Welcome to the first ever Doubles Draft League Hosted by myself and fespy!
(he was picked first)
art by this person
art by that person
Introduction
The other day on the discord server, I happened to notice some people showing interest in a draft league format during some random conversation, so I said "well, why not?" I posted a message in the server and after some lovely people dmed me showing interest (sorry if I didn't get to you a lot more interest was shown than anticipated) I started a separate server, worked out some details, and over the course of the past few days we've been drafting our teams. The way draft leagues work is that each player takes turns drafting a Pokemon that will be available for them to use throughout the course of the season, each Pokemon can only be selected once, players will then make teams composed of some combination of the Pokemon they selected where they will then play each other to determine who makes playoffs and is eventually the winner. We ended up getting 12 people to join the league and we each drafted 10 Pokemon each. A snake draft format is used as to keep the teams as balanced as possible and since there's only 400 Pokemon in the Pokedex currently for SV, we allowed the use of different forms of Pokemon (Rotom, Lycanrock) as long as they had differences between forms. We also banned Commander instead of Tatsugiri to give us another option when it came to drafting.
The Draft order for our league was randomized by good user Yoda2798 and is as follows
qsns
SingleThunder
NotlPrimRose
shaian
Myself
big pichu
YoBuddy
Mack Knife
Memoric
Actuarily
smudgerox
fespy
The First round
And with the first overall pick in the draft.... qsns picks.... Annihilape! No surprise there. Most centralizing Pokemon in the post Flutter Mane era and will be an absolute demon to deal with as far as draft leagues go where there is less checks to everything than the normal Doubles Meta. Following the pick of Annihilape, SinglerThunder picked Iron Hands, a very good support Pokemon with insane bulk and offensive pressure. NotlPrimRose then, with the 3rd pick, elected to take Palafin. One of the strongest attackers in the game and access to one of the strongest priority moves is surely a good pick in a meta with less defensive checks to everything. Shaian followed up by electing to pick Armarouge, which could be considered a little early for the premier Trick Room Pokemon, but with not being forced to Run Tera Grass every game it could be a very good choice. With the 5th overall pick I selected Chi-Yu as a great spread attacker and wall breaker. Pichu then selected Gholdengo which somehow fell all the way to the 6th pick. The Baker took Great Tusk, another all around very good Pokemon with great typing and synergy with a lot of Pokemon. Mack elected to take Ting-Lu, amazing hazard setter with a great ability which makes it incredibly hard to deal with. Memo followed this up by taking Arcanine, which some may consider a strange round 1 choice but the combination of Intimidate, Snarl, and Will-o-Wisp make it a very good choice in an overall weaker metagame where you don't have to prepare for every threat Doubles has. The other half of our Tier Leading duo was due to pick next and Actu picked Garganacl, bolstering that massive defensive stat, infuriating signature move, and the ability to Tera to whatever type it needs for the matchup at hand.
The 11th Pick of the first round gave us our first interesting interaction of the snake style draft. Smudge was do to pick next, however, with both Chein-Pao and Dragonite have yet to be picked. If Smudge doesn't take either, Fespy would get both for free with the 12th and 13th pick. So in a sense, Smudge was forced to take one or give Fespy a deadly combination early. Smudge elected to take Chien-Pao opposed to Dragonite. However, with Smudge having the 14th pick, Fespy was also forced to take Dragonite to make it so Smudge couldn't get the combination he denied Fespy from having. Fespy took Dragonite with the 12th and final pick of round 1.
The full draft is shown below :)
Trades are currently being conducted between players, each player gets 2 trades to make before week one matches begin on Monday. Free agency will open after week 3 where each player will be allowed to replace 2 Pokemon on their team with Pokemon that weren't selected in the draft.
What are your thoughts on the teams? Who won the draft? Who did the worst? What do you think some of the teams are missing? Discuss below and hopefully we can get more interest in a pretty cool format and more tournaments like these can be ran in the future!
If you would like to follow along with our league and see how all the matches are playing out join the via this link
(he was picked first)
art by this person
art by that person
Introduction
The other day on the discord server, I happened to notice some people showing interest in a draft league format during some random conversation, so I said "well, why not?" I posted a message in the server and after some lovely people dmed me showing interest (sorry if I didn't get to you a lot more interest was shown than anticipated) I started a separate server, worked out some details, and over the course of the past few days we've been drafting our teams. The way draft leagues work is that each player takes turns drafting a Pokemon that will be available for them to use throughout the course of the season, each Pokemon can only be selected once, players will then make teams composed of some combination of the Pokemon they selected where they will then play each other to determine who makes playoffs and is eventually the winner. We ended up getting 12 people to join the league and we each drafted 10 Pokemon each. A snake draft format is used as to keep the teams as balanced as possible and since there's only 400 Pokemon in the Pokedex currently for SV, we allowed the use of different forms of Pokemon (Rotom, Lycanrock) as long as they had differences between forms. We also banned Commander instead of Tatsugiri to give us another option when it came to drafting.
The Draft order for our league was randomized by good user Yoda2798 and is as follows
qsns
SingleThunder
NotlPrimRose
shaian
Myself
big pichu
YoBuddy
Mack Knife
Memoric
Actuarily
smudgerox
fespy
The First round
And with the first overall pick in the draft.... qsns picks.... Annihilape! No surprise there. Most centralizing Pokemon in the post Flutter Mane era and will be an absolute demon to deal with as far as draft leagues go where there is less checks to everything than the normal Doubles Meta. Following the pick of Annihilape, SinglerThunder picked Iron Hands, a very good support Pokemon with insane bulk and offensive pressure. NotlPrimRose then, with the 3rd pick, elected to take Palafin. One of the strongest attackers in the game and access to one of the strongest priority moves is surely a good pick in a meta with less defensive checks to everything. Shaian followed up by electing to pick Armarouge, which could be considered a little early for the premier Trick Room Pokemon, but with not being forced to Run Tera Grass every game it could be a very good choice. With the 5th overall pick I selected Chi-Yu as a great spread attacker and wall breaker. Pichu then selected Gholdengo which somehow fell all the way to the 6th pick. The Baker took Great Tusk, another all around very good Pokemon with great typing and synergy with a lot of Pokemon. Mack elected to take Ting-Lu, amazing hazard setter with a great ability which makes it incredibly hard to deal with. Memo followed this up by taking Arcanine, which some may consider a strange round 1 choice but the combination of Intimidate, Snarl, and Will-o-Wisp make it a very good choice in an overall weaker metagame where you don't have to prepare for every threat Doubles has. The other half of our Tier Leading duo was due to pick next and Actu picked Garganacl, bolstering that massive defensive stat, infuriating signature move, and the ability to Tera to whatever type it needs for the matchup at hand.
The 11th Pick of the first round gave us our first interesting interaction of the snake style draft. Smudge was do to pick next, however, with both Chein-Pao and Dragonite have yet to be picked. If Smudge doesn't take either, Fespy would get both for free with the 12th and 13th pick. So in a sense, Smudge was forced to take one or give Fespy a deadly combination early. Smudge elected to take Chien-Pao opposed to Dragonite. However, with Smudge having the 14th pick, Fespy was also forced to take Dragonite to make it so Smudge couldn't get the combination he denied Fespy from having. Fespy took Dragonite with the 12th and final pick of round 1.
The full draft is shown below :)
Trades are currently being conducted between players, each player gets 2 trades to make before week one matches begin on Monday. Free agency will open after week 3 where each player will be allowed to replace 2 Pokemon on their team with Pokemon that weren't selected in the draft.
What are your thoughts on the teams? Who won the draft? Who did the worst? What do you think some of the teams are missing? Discuss below and hopefully we can get more interest in a pretty cool format and more tournaments like these can be ran in the future!
If you would like to follow along with our league and see how all the matches are playing out join the via this link
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