64 Squares vs Heysup
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A very interesting matchup. 64 squares opts for the tried and true deo-d stall by mitana/henri while heysup brings a very unconventional double kaiju structure. Heysup's jirachi lead opens the game with a quick bslam para but 64's deo-d is clearly the winner for the start of this match as it gets a turn 1 spike up against a no spin balance and a turn 2 knock off on heysup's groudon. Heysup goes for the sd to start his own pressure and ends up trading toxic poison for roughly 60% on salamence. There's a cool sequence that happens here where Heysup Swords Dances to punish a protect stall while 64 sends out his own groudon to cover for rock slide. This switch also covers SD by forcing heysup to 50/50 between attacking the groudon in front or reading the salamence. 64 calls the coin flip correctly by harding salamence into the earthquake and cleans up the groudon with protect into faster flamethrower. Heysup is quite behind in the game so he sends out Latios and tries to immediately double switch to Kyogre but 64 had no real reason not to get scrape extra leftovers with protect since he has blissey to cover for any latios nonsense. Heysup goes for another double switch to Jirachi since it beats toxic from salamence while also winning the 1v1 against a lati@s switch if 64 decides to respect kyogre. In response, 64 sends back out his deoxys-defense to knock off jirachi's leftovers so that it'll be much harder for heysup to keep his cm latias check alive. We see 64's blissey briefly but once paralysis happens, it retreats for nat cure while heysup retreats as well to try to punish a switch or aromatherapy with his rayquaza. Unfortunately, it meets 64's groudon and is forced to fallback to latios. Solarbeam from latios is then revealed but 64 had no real reason to go for a trade at only +1 so it instead just gives him a free opportunity to cleric away status from his team. This does at least allow for rayquaza to finally start clicking attacks but there's just too much for it to work through between ho-oh, salamence, deo-d, and groudon all being valid switch-ins. 64 decides to send out ho-oh first, likely because it's the least useful member on his team at the given time but it does have the drawback of not really doing anything besides pressure pp stalling until a potential hp fly crit. As such, he quickly decides to bring out salamence afterwards to try and get status onto the rayquaza. Heysup prefers for latios to eat that toxic but the rayquaza doesn't retreat empty handed since it left both ho-oh and salamence at roughly 50% meaning neither can afford to switch directly into ray's hp fly without finding an opportunity to heal first. Heysup takes full advantage of this with a rayquaza double switch on the forced blissey. Unfortunately for him though, deo-d is still quite healthy as well as faster meaning it can very safely switch into hp fly (or a coverage option) and recover back to 100% while pp stalling with pressure. Even a potential crit would only have a 50% chance to ohko so the odds are very much in 64's favor. Heysup needs para on that deo d before he can attempt more progress with rayquaza so he accepts fire punch chip on jirachi, in exchange. To an extent, it's a risky line since 64 is specifically looking for jirachi damage to open up his latias win patch but heysup can't really afford to play an extended game vs that threat, anyways. He needs to play proactively by aggressively pushing forward his own wincons, which is exactly what he does. After the paralysis, switching to kyogre covers fire punch while also punishing a blissey switch since heysup can abuse her with subcm. This plays out exactly in his favor as 64 tries to toxic as he subs up and is thus forced to retreat to latias without healing deo-d's status. Things go even better for heysup as his +1 kyogre lands a critical hit on latias as it is roar'd out. The fact that latias even survives reveals her significant spdef invest as well as kyogre's minimal spatk evs. The crit was likely a low damage roll which makes it a bittersweet stroke of luck? In any case, a 10% latias isn't going to be much of a check to that kyogre anymore especially since heysup's other 4 pokemon all ensure that it'll be incredibly unlikely that she can ever use recover. Since jirachi is what was pulled out by the roar, 64 takes advantage of deo's paralysis by sending it out first on the forced shadow ball and then sending out groudon so that it's impossible for heysup to double switch to his kyogre with rain up. This play works out as heysup sends out his kyogre the same turn that groudon comes in meaning that the two kaiju face off but with the sun in play. 64 expects heysup to retreat his kyogre since it can't break blissey under the sun and the blob a chance to remove deo's paralysis will undermine rayquaza's pressure. From heysup's perspective, though, a healthy groudon is itself a roadblock to rayquaza especially since it makes it harder to click rock slide to break through salamence and ho-oh. Latios is also pretty weak from and can't afford to take more damage nor can it deny blissey heal bell, anyways. As such, he stays to ice beam as 64 tries to catch latios with hp ghost. At this point, 64 knows that his groudon is faster than kyogre but also unable to finish it off with earthquake. Since subcm kyogre is such a threat after the crit on latias and since going blissey exposes him to a rayquaza double switch (which is possible since it's also safe into earthquake), 64 decides to go for damage on the kyogre while heysup sticks with his plan of elminating the rock slide check and winning the weather war for his unrevealed subcm mewtwo. 64 then sends out latias and decides to raw dragon claw instead of recover to avoid another crit as well as deny leftovers recovery since the spike in play will prevent kyogre at current health from ever clicking substitute again. Heysup therefore chooses to sac his jirachi to try to revenge kill with latios. This does mean that blissey gets to heal bell but heysup can keep momentum by sacing his kyogre for rain and chip so that his rayquaza can come back in and threaten with hp fly. Deo-d may no longer be paralyzed but it is chipped enough that a hp fly crit could actually kill. He fishes for the crit for two turns but decides to punish the recover with a free mewtwo switch so that he could save his 9 remaining hp fly pp. This forces 64 to take thunder chip on his whirlwind ho-oh which he is then forced to sac as rayquaza is pulled out. Latias gets to theaten a revenge kill, though, which heysup has to allow since he can't afford her being healthy enough to check mewtwo. He tries to revenge kill the latias back with his own lati twin which, if he were faster, would mean that he could force extra chip or, ideally, a thunder para on blissey to improve subcm mewtwo's odds of winning. However, his latios is slower which basically means that he has lost the game without another crit or some thunder cheese. The game continues for 7 more turns as mewtwo fishes for the miracle but it's in vain. It's worth pointing out that on turn 58, 64 squares decides to recover instead of dragon claw. This play doesn't do anything to prevent a sub cm thunder ice beam mewtwo sweep. On the contrary, it gives the mewtwo a slightly larger hax potential. The recover wasn't a choke, though. In testament to heysup's creativity, 64 decided to accept that extra hax potential in exchange for not losing to a theoretical sub cm thunder
recover mewtwo variant. That extra hax potential that came with the decision was erased with a dragon claw crit on the following turn, forcing heysup to freeze or bust against blissey.
Heysup played the game really well but it was a very difficult matchup for him to win even with the big latias crit. 64 prepped better for this week and was able to match heysup's level of play to secure the win.
Fogbound Lake vs temp
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Fogbound switches it up from week 1 by bringing a deo-d sunstall. It's a sort of midpoint between the henri/mitana deo-d + mence stall that 64 brought and the more classic sunstall 6 (don, ho-oh, lugia, blissey, latias, forretress). On the other side, temp loads a cb dugtrio skarmbliss(?) team. Dugtrio's niche in the metagame is almost exclusively to prey on blissey (there's also nice lines vs forretress) so, in terms of prep, temp is favored here. In terms of luck, temp is also pretty favored this game. This week is basically temp on the other side of what happened to him week 1, where it was his blissey being preyed on by heysup's wobb as well as being heavily jazzed in the worst ways possible. The turn 13 Skarmory toxic into Dugtrio switch was a pretty sly setup. Fogbound doesn't want to switch any of his fliers into a toxic click nor risk the free whirlwind click from pulling back blissey or his other two grounded pokemon. As such, he decided to stay to force skarmory to whirlwind the blissey while she spams toxic to cover for attempted double switches. Dugtrio is such an uncommon pokemon that it was likely not at all on his mind (I do want to point out that iry is a fan of it, though). That dugtrio crit on blissey didn't really change the interaction much in terms of value but it did mean that Fogbound couldn't determine if it was a cb or a subliechi variant. Latias comes out to revenge kill and muscles past skarmory with +1 dragon claws but then gets crit by the spell tag deo-a when Fogbound was hoping to trade her in for a significant offensive piece on temp's team. He tries to then toxic stall the deo-a but just gets crit again in only 3 turns. There's a cool play where he sends out ho-oh first to bait the coverage (most likely rock slide or thunder given rain) and safely scouts it with groudon while also stalling a turn of toxic for minimal damage. The deo-a leaves the game with another crit, which means that fogbound is later forced to recover off that doubled superpower damage while eating a twave instead of toxic poisoning the slower substitute kyogre. (another major threat to fogbound's team) Since there's not really much point wasting kyogre pp by attacking a sun ho-oh, temp opts to sac his nearly dead dugtrio while also forcing a switch if ho-oh clicks toxic. That turns out to be the case and the dugtrio ends the game with a final cb rock slide crit on deo-d. The game was very likely already decided a few crits ago but there wasn't any desperate room left to find a winpath after the others.
MMII vs Vileman
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My team for this week. I chose to shadow ball t1 instead of the usual bulk up click because there's no public replays of vileman fighting against a mewtwo lead so I have no way to know how he approaches that matchup. There's usually no reason for a latios to stay in on a mewtwo lead (there are exceptions) but I didn't want to risk the uncertainty of ev spreads, shadow ball damage rolls, and 70% thunder accuracy. Vileman plays it safe by sending out his snorlax. This is more than fine for me, I get to freely click bulk up to scout for protect while also buffing boom damage to ohko steel-types at +3. Vileman chooses to curse which is a reasonable play against unboosted mewtwo. Even if I do have brick break, Vileman could be offensive snorlax with boom or a defensive snorlax with the bulk to risk minimum damage scouting my set/spread. If I'm not brick break, as is the case, curse forces me to eventually click boom and vileman was clearly willing to trade his snorlax for my mewtwo. This trade is also very fine by me since mewtwo is there to make an early 1for1 to limit options against the rest of my offense. I don't get that trade, though, since body slam immediately crits for the ohko. I'm now in the very uncomfortable position of starting the game with 5 pokemon against 6 and the lead snorlax already at +2. At this point, I could try to play it completely safe by sending out mew to click explosion so that I could chip the snorlax enough for a teammate to actually kill it. The issue with this play, though, is that I still don't know for sure if Vileman is running protect or not. Furthermore, even if I get the boom off, the snorlax could be fat enough that my groudon wouldn't be able to finish it off and I'd be forced to superpower with deo-a which would just give Vileman's metagross an easy pursuit trap revenge kill. Best case or worst case, I'm still spending A LOT of resources just to deal with the snorlax so I'm still very much losing the game, just in the slowest and safest way possible. I need a bit of luck if I want to make a comeback so I fully commit to trying to sleep the snorlax with my hypnosis mew. Regardless of ev spread or moveset, I would get two click attempts as long as mew doesn't get hit by a crit or para. Once asleep, I could choose to immediately boom for significant chip and to deny a sleep turn to ease groudon setup afterwards or I could hope for the 3-turn sleep jackpot and switch groudon in raw so that I could save my mew boom/second hypno for later. I'd still be behind in the game but the situation would be much more ambiguous for vileman (does he stay to try to wake up and risk feeding me setup on a 3 turn sleep or switch to conserve momentum and the sleep sac?) as well as keeping the value gap as small as possible. Anyways, I just miss both my hypnosis and the game ends with me desperately fishing for miracles. That's just how pokemon is, vileman played really well to maximize his odds and not choke his lead. I wish he had accepted the bo3 ;-;
mako vs violet river
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Another great game this week! The villains stick with sun teams while the drizzlers bring their second week of rain. This time, though, mako brings a sunstall (with a mewtwo twist!) instead of a sunoffense while violet river debuts with a very standard rain gengar. The lead choice and thunder crit gives mako the initial momentum and allows her to get her first spike on turn 4. Violet adapts in a clever way by choosing to calm mind with her blissey to force mako to respond with either a snorlax or a blissey of her own, both of which are good opportunities for violet river's skarm to get her spike up. A lucky roar pulls blissey back out as mako's forre spins away the spike (although violet was probably looking to get more info on mako's 6) which allows skarm to put that spike back up and then reveal gengar on the second spin attempt. Mako brings out her ho-oh counter and this time she's the one that tries to scout with whirlwind but instead just pulls the same gengar back out when violet tries to scout the hp fly click or groudon double with her skarmory. The second time, violet decides to punish whirlwind with a thunder click and is rewarded with a paralysis into skarmory pull. The second spike goes up in exchange for sacred fire chip, but no burn. The final layer is placed followed mako getting her second as the threat of spin forces gengar back into play. Violet correctly reads the safe ho-oh play from mako and commits to spamming thunder in hopes of a crit or full para to ko through recover attempts. Mako settles for just one recover to bring her ho-oh back to 70%ish and then chooses to send out groudon to reclaim the weather on the free thunder. Seeing gengar as a threat, mako decides to thunder wave with her groudon even if it means taking a wisp for it. Violet recognizes that her gengar is very well positioned against the team revealed so far, especially with ho-oh paralyzed and 3 layers up. As such, she decides to send out kyogre to scout the groudon set since mako is unlikely to eq into levitate gengar and both sd/hp ghost clicks are better punished by kyogre than latias while also putting rain back up. Both players don't want to risk the speed creep war at this point so we latios come in to check surf while rayquaza is revealed to punish earthquake. Both players again decide that they don't want to trade this early (espeed chip on latios is dangerous for mako in dealing with kyogre and a dead rayquaza limits violet's offense) so instead mako's forretress and violet's blissey come in to play. Mako's forre switch is particularly interesting since it both covers the espeed stay as well as punishes the safe blissey with a third spike. Violet reads that spike, though, and risks a spin in exchange for thunder chip. She's rewarded for the good play with another para and brings out gengar to cover spin. Violet keeps the reads going with a wisp into the groudon entry but this time her luck fails her as the wisp misses. She insists on getting that burn (as well as likely anticipating earthquake based on the last gengar vs groudon exchange) but that mako gets that thunder wave she was looking for earlier. With groudon burned, there isn't much risk to sending out kyogre which mako takes advantage of with a slick blissey double switch to cleric away all the status that plagued her team prior. This is a big value setback for violet and the cosmos decides to reward mako's initiative with a toxic dodge on latios into thunder para + full para against violet's blissey. Now ho-oh gets a free sub on the forced soft-boiled and gets to para fish with further sub spam. This forces violet to reveal her roar latias as mako gets to fish for a sacred fire burn from behind her sub. Admittedly, this burn attempt is a bit of a risky play since a burned cm roar latias would be immune to blissey's toxic but the burn doesn't happen and it later turns out that violet is using boltbeam roar latias. This set is a reasonable assumption given the rest of the teams structure (honestly, standard boltbeam refresh would be my first guess and scouting that lets you whirl on the refresh click) and a burn on latias would help a lot with the subcm mewtwo wincon. Latios is pulled out and both players commit to trading blows which reveals that violet's latias is either faster or that both are max speed timid. In any case, mako assumes to move second and retreats to blissey while violet stays to click recover. Gengar comes in on blissey to absorb toxic but mako instead heals off spikes chip. Violet reads mako's retreat by double switching to rayquaza (which covers both groudon and ho-oh) and then uses the threat of rock slide to double again to her latias and mako's forretress replaces ho-oh. This gives violet a free thunder click into a roar read on the softboiled from blissey, which finally reveals mako's final pokemon: mewtwo! Violet's latias thunders as mako's mewtwo boosts with calm mind which is important since it gives violet ev spread information as well as a free thunder para fish. At +1, though, mewtwo's potential ice beam is quite dangerous so violet plays it safe and sends out her cm blissey. Mako doesn't want to risk a cm war this early in the game and so respects the blissey and sends out her ho-oh to phaze out any boosts. Mako also wants to start aggressively phazing so that she can, ideally, force kyogre to eat more spikes chip and thus be more likely to win the weather war. Doing so is important for mako as sun thunder would make it far more likely that mewtwo is able to pressure pp stall out cm blissey. Unfortunately, blissey uses thunder and paralyzes the ho-oh once more. This forces mako to bring out her own blissey instead, which violet reads by sending out rayquaza. (the play would also punish a recover click) Finally, violet's rayquaza can start actually clicking attacks. Mako softboiled's once to scout which move cb ray locks into (dd ray would have been very scary here) and sacs the virtually dead forretress to hidden power flying. Latios comes out to revenge kill and violet river responds in an interesting way based on the prior lati vs lati exchanges. She decides to send out her own latias since it is safe into ice beam, due to latios being in ko range as well as being slower. (or at least mako is unwilling to risk the tie) This latias switch also punishes a recover attempt by threatening to win the 1v1 and allowing violet river to push in more damage with roar pressure. Blissey comes in as latias recovers off the ice beam but, this time, mako decides to click toxic instead of healing her weakened blissey. This ends up catching the rayquaza switch but that's okay for violet since she forces mako to sacrifice groudon (rock slide read probably) and keeps blissey at only 50% with spikes in play. Latios comes in again for the revenge kill and violet decides to sacrifice her own weakened kaiju since she's already won the weather war and because sending out her blissey, albeit safer, would allow for mako to potentially double switch her blissey in and heal. In order to keep mako's blissey in it's vulnerable position, violet sends rayquaza back out to revenge kill with extremespeed. At point, mako needs to rely on lastmon subcm mewtwo to turn the game around so she gives up the latios and sends out ho-oh to recover and force burn on latias. She gets that burn this time and lets ho-oh drop to thunder. Blissey comes out and gets chip on skarmory as well as mewtwo setup as whirl pulls it out. After skarmory drops to psychic, blissey comes in and then fails to pop unboosted substitute with her raw thunder. It's worth noting that earlier calcs reveal this to be a damage roll. CM Blissey is at risk of losing to mewtwo's pressure pp stall if it doesn't manage to get enough good rolls against substitute to force mewtwo to recover and thunder para as it does so. Violet has no reason to risk this yet with 3 other pokemon still on her team so she sends out her latias to recover and roar out the mewtwo. Mako lets this happen as she wants her blissey to die while pushing in as much damage as she can. Violet decides to kill that blissey as quickly as possible by having rayquaza finish it off with hp fly, the threat of which denies mewtwo setup and forces it to psychic into latias. Latias fishes for thunder para as mewtwo stalls out burn damage with substitute spam. The game ends with a rayquaza crit. Mako was probably favored to win that endgame (i'm not lavos calcing shit) but, besides that crit, there were still opportunities for violet to win since blissey thunder can pop mewtwo sub roughly 30% of the time. Blissey didn't have much pp left, though, and violet didn't have a sure way to kill a paralyzed mewtwo since her own gengar was paralyzed. She would have needed to hope for enough thunder rolls to fish for para on recover and then either crit or full para a bunch of times. The ending was a bit unfortunate but the game was really well played by both.
I rambled too much again, sorry :-(
