Hey so now that we're out I'd like to share some reviews about my games, prep and stuff, thanks again Nido-Rus for being there to discuss stuff I needed to talk someone with :)
Hope this gave anyone a good read as it's kind of my first time doing these, hoping to see some cool playoff games!
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-516215
Team: https://pokepast.es/d7cb94dd8ffa76e8
Just to leave it clear, I did not steal the team from anyone, even if it looks like it. I started off the season against a pretty agressive player to me, and someone that let everyone know he liked trick room. At first maybe I didn't have the most high meta knowledge but trick room looked very strong since then, so I wanted to try it out, starting off with the basic core on Hat/Indeedee/Torkoal/Amoonguss, I didn't really like sylveon from the sample version so I wanted another tr abuser and I chose rhyperior, then as a second TR setter Porygon2, however I was suggested to try Oranguru out and I didn't really know what it did, but it seemed like a decent option, even more against a potential TR from Para which I thought it was very possible. Oranguru would help more than a passive P2 there so I liked it. After that, my only concern was Sun, since I thought I could just play it well vs sand which could also be an annoying match up. My play against sun was basically lead Oranguru+Rhyperior vs assuming Charizard+Ninetales, which was kinda the best play for the sun user (goth+ursh was also annoying but not really vs potential hat+indeedee since I could just follow me and proc eject button into an offensive mon, though nobody would probably expect eject button from indeedee), and just trick room+rockslide, since oranguru is evd to live Overheat from zard in sun, they'd need to decide whether to kill oranguru with a focus and let both of their mons die to rockslide, or kill rhyperior and let me trick room up, which is a bit less of a probability since if I do protect+trick room it'd have been a terrible spot for the sun user. However I changed it to gigalith and I'll explain why I decided to use goggles iron defense over just choice band, my thinking process was just probably; it beats everything! with amoonguss supporting it, looked pretty damn good in paper and also in tests, and hey it did put in some work, althought maybe it wasn't the best idea to go with a setup mon in a fullroom team.
As for the game, goggles ttar was probably the biggest thing I didn't want to face, game went pretty dire after turn 1 so after that my only chance was to setup with gigalith w/ rage powder support, turn 2 para double protected, most likely scouting for what move gigalith was going to lock on, assuming choice band, so I got a free setup turn, maybe I let gigalith take a lot of chip around the next turns till a tough one, turn 9 I body pressed exca and tr'd with hat, since if he wanted to kill gigalith, he had to double target it, which meant I could get tr up, this might have been a choke from para tho im not really sure, protecting exca and grassy gliding hat probably was better for him, anyway, game looked pretty much won for me there (didnt mention it but hat was psychic because I was scared of wide guard stuff which walled basically 90% of my team, this was most likely a poor decision), till exca got a crucial double protect, which allowed Para to just switch out as tr goes off, Para made a good play after that. Ttar critting hat was also bad since I could have forced a 50 50 situation at the end if hat was healthier. I don't want to say I got insanely unlucky but Para also played for his odds so props to him.
Team: https://pokepast.es/d7cb94dd8ffa76e8
Just to leave it clear, I did not steal the team from anyone, even if it looks like it. I started off the season against a pretty agressive player to me, and someone that let everyone know he liked trick room. At first maybe I didn't have the most high meta knowledge but trick room looked very strong since then, so I wanted to try it out, starting off with the basic core on Hat/Indeedee/Torkoal/Amoonguss, I didn't really like sylveon from the sample version so I wanted another tr abuser and I chose rhyperior, then as a second TR setter Porygon2, however I was suggested to try Oranguru out and I didn't really know what it did, but it seemed like a decent option, even more against a potential TR from Para which I thought it was very possible. Oranguru would help more than a passive P2 there so I liked it. After that, my only concern was Sun, since I thought I could just play it well vs sand which could also be an annoying match up. My play against sun was basically lead Oranguru+Rhyperior vs assuming Charizard+Ninetales, which was kinda the best play for the sun user (goth+ursh was also annoying but not really vs potential hat+indeedee since I could just follow me and proc eject button into an offensive mon, though nobody would probably expect eject button from indeedee), and just trick room+rockslide, since oranguru is evd to live Overheat from zard in sun, they'd need to decide whether to kill oranguru with a focus and let both of their mons die to rockslide, or kill rhyperior and let me trick room up, which is a bit less of a probability since if I do protect+trick room it'd have been a terrible spot for the sun user. However I changed it to gigalith and I'll explain why I decided to use goggles iron defense over just choice band, my thinking process was just probably; it beats everything! with amoonguss supporting it, looked pretty damn good in paper and also in tests, and hey it did put in some work, althought maybe it wasn't the best idea to go with a setup mon in a fullroom team.
As for the game, goggles ttar was probably the biggest thing I didn't want to face, game went pretty dire after turn 1 so after that my only chance was to setup with gigalith w/ rage powder support, turn 2 para double protected, most likely scouting for what move gigalith was going to lock on, assuming choice band, so I got a free setup turn, maybe I let gigalith take a lot of chip around the next turns till a tough one, turn 9 I body pressed exca and tr'd with hat, since if he wanted to kill gigalith, he had to double target it, which meant I could get tr up, this might have been a choke from para tho im not really sure, protecting exca and grassy gliding hat probably was better for him, anyway, game looked pretty much won for me there (didnt mention it but hat was psychic because I was scared of wide guard stuff which walled basically 90% of my team, this was most likely a poor decision), till exca got a crucial double protect, which allowed Para to just switch out as tr goes off, Para made a good play after that. Ttar critting hat was also bad since I could have forced a 50 50 situation at the end if hat was healthier. I don't want to say I got insanely unlucky but Para also played for his odds so props to him.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-516948
Team: https://pokepast.es/a349f0c21dcdf62b
I also want to make clear that this was NOT a sun cteam. Yes, I did, in fact, have an almost unloseable match up. The pokemon I wanted to build around was Dragalge, which was an idea I took from a stax replay, trapping+dragalge seemed pretty solid as well, and I also really liked urshifu as an offensive threat. Poison resists were almost non existent at the time so I wanted to abuse it as much as I could, I was always a bit paranoid on the builder and always wanted to have a sun counterplay, and since Nails and Ezrael were using the same teams since DPL, I was even more confident after Nails brought sun himself during his game on this week.
I don't think there's much to say about this game, firstly I wanted to lead with something not weak to urshifu+goth. I also got lucky with sleep turns so yeah, not much Jon could do that game.
Team: https://pokepast.es/a349f0c21dcdf62b
I also want to make clear that this was NOT a sun cteam. Yes, I did, in fact, have an almost unloseable match up. The pokemon I wanted to build around was Dragalge, which was an idea I took from a stax replay, trapping+dragalge seemed pretty solid as well, and I also really liked urshifu as an offensive threat. Poison resists were almost non existent at the time so I wanted to abuse it as much as I could, I was always a bit paranoid on the builder and always wanted to have a sun counterplay, and since Nails and Ezrael were using the same teams since DPL, I was even more confident after Nails brought sun himself during his game on this week.
I don't think there's much to say about this game, firstly I wanted to lead with something not weak to urshifu+goth. I also got lucky with sleep turns so yeah, not much Jon could do that game.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-518214
Team: https://pokepast.es/353f85eae5f49b9c
This team was mainly made by Nido-Rus so s/o to him!! tho first thing I changed was CC>Blaze Kick on zera since Qwello Lee brought Scizor twice at this point of the tour, rest are pretty similar to my last week's team but tsareena over rillaboom who also helped a lot in this game and the team overall.
I led with goth+zera, who faced a dragapult and incineroar turn 1, I tried to play around him predicting my tsareena most of the times and didn't want to play linear, so I could kill dragapult with helping hand+knock off, crit didn't matter unless it was bulky pult, in my opinion he should have just fake out'd zera regardless, because if I did go tsareena, I do not kill dragapult and he gets a big chip off on zera, which was going to be good for him since nobody else on my team outsped pult. Turn 2 I just wanted to pivot around+reset intimidate on zera, without being weak to his mons in the back, NP toge was kind of annoying, I'd say turn 4 & 5 were the hardest ones in this game, I pretty much predicted him to go rilla on incis slot so he could get a fake out off, so I was debating whether to go zeraora or dragalge this turn, I kinda went for a 50/50 here, which was a roll on gothitelle to live dazzling gleam at 44% (+2 252 SpA Togekiss Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 108+ SpD Gothitelle: 141-166 (40.9 - 48.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO), so I sbombed toge and trick room'd with goth, if he wanted to protect toge+uturn out to exca for example, I outsped it under trick room, however, another possible play from him was fake out draga and dazzling gleam, which it was the worst possible scenario for me, but less possible since I had a tsareena in the back, and if I went tsareena and sbombed toge and he protected+uturned into exca I pretty much lost the game there. After that urshifu could just clean everything.
Team: https://pokepast.es/353f85eae5f49b9c
This team was mainly made by Nido-Rus so s/o to him!! tho first thing I changed was CC>Blaze Kick on zera since Qwello Lee brought Scizor twice at this point of the tour, rest are pretty similar to my last week's team but tsareena over rillaboom who also helped a lot in this game and the team overall.
I led with goth+zera, who faced a dragapult and incineroar turn 1, I tried to play around him predicting my tsareena most of the times and didn't want to play linear, so I could kill dragapult with helping hand+knock off, crit didn't matter unless it was bulky pult, in my opinion he should have just fake out'd zera regardless, because if I did go tsareena, I do not kill dragapult and he gets a big chip off on zera, which was going to be good for him since nobody else on my team outsped pult. Turn 2 I just wanted to pivot around+reset intimidate on zera, without being weak to his mons in the back, NP toge was kind of annoying, I'd say turn 4 & 5 were the hardest ones in this game, I pretty much predicted him to go rilla on incis slot so he could get a fake out off, so I was debating whether to go zeraora or dragalge this turn, I kinda went for a 50/50 here, which was a roll on gothitelle to live dazzling gleam at 44% (+2 252 SpA Togekiss Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 108+ SpD Gothitelle: 141-166 (40.9 - 48.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO), so I sbombed toge and trick room'd with goth, if he wanted to protect toge+uturn out to exca for example, I outsped it under trick room, however, another possible play from him was fake out draga and dazzling gleam, which it was the worst possible scenario for me, but less possible since I had a tsareena in the back, and if I went tsareena and sbombed toge and he protected+uturned into exca I pretty much lost the game there. After that urshifu could just clean everything.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-519356
Team: https://pokepast.es/1e2b147157428915
At this point on the season, I found myself pretty weak to sand in general, which was something I wanted to changed but didn't really feel confident playing other type of stuff yet, and while I was facing a 0-3 Frania, I still had a lot of respect for him and ranked him pretty high. The team I brought was also made by Nido-Rus but I changed a mon if I recall correctly, it was built around coaching mew+physical aegislash. It looked cool in hindsight and test games, while I did not expect to be sanded yet again that soon, I needed to play this game really well to have a chance since it looked pretty hard during non tailwind scenarios.
I don't think I can say I got the most perfect turn at the beginning, but it wasn't looking terrible either, sadly, choice banded ttar allowed Frania to ohko mew and not letting it in again to set up tailwind in the future. After pult revealing choice specs and getting its -2 on spa, I felt confident going aegi+urshifu, however I unfortunately got crit by draco meteor with urshifu, which could still do stuff if it didn't. Turn 5 was pretty tough and basically decided the game, I thought protecting aegi+attacking exca with kommo was sorta obvious, so I tried to be aggresive and clicked iron head on pults slot and flamed exca, since another possible play from him was toge>pult and protecting exca so he could follow me after and kill aegi, that or he could predict my protect with aegi and double target my kommo if I wanted to set up. So yeah, if I protected aegi the game could have been mine since sand also ended in 1 turn more. Regardless, Frania played well and deserved the win.
Team: https://pokepast.es/1e2b147157428915
At this point on the season, I found myself pretty weak to sand in general, which was something I wanted to changed but didn't really feel confident playing other type of stuff yet, and while I was facing a 0-3 Frania, I still had a lot of respect for him and ranked him pretty high. The team I brought was also made by Nido-Rus but I changed a mon if I recall correctly, it was built around coaching mew+physical aegislash. It looked cool in hindsight and test games, while I did not expect to be sanded yet again that soon, I needed to play this game really well to have a chance since it looked pretty hard during non tailwind scenarios.
I don't think I can say I got the most perfect turn at the beginning, but it wasn't looking terrible either, sadly, choice banded ttar allowed Frania to ohko mew and not letting it in again to set up tailwind in the future. After pult revealing choice specs and getting its -2 on spa, I felt confident going aegi+urshifu, however I unfortunately got crit by draco meteor with urshifu, which could still do stuff if it didn't. Turn 5 was pretty tough and basically decided the game, I thought protecting aegi+attacking exca with kommo was sorta obvious, so I tried to be aggresive and clicked iron head on pults slot and flamed exca, since another possible play from him was toge>pult and protecting exca so he could follow me after and kill aegi, that or he could predict my protect with aegi and double target my kommo if I wanted to set up. So yeah, if I protected aegi the game could have been mine since sand also ended in 1 turn more. Regardless, Frania played well and deserved the win.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-519927
Team: https://pokepast.es/836ab621eb540f86
I probably felt a bit lost at this point of the tour, I didn't think I could have issues with JRL since he's been bringing questionable teams, so I kinda wanted to go back to my comfort zone with dragalge stuff. I talked with JRL and he told me various stuff about his prep that made sense so I'm not really mad about this loss and he also played well, he's also a cool guy.
I think this is where the spikes mew trend started, Nails popularizing it definitely changed a lot of stuff during this tour and how people build, my team had no hazard control and was pretty weak to scizor under tailwind, while setting up trick room with goth was also pretty tough so yeah, not much else to say about this game.
Team: https://pokepast.es/836ab621eb540f86
I probably felt a bit lost at this point of the tour, I didn't think I could have issues with JRL since he's been bringing questionable teams, so I kinda wanted to go back to my comfort zone with dragalge stuff. I talked with JRL and he told me various stuff about his prep that made sense so I'm not really mad about this loss and he also played well, he's also a cool guy.
I think this is where the spikes mew trend started, Nails popularizing it definitely changed a lot of stuff during this tour and how people build, my team had no hazard control and was pretty weak to scizor under tailwind, while setting up trick room with goth was also pretty tough so yeah, not much else to say about this game.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-522116
Team: https://pokepast.es/4cf0f505445ce8f0
If you can't beat the enemy, join them! at this point I just decided to go with my own mew offense, not much to say about the team, simply offense featuring LO necro which I loved using.
Game looked pretty even till turn 4, where qsns made a good play sacking both mons so kommo+scizor could be brought in under the last tailwind turn, I got a very lucky heatwave dodge earlier which allowed me to stop kommo from setting up with necrozma after intimidating scizor, I thought about not attacking with necro turn 4 so it could have enough hp to check kommo but I didn't expect that double sack, which put me in a bad position, still, I don't think I autoloss there, still had some tools and probably had to outplay, I think I was a bit scared of amoonguss outspeeding inci under tailwind since I wasn't goggles, so I wanted to play around it safely, didn't have any trouble after.
Team: https://pokepast.es/4cf0f505445ce8f0
If you can't beat the enemy, join them! at this point I just decided to go with my own mew offense, not much to say about the team, simply offense featuring LO necro which I loved using.
Game looked pretty even till turn 4, where qsns made a good play sacking both mons so kommo+scizor could be brought in under the last tailwind turn, I got a very lucky heatwave dodge earlier which allowed me to stop kommo from setting up with necrozma after intimidating scizor, I thought about not attacking with necro turn 4 so it could have enough hp to check kommo but I didn't expect that double sack, which put me in a bad position, still, I don't think I autoloss there, still had some tools and probably had to outplay, I think I was a bit scared of amoonguss outspeeding inci under tailwind since I wasn't goggles, so I wanted to play around it safely, didn't have any trouble after.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-523320
Team: https://pokepast.es/659ebee43985e38d
Heading onto week 7, everyone seems to be spamming mew offense and scizor everywhere, so might as well prep for that. Nails was also sharing teams with umbry so there was a high chance on umbry bringing the same team as well. The team is another mew offense but with kommo-o this time, honestly felt bit stupid for not using amoonguss over rilla on this team since its a better partner. Fire move mew seemed pretty cool since everyone seem to be staying in on mew with their scizor, and it can also hits excadrill. This team also had stalk as last move on scizor so I could reliably switch into amoonguss, plus idt ppl would expect stalk from scizor.
On paper I did have a good/at least even match up, made a trade I liked turn 2, where basically if pult decides to kill mew, it'll die to knock, if it decides to switch out, I get a spike off. Game went absolutely dire turn 4 where I made a really dumb move on activating necros wp, however I think I wasn't in a completely terrible position if it wasn't trick room necrozma, which I didn't predict at all since Nails' necrozma apparently was pretty fast coming from his game against Ezrael. Guess I was punished for assuming sets but also didn't play well and deserved to lose this game for sure.
Team: https://pokepast.es/659ebee43985e38d
Heading onto week 7, everyone seems to be spamming mew offense and scizor everywhere, so might as well prep for that. Nails was also sharing teams with umbry so there was a high chance on umbry bringing the same team as well. The team is another mew offense but with kommo-o this time, honestly felt bit stupid for not using amoonguss over rilla on this team since its a better partner. Fire move mew seemed pretty cool since everyone seem to be staying in on mew with their scizor, and it can also hits excadrill. This team also had stalk as last move on scizor so I could reliably switch into amoonguss, plus idt ppl would expect stalk from scizor.
On paper I did have a good/at least even match up, made a trade I liked turn 2, where basically if pult decides to kill mew, it'll die to knock, if it decides to switch out, I get a spike off. Game went absolutely dire turn 4 where I made a really dumb move on activating necros wp, however I think I wasn't in a completely terrible position if it wasn't trick room necrozma, which I didn't predict at all since Nails' necrozma apparently was pretty fast coming from his game against Ezrael. Guess I was punished for assuming sets but also didn't play well and deserved to lose this game for sure.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-524340
Team: https://pokepast.es/dc3af4b0f98f0577
This is one of those moments where I wished I was the body press variant on mew but hey, it was on nobody but me on bringing a team this inci weak, I didn't know how to make it less dark type weak and thought I could just outplay. The reasoning of np mew over body press was, np beats necrozma/corvi as setup mons, while also having more immediate power vs stuff like amoonguss which could be annoying since it wasn't goggles. I wanted to use this mew variant since way before but never felt like it or was just scared. I'm at least glad it could see the light!
Game went pretty much as I wanted, intimidating the knock user turn 1 and setting up +1 defenses, but an unexpected clear smog amoonguss appeared! tho as I was np it didn't matter much, Tenzai played his outs and did pretty well overall, I should not have sacked ttar like that when inci was still alive and I really regret that.
Team: https://pokepast.es/dc3af4b0f98f0577
This is one of those moments where I wished I was the body press variant on mew but hey, it was on nobody but me on bringing a team this inci weak, I didn't know how to make it less dark type weak and thought I could just outplay. The reasoning of np mew over body press was, np beats necrozma/corvi as setup mons, while also having more immediate power vs stuff like amoonguss which could be annoying since it wasn't goggles. I wanted to use this mew variant since way before but never felt like it or was just scared. I'm at least glad it could see the light!
Game went pretty much as I wanted, intimidating the knock user turn 1 and setting up +1 defenses, but an unexpected clear smog amoonguss appeared! tho as I was np it didn't matter much, Tenzai played his outs and did pretty well overall, I should not have sacked ttar like that when inci was still alive and I really regret that.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesubers-525023
Team: https://pokepast.es/9bc8541192793428
I was a bit surprised nobody used swagger stuff when it was allowed. I wanted to end my season in good form so I did prep against a mew spammer. My first idea was scarf trick mew+spinner in the back, which seemed pretty solid vs nails' stuff which were pretty similar these last 4 weeks or so. Tricking scarf on opposing mew was very useful, if it decided to lock into spikes I could get in exca and spin, and its also disabled from doing any other thing than fake out/spikes/tailwind without switching out. The set on mew is a bit particular, I never really click fake out with mew so was finding any other support move and found out that swagger existed, tho I firstly wanted to make a team around it, ended up just exca as swagger target, but it could have been a lum hawlucha team as well.
The game was pretty clean and everything went as I wanted to go, don't think there's much to comment here.
Team: https://pokepast.es/9bc8541192793428
I was a bit surprised nobody used swagger stuff when it was allowed. I wanted to end my season in good form so I did prep against a mew spammer. My first idea was scarf trick mew+spinner in the back, which seemed pretty solid vs nails' stuff which were pretty similar these last 4 weeks or so. Tricking scarf on opposing mew was very useful, if it decided to lock into spikes I could get in exca and spin, and its also disabled from doing any other thing than fake out/spikes/tailwind without switching out. The set on mew is a bit particular, I never really click fake out with mew so was finding any other support move and found out that swagger existed, tho I firstly wanted to make a team around it, ended up just exca as swagger target, but it could have been a lum hawlucha team as well.
The game was pretty clean and everything went as I wanted to go, don't think there's much to comment here.
Hope this gave anyone a good read as it's kind of my first time doing these, hoping to see some cool playoff games!
