscare primarina. Tusk holds on vs corv but dies to rocky helmet. On the final strech, we see how useless of a mon corv is, unable to 1v1 a ghold in red hp even with band lokixs on the back lmao when will they learn?
------ Circuit Breakers vs Power Plant Dynamos ------
1LDK: Treads sacks itself vs dnite for those sweet sweet rocks, bulky glimmora with tera ghost tanks a headlong rush and spins the block, tusk fails the quick time events and dies to espeed, moth slurps them tspikes and gives ceruledge free flash fire, which allows him to win the 1v1. Kommo-o goes for the super sweep and gets the onmiboost + a taunt, Niko sacks both glimm and valiant in order to properly scout the set, which ceru walls, but val did enough damage to where It's not really necessary, ogerpon bonks ceru out, gambit tries to sweep, but he is too weak
1LDK: Samu-h receives the full kyurem experience with a freeze, blocking spikes, shuca berry ghold takes on tusk and wins with dazzling gleam, zama forces kyurem out into a double for dengo to come back in, but glowking gets him no rest, tusk gets blocked, drawn and quartered by corv. Uses tera water to repel moth and lets kyurem do the actual damage, glowking tricks black sludge for leftovers vs zama, kyurem forces ghold into an awkward position where kyurem dies but not scott free. Zama finally collapses via food poisoning, and uses a really cool grassy seed knock off trailblaze set that gets hilariously walled by donzo then gets roasted by glowking. With no tera ground tera blast, moth cannot progress via glowking and ghold loses to the flamethrower spam.
1LDK: Sub hex pult gets blocked by moltres, who roars into gambit, raging bolt and ogerpon trade for each other, glowking gets lucky poison on tusk, the latter supercell slams himselfs into laro's tusk and breaks every bone in his body. Ogerpon-w pulls out the 4th move, synthesis, which restores her, tusk uses tera steel to try to tank and attack and take her out but fails. Kingambit opens tera fire with air balloon, which gets him a turn for free vs moltres, which lends him a double kill on both moltres and weavile. Swords dance Valiant kills the remainder of their members
------ Showdown Shoguns vs Mt. Silver Foxes ------
1LDK: samu knocks clefs item in exchange for damage, ting lu applies hazards, zama flinches raging bolt with ice fang, which forces suzuya to sack samu-h to save bolt. Bolt comes back to get some damage on clef before retreating again into gholdengo, darkrai finally kills CTC's ting lu, zama comes back and suzuya tries to go to lando to take a hit, but The Strongest OU Forum Hater In The Galaxy predicts it and KOs it with Ice Fang. Iron Fraud comes in and risks it all for the sweep, but only swipes clef before losing to tera water ghold. The basedlord's dengo wins the speed tie vs suzuya's dengo, zama clears darkrai and deo-s finishes bolt
1LDK: Early game Gtcha gets a lot of chip damage on ima's team but can't quite break Pecharunt, speaking of, takes an earth power from kyurem and activates malignant chain shenanigans, that end in both trading for each other. Zapdos willingly takes an ice beam + knock off from darkrai to paralyze it, tries to volt switch into ace but focus blast actually hits, zapdos goes vs darkrai again and gets frozen, but darkrai gets para stunt and both do nothing for a couple of turns until darkrai finally lands the ice beams to kill. tinkaton unloads all her moves onto Gtcha's darkrai until he dies, kingambit tries to get a kingambit moment, but roost means it's not happening
1LDK: The match consists of Mako spamming switch moves until she decides to use tera steel iron crown to force open ting lu. The match then transforms into a game of cat and mouse to position tusk and bolt. Kyurem nails primarina with freeze dry, while glowking sacks itself to get a lucky poison on raging bolt. Lando crumbles to freeze dry and pult survives at 3hp and kills kyurem with shadow ball. But scarf tusk swiftly cuts short the rampage. With both tusk and bolt poisoned, storm zone manages to survive the timer and win the game
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That's a wrap for week 2! The Spartans and Terrors won their series against the Platoon and Gible respectively, while every other team managed to tie. The Spartans sit alone atop the table at 2-0-0, while the Breakers and surprisingly the PR second-ranked Platoon dwell at the bottom at 0-2-0. Next week I anticipate we'll see the pecking order truly develop properly. Thanks for reading - see you next time.
Indigo Platoon (0) vs (0) Studio Gible
SV OU: Santu vs JJ09LIE - cool matchup. Santu's going to want to spin back after the ending from last week but JJ has looked locked in so far.
SV OU: DAHLI vs emforbes
SV OU: crying vs Eternal Spirit - this is going to be the silliest game of all time. Between these two Gama has had more success bringing random bullshit so far. Gonna be disappointed if the combined usage of all 12 mons exceeds 100%
SV Ubers: entrocefalo vs false
SV DOU: Xrn vs bagel
SV UU: Skarpherim vs Amukamara
SV RU: abriel vs Feliburn
SV NU: watashi vs etern
SV PU: LpZ vs S1nn0hC0nfirm3d
SV LC: Scottie vs Hacker - Scottie and Hacker both being 0-2 is like incomprehensible.
Power Plant Dynamos (0) vs (0) Technical Machines
SV OU: INSULT vs myjava - I really don't know who in the OU pool I'm bolding against java right now.
SV OU: Pkel SweeTforU vs Mimikyu Stardust - Mimikyu looked pretty good last week, kept it together in the endgame.
SV OU: Niko vs Piyu
SV Ubers: Kate vs Icemaster
SV DOU: kingofmars vs Nails
SV UU: bbeeaa vs JustFranco - I do think bea will get the belt consistently working eventually but last game really wasn't a meaningful indicator considering I probably could have won that matchup
SV RU: BIHI vs Lime
SV NU: McMeghan vs Stories
SV PU: Jytcampbell vs fish anemometer - win into sub out has to be punished
SV LC: Fille vs tazz
Uncharted Terrors (0) vs (0) Circuit Breakers
SV OU: TDNT vs Laroxyl
SV OU: Stareal vs Mada
SV OU: oldspicemike vs mimilimi - mike's not been in peak form recently and mimilimi is on the rise right now, quite like some of the stuff he brings
SV Ubers: Reje vs M Dragon
SV DOU: sempra vs Spurrific
SV UU: Lyssa vs Lily - okay the Lily prep is clearly not paying off so far as she's loaded two horrible matchups in a row. I cannot cosign Lokix with no bug moves
SV RU: xavgb vs elodin
SV NU: Elias PSY vs freezai
SV PU: GXE vs eifo - GXE just beat SoulWind and Sinnoh back to back, there ain't a soul I'm bolding against him at this juncture
SV LC: Lokifan vs tko
Mt. Silver Foxes (0) vs (0) Orange Islanders
SV OU: Mako vs Pais
SV OU: Luirromen vs Welli0u - a warrior forged in the fire of the OU Circuit
SV OU: Gtcha vs hellom
SV Ubers: 7u9i2 vs RichardMillePlain
SV DOU: EternalSnowman vs qsns - 3k ESM is going down in history. I fully understand why MDB2 flipped out when nobody upbid him
SV UU: Punny vs pdt - super mega highlight. Two guys who farm every UU pool under the sun. 2-0 Punny and pdt fresh off of what looked like a difficult loss. Need to catch this one live
SV RU: Kushalos vs robjr
SV NU: Danny vs Dr. Phd. BJ
SV PU: MZ vs MichaelderBeste2
SV LC: Starsama vs Colin
Showdown Shoguns (0) vs (0) Arena Spartans
SV OU: CTC vs Attribute
SV OU: ima vs ACR1 - lowkey highlight, ACR1 has been doing an impressive bit of resume building this year
SV OU: Storm Zone vs Finchinator - highkey highlight
SV Ubers: fade vs Aberforth
SV DOU: Akaru Kokuyo vs Tenzai
SV UU: TPP vs vivalospride
SV RU: Fogbound Lake vs TheFranklin
SV NU: zS vs Thiago Nunes - Thiago will soon become the first player in history to get ICBB for unlisting replays
SV PU: mind gaming vs SoulWind - mind gaming has absolutely not played like 0-3, I had his last game on in a tab and every time I tabbed in mind was missing a 90% move. Similarly I can't imagine SoulWind at 0-3 either. Feel like mind gets one on the board
SV LC: Envy1 vs Éric
ninth: A final hurrah for Kyurem, soon to be departed: both players have one. Santu's Kyurem forms part of a pretty standard bulky offense, with Moltres and Glowking covering both physical and special sides and pivoting into each other for the benefit of Kyurem and the physical trifecta of Tusk/Zama/Gambit. JJ09LIE has the ever-popular Lu/Ghold core, Kyurem, and an interesting specially offensive core of Primarina/Tornadus-T/Iron Moth. Things start calmly, but Santu's able to get up rocks fairly early on after Knocking JJ's Tornadus: now all the Rock-weaks are vulnerable. He exhausts Tera Fairy on Moltres to stop Primarina's Calm Mind setup. Later, JJ decides to just go for it with DD on Kyurem, managing to Tera Blast Ground Santu's Kingambit to death, but Zamazenta puts a quick stop to things. In an effort to handle Santu's own special Kyurem, JJ hard switches from Primarina to Ting-Lu on an Ice Beam...which immediately freezes it and kills it. Prima at least manages to take down Glowking thanks to some earlier inflicted paralysis, but the damage has been done, and Santu's Kyurem and Zamazenta can finalize the last kills. Despite losing, I'll give a shoutout to JJ's Tornadus-T, which constantly threatened Knocks and U-turns, and even statpadded a kill against a half-health Moltres. We over at QC have been trying to find replays of this mon doing something in tours so this is appreciated.
DAHLI vs emforbes
ninth: When I saw this matchup I immediately got excited for the next shoguns cast. DAHLI's team is tried and true balance, with Skarm/Clef/Scor/Glowking looking to spread maximum hazards and status across the world, a pivot Dragapult to capitalize on the chaos, and a requisite Kingambit. emforbes possesses hazard-bending of his own between Ting-Lu and Cinderace, and is generally quite physically offensive between Gambit, Wellspring, Dragonite, Ace, and even possibly Valiant: potentially good news for DAHLI's Skarmory. Things immediately start with emforbes' Valiant critting Knock Off on Glowking to bring it low (and reveal it's mixed), prompting DAHLI to transfer Clefable's Sticky Barb to Valiant. After letting emforbes' Wellspring get off a billion damage on various mons by clicking Cudgel 4 times in a row, DAHLI reveals Toxic Spikes on Gliscor before losing it to a Tera Fire Pyro Ball. DAHLI has to Tera Dragon the Skarmory to stop the Cinderace, and emforbes subsequently trades Cinderace's life for switching the Toxic Spike back over, putting it out of play for both parties. A flashpoint comes as DAHLI's Clefable gets up rocks on an attempted Destiny Bond from emforbes' Iron Valiant; emforbes gets up his own with Lu but this lets in Skarmory to get up a spike, and the Whirlwind pulls Clefable, which finishes off Lu and severely chips Kingambit before it dies. This level of chip on Gambit presents an angle for DAHLI's own Kingambit and Dragapult, as the former can never be oneshot and the latter is the fastest thing left alive. DAHLI's Gambit cleaves down its enemy, and Dragapult Hexes the last two to secure the win.
crying vs Eternal Spirit
ninth: crying's team looks like something that got built on day 2 of DLC2. Yeah, my VoltTurn core is Corv, Rotom-Heat and Empoleon, what about it? Rotom-Heat actually walls Kyurem variants that lack Dragon moves, so that's cool. You've also got Tusk and Clodsire as sturdy Ground-type defenses, and Meowscarada because, again, this team looks like it was built immediately after finding out it got Triple Axel. Somehow I thought Eternal Spirit was going to have the weirder mons out of these two. Instead he has a completely normal-looking bulky offense with a combined usage of 200%, Corv and Glowking on the defensive pivoting spectrum, Tusk and Scor as hazard handlers/maybe-break-in-case-of-emergency wincons, Ghold and Kyurem doing the big damage. crying opens by using Meow and Empoleon to get up a spike and rocks. Shuca Berry Empoleon nearly clutches out the Gliscor matchup, but a Spike means Gliscor still wins and it has to run for the hills. crying's Tusk starts Bulking Up in the face of a Toxic from Gliscor and even continues to threaten it as Scor Tera Waters, managing to secure a kill on Gama's Tusk as it clears hazards. Eternal Spirit tries to make things work with Kyurem but it can't touch Rotom-Heat, and crying catches the Water Gliscor with a Volt Switch on the switch, which kills it from 52%. This is immediately followed by crying's Meowscarada gifting Corviknight a Scarf. Staring down Kyurem, crying's Clodsire reveals Tera Steel: as all of Eternal Spirit's Ground-types are dead and Corviknight is now infinitely easy to predict around, it functionally walls the entire enemy team. It also has Poison Jab, which means Kyurem can't stay in either. There's too many bodies left, and Eternal Spirit's slowly whittled down to nothing.
ninth: It's one of the revelations of 2024 versus a seasoned professional trying to stop an early slide. myjava's squad is plenty offensive with Deoxys a likely lead to provide hazards/chip for Wellspring, Moth, and Gambit: Tusk is requisite hazard control, while Ting-Lu feels like a bit of a wildcard but nonetheless can support offense with Spikes and Ruinations. INSULT skews more defensive with Glowking, Tusk, Ting-Lu, and Corviknight making up the first four spots, before we take a left turn into a raw Pelipper and a Kyurem. Definitely an interesting choice of an offensive pairing. Right away Deoxys and Ting-Lu trade rocks, but java's Tusk spins them away and reveals Taunt to prevent the Defog from INSULT's Corviknight. From there, java gets his Kingambit in on a Glowking, then SDs and Tera Ghosts on INSULT's Tusk, knocking it low with Low Kick and forcing the sacrifice of Corviknight. INSULT brings Tusk back in, but the dip exceeds the chip and he Rapid Spins the air, losing it for free and subsequently losing Kyurem too. Turning Tera Poison on Ting-Lu at least prevents the 6-0, but the game's definitely over, and INSULT's Pelipper never even got to hit the field. Kingambit haters DNI, this one will be a hard watch for y'all.
Pkel SweeTforU vs Mimikyu Stardust
ninth: Do I have to write this one?
Okay, Mimikyu did actually think this was a good bring into the scout, and the team signed off on it, but it is extremely funny that he keeps bringing the most public-knowledge team of all time. I definitely wouldn't call it a bad team — Future Sight AV Crown and Landorus form an interesting fast VoltTurn core, Band Dragapult is a fun and less common set — but at this point there are absolutely no surprises here lol. Pkel, on the other hand, has what looks like something people would bring on week 2 of SPL this year. Glimmora leads for an HO core consisting of Wellspring and four setup spammers: Roaring Moon, Raging Bolt, Comfey (are we back in January?), and Iron Boulder (did he make this team as soon as DLC2 dropped?). Over the first three turns, Pkel's Red Card Glimmora gets up rocks, both layers of Toxic Spikes, and remains alive at 44%, which is not a great position for an enemy HO to be in. Pkel's Wellspring reveals Synthesis, which I feel like I'm seeing more and more and helps it wall Crown. Sacking it for chip on Gambit ultimately helps Pkel's Moon get in position to chip Landorus and Primarina, which leads to Tera Blast Fairy Iron Boulder getting off an extremely rare noob gut. Comfey and Bolt didn't even touch the field. Pkel is now 3-0 and looking like a torch-bearer for the Dynamos — not bad for a 3k DPP main.
Larry vs Piyu
ninth: Larry deputizes for Niko in battling the 2-0 Piyu, who makes it a third time in a row loading breakneck hyper offense. This time it's Ribombee webs, supported by four setup guys (he's now liberated to run +SpA Moth) and a Gholdengo, which is basically Usain Bolt with webs up. Larry's team is ostensibly bulkier with the likes of Kyurem/Tusk/Ghold, but still notably contains several mons crippled by Webs like Valiant and Moon. It's for this reason that Larry immediately leads with Valiant into Ribombee, gets behind a sub, turns Tera Steel, and starts clicking Calm Mind. Piyu gets the web up, realizes Moonblast is tickling, and quickly decides to sacrifice Moth to break the sub, before bringing in Kingambit and immediately winning the 50/50 to eliminate the threat. Soon after, Piyu's Gholdengo goes on a killstreak as it drops Larry's Ghold, then turns Tera Fairy and blows up Roaring Moon with Dazzling Gleam, then gets a huge hit onto Kyurem for good measure, allowing for a Moon + Ribombee cleanup. The bee got a kill! I don't know what the Valiant set was, but considering this is webs it's probably something greedy like Expert Belt.
ninth: Two vastly different approaches to bulky offense come together. Laroxyl's hoping to put a first win on the board with the now-classic Lu/Ghold hazard duo featuring Clef, also including a mix of offensive control between Dragonite's priority, Zamazenta's defenses, and Deoxys-Speed's mixed agility. TDNT's team is all business in the back four mons — Dragapult and Glowking pivoting around, Skarmory getting everything up and Tusk keeping their own off — but also includes the rapidly rising Keldeo, a deceptively powerful special attacker with a fast Flip Turn, as well as a terrifying stallbreaker in Hoopa. Early on TDNT's Keldeo gets in position to do a bunch of damage to Clefable, but TDNT burns Tera Water early on Laroxyl's switch to Dragonite. Soon after, Laroxyl's Gholdengo catches Hoopa with a Thunder Wave, turning it into fodder: said Gholdengo later turns into a Water-type and proceeds to Recover for basically free on anything except Glowking, who risks a poisoning. Laroxyl sacrifices Ting-Lu to bring Deoxys into position, who gets up a Nasty Plot on a Chilly Reception and forces the sacrifice of TDNT's Keldeo. From here, the combination of Gholdengo and Dragonite, who was earlier paralyzed and therefore immune to poison, are able to whittle down TDNT's team for Deoxys and Zamazenta to put up the necessary big-enough numbers.
Stareal vs Mada
ninth: Okay, is this...Ursaluna semi-stall from Stareal? I guess knowing your enemy is key, and a stall team containing one of its own biggest opps would be good intel. Mada's team features two of stall's other biggest opps in Gholdengo and Kyurem, alongside Tusk and a physdef/spdef core of Zama/Moltres and Clodsire, who I assume he stole from the stall team. Fairly early on, Mada manages to position Ghold for a few good Nasty Plots, taking Blissey down to critical health and necessitating the sacrifice of Toxapex. Stareal's Ursaluna gets into position, revealing a Leftovers Bulk Up/EQ/Facade Tera Ghost set; unfortunately it's still walled by Mada's Zamazenta, who just Roars it out. Once again, Blissey and Ghold find themselves dueling with NP and CM, but this time Mada reveals Psyshock and does away with this whole affair. Ghold gets back-to-back kills on Luna and Gliscor too, and honestly at this point it's pretty over, with Stareal only having Dondozo and Corviknight left. There's not enough that can be done to stop Recover Gholdengo and the four other bodies, and 40+ turns later Stareal forfeits. Stall gets wiped down by Psyshock Ghold, who would've guessed?
oldspicemike vs mimilimi
1LDK: hazards get set up early as tusk goes for a two piece meal combo with spinner + tera dark knock off on sinistcha. Moltres gets para which means free turns for ting lu, and tusk sacks itself to clean the spikes. Tinkaton jobs vs kingambit and tusk mimi's tusk knocks moltres's boots but dies to hurricane, moltres gets some damage on deo-s before kicking the bucket. deo s hits kingambit with tbolt, but kingambit eats it and packs it with iron head. Dragonite tries to set but garganacl + dragapult tag team him. Custap Berry Ting Lu is alone vs sd gliscor, game is over
1LDK: Mako rolls worst matchup of all time, where Wellspring + Tusk get easy damage for free, and once dirge receives para, it's over
Luirromen vs Welli0u
1LDK: Dragonite crashes out vs samu with the most devious outrage of the week, valiant gets a +1, kills ace, then uses tera electric to kill ghold. Ting Lu receives 51% out of specs draco meteor (nascar ting lu am I right boys) and then dies to val, then ogerpon uses tera but crit tbolt, and she is gone. Pult misses draco, loses most of his health to crunch, then Luirro tries to pilot around it, but the miss made it so that no damage can be done in time.
Gtcha vs hellom
1LDK: Both players trade kyurems with hellom's winning the exchange, later, glimmora poisons samu as he tries to set spikes repeatedly, even tho poisoned, he still uses tera poison to ward off valiant at the exchange of his life. Zama kills gambit no issue, pult uses curse to kill pecharunt and himself. Zama wins
1LDK: I am so close to straight up NOT talk about this match because holy fuck does Atri-chan bring some atrocious nicknames, so bad in fact that it does psychic damage to CTC, but okay, ill try. Both change hits with ogerpon, but Atri wins with the help of gambit. The Basedlord sets rocks and tries to get some damage in with treads, but oger spams synthesis and smacks treads again, oger finally dies at the hands of deo-s. Gholdengo comes in, tanks knock with colbur, 1 hex, deo is down. CTC tries to play around zama with moon + val but fails and moon gets killed, zama sweeps with tera fire
ima vs ACR1
1LDK: Kyurem gets a 2x1 kill with +1 tera fire tblast + moves on scizor + samu-h, moltres roars into valiant who kills it, you would think this is a 6-0 game over game but ACR1 gets greedy and pays for it with torn killing valiant, then his own iron treads flops to heat wave. Then suddenly, Pecharunt spams malignant chain + recover, and with the help of tusk with parting shot support and no defense drops from zama, Pecha wins a 1v4 and saves the game
Storm Zone vs Finchinator
1LDK: We see a rare footage of Trick Room being used in 2024, against a cool looking team by finch ngl I really like the aesthetic. There really is not a lot to talk about tho, Finch's team is a good anti offense, but not for this particular offense. The Volcanion gets damage early game, Finch tries to stall away to no effect, eventually cresselia uses lunar dance to bring back Volcanion for a second round of killing Moltresnator, then tr comes on and storm zone wins
And thats week 3, we are staring to see winners, losers, frauds, heros and teams that will feed the kids, week 4 is gonna be under ninth, dont forget to give us likes, and thanks for reading, bye!
Circuit Breakers (4) vs (6) Indigo Platoon
SV OU: Lily vs crying — good swap, feel like Lily's track record in OU officials is better than in UU. very eager to see what flavor of bullshit gets loaded here. predicting Iron Thorns screens vs, like, Lurantis balance
SV OU: Laroxyl vs DAHLI — very excited to catch unbiased coverage of this one on the shoguns cast
SV OU: Mada vs Santu — good wins from both of them last week
Studio Gible (4) vs (6) Showdown Shoguns
SV OU: JJ09LIE vs CTCA plague doc — cool matchup. sensing that both of them will return to comfort, so excited to see valiant vs lu never mind lol. well, getting your mainstay player banned is a surefire way to win a team tour (see: spl xiv. spl xv, wcop 2024) so it's only up from here. I was gonna bold against CTC on the principle of losing to six Hawk Tuah nicknames but now with the banned deucer buff it's up
SV OU: Eternal Spirit vs Storm Zone — two of the most recognizable nicknamers on the site. MAGIC RUSH vs Temple
SV OU: emforbes vs ima — okay emforbes is not going 0-4 + nobody on shoguns timed out last week so statistically the odds are stacked against ima
Arena Spartans (5) vs (5) Mt. Silver Foxes
SV OU: Attribute vs Mako — I should bold against Attribute too for bringing six Hawk Tuah nicknames but the Foxes OU is a bit of a mess right now
SV OU: ACR1 vs Suzuya — ACR1 kind of crashed out last week and got reverse swept by Pecharunt but other than that he's generally played pretty well
SV OU: Finchinator vs Luirromen — ribbon soldiers lock tf in
Technical Machines (6) vs (4) Uncharted Terrors
SV OU: myjava vs oldspicemike — java is like 500-0 against mike this is some kind of mental counterteam
SV OU: Mimikyu Stardust vs TDNT — loading Prime Pult forces me to bold against mimikyu until further notice
SV OU: Piyu vs Stareal — somebody's gonna eventually punish Piyu for loading HO over and over but it's not gonna be this week. I respect the ambition of bringing a UU Ursaluna set on stall though
Orange Islanders (6) vs (4) Power Plant Dynamos
SV OU: hellom vs Pkel SweeTforU — Pkel's been pretty good so far but last game was against Prime Pult and the honeymoon is going to end eventually
SV OU: Welli0u vs Niko — hard to say too much, Niko didn't play last week
SV OU: Pais vs INSULT — not that the game wasn't already over but Why Did He Spin
Welcome to Week 4! There's actually a lot of news from this week, so here's a quick rundown:
Kyurem was banned from SV OU: this is the first week without it.
Shoguns frontman and builder CTC, as well as Foxes manager Chisa, were both banned from Smogon. The Shoguns received 3k in midseason auction credits, while the Foxes elevated Punny to co-manager duties.
After a period of extended disappearance due to IRL circumstances, the Shoguns sold back SV OU savant Vert and received half of his 32k price tag in credits. They used this money to draft Achimoo, GeniusX, Mimilucha, SupaGmoney, and OranBerryBlissey10.
----------- Circuit Breakers (0-2-1) vs (1-2-0) Indigo Platoon -----------
ninth: Two Lokix on team preview, yeah this is about what I expected when I saw these two were matched up. This was the series decider, at that! crying's Lokix is a purely offensive additive to a core of Gliscor, Gholdengo, Hydrapple, all slow, bulky, and capable of huge damage output; Cinderace and Zamazenta provide hazard and speed control. Lily's Lokix forms part of a VoltTurn core with Alomomola and Landorus-Therian, providing opportunities for Gholdengo as well as speed control in Zama and Valiant. It's looking dangerous for Lily as she apparently has few ways of scaring out crying's SD Ice Fang Gliscor, which drops Lando low, but Lily's Valiant is suspiciously not Booster, and it turns out that Specs (?) Moonblast just nukes Gliscor from 77%. crying's Cinderace flips Lily's rocks back onto her and brings Lando into death range to said rocks, which enables Hydrapple to come in, sponge a hit from Lily's Zamazenta, and force her to sacrifice Lokix to revenge with Valiant. crying's Lokix finally debuts to finish off a 7% Gholdengo, but Lily's Specs Valiant continues to get off the goob nut on crying's team, obliterating Gholdengo. Her attacking Zamazenta nails Lokix with a Stone Edge and brings crying's own Zama low enough to be Vacuum Waved, and Lily notches her first win in SCL IV after a transfer to OU, bringing the series to a tie. This game is also notable for the fact that nobody exhausted Tera!
ninth: Not gonna lie Laroxyl's team looks intimidating as hell because of how it's arranged. The first three mons are all business for SV hyper offense, typical speed control and setup attackers in Valiant, Wellspring, and Moth. Then you get to Ursaluna, Hatterene, and Kingambit, three mons with an average speed stat of 22, and you realize this is half Trick Room. DAHLI's squad is a bulkier offense anchored by a Lu/Ghold hazard core, joined by an increasingly popular duo that has strong defenses and offensive threat alike in Hydrapple + Moltres. Weavile and Zamazenta provide speed control. Early on, Laroxyl tries to set up Wellspring with SD, but DAHLI pops Tera Poison on Hydrapple and Play Rough all but bounces off. An opportunity against Zamazenta lets Laroxyl set up Trick Room and Healing Wish out, bringing in Ursaluna, but Facade tickles pre-burn and DAHLI's Moltres wastes the room by Roaring in and killing Valiant. The two trade mons - Hydrapple falls to Wellspring's Cudgel, AOA Zamazenta takes out Moth on the switch-in - but at this point DAHLI has five mons against Laroxyl's three. Laroxyl's Ursaluna obliterates Ting-Lu but falls to Zamazenta, and DAHLI's Moltres outduels a Kingambit that appeared to not have Kowtow? It just kept clicking Low Kick on Roosts? Sure. Ogerpon can't kill DAHLI's Gholdengo from full, even with Tera, and drops, and Weavile's Low Kick secures the game. I can't be bothered to keep track of who was ICBB during each week but I do think we should start collecting statistics on whether having active infractions makes you more likely to win games.
ninth: Two brothers in arms face off with quite bulky compositions. Mada has activated the SLITHERMAN with a pivoting core of Slither Wing, Wellspring, and Alomomola, which essentially gives the whole team Regenerator. Where his team relatively lacks hazards, going more offensive on Gliscor/Gholdengo and potentially only having Rocks on Garganacl, Santu's hazard angle is immediately obvious with Samurott, Skarmory, and Gholdengo. Two low-BST beasts in Amoonguss and Clefable provide disruption and a panic-button Calm Mind setup respectively. Early on, Mada's Gholdengo reveals Specs to deal a massive blow to Santu's Samurott, eventually leading to it being sacrificed after getting just one layer up. The Gholdengo is such a threat that Santu has to Tera Fairy his own to barely live Shadow Ball and take it out. Mada then proceeds to send out his Wellspring, Tera it, catch Amoonguss with an Encore on Synthesis, and force Santu to sacrifice his Tusk. At this point, Santu's ID/Press Skarmory is his big hope, as it fully walls Mada's Gliscor set, but threats of Slither Wing's Wisp keep forcing it out, as it takes nothing from Body Press and can just heal up with Morning Sun. The same line repeats like three times, until turn 69 when Mada brings in Wellspring to U-Turn into Garganacl. Santu evidently has an Amoonguss with no Grass move so he just sacks the 2% Gholdengo. The endgame goes on for a long time, but Mada has more bodies and ultimately comes away with the win.
----------- Studio Gible (1-2-0) vs (2-0-1) Showdown Shoguns -----------
ninth: Originally slated to be JJ09LIE vs CTC, A plague doc stepped up to fill his shoes after the basedlord was banned for tying damsels to railroad tracks. APLGD's team is a classic Grassy Terrain offense, with several Ground-weaks like Kingambit, Gholdengo, and Raging Bolt looking to both resist EQ and get a ton of healing every turn: Iron Valiant and Iron Treads deputize as speed and hazard control respectively. JJ09LIE's team looks to feature tons of pivoting via Moltres, Scizor, and Tornadus-Therian, as well as Samurott for hazards and a Pecharunt that seems like it might have trouble into three Steels. You may also look at JJ's team and think "hey this looks like you kill Great Tusk and then click CM + Thunderbolt 5 times to win," but remember that foreshadowing is a literary device that alludes to later in the story. Anyways, APLGD trades their Rillaboom for JJ's Great Tusk on the very first turn, eliminating the only Ground immunity. The two trade blows, with APLGD throwing out a nice Destiny Bond to drag down Pecharunt, and suddenly we end up with APLGD's Raging Bolt staring down three Electric-weaks. JJ's prepared, though, and Tornadus-T turns into a Ground-type and takes it out with two Tera Blast, but not before throwing out a "please Tera bro" Bleakwind and taking Draco chip to the face. Now it's Kingambit and Gholdengo versus three, and after Moltres back-to-back Flame Bodies Gambit, it's Gholdengo versus three. It's at this point that the wisdom of APLGD's banned predecessor echoes through: Never Exhaust. Gholdengo turns into a Fairy-type, gets a Nasty Plot, dodges a Razor Shell, and slowly goobs JJ's Moltres to clutch out a 1v3 on 4% health and a burn. The Razor Shell miss was unfortunate [I believe he had three chances to dodge/not get dropped before running out of Recovers for the Moltres endgame] but nonetheless a statement debut for A plague doc, stepping into the ring on short notice.
ninth: The two men with perhaps the most recognizable nickname schemes in current gens, Eternal Spirit (aka Gama) and Storm Zone (aka switchbladess aka PYUKUMUKU GURU aka sh0ckwav3s aka amaterasu). Eternal Spirit, in keeping with his penchant for bringing funny-looking mons this tour, is packing a Cobalion and a Thundurus-Therian. Thundurus is probably just offensive but I have no clue what the Cobalion is supposed to be - Clefable aka MAGIC RUSH potentially fills the role of Rocks/paralysis disruption so it's probably not that. The rest of the team features a generally solid core of Dragapult, Samurott, and Gliscor for damage, so Cobalion is probably bulky? Sure. Storm Zone, in comparison, is using a variant of the AV Glowking BO that he and like three people converged onto at the same time. The team skews slower but has massive damage output between Glowking/Wellspring/Bolt/Gambit while still being robust enough to take a few hits: the usual speed control in Scarf Lando was here replaced with Enamorus, which still provides a key Ground immunity and adds a Dragon immunity too. Early on, Storm Zone notices that Fairy resists do not exist and decides to Tera Enamorus to 2HKO Gama's Gliscor, which brings out Cobalion...which turns out to be Sub/CM/Aura Sphere? Calcs look full offensive too, and it's able to claim a kill on Storm's Enamorus. Enamorus remains a massive threat, though, and Gama has to sacrifice Dragapult just to get in Clefable as a kinda-check. Gama tries to set up his Tera Fairy Thundurus-T, only for Storm to immediately switch in Glowking, which walls it forever. Said Glowking also chips the hell out of Cobalion and gets a burn on Samurott, at which point Storm Zone's Tusk gets +1 speed and Eternal Spirit recognizes that the game is probably over.
ninth: Do these teams look familiar? Both of these squads actually share cores with current sample teams. emforbes has the Enamorus version of the AV Glowking BO used earlier in the day by Storm Zone, while ima's team shares four out of six mons with CTC and lax's Crown + Zapdos VoltTurn BO. The two provide a difficult-to-tank combo of Volt Switches and provide entry points for Garganacl as well as the two new entries to the team, Rillaboom and Darkrai, both experts at cleaning up heavily chipped teams. emforbes reveals Synthesis and U-Turn on Wellspring, taking a chunk out of Rillaboom early on in addition to Wood Hammer damn near killing itself. emforbes' Tusk intends to stop ima's Garganacl from getting rocks up, but ima reveals the extremely heat Ice Punch (which does a cool 27% to Tusk, honestly a bit more than I thought): the chip results in a bit of a stalemate where Tusk gets lower and lower, and by the time it kills Garganacl ima's able to keep rocks up. It comes at the cost of his own Tusk, though, a sacrifice to keep rocks off ima's own side. The low-health Rillaboom is sacked to Enamorus, and ima pulls out Iron Crown and tries to go for game with CM Stored Power: unfortunately for him, emforbes Teras his Wellspring for the +1 SpD and survives, ending the threat. Now up 5-2, it's a numbers game at this point, and not even Red Card Darkrai (heat btw) can pull it back. A much-needed win for emforbes, who has never looked like an 0-3 player during this tour but finally gets to add someone to the list of SCL players bodied by a doubles. Lot of respect for the cool shit on ima's team, though, Ice Punch Garganacl is crazy.
----------- Arena Spartans (2-1-0) vs (0-2-1) Mt. Silver Foxes -----------
1LDK: Mako tries to sweep with latias, changes ideas, then uses tera fairy glim to stack tspikes and getting a kill on moon, Blaziken blocks treads from spinning and engages in low ladder activities such as knock off + overheat on the dnite. Treads finally gets a chance to spin infront of Bulk Up Ursaluna. Atri-chan spams moves with volcanion untill he decides to unleash zama, who loses half hp for crit eq, crunch kills latias, bp kills boulder, then uses rest + chesto berry + tera fire to contain blaziken, a couple of moves latter, Atri wins
1LDK: Webs vs a terrible ace matchup, how does suzuya win this? gholdengo hits ace with the twave and gets damage vs treads before hitting the bucket. Moon sets up, there goes ace, then treads, then dies to gambit. Suzuya's Kommo-o set up, tera electric thunder punch, there goes primarina, taunt blocks ACR1's Kommo-o, then dies to a drain punch boosted by ACR1's tera normal, then sets up again to wipe zapdos, and wins the game.
ninth: These two play a million OU games for circuit tours so I was very excited for a display of maximum SV brainrot. We're halfway there with Finchinator using a Ting-Lu for the 70th time, forming a hazardous core with Glimmora and Gholdengo: then you have the full spectrum of offense from slow nuke (Bolt) to mid-speed setup (Wellspring) to pretty fast cleanup (Darkrai). Luirromen has a very anti-offense-offense-club-looking team: you've got Ogerpon-Cornerstone's Sturdy, Dragonite's Multiscale and Extreme Speed, Treads for fast spinning, the general existence of Landorus-Therian, all mons that feature plenty of utility on top of offensive potential. Moth and Darkrai form a deadly special attacking core. The game immediately starts with Luirromen's +2 Darkrai critting and obliterating Finch's Ting-Lu, wrap it up.
Well, it's not over, but it does certainly suck. Finch is eventually able to neutralize the Darkrai by catching it with Gholdengo's Thunder Wave, but he has to lose most of Bolt's health to get there and now has no capability to get up hazards. Iron Moth, now lacking a clear stopper besides a 17% Bolt, wins a speed tie and kills Wellspring, followed by Dazzling Darkrai to death before finally dropping to Bolt. At this point, though, Luirromen can go for game with Tera Blast Flying Dragonite and the unrevealed Landorus. Kind of an unfortunate way to get your first win on the board, but nonetheless hopefully a sign of good things to come from Luirromen. I suppose this must be karma paying him back for when I lucked him in a side tour that had Palafin legal.
----------- Technical Machines (1-1-1) vs (1-1-1) Uncharted Terrors -----------
1LDK: On the rematch number 100 billion of these 2, Moon gets a lucky knock off with no proc on moltres, ogerpon-w bitch slaps ogerpon and explodes. Lando sets rocks while avoiding and taking meteors, samu-h tries to jumpscare ogerpon with sucker punch but valiant is on that, no free eats, and so pecha comes to pivot into moon into killing tinkaton with eq. Taunt Moon 1v1s the moltres, valiant 1v3s the rest of the team
1LDK: TDNT carefully plays around mimikyu's tusk, which leds darkrai to get a kill on glimmora, then procedess to air fry the moltres who just wanted to play the game. A game of tag beetween tusk, moth, ting lu and sinistcha ends with tusk brute forcing sinistcha, and later getting his drip stolen + beated bad in the alleway. Ogerpon gets some damage on nite which is gonna be important later, dragonite uses dragon tail, which rolls into moth, moth then makes a call to boy sminem, buy all in fiery coin, pump it to the moon, gets a +1fiery dance, tera grass energy ball, ting lu is death. Darkrai burns gambit and dies, you might be asking yourself how mimikyu can come back from this position? The answer is that the gliscor is eqless, gambit goes to + infinity and brute forces gliscor, from there, tinkaton misses a life or death twave and the game is over.
1LDK: Stareal starts with the right foot by blasting ting lu with hydrapple, but the match goes awry the second valiant hits him with an Ice Punch, glimmora uses red card to get rocks + tspikes before dying. Zama comes in and gambit uses tera ghost to set up on him, but Crunch defense rolls force his hand, which allows Piyu to stack more IDs, Stareal's entire team taps out 1 by 1 to Piyu's Zama
----------- Orange Islanders (2-0-1) vs (2-1-0) Power Plant Dynamos -----------
1LDK: The match starts slow with pivot moves galore and a few hazards, volt switch from iron crown leave samu-h effectively dead due to rocks, more pivot moves and more hazards get added untill prima dents kingambit while he cleaves her heart for the kill, lando finally dies to tusk, thanks to all the rocks chip. Both Dragonites meet face to face, hellom opts for dd + ice spinner to take 90%, tofu's dnite decides to click fuck it we ball and does 1,000,000 with outrage. Serperior glares kingambit, but luckily for the monster, he never stops and brute forces his way out. Great Tusk cannot fully kill Pecharunt, so Crown has to do it with volt switch, with tusk back in and a free switch, zama grabs it and wins with CC spam
1LDK: Ting Lu gets burned in exchange for 1 (one) spike, Sinistcha pokes pult with a stick, but pult takes no shits with Clear Body. Tinkaton gets crit with ep in exchange for rocks, and U-turns out, pult tries to nuke stuff but gets stuffed, Ogerpon-W takes a try, but Sinistcha gives her a succubus treatment to wall her, the rocks + spike really dent moth, which kills tinkaton but dnite scares the insect off and transforms lando into a world cup presentation about global warming. Pult has to get to -6 in order to kill the ting lu who adds another layer to the lonely spike, so that spike can have a friend that will certainly have a 12 episode lighthearted + sugary filled romance anime while all of us suffer for eternity. Moth dies during my tangent, which lets dnite have time to roost. Kingambit activates tera fairy + sd to end the game double or nothing, gliscor gets some decent chip, which lets keldeo kill kingambit with a surf filled with justice. Bolt finishes keldeo, but dnite pops old reliable tera normal + espeed to bust it open and gets killed by meteor. Ironically enough, due to clear body not dropping the attack stat, it doesn't drop the amount of sustain strenght sap gets, which means Sinistcha during the next 4 minutes and eleven seconds, it's effectively immortal.
1LDK: Ting Lu decides that no one is gonna be happy and takes away moth's income, then sinistcha misses the piss shot and gets burned by moltres, uses tera poison to get back in, but roar lets zama in, pecharunt eats a stone edge but defense drop from crunch forces out into moltres even tho it revealed stone edge. Sinistcha tries to burn gambit with the hot tea move, but the gambit pulls a giant sign that says "Free CTC pls..." Sinistcha decides to spare the man's life, but kingambit uses this as a distraction to smack moth in the ass with the sign, and with tera ghost, it 1v1s zama. Raging bolt cries and seethes because Ting Lu then dies, Iron treads cries and seethes because Ting Lu then dies. Pais missclicks spikes on sinistcha, which doesn't matter since the sinistcha literally cannot hit anything, once ting lu dies, the rest of his teammates finish the game
---------------------------
That's a wrap for Week 4! The Gibles and Foxes took arguable upsets over the Shoguns and Spartans respectively, while the Islanders consolidated their first-place ranking as the first team to three wins: the Breakers/Platoon and Machines/Terrors sets both tied. Also we saw like three Lokix and none of them really did much.
Uncharted Terrors (0) vs (0) Orange Islanders
SV OU: oldspicemike vs Welli0u - looks like mike's got his motion back after finally claiming a win against his eternal rival.
SV OU: Baloor vs Pais - with the other two SV slots 1-3 the Terrors have made two substitutions. Tricky matchup for the LOORdheat purveyor, with Pais looking comfortable in the tier.
SV OU: Ewin vs hellom - I don't think he's going out sad to Ursaluna semi-stall again.
Mt. Silver Foxes (0) vs (0) Power Plant Dynamos
SV OU: Luirromen vs Pkel SweeTforU - Foxes put up a dominant win last week and I do think they'll be able to carry it forward to an extent. Luirromen did kind of luck out in his first win but getting one on The Sheet is something that can beget more wins.
SV OU: Mako vs INSULT - INSULT's been going through it, and unfortunately Mako is a tricky opponent to snap his streak against.
SV OU: Suzuya vs Niko - Suzuya won a 5v6 last week (loaded Ribombee into Treads x Cinderace) so I gotta bold him this week on principle. Incredibly funny to see the end screen with Kommo-o at +2 in every stat and full health.
Indigo Platoon (0) vs (0) Technical Machines
SV OU: DAHLI vs MAVERICK SHOOTERS - word is java has exams and therefore Mav is up. The Machines are full of wily builders and while DAHLI has been fairly stalwart I'm gonna go for the upset.
SV OU: Santu vs Piyu - Piyu is locked tf in right now and the last undefeated OUer but many of his games have been highly offensive and quick, and I think Santu might make him go the distance.
SV OU: crying vs Mimikyu Stardust - here's the thing, on gameplay I probably favor Mimikyu right now, but I just have the feeling that he's going to lose on team preview.
Showdown Shoguns (0) vs (0) Circuit Breakers
SV OU: SupaGmoney vs Mada - the stall general debuts! SupaGmoney tried to diversify in OLT, not stalling a single time, but I think he got a hard pull in Mada who has been an absolute professional for the Breakers.
SV OU: Storm Zone vs Hiko - another debut from Hiko for the Breakers, again getting a hard pull in Storm Zone. Wonder what the matchup record is for these two on ladder.
SV OU: ima vs Lily - I have enjoyed a lot of ima's brings this season and am reasonably confident it'll pay off this week. if Lily continues remembering how to prep (see: Specs Valiant last week) this'll be a good one. Still trying to figure out the hidden messages in ima's nicknames.
Arena Spartans (0) vs (0) Studio Gible
SV OU: Finchinator vs Eternal Spirit - Gama started off well but has had a rough last two games, and I don't really know what was going on with the Flesh Crown bring. Finch got crit brutally last game and will be back with a vengeance.
SV OU: Attribute vs JJ09LIE - despite the worst nicknames of all time Attribute is on fire, you can't dispute posting wins against Santu/CTC/Mako in quick succession. JJ is heat but his endgames sometimes scare me, that Bleakwind was a play made with entirely too much dip on his chip.
SV OU: ACR1 vs emforbes - I was an ACR1 believer, and I still am, but his last two games have kind of ended in car crashes and that can't be moralizing. emforbes got a clean win over ima and between that and his OLT run he's energized right now.
Tokyo Funka is a crazy town
and Tokyo never sleeps at night x3
Tokyo Funka is a crazy town
in a town of tricks
the dirtied haze hags in the air
gathered young men smoke the purple smoke, their eyes empty
in this babylon of thief-takers, abandon the weak
the streets of the red light district becomes desolate and slow down
Gambling plan, the emperor is impatient
Stylishness is incomplete, connivance running rampant
being able to enjoy the scramble road is alright
what the hell do you want to do from now on?
As you are now, its as if your half-dead, you might as well just dream showy dreams
Futile lust, alternating between like & hate
when sake is agitated, a chaotic romance
heal and correct this chaotic world
bring on the fight. Here we go!
The evening sakura dance, the girls adorn themselves
Dance, everybody!
Red temptation makes the back of your neck crawl
Carrying katanas in hand, the boys shout out
Act as kabukimono, everybody!
Going mad out of evil bloodthirst is ecstasy
Bloom, flowers, the transient world is but a moment
Ah... the festival definitely won't be stopped
Ah... the swirling, soaring spirits are full of intense ardor
Egotist magistrate, followers are yes-men
people who do what they want to do as much as they like are haughty BAD MAN
Propaganda? Whats the basis?
prostitute servants the same as ukiyoe are taboo
being able to enjoy the scramble road is alright
what the heck do you want to do from now on?
As you are now, its as if your half-dead
The shogun's desire is our great cause
The evening sakura dance, the girls adorn themselves
Dance, everybody!
Red temptation makes the back of your neck crawl
Carrying katanas in hand, the boys shout out
Act as kabukimono, everybody!
Going mad out of evil bloodthirst is ecstasy
Bloom, flowers, the transient world is but a moment
burn the stage, burn the flames of your passion
Bloom, flowers, the transient world is but a moment.
the ones who let their tears dry are the feeble populace
who is the one who shall protect the children's futures?
cheer up your hearts
cheer up your hearts
Tokyo Funka is a crazy town
and Tokyo never sleeps at night x3
Tokyo Funka is a crazy town
The evening sakura dance, the girls adorn themselves
Dance, everybody!
Red temptation makes the back of your neck crawl
Carrying katanas in hand, the boys shout out
Act as kabukimono, everybody!
Going mad out of evil bloodthirst is ecstasy
Bloom, flowers, the transient world is but a moment
burn the stage, burn the flames of your passion
Bloom, flowers, the transient world is but a moment x2
ninth: Following the execution of Welli0u for electoral fraud, we saw Andyboy appear as his replacement. Both sides actually share four mons, the combo of Wellspring/Tusk/Glowking/Gambit common to both as a bulky, physically biased comp of bruisers. oldspicemike's variant is more aggressive with Dragapult and Raging Bolt rounding out the team on the special end, while Andyboy uses a slower, bulkier offense controller in Zamazenta and Zapdos over Raging Bolt. 2/3 of ZapKingLu...we're getting there. mike uses U-Turn Wellspring to bait and waste Andy's Zamazenta +1 early on, uses Encore Wellspring to win a speed tie and heal from the enemy Wellspring's Cudgel, and kills Zapdos with Cudgel, in what I can only describe as getting off the noob gut. Despite losing Zama's +1, Andy still gets it in cleanly with his own Wellspring's U-Turn and forces mike to sacrifice Kingambit. mike brings out his Raging Bolt, which promptly kills both Zama and Tusk thanks to Tera Bug, even chipping Andy's own Gambit before falling, and giving mike an even bigger advantage in terms of bodies. The chipped Gambit can't win, and mike secures victory via a series of good out-trades.
Baloor vs Pais
ninth: The Terrors elected to start Team Canada stalwart and LOORdheat purveyor Baloor in place of one of their struggling non-oldspicemike slots, and he showed up with a Dark-type-powered offense with plenty of anti-offense tools of its own. The team really wants to go first between Dragonite, Darkrai, and Zamazenta, and provides a hazard protection scheme of Gholdengo and Samurott, with Landorus gluing the squad together. Pais has a raw Ursaluna, which is something we are somehow seeing more and more of. It's attached to a pivoting-heavy composition of Ogerpon and Zapdos, so it'll have plenty of chances to get active, as well as the Booster duo of Roaring Moon and Great Tusk; Gholdengo provides special damage and keeps hazards up. Baloor landing an early LO Darkrai flinch on Pais' Zapdos forces him to bring out Booster Tusk early, which manages to trade rocks and lives with Baloor's Landorus before both die. Pais also elects to burn Tera early on Ogerpon to U-Turn Darkrai nearly to death, which means Life Orb kills it as his Leftovers Ursaluna comes in. Luna ends up Drain Punching Baloor's Samurott for a cool 62% before dying, also knocking off Zapdos before dying. The LOOR reveals Tera Ground DD Dragonite to try and set up on Zapdos/Gholdengo, but Pais reveals Scarf Trick Ghold and nullifies it on the spot, using the forced switch to kill Baloor's own Gholdengo. The Choice-locked Dragonite can do little, and Baloor's Zamazenta gets paralyzed and Hurricaned, leading to a decisive victory. Pais says gg ez before clarifying that he was directing that message to Tricking and Ciro napoli, not his opponent.
Ewin vs xdRudi.exe
ninth: hellom didn't even get banned (he is now ICBB, though) but he was nonetheless subbed out for OLT qualifier xdRudi.exe before the whole suspect affair was uncovered. Rudi's team is the most webs-coded HO I've ever seen that doesn't actually use webs: there's a Kommo-o, a Serperior, and a Gholdengo, who all benefit massively from never being outsped and being able to run funny EVs, an Iron Valiant for speed control, and a Kingambit because obviously. Instead of the Ribombee it's a Glimmora, though, so it's just a normal-ish HO. Ewin, on the other side, has a sand structure with the classic Tyranitar/Excadrill core, supported by Glowking (good pivot, protects sand core from special attacks, CR resets weather for TTar to refresh sand) and Zapdos (good pivot, protects the sand core from CC and general contact), and requisite appearances from Generally Good Mons Tusk and Zamazenta. Ewin reveals AV Glowking early on, and uses Eject Pack Great Tusk to get Zapdos in for an easy early kill on Serperior, Volt Switching in Excadrill. Rudi takes this as an opportunity to go Kommo-o and start Clangorous Souling up, but Ewin's Excadrill reveals Tera Flying Tera Blast (on top of its Air Balloon) and chips it heavily. Ewin identifies he needs sand up to outspeed the Tera Electric Thunder Punch Kommo-o, and sacks TTar to get it up and kill back. Drill continues its killing spree by outdueling a full health Shuca Berry Gholdengo and surviving a Make It Rain. With a near-full Great Tusk and Zamazenta, not even Rudi's Fallen 5 Gambit can clutch it out, and Ewin ends the game in under twenty turns.
ninth: Sir, the goddamn contact-punisher-birds are back. Luirromen's team is a rather bulky, utility-heavy offense between Moltres, Tinkaton, Garganacl doing a little bit of everything between rocks, burns, phazing, paralysis, Encores, constant chip, you name it. Between the back three and the offensive choices of Dragapult and Samurott, Luirromen's to achieve victory by a thousand cuts. Pkel leans more offensive with Iron Valiant, Dragapult, and Scizor providing decently-powered attacks delivered as quickly as possible: Alomomola and Zapdos provide pivoting, healing, and contact punishment. Tusk glues together both teams. Rocks go up early for both, and Pkel briefly threatens with a non-Booster, non-Boots Valiant...what could it be? Luirromen continuously tries to get Garganacl in safely, but the rocks hurt his team as Pkel spins his own away. Luirromen reveals Red Card Samurott to disrupt a pivot attempt, but pulls Zapdos who just kills it while Volt Switching to Valiant, who promptly kills Tinkaton with CC. Rocks do roughly 500% to Luirromen's team before he can finally spin them away on turn 25, but Pkel's team is still mighty healthy, and he can't get Garganacl set up safely against the CC Valiant. Pkel's Tusk gets rocks up again before dying, and the constant chip from rocks and Volt Switch continues to terrorize Luirromen. His Moltres can't stop Tera Fire Scizor, who sets up in its face and gets 2 kills, leading to a decisive victory for Pkel.
Mako vs INSULT
ninth: These two teams share four mons but completely diverge for the final two. The core is Ting-Lu/Great Tusk/Iron Moth/Dragapult, looking to get everything on the floor and clean house with the speedy Moth and Pult. INSULT doubles down on the bulk of the first two with Skarmory, also adding Wellspring, but Mako elects for even more offensive cleanup with Valiant and Darkrai, making her team much faster and frailer. INSULT wins the Dragapult speed tie and kills with Draco turn 1, and they start trading hazards between Skarm and Lu, the field full of spikes before turn 6. INSULT Whirlwinds Lu out but pulls Moth, whose Tera Grass Energy Ball forces the death of his Ting-Lu. Both Tusks come out, and we go from all spikes to no spikes as both Tusks die, Mako employing CM Valiant to kill INSULT's. When INSULT kills said Valiant with Wellspring, it opens a window for INSULT's Tera Dragon Dragapult, who cleans Ting-Lu up before Skarm's Brave Bird catches Moth for another kill. From there it's a straightforward cleanup and INSULT notches his first victory of SCL IV.
Suzuya vs Niko
ninth: Okay, this raw Ursaluna action is getting out of hand. Niko's got the bear on board with a Grassy Terrain offense, allowing it to counteract its burn damage to some extent: it's accompanied by other abusers like Gholdengo (halved EQ damage, welcome back Giratina-Origin) and Zamazenta, as well as Cinderace and Deoxys-Speed for hazard and speed control. Suzuya's team is a bulky revolving door of Zapdos and Landorus providing entry points for Garganacl and Dark-type menaces Kingambit and Darkrai, and between Zap and Cinderace there's probably a lot of status in play. Niko's Ursaluna gets activated early and starts SDing, but Suzuya's Garganacl stalls it into Darkrai's kill range before dying to Facade (goddamn this guy is strong). Suzuya runs into issues when his Landorus gets crit by Pyro Ball and dies instantly, allowing Niko's Cinderace to start Swords Dancing: despite that, +1 Pyro does 59% to Zapdos (wtf) and allows for an easy Thunder Wave into eventual Hurricane kill. Niko calls out Suzuya's Volt Switch and Focus Blasts his Kingambit to death, but immediately after switches his Deoxys into Darkrai's Dark Pulse and dies instantly, making Tera Poison Darkrai both the second-fastest thing alive and resistant to the actual fastest thing alive, Niko's Zamazenta. After landing a poison with Sludge Bomb, Suzuya's Zapdos manages to stall it out, followed by a Dark Pulse flinch to finish Niko's Tera Water Gholdengo. Zapdos was definitely the MVP here: that guy took way too little from Pyro Ball to do all the damage it did this game.
ninth: Every mon in this game except for Lando was either introduced in Gen 9 or unbanned in Gen 9. DAHLI looks poised to spam fast special attacks with Enamorus, Deoxys, Moth, and Bolt's priority, with Tusk and Gambit present to stop the team from getting 6-0ed by hazards or Blissey. MAVERICK SHOOTERS' debut for the Machines comes with a slower if similarly specially biased offense, sharing the Moth/Bolt combo but employing Gholdengo and Valiant as well. Landorus and Wellspring provide physical damage and potential cross-board utility in pivoting and Encoring. DAHLI trades their Deoxys' life for getting rocks up, noticing Mav's lack of removal, then sends out Moth and takes out Gholdengo. Boosted by Fiery Dance, Mav is forced to Tera his Ogerpon to eliminate Moth, who even poisons it first. Mav reveals Life Orb Thunderbolt/Vacuum Wave Valiant, which lands a kill on Gambit but dies in the process, leaving the game score 3-2 for Mav. DAHLI's Bolt comes out and eventually wins the Thunderclap war against Mav's Moth, and DAHLI reveals their ace in the hole that stops Mav's last two mons in Stone Edge Landorus and Raging Bolt: Tera Electric Enamorus survives everything thrown at it and secures the win for DAHLI.
Santu vs Piyu
1LDK: The match consists of... uuhh... a stall team, versus [checks notes]* Psyshock Gholdengo and Sd Knock Facade Gliscor.... yeah... Look, what else do you want me to say. I know, let me talk about my day then, okay so it's spring here and the weather is just right, sunny but not too hot, and with a healthy amount of wind, I think I'm gonna go take a walk later, I need some fresh air, touch some grass, so that I won't end like a player with 50+ alts, remember to stay sane people, go to the gym, get a therapist, eat healthy, do basic chores around the house, everything helps.
crying vs Mimikyu Stardust
1LDK: both standard looking teams on the outside, but perverted on the inside, crying has scarf spam, while mimi has AV spam. The match starts fairly slow tho, both players are trying to catch each other while setting shop if possible, among these we see a substitute great tusk wtf??? who flees when tinkaton tries to encore, the glowking is also red card. Once zama comes in he puts in the numbers with CC + Crunch, dealing decent damage to corv + glowking, eventually primarina solos the tinkaton. Some turns after glowking fails to chilly via para, which allows samu-h to kill primarina, getting 2 layers of spikes in the process, fails the third one and dies to tusk. this tusk tries to sub in hopes for zapdos to miss hurricane, which he eventually does, letting tusk get a kill with rock slide. Glowking fails to chilly again due to para, and deo-s whips out NP to kill it, raging bolt tries to catch the lando switch but fails the quick time event and zama is the one who eats it, crit cc puts tusk to the count, lokix revenge kills, but this gives deo-s the turn to use tera fighting focus blast upon corv and lokix, and psycho boosting the bolt to win the game.
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Showdown Shoguns (4) vs (6)Circuit Breakers
SupaGmoney vs Mada
1LDK: The sun rises today with Mada's team, the ting lu takes a knock from gliscor, then wake comes in to sub on the protect and claim gholdengo with hydro steam. SupaGmoney's ting lu is forced to tera water to handle the heat while getting rocks up, gliscor nails a toxic as mada's ting lu also gets rocks up, and trades damage with apple before retreating to ninetales, who barely lives and screams a healing wish, keep this one in your head, its gonna be important later. AV tusk spams moves vs gliscor and wins, then tanks an Ice Beam from darkrai, killing back with Close Combat, then dying to zama, balloon bolt takes a cc and deals massive damage with tbolt, before getting roared into moth, who dies to stone edge. Raging Bolt comes back in and recieves the healing wish ninetales did 10 episodes ago, with new health and tera fairy, it wins the game via the power of love and friendship
Storm Zone vs Hiko
1LDK: Valiant fails to 1v1 Amoonguss with psyshock thanks to clear smog, lando taunts gliscor, which allows samu-h to get an sd, killing amoongus with ceaseless and dealing a massive blow to skarmory with aqua cutter before dying to body press. Moth gets the skarm, but it seems it can't touch ting lu, so scizor comes in to grab some momentum against the incoming gliscor, protect gliscor + clef blank the raining meteors from bolt, moth uses tera ground to take hits and gamble for SpA boosts, it is clear Storm Zone's plan here is to try to overwhelm the ting lu with all kinds of damage, moth tries again but this time pult comes in and launches a crit hex on lando, who then dies to meteor before getting jumpscared by scizor. scizor sacks itself to finally get the kill on ting lu. A spa drop does not stop bolt from killing clefable, but gliscor with speed evs kills moth on the switch and out speeds bolt for the win
ima vs Lily
1LDK: Oh jolly god gracious, is that another fucking stall game? yaaaay, but this time, instead of losing via having impossible matchups, ima wins via the use of psyshock glowking, who burns blissey's soft boiled. then clefable uses tera bug to catch it, but flamethrower puts more pressure (unless when para) which eventually burns clefable's moonlight. eventually the tusk just kills clodsire? glowking finishes clef with flamethrowers and spams ice beam vs gliscor untill lily forfeits.
1LDK: Websnator vs a rare bootspam with Azumarill, we start the match with Gama's Raging Bolt two tapping Mothnator, then, uses tera fairy to barely survive a headlong rush from tusknator, killing him in the process. Iron Treads trades himself for rocks vs Araquanator, who tanks a raging thunderbolt and killing him too, on his last breath, Araquanator uses custap berry to get webs. Azumarill gets on the field, gets flinched by Kingambitnator's GTA triple drone stunt combo, and dies while doing nothing. From here, Gholdengonator starts a comeback with NP and tera fairy, putting both pult and gliscor into a pack. Weavile ice shards to put it down, then nails a triple axel against the raging boltnator, and it comes down to the gambit 1v1-- hold on wdym the weavile has low kick, yes that's right ladies and gentlemen, apparently, weaviles nowadays run no sd, lowkick over it, and sometimes even knock off less, why? I have no idea tbh, can I get a double check on this rq?
Attribute vs JJ09LIE
1LDK: JJ clicks dpulse on ghold, who eats it thanks to colbur, but a flinch means he has to retreat to zama, who can't rest thanks to twave + taunt. bolt gets chip on treads, JJ's ogerpon almost kills Atri's ogerpon, then the interaction repeats, but a crit ivy vs zama puts him into rest forever, and oger follows soon with dnite espeed. This is where we see a 5-star performance of black air force member Booster Speed Bulk Up Tusk, who sets up 2 times, tanks various attacks from Atri's team and sweeps the floor 1v5, no predicts needed
ACR1 vs emforbes
1LDK: Samu-h trades itself for a spike and knock off on Okidogi's AV. Cinderace gives the spike back, while glim gives rocks. Dragonite tries to set up, but scarf darkrai scares him out into using Glimmora's trap card dnite tries again but gets bonked hard by lando Stone Edge, goes for it anyway and gets damage on darkrai before exploding via hypothermia. With no AV, the dog drops to the 2 piece combo of sball + mir. The combination of shuca ghold + zama knocks lando out, Iron Valiant barely takes a tera fairy dazzling gleam from gholdengo and kills darkrai, rilla easily comes in and rks. The final streetch is tera fairy ghold and tera fire zama doing a 1v1 no shirt duel to the death final destination no items. 1 Spdef drop later, Ghold wins.
Usually this is where the post would end, but since we have reached a milestone, we have to stack donuts on it, so let's see how the tour has developed
The meta has been BO and HO, but we could see the rise of zapdos and gliscor during the weeks of kyurem banned, im guessing things will revert back to weeks 1-3 with the unban, which means less apples, less birds, less cursed fruits and gliscors
ninth: With the recent ban and unban of Kyurem due to electoral crimes I thought it might be interesting to see how some of its prey benefited. Keep in mind this is a relatively small sample size.
Zapdos had an average 6.67% usage in weeks 1-3 which spiked to 16.7% in weeks 4-5, being the joint sixth most used in week 5.
Gliscor went from 16.7% usage in weeks 1-3, including just a single use in week 1, to 21.7% usage in weeks 4-5.
All three members of the dreaded ZapKingLu did not appear together on the same team, but we did see the combo of Zapdos + Slowking-Galar reach 10% usage this week with three brings. This combo appeared three times total in the three weeks prior to Kyurem's ban.
Two people attempted to full-on stall in week 5 with the same team, and both lost to Psyshock Slowking-Galar. No stall was reported in week 4, and prior to Kyurem's ban, we saw two instances of semi-stall in week 3 (I'm counting Mako's team as semi-stall).
Welcome to Week 6! I had a longer intro but the draft decided to vanish from existence. Basically, at the start of the week, the Islanders stood alone in first place at seven points, with four teams locked at six, and the entire field separated by no more than four points. I have to redo all the formatting so let's just get into the games.
ninth: What's with all the Hydreigon this week? I know blunder's videos are known to shift usage stats in the 1300s but apparently his featured shitmons have motion in SCL too. This team featured in hellom's game earlier in the day: Samurott and Lando provide hazards and plenty of chip, Pecharunt provides a hell of status and Parting Shot pivoting alongside a ridiculous natural defense and spinblocking, Hydreigon is a Sub/NP wincon, and Gambit and Zama are broken. emforbes has what I can only describe as a blender of a team, with four mons holding a pivot move between Lokix, Alomomola, Iron Crown, and Zapdos: Alo also helps keep the team healthy, while Tusk protects them from hazards and Zama protects them from losing. Right away emforbes gets to clicking pivot moves even as Mako gets rocks up, replying with his own soon after. Mako's Pecharunt tries to spinblock emforbes' Tusk but has to Tera Ghost to survive its onslaught: after sacrificing Crown, emforbes catches Pecharunt with Tera Stellar Zamazenta's Crunch to finish it off. Mako's own Zamazenta tries its damndest but is walled and paralyzed Zapdos: she tries to set Hydreigon up, but Zapdos keep hitting Hurricanes and it only gets the one kill before retreating. The previous pivoting and paralysis were particularly potent, and the game becomes a cleanup for emforbes' Stellar Zamazenta and Lokix, who gets to finish the game with First Impression.
ninth: Already having the tie secured, Studio Gible substituted yovan33321 over Eternal Spirit to potentially close the series out. His team is turbo-offensive and absolutely insists on going first at all costs, whether through speed (Valiant, Deoxys, Moth) or priority (Scizor, Dragonite). Kyurem and Dragonite provide something resembling defensive backbones but it's still a Daytona 500 type composition. Kushalos, meanwhile, wants things to go much slower, because he's got Manaphy webs, with all the usual abusers like Gholdengo, Wellspring, even a Latias. Unfortunately, Kush fails to get up webs thanks to Taunt Deoxys in the lead who gets up rocks before intentionally not killing Ribombee, instead letting yovan's Valiant come in, kill it, and double up with a kill on Kush's Tusk too...and then a kill on Kush's Wellspring too, before finally switching out. In modern parlance we call this "getting off the noob gut." Kush tries to go for game with Tera Poison CM Kee Berry Stored Power Latias, only for LO Scizor to end that immediately. Iron Moth cleans up, and it's a dominant first victory for yovan: if he keeps this up he'll definitely have to move himself up on his definitive ultimate smogon svou players ranking.
ninth: First of all, this is a really funny looking team preview, you've got Iron Hands versus mono orange/red mons. [note: I wrote this before realizing Iron Hands would appear several more times over this week.] JJ09LIE's team is a high-violence offense consisting of three slower mons that can set up and trade well into most things (Hands, Gholdengo, Primarina), a Landorus for that coveted Role Compression, and two Booster mons in Moon and Moth who clean up on the faster end. Luirromen's hot-colored team has a bit more focus on hazards between Treads, Landorus, and possibly Deoxys-Speed, anti-offense offense tools in Dragonite and the aforementioned Lando, Moth to cover what Deoxys can't hit, and Gambit because obviously. JJ's trading power shows early as his Primarina takes out Luirromen's Moth from lead, because really nothing was gonna switch into it, and parlays this into a kill on the incoming Deoxys who finishes the job. His Air Balloon Gholdengo forces Tera Flying Tera Blast to be used by Luirromen's Dragonite, who damn near loses to Tera Fairy Gholdengo anyways before a crit EQ. Luirromen's Kingambit tries its best and takes out JJ's Moth, but Brian Hands hits the field and starts SDing up. Landorus tickles the Shuca Berry Hands, who replies with a swift Ice Punch and then a Drain Punch to end Gambit, and JJ09LIE takes the win without Roaring Moon ever touching the field.
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Circuit Breakers (1-2-2) vs (2-3-0) Arena Spartans
ninth: Hiko's first four mons look like a pre-HOME balance. You've got a bunch of physical walls in Tusk/Dondozo/Corviknight, a special wall in Glowking, and then two obligatory offensive controls on both sides between Meowscarada and Kyurem. ACR1's team is very emblematic of SV in that it's surprisingly bulky for how offensively potent and not-slow it is: Pecharunt, Lando, and Zamazenta make his team tough to break physically, and Iron Crown isn't explicitly a special wall but it resists many common special attacks like Ice Beam, Draco, Moonblast, Future Sight, etc. Hiko takes initiative by popping Tera Ground Kyurem to eliminate ACR1's Crown, and now ACR1 has to figure out how to break Hiko's Rocky Helmet RestTalk Dondozo, moving pieces around before using the threat of his Raging Bolt to enable his Samurott to get up two layers and a kill on Glowking. ACR1 reveals a teched out Tera Fairy Boots Volt Switch/Taunt Raging Bolt, which does just about everything between preventing a Defog, easily absorbing a blow from Meowscarada, outdueling Dondozo's Avalanche, and opening a path for ACR1's Zamazenta to close out the game.
ninth: In a must-win game for the Spartans' season (the last one chronologically I believe), Finchinator is sticking with a common hazard-stacking style. Samurott and Tinkaton put all manner of things on the floor, which provide chip for unkillable bulky bastards Gliscor and Garganacl, as well as speedy cleanup from Dragapult and personal hazard control from Tusk. Mada, also fighting for his team's season, has the same team used by Mimikyu Stardust this week (scroll down to see a description), which means it's somehow time for even more Iron Hands gaming. Finch's Dragapult starts by missing Wisp and then missing Draco back to back, which is a bad omen. Mada's Pecharunt proves problematic so Finch brings out Samurott, but Pecharunt is fast and poisons Samurott, which means it's also confused, and it hits itself into death range. Pecharunt continues to terrorize Finch's team, and Tinkaton's Knock Off proves to be the most lasting damage he can make stick. Finch even catches the peach with a Headlong Rush on the switch but it barely survives at 2%, before Parting Shooting itself out of the game one last time. Its reign of terror has enabled Mada's Sub/CM Valiant to get into position, though it barely misses a kill on Gliscor and can only chip it as a result. A flashpoint occurs as Mada attempts a DD with Roaring Moon in the face of a 9% Tusk only to get obliterated by Close Combat, and after Rocky Helmet takes out his Gambit, Mada starts apologizing to his team in the chat...but remember the blind Dragapult from turn 1? It's still blind, and misses the Wisp on Mada's last mon Iron Hands, leading to Tera Fighting wiping out the rest of Finch's team.
ninth: This was one of the later games chronologically and I am running out of synonyms to describe the core concept behind the offense brought by GALATINA. You have the slower, bulkier guys that 1v1 anybody, you have the Tusk for hazard control, and two fast cleanup guys. Maybe a potential suicide lead option in Deoxys but I doubt it. Attribute's team actually shares three mons (Tusk/Moon/Ghold) but has more of a defensive, pivoting-inclined angle: Keldeo and Moltres apply special/status pressure and open pathways for Dragonite. The game starts with Attribute's Gholdengo leading and clicking Shadow Ball twice, tickling Kingambit on the switch and then melting GALATINA's Deoxys, which presumably came out in an attempted double. The two go Booster for Booster on Moon as GALATINA burns his to kill Tusk, switches out, then Attribute's comes in on a Dazzling Gleam from Gholdengo and explodes. Attribute has Keldeo, though, which matches up well into several of GALATINA's mons: it easily survives pressure from Kingambit and kills it, then eats Gholdengo's Shadow Ball like it's nothing and kills it too, then chips Bolt for good measure. The pressure applied here, in combination with Moltres burning GALATINA's Megahorn Tusk (I respect it), enables Attribute's Tera Ground Dragonite to get +6 and just win.
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Technical Machines (2-1-2) vs (2-2-1) Showdown Shoguns
1LDK: Iron Valiant and Volcanion trade nuclear hits turn 1, a 30% burn on Steam Eruption lets volcanion win the 1v1, Pex easily tanks the hit and finishes volcanion. Kyurem comes in to set a dd, zama comes in and barely survives 9 icicle spears, before dying to CC. Lando and Corv reset the momentum of the match to neutral, to which both U-turn to Ting Lu and Iron Valiant respectively, Toxapex comes in to handle Iron Valiant, but the latter trolls him with a devious destiny bond, taking both down to hell. AV Hoopa makes quick work of Corviknight, Zamazenta and Lando both kill each other with Ice fang + Rocky helmet. And this is where Hoopa reveals to actually be AV, because it uses destiny bond to also take down ting lu lmao this shit had me in tears. With the combination of substitute, tera fire and crunch defense drops, zamazenta succesfully 1v1s the tera ghost weezing galar
ninth: With the series decided for the Machines, leng loi stepped in for myjava in the final OU game of the week, rocking an offensive sun team featuring some niche picks. The Ninetales (setter)/Hatterene (pivot/hwish)/Tusk (good mon)/Wake (breaker) core is a classic, but it's spiced up with the more defensive Slither Wing, who provides support via status, pivoting, and unassuming bulk, and Brute Bonnet, a potentially devastating physical threat with Sucker Punch. Stall general SupaGmoney, who seems to be on the HO grind recently, actually has a close relative to a team used by the Machines earlier in the tour. Glimmora runs interference and hazards for an exceptionally speedy offense between Scizor's Bullet Punch, Valiant, Deoxys, and Moon. leng leads Wake against Supa's Moon, and probably worried about Scarf he sends in Scizor as the sacrifice. (The Wake is not choiced.) Supa's Glimmora reveals Red Card, and uses it to get rocks up after living a hit from Wake, but he pulls Ninetales, which just means leng's Wake is coming back in. The sun, however, gives Supa's Moon its Booster back, and it Tera Fairies and DDs up to try and win instantly, but leng's Slither Wing reveals Tera Steel on the Tera Blast and then Stun Spores it before going down. Normally this would mean +2 paralyzed Moon is still at 370, but Supa has the slow Moon set and gets outsped by Ninetales for chip, allowing Tusk to finish the kill. Now super-fast, it even gets to outspeed Deoxys and Headlong Rush it before Eject Packing out to the safety of Brute Bonnet, who dies but enables Wake to come back in with four turns of sun left and clean up. Not even Supa's Valiant can kill with Moonblast, and leng secures the win. I think she's now 2-0 on The Sheet.
ninth: This matchup has probably happened quadruple-digit times on the ladder, and they've even got the same custom on to match their familiarity. Mimikyu has seen fit to bless us with the second Iron Hands of the week on a dual-ended offense: you've got super-traders in Hands and Gambit, disruption and debuffs in Pecharunt and Landorus, and the Booster cleanup crew of Moon/Valiant. Storm Zone has a fat balance that looks like the most Shoguns fat I've ever seen: it's got all the hits from the Ting-Lu, the Zamazenta, even a Galarian Weezing. Mimikyu leads Hands into Kyurem, but Storm has a Weezing which walls it thoroughly: Storm burns Tera Ground Kyurem early to kill Hands. Mimikyu's Moon comes out early, exchanging its Booster for Zamazenta's Dauntless Shield and Chesto Berry before both head out: Mimikyu's CM Valiant also exhausts Booster and Tera Electric to try and beat Corv/Ting-Lu before being Whirlwinded out. Storm Zone's Kyurem reveals the exceptionally annoying Sub/Protect and manages to outduel Kingambit despite getting Parting Shot at, and after obtaining chip on everything else Storm Zone is able to clean up with Kyurem. Is this Akalli's fault?
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Orange Islanders (3-1-1) vs (1-3-1) Indigo Platoon
1LDK: Pais is using what's normally called "Lax heat", while potatochan loaded the only team in history that loses to corv. The match is a slow burn with tiny chips being played, and potatochan missing burns on everything. Turn 15 rolls around with corviknight uturning on a pecha switch in into kyurem, and this is the time when we all know, that zama is getting jumped, and boy oh boy, half of his health gets snapped by freeze dry, pex laughs at him while he tries to box, when the opps are laughing at you boxing, you know your done. Lando-T misses a rock tomb, ting lu whirlwinds into darkrai, then eats a +2 ice beam, then does it again, then eats a tera fighting focus blast, then eqs, ma man 3 for 3. The pex gets killed by the crown, lando gets sacked for a -1 + rocky helmet chip, the pecharunt comes, forces corv in then crown 1v1s corv by hitting 2/3 focus blasts. Zama uses tera steel and starts eating mons like Pitbulls eat babys, forcing recovers to be burned, giving Kyurem a chance to go for another onslaught, and even with -1 he has no trouble kicking homeless people in the ribs, darkrai goes down, then pecha fails to kill weezing galar, allowing it to get a defog, which lets kyurem come in for free down the line, samu-h kills kyurem with ceaseless, but now only has 1 lonely line, zama kills samu-h, then goes into a 6-year long One Piece arc against pecha, zama dies, kyurem wins
1LDK: The match starts by tinkaton inflicting twave on the samu-h, and then tinka steals his drip, samu-h uses the power of friendship to hit 2 ceaseless, a knock off and a sucker punch, killing ogerpon in the process and almost killing gliscor had he not gotten a double protect. Hydreigon comes in, gets a sub, tera steel nasty plot, and he is ready to run the fades. Moltres gets selected as the sack to get a turn for darkrai to come in, but his ass takes 88% from draco. Zama comes to finish the job, but darkrai hits him with the twave, which paralizes zama, giving the glowking free pass. Gliscor and Hydreigo meet, hellom predicts the gliscor protect and deviously plots the next ass beating that packed gliscor the turn after, and once the darkrai goes blind by the UV rays, Santu forfeits.
1LDK: Choice Band Zamazenta takes half of tusk's health with a single CC, mola wishes into him to heal the knock off that revealed the cb, with no move restriction, he 360 no scopes Moltres with stone edge + cc. Boring yet highly important pivoting around ensues untill Antonazz's kyurem grabs a KO against glowking, to which dahli counters by killing tusk with zama's cc. DAHLI's kyurem gets sacked for damage on the scizor, more pivoting ensues, tusk gets rocks, scizor removes them, scizor gets burned by scald, then mola wishes into his zama to take on ogerpon-w, then meowscarada comes to tank 1 cudgel, the pivots to tusk, getting rocks + damage on kyurem, then goes to mola to hold on the dd assault, but freeze dry snipes mola for a good chunk, then meowscarada gets sacked for tusk to come in, burning tera fire and forcing kyurem out into ogerpon-w, who pivots on the mola switch into scizor, mola protects, blocking defog, and thus, forcing rocks to stay. Kyurem eats rocks, fails to ko tusk with earth power and dies to the spin, gets a good portion of Antonazz's zama before getting killed by stone edge, dahli's zama cleans the rest of the enemy team with CC.
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Power Plant Dynamos (3-2-0) vs (2-1-2) Uncharted Terrors
1LDK: We see hits being thrown around by everyone, with both tusk and samu-h trading hazards, zamazenta kills samu with bp. We see leftovers pult being used for the first time since the introduction of colors on the TV, burning the kingambit, allowing treads to come in. Treads spins the rocks and sets his own, scareless of ogerpon, dying for the brave. Enam gives scarf gholdengo a free switch, which shadow balls an AV Glowking, who then 1v1s Iron Valiant with tera fairy and then dying to ogerpon-w. Stareal's dengo takes a powerfull whip, retaliating with another sball, enam comes again, clicks healing wish, Kingambit is now revived, gets a sd, predicts the incoming pult switch counters by skinning the dragon alive. Tusk gets a tricked scarf, which he uses to pummel the dengo, oger-w tanks the hit, kills tusk, the uses tera to kill zama, and gets killed by gambit sucker punch.
1LDK: Darkrai starts the match by pimp slapping wake with a dark pulse, wake answers by saying "aight bet" then starts hitting the my dress up darling dance and washes darkrai stinky ass with a spa booster hydro pump, then dunks on raging bolt by subbing on the tclap and hitting the dragon pulse, dragonite finally gets wake for evading taxes. Ewin's Valiant comes to scare the dnite and sets up the sd, then watch real peak gaming real quick, Moth tries to sludge wave the val, but he uses tera ghost, eats that shit and sets another sd, then Niko comes with the coldest "my turn" of all time, by using tera ghost moth, weaving the cc, then setting up with +1 fiery dance. Bro, I was watching this game live, and I actually popped that shit was CLEAN. It then proceeds to snipe Ewin's moth and glimmora who tried to mud slap him, with psychic, even a -1, he still got a crit on the dnite before finally dying. Niko's Valiant comes in, clicks Moonblast 2 times, and wins the game
1LDK: This shit was terrible on so many levels, it almost looks like a Loud House fan fiction story. So first things first, Tofu's team is kinda weird fast pace offense, boostless moth, slither wing and mola, while Mike is rocking an average HO. So Tusk comes on a moth sludge wave directed at hat and gets rocks + psychic damage on Tusk, hat gets sacked to tusk in order to preserve the lando. Moth tries to put in the work, but AV Mola is too fat, even with energy ball, so the fish pivots to Scarf Valiant who sends moth packing with a psyshock. From this point on the whole match becomes a clown fest, watch this peak real quick, Kyurem gets in, gets a +1 on the incoming kommo-o who plans to phaze him out with tera ghost + dragon tail, your putting everything on the line here, and then, this mf misses the dragon tail omg bro I swear to god everyone that I've shown this replay started crying, the game is over, kyurem clicks spear on mola twice, drops, then tera fire tera blast on slither wing, and the kyurem keeps clicking until tofu taps. Shoutouts to the 20 people involved in the cheating scandal + LoseToRU for causing this replay.
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We saw a couple of pretty interesting usage trends. Pecharunt exploded this week, featuring on six teams and winning in half of them. Somehow we saw a rise in Iron Hands as well, going from invisible to three uses and two wins. Slitherman Activated this week with two brings and one win as well.
Looking at the tour at large, here's some key news reports and things to look for:
Only two full-time undefeated players remain: Piyu, playing OU for the Machines, and Spurrific in DOU for the Breakers. How long can they keep this up?
Down a manager and an OU player, the Islanders still find themselves on top and most likely locked into playoffs, with five players posting four wins or more. Besides the Terrors, who struck amidst the banning chaos in Week 5, nobody has won a week against them yet.
The Machines army, ranked seventh in the PRs, can no longer be ignored, and they're looking like outright contenders. Despite Expulso and mncmt drafting a thousand people they've got one of the most stable rosters, with only two people posting a sub-50% record, and their OU continues to be the class of the field.
After only getting their first week win halfway through, the Breakers are gunning for a late playoffs run. Despite 62.5k of starters benching this week, they've put together two winning weeks in a row. Can they displace any of the borderline teams and make it to top 4?
The Shoguns are still in playoff contention, but the loss of core pieces CTC and Vert seems to be hurting them, winless in the last three weeks. Facing a gauntlet of Islanders/Dynamos/Terrors at season's end, it's now or never to turn things around.
Studio Gible finally finished a week in a close fashion at 6-4, following a streak of either stomping or getting stomped. This ain't got much to do with anything it's just funny.
Thanks for reading, and as always we'll see you in Week 7.
Hey everyone, week 7 report is here, join us for another session of skill, lucks, heat mons, and crashouts, dont forget to leave a like and suscribe, but before that here is our sponsor of today, Lunchly. Lunchly is the newest instant lunch on the market thanks to KSI, Logan Paul and Mr Beast. Lunchly is proud to announce that they have important ingredients to your body such as Lead, insane amounts of Sodium, and molded cheese. Get ones from your local store before they get pulled back
1LDK: A well time predict almost kills pult turn 1, Ewin's treads puts rocks on the fields and gets chip on ogerpon-w with steel beam, dying in the process. Ninetales-Alolan gets screen and lets kyurem laugh at play roughs, and gets 2 dragon dance, ogerpon, gholdengo, pult and treads all die to it. Samu-h finally can come in and sucker punch it. Atales gets another set of screens and iron hand effortlessly tanks valiant's spirit breaks, winning the game.
Mako vs oldspicemike
1LDK: The match begins by Mike clicking ruination like it's the only move on ting lu, mako gets some chip with garg + pult, we see that both mola and mako's ting lu are helmet, then mako's ting lu reveals to be taunt which shuts down wish trafficking, this leads to Mike's ting lu getting jabbed by garg's ice punch. Garg gets to also salt cure zama and uses tera water to recover in the face of a specs iron crown, who later goes for psynoise, which lets latios in, allowing to rain dracos on cinderace, getting a crit + ohko. Crown almost kills zama but fails and mike goes to zapdos in an attempt to finish the job, which fails via hurricane miss, so now the ting lu is back in town and tries to get ruination damage, misses, then dies. Volt Switch spam from both zapdos and crown does not outdo the recover healing. Mako successfully survives the onslaught with 1 recover left, zama gets sacked, Latios is in, so now mola has to die, and with no wishes, it's just a matter of time before Mike's team succumbs to the combination of garg + latios
Suzuya vs Stareal
1LDK: meow knocks on tusk but no items come out, doubles into zapdos and kyurem, zapdos tries to tera steel and tries to get 2 hurricanes, but 1 miss, kyurem uses tera fire and evaporates zapdos, suzuya's kyurem also falls to scale shot, ting lu survives 4 ice spears and rks with eq. pult uses dragon dance + will o wisp to kill ting lu and burns tusk. Stareal tusk kills glowking, glimmora survives 1 flower trick, then spits tspikes, later gets poisoned and chipped by pecharunt. Kingambit comes in, uses sd, and wins.
1LDK: Early game Moth gets parad by twave, rocks get up, glowking also gets parad, ogerpon dies to the combo of kingambit + fsight. Tusk recieves some more damage and gets spin blocked by dengo, glowking recieves a knock from clef, taking away the shuca berry, tusk finally spins which lets kyurem in, but not much else for the moment. dragonite gets a ddance, and with tera normal, it chunks kyurem and kills tusk, but gliscor uses tera ghost to block the espeed, gets a +2 then kills. More chip damage gets spread around, The paralized moth that has been taking U-turns from slither wing from 3 movies ago finally kills clef and gets a +1, which does nothing since its para, more damage, you get it, then gliscor vs gliscor and santu wins. Kyurem tries to brute force the dengo to no avail. Then, a game of cat and mouse beetween the remaning mons ensues, which ends with santu's gliscor taking an ice beam, doubles, triples then quadruples switch ins occur, ending with wing burning gambit, then dying to fsight, gholdengo successfully stalling gambit and winning.
DAHLI vs Niko
dahli's val burns tera turn 1 to kill a scarf ribombee who gets webs. Moth comes in, valiant dbonds, moth falls for it, both die. Pecharunt and dengo face each other, then double into their kingambits, dahli sacks his lando to get kingambit with the combination of earth power and rocky helmet. Then the ghost dance repeats, kingambit and ogerpon-w come out, ogerpon-w sacks herself for massive damage on gambit. Valiant 2 piece combos pecharunt, then nukes ogerpon-cornerstone, but lives and revenge kills valiant. Gholdengo finally comes, kills oger-c, then uses tera fighting to slice trough moon and gambit
potatochan vs INSULT
1LDK: Garganacl salt cures samu-h, but the combo of razor shell + lando's earth power ends it. Lando takes heavy damage from repeated corv assaults while setting rocks and taunts, Pecha attacks, clod tanks, samu-h comes up, puts pressures weezing galar with spikes + knock off + razon shell, weezing manages to get a defog + extra damage on samu-h. Corv with id succesfully walls moon, then plays a bit with pecharunt before going to clod, who lays some spikes while zama protects it from danger, then the match stagnates until Kingambit goes all in with tera fairy for the sweep, but corviknight walls it, corv wastes all the roost pp in walling the entire team, which valiant uses to get in, clod takes a knock off in exchange for toxic, val takes 2 ccs to kill weezing, which forces valiant out, essentially killing it with spikes, then corv fully sets up and womps both lando and moon, kingambit finally kills, but gets badly poison by clodsire, Tera steel zama 1v2 both pecha and tera fairy gambit
1LDK: We see U-turn action from roaring moon vs sufys's tusk, this tusk gets rocks, pets corv and the bird scares himself with eject button, ogerpon-w comes in and gets some chip on the torkoal, with pivoting from moon, wake finds itself in the field, launches 1 dpulse to ghold then goes to corv to scout for any potential tera or tricks, wake comes back then incinarates samu-h with flame, but not without getting some damage with sucker. Iron Moth comes in, gets a sub then clicks fiery dance 5 times, getting +4, instantly winning the game, thanks to the power of gambling.
ima vs Pais
1LDK: Weavile sds in front of pecharunt, who punishes it with malignant chain, being forced out by valiant absorbing a knock off, scizor comes on an Ice Punch, doubling into weavile, who kills val with triple axel, and gets some damage with ice shard before dying to darkrai. Primarina starts clicking moonblast and liquid voice altering psychic noise, eats a kebia berry to stand on pecharunt and continues to attack, scizor barely takes a dpulse and double lando doubles ends with pais doubling with tera ice tera blast, doubling the damage by double the amount, and kills darkrai too. Kingambit tries to sweep, but primarina encores it. Pecharunt comes in on the ace planning to burn it, tera water recover saves him from inminent death, he then poisons + stun locks the bolt, Kingambit hurts the ace and hides behind pecharunt who takes the burn, raging bolt tries to come again but can't, lando kills kingambit after tanking a sucker punch. With the team softened up, Moon comes and claims primarina, then stays on lando who U-turns instead of tblast, uses dd to claim ace, scizor finishes moon. Pecha then kills scizor, then lando tries to brawl with him, to no success thanks to recover, which lets it parting shot, winning the 1v1 eventually with 1 recover left, then kills bolt to seal the deal.
GeniusX vs Antonazz
ninth: I think blunder drafted GeniusX in midseason at least partially due to that time he went ultra instinct against Skypenguin in his first SPL game, he's brought up that game on stream several times now lol. The Genius is employing the Ninetales-A/Kommo-o Veil HO that's been making the rounds, which has the primary goal of turning Kommo-o into Extreme Evoboost Giratina: Zamazenta, Darkrai, and Iron Moth remain potent, speedy finishers as well, and Treads gets off pretty guaranteed spins. Antonazz has a Mamoswine, and you may be thinking he just forgot Kyurem is legal now, but it actually has a weird bit of utility between Stealth Rock and Ice Shard, as well as potential snow support from Glowking. Obnoxious pivots in Dragapult and Zapdos provide cover for a physical deathball of Mamo/Kingambit/Samurott. The first round of Veil is fairly uneventful for GeniusX, with Treads sacrificed to get rocks up and remove Mamoswine's own. Moth tries to Sub up against Glowking, but Antonazz reveals Psychic Noise: Tera Ground Tera Blast fails to kill, and Moth falls. A second round of Veil goes up: unfortunately for GeniusX Dragapult's Draco is probably Infiltrator and just annihilates Kommo-o, but it gives his Darkrai a chance to Nasty Plot up and get consecutive kills on Mamoswine, Kingambit, and Zapdos before the Veil falls. Once it's down, though, it's time for Antonazz's Dragapult to go on a rampage, burning and eliminating Zamazenta. GeniusX gets another round of Veil up, but it's not enough to stop Dragapult from outspeeding and melting Darkrai to end the game.
ninth: After subbing out last week, myjava's back with the now-classic comp of Kyurem fat. It's backed by the usual walls of Dondozo/Ting-Lu/Corviknight, as well as the ever utilitymaxxing Weezing-Galar and Zamazenta for a bit of speed. Attribute has a physically heavy offense that just looks like he took the top of the VR, and also threw in a Tornadus-T as the sole special attacker alongside Gholdengo. Things start with Attribute spamming Knock Off with his Torn and Wellspring, then getting up rocks, which myjava's Corviknight naturally cannot remove due to the golden guy, though he gets up his own as well - Attribute then doubles down by getting up a Spike with Wellspring too. myjava sends out a Sub/Lefties Kyurem and tries to get going but gets Roared out, takes another round of hazards, and gets sacked after Attribute sacrifices his Tusk to spin out rocks. Noticing the absence of removal, java's Tera Grass Weezing-Galar lives a hit from Wellspring and gets a Toxic Spike up before dying: his trusty Zamazenta comes out, but burns Chesto/Rest early, fails to get a Crunch drop, and ultimately loses a duel to Attribute's Gholdengo. At this point myjava's team consists of Dondozo and half-health Corv/Lu, who are food for Ghold and Wellspring, and Attribute celebrates the defeat of base 100 HP mons.
Finchinator vs Piyu
ninth: Not gonna lie after seven weeks of SV Gaming I am running out of adjectives to creatively describe the HO vs HO matchup. Finch has a bunch of heavy mid-speed physical attackers and also Deoxys + Moth. Piyu has Manaphy webs, Gholdengo, the usual speed control guys in Valiant + Moon, let's get into it. Game starts with the classic trade of Piyu's Ribombee dying to Finch's Sub-less Moth but getting webs up, with the Moth subsequently traded for chip on Glimmora. The webs put Finch in a conundrum as it slows down his Deoxys and stops it from Superpowering Moon, and he has to Tera Fairy his Dragonite to deal with Piyu's Moon. -1 Deoxys is still faster than Piyu's Gholdengo, though, and kills it, leading to a 2v4 with Finch having 4 grounded mons left against Piyu's Manaphy, Valiant, and webs up. Tail Glow is free because Encore's no longer a threat, and Tera Fairy Alluring Voice misses the OHKO but still kills Wellspring: the Tera also allows Manaphy to live a Sucker Punch and take out Gambit [note: Fallen 5 didn't kill either, I think]. The Manaphy's fast enough to kill Deoxys, too, and Tusk is a formality. Piyu now stands at 7-0 on the season, with only Spurrific able to claim an identical record - can anyone stop this guy?
ACR1 vs Mimikyu Stardust
ninth: Gotta say I appreciate the mon choice of ACR1's team, it looks very nostalgic to launch SV, except instead of Wellspring it was probably some BS like Annihilape or what have you. An old classic hazard core of Glimmora/Ting-Lu/Gholdengo sets the stage for a cleanup crew consisting of Wellspring, Dragonite, and requisite speed control Iron Valiant. In contrast Mimikyu Stardust's squad is a modern compilation of the most annoying bulky mons, with Garganacl, Tinkaton, and Moltres providing all types of chip and red statuses: Tusk, Raging Bolt, and Zamazenta form the offenses of his team. Early on we get to see the new Thunderclap annimation as Mimikyu has to hard switch it into Wellspring, and it gets a nice crit for chip before dying to Play Rough. ACR1's Thunder Wave/Hex Gholdengo takes heavy damage but forces Chesto/Rest out of Zamazenta, and the two teams trade rocks. Notably, ACR1 lures Mimikyu's low-health Tusk into Knocking a Rocky Helmet Ting-Lu and impaling itself - his rocks are staying up now. Mimikyu's Zamazenta claims a revenge kill, but ACR1's SD Valiant comes out and Knocks Moltres to 46% before dying, so Mimikyu is definitely in hell hazard-wise. Mimikyu's Zamazenta tries its best but fails to 2HKO Glimmora and dies, leaving only Garganacl and a half-health Garganacl...both of whom lose to Wellspring. A tightly controlled game from ACR1, who never even revealed Dragonite.
ninth: !! GAMBIT GAMING ALERT !! This HO vs HO matchup may not be safe for Kingambit haters. Viewer discretion is advised. Hiko's got an Araquanid Webs team with most of the usual suspects (Bolt, Gambit, Ghold), and requisite fast mons in Deoxys and Roaring Moon. JJ09LIE has Glimmora supporting an Iron Boulder HO that essentially stacked a bunch of fast Ground-weak things, a Gambit, and also a Landorus. Since we're not in the 1400s neither of them lead with the super obvious leads, instead starting with a lead Deoxys set and Moon respectively. Hiko's Deoxys gets rocks up, chips Moon with Superpower, and dies, leading to a finisher from Hiko's Gambit. JJ takes the opportunity to set up his own rocks, and taunts Araquanid to prevent webs. Hiko has a plan, though: Araquanid reveals Red Card and Surf, which pulls out and obliterates Moth, then Tera Ghosts to live Mighty Cleave and kill Boulder too, in possibly the first recorded instance of Araquanid getting off the noob gut in an SV official. JJ09LIE still has a Kingambit, though, which dispatches Moon and eventually Gholdengo after a tense exchange in which it's revealed it has no Kowtow. Somehow, Hiko's NASCAR Raging Bolt outspeeds and kills JJ's Landorus, and it comes down to Gambit vs Gambit. Hiko Kowtows immediately and gets the kill, and cleans up the match in one of the more interesting examples of Gambit Gaming I've seen.
emforbes vs Mada
ninth: It's like we're back in January - Mada's team is a Veil HO featuring Comfey, best known for its exploits in the early weeks of SPL XV, and Blaziken, best known for its exploits in the 2010s. Obviously Kyurem is there too because it's basically Baxcalibur's cousin under snow+Veil, as well as Glimmora and Gholdengo for an overall very specially offensive team. emforbes has the classic Lu/Ghold hazard industrial complex backed by frequent ally Dragonite, Clefable to provide whatever status/hazards the other two lack, and Zamazenta/Deoxys on cleanup duty. The two start by trading Veil for two layers of Spikes, but it's advantage emforbes as Mada's unable to get more than chip on Ting-Lu out of his Kyurem before it falls to Gholdengo. There's one turn left, though, and Mada uses it to set up his Blaziken and secure two quick kills on Deoxys and Clefable before it kills itself to recoil. Noting Mada's remaining mons are vulnerable to Steel, emforbes uses Tera Steel Gholdengo to annihilate his Glimmora, and even though Mada doubles to Ninetales and gets Veil up, Gholdengo's able to come back in and cripple Comfey with a Tricked Scarf before dying to Tera Blast Ground. A freeze on Ting-Lu still allows Mada's Comfey to get off some draining action, seeing as emforbes' remaining mons are all Fairy-weak, but it's not enough to outlast some timely Body Press chip from Zama into a Dragonite Ice Spinner to end the game.
Eternal Spirit vs Lily
ninth: Okay, last game of the week for this matchup, Gibles trail Breakers 4-5. Eternal Spirit has triple-Dark hyper offense, we've seen this team a billion times, they overwhelm shared counters through sheer physical violence, not gonna go on about it. Lily's got an interesting DragMag-without-the-trapping thing going on, with Corviknight and Gambit providing cover for the walking stat sticks of Kyurem and Raging Bolt, plus the trusty glue in Tusk and Valiant. Gama starts by trading Samurott for chip on Kyurem and one layer of Spikes: Lily brings in Bolt to revenge, but can only bring it low before Tera Fairy Dazzling Gleam is exhausted to kill it. Bringing out Tusk in an apparent effort to get the many hazards off, Lily basically dares Lando to stay in on an Ice Spinner, which it does, and then Tera Fires to live Moth's Dazzling Gleam and kill it too. With Ghold/Gambit/Moon left for Eternal Spirit, Lily switches back and forth between her own Gambit and Corviknight until Corv finally dies, allowing her to bring out Valiant [note: not booster] to kill Gambit. Gama's Moon finally comes out and tries to set up, but Lily catches it with an Iron Head and then finishes it with Vacuum Wave, and there's not much left for Ghold to do against Gambit, securing a third week win in a row for the Breakers.
And thats all for today, The Foxes, The Spartans, and The Platoon are 100% out of any chance of contention, everyone else still have a chance to make it trought the remainder weeks, who will win? who will fall? stay tune for more, untill next time!
It's almost time now. The pieces are falling into place, but there's still so much that can change in these last two weeks of the SCL regular season. Three teams - the Spartans, Platoon, and Foxes - have bid farewell to playoff dreams, while at the start of the week no team was mathematically guaranteed a spot in the top 4, even the first-ranked Machines.
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Technical Machines (4-1-2) vs (4-3-0) Studio Gible
ninth: Piyu's been loading a lot of HO but this is probably the most ontologically evil one yet. Aurora Veil x Grassy Terrain x Comfey with Moon and Moth as cheap sweepers? This looks like something I would use if I wanted to autopilot an alt into the 1500s. emforbes is going with the classic strategy of stacking four big physical attackers, and has a Chansey and Pecharunt as well, potentially good picks into Piyu's HO-heavy playstyle what with all the Parting Shooting and never dying to any attack. Piyu opens with Veil, and an extended exchange between Chansey/Wellspring and Treads results in rocks up on both sides and Piyu's Rillaboom on the field. With one turn of Veil left, Rillaboom SDs up, lives a Malignant Chain easily, and makes Pecharunt's 160 Defense look like paper. It further continues its killing spree by Drain Punching emforbes' Kingambit, and it takes exhausting Tera Fairy on Tusk to stop it. Piyu sends Ninetales back out and sets up Veil, finishes off Tusk, then sends out Roaring Moon. At this point emforbes has three mons left and has exhausted Tera, while Piyu's Tera Flying is locked and loaded: I'll let you guess what happens next. AV Ice Beam Dragonite was cool to see, though. For those of you keeping track at home, that is eight wins and zero losses for Piyu.
ninth: Welcome back week 1, Machines Scizor is back on the menu. It's HO vs HO, and myjava has a status/pivot gang of Pecharunt/Zapdos ready to cover for Scizor, Valiant, and Iron Boulder, all of whom are desperate to move first at all costs. JJ09LIE has opted for the "surely he won't bring Blissey" strat and loaded up four special attackers, with Primarina/Bolt/Crown taking up the "slow mon that trades well into everything" slot and Darkrai providing some speed. Zamazenta deputizes as his main physical attacker alongside HO staple Landorus. JJ09LIE starts on the offensive by leading Raging Bolt and immediately attacking into a Volt Switch: myjava has to call the Dragon or Electric move and gets it wrong, losing Iron Valiant instantly to Thunderbolt. The two trade rocks, but JJ's Grass Knot Landorus has the upper hand on java's Tusk. but with the only Fairy eliminated, JJ is free to just U-Turn into Bolt and start clicking Dragon Pulse, scoring a kill on Pecharunt as well. Despite catching Lando with an Ice Spinner and leaving it in range of death to rocks, java's Tusk dies in the process, which means it's time for a third round of Raging Bolt rampaging, with myjava's Scizor left to die. Zapdos finishes the kill with Hurricane, but JJ's Sub/Lefties Darkrai comes out, subs up, and finishes it off. Now it's myjava's Iron Boulder versus Darkrai behind a sub and three other mons, all of which it outspeeds. It turns Tera Fairy and sets up on a Dark Pulse, breaks the sub, but goes for a second SD instead of attacking, and Darkrai finishes it off with Tera Blast Fairy. I'm unsure what all the spreads are, but if Boulder had its own Tera Blast Fairy I thought it had a chance of winning if it attacked here - however, ID Zama is favored to live +2 TB Fairy so I imagine myjava was going for certainty there. This is an interesting match - the score looks lopsided but there's a real chance it could have gone the other way in the final act.
ninth: I can't cosign Eternal Spirit bringing Toxapex/Landorus/Clefable. Nice Gen 8 team, you just swapped the Weavile for a Kyurem and threw some paradox mons on there. Staring down ES's compilation of nerfed mons is Mimikyu Stardust's Manaphy Veil featuring Kyurem, two Quark sweepers, and Treads, which essentially gets four chances at 6-0ing. The first round of Veil starts out uneventful, with Toxapex and Treads trading hazards and chip - Toxic Spikes looks like a problem until it just gets spun away, though Rocky Helmet Clefable punishes it with a bit of chip. With two turns of veil left, Mimikyu hits the go button and turns Moth into a Grass-type, setting up a sub behind Veil and easily sponging an Earthquake. ES has to sacrifice Toxapex to stop it with Kyurem's Icicle Spear, but this just lets Manaphy in, who revenge kills it and then kills Lando for good measure. Once ES's Treads comes in to finish it off, that means it's time for more Veil, shortened due to Knock Off - Mimikyu goes with Kyurem this time, which is stopped by Valiant's Destiny Bond but leaves one turn left for his own Valiant to set up Swords Dance. It only achieves chip on Clefable, but that's all it needs for Mimikyu's own Treads to clean up the kill. Eternal Spirit Tera Ghosts his own Treads in a last-ditch effort, but Ninetales in snow proves to be just a little too tanky and wins the trade, securing the game for Mimikyu Stardust.
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Circuit Breakers (3-2-2) vs (1-5-1, eliminated) Mt. Silver Foxes
ninth: (banging drums) Give it up for LuGholdNite! I feel like I've explained this core at least twice every week. Lily's choice of support for this hazard + cleanup crew includes Zapdos and the trades-positively-against-everything machine Primarina, as well as the ever-speedy Zamazenta. Luirromen's team is basically the Empo team with Valiant swapped out for Darkrai as the speed control: Zapdos deputizes as the primary anti-physical wall to cover for an offensive Landorus, while Cinderace works as the hazard protection (or bluff thereof) for Kyurem. Luirromen starts by Getting Them Up with Lando but taking a billion from Hurricane in the process. Lily gets her Zama in against a 2-hit Icicle Spear, and proceeds to start clicking Stone Edge, which crits Zapdos to 25% and then finishes Lando off despite Intimidate. It turns out Luirromen's Kyurem is mixed, which helps it kill Lily's Primarina. With the score Lily 5-4 but with her Lu burned, Luirromen sends out his Kingambit and decides to go for game, setting up and turning Ghost-type even after being paralyzed by Zapdos. The yellow magic helps, and the Gambit can only get two kills and chip on Zama before falling. At this point Luirromen's remaining mons are all weak to Zamazenta, and a relieved Lily celebrates by switching Gholdengo hard into a Pyro Ball, which goes wide: this results in Luirromen U-Turning out into a Thunder Wave on Darkrai. From here Lily sacrifices Ghold for chip, then Zamazenta + Tera Normal Dragonite are able to clean house, even after Cinderace lives a Stone Edge.
ninth: DOU-BLE-RE-GEN (clap clap clap-clap-clap) Bringing two bulky regen mons is a lost art in SV and I'm glad Mako is keeping the tradition alive with Torn-T and Hydrapple: one fast with pivot potential, one slow, both annoying high-variance special attackers. Gholdengo serves as a more reliable special attacker and possible scarfer, while Garg-Great Tusk-Gambit provide a consistent physical backbone. Malekith has Pecharunt HO. I'm writing this after the below writeup but it's the same team Hiko used with Darkrai over Primarina. Mako leads with Torn-T into Roaring Moon, and immediately exhausts Tera Fairy Tera Blast...which doesn't even kill, allowing Malekith's Moon to get a huge hit off before Torn finishes it off with U-Turn. Malekith keeps a momentum advantage with pivoting between Landorus and Pecharunt, eventually looping in Darkrai to set up a Nasty Plot and start blasting: it claims a kill on Hydrapple before Mako has to bring in Scarf Ghold to finish it. Malekith, continuing to have some real bulky mons, sends out his Kingambit and SDs, survives a Headlong Rush, and kills Tusk straight up. After cycling Intimidate onto Mako's own Gambit, Malekith decides it's time and sets up SD on Tera Steel Valiant, which just gets four kills. Is this a case of "never exhaust" striking true? Perhaps. More on that below.
ninth: The peach has contined to persist on these HO structures and I don't think it's gonna stop any time soon. Hiko's usual 500% usage HO mons of Gambit/Moon/Valiant/Lando are supported by potent pivot Pecharunt and the slower yet deadly Primarina. Suzuya has gone with the tried-and-true strategy of having three super-annoying defensive mons in Moltres/Gliscor/Garganacl, supported by Tusk for removal, Gambit for being strong, and Dragapult as the token fast/special damage guy. Suzuya does what many have done when loading Garg into HO and turns into a Water-type turn 1, getting up rocks before being forced out by Psychic Noise Primarina: the same Psychic Noise proves to be Hiko's trouble as it lets Suzuya's Gambit in for free, forcing the sacrifice of his Landorus. Hiko attempts a setup with Moon, but Suzuya simply goes hard Moltres, lives a +1 Knock with ease, and burns it, which means it's basically a Shelgon. The next stop for Hiko is using Pecharunt to pivot into Kingambit, allowing for a free setup, and despite a burn it's able to claim a kill on Suzuya's Dragapult and even live a Headlong Rush from Tusk at 3%, chipping it in the process before dying. There's one last setup mon left for Hiko, though: Sub/CM Tera Electric Iron Valiant, who takes nothing from Iron Head and even gets to set up - but fails to kill with Moonblast and dies. Now lacking in upfront damage, Suzuya can just go to his SD/Facade/EQ Gliscor and win against the Pecharunt and burnt Moon. Hiko's HO never truly got a chance to set up against Suzuya's bulkier mons.
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Orange Islanders (4-2-1) vs (2-5-0, eliminated) Arena Spartans
ninth: LuGholdNite is back, you know the deal by now, people love using this tryhard shit because it's effective. This one has Moltres and Zamazenta too because physical attackers haven't been through enough, and Valiant for more speed. We can talk about Pais' squad instead because it's pretty neat, with Rillaboom's Grassy Terrain offsetting Ursaluna's burn damage and turning his Kyurem - helped by Glowking's snow - into 2023 Baxcalibur. With Tinkaton and Tusk as support and insurance against enemy Kyurem, it's a potent combination. Pais leads Rillaboom into Attribute's Valiant and Hammers it to death. Attribute reveals Brave Bird Moltres, which does a pretty big chunk to Glowking before Pais brings out and activates his Ursaluna. It's able to secure a kill on Gholdengo before falling to Moltres. Pais sets up a second round of Grassy Terrain, and trades his Rillaboom to recoil as it kills Ting-Lu, leaving the score at 2-4 in Pais' favor. After Pais' Glowking reveals Psychic Noise to prevent Terrain healing, and Zama's Crunch doesn't look like a 2HKO, it's looking joever - until Attribute's Zamazenta Rests as Pais switches to Tusk, letting him get +5. Tera Ghost Tinkaton can't even stop it, because Attribute not only calls it out with an immediate Crunch but turns Tera Electric to absorb the Thunder Wave with ease, and believe it or not, the +5 Zama cleans house. The dog's good, folks: Tera Electric on a mon that already gets a one-time status cleanse is a new one and I like it.
1LDK: Man, it's been a long time since I've had the chance to go full insane on a finch the nator game, the match starts slow with both tinkatons exchanging rocks, Tinkanator robs Lokix's timbs, but gets paralyzed by the guilt, stopping himself from knocking off the gliscor's source of protein. Outside some extra chip on lokix, the match devolves to dlc 1 haram with both gliscors stalling each other. Finch successfully baits Latios into using tera steel while letting glowkinator take the hit. This is where Finch reveals his next trick, roar + 3 attacks zama, which he uses to rack sweet sweet trolling. 10 years into the match, the barbarians took half of rome, and also darkrainator got a freeze on a tinkaton, which essentially kills her, and lokix dies to rocks. Later down the line, the combo of future sight + zama puts latios on red health, darkrainator finally uses tera poison + will o wisp to try to cook the zama, but latios takes it instead. Antonazz realizes the remainder members cannot take the darkrainator on, so he taps out.
ninth: Roaring Moon, at 370 speed, is theoretically in the bottom half of speed on xdRudi.exe's team. This makes sense when you're flanked by super-turbo-HO mons in Moth/Valiant/Deoxys (probably a lead set), but it's still funny to think about. Kyurem and the ever-present Tusk are the only mons you could even remotely describe as slow, and Tusk is usually 300 speed anyways. In contrast to xdRudi's "each of these guys get one chance at sweeping" team, ACR1 looks like he plans on clicking pivot moves until something dies, between Lokix and Dragapult's U-Turn, Iron Crown's Volt Switch, and Alomomola to top the team off. Recognizing that rocks are probably necessary against a team like this, xdRudi trades his Deoxys's life for rocks. xdRudi uses his Moon's Booster to double into a suspiciously non-Booster mixed Valiant (I was wrong about the speed thing!), which eliminates Alomomola by using Moonblast into Knock into Thunderbolt. ACR1's choiced Dragapult comes out, forcing Valiant's sacrifice before Kyurem can come in and Spear it down. Even Booster-less, xdRudi's Moon is still a threat, 2HKOing Great Tusk with Acro and bringing it to a 3v3: Moon, Tusk, Moth versus Zama, Crown, Lokix. xdRudi's Moth turns Ghost-type on Zama, but Psychic bounces off and ACR1 Roars it out, leading to a dead Moon: he then turns Fire-type to easily live Fiery Dance, Crunches the Booster-less Moth, and even chips Tusk before letting Lokix finish the last kill.
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Power Plant Dynamos (4-2-1) vs (3-3-1) Showdown Shoguns
1LDK: Ribombee and Tinkaton trade hazards, moth gets a clean hit on zama, which is followed by ogerpon-w, kingambit takes an eq from ting lu, which lets him kill zama, and get a good chunk out of dnite. Gholdengo gets an NP, kills pecha with sball, then Rotom-Wash misses 2 hydro pumps, which puts ima in an unfortunate position. Even with the focus blast miss that ends gholdengo's life, the combination of Valiant + Ogerpon speaks doom.
1LDK: The lando blocks skarmory from hazards while setting his own, the bee also drops the webs and sacks herself to give dengo the shot, wake flip turns into ting lu, who gets 1 sent to the shadow realm by a tera fighting focus blast. He then tanks the malignant chain from pecharunt, and sents his ass back to UU with a shadow ball. Walking Wake surfs over that bitch, then Ogerpon-Cornerstone knocks off zama's boots, this will be important later, doubles into lando and wake and lando gets washed, dragonite loses multiscale, valiant gets on a draco meteor, but since valiant is slower, his fraud ass explodes like an anime fan when facing a tera water boosted shower. Ogerpon-C then breaks through skarmory, then wake forces him out into dnite, who has to kill with meteor, and this is the end of GeniusX, as Jytcampbell can just spin the whole block with sd boosted horn leeches
1LDK: Sandy Shocks quickly blows the fuck out of that fraud ass treads. Pult comes in, sets up on the rocks, he then uses dragon darts... and then protect... all that for his ultimate move, last resort... which takes a decent chunk out of scizor, but that's really it. Raging Bolt packs the barely alive sandy shocks, then gets packed by moon. Zama spanks primarina with a 2 piece combo of stone edge + heavy slam. THE SECOND MOST FRAUDULENT MON IN OU (only behind corviknight) AKA Meowscarada comes in, gets a trick scarf, takes 47% for a resisted CC, then ran right into Moltres, making her useless. Life Orb Lokix comes in, kills the cat, then dies to Moth. Moltres baits the Moon to knock zama's scarf, making Meow even more useless in retrospect, Zama then misses a stone edge on Moon, wastes tera steel and gets his face planted to the ground by tera ground eq, dying, to diarrhea. We then see Moltres clutching up that flame body proc, stalling for 20 million turns, then clutching up again vs Moth, securing the bag.
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Uncharted Terrors (3-1-3) vs (1-5-1, eliminated) Indigo Platoon
1LDK: In this match, we have stall, versus a team that cannot break through stall. Yeah
ninth: I was gonna try and add some extra analysis to this because I saw 1LDK's recap was just one line, but then I actually watched the replay and yeah, there's no Psyshock on that Gholdengo, not much to add. View attachment 684556
1LDK: The match starts with lolebruh stacking donuts on top of those hazards, but a bad knock off into headlong rush makes work of the spin blocker, and samu-h fails to even tickle garg. Roaring Moon sets up and smacks garganacl, but salt cure + crit ice punch sends him back home. Valiant sets up, then FINALLY kills the garg, but can't get pass kingambit. Moth takes a crit sucker punch and kills gambit, but pult revenge kills him. And no, zama does not make the 1v4 because he had tera steel instead of fire
1LDK: In this match, we have stall, versus a team that can actually break through stall (inb4 hmmm aksually that's a fat balance 1ldk pls get your facts right your a bum). But things quickly get out of control when Mike's breakers get a bad case of food poisoning for eating too much chocolate on Halloween. But even then he cannot break the gliscor, and yeah, gliscor actually dog walked the team, yikes
Thanks to a victory against Studio Gible, the Technical Machines are the first team 100% locked into playoffs at 11 points. Managers mncmt and Expulso seem to have struck gold with their strategy of drafting a thousand underrated people - now it's time to see how they will stack up against playoffs pressure.
With victory must come defeat, though, and we must bid farewell to the Showdown Shoguns, who are now eliminated from playoffs contention. Despite a highly touted roster post-draft and a deathball of OU talents, the disappearance of Vert and the ban of CTC proved too much to overcome. View attachment 684564
The playoffs picture is still developing, so here's a quick recap:
[11] The Terrors look set to make playoffs for the 5000th time. They can theoretically miss out if they lose horribly to the Shoguns and both Breakers/Islanders super-sweep their series, but it'd take an unprecedentedly large swing in win/loss differentials across the board to offset their +16. They're probably going to qualify for playoffs on, like, Wednesday.
[11] The Dynamos have a much tighter plus/minus at only +2, but are still favored to make it as long as they don't turbo-int to the Spartans and the Breakers/Islanders don't win too much.
[9] The formerly first-ranked Islanders, reeling from the ban of a manager and core player, are dangerously close to missing out altogether after a rough week against the eliminated Spartans capped off by an activity loss. They face Studio Gible, who are also in playoffs contention - a close series could spell their doom, because even if they win, they need the Breakers to not win by too much as well.
[9] The Circuit Breakers tied this week to push themselves to 9 points, but face the first-ranked Machines, who have already qualified. They need to beat the Machines to qualify, as well as hope for a rough series from the Islanders. Note that the Machines have only made two substitutions this week: they seem to still be putting forward max effort even with playoffs secured.
[8] Studio Gible, despite being at eight points, technically has a chance. They need a win versus the Islanders as well as a loss for the Breakers.
ninth's prediction - Machines/Terrors/Dynamos/Breakers qualify, with Islanders/Gible ending in a murder-suicide draw.
In terms of the teambuilder, what have we learned from week 8?
Pecharunt's not going anywhere: its usage has not dropped off much after the initial surge a few weeks ago, seeing seven brings this week, mostly on HO. It only won one game, though.
Iron Hands has disappeared, though, dropping out of the tour altogether after a two-week spike in usage.
Looking for a throwback to the first week of SV? Two people brought Meowscarada this week. Also, two people lost with Meowscarada this week. as it is no longer 2022.
Four Tinkaton this week - I've long been a believer that this mon is OU-bound, and with one of the mons it checks back in the tier thanks to Akalli's skullduggery, I'm more sure than ever about it.
Is the eternal adage of "Never Exhaust" holding true? I tracked it this week: seven people who burned Tera first lost, while five people who used it second lost. (One game had nobody use Tera, and two games saw both burn it simultaneously.)
Thanks for reading - we'll see you next week to recap the regular season and begin playoffs!
Tinkaton is a weird one as it’s not actually a good Pokemon from afar, but it is able to serve a really important set of roles:
Stealth Rock setter, freeing up a slot on Great Tusk, Ting Lu, Garganacl, etc. when they all value move slots way more than Tinkaton
Knock Off user, also freeing up a potential slot on a Great Tusk, Gliscor, etc. on teams that really appreciate removing a certain HDB user or Rocky Helmet (can also displace items with Pickpocket, but MB is ofc usable)
Role compression typing, especially with Air Balloon. On BO or even more up-tempo balance squads, being a one-off check to Gliscor, Weavile, Kyurem, Enamorus, Meowscarada, Slowking-Galar, Landorus-T, Latios, Glimmora, Deoxys-Speed, and Hoopa-Unbound is huge. Obviously it’s not really a true counter to much (more on this later), but gameflow is everything and this metagame has made true check/counter conventions of yesterday become more blurry, so this flexible role goes a long way towards achieving a decent team.
Actually checks every Darkrai a few times unless it’s NP + Focus Blast. This is so rare for balance and BO. Usually it involves a trade or running Zamazenta with certain tools, but this extra layer of protection enables different team compositions that go a long way.
Encore is huge. It can force certain switchins or allow for Knock Off to hit things the opponent doesn’t want to lose an item if you time turns right. It also goes a long way with the resistances and immunities you get with Tinkaton, even if it’s just kept in the back to ease prediction.
Mold Breaker is seeing more usage and it can be big when facing Hatterene offense or in a few other niche capacities. Pickpocket great applications as well. Just toolsy overall.
I’m not surprised it saw a swing up in usage a few months ago. I’m not shocked it is being used more again now. It’s very viable. I used it two of the last three weeks partially by coincidence, but it may very well continue to rise in usage on those middle-of-the-road teams for its various applications.
I’ll post a team and game analysis dump later this week prob.
Welcome, to the end of the regular season of SCL, where 4 teams are fighting life or death with every move, while the machines are just scratching their balls and farming sheet stats. With the Machines being the only team 100% in, the terrors, the gibles, the dynamos, and the islanders have to give it all in hopes of making the last run in, who will get in? Let's find out.
ninth: Both of these players started out in PU before migrating here. OLT semifinalist SoulWind rocked up with a no-nonsense offense with Tinkaton and Pecharunt holding it down as reasonably fast bulky utility mons. Zamazenta, Gliscor, Dragonite, and Darkrai all possess setup potential, but the team looks capable of playing the slower game as well with Pecharunt's disruption and pivoting, Gliscor's constant regeneration, etc. Larry's team is centered around Grassy Terrain turning high-BST mons like Gholdengo, Ursaluna, and Zamazenta into constantly regenerating juggernauts - Luna in particular benefits from offsetting burn, and Gholdengo loves halved EQ damage. Cinderace and Deoxys provide a cocktail of speed and utility to back them up. The game opens with Larry's Deoxys getting rocks up and denying SoulWind's own via Taunt, then chipping Dragonite before going down. SoulWind's eventually able to get his own up via Tinkaton, and even paralyze Cinderace before going down, but in the process Larry's Ursaluna gets activated. Headlong Rush deals nearly half to SoulWind's +1 Zamazenta, forcing an early Rest: the two go ID for ID, and SoulWind opts out early to go Pecharunt - only for Larry to Roar and bring his Zama back out anyways. That was a funny sequence. Anyways, it's on turn 30 that Larry debuts his Life Orb Rillaboom: Dragonite's Ice Spinner immediately removes the terrain, but it takes half from Knock in the process and loses its boots. This puts Dragonite in a funny no-win scenario where it either switches out, getting chipped on re-entry, or stays in, letting Zama get to +6: SoulWind eventually opts to switch out to Pecharunt, enabling Larry to sack Rillaboom for a second round of terrain. Grassy Seed Gholdengo comes out, NPs up, and Larry nails the Darkrai switch-in with a Focus Blast, and from there it's pretty joever. Even faced with Tera Dark Zamazenta, Ghold just Tera Waters and lives with immense ease - it was pretty much unkillable with the Seed boost. Welcome back, Aegislash.
Eric vs Niko
ninth: Initially meant to be ACR1, Éric instead filled in with a quirky, physically heavy offense. The team revolves around low-to-mid-speed potential setup bruisers like Iron Hands, Dragonite, and Scizor, with Tusk/Pecharunt on support and Darkrai being the token fast special attacker. Niko, on the other hand, just grabbed a bunch of mons off the top of the VR. You have the fast OP mons (Moon, Pult, Valiant) and the slower OP mons (Ghold, Tusk, Kyurem). Notably, this team contains three mons that viably run either physical or special sets - interesting surprise factor. The game starts with Éric's Hands gently encouraging Niko's Valiant to switch out of its Booster, because Niko just goes Tusk and gets up rocks. Hands proceeds to switch hard into Gholdengo and get sacked to Shadow Balls. RIP my man. Anyways, Gholdengo and Pecharunt exchange tickles until Éric brings in Darkrai on a Recover, prompting Niko's Roaring Moon to come in. Darkrai misses a Wisp on the setup, and it's looking dangerous...until Ice Beam freezes the next turn. However, with Darkrai chipped, this does not stop Niko's Kyurem from comming in, turning Tera Fire, Dragon Dancing on the switch to take out Pecharunt, and then reading Tusk's Tera Ice with a heads-up Tera Blast Fire. It's at this point that Éric recognizes the game is probably over.
Attribute vs Pkel SweeTforU
ninth: I love HO archetypes!!! Attribute's HO is a Veil team featuring Glowking and three setup goons including Kyurem, pretty self-explanatory. He does have a Tusk, which may be useful against Pkel's Ribombee webs. All the usual webs beneficiaries are here: Raging Bolt, Gholdengo, Dragonite, (checks notes) Zarude? Gotcha. Also want to note that Pkel has one (1) Ice resist. Pkel leads Ribombee into Attribute's Kyurem, and it gets off a Stun Spore turn 1, only for Kyurem to hard Icicle Spear it to death. No webs this game, then. Gholdengo revenge kills it, and the two exchange chip until Attribute sneaks in his Ninetales on Pkel's LO Zarude. Veil goes up, so Pkel goes Gholdengo, and the next turn Attribute switches his Moon into a Thunder Wave...which misses. Ghold has to run for the hills, allowing Attribute to send out his Ice Spinner Tusk and just start spamming it behind Veil, eliminating Zarude and chipping Pkel's own Bulk Up Tusk heavily. A 19% Tusk at +1 +1 is still a threat, though, and Tera Ghost allows Pkel to brute force through Zamazenta, forcing Attribute to Tera Grass his Slowking to deal with it. A second round of Veil goes up, and Pkel's Ghold misses a second Thunder Wave on Attribute's Glowking, which proceeds to reveal Nasty Plot + Psychic Noise/Sludge Bomb/Flamethrower, landing a kill on both Dragonite and Gholdengo before finally falling. Out of options, Pkel's Raging Bolt can do nothing but lose to Tusk.
ninth: Do you miss January 2023 and trying to make Ceruledge webs work? Ewin's clearly feeling nostalgic, with a Ribombee-led webs squad featuring the usual suspects of Gholdengo, probably SpA Moth, Moon, probably a Valiant for speed control. Unfortunately, he's staring down a Hatterene. It's part of a bulkier team from devin that was slower than most of Ewin's team anyways. The Samurott/Lando/Gholdengo hazard gang is key to producing chip for the cleanup crew of Kyurem and Zamazenta. Ewin leads Ribombee as one might expect, but simply starts Moonblasting Hatterene on the switch-in, getting a drop and managing to 1v1 it into switching out after devin goes for a Nuzzle which fails to paralyze due to Shield Dust. The bee dies to Scarf Gholdengo without setting webs, but it managed Big Chip! Ewin uses this as a chance to bring out SpA Moth, which gets a Fiery Dance boost, Teras on a Stone Edge miss from Zamazenta to Dazzling Gleam it to death, crit oneshots Lando for good measure - then goes for a Tera read and Psychics Kyurem, which survives easily thanks to devin not exhausting. He proceeds to set up its own Dragon Dance, killing Moth and forcing Ewin's Valiant to come out to stop it. Though devin's Tera Poison Samurott tries valiantly against Valiant, the door's still wide open for it and Moon to clean up.
SupaGmoney vs oldspicemike
ninth: For context, these two played on Tuesday evening. SupaGmoney loaded stall (gasp) but this time it's a double-Poison Amoonguss/Weezing-Galar variant. mike has opted to bring that one super sweaty Gliscor/Skarmory/Dragapult/Glowking hazard stack tryhard squad: this version has an Ursaluna and a Meowscarada as a pivot. This one is long but an important bit is turn 7: mike's Spikes Meowscarada knocks Alomomola's Boots off, and Supa immediately Tera Steels it to avoid dying. 20 turns later, this leads to mike's SD Gliscor getting to set up and delete said Alomomola. Between mike's Psychic Noise Glowking, constant Knock pressure from Meowscarada, non-Guts Ursaluna's raw damage, and Brave Bird Skarmory which he hid until turn 82 to chunk Amoonguss, Supa can really only just switch around a lot and slowly lose. I would like to shout out Meowscarada for putting up a triple double this game between Knock, Spikes, and Triple Axel actually doing damage.
Storm Zone vs Stareal
ninth: Post's late because I forgot this game happened. Oops. Storm Zone's offense is a funky-looking cocktail that's been making the rounds on ladder recently - Mamoswine acts as a unique lead with access to rocks and FEAR strats via Endeavor and Sash. Moth and usually-Scarf Meowscarada act as speed control to support wallbreakers in Iron Crown, Iron Hands, and Primarina as a setup threat. Stareal's core of Clodsire/Skarmory/Clefable spreads hazards and status to produce chip for his high-BST offensive options in Zamazenta and Latios: Kingambit is there too because obviously. Storm leads with Crown and just starts clicking Tachyon Cutter, chipping Latios and bringing out Stareal's Gambit: he ends up catching Mamoswine with a Low Kick, meaning it can only get up rocks and not its FEAR nonsense before dying. Storm decides to Tera Ground his Moth early for a kill on Clodsire, but is immediately Whirlwinded out by Boots Skarmory, who lives thanks to Sturdy. Potentially a sigh of relief as, depending on the Moth set, it might have gotten a massive killstreak. Stareal decides it's time to go for game and turns his Zamazenta into a Fire-type against Storm's Water-type Primarina, which cannot hit it and can only watch as the dog gets +5. With Moth's Booster consumed, there's nothing left that can outspeed Zama, and the game is super over. Mon's good, y'all.
1LDK: BO vs 5/6 trick room and an Ogerpon-w for downtime. Ursaluna gets on tinka safety without recieving a knock, which lets it munch on the tinka till death. Sub-tech kyurem safely stalls hatterene, which forces kingambit to tera dark early to break sub and force kyurem out. Zapdos misses every move as usual, which lets cresselia get trick room + gambit again with healing wish from hat earlier, kingambit survives samu-h's sacred sword at 1hp, so now the game becomes cat and mouse in not letting cress set up again, zapdos kills ursaluna and uses tera dragon to survive ogerpon-w, this, in conjunction with scarf samu-h, kill ogerpon-w. Glowking takes ceaseless thanks to colbur, letting it kill samu-h, tusk tries to kill but cress comes in, letting kingambit get a full restore for one last chance at sweep, but kyurem stalling, alongside zapdos sacking, lets them weather the anomaly, winning the game.
Gtcha vs DAHLI
Mako vs lolebruh
1LDK: my 2 goats are fighting, the ace gets a good smack on glowking but he survives and twaves, so with paralizys, garg gets free damage on him and serp, tusk later gets in position to kill ace, then uses tera ice to greatly damage the rillaboom with ice spinner + rocky helmet, serp gets cockblocked by the entire team one way or another, bolt tries to sweep but gets blocked by garg, lucha tries to sweep but the combination of psy noise glowking and helmet tusk is enough to stop it. Bolt tries to sweep again but once garga chips it, meow can just clean it up, glowking 1v1s zama
1LDK: Before starting the match, hellom where are you, sending hugs and ice cream. So now we can talk about I think the shortest OU match this tour. Deoxys-Speed clicks taunt, takes a dragon pulse from bolt, then red cards into Moth, who cannot break ting lu even with dazzling gleam. Doubles into deo, gets rocks and forces ribombee to go for moonblast over webs. Kyurem gets in, clicks dd 2 times, one icicle spear, one tera electric tera blast, and the game is over.
emforbes vs Pais
1LDK: scarf gholdengo and specs keldeo soften the treads and ogerpon, pult kills keldeo, while dengo claims oger-w. Gholdengo stays on Raging Bolt and clicks sball untill it dies, then tusk claims the kill. Valiant tries to set up, but Moltres yolos into it, zama crashes out on moltres. Tusk gets some damage on Pult, and specs pult too, kills tusk, and gives Moon free set up to dd, tera fairy eq one shot the tera fire zama.
JJ09LIE vs Antonazz
1LDK: zapdos misses the hurricane twice, so samu gets a knock + spikes, then zapdos misses the roos--- okay this is not RBY. JJ has to pivot around with Crown so that zapdos can actually work, and he almosts kills the samu-h, but gets put on fraud watch by pecharunt. Pult gets a 2x1 with samu-h and tusk with tera ghost shadow ball. Valiant sets up, kills clef, then Cinderace misses the pyro ball, with ace gone, Antonazz uses Iron Crown to set up and win
1LDK: Ogerpon-W knocks off Enam's expert belt, then sets 1 layer of spikes and pivots into ting lu who takes a poison from sludge bomb. Grass Knot makes 0 damage but lets enam come free on rocks, who then spams Moonblast to get rid of Malekith's enam. Oger tries to cudgel but Volcanion eats it like a kids meal, Volcanion clicks some moves and knocks ogerpon, but oger knocks his shuca berry. Both tusks trade but Piyu wins. Pult tries to go all in for the tera ghost tera blast sweep, but can only get tusk before scarf ghold forces him out, ting lu hits the field, then doubles into pult to get free double, but Piyu was on that, no free eats. Ghold kills dirge, enam finishes ting lu
Lily vs leng loi
1LDK: Both teams are on the anti-offense side, so both try to uuuhhh... out-anti-offense each other? Lily is forced to tera turn 1 to not get instantly rolled over by Keldeo, Leng outplays Lily with positioning, allowing dnite to get some damage on chomp, and paralizing moltres. Fast foward a bit, Lily's tusk is about to die, but she gets a good predict on pecharunt, heavely denting it, and spinning on dnite. Darkrai gets a burn on Tinkaton, but tinkaton gets rocks again, and ting lu gets spikes again, this time, Leng does block the spikes. From this moment, garchomp drops, darkrai red cards weavile into dnite, who recieves a sludge bomb poison, scarf gholdengo recovers on a ting lu sack, pecha 2 taps moltres with stabs, gholdengo locks himself into scarf, which weavile takes and kills with knock, and blocks dnite espeed with tera ghost.
Mada vs Mimikyu Stardust
1LDK: Okay so mimikyus team looks like a gen 8 team and the second my brain realized that my day got ruined. glim red card poisons samu-h, then zama comes and weaves the ceasesless edge, and Ice Fangs pult even tho it eats a burn. With lando intimidate, Rotom takes NEGATIVE damage, and zama actually takes more from that lol. Clefable holds on vs Hawlucha. Lando takes a BONK to the head and rks rilla with U-turn. Ghold uses tera fairy + grassy seed + np to set up on samu-h, not without losing his defense boost tho. which means is forced out by zama heavy slam. Raging Bolt kills clef but dies to lando, then kills ghold and lets rotom finish off zama
And with that, week 9 is over, and the Gibles and Breakers are officially out of play-offs, not only that, but zioziotrip has been unlocked as a playable easter egg by the islanders, will he help the team out in the hopes of winning the tour? The final strecth of the tour begins here, good luck everybody
Technical Machines (0) vs (0) Orange Islanders
myjava vs zioziotrip
Mimikyu Stardust vs hellom
Piyu vs Pais
Uncharted Terrors (0) vs (0) Power Plant Dynamos
oldspicemike vs INSULT
Stareal vs Niko
Ewin vs Pkel SweeTforU
This post I will outline my SCL experience, cool sets I used, every team I used, and the games I played. Feel free to scroll through it if you are not interested in context and thoughts or read through it if you enjoy my perspective. Have a nice day!
3-5 is a bad record for me and was not the result my team purchased me for, so I am sorry to my teammates for this outcome. I actually had a ton of fun this campaign despite this, but more on that later. This is the first calendar year I have ever finished negative overall across my 11 years regularly playing official team tours and I was probably due for this; I played most of my games well enough this year, but I had one really unacceptable loss in both SPL and WCoP from a playing perspective and I was bound to have some breaks not go my way after being a bit fortunate last year. I also think the playerbase continues to adapt at varying paces and while sometimes I am ahead of the curve, other times I was just keeping up or even behind for a few weeks, which is a tough reality to live in this generation. My main advice to other competitors is to play, play, and play some more if you can without burning out -- this generation rewards familiarity and confidence when taking risks more than perhaps any other, especially with how trends go (especially applicable closer to releases or bans). You need to be in-touch with your teams ranging from when to use/preserve certain Teras to leads with offenses to difference sequences with balance and so much more. For some, it comes intuitively and for others it depends, but for me, I love playing with my teammates/friends/even on ladder at times.
Pivoting to SCL specifically, 3 of my 5 losses were kind of cursed this season and the Spartans flopped big time after week 2, but despite all of this I actually had a lot of fun this season. I mostly enjoyed the week-to-week grind with building and testing, I quite liked my teammates, and I felt motivated despite having some of the worst/toughest weeks ever for me IRL. I do not actually have many regrets this season, which is funny as I did in SPL and WCoP despite doing a little better.
Play wise, I actually feel like I made fewer misplays than last year when I won 8 games (this is not saying I made none -- there were definitely some and I will get into this later in the post) and some things just did not quite work out between strong opponents or rough breaks, but in the end there is no excusing or justifying any record: you are what you are and I finished 3-5, which is way worse than 7-3 and 8-3 from last two years of SCL. Sorry again to the Spartans -- you guys deserved better output from me. With this said, not all was negative! Major props to my teammates Attribute (7-2) and ACR1 (6-2) for combining to go 13-4 in the other two slots though -- I looked forward to working with you two each week this season, I was so proud of you for executing at such a level, and I am excited to see you both continue to succeed in the next tournaments. Big thanks to our supporters, too -- pretty much every teammate I regularly interacted with was awesome. It is rare to have such a nice group of people together without any hate or major frustration during these times around the world, so I thank you for this opportunity.
Let's start with some fun sets I used this season:
W1 vs oldspicemike
Ting-Lu @ Assault Vest
Ability: Vessel of Ruin
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 20 Atk / 8 Def / 224 SpD / 4 Spe
Careful Nature
- Earthquake
- Ruination
- Stone Edge
- Heavy Slam
AV Ting Lu is not my "creation", but it had not surfaced for a few months before I brought it out W1. My team chat was filled with ideas about role compression in offense mirrors with different ideas ranging from recent risers like AV Okidogi to hidden gems like AV Slowbro, which never surfaced this campaign. AV Ting Lu is really good at being able to 1.5-for-1 or even 2-for-1 trade into generic offenses, especially if they are like Booster Spam or special attacker heavy. Realistically none of Dragapult, Raging Bolt, Iron Moth, Gholdengo, Darkrai, Iron Crown, or Zapdos can 3HKO it with SR or 2HKO it after a boost (barring the rare NP + Focus Blast Rai/Ghold that hits twice). Ruination alone is great into offense and any team lacking Gliscor/Regenerator, so being able to spam that without fear into a ton of Pokemon I expected alone was great, but the additional coverage and surprise bulk flipped a ton of interactions. It is probably less good now than it was earlier on in the tournament with Gliscor being a bit more common, but still viable for sure on the right team.
252 SpA Choice Specs Protosynthesis Tera Water Walking Wake Hydro Steam vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu in Sun: 428-504 (83.2 - 98%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252 SpA Iron Valiant Moonblast vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 188-224 (36.5 - 43.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after 1 layer of Spikes
252+ SpA Choice Specs Tera Dragon Raging Bolt Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 208-246 (40.4 - 47.8%) -- 4.7% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Choice Specs Tera Steel Iron Crown Tachyon Cutter (2 hits) vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 136-164 (26.4 - 31.9%) -- approx. 0.6% chance to 3HKO after Stealth Rock
+1 252 SpA Enamorus Moonblast vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 204-242 (39.6 - 47%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ SpA Primarina Moonblast vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 144-170 (28 - 33%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
252+ SpA Choice Specs Torkoal Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu in Sun: 195-229 (37.9 - 44.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock
Srn mentioned Taunt on Great Tusk a half dozen times during SPL, but I never had a chance to use it. Not really earth-shattering or something I came up with firsthand obviously, but it is really good at forcing progress in tandem with Rocky Helmet -- you can leave things like Corviknight or Skarmory in +2 Kingambit range, mess with stall, and also stop set-up from defensive tera Gambit/Bolt/Garg. Obviously the Tera can be whatever you normally opt to use on Great Tusk and the EVs can be too -- this was to chew Ogerpon and some other things, but the premise of Taunt was nice. Nowadays, I find CC to be a good fourth when you have another SR user and Knock Off user because it hits Balloon Kingambit and grabs some OHKOs, but Taunt is great in certain match-ups when you can afford it.
I have seen Colbur Deoxys-Speed prior to SCL, but never this specific combination. Deoxys-Speed is such an awkward Pokemon because it does a lot of things ok, but it does not excel at a ton and many people use it strictly in one role or do not explore with it. I have found this combination of item, spread, and moves great at forcing progress in early-games that are otherwise hard to navigate in offense mirrors while still carrying some weight with Knock + Psy Noise vs bulkier teams.
252+ Atk Sharpness Samurott-Hisui Ceaseless Edge vs. -1 248 HP / 40 Def Colbur Berry Deoxys-Speed: 240-283 (79.2 - 93.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Darkrai Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 0- SpD Colbur Berry Deoxys-Speed: 212-251 (69.9 - 82.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Dragapult Hex (65 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0- SpD Deoxys-Speed: 218-258 (71.9 - 85.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
+1 4 Atk Great Tusk Headlong Rush vs. 248 HP / 40 Def Deoxys-Speed: 255-301 (84.1 - 99.3%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 Atk Protosynthesis Roaring Moon Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 248 HP / 40 Def Colbur Berry Deoxys-Speed: 226-267 (74.5 - 88.1%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
0 Atk Gliscor Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 40 Def Deoxys-Speed: 109-129 (35.9 - 42.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock
+1 252+ Atk Tera Normal Dragonite Extreme Speed vs. 248 HP / 40 Def Deoxys-Speed: 229-271 (75.5 - 89.4%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252 Atk Iron Valiant Spirit Break vs. 248 HP / 40 Def Deoxys-Speed: 256-303 (84.4 - 100%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
+2 252 Atk Iron Valiant Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 248 HP / 40 Def Colbur Berry Deoxys-Speed: 221-260 (72.9 - 85.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Tera Stellar Enamorus Moonblast vs. 248 HP / 0- SpD Deoxys-Speed: 260-306 (85.8 - 100.9%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Technician Tera Steel Scizor Bullet Punch vs. 248 HP / 40 Def Deoxys-Speed: 226-266 (74.5 - 87.7%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
W3 vs Storm Zone:
Darkrai @ Red Card
Ability: Bad Dreams
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 120 HP / 48 Def / 88 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dark Pulse
- Sludge Bomb
- Ice Beam
- Will-O-Wisp
The vision behind this was definitely ACR1 more than myself, but it is honestly really good on the right offense. Red Card in general goes crazy (or at least did -- bit less so RN than W1-5 I'd say) and should have been used more on Glimmora, Darkrai, Ting Lu, and even things like Gholdengo and Primarina who have good resistances and fit on those teams. Being able to stop a sequence from getting out of hand or flip the tempo of a game can go a long way towards working into a favorable game script for your squad. I will say that it is always a bit cheesy as the RNG of the switch it forces can dictate a lot, but I like saving it for mid-late game when possible to try and mitigate that / steer odds.
Great Tusk @ Assault Vest
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 8 HP / 108 Atk / 140 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Headlong Rush
- Ice Spinner
- Knock Off
- Rapid Spin
People like Kumiko used this in SPL I know, but it was arguably even better in the early season, more offensively inclined metagame. You can opt to use CC, Stone Edge, Heavy Slam, or Megahorn depending on team if you fit Knock elsewhere, for what it's worth, but I wanted Knock Off here. Anyway, I felt I had a good BO core going, but wanted to have some leverage in specific 1v1s and ability to Tera into a 1v1 vs most special attackers. AV Tusk compressed this role alongside giving you a Ground, Rapid Spin, and the ability to check Kingambit pre-Tera, which was necessary here. I think it is just as good as other trends like AV Okidogi or AV Zamazenta, but for some reason never caught on. I had RH Garchomp on this team, too, so I really did not miss Rocky Helmet too much. Lax also inspired my general uptick in AV these first few weeks, so kudos to him.
Speaking of RH Garchomp, lo and behold. Obviously a historically known set, but I think it is supremely underrated right now and was even moreso earlier in the season. It sucks being deadweight into Gliscor, but otherwise this set is super band it oftentimes is able to swap in and force damage against offense while getting up hazards. I like it especially with Choice Scarf Gholdengo, which I used this week. Ghost allows you to flip the script vs Great Tusk, Dragonite, and Zamazenta, too. Should see a greater piece of the pie chart among Ground types and SR setters.
Shoutout to Duckular for the original inspiration to try Sticky Webs with special Araquanid, which debuted here. I took my own spin on it with different personnel and sets. I did make the Araquanid different, opting for Mirror Coat + Endeavor -- it is unfortunate to not be able to touch Roost Roaring Moon pre-Tera, but I do not mind missing Ogerpon-Wellspring too much and having both of Endeavor and Mirror Coat can flip a ton of games. I do feel this is the highest ceiling Sticky Web setter -- obviously a tad less reliable than Ribombee as it is slower can can get OHKO'd by Roaring Moon Acrobatics or Raging Bolt Thunderbolt, but it is normally safe and provides far greater output.
Look, I know Iron Moth wants Fiery Dance, Sludge Wave, Dazzling Gleam, Psychic, Energy Ball, Substitute, Tera Blast, and Toxic Spikes, but I have another move for it that proves worthwhile -- Overheat. It is a great option to deal a large blow before being taken out -- think about when facing a Gliscor, Kyurem, Landorus-T, Great Tusk, Deoxys-Speed, Ursaluna, etc. and you cannot necessarily OHKO them, but they have a path to OHKO you -- dealing a larger chunk of damage or potentially taking them out can flip a lot in the game. This is really only for use on teams that are ok into Kingambit as you normally like using Substitute to ease prediction and not for teams that mandate other coverage, but if the shoe fits, it offers a ton of clickability. At +1, you can even OHKO mixed Kyurem, Landorus-T, and PDef Gliscor. At +0, you OHKO Gholdengo and Kingambit, which live Fiery Dance. Calcs below -- cool with Tera Fire, too, but that is impossible to fit when you want defensive Tera options almost always.
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Overheat vs. 0 HP / 0- SpD Kyurem: 376-444 (96.1 - 113.5%) -- 75% chance to OHKO
132 SpA Iron Moth Overheat vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Great Tusk: 343-405 (92.4 - 109.1%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
132 SpA Iron Moth Overheat vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Landorus-Therian: 249-294 (65.1 - 76.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
132 SpA Iron Moth Overheat vs. 244 HP / 0 SpD Gliscor: 262-309 (74.4 - 87.7%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Overheat vs. 244 HP / 164+ SpD Gliscor: 294-346 (83.5 - 98.2%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Overheat vs. 252 HP / 240+ SpD Slowking-Galar: 211-249 (53.5 - 63.1%)
Nothing too novel, but IMO Tera Fairy is the best defensive Tera on Dragonite -- you click it way more than other Teras. Huge with Kingambit Sucker Punch, Zamazenta and Great Tusk encounters, neutralizing Ice from Darkrai and Kyurem, stopping Raging Bolt and Dragapult in certain scenarios, or improving the match-up into Iron Valiant and Primarina. Tera Blast is nice complimentary offensive coverage -- you miss out on Corviknight and Moltres, but otherwise it is superb. Think someone used this set back in SPL, but otherwise we do not see Tera Blast much aside from Flying and I feel that should change.
Now let's get to teams and replays from the season!
oldspicemike is an underrated player and one of the best in the field; I had him top 3 in my PRs coming in and he consistently put up results prior to this campaign -- helped Midwest win WCoP, dominant records in both SPL and last SCL, and qualified with ease for OLT. Drawing him W1 after I came into the tournament a little cold since I was focused on BW stuff and IRL was not going to be easy, so I put in a ton of work this week -- laddered two alts up, built a handful of teams, and circled in on an idea ASAP. The gut and expectation was he would use offense, so I wanted to have some stoppers. Dragonite came to mind initially, but ended up going with Kingambit priority with two fast Pokemon with BoosterSpeed Iron Moth + Deoxys-Speed and AV Ting Lu as a universal tank. I did not expect fat, but as a weaker cover-up, I did go with a nice physical core of Taunt RH Tusk to force chip + SD Ogerpon, which can usually poke enough holes after SR + Knock spam early from Deoxys-Speed to where Ogerpon itself or Kingambit has a shot later in games.
Pivoting to the game itself, he brought Sun -- not quite the type of offense I expected, but it was a tested match-up from ladder runs and I know my Tera lanes + opening sequence from the jump at least. Seeing SAtk booster on Walking Wake was huge for me; he probably brought it to cover me using something more balance oriented, so being able to disrupt it and not have many slower/non-priority options was an asset. This let me trade Deoxys-Speed for most of it after he could not click Hydro Steam out of respect for Ogerpon-Wellspring. From there, my Iron Moth lane was perfectly set as I killed weakened Walking Wake with Fiery Dance, baited the Roaring Moon, and exhausted Tera to kill it with Dazzling Gleam.
I was up in the trade-war from there and had AV Ting Lu in the back, which had easy EQ/Ruination damage forced into everything. He revealed Tera Flying, but this was good for me as I had Stone Edge on Ting Lu and Ice Spinner on Great Tusk. From there, I just went pretty simple to avoid throwing away a winning position. I did not make too many aggressive plays and forced progress at every point possible. Taunt Great Tusk avoided losing to running critical hits or misses, Ting Lu spammed Ruination when necessary, and Ogerpon forced the issue vs Ninetales and to end it. Felt like a strong win vs a superb opponent to start things off -- glad I got to show off AV Ting Lu in particular.
Another strong opponent W2 in DAHLI, and this one was a little personal as I was a member of the Platoon the prior two years. Turns out our game was the deciding game 10, too, so a lot was on the line. I went pretty deep into self-scouting for this and determined bringing another offense was best -- they were going to come prepared for Spikes and balance, but I felt virtually any offense with outplaying potential would suffice here.
Ultimately, this was one of my most standard brings: SD Knock Ogerpon-Wellspring forces progress virtually always, Colbur Pult is superb early game, Red Card Glimmora provides timely redirection and field control, and Treads was optimal glue, especially when I was particularly worried about Raging Bolt + Fairy types this week due to me typically being overwhelmed by cores with these things. From there, the best Pokemon in the tier helped round things out with Zamazenta and Kingambit. Specific sets required a ton of playing and thought, but really I just wanted to draw a neutral match-up to put myself in a spot to let the plays decide here, and thankfully it worked out.
Right from the jump, I came out with some nice maneuvers to force progress with Dragapult a few times, but a timely critical hit on Slowking-Galar made this game very fortunate and hard to lose for me. From there, I just tried to keep tempo up and, similar to last week, force the right trades without making the wrong risks from an advantaged spot. Kingambit had a nice stay to force chip on half of his team, Dragapult forced the issue, and Zamazenta ultimately closed out the game after I cornered Zapdos. Could've been closer -- did like my chances with Dark Zamazenta and Balloon Fire Gambit both being able to force the issue, but obviously a different game if things went in another direction. Nice to clinch an extra point against a team I really wanted to beat though.
Storm Zone went out of his way to ask to play me and I will never run from a hype game, so that was fun from the jump. For this game, Storm is known for using offense historically, but he brought out bulkier teams in OST and other SCL games, so I did not focus a ton on his scout aside from some concepts he repeated over time and instead focused on myself. Lax, blunder, CTC, and others on the Shoguns knew me well -- obviously my bread-n-butter is balance stuff with Ting Lu, Slowking-Galar, Gliscor, etc. while I used hard offense twice so far, so I decided to not only go with something different in bulky-offense, but also use some Pokemon I have not in a long time. I had no Gholdengo usage all year long somehow, Darkrai I had yet to bring out in official capacity at least, and I wanted in on the Moltres trend, so I cooked something up really different and pretty creative to give a new look this week.
This was probably one of my more clever and enjoyable brings. The game was not a win, but I got very high on ladder with this and won repeatedly in OU seasonal since then, so at least there is some redemption for the squad. AV Tusk, Red Card Darkrai, and RH Chomp all felt like cool brings. RH Chomp with Gholdengo in particular is a really good core and should be explored more, too. I do not really have many regrets here and sometimes the cookie does not crumble quite as you want it to.
Going into the game, I was not expecting Trick Room and it was pretty dire from the jump. I pivoted really nicely around Ursaluna earlier, forced Trick on Cresselia, got a lot of mileage out of Raging Bolt, and punked Ursaluna with Red Card once after the Healing Wish at least. Storm Zone played optimally, did not take any incorrect risks or choked, and held serve when he was a leg up due to my lack of switch-ins to Volcanion, Enamorus-T, and Ursaluna under TR. Had he either not been Tera Normal on Ursaluna or not clicked it vs Garchomp, assuming I was offensive, then I could've probably had a chance to pull things out, but Storm had the right set and, as he did all game, made the best plays. Kudos to him for a great bring and superb piloting from there, but this loss just did not bother me too much at least.
At this point, I felt really strong about my execution and season outlook despite losing the prior week. 2-1 with a strong strength-of-schedule and a ton of opportunities ahead, my team being 2-1 overall, and a good feel for the metagme was the right place to be. I had an ok read on Luirromen from when we played in a few tournaments in the past, but I also knew some of his countrymen may have some influence and this is before Raptor got banned, too, so I wanted to be cognizant of all possibilities. Overall, I expected offense with a unique breaking option to disrupt a bulkier bring from me, but I knew it was possible for me to face a surprise bulkier team like some of the WCoP teams we saw from Chile.
Choice Scarf Darkrai felt like a great bring here. Trick is able to cripple a special wall on the off-chance I face a bulky team, which opens the door for Raging Bolt and Gholdengo, while having such a fast revenge killer with Tera Ghost can be very practical in offense mirrors as well. I also felt hazards in the short game could be good here while not wanting to lose to opposing Toxic Spikes, so going for Red Card Glimmora + Ting Lu opened up the game to disrupt my opponent while setting the field for me, providing some nice defensive coverage, and giving me a clear blueprint for what I needed to cover with the remainder. Gholdengo, Raging Bolt, and Ogerpon-Wellspring fell into place here after a lot of trial-and-error with some different Gholdengo sets and Ogerpon-Wellspring fourth moves.
The game itself was very frustrating. From lead, we had a crucial decision: I was perfectly fine taking a Will-O-Wisp with Ogerpon-Wellspring and clicking U-turn, but did not want to risk dying outright to a high range from LO Sludge Bomb or a rare Choice Specs set, which makes sense as a bring into me with Trick for bulkier stuff. I could have risked this, gone for U-turn, and been fine in any scenario where I did not die. Alternatively, I could go Ting Lu and be safe into anything that was not Nasty Plot -- and if he clicked NP on a U-turn or Trailblaze, he virtually lost the game from turn 1, so I really did not suspect this. Well, he went for the risk of NP as I went to Ting Lu, hit and crit Ting Lu while not getting min on the crit, and then I was in big trouble. I thought a lot about this first turn and honestly with everything out there, I do not regret switching. NP can virtually lose the game if I stay in and it's the first turn when he has Dragonite and numerous RKers for Ogerpon, so it was a huge risk and Ting Lu was safe into any other move -- had no way of knowing the set for sure and was fine if he did not both have NP, have Focus Blast, and crit it. All you can do there is give massive props to Luirromen for taking a strong risk, which turned out to be a great play for him.
I do think he got a bit shaky in the end-game vs Well and me in his first two games, but this is not a shot at Luirromen as they were his first two games of the tournament and he is really a strong player who deserved some wins. As an aside: I expect Luirromen to continue to put up big wins in many tournaments in the future if he wishes to compet. I do admit from my end this was frustrating as I actually managed to claw back despite half my team being crippled here to the point where I won if I either won a speed tie (Iron Moth vs Ogerpon-Wellspring) or got one of two crit/flinches with my own Darkrai vs his Iron Moth. It would've been awesome since I played my ass off to position myself back into a decent spot and I think some priorities on his end were shaky, but obviously did not go my way. Definitely felt bitter dropping to 2-2 after all of that, but I think you gotta just focus on how you play as opposed to the result in cases like this -- we cannot control everything and I still had over half a season to play the game I love on the biggest stage, so no time to be sad when you can start preparation for the next big game.
Gama is someone who I have a ton of respect for -- he does his own thing no matter the format and he does it well enough to cook up a resume filled with results that 99% of players will never come close to. Some people may be confused by specific teams or plays or think he is past his peak, but he is quietly top 15 on the sheet in all-time wins and had multiple 6 win official team tournaments in 2023 alone. I looked at the scout and took away some vague trends that made sense, but looked a lot less at my self-scout this week, instead figuring out the best way to attack my opponent rather than trying to vary a ton.
Turns out I varied a ton regardless as I ended up using Araquanid Sticky Web offense -- it is probably the team I was most proud of and enjoyed the most. This shit absolutely mauls the ladder (although consider making one of Tusk/Ghold +Speed), it was so fun to build and then edit throughout the last few days of the week, and I really do not regret using it. If I had to RMT anything, it would probably be this team, but I have already distributed it to quite a few people and they have used it across different places. Pivoting into the game itself though: the one downside of Araquanid is it can get OHKO'd by a small handful of things, making it less reliable than Ribombee in those games. We had a contingency plan of leading Great Tusk vs most Roaring Moon teams already to avoid Acrobatics OHKO into Araquanid, but Raging Bolt was a bit more of a debate...see the two images below
Obviously this is not Attribute's fault -- I pick what I click and made a conscious risk and that dude is a fire teammate, but it is fucking hilarious and cruel this happened exactly this way LOL
Game was in a pretty bad spot after I lost Iron Moth, which did alright offensively but was my least valued team member, for nothing after he read me not being Substitute properly. He then exhausted Tera for the kill on Great Tusk, which looked bad but actually favored me a ton as we will see later on. On T4, I made a do-or-die double that had huge risk and saved the game for me, getting Araquanid in on his switch to Iron Treads, where he predicted me to try to Thunderclap to RK him presumably. This let me get a free kill with Surf on the SR, then tank the non-Booster Raging Bolt TBolt to KO with Surf while being in Custap range, and finally get up Sticky Webs before Dragapult took me out -- we had ourselves a playable game state, finally.
Ultimately, game came down to if he was Clear Body or Infiltrator on Dragapult -- if he was Clear Body, he has a chance and if he is Infiltrator, he lost. I suspected Infiltrator as he already had removal and I have never used Sticky Webs in my life, but he was Clear Body. I got a fortunate flinch vs Azumarill, but it was slower than everything and had no routes to kills unless it had a Fighting move on that exact turn, so I do not think this changed much. This was a fine spot because I was favored to win overall, but it was not safe at all. Let's break it down: Weavile dies to Thunderclap -> Sucker Punch always and it was not Pressure (meaning I had 8 Sucker Punch PP, not 4). He had to either Ice Shard on Thunderclap twice (or crit 1) OR predict me to predict Ice Shard, be/use Triple Axel, AND hit all 3 + still be/use Low Kick to OHKO Kingambit afterwards. If I win the 50/50, the game is over barring me losing 8 consecutive Sucker Punch turns or something crazy. If I lose the 50/50, he has to hit all 3 Triple Axel and be Low Kick. Sadly, he got the turn right with Triple Axel on Thunderbolt and all got all three hits, then revealed Low Kick. Only turn I can really go back and maybe regret this game was the lead, and even that was a hard call for a number of reasons (shown above). Similar to the Luirromen game, I managed to claw it back to be favorable slightly and it just did not go my way. I thought my MU here was good, Gama played his outs nicely, and it just came down to the wire in a good game. I enjoyed playing it despite the result and liked the process this week. It was another "well, it is what it is. not too upset" loss, but truthfully going 2-0 to 2-3 with these two losses was sad for me as I wanted to provide more for my team, so sorry to them.
Main thing this week was I had used almost entirely offense (one bulky-o) up until this point, but I still wanted to distance myself from the Ting LU + Gking balances I am known for -- Mada is a smart opponent with a good track record and he likely had the help of certain Italians who like seeing me lose, so I made sure to be on my game here with varying things up in a smart fashion. I think my team pick was pretty great, too, as it had quite a few things I had not used this season thus far (Boots Pult, Samu-H, Gliscor, Tinkaton, and Garganacl) while still being very effective as I scaled >1900 while testing until I had to stop in fear of being caught.
The idea behing the build was slow U-turn Gliscor with Toxic/EQ/Prot/U-turn. They did not use much Corv/Skarm and this set was not fun for their offenses to swap into all while assuming momentum repeatedly vs balances. I thought it was a good, surprising change of pace bring from me and it did well into them at the same time. Spikes from Samu-H felt like a perfect partner to this, too. From there, the team kind of completed itself: Garganacl + Samu-H is enough for any breaker Gholdengo set I expected, Tusk has to be there to spin for Garganacl, Pult provides speed control and soft checks certain things, and Tinkaton rounded this out as glue. I had to exhaust Tera into certain Ogerpon-Wellspring positions and had to be very particular vs Roaring Moon, but otherwise this team was very strong for me.
The game itself was frustrating. Lead off well for once, but missed both Wisp and Draco into Landorus-T when that health proved very relevant later on. Got unlucky vs Pecharunut with Samurott-H when a single layer of Spikes won the game easily later on and the damage alone probably did the trick for me, too. I am proud of myself for keeping full composure, figuring out what I needed on the fly, and putting on an absolute clinic in controlling the game from there despite this to work myself back into a good position like the two prior weeks. I actually thought this was one of my best games, but in the end, the result was the same and I just could not catch a break. Spoke at length about the endgame, even with Mada's own teammates and my own, and do not really regret much -- maybe not even risking Samu-H vs Pecha? but it did not have entry vs anything else on the team, so feel like I had to do that and it worked to win the game long-term unless I was very unfortunate.
Idk, I mean this was just kind of a sad one because this game was the decider with a point on the line and my team needed it for a chance to survive in the playoff picture. Mada is a great guy and a very strong player, but yea, this one stung a bit more than the others. Sorry to my teammates that this (not mathematically, but practically) ended our season, but I hope you guys know I tried my damn hardest and the tour just did not go my way. Some things are just a little cursed. I liked our group and it will be a stain on my history knowing I could not achieve better results as I should put up good records if I cost >20k. I am still personally proud of myself for efforts like these as >99% of the time this is a "season's saved" type of win with it all on the line, but obviously did not work out that way and we move. In the end, results are what matter and I am sorry they were not different. I will keep working to improve upon myself as this is all we can control after all, so LGI for the future!
W7 and W8 I did not prep as specifically for the opponent -- I will share the teams I used below and not go as in-depth on the games, but still tried very hard to bring good, tested teams for the games and honor the tournament as every single team should compete until the end, in my opinion. I wanted to play W9 if possible, too, especially after winning W8, but Abe wanted back in Ubers and SW wanted in the line-up still, so I told managers it was ok to give them what they requested. Was a little sad Abe ended up DG'ing and SW did not want any help, but the tournament was over at this point and some others had checked out, so it is what it is. Not either of their faults and probably a fitting end to the tournament anyway.
I really hope to return to SV for SPL as it is easily my favorite generation right now. Sure, some things are a little fucked, but I am very passionate about this tier and look forward to continuing to compete at the highest possible level. Will be spamming the ladder in the meantime as I hope to finish out my run through finals of the ongoing OU SSNL.
W7 vs Piyu: -- Was a great game vs a tough webs team. Came down to him being 320 speed Manaphy while my Deoxys-Speed was only 318 at -1 due to Sticky Webs, but was a really fun one to play. Huge props to Piyu for going 9-0, btw. This was an amazing season.
W8 vs Antonazz: -- Finished strong with a pretty clear win. My opponent's match-up was tough and I played tempo fine, so it worked out.
Thanks to everyone for reading. I enjoyed this season despite it not going my way. I love this generation and metagame. I cannot wait for my next opportunity to pop off. I hope everyone has been having fun with the game and have a nice day!
I hoped to write on this thread as a winner but I guess I'll write on this thread as a loser
Losing both WCOP and SCL in playoffs definitely sucks, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. I feel honored to have had a decent season, especially considering my low price. Even the losses can serve as valuable lessons for identifying areas where I can improve.
Looking back, I can say I’m happy with my overall performance. However, before SPL, I’ll focus on figuring out how to deliver god-tier performances like SPL Hellom or SCL Piyu. The level of competition in this SCL was surprisingly high, even with top names like Vertex, Mind Gaming, Xavgb, and other notable SV OU players not competing in SV OU this season.
This was probably the first official tour with a more stable metagame compared to previous editions of SPL, SCL, or WCOP, which made things even more interesting. I’d like to write up a team report as I did for WCOP since I've seen that there are people who found interesting my team choices or similiar stuff, it can also be a good way to help the community or whoever is getting into tournaments, so stay tuned for that.
The preparation for Week 1 wasn’t too deep. I mainly wanted to stay in my comfort zone by using a teched HO team. This team was initially built by PDT, and I made a few small adjustments with Will of Fire. I remember having a lot of success with this team on the ladder, so given that I didn’t have much information on Malekith, I opted for a generally solid HO team that included anti-HO tools like AV Zama, Roar Kyurem, and anti-fat options like Roaring Moon.
The team performed well, but I won’t lie, the game was really close.
I won’t lie this was the week where I feel like I completely trolled my preparation. Grass-types in SV OU that aren’t Ogerpon-* are so bad that I ended up getting farmed by U-turn Ogerpon-Wellspring, which created an opening for Zamazenta and Kingambit to sweep me.
Honestly, I think I played well overall, but my preparation fell short, so the loss was deserved. This game pushed me to refine my preparation and be more cautious if I decide to go with balanced teams in the upcoming weeks.
After Week 2, I felt so disappointed in myself that I was determined to prioritize a well-built and solid team to counter the threats that cost me the match. So, what did I do? I "borrowed" Myjava's team
!
That said, I made some significant changes, like adding Spikes Ogerpon to gain a huge advantage against balanced teams and it worked out pretty easily.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m not sure if I’ve been a genius or just a complete troll this week. It’s not that I wanted to underestimate Insult, but since he’s been running HO throughout the tour, I ended up using a team specifically designed to farm HO quite easily.
That said, I’m happy with some of the tech choices I used, so there’s that.
With Kyurem out of the meta, it’s possible to run zero Ice resists, though there’s always the risk of getting trolled by Ice Beam Darkrai or Deoxys. Still, my matchup against HO was really favorable, and the team was super playable even against bulkier setups.
This team was built by PDT, and I had a lot of fun using it. I even managed to hit something like 88 GXE on the ladder with it lmao.
This week, I wanted to completely catch my opponent off guard by shifting my playstyle entirely. The team I used seemed solid against the balanced teams he showed in his scout and was also really effective against HO.
While I usually don’t like using teams like this, I made some adjustments to make it as proactive as possible and it turned out pretty well.
I won’t lie I was really disappointed this week. The preparation was perfect, I played well, but I got robbed in a game that was 100% won if not for Pecharunt RNG.
I didn’t need to spend too much effort preparing since I knew Ima is a HO enjoyer, and this team had plenty of tools to counter those structures. It also had a solid matchup against Kyurem, which had been unbanned just a few weeks ago.
Honestly, I think this was my best preparation of the entire tournament, but RNG wasn’t on my side. That’s just how the game goes, though, so I won’t dwell on it. GGWP to Ima, he's been a good opponent.
I revamped a team I made during WCOP and I had a lot of success with it during testing phase. I felt like it could have worked vs Attribute teams but at the end I got farmed from Tera Electric Zamazenta. I don't have regrets anyway with how I played, I think I played well.
War on HO. After the last two losses, I felt a bit unconfident, even though I played fine. I didn’t test at all this week I just wanted to bring something solid that could reliably lock in against Emforbes. The team choice seemed appropriate. s/o Attribute that carried me.
OK DISCLAIMER: I don't regret anything about the preparation of this Semifinals except a small change that made me lose the game probably because I'm probably a living troll / skill issue etc.
After this loss, I felt extremely tilted and disappointed. I had played against Piyu before in WCOP, and while I wasn’t intimidated by his record, I enjoyed the challenge of preparing for him. That said, I went into full malding/raging mode after the game because I got cheesed by Latias. Later, I realized I had no one to blame but myself, I just needed to pay more attention to the smaller details.
Piyu was really reliant on threats that could potentially be farmed by Manaphy under webs, and during the testing phase, I generally felt confident against his teams. Fun fact: zS carried me so hard with this build, giving me a goated spread that allowed Ribombee to survive a Weavile Triple Axel (since it was in the scout).
Probably my only mistake was swapping Stun Spore for Skill Swap just hours before the game. If I was that worried about Hatterene, I shouldn’t have used webs in the first place or at least I should have found another way to counter it. With Stun Spore, this probably would’ve been a 100% win for me (assuming I would have not trolled).
I don’t regret my plays overall. The reality is that without Stun Spore on Ribombee, I lacked a clear win path, and with a low timer, it was really hard to figure one out. My early game was nearly perfect, but I could have managed my timer better and come up with a stronger plan to handle Latias. From team preview, I already knew avoiding a sweep would be tough, especially if Latias had the right set.
On the other hand, without spending most of my timer on the early game, I might not have played it as cleanly, and the game could have ended even earlier. Even though webs weren’t particularly useful in this game, I don’t think the rest of the team was bad against him.
WP to Piyu: it was probably the closest game I’ve played in this tournament and there's probably a lot I can learn from him or generally from this game.
---I didn't post EVSpreads because a lot of them are specific, but if you're really curious about some maybe I can share them IDK---
Thoughts on the Season
Losing 0-6 in the semifinals hurts so much, especially after investing 9 weeks into the tournament, despite all the challenges like the Welliou and Akalli bans. But it’s part of the game, and it's only fair that better opponents advance to the finals.
I’m really grateful to Clean and Akalli for picking me and believing in me, even though I wasn’t much of a tournament player and had only competed in WCOP before this. I hope I didn’t disappoint them, and I’ll be working on what I can improve for upcoming SPL or any individual SV tournaments if I decide to try them. Also bonus s/o to Akalli that continued to help the team with giving ladder alts to everyone for testing teams etc.
I’m proud of my tournament run, but I feel like there’s still room for improvement. Both WCOP and SCL have been a great first step toward that. My promise to the community is that I won't stop here and I'll do everything needed to come back a lot stronger.
Ty to everyone who helped me during this tournament + ladder for test games!
it's semis i think it's a sufficiently special occasion
Welcome to semifinals. After a dominant regular season, the first-seeded Technical Machines look to continue their dominance into new territory as they face the Orange Islanders, who rebounded from two of their core members getting caught in the YSL indictment to grab the fourth seed. The Uncharted Terrors, perennial playoffs presences looking to finally make the step and earn a title, face the Power Plant Dynamos, who have not lost a week since week 5 despite a 40k bbeeaa/spell-sized hole.
Before we get into recaps, I want to quickly highlight some notable changes between October's 1500 ladder stats, which determine tier shifts, and the SCL regular season usage of several mons. SCL usage is on the right.
#12 12.41%---> #2 33.33%
If you feel like the last few weeks have had a few Zamazenta Moments, you're probably right. Constant exploration of new sets (Chesto/Rest, Roar, Tera Fire, Tera Electric) has kept the dog relevant on top of, you know, its other attributes of being a box legendary.
#9 15.60% ---> #5 23.33%
Ogerpon-Wellspring's toolkit has seen plenty of exploration this SCL, with Trailblaze, Synthesis, and Spikes all being seen a few times.
#28 7.216% ---> #T10 18.33%
Yeah, not surprised about this one. Fat mons provide zero instant serotonin on ladder so people don't load it as much. Ting-Lu has found itself forming cores with Gholdengo and sometimes Dragonite to put hazards up, keep them up, and enable easy cleanup.
#57 2.55% ---> #T24 7.78%
This mon started popping up about halfway through SCL and it's just stuck around. Barely outspeeding Great Tusk, the ever-present threat of being poisoned, ridiculous physical bulk, and a fast-ish pivot/debuff option gives Pecharunt a unique cocktail of utility, popping up on a few HO teams.
#46 3.56% ---> #T24 7.78%
Finch's post above is a great demonstration of why Tinkaton has seen a spike in usage. I'll say this: I'm actually glad Tinkaton's stats kind of suck, because if it had pseudo-legendary stats it would be horribly obnoxious.
#31 7.01% ---> #T47 2.22%
Being a Protean starter with a good speed tier is attractive on ladder, but Meowscarada has failed to replicate this in SCL, only being brought four times.
#33 5.35% ---> #T44 2.78%
In tournament practice Enamorus ends up being a Moonblast + Healing Wish bot. Being outsped by Wellspring kind of sucks. It has seen use on a variant of that one AV Glowking sample team, I think.
#13 12.18% ---> #T30 6.11%
Despite featuring on a popular team used by Empo during his Smogon Tour run, Cinderace hasn't seen much usage outside of that model.
Without further ado, let's look at the SV OU roundup! Within the series, I will be highlighting the games in chronological order.
ninth: First game of the series and it's HO vs HO. Piyu, possibly the protagonist of the tournament, comes into the game with an unbelievable 9-0 record guided by aggressive HO teams and utter confidence in playmaking. He has a classic launch-day-SV offensive core in Glimmora + Gholdengo + Dragonite, with Weavile and Zamazenta as the faster threats. There is also a Latias present, most likely a Stored Power cheese set because if you wanted to go all-out attacking you'd just use her brother. Pais, a crafty Italian with a penchant for piloting unique offense structures, has Manaphy webs. I feel like this exact six has been brought at least three times this tour. The game starts out looking pretty bad for Piyu - Pais' Ribombee and Glimmora, two mons typically designated as leads, amass a total of four kills by the end of turn 8 via the combination of Power Herb Meteor Beam and just clicking Moonblast a bunch. Piyush sends out Latias, disconnects briefly, and Pais nearly times out himself, which would have been a tragicomic way to lose a game that looks this over. View attachment 688579
The actual way it ends is much funnier. Latias lives a Moonblast, starts clicking Agility, turns Fairy-type, and starts clicking Calm Mind with Leftovers. Ribombee, despite getting a thousand Moonblast drops, can only tickle Latias as it slowly boosts up and even goes for a third Calm Mind in Gholdengo's face. Latias lives Psyshock with 2% health, eliminates Gholdengo, and suddenly it's looking scary for Pais. Roaring Moon's Knock Off also fails to kill, leaving it at 5%, and it falls just as quickly as the rest. Latias has, in under ten turns, flipped a 5-2 disadvantage into an unbelievable victory for Piyu, now at 10-0 and a 1-0 lead for the Machines. Starting to feel like it'll take divine intervention to stop Piyu.
After this match, the Machines went on a killstreak with Stories, Icemaster, and fish anemometer bringing the series to 4-0. The next game on the docket was...
ninth: You may be thinking to yourself "when the hell did zioziotrip get on the Islanders?" He's actually been there the whole time, but managed to get his auction price down to 4.5k by locking himself out of everything but DOU, which he does not play, until playoffs. With a Venusaur-flavored take on sun HO (note: Ninetales being the more popular sun setter is a great development...Encore and Healing Wish are great tools on HO), he's looking to come out strong against myjava. A breakout star of SPL XV and WCOP 2024, myjava's SCL has been more neutral, missing three matches mostly due to IRL commitments and having all three losses come consecutively and recently. "Ting-Lu hyper offense" sounds like an oxymoron but I can't think of a better way to describe it: Glimmora/Lu is a menacing hazard core that sets the stage for a Dragonite/Zamazenta cleanup, with Wellspring present for even more physically offensive pressure. Notably, both teams have a Hatterene, making the hazard game of great importance. zioziotrip starts by setting sun up, and one Eject Button Hatterene later, he's got his +Speed Walking Wake active, and myjava needs to deal with it urgently. He loses Hatterene to it, then misses a Power Whip but avoids losing Wellspring too - ultimately Red Card Ting-Lu is able to stop it from getting any more kills before sun dies out. java's Glimmora ends up Sludge Bombing zio's Hatterene, enabling a bit of safety for his Body Press Zamazenta, which applies big chunks of damage to Wake and Ninetales before burning Rest/Chesto, getting Wisped and therefore forced out. myjava's answer to speedy sun turns out to be the classic Band Tera Normal Extreme Speed Dragonite, which obliterates Roaring Moon, chips Venusaur to hell, and nearly kills Helmet Tusk from 75% with a crit. zioziotrip has Tera Ghost up his sleeve, and he uses it to stop the sweep, but myjava cleverly scouts the Tera and switches out, which means the Extreme Speed party will continue later. Healing Wish gets Tusk back to full but it just gets Ruinated, and one Wellspring sack later, it's back to Dragonite exerting the big pressure and eliminating Venusaur. zioziotrip can't do anything against Ting-Lu and Dragonite anymore, and myjava cleans up the last two kills to move the Machines to 5-0. A strong win considering his hazards, which seemed like a core part of this team, did a whopping 12.5% damage over the whole match.
Following myjava's victory, the Machines' Lime defeated robjr in RU with Muscle Band Scale Shot Krookodile, which I assume is sheist but maybe it's standard, I don't play RU. This brought the Machines to 6-0 and a win of the week, utterly dominating the Islanders before the sun could even set. Congratulations to the Machines for defying preseason expectations and securing themselves a finals berth!
ninth: It's Mimikyu's Jirachi vs hellom's Skarmory to lead: Skarm gets rocks and eventually two spikes up while Jirachi fishes for Body Slam paralysis and gets it on the second try. A Donphan spin attempt from Mimikyu is blocked by Rotom-Wash, who continues to get off the noob gut by Tricking Mimikyu's Clefable a Scarf. With plenty of hazards in play, hellom's Raikou decides to set up Calm Mind, but gets poisoned by Latias and can only eliminate the neutralized Clefable before dying. hellom lands Big Chip on Mimikyu's Jirachi with a crit Pursuit, and denies Mimikyu's spin once and for all by blowing up his Metagross on Donphan. Mimikyu's last turns out to be Leech Seed Abomasnow, which to his credit scares out Suicune but still gets scared out by his Scizor. Noting a lack of safe Thunderbolt switch-ins, hellom's Rotom-Wash starts clicking Thunderbolt, dropping Jirachi and chipping Milotic before smacking Mimikyu's slow-ass Latias with a Hidden Power. With the advantage built, hellom's Suicune can start going for Calm Mind and HP Grass against Mimikyu's Haze/Recover Milotic, and Pressure helps it run Milotic low on Hazes. A desperation Abomasnow can do nothing to stop Suicune, and hellom takes the victory to move the Islanders to 1-6.
This was a bonus game played after the series had finished - usually after a series is decided all remaining games are dead, but they decided to play it anyways. I was trying to format it so you could reveal each mon one at a time via inline spoilers but I could not get it to work.
1LDK: Ewin gives Tofu's moth a scarf and dies to a fiery dance, the +1 is irrelevant since Moon can come in and set up, to which he does, and OHKOs the teraless zama with acrobatics. Primarina barely survives eq and revenge kills with moonblast, Ewin's moth comes and revenge kills the primarina, then ogerpon-wellspring comes, uses tera and wins the speed tie to revenge kill the Moth. And then dnite comes to kill ogerpon-w in 2 unloaded scale shots. And you won't believe what happened next, the tusk came to revenge kill the dnite, omg cinema, balloon ceruledge sets up and kills pult at the cost of his balloon, then dies to tusk, then valiant sets up, tanks a headlong rush from tusk, then hits the 31% roll to kills moth with +2 knock off
Between this match and the next, the Dynamos took wins via Carapinga Kenix and Larry, while the Terrors' sempra (who played on main...) and xavgb picked up dubs, leaving the score at 3-2 in favor of the Dynamos.
1LDK: Mike is using a webs team that I'm pretty sure I've seen before, but I can't put my finger on where exactly, while insult is running a pretty standard BO. Mike gets webs up, insult razors + aqua jets bee to ko it, kyurem pops ghold's balloon with freeze dry then kills with tera ground ep. Rilla comes in and U-turns on the Iron Moth switch into samu, who tanks a dazzling gleam via AV and 2 taps with ceaseless edge + aqua jet. Mike's raging bolt sets infront of the samu-h, tanking the same 2 tap that killed moth, then zaps him with thunderbolt, then slams the teraless raging bolt into the ground with dpulse. An Iron Moth with no booster but no recognizable item tries to kill raging bolt with dazzling gleam, but lives it at 5% and he gets crit one shot. Rilla finally comes to kill raging bolt, then uses tera grass grassy glide to crit dengo into 2hko range, blocking his sweep, but roaring moon finishes him, he chunks the rocky helmet tusk and tusk finally spins the webs, but it's too late.
With the series now 3-3 Dynamos, it was closely followed up by...
1LDK: Moltres burns Ting Lu, U-turns into dengo to set up, he trades damage with ogerpon-w, with his covert cloak being knocked, but him still consious, hands forces oger out into zama, who takes a good chunk out of attack booster wild charge + drain punch, he gets roared into dengo, who goes into tusk. Stareal retreats to pecharunt as tusk sets rocks up and uses tera ghost to maintain the ability to block spikes, while no longer being scared of ground, Pecharunt gets some chip on tusk and kills the iron hands with 2 hexes. Darkrai comes to pop the tinkaton balloon, sets rocks in the incoming tusk and hits the twave into a ground-type, which means tinka dies. Pecharunt enters and dengo gets sacked to save the tusk, darkrai comes in and tries to go for a psyshock but ting lu blocks that, tusk gets a bit more chip on tusk and lets darkrai come in for free to set up, misses the first focus blast, which is bad because ruination, but he gets the second one, then uses tera poison sludge bomb to shit on the zama. Dragonite tries to scare him with a double switch, but Niko doesn't care and deletes the Pecharunt thinking he had free eats, dnite finally comes back to kill it. Moltres comes in, pivots into Walking Wake, who turned out to be scarfed, he clicks draco twice to win the game
Following Niko's win, Kate won for the Dynamos in Ubers (and got in her winpost before Niko), but Elias PSY struck back against McMeghan in NU. In the final game, the Dynamos' Jytcampbell defeated GXE to secure a 6-4 victory for the Power Plant Dynamos, who will go on to face the Machines in finals.
Thank you for joining us for semifinals! We're almost at the end of this journey, and it's been a lot of fun covering these matches. Tune in soon for a preview of finals and the probably-thrilling conclusion to SCL IV!
I'm bored at work so I figured I would put together a bonus episode, a preview of the finals showdown between the Technical Machines and the Power Plant Dynamos.
The Technical Machines: Legends in the Making?
The Technical Machines were not a team people expected to go far. Led by Expulso and mncmt, the latter fresh off of a manager unban, they entered the season with a 10k retain of RU player JustFranco, who performed well for the team last season. Their draft strategy featured only two players above 10k, 2024 breakout OU star myjava and DOU stalwart Nails, accompanied by what I can only describe as an army of cheap players and new faces. Hitting a total of 20 players, their OU core consisted of java alongside crafty Team India faithfuls MAVERICK SHOOTERS and Piyu, as well as up-and-coming builders/ladder fiends in leng loi and Mimikyu Stardust.
Faith was not high in this team: their OU squad was ranked ninth in the official PRs and the team was rated seventh overall. In spite of the expectations, the Machines quickly proved themselves to be no laughing matter, starting off with a strong win over the Foxes and a tie against the full-health Islanders. After dropping a set to the Dynamos, the team only seemed to ramp up and up over time, scoring the first seed in dominant fashion and brutalizing the Islanders in a quick semifinals 6-0. Piyu's 10-0 record is the obvious story here, an unbelievable performance fueled by HO squads straight from the Machines kitchen and hyper-aggressive plays to back them up. He's been playing like he knows he's already won, and it's translating into wins. But the rest of the squad should not be overlooked as an overwhelmingly consistent band of players, with only three people sitting at a negative game differential across all 20 players. Icemaster recovered a shaky 1-3 start with a 6-game winstreak, last-ranked Lime ran the RU gauntlet with a 7-2 record, and Mimikyu Stardust took a step up in performance with some solid performances to reach his first positive official team tour. Despite their size, their starting lineups remained highly stable, but substitutes leng loi, Denial, and frankjosh were all able to put up wins for the team when called upon. With a 19-8 record in regular season SV OU, their squad set the standard in the tier for everybody else to try and catch up. They also brought a lot of Scizor early on: that's one of my favorite mons, thanks leng.
The Machines are an exciting, young squad that clearly has the skill and the passion to go for green, but this is the first time many of them have ever been under this kind of pressure. How they'll hold up in the finals is a question, but if they can keep up the momentum they've been on this whole tour, it's uncertain who can stop them.
The Power Plant Dynamos: A Reborn Dynasty?
This year's Power Plant Dynamos, historically one of the more successful franchises in SCL's short history, are a tale of two teams. Excal returned from a forced break to manage alongside partner in crime Luthier, after managing the Dynamos to victory together in SCL II. Entering the auction, they held a single 14k retain on French all-rounder BIHI. They proceeded to drop 37k on a UU-locked bbeeaa, 26k on CG OU stalwart INSULT, 20.5k on the legendary McMeghan, and 11k on Dynamos Ubers mainstay Kate, leaving them flat broke for the rest of their auction - the rest of their team was either 6k Larry or 3-4k. Their OU core consisted of INSULT, Italian firebrand Niko, and (checks notes) DPP main Pkel SweeTforU? The draft plan seemed straightforward: trust the big expensive picks to put up 7-2 records, and trust their scouted inexpensive picks to punch above their price and get enough wins in the aggregate to claim victory.
Initial results were mixed. After two weeks, the Dynamos sat at two wins and two losses. While McMeghan was rolling the field with all manner of NU nonsense, and Pkel SweeTforU was breaking out as a surprise threat in OU, they weren't extracting maximum potential from much of the team: several slots were struggling hard, and the 40k bbeeaa/spell UU duo was only winning half of their games. Then, something funny happened. View attachment 689014
As part of the Kyurem RICO indictment, bbeeaa and spell were forcibly removed from SCL IV. Now 40k in the hole, the Dynamos received 6k credits as a consolation prize — but what they did with what they had left was miracle work. They spent the money on lower-tier players in Kenix and 691, and it's safe to say their pick paid off massively. Kenix presently sits at 4-1 on UU, at least partly due to the existential horror of a guy who will beat you and then just say "Carapinga" like a Pokemon only capable of saying its name. Besides Kenix's turn, the Dynamos made a number of beneficial adjustments as well. Grandmas Cookin entered the field in DOU and performed immediately with a series of victories, Jytcampbell deputized in a number of slots and won in most of them, and Larry flexed across several tiers to pick up important wins. Many of their starters remained powerful: McMeghan continued terrorizing NU with a joint best-in-class record, Kate's winning record in Ubers persisted, Niko has posted no losses since week 5, and Pkel SweeTforU remains above even after his hot streak ended. The Dynamos did not lose a single week after the banwave, and after defeating the Terrors in a close 6-4 series, they're just six or seven wins away from another trophy.
The Dynamos are proof that hardships can be blessings in disguise. The removal of a cornerstone piece proved to be the catalyst for everything falling just into the right places. Every week they've won has been by narrow margins, but that also shows an ability to win under pressure. With battle-hardened veterans and fresher faces alike, there's nobody on the new-look Dynamos I ever feel comfortable bolding against.
Matchup time.
SV OU: Piyu vs INSULT
Three months ago I probably would have just bolded INSULT. Unfortunately for the latter, INSULT's been kind of going through it this season, currently at 1-7. Piyu's story has been more or less the opposite, on a 10-game killstreak against strong opposition and frankly making it look like the outcomes were never in doubt. While current form favors Mr. pitfire by all means, INSULT does have the upper hand on experience in high-pressure situations, which may activate at this crucial juncture. Showings as recent as his Kingambit miracle work against SoulWind prove he can clutch up. The experience delta isn't all-defining, though - Piyu started in SCL III's final, and though he didn't win that game it counts as finals experience nonetheless. Gonna give this one to Piyu 60-40.
SV OU: Mimikyu Stardust vs Niko
Both of these players are coming in hot with something to prove. Mimikyu Stardust, known ladder fiend, seeked to clear his good name after an autopilot car-crash OLT attempt, and put up a respectable 5-4 in his first full-time starting role in an official. Niko entered SCL coming off of an uncharacteristic 2024, starting 5-0 on the year and following it up with a torturous 10-game losing streak in officials that only snapped after Team Italy's defeat in finals. Fueled by Italian hyper offense, his SCL has put that narrative behind him with a monster 7-2 record and no losses since week 5. I expect both to bring a fast-paced offense and am placing the line on game length at 20.5 turns. IMO the margins are very slim here and team choice is going to make all the difference - considering the depth of the Machines' OU kitchen I'm giving it to Mimikyu Stardust 51-49. Niko 80-20 if I see Prime Pult.
SV OU: myjava vs Pkel SweeTforU
In under a year, myjava went from CBB's sleeper pick to a bona fide superstar, scoring 15 wins to 5 losses and a red trophy on the year so far. This tour has seen him miss a few games and shoot closer to neutral overall, but his control in his semifinals match vs zioziotrip tells me he's ready for the spotlight once again. Pkel SweeTforU's insane momentum at the season's start has retracted slightly into "just" pretty decently above average, which is frankly still much more than the PRs or his auction price expected. I think after seeing his work in WCOP and many of his SCL games I trust myjava's endgames a lot, which will push him over the edge here. myjava 53-47.
SV Ubers: Icemaster vs Kate
These two are competing for the best Ubers record. Kate's clutch experience was documented for the Dynamos in SCL II, so I'm giving her the edge. Kate 52-48, banger alert.
SV DOU: Nails vs Grandmas Cookin
Interesting proposition. Nails is obviously a storied player in DOU, but his season has been fairly neutral and most of his wins are against the bottom half of the pool. Grandmas Cookin is arguably in better form but is fresh off of a loss and it's their first finals. Going with Grandmas Cookin 54-46 because that's one of the best names on this site.
SV UU: JustFranco vs Kenix
If I got haxed and my opp just said "Carapinga" I think I would tilt off the face of the earth. This is technically a heat matchup, the consistent performer in Franco fighting Kenix on a hot streak, but it is honestly difficult to visualize the farmer losing at this juncture. Carapinga 51-49.
SV RU: Lime vs BIHI
Lime hasn't lost since Week 4 and is probably in better form in RU specifically. But BIHI has shown ridiculous clutch ability before (who the hell beats Heroic Troller in RBY in an SPL finals tiebreaker???) and he did beat Lime in Week 3. His last game against xavgb was, uh, a game, but I can sense the clutch gene activating. BIHI 51-49.
SV NU: Stories vs McMeghan
Going off The Sheet and knowledge of McMeghan's storied expertise I should bold him. This is my crystal ball pick: McMeghan either overcooks or plays it safe and undercooks. Stories 51-49.
SV PU: fish anemometer vs Jytcampbell
I just saw Jytcampbell 6-0 GXE but I also saw Florges and Abomasnow, the slowest mons ever, holding Choice Scarfs and Tricking them to each other. Not sure what to make of this tier. Jytcampbell 52-48.
SV LC: tazz vs Larry
Now, I am become Sheet Reader. tazz 55-45.
Tiebreakers: no clue tbh. SV will be Piyu vs Niko likely, or java if he wins and Piyu loses. Dynamos can obviously pick NU for McMeghan but they might want to save him for the flex pick. If Carapinga cooks in UU you can keep up the hot streak too. Machines have angles in Lime (RU) and tazz (LC) if they win, Dynamos don't appear to have a strong handle on LC but I'd be terrified sending a tiebreaker to LC lol.
Sucks to go out like this, but I want to thank Expulso and mncmt for drafting me and all of our OU players/helpers for making this an incredible experience. I went in to this tour promising to grind like hell building and I quickly realized that the way I was going about it (spamming my channel with multiple teams a day) was neither sustainable nor helpful. I eventually settled in to a good rhythm of building mostly for Mimikyu while letting team India do their thing (while providing borrowed/stolen teams or input as I saw fit). However, I definitely was burned out by the end of the tour. Nonetheless, I'm happy with the prep I did for Semifinals/Finals.
Here are some teams that I made for the tour and I'll end with some more thoughts on my building/playing.
Hopefully when you see this paste you'll realize why I was so heartbroken to read the phrase: "The opposing Moltres avoided the attack!" I think we did excellent prep for Niko. I wanted something that was great into what he had been bringing, which was offense with Gholdengo and Iron Moth as Val checks, while being solid into a potential backup of the Italian staple, Moltres BO. The result was this team with double Moltres lures and the Valiant set I made pre-OLT to farm Bolts without relying on Encore, as well as getting past Moth more reliably than weak Psyshock.
This was a team that I first theorized with Storm Zone. We thought that Pech teams gave up a lot into Kyurem teams (hence the Hydreigon that hellom brought). I wanted to solve this issue without SpD Moltres because that had been a comfort mon of mine. Weavile and Tinkaton fit the bill while also helping into bulky Moon, which had been skyrocketing in popularity at the time.
Looking back, this was an incredibly greedy bring. Spikestack with no Knock is certainly a team, but I had faith that any bootspam that Crying brought would be 6-0'd by NP Pain Split Deoxys. Galatina showed me this set so I'm assuming it was made by one of the Italians, but regardless, I love it. I love it even more with a Covert Cloak to set up on non-twave Gking and set up better on Garg, but I couldn't sneak that amount of heat past my more reasonable OUers.
This was a genre of team that I really liked at the time: rocksless Scarf Lando + Cinderace. I still like rocksless Lando + Cinderace but I format it a little differently. I think I built this for Week 1 and Mimi didn't use it. We liked it into the Welli0u scout so I made a few other teams but we settled on this. Pais later used the same team but with Booster Bolt.
This idea came up because mmq wanted to sun someone. It didn't end up going through but I got the chance to sub in for Java after we won the week and I didn't have a team I liked besides this one that I got #3 on ladder with. Thankfully it worked out.
Now here are some other teams that I made this tour that either didn't get used or were used in other tours:
I had an incredible time this tour, and even if it was exhausting, I'm sad it's over. Huge shoutouts to our opponents the Dynamos for beating us not once but twice. Thank you especially to Excal for your kind words earlier today and before the auction almost 3 months ago.
I wanted to say that I'm incredibly motivated in CGOU going forward and I think this tour was a great display of my playing and building chops. I may not love the direction that the tier has headed recently, but my favorite part about competitive games is working with constraints to make the best product you can. I hope to run it back in SPL, so managers, please consider this my tryout post. I'm 3-0 on the sheet and want to keep that X-0 going at least until I have more wins than 3d . I love this game and this community and, especially after this tour, I'm hungry for those pixels.
It's Sunday, 24th of November, the year is 2024. It's SCL grand finals between the Machines, composed of team india + friends, the 3k squad who everyone though they were gonna bomb, yet they dominated the season, with the most impressive story being Piyu going undefeated the entire season. On the other side, we have The dynamos, a team that struggled during the season, but remained strong, in good and bad situations, they never gave up.
Before we start, I wanna shoutout ninth for helping in the project, he did a lot of quality work, and seems like people really appreciate his writing, we both couldnt have done it without each other, so please give all the posts likes
ninth: This was the first game of the series, taking place on Thursday, for anybody who wanted some LuGholdNite action to get them to the end of the week. Mimikyu Stardust's aforementioned core is supported by three fast, super-offensive threats in Zamazenta, Valiant, and Deoxys. Niko appears to have prepped for pure HO, stacking three or four "please stop sweeping" mons up front with Zamazenta, Pecharunt, Moltres, and another Ting-Lu. The team is pivot-heavy between Pecharunt's Parting Shot, Moltres and Wellspring's U-Turn, and Treads' potential Volt Switch, hoping to keep momentum against things like Booster mons. Mimikyu's Deoxys pulls its Red Card early to get Treads out of the way, but immediately pulls Wellspring who forces a switch: a few turns later it just turns out to be a rocks-for-rocks trade anyways, immediately removed by Treads. Niko gets key chip via Earthquake before bringing in Pecharunt to poison and full-stop Zamazenta. Mimikyu goes Lu, Niko pivots to Wellspring, Mimikyu goes hard Dragonite, and with no Play Rough apparent Mimikyu immediately starts going for game with DD. Niko's Moltres looks like a hard stop to it, though...until Mimikyu pulls out Stone Edge...until it misses and Dragonite gets Wisped. It's heartbreak for the Machines man who can only watch as Niko's Ting-Lu starts putting stuff on the floor, forcing a Zamazenta sack and Gholdengo to take chip in order to Focus Blast down the Lu. There's nothing left for him to break Moltres with, because Dragonite's Stone Edge is easy as hell to switch into and it probably doesn't even kill. A second Red Card on Mimikyu's Lu is cool but ultimately can't do much else, and Niko takes the first game of the series.
myjava vs Pkel SweeTforU
1LDK: Turn 1 java's oger uturns away from kyurem into a glimm who eats a freeze from the freeze status inducing freeze dry, red card shuffles the deck and hat comes in, psyshock directed but ting lu gets a free entry from that, the hat reveals dkiss + cm, but gholdengo can contain it with no issue, both double, myjava goes to his ogerpon-w, pkel chooses ting lu, myjava's ogerpon-w launches an Ivy Cudgel into ting lu, but he can take it, phase out oger with red card and set rocks up in front of darkrai. Darkrai starts spamming ice beam, almost killing ting lu, taking almost half of valiant's health and chipping scizor. Kyurem scouts dengo's twave, pkel fakes out a double with ogerpon-w, then kyurem again, who slowly kills ting lu with freeze dry while ting lu sets hazards. Kyurem then scouts darkrai's intentions, survives the specs dark pulse and kills with freeze dry. Ogerpon-w comes in, kyurem scouts the knock, then pkel sacks the ting lu to bring valiant safely, who trades itself with CC to leave ogerpon at 10%, Scizor comes in and the frozen vegetable known as glimmora gets sacked. Raging Bolt comes in and brings down the fury on scizor, vaporizing it with tbolt, pkel gets extra chip with u-turn and hatterene gets vaporized aswell, raging bolt gets baited with synthesis, and then sweeps raging bolt with a well timed Play Rough. Finally, with the use of tera water, ogerpon-w brute forces her way throught gholdengo, winning the game and putting the score at 2-0 at the time.
After the Pkel/myjava thriller, things turned very orange very quickly. Jytcampbell, Larry, BIHI, and Kenix all took wins before the afternoon, running the score up to 6-0 and scoring the Power Plant Dynamos their second Smogon Champions League victory!
Excal and Luthier have created a veritable dynasty, and they did it all without their 40k UU core. Congratulations to the veterans and first-timers alike, the full-time starters and the super subs. They took a quite unique path to victory, but they did it their way. Likewise, best wishes to the Technical Machines, who fell short in the finals but defied expectations by making it there with a fresh-faced roster of Indian chefs and sleeper picks.
(Every official team tour in 2024 has now been won by a team that had a major team member get banned midway through. Is it time to start investigating the thug buff?)
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Now it's time for the part where I Read Da Usage Stats and tell you about some of the key meta trends over the season.
This combo was the most frequently used core of four, being seen nine times: absent Glowking, the Wellspring/Gambit/Tusk trio came seventeen times. This core seeks to overwhelm the opponent through raw physical dominance and absorb hits via a core of Helmet Tusk and AV Glowking. Commonly, the final two slots were filled by speed control (Zamazenta, Scarf Landorus/Enamorus) and an Electric-type (Zapdos, Raging Bolt).
A fundamentally sweaty core, this gang of three is no less effective with ten brings over the tour. Without even considering moves, this is one of the most defensively solid cores in the game with immunities to six types and status moves, resistances to every other type, a debuff to special attacks, and HDB Multiscale. They also form a potent offensive synergy: Ting-Lu sets hazards and applies chip, Gholdengo keeps those hazards up and pressures defensive mons, and Dragonite cleans house with Extreme Speed or whatever you want to run on it. It's no surprise that this core is so popular.
Woe, -0.67x Atk and SpA be upon ye. The uninitiated might not have expected a weirdly built mon with middling stats save for a ridiculous defense to find life in OU, but Pecharunt has proven to be a potent pivot that portends peril for plenty of Pokemon. Malignant Chain is something that non-immunes never feel good about switching into, and outspeeding Great Tusk by two points allows it to threaten a toxic+confusion or simply Parting Shot its way into a favorable matchup. Most commonly, it's found on HO alongside fellow pivot gang member Landorus and "can I win now" staple Kingambit: they were tied for the third most used trio of the tour.
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I wanted to give some special shoutouts to the most exceptional OU players, teams, and games this season as well. Please check out these unofficial awards!
Player of the Season
ninth + 1LDK: Piyu
I mean, it has to be Piyu, right? I can easily see an argument for Niko, who looked unstoppable in the back half of the season and led the Dynamos to victory, but 10-0 is just ridiculous. An SCL champion last year, Piyu took it to another level by washing away everybody in his path. He faced no shortage of strong competition, but his confident HO play and smart Teras proved to be the difference maker. Seriously, I have a few notes on his games and a lot of them just say "NEVER EXHAUST" as a key thing that helped him win. All of this winning, and he was only 3k - he'll be one hell of a retain next year. India WCOP 2025?
Rookie of the Season (first official team tour)
ninth + 1LDK: Pkel SweeTforU
Amongst a strong OU pool Pkel SweeTforU was ranked dead last in the official PRs, a DPP main with a Microsoft Paint avatar and little SV experience to speak of besides an OLT attempt. Mons, as they say, is mons. Starting his season off with a controversial win over emforbes, Pkel soon showed he had the skill to keep up that momentum by roaring to an early 3-0 start. Despite the middle of his season bringing his record to "only" 4-3 (still very good for a 3k starter), he continued to show class, closing out the season strong with key wins vs Storm Zone, Ewin, and myjava to help his Dynamos earn the trophy. Whatever the future holds for Pkel, he's shown that class in one generation can translate well into class in another.
Team of the Season
ninth:
Mimikyu Stardust's Kebia Primarina + Weavile + Band Scizor HO, used W2 against Welli0u, built by leng loi
There was no shortage of strong teams used throughout this SCL, from HO to webs to Ursaluna semi-stall to that CTC Sinistcha team to the thousand LuGholdNite variants we saw near the end. My personal favorite, though, has to be this one. This team captures what I like so much about the Machines SV OU kitchen: a forward-thinking approach to HO with unique picks and sets that doesn't go overboard. Band Dual Wingbeat Scizor, Tera Blast Ice Landorus, and Weavile in 2024 are all just-barely-left-field picks, but the core itself is highly robust between Landorus, Primarina, and Bolt's natural bulk. My favorite pick has to be Kebia Berry Primarina, though, which almost feels like it was hacked on mid-battle to survive a Sludge Wave. Mimikyu plays this one pretty well too - his endgame here is clean, and he manages the trades well for the Scizor + Landorus finale.
I think the teams Finch posted here in this very thread have been the most influential, for a couple of reasons
1) they are public, therefore, easier to grab
2) on ladder, finch webs made Araquanid raise in viability + usage, due to his abilitys of doing more than setting webs
3) in tours, the anti offense has been reliable in handling most offenses (outside trick room and keldeo)
Despite the elimination of the Spartans, they had the potential to play spoiler against the Islanders, and a short-but-sweet banger resulted between two high-performers in Attribute and Pais. Attribute's team is pretty standard, it's LuGholdNite, but Pais has a really fun looking Rillaboom/Trailblaze Ursaluna Grassy Terrain offense that revolves around turning Kyurem and Ursaluna into the Incredible Hulk. It starts with Attribute sacking his Valiant T1 to Rillaboom despite having a full-health Moltres, and you may be thinking it's just goobed. Attribute makes a series of solid plays to neutralize Ursaluna, but Rillaboom and Kyurem apply immense pressure, and Pais is soon up 4-2 against Attribute's Zamazenta. Now, you may think this is just a broken Zama sweep, but the way it was achieved was a true rollercoaster: Zama survives two Psychic Noises with 1% health, then reveals Chesto Rest, outpaces Bulk Up Tusk, and then performs what I can only describe as Tera magic on Turn 20. Attribute turns Tera Electric to avoid Tinkaton's Thunder Wave, and predicts the corresponding Tera Ghost with Crunch for the clean 2HKO. To me, that's cinema.
The overall among ALL players is 136-132, meaning, a positive differential
The most amount of OU players comes from the shoguns, with 7 different players in that slot
Great Tusk is the most used mon in the tour, and the only one with 3 digit usage, with 102 apparisions across the tour
hello is me the team poster. SCL is prob the most fun ive had in a official since my first spl, and i have to thank Gingy and shiloh immensely for that. for the most part I felt really good when it comes to my building and playing this season. also want to thank oldspicemikexavgb and GXE for bouncing off ideas with me constantly, really refreshing experience and helped improve my mentality surrounding the game. just going to go over my favorite teams and go over some other stuff briefly. I know I always post a excessive amount of teams but im not building every week, i only really build for officials or when i have ideas I really really want to use lol.
used this vs pais, went through a couple of teams and versions of this. the team itself use to have rillaboom but i pivoted off for dragonite to cover more mus. what i noticed with pais scout is that he loaded a lot of birds if hes not using offense (molt, zap in particular), ewin gxe and i were testing rock move dnite a couple weeks prior and decided to use it when i got to play, i think hellom was also testing like this himself in previous weeks but i never discussed this set with him personally so i dont exactly know the timeline of this set coming into to existence. i used LO shock darkrai a good bit in olt quals and I thought it was super fun, thought pais might potentially break trend vs me and load stall since a lot of teams people know i use are more offensive and he rotates from offense, stall and molt/zap teams historically. other than that, this is decently standard outside of electric zama which i liked here to potentially catch zap or bolt in the endgame. ended up not getting a ideal matchup and i missed turn in the endgame, i shouldve not tera'd dnite and just raw dd since that gave me the most openings in the endgame. overall though, i do think i played decently well and was fine with the game, after I tera'd dnite i shouldve not gambled with the ghold set and just try to outplay, even though that endgame didnt favor me i couldve potentially won through getting ever turn right.
probably my favorite team i built this tour, unfortunately this team is way less consistent with kyurem back in the tier. LO apple was something mike was testing but was struggling build and I cooked this up. not much to say about the sets themselves, apple was one of the better breakers in the tier post kyurem and life orb was cool since u just nuke shit and switch out to get hp back. same idea with electric zama trying to snipe zap and farm endgames. a bit sad the team lost, mike and i got really high on the ladder with this and it was consistently performing before the game. not exactly sure why stareal didnt tera because it was a pretty decent win path if he did and it looked like a no brainer that turn but shit happens. if you dont play kyurem the team is still fine but you run the risk of getting fucked if you play it, do think this is one of the better hos in the meta if we ever revert back to no kyurem. i'd just mix and match sets between the two versions if u ever plan to use this.
hollow loorple, pretty straight forward offense but consistently performs well even on ladder still. tdnt used this week 1 or 2 and won pretty convincingly, the only real idea that i remember was that his opp looked rly weak to spikes and deoxys. ewin suggested life orb nuke deoxys to open up teams early game for shared checks and it seemed fun and the team turned out pretty good. no ice beam deo is pretty sus at first glance but deoxys with life orb and max spa is strong enough to break through gliscor regardless. team is still good, i use it on ladder a fair bit, esp on new accounts.
tdnt played mimi this week, mimi tends to use a lot of offense so i reworked a decent anti offense i had with some quirks to cover trending stuff at the time. The original version of this team did have a weavile and a moltres but we pivoted to dnite and darkrai to cover matchups tdnt was concerned about. sinistcha has fallen off a bit in favor of pech but as a wincon its still a workable mon due to decent typing and movepool. biggest tech on this team is prob dtail lowkick dnite. dtail was on this from the start since it has a decent offense mus in conjunction with spikes but lowkick was added later since tdnt was struggling with gambit in tests, i remember potatochan used this set in wcop and it worked out really well so i had him test this and was consistent in tests. tdnt unfortunately lost because of a miss though i think if i remember correctly there was a safer route to take but the game wouldve been locked regardless. really good prep by me but shit happens in pokemon games. on glance the team still looks decent but does get slightly annoyed by sun.
different ish structures, same idea. liked this weezing core of lo zama + weezing considering weezing has gained a bit of traction. the main tech of the team is really tera ground on offensive zama, with all the raging bolt spam and twave it seemed like a really fun pick to troll some wins. other than that the other main difference is the breaker, both of these versions inspired things that were brought early on in the tournament despite not exactly being what we loaded. CB Hoopa was something vert was using for sub mons and general breaking and it looked good into a scout of somebody we played so i mocked this. same idea with the ogerpon version, adamant oger looked really nice into somebody we played and i revamped around that idea. while i do have different teams with hoopa and ada oger ill show later on here these were the ones i used the most and had most success with.
another clump of similar teams. enjoyed using these on ladder a good bit during the latter end of the tournament. again another set of teams that inspired some other brings. dd pult saw some usage and i wanted to make my own team with it, the sub tbolt set on val is something i saw on one of those iron hands teams and thought it added a decent bit here. lo zama makes a return because i was kind of obsessed with making it work but for the most part i came to the conclusion that it was either offense or the team structures from above only type of set. knock dark tusk was a set mike came up with during the teapot spam part of this tour but it still offers a bit of utility now as well. bug bolt is something i experimented a lot with early on in the tour and youll see some of those early pastes below, being able to resist fighting and ground moves is just very useful while not getting the weaknesses flying gives you. overall, just some decent ladder teams that i enjoyed, probably has some weaknesses i missed because theyre def less polished compared to the other teams above but wanted to slightly talk about them anyway.
the rest of the post will just be the rest of the teams with almost no explanation. most of these were used less than the ones above so there is probably room for improvements, some were used in other tours but built for the scl season etc... may have some diamonds in the rough here, feel free (and i advise to) to try them out yourself and make edits.
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no kyu "meta" & vs pais scraps
tusk with a rock move seemed cool here with pais' trend to spam the kanto birds. kyurem use to be something else but i replaced it when he came back and forgot what it use to be there but he fits better than the og mon anyway. chomp is less viable now but still fits defensively.
i forget how this team came to be in terms of prep but i thought fezan + apple rly funny as a core. team is fun but had some mus like sun that were hard so avoided bringing it. theres a av crown version in the dump since it helps defensively in the current environment.
same deal with rock move tusk idea but ursaluna is a extreme way to deal with those kanto birds structure. ursaluna also looked good into his defensive cores, being able to trailblaze on stuff in forces out like gking as well to force progress. first team was the one i was testing but the team i brought was more consistent, kyurem version was made after. prim version is def very awkward to pilot which is why i pivoted off but there is some cool ideas that can be expanded upon.
there was few more teams in this sections, mostly just okidogi and fezan bulky offense tests but unfortunately with kyurem coming back its hard to post them confidently since theyd need drastic remodels.
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spares/less polished/idea testing (please excuse any inconsistences or obvious errors, the amount of testing done extremely varies between teams.) two versions of this to fit encore, flying moth was the main idea bc of clod spam on ladder forget what week this was but lati looked good in one of our slots mike was testing adapon and hwish at one point for semis i think so mocked this up saw suyuza use this kommoo set and thought it was cool on webs, kommo is a mon i think is underexplored wanted to test something with drei a bit different than the hellom team 2 versions, wanted to test something a bit different with slither that wasnt the mola wishpass stuff iron hands was used a bit for a while, thought av looked really cool alongside hwish generic team i made early on when adapon looked solid into a scout we were playing vs. this 6 got played by some other team, not sure if people saw the team on ladder or just came up with the same shit bc its nothing special imo. use to be a fezan squad when kyurem was gone but pivoted to the current structure post kyurem returning. just a scrap from the week we wanted to use hoopa, torn was cool at the time another scrap mentioned above but was made before torn was conceptualized original version of the darkrai team tdnt used, changed a lot by the time the game came around made this when kyurem was gone because I really wanted to make monke work early bugbolt waterpon offense utilizing lando instead of ting (i made the bottom team first) bugbolt + waterpon with ting lead, seemed cool but didnt use much
this season was a blast and i got to play with a lot of old friends and met a ton of really cool people. really wish we couldve had a trophy to firmly remember the tour by because of how great it was but, at least for me, i wont forget the experience i had and what the season did for me mentally. to my fellow terrors, thank you so much.
just to wrap the post up, i really hope we can come around to the idea of properly nuking kyurem. while it on and off goes from good to very fucking annoying because the volatility of the meta which skews the perception of whats broken among literally all of the controversial topics. i personally feel the no kyurem meta had a ton of room for creative expression, especially when dealing with top threats in different ways. while there is a lot of no kyurem teams here, i didnt share a ton of them bc i felt theyd be eh rn. from a building and laddering standpoint i had the most fun ive had with this tier in a long time, the structure variety i experienced felt very very fresh. this is just my opinion of course but that two week stint was genuinely the best ive felt with the tier in a long while in several ways and hopefully others felt the same.
thats all for now, see you whenever i get this type of opportunity again. thanks for reading.
In wcop I stole teams and got owned so for this tour, I decided I would go back to my roots i.e building crack offense. Initially I was hoping to just be a sub slot and get carried but expulso started me anw, so thank him for that.
Fwiw none of these teams are tested. I went with the classic strat of fuck it we ball and it worked. Most of these teams are also probably ass for ladder but should be just fine for a bo1 game with some tweaks(hopefully).
Gholdengo is easily the best SV mon.
Val still has many more sets to be explored. PLEASE STOP USING CM SHADOW BALL VAL IT'S ASS
Ground moon is probably broken.
Underrated mons: manaphy, latias, weavile, volcanion
Studio Gible --- S1nn0C0nfirm3d, etern, emforbes, feliburn, Eternal Spirit, Hacker, JJ09LIE, Amukamara, false, bagel, tier, yovan33321, PZZ, Nat, cleann, Lana, Seraphz, Drifting
Orange Islanders --- pdt, Welli0u, hellom, MichaelderBest2, qsns, Páis, RichardMilliePlain, robjr, zioziotrip, Dr. Phd, Andyboy, zoe, Colin, xdrudi.exe, sufys
Indigo Platoon --- Xrn, Scottie, Santu, Entrocefalo, abriel, LpZ, Skarpherim, crying, watashi, Taka, DAHLI, potatochan, damien the genius, lolebruh
Uncharted Terrors --- oldspicemike, xavgb, GXE, Elias Psy, TDNT, Baloor, sempra, Stareal, Ampha, xqiht, Lyssa, Reje, Lokifan, Ewin
Techinal Machines --- Justfranco, Nails, myjava, icemaster, fish anemometer, tazz, MAVERICK SHOOTERS, avarice, Stories, Lime, Piyu, LilyAC, eragon, TrueNora, Mimikyu Stardust, Denial, Leng Loi, Bouff, Shengineer, frankjosh
Mt Silver Foxes --- Punny, Danny, Suzuya, Mako, Kushalos, EternalSnowman, Gtcha, 7u9i2, Starsama, Ann, Django, Quinn, Luirromen
Power Plant Dynamos --- BIHI, McMeghan, bbeaaa, INSULT, Kate, Larry, kingofmars, Pkel SweeTforU, Niko, Fillie, Spell, Grandmas Cookin, Jytcampbell, Kaboom
Showdown Shoguns --- zS, Storm Zone, CTC, Vert, fade, mind gaming, ima, TPP, Fogbound Lake, Frixel, A plague Doc, Dj Breloominati, Akaru Kokuyo, Envy1
Circuit Breakers --- eifo, M Dragon, Spurrific, Laroxyl, Lily, Mada, freezai, 3d, tko, Hiko, JUST ONE GALATINA, elodin, sabella, mimilimi, Mashing, Malekith, babyboysblues, Diamond_realms
Arena Spartans --- SoulWind, Finchinator, TheFranklin, Aberforth, Thiago Nunes, Éric, JRL, ACR1, Attribute, vivalospride, Tenzai, ishtar, Pokeslice, Mossy Sandwhich, Eeveeto
crying vs CTC 
DAHLI vs ima 
Welli0u vs Laroxyl 
emforbes (0-1) vs (0-1) TDNT 
mimilimi (0-0) vs (0-1) INSULT 
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crying vs Eternal Spirit 
ACR1 vs emforbes 
emforbes (1-4) vs (1-4) Mako 
yovan33321 (0-0) vs (0-0) Kushalos 
Piyu (5-0) vs (3-2) ima 
Piyu (7-0) vs (3-4) emforbes 
myjava (3-2) vs (4-3) JJ09LIE 
Piyu (9-0) vs (6-3) Pais 
