Post-Spotlight Tour slop!
As inspired by MJ's post after the double elimination SM SU Discord tour last year, I'm going to go over some of my thoughts after winning the SM SU Spotlight that he hosted in the Discord for this last month.
Vs Doom
I sometimes get spoiled by an early bye in these tiny tours and start off weaker than people who play, so I wanted to buck that after my r1 bye and intentionally start strong against Doom. I beat both Doom and Sleid last tournament, so I was thinking they'd be prepping together and with the goal of getting some revenge, so I took this a little more seriously than maybe a Discord Swiss with less than 16 players warranted. Still, I've known Doom for long enough to have a grasp on what him and Sleid like to build and bring.
Team 1:
Seedy Business
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I can't remember what Pokemon or game exactly inspired this team, but I wanted to design something around SubSeed. Doom is a big Furfrou user, and a Ghost-type seemed like a strong way to punish this. I've also felt that Gourgeist-Small is underused in our small pool of players, so I thought I'd give it a little time in the sun.
Game 1:
Replay
In practice, I ended up letting go of Gourgeist a little earlier on, as I didn't think it was going to be super important for late-game against Doom. The damage on Shiinotic was not even necessary, since Fraxure had Poison Jab, so I'm not sure this was an amazing showcase for Smallgeist doing anything more than bugging Gabite and Wishiwashi in the early-game. Doom lost the game by not clicking Ice Beam against Fraxure as I had it use Dragon Dance again, but I didn't see a guaranteed OHKO from Ice Beam and thought Doom might be trying to scare me out, which was correct, so I'm glad I went all-in on that moment. Doom's team lacking a Scarf user really helped me.
Team 2:
Dragon's Ripple
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Doom's Furfrou usage also opened me up to the possibility of destroying him with one of his favorite Pokemon: Trevenant, specifically Z-Forest's Curse. Sun has been having a moment in this tournament after it was cooked up in friendlies, so I went pretty heavy on the back end of the team with Hakamo-o, Scarf Furfrou, and Poisonvally. I did forget to make my Wishiwashi as slow as possible though, oops.
Game 2:
Replay
Doom surprised me again by bringing something that wasn't HO and that I hadn't seen before. Even though his team looked a bit more traditional, the Z-Trick-or-Treat Gourgeist-Small surprised me. This was my "we're so back" moment with Hakamo-o after not seeing sun in the preview, but Doom pulled out Psychic. In the end, I basically traded my weird nichepiece for Doom's Z-Move user, so not a waste, even though I think the set is pretty bad. Since Gourgeist went down and Solrock was out, I basically just got to throw the rest of my pieces at Doom's until he tapped out.
Vs Oofhixd
I didn't play Oof in the most recent SM SU Discord tournament, but I felt pretty confident preparing for him considering that he tends to borrow a lot of teams and hasn't played SM or SU as long. Like with Doom though, I didn't want this to mean that I took things last seriously.
Team 1:
Frog and Toad Are Friends
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Looking back, this is a little bit of a goofy team, but I had a fun time putting it together, or at least naming it. I actually built this as an option against Doom to take advantage of his high Poisonvally usage, and I thought I'd get away with it too considering that Doom and Sleid have similar and public building habits that Oof might copy. Torkoal is a peculiar pick that I singled out as a Shell Smash wallbreaker following Huntail's ban, and I thought Frogadier would be an excellent Pokemon for drawing in passive stuff to set up on. Shell Smash Torkoal hasn't really been run a whole lot, so I was hoping that it would get overlooked as the spin variant until it was too late. Scarf Frog is also here because it seemed like an excellent check against sun, particularly when Sleid brought it against Zpice, so I wanted to make sure I had something for that. I had the chance to test this type of team and win against MJ with it, so I felt pretty good going into the game.
Game 1:
Replay
I recognized that one of Oof's teams was an old MJ one, and they were both HO teams, so I didn't hesitate as much during this set considering how I felt against my testing partner from last week. Flyvally proved to be funnily good as an offensive Defogger against Monferno. The game ended up pretty linear as Oof went through his list of setup sweepers, which forced me to end up just trading Torkoal for the chance (+1 252 SpA Glaceon Hidden Power Ground vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Torkoal: 264-312 (93.9 - 111%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO) to do damage to Z-Celebrate Glaceon. Thanks to that, I got to hold onto Grimer-Alola for longer instead of having to hope for Poison Touch to chip it down, but Scarf Frog was there to save me, and I still had Stunfisk as a potential sack.
Team 2:
Choice Fashion
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Choice Specs Shiinotic seemed like a fun Fairy-type attacker to try out, especially since I saw an Outrage Fraxure in the last game, so I loaded up an older team that wasn't intentionally built for Oof, let alone this tournament. I don't even remember testing this one or thinking of the sun matchup when putting it together, but it's got a lot to like. Golem-Alola can deal major damage to Klang and Metang so that Glaceon can more easily clean up, while Monferno is also there as a wallbreaker looking to surprise people expecting its relatively less explosive Swords Dance + Eviolite set. This team is sort of begging for a Wishiwashi and a bit more speed, but it was still a fun one to put together.
Game 2:
Replay
The notorious sun matchup comes in the game I forget to bring a team that was designed to deal with sun. I'm kind of surprised Oof loaded up such an old iteration of sun teams without any edits, but it worked to my favor against Bellossom, which was relying on Quiver Dance and Giga Drain instead of Growth and Solar Beam to break down my Silvally-Poison. Although I think one game in a tiny tour can only say so much, I think it speaks to sun being more of a mid strategy that's gotten spammed in this recent period instead of the big new hotness for HO in the post-Huntail world. The game probably would have been different if my opponent had prioritized setting up sun, but Poisonvally was there holding up me and the rest of the tier as usual.
Vs Sleid
I had a feeling that I'd be seeing Sleid in the finals of this tournament if I made it to that point, and I was right in that. Beating him and Doom in the last SM SU tournament felt like a bit of a fluke considering how much they like the gen and can test with each other, so I wanted to be as locked-in as is reasonable for a 4 round Discord tour.
Team 1:
Turn of the Century
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If there's one Pokemon Sleid loves to spam, it's Silvally-Poison. I made sure that my teams would give him a tough time making the most of that. This first team's muse was this accumulation of inspiration I got after seeing Sigilyph in action in some old gens as well as Choice Specs Swoobat as an ORAS ZU pick. From there, I knew I wanted to make a Specs Swoobat team. The team is pretty linearly designed to facilitate getting Swoobat in as much as possible. You've got the classic pivot core of Poisonvally + Wishiwashi, Grimer-A for trading Eviolites with other grimas and potentially removing Metang, then there's Z-Simiage as a wallbreaker against Steels that could also double out to Swoobat against Swalot or Poisonvally, and last is Camerupt for rocks and Voltblocking.
Game 1:
Replay
Although Sleid didn't bring Poisonvally as I'd expected, he did bring a hazard remover that he had no cleric support for, letting Camerupt eventually get and keep rocks up to prevent Ninjask from runnning rickshaw on me. The CB Ninjask was a pretty big threat to a lot of my fast and frail team members, and I was a bit concerned about Leech Life, but I felt pretty in control of the game. Specs Swoobat got to put in its amazing showcase since Sleid lacked any Psychic-resistant Pokemon on his team. Once Ninjask went down, it was pretty much a sealed deal. I didn't realize until afterward, but this team has two Poison-types, so I might change the 'vally type in the future.
Team 2:
Back Alley Baddies
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After going on for years about how bad spin is in SU in order to inoculate the playerbase against the phenomena of spamming unviable spinners, I'm now fighting an uphill battle against my own propaganda, as most people don't recognize Staryu as a spinner. On this team, I really wanted to leverage Sleid's tendency to spam Poisonvally, so Trubbish Spikes was born. If I were to rerun this team, I would change Trubbish to a specially defensive variant instead for taking special attacks from Poisonvally better. I had been toying around with some semistall teams with Scraggy prior to fighting Sleid, and I thought it would be a helpful piece if I needed to fall back on a pretty reliable bulky setup sweeper. Rockium Dugtrio is a funny one, but it's the Pursuit user of the team to push some damage on things like Metang and ensure that the Ghost-types, especially the trending Misdreavus, aren't free.
Game 2:
Replay
So I actually forgot to make Staryu's ability Natural Cure instead of Illuminate, so you'll see that it won't heal from Toxic during the game. Sleid's Gabite missing Toxic early on was a bit of a relief considering that, but I don't see that it would have majorly changed the trajectory of the game. Trubbish succeeded in its showcase, by weakening and eventually overwhelming Poisonvally, though I'm not sure this was critical to the overall gameplan. Still, it's proof of concept enough for me. Sleid's wacky Unfezant set did legitimately get me to tighten up a bit, especially as I failed to consider how much Night Slash would do to Metang after seeing the Meteor Mash miss. Dugtrio was able to remove it though, thankfully (252+ Atk Unfezant Quick Attack vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Dugtrio on a critical hit: 172-204 (81.5 - 96.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO).
I'm happy that I got the chance to test against the last tour winner, more definitively beat duo of the guys I respect the most in this tier, and still pull out new stuff. This tier feels very open and fresh following Huntail's ban, and I'm looking forward to playing more SM SU this year. Thank you to
Michael Jordan for hosting and testing with me,
Zpice for doing the team ritual and listening to me threaten to bring sun for the fifth time in a week, and
doom for playing friendlies with me outside of tour so that I didn't get rusty and could keep coming up with fresh ideas.
Monferno
Simisage
Wishiwashi
Electabuzz
Gabite
Hippopotas
Magcargo
Smeargle
Lumineon
Noctowl
Pidgeot
Sliggoo
:oricorio-pa'u:
