Week 2 review:
triangles vs
BIHI (
W)
This was a strange game, perhaps due to Triangles's team. None of the mons on it are particularly out there but the arrangement is very far from standard. Anyway, the match starts with Triangles leading Metagross and BIHI leading Tyranitar. You'd assume Metagross would have the upper hand in such a matchup, but Triangles switches to Salamence immediately, catching an Earthquake. BIHI's move is less questionable, as you often see either fast or bulked out Tyranitars staying in to trade for damage. I assume BIHI was trying to follow that up with a Magneton trap to further enable his SD pass offense. In hindsight, the Triangles move made sense as you can see from his team composition that Metagross is his only (real) Rock resist. He probably came into the game with that Salamence pivot as a set piece to scout out his opponent's moves. Knowing this you can assume Triangles wanted to lead Metagross in hopes of luring out Skarmory early and set it up for an easy trap. This is pretty well thought-out but ultimately backfired as BIHI didn't bring Skarm.
Triangles avoids disaster early by pivoting his Mence out of an unsuspected Ice Beam, which hits Ludicolo. Just seeing BIHI's Tyranitar set here, and how he played, you can assume he has a Magneton in the back: turn 1 EQ is a pretty good tell usually. This narrows down BIHI's team archetypes to a few styles only. On turn 4 you can already guess what BIHI is playing; SD Celebi with Magneton means it's SD Pass. He'll have a bunch of physical sweepers like Metagross, Aerodactyl, Salamence, Gyarados, etc.. Triangles catches a break early as Leech Seed misses and his Metagross gains an Attack boost, forcing a hasty Celebi BP. In comes the aforementioned Magneton as BIHI trades it for damage on Triangles's Metagross.
Triangles makes a pretty good read on turn 12, blowing up his Meta for BIHI's all important Celebi. BIHI quite evidently had nothing that wanted to deal with Meta, and Triangles REALLY wanted Celebi gone to enable his Ludicolo and unrevealed Suicune. This was a gigantic swing and puts him in a good spot, with the only issue being giving up a bit of insurance against Aerodactyl, which is common on teams like BIHI's. This should be manageable between Salamence and Suicune, though. The issue lies with the double down turn, as Triangles decided to directly go to his weakened Ludicolo; all 3 of BIHI's possible lasts (Aero, Salamence, Gyarados) would easily beat Ludi. Meanwhile Ludi still had some pretty good value, threatening both Metagross and Tyranitar. Anyway, Triangles is forced to let Ludi go as BIHI went to Aero.
We then enter the crucial phase of the game, with Triangles having a decent advantage, but BIHI holding some outs. Triangles has a 100% Suicune in and BIHI follows up a Tar KO with Metagross. Both players set up, and then Triangles tries to catch the boom by going straight to Magneton -- catching an EQ. This move seems justifiable as Aero appears massively threatening and preserving Suicune on a Meta boom would basically win the game unless BIHI gets a series of flinches. However, Triangles still holds a massive advantage if Meta booms there since his Mence is DD and he has a Lax in the back. If BIHI blows up the Meta he won't really have anything that can hold up to an Intimidate supported Lax anymore, unless again he gets consecutive flinches. There just wasn't much upside to that home run try, and the failed attempt set him back immensely.
The game then ends with Meta sweeping for BIHI. Even if he hadn't gotten the crit on Lax, Meta would have been free to fish for raises or crits for a long time since I doubt Triangles had EQ on Lax -- he had no pursuiter. Overall, I thought it was a pretty good performance by BIHI, who just continues to make fewer mistakes than his opponent and appears to be on route to a very successful season.
Mako (
W) vs baddummy
This game was a shootout and it started right away. As mako doesn't take the time to scout anything with her Zapdos out of Tyranitar, you can tell she has pretty nefarious intentions. Her Metagross gets decked by a simple Crunch and reveals no lefties, chasing Rick's Tar out of a potential CB Mash. His Skarm takes the hit and reveals it's not CB either though, which rings either the MixMeta or Magneton alarm bells. It turns out to be the latter, but Rick's already got his spike so he has to let Skarm go. Already, you can tell Rick is using a variant of Superman since he is chasing Mag out with Flygon, a notoriously poor punishment for the Mag trap. Mako makes a very nice pivot, inviting Flygon to Protect with her Zapdos which was just the entry her Lax needed. Already on turn 7, you can tell what the teams will look like: Rick will have a special wall like Blissey or Jirachi with an assortment of levitating special threats. Mako's last 2 will be a couple of physical brutes like Tyranitar, Salamence, or Aero.
Turn 8 is exactly where the issues start for Rick. He sends his Tyranitar in on mako's Lax and hopelessly tosses out a Crunch. Given the wide array of moves Lax can run, I can understand wanting to scout, but he could have revealed EQ simply by pivoting to his Gar. Instead, he goes for the very conservative route of trading Tar's health for a Crunch and THEN pivoting to Gar to blow up. Maybe he didn't have Will-O-Wisp? This would be pretty surprising on the type of team he was running. Worst case scenario is confirmed as Lax crushes Rick's Zapdos with Return, ending up with pretty much a 3-for-1 trade.
Mako continues to put the pressure onto Rick with Magneton, finally landing a beautiful Tox on Rick's Flygon on turn 18. That was the final nail in Rick's coffin: he no longer has any healthy physical wall and Mako's using a powerful physical offense. There is a small glimmer of hope for Rick when he lands a toxic on Mako's SubDD Gyara and puts Metagross in very low health; this all disappears when Meta blows up on Blissey though. The rest of the game unfolds with a series of uneventful scripted trades confirming Mako's victory.
M Dragon (
W) vs McMeghan
As you'd expect from two 2005 joindates, the game starts with a Suicune mirror. David reveals he has Roar right away, which has the potential to be pretty concerning for Roro if his own Cune is Roarless. By turn 2 we already know Roro is running stall (as expected) and M Dragon tries to take advantage by trapping Roro's Skarm immediately; Roro saw this coming and took a careful approach, preferring to withdraw Skarm to presumably scout a potential Mag. On turn 6, David reveals his Lax and thus the win condition is pretty clear for him: clear out the Skarm, then Suicune should be able to drain all of Roro's Celebi's Leech Seed PP, then Lax will win.
M Dragon decides to entertain Roro's Celebi with his Lax and rest loop it for a few turns, not minding Leech Seed. Roro then threatens to get his Spikes up on turn 16 and invites Magneton in, doubling Dugtrio in on turn 17. M Dragon doesn't fall for the trick and stays put, as this breaks the Rest loop anyway and allows his Lax to escape with a decent amount of health. You can already see how the game will be decided: it'll be a game of cat and mouse between Skarmory, Magneton, and Dugtrio. Whichever player gets the trap first will hold an enormous advantage. M Dragon finally accepts Skarm's invitation and goes to Magneton on turn 19, however Roro went to Celebi instead, perhaps expecting one of the unrevealed mons to come in.
The next sequence has M Dragon setting up Suicune, which Roro will seemingly only be able to stop with Celebi, playing into M Dragon's game. Roro tries to hold Suicune off any other way he could until turn 33 when Celebi is forcibly dragged in and he has no choice but to waste one of his precious Leech Seeds. M Dragon takes advantage of the situation by healing his Lax with a simple switch-in, thanks to the still pristine field conditions. So far, Roro hasn't gotten much going, but he doesn't really have a good way to force progress his way either.
After the Suicunes share a couple more dances, David unleashes yet another way of making progress he has: Houndoom Pursuit trapping Celebi on turn 48. If Celebi ever goes down, there will be little Roro can do to hold off Suicune now, even with Skarm alive. Roro's hand is then forced to get progress any way he can and M Dragon takes advantage with a very aggressive Mag switch on turn 51 which catches Roro's Skarm switch. The cherry on top was M Dragon revealing Porygon2 to countertrap Duggy, protecting his Houndoom from further harm and effectively sealing the game. The rest of the game is pretty uninteresting as M Dragon's advantage is so immense even a toddler could win from there.
Overall, a very nicely played debut for M Dragon, beating the washed allegations. However, it's important to keep in mind even Mazar had tougher matchups in SPL so this loss shouldn't be held against Roro, except maybe for how predictable his team choice was.
PKLeech (
W) vs Leo
This one started with a similar turn 1 to the Mako-Rick duel, albeit with a very different result. Leo's Metagross immediately gets roasted by Fire Blast and reveals Leftovers at the same time. Leo refuses to cut his losses and pivots to Charizard and gets decked for half his health by Crunch. Leo then pulls the trigger on his third switch in as many turns and his Loom takes a massive Crunch too. By turn 4 we already know Leo is running mixed offense and know very little about Leech's team. Leech then decides he's seen enough and simplifies by trading his soldier of a Tar for the opportunity to trap Leo's Breloom. This comes at the cost of letting Zard in for free, but is soon revealed to be of no concern as Leech goes to his trusty DefMie. We now know Leech is running stall, with SkarmBliss surely waiting in the wings and that appears to be bad news for Leo.
Leech makes a strange play on turn 12 by pivoting his Dug in from Starmie on Leo's Zapdos, but upon further inspection it's pretty safe: Duggy threatens the entirety of Leo's team if it has Rock Slide (safe to assume with Blissey in the back.) I assume he didn't want Zap to BP on Bliss into a strong breaker? This ends up happening anyway on turn 13 which also reveals Meta is faster than Bliss, if there was any doubt. Leech's momentum appears to be stalling at that point. He wastes no time turning that around by spiking with Skarm on Zapdos on turn 15. He escapes unscathed as Leo BP'd. I feel like he could have taken a more careful approach, but this spike was so huge he would have been in the driver seat even if he took a Tbolt anyway. The spike enables him to switch between his defensive mons and keep them healthy while chipping away at Leo's team, putting the game out of reach.
Skarmory comes in for free again on a Pert EQ and triples down on the Spikes. The only real hurdle left between Leech and a win is Leo's Pert which is under massive pressure from all the Spikes. Leech makes a small mistake Recovering Starmie 3 times between turns 30 and 32, as this gave Leo multiple chance to crit it, and more importantly free lefties. Leo's Swampert finally goes down on turn 37 and it's now desperation DDTar time for Leo, which Leech reads perfectly and calmly traps with his still standing Dugtrio.
I think Leech should be pretty happy with this performance as he bounced back after a tough week 1. He once again used the stally stuff he uses all the time, but he played it aggressively and converted his advantages. Tough break for Leo who got benched after this, I wish him a short benching and hope he gets back soon.
SEA (
W) vs robjr
Right from the start you know SEA is gonna be unleashing some bullshit thanks to her Smeargle lead, which is a good sign for her winning chances. How turn 1 unfolds however, is not. Rob's Zapdos is somehow faster than her Smeargle yet not strong enough to knock it into Salac range. This reveals that Rob's Zap is probably one of those glue offensive sets that act as a makeshift answer to half the tier. That set is usually seen on offense. Just looking at the leads we can expect a barn burner.
SEA tosses the beagle for a free shot with Tyranitar and ends up dinging a leftiesless Meta. This Meta is quickly revealed to be CB through the Mash damage on SEA's own Meta. After a couple trades and a lucky raise, SEA finds herself with an early advantage as she can freely set up an Agility. This however is short lived: her Meta lacks Rock Slide and Rob's Zap easily deals with the threat through Thunder Wave. After a turn 8 full para, the prognostic seems grim for SEA as she's rapidly depleting ammunition without rob having to spend much of his. SEA's type of team typically requires early sacrifices to set up a huge comeback later on, this pace of losing mons will have her losing soon.
SEA uses the down turn to send her Tyranitar in once again undamaged. I thought rob made a small maneuver mistake on turn 10. Yes his Meta wasn't very useful, but SEA was very obviously a DDTar and going to use that turn to DD. Rather than waste a sack already, he could have gone directly to pert on turn 10 and having the exact same situation as his turn 12 one, except he'd have an extra sack. Anyway, Swampert sends Tyranitar packing on turn 13, but not without sustaining major damage which won't let it handle an Aerodactyl or a DD Mence anymore.
Rob's Zapdos makes another victim in SEA's Gengar by paralyzing it and dinging it for major damage. SEA then lets the weakened Gar go to rob's Tar and shifts into endgame mode, having only 2 mons left. On turn 19 we finally see... Electrode... Which is somehow tasked with sparking the comeback for SEA. It does just that I'm not sure what kind of spread Electrode runs in OU these days, but it seems like rob's Tyranitar was not very bulky from the Explosion damage. As a result I'm not convinced the lucky breaks SEA got (boom crit and RS miss against Mence) mattered much as +1 EQ would have most likely KOed Tar with a single boost and the boom damage anyway. From the way rob played this, I feel like his last mon was probably a Fighting type, which would fit in the mixed offense mold rob's team seemingly fits in. Was it maybe Heracross? This would explain why it didn't come in to face off with SEA's Tyranitar. Alternatively it could also simply be Magneton. If it was, not revenging the weak Gar with it would have been a massive mistake, so I'm gonna go with Hera.
I thought this was an unusual team choice from rob who typically plays better with more balanced types of teams, since he is a pretty conservative player. SEA however righted her week 1 wrongs and piloted the kind of surprise teams she does best with. She played very well and should be a big threat going forwards this season.
I hope you guys liked this write-up too, and if you did, see you next week!
Team Raiders: McMeghan
Stark Sharks: Mako
Congregation of the Classiest: BIHI
Alpha Ruiners: baddummy
Wi-Fi Wolfpack: robjr
Ever Grande BIGs: Triangles
Circus Maximus Tigers: M Dragon
Indie Scooters: SEA
Cryonicles: Leo
Dragonspiral Tyrants: pkThunderbolt
