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approved by Earthworm | art by Zracknel | resuming BKC's concept with his permission
ADVANCE POSTSEASON THREAD
Hi everyone! As some of you might know, BKC created a thread last year to act as a conclusion for three SPL months full of exciting games, interesting teams and great players. Another season has passed in the same fashion and the other SPLayers I talked to expressed interest in giving the concept another try, so here we are. Whether you were a player, an helper or a spectator in this XIIth edition of the Smogon Premier League, feel free to post your preparation processes, thoughts on the matches, metagame takes and more down there!
Hclat's SPLXII Recap and teams
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Hi everyone!
I've never done any public team sharing before, and I thought doing it in the form of a personal summary of (basically) my first SPL would be as good a time as ever. I build teams really independently, which I think has a couple effects—My teams are pretty unique, not well-known, tailored to the way I like to play, AND they'd probably benefit from a few additional sets of eyes. I'm always happy to check out any improvements anyone makes or to generally discuss further. My discord is Hclat#9507.
Overall, I feel alright about my W-L, but I was really disappointed in my level of play. I think I came into games with a large teambuilder advantage, which I squandered several times throughout the season. I'll go through each of the five weeks I played, explaining the team, its strength, weaknesses, and my reason for using it, as well as an overview of the game itself and what I should've done differently.
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Week 1: Umbry https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen3ou-537302 Scissor and friends
At a glance, this team looks absurd. There's a lead breloom, a starmie without spin, a full-special salamence, a scizor, and no semblance of a special pivot to speak of. Despite this, I actually think this is the best-overall team I brought this season; several subtleties go into compensating for these weaknesses. I'll dive into them here.
First off, let's talk about what scizor does well: It's a speed-boosting reversal sweeper that works a lot like heracross. The good news: you don't have to stress about being weak to sand, drill peck, or dugtrio. The bad news: you do need to compensate for its bad coverage and its undesirable speed stat (leaving it faster than dug but slower than aero at +1). The goal of the rest of the team is removing all the bug/fighting resists in adv: breloom forces in and chips flying mons. Starmie can pivot things like mence and gyarados and one-shot them. Hydro Pump salamence packs huge surprise damage against aerodactyl, charizard, and moltres (while its partners here don't really mind a mon being walled by blissey). Tyranitar traps gengar, and it can force chip onto every flying type.
I chose breloom lead, plus recover+3atk starmie, because it's basically the only way for these 6 mons to have no catastrophic lead matchups. Starmie can switch into every salamence move and click recover. Breloom can cross its fingers and click spore against everything else.
All-in-all, this team matches up pretty well against balanced spike teams (though salamence/aero make things hard) and very well against any claydol stall. It struggles against offenses that can claim momentum, but scizor can randomly back-sweep CM cores sometimes.
Here were the reasons I picked it against Umbry:
I noticed she preferred slower, defensive teams, which would be weak to scizor+breloom
I noticed she played risk-averse earlygames; I didn't expect her to make mistakes, but I didn't expect to be punished for bringing something flimsy.
I knew Umbry doesn't main ADV. Not that anyone really would know what gen3 scizor does, she definitely wouldn't.
The game itself:
I drew an amazing scizor+breloom matchup. After a boost, scizor would outspeed and ohko the entire team, except it misses the jirachi by about 10%. Unfortunately, I got completely stomped in-game. Umbry recovered the early breloom momentum and didn't allow breloom to re-enter all game, eventually nailing it with an ice beam. She managed to keep the jirachi at full and stave off the scizor sweep. I think my worst play this game was switching my pursuit tar out of claydol on like the fourth turn; it was simply too passive a play, and it allowed her to regain her footing and stall out the game.
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Week 2: CyberOdin https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen3ou-538789 The boring one
This is just a solid skarm team. Star+Zap is a bit unusual together on this type of team, but otherwise it's incredibly standard. I was planning on using a forretress+rest flygon+spdef jirachi team this week, but my teammates discouraged it. This team is generally solid, it doesn't have any super-free or super-hard matchups like some others. Its biggest drawback is probably a weakness to mixed tyranitar or lack of means to progress against rapid spin.
I thought it would do well vs CyberOdin because:
He prefers to play balanced-to-offensive teams, with a lot of spikes
He doesn't use much mixed/special ttar, and my starmie has psychic to punish the no-bulk focus punch gengars he uses a lot
The game itself:
I remember being really frustrated with myself for losing this one. I played into an advantageous position early on, getting a spike and absorbing a boom with skarmory, despite his magneton. I made a hasty swampert switch when I saw his tyranitar, which odin nailed. And later, I missed a catch-all winning line where I could have switch zapdos into his endeavor swampert and clicked roar. The matchup was slightly losing for me I think; grass tar was a counter to my team, and I un-crept endpert with my starmie. Still, a super frustrating loss I have nobody but myself to blame for.
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I subbed out for weeks 3-6, thanks to my poor play and the Ruiners' season going up in flames. Teclis used a couple of my teams in his 4 weeks; I think he played very solidly and caught some bad luck. He did a lot better than his record reflects.
FUN FACT: Teclis and I brought 3 quick claws this season. We were 3-0 with quick claw, and 1-5 without.
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Week 7: Watermess https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen3ou-544276
At this point of the season, the Ruiners are completely out of contention, and I'm only in the lineup again because Teclis is on vacation. You'll notice my prep gets a lot more goofy and less deliberate. Curiously, my results look a lot better from here on out too.
I was flip-flopping between my camerupt team and my lanturn team for this week, and I ultimately made my decision with help from showdown's !pick command, but also knowing I wanted to bring heracross into thelinearcurve later on.
That said, I think this team is really good, and it provides lanturn a lot of room to shine. Why's lanturn good, you ask? Well first, don't interrupt me in the middle of my post. Secondly, its typing is OP, and it has amazing synergy with several great spike partners. I'll go down the list:
Skarmory
No common weakness. 4x resist and immune to lanturn's weaknesses. PLUS either skarmory or lanturn resists every single type except rock and fighting. Lanturn can come in on electric attacks
Breloom
No common weakness. Comes in on rock and ground attacks and resists grass (helps cover grass zapdos). Lanturn can come in on flying, electric, fire, and ice attacks.
Salamence
No common weakness. 4x resist and immune to lantern's weaknesses and does well against users of the move earthquake. Lanturn wrecks its water-type counters
Some other great partners include gengar, charizard, and moltres. Such orthogonal typings force opponents to click punishable moves; they must open themselves to a free switch or a timely stay-in.
Sidenote, counter>roar on skarmory is good. Y'all will look back on this post as the beginning of the counterskarm bandwagon.
I also think this team was a good choice vs. watermess because.
He uses a lot of starmie and moltres
He doesn't use much stall
He doesn't use a lot of cm spam/cm bp
The game:
I drew another really good matchup. He had no consistent answer to my adamant black belt breloom, and my lanturn blanked his offensive starmie's threat (name another ou pokemon that would blank starmie and dissuade his skarm switch on the following turn; I'll wait). However, I made a bad play in letting my breloom die to a spike sac->dug and an even worse one in forgetting that skarmory could roar my salamence before it dies to poison. Luckily for me, henz didn't manage to punish the second round of chokes, and I was able to clean with metagross and claim my first SPL win!
This team's alright. It can win a bunch of standard matchups, but it's very weak to dugtrio and not great against tyranitar. It's a lot of fun though. Here are my recommended opening lines, since they're pretty weird.
Lead tar: Turn 1 bp->jirachi (unless tightening focus or tar switch-out). Turn 2: If tar showed physical, hard hera switch. If tar clicked special, vaporeon.
Lead Metagross: bp->vaporeon
Lead zap: twave/tbolt/hard camel
lead salamence: YOLO HARD HERA DOUBLE
This teamchoice was 50% me wanting to bring camerupt for the memes (on the heels of several ADVOU VR posts), but I do think the vaporeon+heracross offensive core matches up very well into linear's fat spikeless balance preference.
Linear brought the ugliest stall team (don't fat shame. do adv-dual-blob shame) I've seen in my life, and I was able to instantly snatch momentum from turn 1. I got a substitute pass to dd tyranitar, and got 2 flinches + a cooperative damage roll to instantly win the game. yay!
Team and commentary's on youtube already, and nobody probably wants it anyway, since mr mime has already been yeeted to ubers as I'm writing this. I'm glad that I accomplished my two goals here: winning the game and getting RienaRienPass banned (with consent from Mead/RienaRien himself). I appreciate the swiftness of the ban, but I also think the council was very rigid in their decision to ban mr. mime the pokemon, and they may have left the door open for similar shenanigans.
I hope the adv council will not require a disgruntled ladder player to infiltrate SPL and grief a match to enact change, next time around.
This is my first time doing this and I'm not the best player around so don't expect any super duper great insights or metagame shattering revelations as you might (hopefully) find in the other posts. Still if you want to hear some thoughts from an official tournaments rookie about his experience it should be as good of a post as any. So...
I got picked this edition by the Ruiners, which I'll admit surprised me a little. I was not exactly sure to be bought pre-SPL due to a lack of outstanding results and while I sent cover PMs to a couple teams, the Ruiners were not among them. If anything, I knew the team as the one who crushed our (SPL XI Classiest) dreams of winning the last edition. However since they decided to put their trust in me I quickly made up my mind and decided to give it my best to try and have the team gain its third red trophy in a row. They picked another ADV enthusiast in the person of hclat, a ladder hero who had a great CALLOUS Invitational run this summer and the head full of builds ideas. He was a much more legitimate starter than I was and I spent the first two weeks trying to help out him and frania, our BW starter, with what little I had to offer. I was not deadset on playing this SPL since I lacked confidence after my last year's experience, but I was happy to be part of a team again as the environment is definitely unique among all the other teamtours I've played. However, after two tough games, I ended up switching places with hclat, back to the big stage.
Week 3 vs. starmaster
My first opponent happened to be starmaster, from the Wolfpack. A great, versatile pilot who had ADV as one of his main tiers and potentially the support of two of the greatest players of all time in ABR and BKC? That's as interesting of a (re)start as any to get back into serious stuff. My philosophical/classic approach against a superior player is that you can either go out of your way during the preparation to gain an upper hand through the match-up, assuming that they will play it safe against a less solid player than they are, or that you can bring a team which gives you room to remove a bit of objective/in game skill from the equation with tools to outplay your opponent through more or less risky, short term predictions.
star's scout was an interesting display of solid teams I knew other top players had already used in the past and squads featuring the latest metagame trends. I however identified a couple interesting preferences, such as a crazy high usage of Starmie as a spinner to the point that the amount of Claydol, Foretress and other bulky waters he used was lower than average and the lack of crazy offense with a lot of more control-oriented teams instead. Since he seemed to have clear-cut preferences, I figured I would give the first of the approaches I described above a try - it would on my end either be more or less bulky Spikeless balance, HP Bug Forry TSS or Skarm + anti-DefMie tools TSS. I've been a big fan of Forry for a while now (and I'm glad it has been seeing the usage it deserves during the last few months) so I decided to give its HP Bug set a try, especially since it did not appear much in my own replays. Prinz made a remark about how star did not use the likes of Milotic much more than that, and given his approach to Spikes control we settled for a classic line-up used a lot by other players in the past, including star himself: .
The synergy looked pretty good with Forry being able to keep Spikes up against pretty much everything shown in the opposing scout, HP Bugging Starmie out of its way (and crippling its ability to soft check MixMence/Moltres) in addition to the usual TSS tricks. Arbitrations about the sets included what to use as Forry's fourth move and what kind of Tyranitar would be best. Despite assuming that he would bring Starmie or Swampert as his bulky water in a modern balance/TSS line-up, I was still worried about how much the team struggled against fat builds (in the "hardwalled by MiloCune" way). As such, I ended up deciding he would not use the one currently called "bad mon Mag" and put Boom on Forry over the more classic Earthquake to be able to dent fat Pokémon. Tyranitar ended up using Thunder with the same reasoning and since it only really needed to trap Gengar and set-up Sand, I went for a mixed set with a BoltBeam coverage, Focus Punch and Pursuit. Kind of walled by Swampert, but him bringing Swampert was pretty good news for the team as a whole regardless so I did not mind that much. Another antifat option I considered was Snatch Blissey, but I really liked Wish for the extra longevity it brought to my other Pokémon and the two other tricks seemed to be just enough.
star also bringing Forry TSS was definitely on the "bad surprise" end of the spectrum as far as I'm concerned, since he had little of those in his scouter and I thought it was not something his helpers were especially fan of either. The future proved me even more wrong as it used it several times afterwards in the tournament x_x. The game was off a good start as this particular set of Mixed Tyranitar managed to surprise him and KO his Salamence early on. I've heard some criticism about me making risky plays at the beginning, such as not checking a fire move on Blissey or staying in with Tyranitar against Swampert at the risk of getting HP Grass'd. However I can't say I regret any of those; Fire Blast Blissey is pretty uncommon those days and neither star nor BKC or ABR had used it in the past. At that point in the game he only had Salamence and Blissey revealed and it was much more likely for the Salamence to be mixed, for him to have a Mag in the back or for him to use a Starmie control type of balanced than for him to have a fire move on Blissey, and I was not really to give up momentum only over this uncertainty. As for the Pert stay-in thing, I had a lot of SpDef on Pert which meant that even if he had HP Grass - which I also doubted - it would not have been enough to score a KO. However, Torrent boosted Surf would have hurt him seriously and he did not know whether or not I had a Gengar in the back, so he could not afford to take what would also have been a risk on his end - and he did not.
I managed to secure what I think was a decent upper hand until Turn 17, at which I took yet another risk by letting my Forry in against Fire Punch Jirachi to remove the Spikes on my end of the field to secure a complete positional advantage, thinking he might want to predict my Moltres coming in on it again - which would have put me in a great position if not for Toxic being around. Even if Forry being chipped was not catastrophic per se, I'm not sure the risk was worth the reward even now (plus there is the failed prediction aspect which makes you look what an idiot, but the visible difference between an idiot and a genius can be thin in Pokémon). I still managed to get Forry out of SToss range a few turns later by pivoting on one of his Blissey's status move and threatening it with a nice Boom so that I could Wish pass on it later (in hindsight I played all this game much more agressively than usual, but eh). This however gave him the opportunity to remove the layer of Spikes I had on his end of the field by double switching on the Wish turn, which was pretty sad and made me lose my advantage. To be honest I should have predicted that one by pivoting into Tyranitar (which happened to be hardwalled by Jirachi anyway) or something. Double switching prediction is not an exact science by any mean but that was one of the two big oversights I made this game. With it, the balance was restored and everything was still possible for both sides...and then Aerodactlyl came in against my Salamence.
I was not sure what he would do exactly. I had a solid Aerodactly check in Swampert and two good pivots in Forry and Tyranitar. He could Rock Slide, Double Edge or double switch. Rock Sliding was a waste of momentum against Swampert, but Double Edging a pivot on Forry or on Tyranitar was equally bad if not worse. There were a lot of options to think about depending of our respective appreciations of the situation. I spent a minute thinking, which was long but in hindsight may not have been enough, before going to the default Pert which could always be healed easily through Wish later since it hardwalled most of his team. Sure enough, he clicked Double Edge and got a critical hit, which was awfully bad. A few weeks later, I think I should have gone into Forry since I did not really care about it being chipped and I could always heal it later - a move without any large reward since it would have given him the opportunity to send in his own Forry and led to some troubled patterns, but without such a large risk either. Instead of that this turn turned out the worst possible way and my team started to unravel faster than any wool pelotte from there. I tried some heroic double switches and predictions with my MixMence with the hope of fishing a Brick Break critical hit on his Blissey and re-even the odds a bit myself, but it did not work out.
That was all in all an interesting first game to have. I think I had a pretty bad appreciation of the risk/reward balance in several occasions, which made me lose whatever upper hand I may have managed to gain at some points. I think the situation was fairly even before the critical hit which put me in a losing position immediatly, but given how I played before I think he may very well have outmanoeuvred me at some point afterwards. A frustrating match to some extent, but at least it made up for a good reminder of what I had to work on.
Week 4 vs. Golden Sun
Moving forward, I was paired against Golden Sun Week 4. I did not know much about him besides the fact that he was a veteran like few others in the community and liked balanced teams. However I had a strong opinion about the manager behind him and I was sure that CALLOUS was able to spend tens of hours crafting what he perceived to be the perfect counterteam against my usual style - safe TSSs, solid BKC teams and such. Aurella super duper matrix scout did not give me any especially usable insight on GS' preferences so I only gave myself two guidelines about my team choice this week:
The further from my usual trends, the better.
Be good against balanceds if possible.
Pretty simple right? Well I can assure you that going out of your comfort zone - of what you like - on purpose for an important SPL game is not exactly really easy. I spent a lot of time browsing through teams and archetypes, reading lot of past posts and metagames takes and skimming through tens of replays to find a new soul mate.
[00:32] Hclat:
this is a creative set you might want to consider. I know it seems weird bc youve never used it before, but it's kinda like a cbmence that outspeeds everything
Aerodactyl @ Choice Band
Ability: Rock Head
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Double-Edge
- Rock Slide
- Hidden Power [Flying]
- Earthquake
Prinz really wanted me to use something similar to his Week 1 team against dekzeh last year () and I spent quite a few time trying to make something out of it, but it never felt right so I ended up giving up (plus it was MixMence weak). While in the middle of my quest for renewal, I ended up posting a rain team I got from undi when I was helping him during the last CI (), to which hclat replied that rain may not be a bad idea against Golden Sun. I actually stopped and took a minute to think about it, which triggered a PTSD from the aforementioned CI. This prompted me to have a second look at linear's team dump in which I discovered a rain from hclat which looked just fine in . After a few tweaks and testgames in which the Suicune set ended up being able to autowin a lot of match-ups, I made up my mind: rain it would be.
Omfg, I'm glad I did not bring a good old TSS because this SURE feels like a complete counterteam. I made good use of the rain practice sessions beforehand by removing the Tyranitar as soon as possible with Zapdos and Dugtrio, thinking by turn 3 I was facing some kind of Magneton offense as he revealed DD Mence (although it ended up being a slighlty bulkier team). The actual match-up was clearly not what he expected and I managed to have all his team revealed, Milotic crippled after I managed to connect a Thunder & the weather reset by turn 14. The first bit of issue appeared a few turns later, as he guessed that my beloved Suicune was in fact walled by his Salamence due to not using Ice Beam and pressured me a bit from there. No problem though, I revealed my Gengar as he Earthquaked, predicting Jirachi to come in, and immediatly doubling out to Dugtrio, removing his Blissey. He tried to revenge kill it with Milo but I got a full para, which allowed Dug to get a second kill in a row. To be honest I'm still unsure whether or not the FP was a curse or a blessing. I had a decent lead after Bliss' removal and Milotic was not a problem by any mean as Jirachi was permawalling it and could even afford to Wish pass to the rest of the team. However, Milotic's immediate death meant that he was forced to take on the offer of a free DD Mence set-up on the EQ-locked Dugtrio. I pivoted into my bulky Gengar, who as pretty much all the ADV metagame was able to live a +1 hit from Mence. He would always DD a second time, so on my end came the big question: WoW or Ice Punch this 95% Mence? I knew from the Cune hit he took earlier than he had a bit of SpDef, although the roll did not reveal much more than that. At that point I was very paranoid about WoW missing, even though I still had Kingdra in the back. Ice Punch had the benefit of having a 100% accuracy, being able to crit, freeze, and also put the Mence's in Cune range.
Based on the few (in hindsight, probably outdated) Salamence spreads I had on hand I expected something like...
0 SpA Gengar Ice Punch vs. 4 HP / 136 SpD Salamence: 282-332 (85.1 - 100.3%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO into
192+ SpA Suicune Surf vs. 4 HP / 136 SpD Salamence: 65-77 (19.6 - 23.2%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery
...which should have been enough to knock out a Salamence at 95%, even with the Lefties recovery.
In reality, he had a bit more SpDef than that and it looked like:
0 SpA Gengar Ice Punch vs. 0 HP / 192 SpD Salamence: 265-312 (80.3 - 94.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
192+ SpA Suicune Surf vs. 0 HP / 192 SpD Salamence: 61-72 (18.4 - 21.8%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery
which is not quite as good.
The result was a midroll on my end, which left Salamence winning the duel at 23% and my position becoming a bit unstable. But no issues right? There was still private Kingdra in the back, which was pretty much always out of range even from +2 HP Flying and could KO with Ice Beam without any troubles.
Salamence used Rock Slide!
(The opposing Dawn Rifle lost 61% of its health!)
The opposing Dawn Rifle flinched and couldn't move!
Jokes on me. He went for the winning play and won, letting Mence sweep the rest of my team effortlessy.
I was bit melancholic after this game. I went out of my way to play something unusual, effectively foiling the machievalic counterteam I assumed was coming, played decently, but still lost (and I think thats the week our hopes of making it to the playoffs more or less disappeared). Well, that's Pokémon for you. Sometimes you will do bad and win, sometimes you will do okay and lose. At least both GS and I played to the best of our abilities, so I can't say it was a bad game by any mean. With all this considered, someone once said "losing happens but we really gotta stop losing". I still had a couple chances to play, so let's keep going!
Week 5 vs. tamahome
Week 5 was pretty interesting from my point of view as it was another Ruiners vs. Classiest showdown as in last year's finals...except I somehow ended up switching sides at some point. And surely enough, I would also be facing my former teammate tamahome, a great guy & player I had a lot of respect for. We spent months last year helping one another over the ADV slot and played tens of games, and because of that he was probably the opponent I knew the best this season. Still, business is business and even if we were out of the tournament by then, I did not want to give him too easy of a victory.
Honestly though, this week was probably the hardest of them all. I had a lot to look for IRL and IVL, and I was up against a very versatile player who left little room for counterstyling. If anything, I thought he would not bother too much taking into account my own trends due to the low sample of recent relevant games by me and the influence of hclat, proven last week through the rain offense. He would rather bring something he felt good with and pilot it to victory. My opinion was that this match would mainly be won or lost on the playing field, not in the builder. I was not super motivated after last week's setback against Golden Sun and although I considered a lot of teams from P2 Offense to Skarm TSS with hclat to bounce ideas off, but nothing really felt good to play in test games - if anything, I found a lot of match-ups to look unwinnable (everyone is prepared against Skarm TSS u.u), which did not improve my mood. 4h before the game I was pretty much tired of all that, deleted the multiple variations of the same TSS I was working on and started to look for stuff I thought I would find actually fun to play. This ended up being junky with things like ft Endure Salac Dugtrio and others. 1h30 before the game hclat, who is somewhat of a mad scientist himself, suggested I could use a Jynx team (while Prinz was preaching the virtues of offense). I played one test game with the Jynx team against hclat (and won!) 10 minutes before the match. At that point I was just like "let's get over with it, Jynx it is" and so the match started.
The game ended up being very straightforward, but I guess it is not a bad thing from time to time. Jynx managed to get Skarmory asleep and trade herself for the opposing Tyranitar with Dugtrio's assistance, which the rest of my team very much appreciated. Skarm woke up earlier than expected, but Celebi was still able to poke a bit at the opposition see what was behind, and it looked like a pretty passive team for once, which surprised me a little. I think I played pretty suboptimally against the Jirachi, but it was kind enough not to burn my Dugtrio during my clumsy trapping attempt so I suppose it ended up well for me. Kingdra managed to reset the weather soon enough with my two Baton Pass users keeping up the pressure on the opposing team. Claydol joining the party was a bit worrying since I was not 100% sure who to sack, but Kingdra looked like the less useful of the remaining folks out there so I let it take the boom. Who to send afterwards was the endgame defining decision; the pros and cons all of options were pretty clear at that point so I just had to trust my guts feeling and put myself in tama's shoes based on everything I knew about him. A bit of a gamble, but Dugtrio managed to trap Celebi effectively, allowing Zapdos to clear the remaining two Electric-weak Pokémon.
That was a turn of events I can't say I expected at the beginning of the week but having scored a win after all this time spend on SPL felt really good and washed away my previously bad mood. I'm a bit sad it had to be made at tama's expense of all people, but that's inherent to the nature of competition I guess. I really like the team I used and I have been spamming it in friendlies and such afterwards, so 10/10 recommendation by hclat here.
Week 6 vs. McMeghan
Last but not least, Week 6. I knew coming in that it would be my last match this SPL as I would be leaving in vacations next week and would not have enough time to actually prepare for a high level match (hclat requested to play linear the week after and I did not really care about playing the very last one so he would be the one doing it as well). I was down 1-2 at that point and paired against Roro, one of the site's greatest players and someone I had a lot of respect for ever since I started to have a look at Smogon's competitive scene in 2014~2015. This was the first time we would play in a tournament match, and for it to be in ADV for SPL really made me look forward the game. Plus I still had this optimism boost from having won the last week, telling myself that even taking all the rest into account, if I managed to end up at 2-2 with victories over Roro and tama, this SPL would not be too shameful (at least not as much as the last one~).
Now I did not expect Roro to be an easy opponent to take down by any mean. He is a much better player than me with possibly more years spent playing gen3 than all the ADV guys in our team put together plus the possible assistance of vapicuno, whose grasp over the metagame and innovation ability are second to none, to bounce off ideas. Still, there were things to work on and some preferences visible in the scout (lots of Jirachi, Claydol and Celebi, little from no Gengar, etc). Heracross and other fighting type breakers looked pretty good, but I also happened to state Day 1 that...
[16:17] Teclis: given his high Jira usage I believe we have no choice but to use Camerupt
[16:17] Teclis: metagame solved
...which was taken very seriously by hclat in the aftermath of our Lord's comeback. We proceeded to experiment very seriously on the Camel, but it ended up being quite hard to make work consistently. It was like if we were building and playing with an handicap so the idea was deemed too risky and we moved forward, although hclat kept playing with a particular offense he created in (and beat linear with it afterwards).
We then tried to come up with good Hera stuff, but it simply did not work really well in test. I decided to give Hariyama a try and started to dig all the Hariyama teams who had seen usage in tournaments over the last six months. It ended up as a nice melting pot but I was not really convinced in test games, so I experimented with other Skarm TSS featuring various Gengar sets (Hypnosis + Focus Punch, DBond paired with Aero). Alas, nothing here really worked either. In retrospect, this week was probably the one in which I had the worst testgames winrate since I've started to play in tournaments. I barely remember winning any game at all (despite some cursed things showing up), which did not really make me feel confident in my ability to win the match. At the end of it I was close from a mental overheat similar to the previous week and my final choice (made one minute before the game) was between the latest version of the Yamateams and hclat's Camerupt Gaming offense above (aka between the byproduct of hours of efforts to explore an archetype and the funny option). Sadly I lacked the courage to pull the trigger and ended up loading the safe stuff.
Lead Zapdos was well within expectations given how good the Pokémon is right now and meant a free Knock Off on my end. Thunderbolt did not do much, hinting at a SpDef set, and him revealing Skarmory afterwards confirmed I would be dealing with some kind of Zapdos/Skarm/TTar/Pert TSS with filler possibly including Gengar, Blissey, Celebi or Jirachi. Facing Skarm was pretty good as far as I was concerned since Forry has a good natural match-up against it, so I was able to Spin away the first layer of Spikes...only to face surprise spinblocker Breloom which set me asleep with its Talent. This had the benefit to reduce his possible last Pokémon to Jirachi, Blissey or Celebi as there was no place for Gengar in that kind of build. Still, handling the Breloom could prove to be a problem so I spent the next few turns trying to keep Spikes off my side of the field and playing around it. The match-up looked pretty good so far with my team being able to handle everything I was expecting, so I ended up setting a Spikes myself (at the cost at allowing one on my side) to start punishing whatever switches and double switches he might try to pull off to pressure me. Even better, I managed to have him Spore my pretty much useless Tyranitar T17, meaning Breloom would be much more easy to manage.
A bit later, he ended up revealing his Zapdos to be Agility and passed it to a Celebi, meaning it had to be Swampert last. That was still within expectations/ the scope of what he showed the previous weeks though and I had my own SpDef Perish Song Celebi ready to counter any CM Sweeper or Pass chain. I however made a small mistake about the Celebi set, assuming it was Giga Drain/HP Fire/CM/Baton Pass and overlooking the possibility of it being your classic Superbi since it is a Pokémon I don't have in high esteem. It having Psychic or not would normally not have mattered since my own Celebi was as good of a counter to the Zapdos + Bi pass core as you might hope with Sand and 1 Spikes up, but the opposing Celebi ending up getting a critical hit on mine at the second Hidden Power Fire I allowed landing (in what was also a much higher roll than the first HP Fire had let me hope to). Mr."As good of a counter as you might hope" died to Sand, forcing me to send my second check in Salamence, hoping it would not happen to be Psychic but thinking I still had a bit of room to play around it. Alas it had both Psychic and another critical hit under its belt, so my attempt at Wishing and pivoting away ended up being unsuccessful as Salemence dropped too. I gave setting up Jirachi a try with the wishful thinking that I had a shot if the Swampert happened to be a mono Surf set without Roar (or if I was able to freeze it) but this was not the case, and thus ended my last game this SPL.
I find it funny that despite how nerve wracking the preparation for this week was I still ended up getting a fairly good match-up (proof that it paid to some extent) & I don't think I played terribly bad despite a few awkward turns. The opposing Celebi happened to be on steroids regardless so it broke through my defensive core much easier than expected, which is what it is. I felt pretty sad after this game but at that point I was pretty much done playing this SPL regardless so it was just a "whatever, it's Sunday evening, let's go to sleep and move forward tomorrow" type of mood. At least I did not really mind losing to Roro since I had a lot of respect for him and his team (in which I had a couple friends) still had a chance to make it to the playoffs, but the game itself was a bit worse than I wish it would have been.
Conclusion
And so this SPL ended for me. Despite the bit of melancholia I felt after some games and a not so good final 1-3 record, I'm overall pretty satisfied with how it went on my end (forgetting the fact that we ended up being the worst team of the tournament). I think I played much better than the previous edition on average despite the final record being pretty similar and it gave me a bit of hope about not being completly irredeemable as a pilot. Even if I don't have as much motivation to improve or reach a satisfying level as a few years ago, having seen this ray of light means that I'll keep trying my luck in tournaments here and there and maybe reach a somewhat good/consistent level on the way.
Personal stuff apart I did not make any s/o after the end of the tournament so I'll use this opportuniy to thank HANTSUKI and Prinz for bearing with me and giving me the opportunity to play again on the big stage against players I have a lot of respect for, Hclat for the crazy amount of help and support he gave me when preparing, and the Ruiners at large for being a bunch of great characters I, all in all, had a lot of fun with. I hope we will get the opportunity to play alongside each other once more in the future! Thanks also to all the SPL hosts, participants but also spectators. All of you are part of what makes this tournament amazing!
This post is already super long even by my standards so I'll stop the avalanche of words here. See ya around!
Gonna do it like Kevin last year, don't wanna share the imports because I haven't built a lot of new things yet but I will do a brief showcase of the teams I used this year. My teambuilding philosophy was very much like BKC's last year, explained in his intro. I never really tried to win in the builder, but rather brought solid & tested stuff that I had a feeling would do well vs my opponents. I tested and solified a bunch of teams before the tournament started to make sure I was as sharp as possible in the tier, which helped a lot.
When I was scrapping on the ladder testing and honing my teams before the tournament, I ran into someone (turned out to be linear) who was using a Dual Spin team with Forretress and Claydol. I immediately noted down the idea because I really liked it. With Claydol spinning, I could use Forretress without a Pursuiter and even use all the anti-spinners moves I wanted on it. This felt like a good idea vs Odin and I put the team together, tested it on the ladder and it worked very well!
One of my framework when using Forry/Skarm that I try to pursue is pairing them with a Wisher and a good MixedWall (those really feast on Forretress teams otherwise). Jirachi was used because it gave the team more pacing than Blissey and provided a solid Rock resist since I'm not a fan of Claydol as the only one in general.
4 Atk Ttar (enabled once again, because no need to Pursuit with Claydol) + Roar Zap + Spikes made for a good early/mid game damage distribution, and Forretress can keep Spikes vs Starmie/Claydol thanks to HP Bug while keeping Magneton/Metagross at bay with EQ and even Boom later when I need/can do it. Jirachi (PhysDef here) keeps the team together while spreading some poison. I also like having Wish support with Roar Zap because I really wanna avoid having to Rest with it as it can be hard to wake up and sink the momentum away otherwise.
Aero rounds the team together as a cleaner, I've found the team to have difficulties with Lum DDTtar in testing and I realized I could tech HP Fighting on it because you don't really need to hit into Fighters/Celebi weakness with Spikes / Roar Zap. Worked wonder in the actual game too.
I don't know exactly how I got there, but this started as a revamp of my SubJirachi ParaSpam that I posted in the Gen 3 Team Dump thread. Anyway, it's a very resilient team with good Offensive pressure if needed.
Forretress + Pursuit Tyranitar, backed up by Pert as the Rock resist this time, with Roar because I like to have a Phazer on every team just in case, and with Spikes it feels even more justified. Like I said for the previous team, I like to have Wish and a MixedWall with Forretress, so I went with Jirachi. The problem at this point is that I found myself quite weak to Zapdos (dont like relying on Jirachi for Zap, it gets paralyzed and then it's so much worse). I also needed a good Suicune answer, especially because Salamence used to be a Moltres, to bring me offensive power and Spikes abuse. Bliss entered the team as a special wall that could handle Moltres/Zap and even Cune with a Snatch set.
Tested the team a lot with Moltres and I wouldn't find it particulary amazing, and even hated how misspredicting vs Fighters got me OHKOd by Rock Slide. Tried Mence and it felt a lot better. I've had experience before the tour with RoarMixMence + Spikes and it'd feel broken, giving the team a lot of offensive power, checking Fighters and phazing Cune easily with the help of Blissey.
As for the game, the early crit vs Forretress set me back but I knew I could get it back in shape with some Leftovers and Wish support. Swampert shuffled the whole team around with Spikes and Salamence finished the job. I just had to be careful around Dug/Cune and play my cards right to prevent them from making a comeback.
I originally wanted to use Hariyama vs Marcop but couldn't land a build that fit my tastes, so I defaulted to some "tried & true" team tested on the ladder before the tour. Out of the options I was considering, I picked the worst one vs what I ended up bringing.
Anyway, this is an old Ojama build, that I wanted to modernize as it was sitting in my builder for a while now and didn't like some of the moveset choices in the current meta. The team has two Choice Banders for direct damage, two setuppers (CMCune CMJira) for longer games, two Boom options to unlock games and longevitity between Wish Jirachi and the overall solidity.
It's an example of a "beat down the spiker and spin" kind of team, with CB Brick Break Meta to weaken Waters and Spikers while avoiding a Mag Trap, Adamant CB Mence for the extra damage, and Jirachi trying to keep them healthy until Cune/Jira can win. Blissey was FireIce coverage since I have my own RoarCune to deal with opposite Cune, and Fire coverage helps a lot to prevent Spikes from coming back up or at least punishing them from attempting to doing so.
Unfortunately, one of the most modern trend this tour was Zap into BeatUp Dug, which are EVd for Modest Blissey. I knew this but because of my indecisiveness, I decided I'd risk it for this game. Got thoroughly owned and the crit vs Claydol didn't help, but to be honest, I don't think I ever stood a shot considering some of things that happened in and out the game (needed to get the kill roll vs Ttar with Jirachi, Adamant Salamence being slower than both BP Zap & Celebi, effectively never really threatening them while I was dying from Sand). My biggest regret team-wise this tournament. The team isn't terrible but ZapDug and ZapOffense in general dictate the pace a bit too much for my liking against it.
You may notice by now that this is my third Forretress team. Before SPL, I had like 0 Forretress in tournaments, but ever since I tried it again and adapted my play with it (more conversative with its health and less greedy for spikes early), I've been converted. This team was my first New Forre Style build and I brought it vs Tama because he isn't all about counterstyling, so I could "risk it" here, despite already using it 2/3 times.
The team has the best mixed wall in the game in Milotic, PursuitTtar, and WishBliss to support Forry. Salamence (RoarMix) was added because I wanted a Phazer that isn't Ttar (too Dug prone) and a Fighting answer + offensive pressure. Finally, Breloom was added because it'd bring a Rock resist, more offense (Sleep is so good), and help vs DDTar thanks to Mach Punch (only need some chip to finish it off). Moreover, it could help kill Dugtrio with Mach Punch into Tyranitar, to avoid losing Blissey against Special Dug teams.
This team is very Gengar weak if Tyranitar doesn't land the trap, and sadly, getting crit by that Cloyster put me out of the game entirely pretty much. Cloyster can also put a lot of pressure and I decided my best way to answer it was to set up Sand and Crunch it once, as I could always Wish Tyranitar back up with Blissey anyway. Just a game to forget, sometimes there is some luck more aggravating than other. However, I decided I'd try bring teams with a bit more pace from then on, as I wanted to avoid those nightmare scenarios again.
With this team, I was going back to my preferences of ZapCele offense, with a little sprinkle of Spikes in the form of Skarmory. Shout-outs to Altina because I pretty much got the team from him after some brainstorming, which I've adapted to my liking.
I usually don't like Skarmory on such builds, but I've grown to appreciate it because it can act as a punchingpag early game to avoid crucial damage on Celebi/Swampert, and Spikes are obviously never bad. Here they even compliment the breaker set that Tyranitar is wielding (Fire/Grass/Fight/Rock). Basically, the team can either break through Ttar + Spikes, and against builds equipped to deal with that (think MiloSpin), you have CMBP Celebi. The Zapdos is AgilityPass, which can help the entire team, and they're all EVd to potentially profit from it. Skarm is Taunt here because it's a team meant to be played fast and you wanna avoid free Spikes as much as possible.
SubCM Jirachi to rounds things off, solid defensive typing but also one of the most terrifying CM/Agility recipient in my opinion. SubCM Jirachi is good as is, but if you make it outspeed everything, there won't be many things standing in its way. Zapdos also had Toxic, which can force Blissey out if you wanna BP on a non-status move, and also because if you catch Pert/Ttar with it, it's all the better for Jirachi.
As for the game, it was disputed but I got behind with some bad luck against MixMence (a real threat at that) and Zapdos. However Jirachi got lucky back in the endgame with an Ice Punch freeze and took it home.
A revamped version of a team I built with TDK a while ago and used in various tournaments. It's quite straightforward. Zap+Spikes, 3Atk Celebi and Breloom being strong vs teams with traditionally good Spikes matchup.
This time, the sets have been adapted to reflect the change in the lineup. It's not a CM chain team anymore, and Breloom will have to do the breaking, supported by a novelty Salac max speed Tyranitar. This set can trap more things in a pinch, such as Salamence and Starmie and also get to fit Taunt in the moveset to prevent Spikes from going up. Zapdos was once again AgilityPass, as I found it had the best benefits for the team, potentially giving Celebi or Breloom a way to be more dangerous in the lategame. It also helps Zapdos itself if need be obviously.
This was for sure my luckiest game of the tournament. Teclis was well prepared for me, with Perish Song Celebi kinda blanking me once he sleepfoddered his Tyranitar. I was a bit surprised he stayed with Forre vs my Breloom as it was very important in this match-up and I thought he'd avoid taking a Focus Punch for free. Once we both got a Spikes down, I tried to play as offensively as possible, because I'd just lose long term otherwise. My strategy was to get Tyranitar on Celebi while it's under Perish Song to land a Pursuit on it, which would allow my Celebi to become more dangerous should I set-up with it again.
Looking at the replays from SPL for inspiration, one of the team I liked the most was starmaster's Raikou Lead team that he used vs linear. It was similar to that team I posted and used a lot throughout the year, but felt more solid defensively, which I was all for. He was kind enough to let me take a look at the team and I adapted it to my liking.
So this is pretty much a Zap Dug Gar team, but with a different special Lead so Zapdos can be used in the back, since it's pretty good at trading 1v1 with anything, which is kinda the theme of this team. Just good stuff put together. I really like the use of breaker Ttar again (Fire/Grass/Fight/Rock). Very good solo breaker while keeping some defensive utility. Zapdos is Toxic to give you an easier time at removing Blissey even if you miss it from the lead strategy.
The point of the lead here, is to trade a kill with things like Tyranitar, Metagross or Blissey, which are always buffer if not straight up walls to your Zapdos and Gengar. You won't kill those mons with the lead, but Dug will finish them off. Dug can also remove Celebi thanks to its tanky spread, which works for everyone here really. The idea is start with the momentum of your side, which is why star had Raikou. Great vs Zapdos offenses. I thought I'd be slick and use Jynx myself. I wanted some more offensive pressure and I felt like adding Sleep to the mix would be perfect. I made it Ice Beam/Fire/Taunt to prevent recovery/setup of all kinds and made sure I'd keep things in range of Dug. Fire is to put Meta in Dug range and prevent Forre from spiking on you. Technically I could be greedy and use LK against Ttar/Meta lead, but I dont wanna miss or run into Lum and then not KO with Dugtrio, that's pretty much an instant loss.
As for the game, securing the kill on what turned out to be Pursuit Ttar lead made Gengar a real monster, and it carried that game hard. I just had to play as aggro as possible to avoid getting grinded out by the combo of Flygon/Gengar/Zapdos with Spikes down. At the end, I didn't expect Protect Zap and it was prob more optimal to Ice Punch before Booming but I didn't get punished for it at least. I was afraid of some Modest Agility crits...
Probably my most creative team this tournament, with the closest and most interesting game to boot.
I had this idea of using this old Loom set (Sub/Leech/Spore/FP), which could potentially 1v1 anything, especially if I could make it faster than whatever it'd face (>AgilityPass Zap). To create this situation, I wanted Pokemons that could trade kills hence why I went with CB Gross/CurseBoomLax and EndPert. CBTtar was chosen because it's not really expected mid-game (coming after a Boom) and is good at netting OHKOs, sometimes unexpected.
The game was very close and we both got into a situation, at least for me, where we had no choice but to play the speedtie. I was very weak to Jolly Loom when ours clashed, and with my Zapdos poisoned and his Blissey alive, I couldn't afford to switch around. My Loom won it and went on a killing spray this game. The endgame was a bit messy, but when I sacked my Tyranitar to spikes and had to pick something to send vs 4% Jirachi; I figured Swampert would always win the game, because all I had to do was to weaken Loom to have it in range of Zapdos. Sending Zapdos directly could lose me the game vs Loom if he instantly woke up (which he ended up doing) as the poison damage would accumulate. I quickly realized that Star could play around my Pert spamming Sub thanks to the way Focus Punch works, which is why I Endeavored once and then tried to hit the Pump that'd always leave Loom in Tbolt range. My last move wasn't Ice Beam but Swagger, otherwise that game was over. Anyway, from that point, star played very well and got the breaks he needed to claw his way back out of big disadvantage.
A month later (lol), it occured to me that I would have won had I sent Loom and not Zapdos or Swampert after the Ttar sack. By spamming Focus Punch, I always kill Jirachi (thanks to Leech) or Breloom there, and no matter what happens, Zapdos finishes the job!
Overall pleased with my tournament; biggest regrets are the team choice vs Marcop and the endgame vs star. Thanks again to Altinavapicuno and Star for bouncing back ideas.
Hclat's SPLXII Recap and teams
), to which hclat replied that rain may not be a bad idea against Golden Sun. I actually stopped and took a minute to think about it, which triggered a 
a try and started to dig all the Hariyama teams who had seen usage in tournaments over the last six months. It ended up as a nice melting pot but I was not really convinced in test games, so I experimented with other Skarm TSS featuring various Gengar sets (Hypnosis + Focus Punch, DBond paired with Aero). Alas, nothing here really worked either. In retrospect, this week was probably the one in which I had the worst testgames winrate since I've started to play in tournaments. I barely remember winning any game at all (despite some 
