Pretty late and probably unexpected, but I just got back from my vacation and finally have some time to write some shoutouts. Even after nearly a week I’m still fresh with the excitement of winning. I’m not really one to often give my opinion and thoughts publicly, but to have won this tour again, this time with many friends, feels absolutely incredible and I wanted to show my appreciation to everyone who helped make this tour such a positive experience. I wrote this all in one sitting so please bear with me.
I won’t dive into personal shoutouts, but I’m really grateful to have so many good friends on this site who continue to support me. Thanks for an awesome tour and I’ll see you guys in SPL.
I don’t think too many people rated you guys very highly after the draft, but boy did you prove them wrong. Losing sucks, trust me I understand, but to have so many newer faces all break out in the same season, on the same team, is something truly special. Anyone who watched this final series can tell you that it was a million times closer than the score shows and that many of these games were won by the smallest of margins. You were an amazing team, and as a spectator of the game, it was great to see you guys progress throughout the season.
Expulso & mncmt: It’s really easy to give up on something after being denied, especially when it happens not once, but twice. That being said, you never gave up and continued to try to prove that you were deserving of a managing spot. I think after this tour, it’s safe to say that you removed any doubt. Congrats on the successful tour.
Piyu: It feels weird to not have anyone shout you out after what you’ve managed to accomplish this season. 10-0 is an amazing record for anyone and to do it as a 3k purchase is absolutely astounding. The definite MVP of the tour and a huge part of your team's success; well done on an incredible tournament.
fish anemometer: To be completely honest, I wasn’t really familiar with you at all coming into the tournament, and I’m sure that you weren’t too familiar with me either. Even now, we haven’t really spoken with each other, but the two games we played together were some of the most fun I’ve had playing this game, and I hope you can say the same. Both really came down to the wire and could’ve easily gone the other way. I know you have some regrets regarding your season, but I was impressed by your gameplay and to put up a solid record in your first official, in a very stacked pool, is truly impressive to me. I’m looking forward to seeing you in the next SCL.
Expulso & mncmt: It’s really easy to give up on something after being denied, especially when it happens not once, but twice. That being said, you never gave up and continued to try to prove that you were deserving of a managing spot. I think after this tour, it’s safe to say that you removed any doubt. Congrats on the successful tour.
Piyu: It feels weird to not have anyone shout you out after what you’ve managed to accomplish this season. 10-0 is an amazing record for anyone and to do it as a 3k purchase is absolutely astounding. The definite MVP of the tour and a huge part of your team's success; well done on an incredible tournament.
fish anemometer: To be completely honest, I wasn’t really familiar with you at all coming into the tournament, and I’m sure that you weren’t too familiar with me either. Even now, we haven’t really spoken with each other, but the two games we played together were some of the most fun I’ve had playing this game, and I hope you can say the same. Both really came down to the wire and could’ve easily gone the other way. I know you have some regrets regarding your season, but I was impressed by your gameplay and to put up a solid record in your first official, in a very stacked pool, is truly impressive to me. I’m looking forward to seeing you in the next SCL.
Excal: I don’t even know where to begin. We’ve been friends for so long now it was a blessing to finally get to team together, and it genuinely couldn’t have gone any better. It’s unreal to think that you were manager banned up until the start of this tour, when you’re such an incredible manager. You were very active in chat and prep and did everything to keep the team motivated week after week, I don’t think anyone could ask for any more. You’re insanely smart at this game, especially when it comes to the building and prep aspect. I think the majority of my season’s success can be attributed to your contributions in the PU channel. We complemented each other perfectly; week after week you would pump out so many teams for me, and even if I’d completely shit on them, you were extremely accepting of it and willing to look for new ways to approach the week. There’s not a single person more deserving of this trophy than you, thanks for the wonderful season.
Luthier: My fucking goat. One of my best friends on the site and probably the main reason as to why I even got drafted for this tour. I think one of the hardest parts of my season was avoiding calling you by your name in our team chat. You’re a really funny and hard working guy with the ability to brighten any chat and make it more enjoyable. Somehow you managed to have the most random reads in every tier where you would name some off meta mon only for it to work to absolute perfection. Easily one of the most impressive and genuine people on the entire site and I’m so thankful to have finally won a tour together after so many tries.
INSULT: Another one of my longest friends here, somehow it’s also our first time teaming together. I don’t think there’s a person on this site who can say a single bad thing about you. You’re one of the nicest and most humble people I’ve ever met, despite having all of the room in the world to have an ego for being one of the best players on the website for several years. This wasn’t your tour, having a combination of bad luck and people finding your teams through ladder, but it’s okay to have a single bad tour in 6 years of consistently hard carrying your teams. In a volatile tier like SV a lot of games come down to very small margins and if we were to redo the tournament right now I’m sure you’d put up your usual record. From having spoken to you about the game and seen you grow as a player over the years, you’ll always be one of the best players in my eyes.
Niko: I’ve always been a big fan of your play and was actually a huge reason as to why you got drafted to the spartans last year (sorry for dragging you down with me). However, that season confirmed to me that you’re an amazing player and teammate with great game knowledge. That’s why, despite your loss streak coming into the tournament, I had a lot of faith in you to put up a solid record coming into this tournament. Little did I know that you would go fucking 8-2, putting up the single best record on our team and the second best OU record in the entire tournament. You’ve proven that you’re one of the best players on the site, thank you for carrying us.
Pkel SweeTforU: I really wasn’t familiar with you at all coming into the tournament and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have my worries about throwing in a DPP main into SV with very little experience, especially as a notorious 3k Excal purchase. You immediately shattered any doubts that I had. Your approach to prep was a breath of fresh air, there were so many teams / sets / mons that I thought looked bad that you managed to pilot with absolute confidence and make them look as if they were unbeatable. Your finals endgame was one of the single most impressive displays in recent memory, I still have no idea how you managed to pull it out, and was a huge contributing factor in building our momentum to eventually win finals. You’re a really nice and positive guy and it was an absolute pleasure to team with you.
Kate: I’m pretty convinced that Ubers is a completely terrible and coinflippy tier and yet every time you played I had absolute confidence that you would win. I think you’ve proven to everyone that you belong at the top of the pool and had you needed to play your finals game, I’m sure that’s where you’d have landed. You have a fantastic personality, a perfect balance of strong and yet not overbearing, that made it such a fun experience to share a chat. Good luck playing OU for the Excap’s in SPL.
Grandmas Cookin: I will be blatantly honest, I do not really watch or understand doubles. What I do understand is that if the game is over and there are still mons on our side and not the other side it’s a good thing, and every one of your replays where I skipped to end it felt like we still had all of our mons left and they had none. You were an awesome and active support and chat presence throughout the first half of the season, but it was nothing compared to how massively you came in and clutched for our team in the second half of the season. Even your strong 4-2 record doesn’t do justice to how crucial you were to our season’s success, looking forward to seeing you in for a full season next SCL.
kingofmars: We didn’t talk a whole lot because, like I said, I don’t really understand doubles at all. That being said, I understand that you were really busy with irl and VGC (which I imagine is understandably your priority). On top of all of that your season pretty much got instantly fucked over by a team leak and then you had some bad luck as well, just unfortunate circumstances piling up that would make it nearly impossible for anyone to perform and not tilt. Thank you for sticking around to help us out in spite of all of that, and I’m sure if you were to give it another go it would look a lot differently.
Don Eduardo: CARAPINGA. Genuinely one of the single best players on the entire site right now in any tier. It’s been said a million times, but I don’t even care, the fact that you went undrafted is fucking MIND BLOWING. How did that happen??? When bea got banned I thought it was an absolute horror and potentially season ending, but then when Excal mentioned that you were in the pool I was so relieved. You’re such an awesome presence in team chat and you have an amazing approach at prep as well. I had so much confidence in you to win every game, and you continued to deliver week after week. You completely saved our season, I’m so glad we were able to win it together.
691: You were absolutely instrumental to our UU success after the bans occurred, and very active despite not starting, I can’t thank you enough. You’re a really funny and enjoyable chat presence, it was super awesome to have you around. You even subbed into PU for me so that I could enjoy my vacation without having to worry about playing and had an absolutely dominant performance proving you can compete with the best. Thank you for saving our season.
BIHI: The exemplary team player. You were pretty much randomly thrown into RU at the start of the season despite wanting to play NU and you handled it with no complaints. It’s no coincidence that you continue to win team tour after team tour being such a great and flexible person. There aren’t many who would be as willing to put their ego aside to try to do what they think is best for the team and to have someone like you on the team is an absolute blessing. It felt like there were several games where you weren’t given an opportunity to show your skill and just ended up losing on preview, but in the games where you were able to, it was a sight to behold. Your destructive finals performance really made it sink in and feel like it was an unchokeable lead, and played a massive part in carrying our momentum through, beating a very strong player in such a dominant fashion. You’ve really proven that you can play any tier at the highest level, and I’m glad to have gotten the opportunity to team up with you.
McMeghan: Roro I have the utmost respect for the way you’re able to look at a tier and put your own personal spin on it and effectively create your own metagame at a high level. You have an amazing mind and I could probably go on forever about how great at pokemon you are, but I’ll avoid going into that too much. What really amazes me about you is how you carry yourself outside of the battle. While not being a manager, you dropped an absolute bomb of a speech after week 4 on a seemingly mediocre team just to keep us motivated. Week after week you continued to encourage everyone to get the most out of us. When you got completely robbed in semis, when 99% of players would have come into the chat and complained about the luck that had just occurred, you didn’t mention it a single time and instantly went into analysing the game and what you could have improved on to avoid the hax altogether, beating yourself up over not having played 100% perfectly. The mentality and level of class you have towards the game is on a completely different level from anything I’ve ever seen, and is something that myself and many others could learn from. It was a fantastic experience to finally get to team with you and your dominant performance was just the cherry on top.
Larry: One of the more controversial people on the site, I don’t care what anyone says, you are awesome. I feel like we’ve become friends pretty recently, and somehow ended up teaming for the first time shortly after. There’s never a dull moment with you, you always manage to make things entertaining and fun. You’re probably one of the more underrated players on the site, you really stepped it up towards the back half of the tour and your last 3 games in particular were all incredibly clutch performances. LCarry.
Fille: We’ve known each other for so long now, having played probably 100 side tours together, it was about time we finally got to team in a real tour. You’re an awesome player nerfed through external circumstances like playing under less than ideal conditions, but your fun and nonchalant attitude was essential to balance out all of the stress and seriousness of a team tour environment. One of the coolest dudes on the whole site, glad we were able to get this one together.
Kaboom: I didn’t really know you at all before this tour, but It was such a pleasure to have gotten to know you. Easily one of the nicest and most supportive guys I’ve met. Right from the start you were extremely active and a great support to fille. You then stepped up to the plate and were willing to start and give it your all there; if it weren’t for the misfortune with the timer I’m sure we’d have gotten to see some very strong gameplay. When you got subbed out, you had no complaints and continued to be a strong support for fille. Even when Larry got subbed in, you were completely amazing, and even with the very little feedback he gave, you were able to successfully convert ideas into teams that he would be able to pilot. The amount of impact you had in LC in playoffs through support cannot be stressed enough, enjoy your well deserved trophy.
bbeeaa: We first met when we teamed in Snake for the first time and you completely fucking carried my ass to trophy and had an amazing break out tour. I was super stoked to be able to team again for the first time in years, then your dumb ass got fucking banned LOL. You’re an awesome teammate, one of the greatest team tour players of all time. There’s no doubt in my mind that you’d have hit your groove and dominated the rest of the tour had you not gotten banned. We managed to keep our 100% win rate when drafted together, wish you could’ve gotten the trophy too.
spell: Your dumb ass got banned too. Honestly you’re a great teammate, super active and supportive and willing to be a complete prep machine while also being extremely easy to communicate with and active in conversations. It’s a shame that we weren’t able to get this one together, but I’m sure one day we’ll get to share the legendary Canada WCOP trophy.
Luthier: My fucking goat. One of my best friends on the site and probably the main reason as to why I even got drafted for this tour. I think one of the hardest parts of my season was avoiding calling you by your name in our team chat. You’re a really funny and hard working guy with the ability to brighten any chat and make it more enjoyable. Somehow you managed to have the most random reads in every tier where you would name some off meta mon only for it to work to absolute perfection. Easily one of the most impressive and genuine people on the entire site and I’m so thankful to have finally won a tour together after so many tries.
INSULT: Another one of my longest friends here, somehow it’s also our first time teaming together. I don’t think there’s a person on this site who can say a single bad thing about you. You’re one of the nicest and most humble people I’ve ever met, despite having all of the room in the world to have an ego for being one of the best players on the website for several years. This wasn’t your tour, having a combination of bad luck and people finding your teams through ladder, but it’s okay to have a single bad tour in 6 years of consistently hard carrying your teams. In a volatile tier like SV a lot of games come down to very small margins and if we were to redo the tournament right now I’m sure you’d put up your usual record. From having spoken to you about the game and seen you grow as a player over the years, you’ll always be one of the best players in my eyes.
Niko: I’ve always been a big fan of your play and was actually a huge reason as to why you got drafted to the spartans last year (sorry for dragging you down with me). However, that season confirmed to me that you’re an amazing player and teammate with great game knowledge. That’s why, despite your loss streak coming into the tournament, I had a lot of faith in you to put up a solid record coming into this tournament. Little did I know that you would go fucking 8-2, putting up the single best record on our team and the second best OU record in the entire tournament. You’ve proven that you’re one of the best players on the site, thank you for carrying us.
Pkel SweeTforU: I really wasn’t familiar with you at all coming into the tournament and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have my worries about throwing in a DPP main into SV with very little experience, especially as a notorious 3k Excal purchase. You immediately shattered any doubts that I had. Your approach to prep was a breath of fresh air, there were so many teams / sets / mons that I thought looked bad that you managed to pilot with absolute confidence and make them look as if they were unbeatable. Your finals endgame was one of the single most impressive displays in recent memory, I still have no idea how you managed to pull it out, and was a huge contributing factor in building our momentum to eventually win finals. You’re a really nice and positive guy and it was an absolute pleasure to team with you.
Kate: I’m pretty convinced that Ubers is a completely terrible and coinflippy tier and yet every time you played I had absolute confidence that you would win. I think you’ve proven to everyone that you belong at the top of the pool and had you needed to play your finals game, I’m sure that’s where you’d have landed. You have a fantastic personality, a perfect balance of strong and yet not overbearing, that made it such a fun experience to share a chat. Good luck playing OU for the Excap’s in SPL.
Grandmas Cookin: I will be blatantly honest, I do not really watch or understand doubles. What I do understand is that if the game is over and there are still mons on our side and not the other side it’s a good thing, and every one of your replays where I skipped to end it felt like we still had all of our mons left and they had none. You were an awesome and active support and chat presence throughout the first half of the season, but it was nothing compared to how massively you came in and clutched for our team in the second half of the season. Even your strong 4-2 record doesn’t do justice to how crucial you were to our season’s success, looking forward to seeing you in for a full season next SCL.
kingofmars: We didn’t talk a whole lot because, like I said, I don’t really understand doubles at all. That being said, I understand that you were really busy with irl and VGC (which I imagine is understandably your priority). On top of all of that your season pretty much got instantly fucked over by a team leak and then you had some bad luck as well, just unfortunate circumstances piling up that would make it nearly impossible for anyone to perform and not tilt. Thank you for sticking around to help us out in spite of all of that, and I’m sure if you were to give it another go it would look a lot differently.
Don Eduardo: CARAPINGA. Genuinely one of the single best players on the entire site right now in any tier. It’s been said a million times, but I don’t even care, the fact that you went undrafted is fucking MIND BLOWING. How did that happen??? When bea got banned I thought it was an absolute horror and potentially season ending, but then when Excal mentioned that you were in the pool I was so relieved. You’re such an awesome presence in team chat and you have an amazing approach at prep as well. I had so much confidence in you to win every game, and you continued to deliver week after week. You completely saved our season, I’m so glad we were able to win it together.
691: You were absolutely instrumental to our UU success after the bans occurred, and very active despite not starting, I can’t thank you enough. You’re a really funny and enjoyable chat presence, it was super awesome to have you around. You even subbed into PU for me so that I could enjoy my vacation without having to worry about playing and had an absolutely dominant performance proving you can compete with the best. Thank you for saving our season.
BIHI: The exemplary team player. You were pretty much randomly thrown into RU at the start of the season despite wanting to play NU and you handled it with no complaints. It’s no coincidence that you continue to win team tour after team tour being such a great and flexible person. There aren’t many who would be as willing to put their ego aside to try to do what they think is best for the team and to have someone like you on the team is an absolute blessing. It felt like there were several games where you weren’t given an opportunity to show your skill and just ended up losing on preview, but in the games where you were able to, it was a sight to behold. Your destructive finals performance really made it sink in and feel like it was an unchokeable lead, and played a massive part in carrying our momentum through, beating a very strong player in such a dominant fashion. You’ve really proven that you can play any tier at the highest level, and I’m glad to have gotten the opportunity to team up with you.
McMeghan: Roro I have the utmost respect for the way you’re able to look at a tier and put your own personal spin on it and effectively create your own metagame at a high level. You have an amazing mind and I could probably go on forever about how great at pokemon you are, but I’ll avoid going into that too much. What really amazes me about you is how you carry yourself outside of the battle. While not being a manager, you dropped an absolute bomb of a speech after week 4 on a seemingly mediocre team just to keep us motivated. Week after week you continued to encourage everyone to get the most out of us. When you got completely robbed in semis, when 99% of players would have come into the chat and complained about the luck that had just occurred, you didn’t mention it a single time and instantly went into analysing the game and what you could have improved on to avoid the hax altogether, beating yourself up over not having played 100% perfectly. The mentality and level of class you have towards the game is on a completely different level from anything I’ve ever seen, and is something that myself and many others could learn from. It was a fantastic experience to finally get to team with you and your dominant performance was just the cherry on top.
Larry: One of the more controversial people on the site, I don’t care what anyone says, you are awesome. I feel like we’ve become friends pretty recently, and somehow ended up teaming for the first time shortly after. There’s never a dull moment with you, you always manage to make things entertaining and fun. You’re probably one of the more underrated players on the site, you really stepped it up towards the back half of the tour and your last 3 games in particular were all incredibly clutch performances. LCarry.
Fille: We’ve known each other for so long now, having played probably 100 side tours together, it was about time we finally got to team in a real tour. You’re an awesome player nerfed through external circumstances like playing under less than ideal conditions, but your fun and nonchalant attitude was essential to balance out all of the stress and seriousness of a team tour environment. One of the coolest dudes on the whole site, glad we were able to get this one together.
Kaboom: I didn’t really know you at all before this tour, but It was such a pleasure to have gotten to know you. Easily one of the nicest and most supportive guys I’ve met. Right from the start you were extremely active and a great support to fille. You then stepped up to the plate and were willing to start and give it your all there; if it weren’t for the misfortune with the timer I’m sure we’d have gotten to see some very strong gameplay. When you got subbed out, you had no complaints and continued to be a strong support for fille. Even when Larry got subbed in, you were completely amazing, and even with the very little feedback he gave, you were able to successfully convert ideas into teams that he would be able to pilot. The amount of impact you had in LC in playoffs through support cannot be stressed enough, enjoy your well deserved trophy.
bbeeaa: We first met when we teamed in Snake for the first time and you completely fucking carried my ass to trophy and had an amazing break out tour. I was super stoked to be able to team again for the first time in years, then your dumb ass got fucking banned LOL. You’re an awesome teammate, one of the greatest team tour players of all time. There’s no doubt in my mind that you’d have hit your groove and dominated the rest of the tour had you not gotten banned. We managed to keep our 100% win rate when drafted together, wish you could’ve gotten the trophy too.
spell: Your dumb ass got banned too. Honestly you’re a great teammate, super active and supportive and willing to be a complete prep machine while also being extremely easy to communicate with and active in conversations. It’s a shame that we weren’t able to get this one together, but I’m sure one day we’ll get to share the legendary Canada WCOP trophy.
You guys had absolutely no obligation to help us out whatsoever and yet, even with no physical reward, you guys made a huge contribution to our team’s success. Thank you all so much.
bhkg: You were probably more useful to the team than I was. Really awesome guy, extremely active, continuously provided our OU players with ample support, I really can’t stress enough how important you were to us. Thank you for all of your help this season, looking forward to seeing you in future tours.
CrashinBoomBang: I think this is probably the first time we’ve ever interacted with each other and it was awesome. You are a really fun and cool guy and seamlessly flowed into our conversations making the chat really enjoyable. Thank you for supporting and gassing us throughout the entire tour, and hopefully one day when you’re less busy irl, we’ll get the chance to team up.
Dave: One of the guys I respect the most on the entire site, I can’t express my gratitude to you enough. You’re doing an amazing job as a TD and dragging tournaments in the right direction. I’m sure if you ever go back to managing that we’ll get one together some day.
Rewer: We’ve been longtime friends now, I remember in SPL X ruiners it was me on the outside supporting when you won, and this time it was you on the outside supporting when I won. It’s always a fun time to share a chat with you, thanks for being a part of it.
Always Edgy, FlamPoke, Frito: Thank you guys for stepping up and helping support our tiers that were lacking in support. You guys played a massive part in this victory.
Separation, Triangles, Twixtry: Thank you guys for supporting our team throughout the entire season.
Playoffs
Django: I saw some of your messages in the NU channel and you’re an absolute machine. Thanks for your support, I’m sure had roro played in finals it’d have been a great success.
Feliburn: You’re a super fun and chill dude, thanks for joining and helping support our RU slot.
hellom: It’s crazy to think that we knew each other probably before either of us even had a smogon account. At the time it wasn’t on my bingo card that you would become one of the best players on the entire site and have an 90% win rate in officials, but here we are. It’s awesome to see how you’ve grown over the years, and it’s clear to everyone how good and knowledgeable you are at SV OU. Thanks a lot for joining and supporting us.
mind gaming: Mind gaming indeed. One of the greatest minds on the entire site. You are such a phenomenal player and builder, there’s no one I’d rather have joined to support me throughout the playoffs. You were able to deal with Excal and my bullshit of having 500 teams and no real set ideas. Then when it was literally hours before my semis game and I wasn’t a fan of any option, you were able to pull the snow out of your ass which ended up being absolutely perfect. It was a pleasure to have you join us, thank you so much for helping out, and congrats on another amazing season.
Pais: What a great season you had. Easily one of the smartest SV players at the moment. As someone who doesn’t play much SV, I was amazed when you were able to call out that it was stone edge dragonite in the finals match. Your approach to prep was awesome, and you’ve really made leaps to where it’s no reach to call you a top player. Thanks for joining and supporting our OU throughout the playoffs.
Punny: First of all, fuck you for dodging twave and ruining my perfect record. Jokes aside, thanks a lot for joining and helping us out. You’ve been one of the best players on the site for a long time now and having your help played a large part in our dominant UU playoffs performance.
bhkg: You were probably more useful to the team than I was. Really awesome guy, extremely active, continuously provided our OU players with ample support, I really can’t stress enough how important you were to us. Thank you for all of your help this season, looking forward to seeing you in future tours.
CrashinBoomBang: I think this is probably the first time we’ve ever interacted with each other and it was awesome. You are a really fun and cool guy and seamlessly flowed into our conversations making the chat really enjoyable. Thank you for supporting and gassing us throughout the entire tour, and hopefully one day when you’re less busy irl, we’ll get the chance to team up.
Dave: One of the guys I respect the most on the entire site, I can’t express my gratitude to you enough. You’re doing an amazing job as a TD and dragging tournaments in the right direction. I’m sure if you ever go back to managing that we’ll get one together some day.
Rewer: We’ve been longtime friends now, I remember in SPL X ruiners it was me on the outside supporting when you won, and this time it was you on the outside supporting when I won. It’s always a fun time to share a chat with you, thanks for being a part of it.
Always Edgy, FlamPoke, Frito: Thank you guys for stepping up and helping support our tiers that were lacking in support. You guys played a massive part in this victory.
Separation, Triangles, Twixtry: Thank you guys for supporting our team throughout the entire season.
Playoffs
Django: I saw some of your messages in the NU channel and you’re an absolute machine. Thanks for your support, I’m sure had roro played in finals it’d have been a great success.
Feliburn: You’re a super fun and chill dude, thanks for joining and helping support our RU slot.
hellom: It’s crazy to think that we knew each other probably before either of us even had a smogon account. At the time it wasn’t on my bingo card that you would become one of the best players on the entire site and have an 90% win rate in officials, but here we are. It’s awesome to see how you’ve grown over the years, and it’s clear to everyone how good and knowledgeable you are at SV OU. Thanks a lot for joining and supporting us.
mind gaming: Mind gaming indeed. One of the greatest minds on the entire site. You are such a phenomenal player and builder, there’s no one I’d rather have joined to support me throughout the playoffs. You were able to deal with Excal and my bullshit of having 500 teams and no real set ideas. Then when it was literally hours before my semis game and I wasn’t a fan of any option, you were able to pull the snow out of your ass which ended up being absolutely perfect. It was a pleasure to have you join us, thank you so much for helping out, and congrats on another amazing season.
Pais: What a great season you had. Easily one of the smartest SV players at the moment. As someone who doesn’t play much SV, I was amazed when you were able to call out that it was stone edge dragonite in the finals match. Your approach to prep was awesome, and you’ve really made leaps to where it’s no reach to call you a top player. Thanks for joining and supporting our OU throughout the playoffs.
Punny: First of all, fuck you for dodging twave and ruining my perfect record. Jokes aside, thanks a lot for joining and helping us out. You’ve been one of the best players on the site for a long time now and having your help played a large part in our dominant UU playoffs performance.
2024 was honestly a pretty crazy year for me in terms of Pokemon. I started off the year planning the Ruiners draft with Mannat with the plan to buy me for 3k as an SM starter. We discussed it a lot and our planned draft ended up looking very strong. When the auction happened, the draft went very closely to plan, but we ended up with a slight edits such as drafting Charmflash instead of a designated SS slot. Charmflash felt much more comfortable in SM so I decided to shift to SS, a tier that I lacked a bit of familiarity with, so that Charmflash could play SM, a sacrifice I was willing to make for the greater good of our team. I don’t regret this at all as he had an incredible tour. We ended up doing really well, and, in my opinion, we were looking to be the strongest team heading into playoffs. As we were up 6-4 in the semi-finals, Malekith, my teammate, ended up being given a loss for getting hacked, genuinely one of the worst decisions to ever be made in an official tournament. The combination of Malekith being hacked, and Stresh getting unlucky in both semis and the semis tiebreak ended our season and left a really sour taste in my mouth. I had never been so frustrated with anything Smogon related in my life. I ended up with a 5-4 record, not a bad record by any means, but not exactly the stellar record that I was looking for. I really felt as though I could’ve put up a much better record but a combination of somewhat unlucky moments and some minor in-game mistakes ended up costing me what could have been.
I was pretty fed up with mons after that and didn’t really have much interest in joining any individuals. I joined the first Sunday SV stour on a whim, despite never having played any SV games, and ended up actually doing pretty well. I decided I’d give it a go to try qualifying and see if I could replicate my success from stour 31, where I ultimately lost in semi-finals to some misfortune, as it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing mons. I did end up qualifying for playoffs, but I didn’t really have much motivation to prep. I ended up getting two extremely difficult matchups against Santu in the top 16 and got completely farmed. I was a bit frustrated with myself for not putting in the effort and essentially wasting a large portion of 9 weekends of my life.
When WCOP came around I had slightly more motivation. Seeing some of the newer faces on Canada like 3d and Baloor put in so much effort to build and win for our team made me want to put in the effort as well. We managed to climb through relegation with relative ease and things were looking good. That facade quickly shattered as the main stage came along. I know it’s easy to cope about luck, but our games in the early stages of that WCOP were genuinely some of the unluckiest games I’ve ever witnessed. Although I completely understand that Pokemon is a game filled with RNG, it was really frustrating to see my teammates get lucked over and over again after putting in so much effort, and I still held a bit of resentment at the game from SPL and Stour. I ended up finishing the tour 1-2, my first negative WCOP record since 2018, after an unlucky game vs Roro and an abysmal showing vs fade.
I was considering not even signing up for SCL, since I didn’t have too much familiarity with any of the tiers, I was pretty annoyed with Pokemon, and I wasn’t even sure if anyone would draft me. When I saw that Excal and Luthier were managers I decided to sign up just in case they would consider drafting me so I could chill with some friends. Luthier then hit me up that they may end up drafting me as a potential sub option, and thank god he did. Despite being on vacation for a large portion of the tournament, I ended up putting in a lot of effort and I couldn’t be happier with the result. To be thrown in 3 different tiers and go 6-1 including a 5-0 performance in PU feels amazing. I’m really happy with my play throughout the tournament and to have finally been able to achieve a strong record, something I’ve been working towards after all these years, against a very strong lineup of opponents felt surreal. This was easily my favourite tournament experience in all of my time on Smogon and turned what was a really shitty start to 2024 into easily my best year for Pokemon.
I was pretty fed up with mons after that and didn’t really have much interest in joining any individuals. I joined the first Sunday SV stour on a whim, despite never having played any SV games, and ended up actually doing pretty well. I decided I’d give it a go to try qualifying and see if I could replicate my success from stour 31, where I ultimately lost in semi-finals to some misfortune, as it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing mons. I did end up qualifying for playoffs, but I didn’t really have much motivation to prep. I ended up getting two extremely difficult matchups against Santu in the top 16 and got completely farmed. I was a bit frustrated with myself for not putting in the effort and essentially wasting a large portion of 9 weekends of my life.
When WCOP came around I had slightly more motivation. Seeing some of the newer faces on Canada like 3d and Baloor put in so much effort to build and win for our team made me want to put in the effort as well. We managed to climb through relegation with relative ease and things were looking good. That facade quickly shattered as the main stage came along. I know it’s easy to cope about luck, but our games in the early stages of that WCOP were genuinely some of the unluckiest games I’ve ever witnessed. Although I completely understand that Pokemon is a game filled with RNG, it was really frustrating to see my teammates get lucked over and over again after putting in so much effort, and I still held a bit of resentment at the game from SPL and Stour. I ended up finishing the tour 1-2, my first negative WCOP record since 2018, after an unlucky game vs Roro and an abysmal showing vs fade.
I was considering not even signing up for SCL, since I didn’t have too much familiarity with any of the tiers, I was pretty annoyed with Pokemon, and I wasn’t even sure if anyone would draft me. When I saw that Excal and Luthier were managers I decided to sign up just in case they would consider drafting me so I could chill with some friends. Luthier then hit me up that they may end up drafting me as a potential sub option, and thank god he did. Despite being on vacation for a large portion of the tournament, I ended up putting in a lot of effort and I couldn’t be happier with the result. To be thrown in 3 different tiers and go 6-1 including a 5-0 performance in PU feels amazing. I’m really happy with my play throughout the tournament and to have finally been able to achieve a strong record, something I’ve been working towards after all these years, against a very strong lineup of opponents felt surreal. This was easily my favourite tournament experience in all of my time on Smogon and turned what was a really shitty start to 2024 into easily my best year for Pokemon.
I won’t dive into personal shoutouts, but I’m really grateful to have so many good friends on this site who continue to support me. Thanks for an awesome tour and I’ll see you guys in SPL.
