Tournament The OLT XIII Discussion Thread

[40kultra]

bootlicker

Sorry not listening to someone that rigs brackets

 

[sire clod]

Sorry not listening to someone that rigs brackets

 

[40kultra]

Ggs larp ended

 

[Let's Rumble Shall We]

heileone’s OLT Qualification Guide

Background:
Hey everyone, I’m heileone. Recently I was inspired by my good friend Monster to make a meaningful contribution to the OLT discussion thread, since I really do agree with him that the quality of content in that thread has been declining quite a bit unfortunately. I think it's the inevitable result of the metagame dying and the playerbase becoming less passionate, but I digress.

This is my OLT qualification guide, which I’ve decided to write to help liven this thread up. Let's start with the most important question: Why should you listen to my advice? As of this OLT, I’ve now qualified for OLT in the first cycle twice in a row, and I’ve put up decent results in other trophy team tours as well (Although as you’ll learn in this guide, that's far less relevant considering how different OLT is from those tours). I think it's clear that I have at least some acumen for qualifying for this tour, so I hope that the general practices and principles I’ve collated can help you on your OLT journey as well. Without further ado, let's get into the guide!

Chapter 0: The Numbers Game

From the moment the tour starts, the result has already been determined for 97% of participants.

Some readers may be confused by this statement, but allow me to explain. OLT does not start when the cycle 1 post goes up. At the end of the day, you need to be good enough at pokemon to come out ahead of the vast majority of the roughly 400 other participants. You need to be dedicated to the game and grinding ladder outside of just during OLT with a focus on improving your own gameplay. As an example, I recently tried to audit the number of games I played across all my accounts. In the past 3 years since I first started, I’ve played roughly 25,000 games of pokemon on the ladder. That’s 25 games a day for 3 years! Of course, if you’re naturally talented for pokemon or dedicate yourself to just improvement, you could probably qualify with significantly less practice. But I would say the most important thing is that you need to be having fun. If you don’t have fun, then you’ll burn, get tired, and drop the game without committing a serious amount of time into it (And that's ok!). For the majority of readers, this is where this guide probably ends. If you aren’t good enough to qualify, then unfortunately there isn't much I can't teach you aside from “get good”, as unsatisfying as that may be.

So who is this guide for? Well, remember when I said that the outcome of the tour is determined for 97% of participants? I believe that of the 8 slots every cycle, 4 go to the players who are a cut above the rest in terms of laddering skill and can basically qualify at will. Think people like vert or nat. The remaining 4 are slots that are fought over by anywhere from 12-15 players who are good enough to qualify but not so much better that they can brute force the issue. This guide is for those 3% of signups, so if you think that might be you, keep reading! I’m sure you’ll find something insightful that will help you get over that edge and make it to the swiss stage.

Chapter 0.5: The Basics
Let’s get the basics out of the way.
Your body is a machine, and you need to keep it in good condition to perform well. Make sure that when you’re laddering, you’re well rested and well fed. Seriously, I cannot understate the importance of this. In fact, it’s probably the most important thing you as a person on the cusp of qualification can do. I know when I’m on 3 hours of sleep I play like a 1700, and I’m sure you do to whether you admit it or not. Anyway, with that out of the way, let's get onto the more specific OLT advice.

Chapter 1: In Game Strategy

This chapter is going to be broken up into two parts, How to Ladder and Team Selection.

How To Ladder:
When it comes to the ladder, CONSISTENCY IS KEY!
What do I mean by consistency?
Laddering from OLT is interesting because it’s very different from the typical tour experience in pokemon, with only Smogon Tour live tours being even somewhat similar to it. Let’s look at the goal for the average team tour. Realistically, in a team tour going positive means doing well. It means you get your “contract renewed”, so to speak. People will probably buy you if you show you can win 5 out of 9 best of ones. For OLT though, this is not the case. Even if you ignore the fact that the average OLT qualifier plays probably 15 times this amount of games, if you look at the win rates for these players, they usually are in the range of 66%-70%, with the majority of their games played at or near the top of the ladder. You need to be able to CONSISTENTLY beat players who are at the apex of the ladder to qualify. What does this mean?

Ladder rewards risky nut checks much less than tour plays.

The most important things when considering the large sample size of games played, in my opinion, are beating players worse than you, and minimizing throws. Aggressive plays that threaten to put you far behind are much better in tours, where a chaotic game played on a knife's edge can let you pick up wins against players that are “better” than you. In a tour, if you can pick up a win like this, it’s 1/9th of your tour performance. That’s a massive boon, and it's no wonder that there's a crop of players who play super aggressively like this that have come in from the tour scene! But on the ladder, it represents a much smaller portion of your overall games, and opens you up to devastating losses against players you should always be beating and unnecessary throws that will cost you huge amounts of points when you’re near qualification. In my opinion, the best way to ladder is through smart sequencing, positioning, and reserving the reads (risks!) for when you truly need to cut off a devastating line.

When it comes to laddering, consistency is the name of the game, so we want to minimize risks. And there is no better way to minimize risk than through team selection!

Team Selection:

Let's start with what type of teams you should bring:
They should be able to beat a wide variety of matchups
They should be something you are comfortable with
Most bad matchups should be outplayable(Its ok to have 1 or 2 unwinnable ones)

And that's it! Three simple criteria. The teams can be any flavor of offense, bulky offense, balance, or semistall you like, as long as it meets these 3 criteria. Now let's talk about what you shouldn't bring:
Cheese
And that's it!
Ok let me elaborate. I consider cheese to be: Stall, Screens, Sun, Webs, Rain.
Why is it bad to bring these?
The biggest reason is because they remove agency from the game. “But heileone!” you cry out, “I beat so and so spl player with scr-” Let me stop you right there. As I mentioned before, consistency is key. These styles have a very polar matchup spread that will allow you to beat players “better” than you and force you to lose against players “worse” than you. Additionally, and this is a BIG problem, if they get too popular the meta adaptation is generally very easy. I’ve seen it in two OLTs now where cheese comes out to an early lead, only to be brutally countered into oblivion down the road. In fact, if you look at the qualifiers from the past two years, only one person has qualified with cheese (THAT I CAN RECALL). That person is vert, who could probably qualify with 5 pokemon. Simply put, even if you disagree with my view here, history has shown that I am probably right about this. So don’t cheese if you want to qualify.

Chapter 2: Climbing Strategy

Let’s talk about climbing strategy.
One thing that I personally think is important in this tour is starting day 1 and maintaining a top 4-8 position throughout the tour. Starting from day three, you should be playing until you hit that position and then logging off to rest/live your life. This might be a hundred games or it might be 3 games, but the important thing is to PACE yourself and make sure you are moving at the correct speed day by day. There's no reason to play any more games, and if you play less you risk missing qualification.

DO NOT START LATER THAN DAY 2

Seriously! I don’t know why people think this isn't a massive debuff to their qualification chances! I mean sure, if you’re a beast and can qualify anyway, go for it, but this guide isn’t for you anyway. You get a massive advantage playing during the first weekend and being in a good position throughout the week! No playing catch up needed if you keep a good pace!

As you approach the last day, you should start to accelerate. On the second to last day, before you log off, you should aim to be in position 1-3, or at the very least at a high enough elo that you won’t have to play a billion games on the last day. Ideally, you would be two wins away from qualifying AT WORST. Try to be qualified by the day before or at the very least only one win away. For me, last OLT I didn’t have to play any games on the last day, and this OLT I woke up, saw that my position dropped a bit and then only played a quick game before work. This strategy also has several other advantages. If you need to play only a couple of games at the end, you can pick your battles very easily. You can wait until people with bad matchups are in game and queue, or you can actively seek out good matchups through sniping. Either way, it's a massive advantage you don't want to be giving up!

My next climbing tip is don’t throw! Consider that I only made it this cycle because all of JustFranco, crying, and Storm Zone threw qualified positions! If you are in the lead and above other people at the top, they have to come to you. Even the very best players end up with less than a 75% win rate, so by forcing others to play you make them take the inevitable risk that they drop. So why would you take that risk yourself? Just stay calm and relaxed, but be ready to queue! Ideally, if you followed the rest of the advice in this guide, you’re in a position where only one more win saves you if you’re at risk of being knocked out, and you can pick a nice battle for yourself that will get you back into that qualifying position.


Closing Remarks:
With that, that's all I have to say. Thanks for taking the time to read my guide! I hope you were able to glean something from it. And if not, then I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it! Also ban light clay.

my jolteon team isn't cheese people

 

[Storm Zone]

Okay this post came a bit late because my builder takes days to organise nowadays and other stuff has been going on, now that i have the time, i would like to give my thoughts.

First and foremost, the OLT laddering phase is always a fun period, not only does it show unique/innovative teams from each good player that signs up, you know the skill floor on the ladder is increased drastically, which means whatever wins consistently on the olt ladder is way better than what wins consistently on the normal ladder.

The Second thing i wanted to note is, burnout, ive been meaning to show y'all how to avoid burnout, its not a matter of taking a break, its mental focus and discipline, if you blindly ladder after losing a game and you lose more, you stop, the trick is to not blindly ladder after a loss like i did in cycle 1, but rather review the loss, and acknowledge that you made mistakes or things out of your power happened (hax), keep the focus, and move SLOWLY to the next game.

The Third thing is time between loading, i would say to avoid others sniping you, wait 5-10 minutes between games after you hit 1700, you are given a whole week each cycle, so manage your time wisely.

The Fourth thing is team choices, the key to qualifying is a very solid rotation, of teams that beat each other's counter teams, for example, you bring a balance, you know balance gets stomped by wellspring ceru screens which gets stomped by sun, sun gets stomped by sand and chilly, both get stomped by trick room.

Team Dump:
https://pokepast.es/f464b85d994bb90d
When i made this i wanted to be able to switch between the style i wanna win with, ceru screens or trick room, bc both win diff mus, but the power of bolt ceruledge carries all bad matchups

https://pokepast.es/337d8af6e7215473
The triple choice team i made for wcop finals vs team canada, which won us wcop, specs crown + band tealpon + booster iron hands + scarf enam healing wish, basically sd flip turn samu + iron hands + healing wish can break any team, and tealpon is always dangerous, be wary of dnite, you need to keep tera on glimm, hands can take +2 non tera ground eq, be wary of tera ground dragonite.

https://pokepast.es/61ef80701ac08961
Sd gliscor boots spam, pretty standard, me and ctc built early dlc2, i revamped and put some spins on it, it was effective this olt, i linked the bolt version bc people told me dragapult version got destroyed by zapdos, so it was necessary to have a version good into zapdos, other than that, solid team.

https://pokepast.es/240b71d356b0418b
Hydrapple team i built, possibly a contender for one of my best teams, after the modification of wisp cind, hydrapple has been a monster in every game i have used him, it is unbelievable, the damage it does and how bulky it is, also with regenerator is crazy broken af, highly recommend using this one.

https://pokepast.es/dcd7cf9428bf980a
The Whirl Islands whirlpool spam av kyurem team, this is also a contender for one of my best teams this gen, it is very, very consistent, made it during wcop as a revamp of the pecharunt one i posted last olt, its done well all wcop and for sure will perform in olt if you decide to use it.

https://pokepast.es/11b14fa5c48e0efd
When Vert used offensive sub cress in wcop, it inspired me to make this team, when i found out cress got lunar blessing, it ended up becoming one of the nastiest teams of the gen, infesting the OLT metagame to the point of no return, i apologise, please use this, you will get wins that feel unfair.

https://pokepast.es/727fdca777d9430b
The Slow chemical sun that qualld me in the ou team up tours, and did well throughout olt, now this team has alot of powerful threats like bolt and wake, even tera bug gambit but the fast hatterene is designed to defeat fatter builds and deny gweezing fog, since you outspeed gweezing, + you dont have to nuzzle blissey to outspeed it, and thus you are faster than it, psynoise split it down so bolt and wake can capitalize. Be wary of tspikes, try to kill glimm with bolt or wake.

https://pokepast.es/610af582ace30041
A gliscor heatran tealpon build i made for last olt in the game 3 vs alh3n the series where i got haxed in the quarterfinals, i made a few tweaks and modifications, to be good in this metagame. Play carefully around tusk.
https://pokepast.es/29ecc783246cecde
Cosmic Rays ceru treads jugulis screens i built during wcop, no need to go into any detail with this, remember with screens you need to play aggressively and get turns right, which is what makes it feel broken when you have strong abusers.
https://pokepast.es/21fbcbf7b7aab7a2
Rain Screens, this is a good team but, i spammed it too much now i believe people are checking to see if they beat it in the builder, give it a few weeks itll pop off again.

This was a collection of teams i built for wcop/olt, with descriptions for each, theres more but im posting the most efficient ones.


Theres a bonus team dump i wanted to share with y'all, ignore the font though, idk why the text is bigger for the bonus dump + descriptions of the teams lol.
Bonus Dump:
https://pokepast.es/1a161cf113e5121a
Overheat blaziken specs bolt offense,
just hard hitting offensive threats
with healing wish support.

https://pokepast.es/e4debbd8a8cffd34
version 2 of the team above, with
nasty plot pain split deoxys speed
which is an extremely broken mon in
the metagame rn.

https://pokepast.es/ff120c8406139eb7
ursaluna offense with gweezing, a new
structure i have been testing lately
heatran oger gweez, this is the broken
version of it, powerful team almost
impossible to beat it.

https://pokepast.es/4658088efd9043ac
The tealpon version of the team above
slightly weaker version but still very
effective, both versions patch up
each other's weaknesses.

https://pokepast.es/dfdea9c430a8084c
new sand structure i built, with
gweezing again, so with the gweezing
removal, it allows you to run sd orb
3 attacks drill which has been very
powerful all olt, features a new oger
set i invented, sub leech seed stabs,
also good into protect stall, and many
garg/balance structures, while the drill
practically massacres offense alongside
av torn and gweez,this is overall a
consistent team, just try to position
well vs kyurem.

https://pokepast.es/daec6e98bbbaf802
Tera ground soft sand ubernite offense
Standard glasses samu scarf ghold card
glimm, av physdef tera bug hatt for tusk

Okay now i wasnt gonna leak newer stuff due to being able to use it in playoffs but does it matter anyway, a good team will win whether you know it or not, and if ur hiding teams ur admitting u cant build new ones, so im completely fine with posting some new teams here, and will almost certainly post more after olt playoffs.

Here's my advice + strategy for qualifying, have a nice, 4 team rotation, doesnt have to be more than 4 teams.

Tales of a Loner: 1000-1500
Age of Extinction: 1500-1750
after the 1750 mark, you start rotating:
Evanescence/Age of Extinction/Tales of a Loner: 1750-1950
Tiger's Eye/Evanescence/Age of Extinction: 1950 all the way to top 8 and it should qualify you.

Tales of a Loner, Evanescence, age of extinction, and tiger's eye are teams listed in the team dumps above these are team names just incase you get confused.

Anyway, try my strategy for qualifying as it is very effective, let me know how it goes, pce.

 

[WhiteQueen]

a

Okay this post came a bit late because my builder takes days to organise nowadays and other stuff has been going on, now that i have the time, i would like to give my thoughts.

First and foremost, the OLT laddering phase is always a fun period, not only does it show unique/innovative teams from each good player that signs up, you know the skill floor on the ladder is increased drastically, which means whatever wins consistently on the olt ladder is way better than what wins consistently on the normal ladder.

The Second thing i wanted to note is, burnout, ive been meaning to show y'all how to avoid burnout, its not a matter of taking a break, its mental focus and discipline, if you blindly ladder after losing a game and you lose more, you stop, the trick is to not blindly ladder after a loss like i did in cycle 1, but rather review the loss, and acknowledge that you made mistakes or things out of your power happened (hax), keep the focus, and move SLOWLY to the next game.

The Third thing is time between loading, i would say to avoid others sniping you, wait 5-10 minutes between games after you hit 1700, you are given a whole week each cycle, so manage your time wisely.

The Fourth thing is team choices, the key to qualifying is a very solid rotation, of teams that beat each other's counter teams, for example, you bring a balance, you know balance gets stomped by wellspring ceru screens which gets stomped by sun, sun gets stomped by sand and chilly, both get stomped by trick room.

Team Dump:
https://pokepast.es/f464b85d994bb90d
When i made this i wanted to be able to switch between the style i wanna win with, ceru screens or trick room, bc both win diff mus, but the power of bolt ceruledge carries all bad matchups

https://pokepast.es/337d8af6e7215473
The triple choice team i made for wcop finals vs team canada, which won us wcop, specs crown + band tealpon + booster iron hands + scarf enam healing wish, basically sd flip turn samu + iron hands + healing wish can break any team, and tealpon is always dangerous, be wary of dnite, you need to keep tera on glimm, hands can take +2 non tera ground eq, be wary of tera ground dragonite.

https://pokepast.es/61ef80701ac08961
Sd gliscor boots spam, pretty standard, me and ctc built early dlc2, i revamped and put some spins on it, it was effective this olt, i linked the bolt version bc people told me dragapult version got destroyed by zapdos, so it was necessary to have a version good into zapdos, other than that, solid team.

https://pokepast.es/240b71d356b0418b
Hydrapple team i built, possibly a contender for one of my best teams, after the modification of wisp cind, hydrapple has been a monster in every game i have used him, it is unbelievable, the damage it does and how bulky it is, also with regenerator is crazy broken af, highly recommend using this one.

https://pokepast.es/dcd7cf9428bf980a
The Whirl Islands whirlpool spam av kyurem team, this is also a contender for one of my best teams this gen, it is very, very consistent, made it during wcop as a revamp of the pecharunt one i posted last olt, its done well all wcop and for sure will perform in olt if you decide to use it.

https://pokepast.es/11b14fa5c48e0efd
When Vert used offensive sub cress in wcop, it inspired me to make this team, when i found out cress got lunar blessing, it ended up becoming one of the nastiest teams of the gen, infesting the OLT metagame to the point of no return, i apologise, please use this, you will get wins that feel unfair.

https://pokepast.es/727fdca777d9430b
The Slow chemical sun that qualld me in the ou team up tours, and did well throughout olt, now this team has alot of powerful threats like bolt and wake, even tera bug gambit but the fast hatterene is designed to defeat fatter builds and deny gweezing fog, since you outspeed gweezing, + you dont have to nuzzle blissey to outspeed it, and thus you are faster than it, psynoise split it down so bolt and wake can capitalize. Be wary of tspikes, try to kill glimm with bolt or wake.

https://pokepast.es/610af582ace30041
A gliscor heatran tealpon build i made for last olt in the game 3 vs alh3n the series where i got haxed in the quarterfinals, i made a few tweaks and modifications, to be good in this metagame. Play carefully around tusk.
https://pokepast.es/29ecc783246cecde
Cosmic Rays ceru treads jugulis screens i built during wcop, no need to go into any detail with this, remember with screens you need to play aggressively and get turns right, which is what makes it feel broken when you have strong abusers.
https://pokepast.es/21fbcbf7b7aab7a2
Rain Screens, this is a good team but, i spammed it too much now i believe people are checking to see if they beat it in the builder, give it a few weeks itll pop off again.

This was a collection of teams i built for wcop/olt, with descriptions for each, theres more but im posting the most efficient ones.


Theres a bonus team dump i wanted to share with y'all, ignore the font though, idk why the text is bigger for the bonus dump + descriptions of the teams lol.
Bonus Dump:
https://pokepast.es/1a161cf113e5121a
Overheat blaziken specs bolt offense,
just hard hitting offensive threats
with healing wish support.

https://pokepast.es/e4debbd8a8cffd34
version 2 of the team above, with
nasty plot pain split deoxys speed
which is an extremely broken mon in
the metagame rn.

https://pokepast.es/ff120c8406139eb7
ursaluna offense with gweezing, a new
structure i have been testing lately
heatran oger gweez, this is the broken
version of it, powerful team almost
impossible to beat it.

https://pokepast.es/4658088efd9043ac
The tealpon version of the team above
slightly weaker version but still very
effective, both versions patch up
each other's weaknesses.

https://pokepast.es/dfdea9c430a8084c
new sand structure i built, with
gweezing again, so with the gweezing
removal, it allows you to run sd orb
3 attacks drill which has been very
powerful all olt, features a new oger
set i invented, sub leech seed stabs,
also good into protect stall, and many
garg/balance structures, while the drill
practically massacres offense alongside
av torn and gweez,this is overall a
consistent team, just try to position
well vs kyurem.

https://pokepast.es/daec6e98bbbaf802
Tera ground soft sand ubernite offense
Standard glasses samu scarf ghold card
glimm, av physdef tera bug hatt for tusk

Okay now i wasnt gonna leak newer stuff due to being able to use it in playoffs but does it matter anyway, a good team will win whether you know it or not, and if ur hiding teams ur admitting u cant build new ones, so im completely fine with posting some new teams here, and will almost certainly post more after olt playoffs.

Here's my advice + strategy for qualifying, have a nice, 4 team rotation, doesnt have to be more than 4 teams.

Tales of a Loner: 1000-1500
Age of Extinction: 1500-1750
after the 1750 mark, you start rotating:
Evanescence/Age of Extinction/Tales of a Loner: 1750-1950
Tiger's Eye/Evanescence/Age of Extinction: 1950 all the way to top 8 and it should qualify you.

Tales of a Loner, Evanescence, age of extinction, and tiger's eye are teams listed in the team dumps above these are team names just incase you get confused.

Anyway, try my strategy for qualifying as it is very effective, let me know how it goes, pce.

bro some of these teams are pretty sick, as I can see the strategy and thoughts behind them. Almost inspired me to play offense

 

[LB]

the other posts inspired me to i decided to talk about my experience of qualifying for olt as someone who has never qualified or really came close before. last year in cycle one i got to around 2000 and thats the closest i've been before this year. hopefully this post will be more relatable and maybe help some people out.

during world cup i built one of my fav teams which was a team around blaziken and it went insane in test games and barely lost in them. i was so confident bringing it but unfortunately things didnt go my way , some of it would be match up based but i'd also take blame in that i didnt play the best game here . i knew this team was insane and was upset that i lost with it when i had my chance, and because it lost in the world cup people wouldn't give it the chance of being a good team.

after wcop i was honestly pretty drained out, as whilst playing it i was also doing my university entrance exams this made me really get bored out of mons so i stopped playing for a while and really just enjoyed my summer and played other games. however as olt rolled around even tho i wasn't playing mons as much i really wanted to give it a try and i didnt want to miss out on this tour as its a tour ive always wanted to do well in . i didnt expect to do much this olt and was just gonna play a little bit so i could just be like ' yeah i tried ' and move on and not regret not playing it .

i started off pretty slowly with my blaziken team and around day 3 (monday ) into the cycle i was sitting at around 1750's . i felt good as i was consistently winning with an all out ho team.

however on the days 5(wednesday) 6( thursday) i was having a bit of a plateau as i was trying to climb to 1900's i was stuck around in the 1800s for a bit going win loss win loss win loss. i kept wanting to end the nights at a set number like 1800's on the wednesday and then 1900's on the thursday. after a lot of going up , going down i finally ended thursday night at 1900's and went to sleep with two days of the cycle left.

on friday the day before the last day of the cycle, i went on a consistent streak and went from 1900's to 1986 which is when i went to sleep and left the last day (saturday) one game off from 2k.

saturday ( the final day of the cycle rolled around ) and i was ready sitting at 1986 elo, i was gonna chill and take my time before i queued but then spookyz was forfeiting to everyone so i rushed in to try my luck LMFAO, unfortunately i didnt get him but i did get a game where i won and got over the 2000 elo benchmark. however after this i started losing, i went on like a 4-5 loss streak and was at 1912 and i thought my chances of qualling for olt were over. i even changed teams for 2-3 games and i just couldnt do it. then i went back to blaziken and went on a crazy win streak and won 5 in a row and got back to 2000 elo , and then kept pushing and got to around 2066

from here ill post the replays from my last few games of the climb

at 2066 i know i just needed one more win to lock in qualification but unfortunately lost to the same person who beat me in wcop , being vs lacks - this tanked me down 25 points , then i queued again into who i was told was tricking? so vs tricking , i lost this one to a pretty nasty crit and i thought from here it was over losing 21 and dropping to 2020

then from 2020 i queued two games vs fusien and vs tricking , secured both the wins and went to 2061 and was back at the point where one more win would seal qualification

i was then at 2061 , one more game left, i queued vs nemosse who was 1972 at this point in time and unfortunate i lost here setting me back 25 points and things were definitely looking dark now i was at 2036

however i didnt give up and i kept going and queued vs crying , in this game blaziken showed his power and cleaned the game up in 13 games leaving me at 2055 and with 15 minutes left i was ready to queue my last game

and if things couldnt go darker from here.... they did and i queued into fusien running full stall , i didnt think i would have enough time here to close this out so i ended up queuing TWO games at the same time, and then got vs crying .

i had to play both these battles at the same time, nerves going crazy, each battle on a seperate monitor and over 150 people watching me to see if i would qualify, and after so many failures of losing in the last game i took down fusien first then blaziken cleaned up vs crying and after all these games of using the same team i finally qualified

i hope this is a good read as i wanted to talk more about the experience as i dont have a plethora of teams to share but inevitably i will share the one team i used this cycle with some explanation about how to use it

https://pokepast.es/240803dc42cd5ae2

the main idea of this team is to lead hammu and get up hazards , with taunt spam to stop them getting off, even if they have a cinderace i would still get them up, reason being cinderace lets in blaziken for a free sd and that in itself can clean games up, other mons that let cinderace sd are kyurem, bpress corv / skarm , non whirlwind lu and even mola lmfao. people had questions about non fire move blaziken but in my opinion this is honestly the best set, i think fire move is unneeded if you have these 3 moves, as these do cover the meta better in my opinion . light screen moth which did get a few eyes moving aswell was a set i created in spl but was unnable to showcase during that game but i spoke more about that in my spl teamdump and the thought process behind that, but lets just say it really clutched up a few games for me.

anyways thats all from me, i hope this was an interesting read . feel free to message me if you have any questions. im not gonna spell check or grammar check anything its just an informal read if anyone's interested , just want to thank my friends in iron gender and uk cord for believing in me and thanks to my group of friends aswell Cow zRyan Eelektrone Lsa WAJ Wesleyy X-Wing

good luck and dont give up just keep clicking play would be my advice

 

[Lsa]

friends is a big word to describe our phenomenon your just a tool in me and zRyan's journey to life maxxing

lsa out

 

[JojoOui]

Since I saw that many people have posted their thoughts and advice regarding this OLT, I decided to do the same.
This is my 3rd OLT. I had told a lot of people that I would qualify this year, because my last two OLT runs allowed me to stack up the experience needed to make it happen. I went through a lot of failures and made mistakes like any human being, but I never repeated them. I always tried to learn from them.

During my 1st OLT, I managed to climb pretty high, to 2k. However, I was scared. The fear of losing restricted my plays and made me extremely predictable. I was fully aware that I wasn’t making the right moves, but it was stronger than me—I would still click the "safe" options. Facing excellent players, that just didn't cut it, and I lost. On top of that, I was playing every single day without stopping. Even when I was in a good spot, I kept grinding, which led to massive tilting. Little by little, I lost the desire to play; I was just mindlessly clicking like a machine. I didn't stop because I knew I had it in me. In everyday life, I have this mindset that the impossible is always possible. Despite clear flaws in my mental game and my ingame decisions, I still believed. As a result, I didn’t qualify and took a break from Pokémon hahahahahah.

As for my 2nd OLT, I couldn’t play to my full potential due to constant connection issues, having to play on my phone (which I absolutely hate), and scheduling conflicts. But despite all of that, my ingame level had drastically improved compared to before. Against all odds, I managed to secure a spot where I could play the final rush on the last day of cycle 4. This was a huge first for me, because during my 1st OLT, I would tilt way before that day even arrived. Every single game brought its own unique pressure. But I was determined to qualify, and thanks to my 1st OLT, I understood that I shouldn't be afraid to play the game. That night, I managed to get my PC, and I was winning games in the middle of the night at a highway rest stop. But my stories always seem to end on a sad note: my PC battery completely died, and I had to switch back to my phone. I lost all my points, LOL. After that OLT, I took another break. I completely lost my taste for the game after missing out on qualifying because of my internet and that piece of trash phone.

Anyway, enough talking about the past, let’s get to the present. This year, I finally had good Wi-Fi, and I acquired a new skill: teambuilding. Throughout the year, I perfected teams and stopped doubting their viability. My friends validated them and helped me out whenever something wasn't working. I even got to play teams that I built or revamped during the World Cup, so shoutout to Team France for that. This skill is incredibly valuable for OLT. Where I used to play generic teams that anyone could pick up, I could now pilot my own builds and easily adapt to the ladder. I had a lot of fun building (s/o Necrozma), and I realized that enjoying the game was the only way I was going to qualify. I felt zero pressure, knew my teams inside out, and my ingame level was at its absolute peak.
As for how I was going to ladder, I managed to space out my time and games thanks to Zokuru , who helped me immensely with my self-confidence and choosing the right times to play my matches.

In short, that’s my perspective on this OLT. I wanted to share it because I think a lot of people probably went through the exact same emotions. I really want to emphasize learning from your mistakes so you don't repeat them. This competition is designed to make you tilt and choke, so take a step back and analyze what’s going wrong instead of digging yourself into a deeper hole. I won't give any specific advice since heileone pretty much covered everything.

Thanks for listening, and catch you later!

---

 

[SpectralWaveYt]

I feel like it'd be great if this thread was linked in olt chatroom :/

 

[40kultra]

I have officially announced my retirement from larping. After 3000 games played and 65 gxe I realized that I need to listen to top players like helieone so I can qualify for olt. This means

-No more larping on stallcord
-No more building shitmon teams
-loading free elo teams like rainbow offense and cres Ho

Comeback from approx less than 30 hours starts now!

 

[raffe]

LEAKED CYCLE 4 QUALS SCRIPT:

n1: lt134tt gimmighoul
n2: lt134tt agency
n3: lt134tt swily
n4: lt134tt laro
n5: lt134tt t sahur
n6: lt134tt fiish
n7: lt134tt iiiQ
n8: lt134tt notlax

IF YOU QUALIFY AND YOUR ON THIS LIST, THANK ME FOR WRITING SUCH A GOOD SCRIPT, IF NOT DONT BLAME ME PLEASE

Update 1: sorry Bundy, aquilo told me to kick you off and replace you with them lmk if you want back on

Update 2: fiish asked to replace hoenh lmfao. If Anyone else wants on DM me

Update 3: 3eyeQ replaced aquilo who replaced bundy

Update 4: yo ts aged awfully , like 3 of them I'm pretty sure have played 2 games, ones 1400s yikees

Update 5: I went 1/8 shit

 

[raffe]

Not sure who will be reading this but I hope it does reach those who are still trying to qualify. From the time I'm writing this there's still over 36 hours still.

Don't give up
The biggest mistake I've seen people make while I've been helping people with olt, is giving up after losing a few games. Anything truely is possible so don't quit out its official.

Don't tilt que
There is still 36 hours which is MORE then enough time to ladder. Don't force yourself to play fast or while upset.

Load comfort teams
If someone gives you something, or your just not feeling the team works with you, trust yourself. Even if someone knows your sets a good team with a player confident in themselves will be able to win any matchup.

Rooting for my goats!!!
S/O ULTRAPENGUIN/GHOULISHCHAMP/LT134TTGIMMIGHOUL swily, bundy, sire, waffle, laro, and everyone else I've talked to about olt. <3

 

[sire clod]

Qualifying for OLT playoffs is just reaching the starting line, but it was still an extremely grueling process and I really wanted to qualify because I felt like it was a mental hurdle I had to get over. I am terrible at ladder, I feel like in any given game I can go toe to toe with anybody but I tilt like crazy, the ability to stop one loss from turning into five isn't something I've learned how to do well at all yet. This final cycle was a combination of some luck, good matchups, possibly a weaker competitive pool, and a couple new(ish) teams that felt a bit more comfortable for me to spam. I can't say I learned how to not tilt because I just straight up didn't lose from 1800 all the way to 2016 where I sat and qualified safely (funny story I literally couldn't access Pokémon Showdown the entire 12 hours before the deadline, I spent hours refreshing and resetting my modem before I could finally get a single game at 3 am, 6 hours before the deadline, and luckily I queued into Paycard who had a lot of points instead of some 1700 who probably would've hit me up for -40. After that I went to sleep and said if 8 ppl pass me in the next 6 hours so be it)

Ladder definitely brings out the worst in me, if I crashed out at you I apologize, it probably will happen again

Anyways shoutout to ima and Vert for the continuous motivation and support and tough love, I wouldn't be half the player I am without you guys and what I've learned from Team West. cala_aa leng loi for keeping me sane, Storm Zone for passing me teams (that I was fucking GIGAFARMING with when nobody else had them and then he leaked said teams in his team dump I was very mad about that)

Shoutout to the Iron Gender Factory for producing five qualifiers to this tournament, LB vk Dragonite4242 hellom (yes he would not be here without the Iron Gender Buff, facts only)

Shoutout to everybody else that supported me along the way!

Anyways can't say I enjoyed the ladder cycle much but now I'm here, will do my best to win this thing, gl to all the other competitive beasts that made it this far

 

[sire clod]

after one too many games like this

Ban Lu holy fuck

 

[Dragonite4242]

Now that I'm out of swiss, I'm going to give my thoughts/yap about being a first time qualifier. I went into this OLT as kind of a "ladder hero" who used lots of fun mons on ladder like maushold, basculegion-f, etc., floating 1800-2000 range, but not having any success in or even playing many tournaments. I've attempted to qual for OLT each year but have not been remotely close; I don't think I was ever within striking distance in the last few hours of any cycle until this years cycle 4 when I actually did qual.

This year, I wanted to break from my usual strategy of just queueing a million games as if it was just regular ladder and hoping that I would eventually fluke up to near qualifying, which has never worked for me before. In week 1, I unfortunately relapsed into spamming games with some really dubious teams like:
https://pokepast.es/9e5dfee9c63c398c
https://pokepast.es/fa19be84830f1cb7

It goes without saying that these teams are bad, and I did not accomplish anything except bouncing around the 1800s for a few hundred games.

Week 2 was basically the same thing except slightly less total games, and cycle 3 I only started on Thursday and put up 150 games of crap as well.

Going into cycle 4 some iron gender players like me waffle04 and a couple others named ourselves "penguins keep waddling" to troll notorious #1 on Tuesday then 500 games 1600 Ghoulish Champ and I was trying to have a better paced week. I built a couple different teams:
https://pokepast.es/4476f6d07931b48a
https://pokepast.es/3b76934dc8002a1b
among others, which overall gave me a fairly well balanced set of good reasonable offense/bulky offense teams that I could comfortably use, with fundamentally good pokemon that gave me a chance to win every game as opposed to using volatile wacky teams that I had previously laddered with. I mixed in a dose of standard stall and a couple weather teams that saw limited use/helped snipe some players. I also stole this crying team
https://pokepast.es/10927de5171d7347
which i saw them load a couple times and thought was really hilarious, featuring choice band flare blitz cinderace for extra pp/accuracy as a 4th move.

I started at around 1700 on Sunday and played a couple games each day pacing my elo with peng to ~1740 Monday, 1800 Tuesday, mid 1800s by Thursday, at which point uhhh peng Thursday may have occurred and I was on my own. Many of these days I played less than 10 or even 5 games because I hit my elo goals but also because ladder was uncharacteristically dead at very normal playing hours, and I was playing 1600s or even 1500s while at 1800. Then on Friday I decided to play a whole bunch of games to just get in some practice with different teams, dropping to a low of ~1700 but safely being back in the 1800s by the end of the day. Saturday I also played a decent amount of games early in the day, eventually going on a little win streak to get me to 1948, with that being good for #8 at that time, #1 being 1999. I knew I probably just had to win 3-4 more games ideally to get up to around 2000 and that should be enough to qual given that cycle 3 had a cutoff of just 2013 and this cycle could be even lower. This mini run included a couple interesting replays including this really odd replay with the crying team using rest treads + hazard stack to beat a tera ghost gliscor hazard stack stall: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2672619480 as well as a pretty normal offense vs mola lu balance game that got me to 1948: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2672630982

From this point, I decided to pretty much exclusively snipe favorable matchups to get the remaining elo, because I knew that I could easily lose streak down to 1800 and get tilted. I started this off suspiciously by instantly missing a snipe(don't remember who I was trying to snipe anymore) but fortunately getting a great matchup regardless: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2672638954, which is a fun game with the crying team again where flare blitz ace was a useful safety in the back with 6v1 against last mon cress that could have gotten scary if I didn't get good pyro ball rolls/hits. At this point, I was very much using dishonorable tactics like pulling up replays to scout opponents sets, which of course is technically fair game and I was trying to tryhard and qual in the last cycle. For example, I scouted the gholdengo in this game to be twave and so I knew spdef treads walled it.

I spent 2 hours or so watching live games trying to snipe, with this storm zone snipe with sd gliscor stall https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2672731437-whkkh5cg14ivaygqiu6l6lreq8aqpohpw where I almost let clodsire die and lose, and this utter cteam with knock growth venu sun against unstoppable1 in an extremely suspicious game that I almost managed to lose https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2672764730-hpla6xcy5uq030yaqw7mhvqu58co1tupw

I then went to sleep at 2003 which iirc was ~#4 or something, hoping that I would not have to play more in the morning. Instead, I woke up with around 45 minutes to play at 8th/9th place with a couple players around that 8th spot, so I definitely needed 1 more game. I tried to snipe, watching games until 15 minutes, and then just had to load another game, electing to load the crying band ace team again even though this team was very much a fish for non hyper offense matchups. I got matched up into fellow iron gender member Mimikyu Stardust and fortunately for me haxed the shit out of this game despite misplaying a horrifying number of turns, apologies to mimi. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2672887110?p2

In the end I qualified with 1-2 seconds left before the deadline which was a lot of self inflicted stress by playing so slow and choking that last game to make it last longer lmao.

I'm not going to go over my swiss run where I went 1-3 with some competitive sets and some blowout losses, so I'll take the time here to thank some friends who supported me throughout this tournament and in my pokemon playing career in general.

I would first and foremost like to thank Iron Gender as a whole for being such great friends and making it enjoyable to continue playing this game even though SV OU is frankly really wack at the moment. I especially want to thank cala Heatranator sire clod for helping me out a lot during swiss prep. Ghoulish Champ waffle04 AquiIo quacc blooclipse SirPeanutCronch LB duckycrater Delibird Heart it was great laddering olt with yall, especially when we were all named penguins keep waddling.

 

[Vincent727]

gg all, it was so much fun competing next to so many good players. This was my first olt so i came with pretty low expectations of myself, only joining to bandwagon everyone else. As a cycle 4 qualifier, i played each cycle prior to that so i had some burnout coming into it :P. Making it to 1980 cycle 1 (before tilting wayy out) , top 16 during cycle 2, and then top 10 in cycle 3. In my final cycle, i gave it everything and rushed to rank 1 on the ladder as fast as i could, belting out like 800 elo in 3 hours doing triple queues and then another 100 elo the next day. This turned out costly as I very soon tilted 200 elo when i was so clearly in the lead prior to that.

After rage loading for like 30 games in 1700s i took a break and told myself i would come back on the last 2 days and make it all up. And then, i made it, 2012 elo on the last day. I was feeling really good about myself. In the last 30 minutes of cycle 4, there i was, top 2-3 on the leaderboards. I was already celebrating in my head and on discord thinking, surely the ladder isnt so volatile that 6 people can pass me. I even opened a game in the last 10 minutes just in case. Of course, 6 people ended up passing me :P, and i was so emotionally devastated. I gave it everything, sleepless nights, early morning wake ups to try and get a better shot, just for it all to be in vain. After letting off some steam (euphemism), it was found out that someone alted, giving me a second chance in the play offs.

the slither wing sun paste i used to qual mainly (although i loaded some screens and g-terrain) https://pokepast.es/c7e9d4c017ea41ee

As for my swiss, i think it showed very clearly that i was new to tours :P, only making it in with a bunch of hax at the end. I loaded basically only offence and ho (i think this was starting to get exploited near the end) but I'd like to shout out everyone who passed teams to try and give me a fighting chance during swiss.
s/o raine, ak blue, raffe for giving me so many of my olt teams and for running mocks with me
s/o all the people cheering me on even though i was a new face among tours
s/o sparkelz for giving me the idea to load specs darkrai

(hoping and predicting that storm wins this whole tour)
(oh and shoutout raffe again for writing such a good script :P)

 

[raffe]

Recently this tour has sparked a lot of debate for something very important things, aka the large amount of extensions even being named Official Extension Tour

to really figure this out, I did what any normal person would do: I put everyone's game stats in an excel spreadsheet over the course of an hour and found out how many extensions every player had, amount of extensions per week, average day of the week each player had their games etc etc. I will update this every week

to clarify the third section, I put every players games on a point system 1 meaning they played monday etcetc. If a player ended up with 6.8 for example, then that's just for differentiating and for better averages overall to give more detail.

without further ado, here it is!

Player Names	# Of Extensions	Average Day Of Week Game Played (1 is monday 7 is sunday, 8 is monday of the next week) (based on date of winpost)
Axzel		7
Baddy	II	7.33
bbeeaa	I	6.83
Dasmer		7
Dragonite4242		7
Empo	I	7.4
Ewin		6.75
Fabrisse	I	6.5
Giannis		5.67
heileone		6.16
hellom	III	7.83
JJ09		5.75
Jojooui	I	6
Franco	II	7
LB	III	8.5
Rumble	III	7.25
Memphis	II	7
MinoGod	II	7.4
NoName		6
Pkel		5.33
Qways		6.67
Sanesa		6.6
sire	II	7.5
Skarpherim	I	7
Stareal		5.6
SZ		6.83
SupaG	IIII	8
Tace	I	6.8
Swily	II	6.67
vk	I	6
Welliou		5.6
zugubu		6.2
Total Amount/Final Average	XIV(14)	6.726

A total amount of 14 different games extended out of a total of 63 across the weeks so far.
1 extension on w1 w4 and top 16, 4 on week 2 and 3, 3 on week 4.

The goats of playing games early:
Pkel at 5.2
Welli0u at 5.5
Giannis at 5.67
JJ09lie at 5.75!
these are the three players who got under a 6 woo!

The biggest extenders booooooo:
LB at 8.5
SupaGmoney at 8.16
Sire at 7.5
Baddy had a 7.6 but I don't think it was his fault

anyways this is just a shitpost with math backing it LOL. cant believe that some people seriously played their game on average on monday though SupaGmoney lock in gang


(also heres the excel graph i made for it LOL)

dont take this seriously and this is just a joke, obviously dont send hate to people but like cmon yall lock in

 

[OceanicGamer]

haha swily six seven

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Recently this tour has sparked a lot of debate for something very important things, aka the large amount of extensions even being named Official Extension Tour

to really figure this out, I did what any normal person would do: I put everyone's game stats in an excel spreadsheet over the course of an hour and found out how many extensions every player had, amount of extensions per week, average day of the week each player had their games etc etc. I will update this every week

to clarify the third section, I put every players games on a point system 1 meaning they played monday etcetc. If a player ended up with 6.8 for example, then that's just for differentiating and for better averages overall to give more detail.

without further ado, here it is!

Player Names	# Of Extensions	Average Day Of Week Game Played (1 is monday 7 is sunday, 8 is monday of the next week) (based on date of winpost)
Axzel		7
Baddy	II	7.6
bbeeaa	I	6.8
Dasmer		7
Dragonite4242		7
Empo	I	7.4
Ewin		6.75
Fabrisse	I	6.5
Giannis		5.67
heileone		6.16
hellom	II	7.8
JJ09		5.75
Jojooui	I	6
Franco	II	6.83
LB	II	8.5
Rumble	III	7.25
Memphis	II	7
MinoGod	II	7.4
NoName		6
Pkel		5.2
Qways		6.67
Sanesa		6.6
sire	II	7.5
Skarpherim	I	7
Stareal		5.6
SZ		6.83
SupaG	IIII	8.16
Tace	I	6.8
Swily	II	6.67
vk	I	6
Welliou		5.5
zugubu		6.2
Total Amount/Final Average	XIV(14)	6.726

A total amount of 14 different games extended out of a total of 63 across the weeks so far.
1 extension on w1 w4 and top 16, 4 on week 2 and 3, 3 on week 4.

The goats of playing games early:
Pkel at 5.2
Welli0u at 5.5
JJ09lie at 5.75!
these are the three players who got under a 6 woo!

The biggest extenders booooooo:
LB at 8.5
SupaGmoney at 8.16
Sire at 7.5
Baddy had a 7.6 but I don't think it was his fault

anyways this is just a shitpost with math backing it LOL. cant believe that some people seriously played their game on average on monday though SupaGmoney lock in gang


(also heres the excel graph i made for it LOL)
View attachment 869574

dont take this seriously and this is just a joke, obviously dont send hate to people but like cmon yall lock in

really says something about sv that people are trying to avoid playing it for as long as possible

 

[Vincent727]

haha swily six seven

 

[UT]

dont take this seriously and this is just a joke, obviously dont send hate to people but like cmon yall lock in

 

[ego]

Fun sets this week! I did actually watch most of these but because of thanksgiving I was not locked in, so I will just look at the games again as though I've never seen them and do some stream of consciousness commentary. I'm not an expert here, this is honestly mostly an exercise for me. If you disagree with any conclusions please angry react and then write your own post

JJ09LIE vs bbeeaa

G1

G1: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-979019?p2

T0: JJ has booster Val/Bolt, Val can be anything but my gut says it's probably special because you might value the fast Moonblast on this team. On first read, my pattern-seeking brain defaulted to "booster spam" i.e. booster Crown, but I realized that booster Crown is basically only ever a thing on screens (where it has enough time to boost up to threatening levels; it's not initially scary). IMO AV and Specs mostly cover the same matchups on this mon, and I kinda think this is just a matter of "which of the two sets does JJ think is good" but I do think you realistically need either AV Crown or Balloon Ceru to feel comfortable into Kyurem. AV Crown + Lorb Ceru, or maybe Specs Crown + Balloon Ceru. Lowkey doesn't this team get totally ripped apart by webs?
bbeeaa's team looks pretty standard sand, I assume Roar Molt, Sub Dark Zama? Roar Zama is possible but that'd be a fairly defensive pick when your only hazards are rocks. On matchup, bbeeaa's Drill and Zama look like huge threats, as do JJ's Val and Ceru. I thiiiiink bbeeaa has matchup; Drill is a nice safety blanket to weather the storm against the setup spam until Zama can clean lategame. If this is SD Val, then Tera Dark Zama looks demonic, you just have to force it to exhaust booster and get some chip on Lando and then it wins. Tera Steel is scary too but has a tougher time with Ceru.

T1-2: JJ wants rocks with Lando, bea's best counterlead is Apple, JJ can't really risk damage on Lando this early, so Crown's the lead. Right away I am dead wrong, as Crown is not booster and does 56% to Molt with Volt Switch. That's for sure Specs Crown and a mostly SpDef Molt; I kinda love Specs Crown, so this is cool to see, and with Molt chipped the Tachyon switches are uhhhhhhhhhhh...Ceru is Balloon, which is really nice in this matchup
T3-6: Straightforward enough plays to here. Lowkey JJ could have pulled the trigger on CC on T3, bea kinda can't afford to lose Molt yet and it can't touch Ceru anyway. T4 Pech covers both CC and switch to Val, and now booster's gone, which REALLY sucks. On T5 I kinda don't know about this Focus Blast; it's surely trying to cover a Drill stay in to call out Lando, but like, Iron Head doesn't do enough for that to be rewarding. Kinda think double is always coming out (Apple, maybe Molt), and so Focus Blast doesn't do much. Miss is unlucky, but now your best Apple switch is locked into a move that doesn't scare it out and it can just click buttons for free. Val goes down without doing anything, early Specs Crown progress amounted to little. At least now Crown can come back in and be scary
T8-9: Zama reveals no Lefties, then calls out the Lando switch and fucking OHKOs it. Pretty nuts; that's definitely CB; Jolly never OHKOs defensive Lando and only kills zero bulk Lando 56% of the time, so this could even be Adamant (which outspeeds Val, btw). I'm not actually sure why I tunnel visioned on IDBP Zama, tbh. This is a bad situation for JJ but also Ceruledge is an issue with Tera
T10: is Tachyon not just better there?
T12: with the reveal that Tar isn't Smooth Rock, idk about sacking it to Woger. I get that Apple and Pech are chipped and so SD on the switch is potentially scary, but I mean, it'd need to be SD + Trailblaze + Play Rough to be a real threat and also get turns right against Apple's Tera and dodge confusion from Pech. And if sand is about to run out, then idk why we sack Zama on T15 instead of going Drill on Bolt. I know this probably doesn't matter, but with no sand and a dead Zama, SD Woger is much scarier because it doesn't need Trailblaze and a free turn to use it
T16-end: Woger SDs and wins. This game just kinda seems omega tossed to me. From T13 onwards JJ's only win path is hoping that bea sacs all his speed control and then gives Woger a free turn to SD. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened, and it absolutely was not necessary because there's no reason to ever leave Zama in on Bolt.

G2

G2: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-979026

T0: bea loads the most standard team ever. I assume this is Scarf Lando with Rocks, because you'd rather use better Kyurem sets alongside Glowking and you're extremely slow without a scarfer, but I don't think you can just assume that. This is such a standard 6 that I don't think you can count on having the paste, basically everything is customizable in its sets. JJ's team is kinda similar in that we know basically what everything does but there's enough flexibility on items and coverage that we can't commit to anything hard. This should be bea's matchup just on the premise of "webs vs Cinderace is hopeless", and Glowking is super annoying for Enam and Moth, but this is definitely a matchup that Zama and Gambit can steal
T1: on paper, Cinderace looks omega free into Ribombee, and idk what JJ can do besides Moth. Maybe if this is AoA Zama? Goes Glowking instead, which is also omega free. I am curious about the Enam lead, which is forced out by this and also gets outsped by Cinderace. I guess the logic is that Cinderace never OHKOs and cannot risk dying. Guess that makes sense. Glowking eats the Lorb hit and OHKOs back.
T2: Kyurem takes 38%, suggesting that it's a reasonably bulky AV set. Immediate Dance boost means it just dies on the switch. I sure hope this was Scarf Lando! Once we find out that it IS Scarf Lando, though, Zama becomes extremely scary.
T9: After the cards unfold, Glowking gets crit. It's still alive, though, and reveals Rocky Helmet. bea should be okay, but I am curious about how the Gambit vs Gambit endgame plays out.
T17: bea gets the read right. From my perspective, switch Moth and double back to Gambit could have been dangerous, but bea calls out that JJ's expecting U-turn and cripples the Gambit. Game over
Review: webs vs Cinderace, Zama vs Helmet Glowking and Scarf Lando. uphill battle and bea got a few key turns right (lead matchup, the lategame Gambit)

G3

G3: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-979057?p2

T0: This is WhiteQueen stall, i.e. SubTect Gliscor and Protect on everything. JJ loads another one of those very standard-looking teams where everything is flexible in sets, except it also has a Mandibuzz, which is pretty much dead weight in this matchup. With Mandibuzz + Cinderace surely this is Scarf Tusk? This doesn't look great for JJ on paper, but I'm not really equipped to assess how playable it is. I don't think SD Power Whip Woger is super common atm, nor Taunt, so I don't really see an obvious stallbreaker. Let's see!
T1: bea leads Corv, which makes sense, I think, when Cinderace is never leading. Gotta be cautious with Gliscor vs SD Woger. I wonder if Glowking has Ice Beam? Some context from watching WhiteQueen play this team a million times; Gliscor is Tera Dark and very often uses it early to avoid getting slowly whittled down by Future Sight.
T6: 15% is a lot, and from the calc, that should be Specs? The problem with this matchup for bea is that you're going to have to eat a bajillion ice moves and pray you don't get too unlucky with freezes. JJ gets the immediate freeze and clicks Tera to press the advange, which would 2HKO Corv on the switch if not for Lefties + Tect
T10: another freeze on Blissey, forcing it out at 44%. By my count, it's always dead if it switches in to Blizzard now and is usually dead if it switches into Freeze Dry, so you're going to have to sac something now and then pray you don't get frozen one more time
T21: Blissey dodges the pivotal crits there. It's now at 40% with 5 Softboileds remaining, while Kyurem has 19 Freeze Drys and 8 Blizzards left. Corv can waste a bunch of them because it's not dead to Freeze Dry from here. You'd love to get the Court Change off, but you don't really have great switches into Pex, tbh
T23: Tusk is Spin, which confuses me a little. Is this triple removal or is is Defog-less Mandibuzz? Is that really good? Also, this team looks extremely slow with no Scarf Tusk, so is it Scarf Spin? hm
T28: the default SpDef Gliscor in the calc dies about half the time after Tera to Timid Kyurem Blizzard here, and max/max always has at least a chance to die. You can never stay in to Tect then Toxic her
T29: Pex freeze could, on paper, open up Woger and force tera on Dozo. Issue is, I'm not sure if there's a way to capitalize on that.
T31: crit freeze looks extremely bad here. You're not dead to Blizzard, at least, which means after sacking one more mon you can heal back up. I think you just sack Pex here. Only 3 Blizzards left
T32-33: I'm not sure what I think about clicking Blizzard here, but something worth noting is that the rolls are very odd here. Blissey taking 44% on a crit Blizzard and then only taking 32% from non-crit is extremely low. There are two possibilities to explain Specs Tera Ice Kyurem Blizzard only doing 44% on a crit to Blissey; either that's 252/252 +SpDef Blissey vs Timid Kyurem and that's a minroll crit, or that Kyurem isn't fully specially invested. The former seems more likely. Regardless, bea staying in on these turns is risking the game on what looks like a 50-50ish roll, and dodges one hit and gets it. Is this necessary? Blissey's at 33%, only has 4 more Softboileds, and you have 19 more Freeze Drys. If you switched out on T31, you also have 4 more Blizzards left, which means that the next time you come in on either Gliscor or Pex you just have another guaranteed kill. Instead, you miss 2/3 remaining Blizzards and miss the roll to kill Blissey. Even so, just never ever stay in with Glowking to let it recover, and this should be done.
T37: This is extremely not Power Whip, meaning Woger was never a threat and this game really did need freezes for JJ to win
T38-47: I don't really understanding the fucking around with Glowking, to be honest. Tect Corv mostly negates Future Sight. Also, Mandibuzz is the momentum sink of all momentum sinks on this team
T48: Gliscor has 31 Tect and Sub PP remaining. Glowking has 14 Ice Beams, Woger has all 16 Cudgels left. Does Tusk have Spinner? Glowking and Mandibuzz can probably sponge up a ton of attacking PP as well, I wouldn't say this is necessarily a bad situation for JJ yet, but JJ SHOULD probably be worried about giving up predictable switch patterns to let Blissey come in on Glowking and heal back up
T55: Gliscor switches out. 28 SubTect PP vs 9 Ice Beam PP remaining
T79: Pex unthaws and gets Toxic off on Mandibuzz.
T82: costs JJ the game.

Okay, so with the benefit of hindsight: Woger was never doing anything this game, not with SD Trailblaze, and so this all hinged on putting yourself in as many situations to click Ice moves with Kyurem as possible and get enough freezes to take it. And JJ got those freezes!
I think, reviewing the game, the thing that ultimately let bea back into the game was letting Corv and Scor sit there and click a million buttons and eventually get enough free turns for Pex to unfreeze. JJ did such a good job at getting Kyurem turns to attack early in the game and then just stopped. Of course, a big part of that is conditioning; we saw the Kyurem vs Pex matchup unfold several times over the course of the match and bea kept switching, so JJ read that matchup as an opportunity to keep clicking buttons, which backfired later on when bea pulled the trigger on Tera.
T38 seems curious to me. I'm not really sure what Future Sight is supposed to accomplish against Protect Corv, and that allowed Corv to heal up. Once Corv got to full, that's when JJ had to start dancing around it, because Kyurem no longer 2HKOs (and it only has one more Blizzard into Pressure Corv). I felt like the gameplan once JJ got the Blissey to 1% became very passive; Cinderace and Woger never came out (i.e. the mons that force Dozo and Pex in, the mons that Kyurem kills with Freeze Dry) except to waste PP on Gliscor. Ultimately, what it comes down to is that bea got enough turns right in the second half, and was able to condition JJ into leaving Kyurem in on Pex. I think everyone would route this game slightly differently and quibbling with individual clicks in a long game like this misses the point. And of course, though Kyurem put itself in position to get lucky, it did get lucky with the freezes. JJ didn't really have other tools versus stall here

Strange set. Two lopsided matchups and one choked endgame. Turns out that HO and Stall have pretty feast or famine profiles. bbeeaa's the most historically accomplished player in the tournament and JJ09LIE was my prediction to win the whole thing, so this was a really interesting R1 matchup for me.

 

[MinoGod54]

Hello everyone !

I think most people did not know me before OLT, and I probably made it worse by keeping most of my thoughts for this big losepost (and because I’m nor an active Smogon member nor a great english speaker, by the way). So, ye, I spent most of my showdown time on the french subroom, Arcade, only playing a few OM international tours. I tried OLT because I had some holidays playing an update of ctc’s sun ( https://pokepast.es/d53a524c7accb3f0 ) and.. got banned from smogon at 1am the last night of cycle 2 because of a double account issue. it was a long time ago now but it was clearly something, all my french friends were asleep and I had to PM random auths to try getting the good account unbanned before earning the last points twenty minutes before the deadline - at this point, one loss would have been enough to destroy my chances, but fortunately I won all my six games and you know the rest. I’d like to thank a lot the guy who helped me even if I don’t remember his name (sry…) and Palapapop for telling me I had a really great ingame during a random roomtour, which encouraged me to tryhard on the ladder. By the way, if it is technically possible, I think counting games loaded before the deadline and not ended before the deadline would be better during this ladder part, as it prevents players to load ten games ten minutes before the DL and timestalling the ones with a difficult matchup.

As a new player, the swiss (and OLT overall) allowed me to fight against a lot of great and well-known players, which is what makes this tour so cool imo. I’m not here to explain each of my rounds as I think it would be long without being interesting, but globally.. I told myself at the beginning that I’d like to play this tour alone in my preps, and actually I built almost all the teams I played ( I’ll send the pokepaste later with my teams and the builder) except when I failed to build enough teams in seven days, which happened often, fortunately I played only two games in all rounds, then tested them on ladder, only twice against friends to check the stall matchup (thus, thanks to Sulfura28 and Roaring Moonlight ).

It’s a weird feeling being eliminated after like two months caring at least once a day bout this tour, I would’ve liked to go further, to be the last french guy, to fight other players (even if my opp would have been Bea, who I and ice beam crits already beat earlier) or to finally build around these ones https://pokepast.es/d761c172eff13a8e / also I think I could’ve reached top 3 and I have the feeling of something unfinished.. maybe next year even if I know now how long is the road from 0 elo to top 16.

OK, now, I have to say that while hanging out in the strategy community lately, I’ve heard a LOT about AI. I’m going to add my two cents. First of all, I’m looking at this from the perspective of someone who wants a bright future for competitive Showdown, and I’ll never be satisfied with “Nintendo is organizing IRL tournaments—that’s good enough.” I don’t want to think like the ones who say Smogon will fall for sure. In my opinion accessibility is the key to any competitive environment because I think what we’re looking for on PS - more than just reaching the highest possible level, as in Enhanced Games - is a reliable way to determine the best player at any given moment from a pool of players - and let me be clear: the widest possible pool. This is why I’ll root for -if it exists- the implementation of an anti-cheat software for tournaments (or even the ladder, though I’m already less concerned about that), because soon there will be no point in mixing bots and humans. This program has to be easy to download to avoid losing our playerbase to stuff like Champions, which already drains it. And actually, because I had to think about it, I’ve wondered whether Ai used as a theoretical aid (like chess players who analyze their games with Stockfish) might end up standardizing our gameplays, and that made me think about theoretical resources in general, such as damage calculators or sample teams. I’ll leave that question open.

note: I helped myself with a (non-Ai, of course) online translator to write the last paragraph. please forgive me if it is not allowed, I just wanted to be sure that what I’ve written is clear and correct.

builder, as promised: https://pokepast.es/edfef73d2a71b3cb

raffe you can check my wall I never wanted an extension :p (not to blame anybody, I know I’ve got a lot of free time)
We don’t know each other but I’d like to mention Vincent727 as we’re both OLT “beginners”, I admit I compared our runs a little bit :)
all the people that sent me at least one message during OLT, it's incredible to feel the beginning of being famous :0 someone even told me I was in a blunder vid, with one of my worst sets but still
And finally they did almost nothing for my run but I’m taking advantage of the visibility to shoutout my oldest mates tf and Giga-Chandélure

Have fun to all remaining players !

 

[sand1234]

Hello everyone !

I think most people did not know me before OLT, and I probably made it worse by keeping most of my thoughts for this big losepost (and because I’m nor an active Smogon member nor a great english speaker, by the way). So, ye, I spent most of my showdown time on the french subroom, Arcade, only playing a few OM international tours. I tried OLT because I had some holidays playing an update of ctc’s sun ( https://pokepast.es/d53a524c7accb3f0 ) and.. got banned from smogon at 1am the last night of cycle 2 because of a double account issue. it was a long time ago now but it was clearly something, all my french friends were asleep and I had to PM random auths to try getting the good account unbanned before earning the last points twenty minutes before the deadline - at this point, one loss would have been enough to destroy my chances, but fortunately I won all my six games and you know the rest. I’d like to thank a lot the guy who helped me even if I don’t remember his name (sry…) and Palapapop for telling me I had a really great ingame during a random roomtour, which encouraged me to tryhard on the ladder. By the way, if it is technically possible, I think counting games loaded before the deadline and not ended before the deadline would be better during this ladder part, as it prevents players to load ten games ten minutes before the DL and timestalling the ones with a difficult matchup.

As a new player, the swiss (and OLT overall) allowed me to fight against a lot of great and well-known players, which is what makes this tour so cool imo. I’m not here to explain each of my rounds as I think it would be long without being interesting, but globally.. I told myself at the beginning that I’d like to play this tour alone in my preps, and actually I built almost all the teams I played ( I’ll send the pokepaste later with my teams and the builder) except when I failed to build enough teams in seven days, which happened often, fortunately I played only two games in all rounds, then tested them on ladder, only twice against friends to check the stall matchup (thus, thanks to Sulfura28 and Roaring Moonlight ).

It’s a weird feeling being eliminated after like two months caring at least once a day bout this tour, I would’ve liked to go further, to be the last french guy, to fight other players (even if my opp would have been Bea, who I and ice beam crits already beat earlier) or to finally build around these ones https://pokepast.es/d761c172eff13a8e / also I think I could’ve reached top 3 and I have the feeling of something unfinished.. maybe next year even if I know now how long is the road from 0 elo to top 16.

OK, now, I have to say that while hanging out in the strategy community lately, I’ve heard a LOT about AI. I’m going to add my two cents. First of all, I’m looking at this from the perspective of someone who wants a bright future for competitive Showdown, and I’ll never be satisfied with “Nintendo is organizing IRL tournaments—that’s good enough.” I don’t want to think like the ones who say Smogon will fall for sure. In my opinion accessibility is the key to any competitive environment because I think what we’re looking for on PS - more than just reaching the highest possible level, as in Enhanced Games - is a reliable way to determine the best player at any given moment from a pool of players - and let me be clear: the widest possible pool. This is why I’ll root for -if it exists- the implementation of an anti-cheat software for tournaments (or even the ladder, though I’m already less concerned about that), because soon there will be no point in mixing bots and humans. This program has to be easy to download to avoid losing our playerbase to stuff like Champions, which already drains it. And actually, because I had to think about it, I’ve wondered whether Ai used as a theoretical aid (like chess players who analyze their games with Stockfish) might end up standardizing our gameplays, and that made me think about theoretical resources in general, such as damage calculators or sample teams. I’ll leave that question open.

note: I helped myself with a (non-Ai, of course) online translator to write the last paragraph. please forgive me if it is not allowed, I just wanted to be sure that what I’ve written is clear and correct.

builder, as promised: https://pokepast.es/edfef73d2a71b3cb

raffe you can check my wall I never wanted an extension :p (not to blame anybody, I know I’ve got a lot of free time)
We don’t know each other but I’d like to mention Vincent727 as we’re both OLT “beginners”, I admit I compared our runs a little bit :)
all the people that sent me at least one message during OLT, it's incredible to feel the beginning of being famous :0 someone even told me I was in a blunder vid, with one of my worst sets but still
And finally they did almost nothing for my run but I’m taking advantage of the visibility to shoutout my oldest mates tf and Giga-Chandélure

Have fun to all remaining players !

Is the SD protect Kingambit in your builder a mistake or is there some purpose to it?