won, ggs man, you did really well this tour and with some super nice teams too. also dug the username a lot.
sorry for this bigass post, didn't mean to be self-indulgent, just figured this was a good opportunity in light of the latias discussion
I watched every replay from this tournament. despite the small sample size, I thought this metagame was fantastic. it was like the last latias tournament, but less semistally, which is ironic thanks to clefable being a thing now. I don't think she's too overwhelming but time will tell. several current dpp teams work just fine with her around, if not moreso; up until semis I used my standard stall team and legitimately didn't change a thing because it naturally handles all forms of latias so well. not all teams have this luxury obviously but it doesn't throw too many things out of whack. my other go-to team until that point took a standard balance team of mine and switched starmie for specs latias to turn it into a more offensive variant that still had great backbone; a little lazy as far as implementation but it shows how well it naturally fits in, and it does the job well. I wanted to use this tournament to explore the meta a little and this way I did that. the team I fit it in was super latimence meta anyway, with gliscor + scarf rachi.
being wary of the potential issue, I tried dugtrio alongside it (and even made a magtrio team for finals that I didn't get to use) and it wasn't too bad for the same reasons dug tends to not be too bad in general, and that's without many of the weapons against it that are great vs. the whole metagame that people forget/ignore. so... who knows.
interestingly, I did not see a single scarf latias, which was fairly popular back in the day, but then again that was largely because of ddmence. still might be worth thinking about. cm roar/refresh sets definitely might've showed up at some point, especially the latter with clefable existing. just thinking of it now, lati fits in pretty nicely on those lameass para teams.
something new that I noticed showed up (already!) was a "tech" finch and I brought at the same time - in the vein of sleep talk cbnite for breloom, sleep talk specs latias for the same purpose. it's potentially a nice idea, something something pursuit but something something dnite doesn't love them either etc I think it's fine. shows development already. nice new option against rose offense as well
overall, I really think latias is worth thinking about. we'll see. thanks for hosting merritt
for anyone who'd like to peruse (and ease of browsing for any potential latias suspect discussions), here are all my other games from this tournament:
r1 vs. raspberry
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-392964 - stall doing its thing. no latias, but rasp's team does quite well against it
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-392966 - dugtrio backfiring here shouldn't serve as an example of dug backfiring but as more of a severe error in judgment of last mon on mine. I think the team is fine overall, though; I adapted it from a similar team I have from the current meta and it had similar strengths and weaknesses, don't think latias pushed it too far one way or another and this is pretty much ideal support (fancy cm setups aren't as good thanks to mss and scarfers so I find it better to just have the nuke over-and-over option especially as specs pulse is just as good sweeping-wise endgame). anyway rasp's team is more ho but with uturn ape + pursuit tar latias is not breathing easily at all, and there's ddnite + sdluke for easy setup
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-392968 - the other standard team I mentioned earlier. rasp's team fits right at home in latias.
r2 vs. excal
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-393920 - a wild latias appeared. team's fine.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-393927 - this is a current meta rmt of his (iirc), but in any case latias probably isn't the issue unless mad spikes are up and in that case those are probably the bigger problem
r3 vs. reachzero
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ubers-801799294 - reach is a legend of the old dpp days and thus I expected something old-school. my stall team matches up well against most of it (although worse against gliscor than I'd like to admit). unfortunately,
atticus' cb gyara vs. pana was also old-school and it's pretty nasty against my team. this isn't quite atticus' team (tran lead, sub champ, had a rotom, sr non-scarf rachi especially physical was rare then) but it's close enough, is REALLY powerful, and belt tar feasts on scarftar expectations. we had a pretty excellent battle, close as it gets and this one's pretty representative imo.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ubers-801811787 - see above, with more para abound
r4 vs. mazz
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-397593 - vs. kg/taylor/earthworm/august/mop/loki stall. new stall vs. old stall. latias didn't really want part of this one. was glad to see forry again
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-397601 -
earthworm and jumpluff's rmt, one of the better rmt archive teams to bust out for this tour thanks to its lack of mence, against the balance. surprised we didn't see more vashta-style ones. anyway another pretty oldschool game, stylistically. gliscor is amazing. (current meta too)
semis vs. finch
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-398864 - I decided to build something new as finch would be the kinda guy to... "counterstyle" even in an unofficial tournament which most people don't really do these days (s/o the 6 years am took while making me test with him for 2012's all gen tour finals against earthworm. losing the aesoft replays of those games crushes my heart forever... dpp tauntwow gar's first big day on the scene). anyway rather than going down the stupid rabbit hole of figuring out how he'd ct me and then trying to ct that, I decided to avoid such matchup-related pitfalls altogether and explore the meta a little more, trying some strategies that were good back then and trying again in a more modern context. sure enough he led mix flygon... because my stall team and balance team's leads were spdef tar and specstran respectively, and it also had a good matchup against both.
magnet rise magnezone kinda exists now for those who really hate protect zong stall teams but it's kind of a no-brainer when zong's that whole great anti-latias + trap/spikes pokemon. steel typing and custap assist in the anti-latias effort. cb scizor is the most oldschool thing there is and he fit well on this psuedo-dragmag. mamoswine, anti meta as ever, and he too loves a dead zong. this team was one of my best efforts for this meta, I think. the last was st specs latias.
his team was quite strong in current dpp but worked fine in latias. nice. honestly it's pretty uncommon for a current dp team to be too weak to latias unless you're loading up some frail offensive '11-'12 fwg shit and even those could probably hold their own
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-398865 - this is another strong style of balance I wanted to bring into the latias limelight with the same st specs bomb option. breloom is still terrific, as shown by my own, but having the option is fantastic, and weakening tar can be huge for the wish cm rachi I packed (and misplayed). finch put the latias into nidoqueen semistall. worked fine. again, nice.
finals
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-401688 - another style I wanted to explore that was popular back then, tspikes offense. my last was sub/tect offensive heatran, which I found excellent with tspikes and cbtar support. might consider roar on pert. groudon's team was overall solid, lati or no.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ubers-401690 - and finally, the most recognizable latimence-era style, semistall. this one was good.
I would encourage anyone and everyone who played in this tournament to give their thoughts, playing- and building-wise. for anyone else who'd like to browse more replays from the tour, they're scattered across these threads; while of course there were some duds, as was to be expected, there were a lot of really good ones.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-dpp-latias-tournament-round-5-semifinals.3641887/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-dpp-latias-tournament-round-4.3641647/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-dpp-latias-tournament-round-3.3641411/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-dpp-latias-tournament-round-2.3641159/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-dpp-latias-tournament-round-1.3640910/
glad I got to play with you again, my love. she was my smog avatar in '11, yknow
