Tournament UUPL VII Commencement Thread

Gosh, I'm so excited for draft and to get to see some UU players do their best in some games!

To relieve the tension, have a free brain teaser guys:

Question: On turn 1 of a standard gen7uu game, a Life Orb Nidoking takes 85% from a Fire Blast Chandelure and is burned and OHKOs it with Earth Power. At the end of turn 2 it’s at 100% without status. How is this possible?

Nidoking uses Rest, opponent wakes it up with Worry Seed.

View attachment 166838

Did you guys get it? Or think of an alternative answer? Hope to see you all more in Brain Teasers or in the Friend Safari Pokemon Trainers!

Nidoking uses rest on skill swap insomnia Hypno.

OR

Chesto Latias uses trick on Nidoking as it rests, and the hosts allow bugzinator to play UUPL.
 
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BAN ORAS UU CONKELDURR
Alright we doing this. I realize it isn't ideal to wait till less than 2 days before the auction to post something of this scale, but ORAS UU is universally seen as a flawed and generally disliked metagame, and as someone who has played/built the tier for years now, the main problem has become blatantly obvious to me. There are various Pokemon that people will point to as the catalyst, ranging from Hydreigon to Celebi to Entei to Gyarados among others, and all of these undeniably play a role in building in the tier seeming like a literal checklist. However, it is Bulk Up Conkeldurr that rises above the rest in terms of sheer strangle hold on the teambuilder. Obviously, banning elements of old gens can be messy, but I don't see how this ban, solely for UUPL, is inherently any different from banning something like Baton Pass from other metagames. Without the constraint of preparing for this beast, I genuinely believe ORAS UU would be a much more free-flowing and generally more enjoyable tier to play and build.

Ridiculously limited counterplay - As stated above, the main issue with Conkeldurr is how few options truly deal with it reliably, creating a huge strain on teambuilding. Looking at the tier list, there are only a handful of real "counters" to its most effective set, being Specially Defensive Bulk Up. These answers are as follows: Sylveon, Cresselia, Florges, and bulky Haze itemless Crobat. The list ends there. Sure, they beat it one-on-one, but a well-supported Conk has ways to abuse/surpass all of them.

The main issue with Sylveon in this case is its reliance on Wish to stay healthy. Conkeldurr can be easily paired with a Steel-type Roar user such as Empoleon or Mega Aggron to essentially nullify Sylveon as a long-term answer. The next problem with Sylveon also applies to Florges, which avoids the issues presented by Roar users via its one turn recovery in Synthesis. The two come into hazards, eat a Knock Off, and are suddenly at 70% or so without passive recovery. If they don't heal immediately, they'll find themselves at just above half upon their next entry. For the rest of the game they have to be wary of letting Conk get out of hand, thus giving up huge amounts of momentum to potential abusers like Nidoqueen and Roserade. Essentially, the bulky Fairy user always ends up on the back foot if the Conk user supports it well. As for Cresselia, I shouldn't have to go too far into detail for any of you to realize how passive and easily taken advantage of this thing is. Against any good team it should apply next to no pressure of its own. To make matters worse, if it catches a burn or poison, it finds itself spamming Moonlight so (shockingly) Conk doesn't get out of hand long-term. Crobat: run a rocker that keeps them up on it, maybe use Pursuit Aero too, and suddenly its nothing but a momentum suck. It has to keep on Roosting after catching a Knock + rocks damage or again, it loses later on.

Maybe you see the trend by now, but any good Conkeldurr team will have ways to abuse its only real "reliable" answers. Now onto softer answers. Sadly, this is perhaps the stupidest part of this Pokemon. Its fucking crazy how much Conkeldurr can beat one-on-one simply due to its natural bulk, access to Guts (haha Scald xd), recovery from Drain Punch, and the broken move that is Knock Off. Not only are the hard counters limited, but the soft answers are almost nowhere to be found. The closest things to those are Whimsicott and Colbur Psychic Slowking. To not take 700 on each switch-in combination with rocks up, Whimsicott has to heavily invest in bulk. However, to deal significant damage to fat-as-shit Conk, it also needs some Special Attack investment (0 SpA legit has a 0% chance to 2HKO). Either way, you eat a Knock Off and lose passive recovery, take hazards a couple times, and then you no longer (kind of) beat Conkeldurr. Moving onto to Colbur Psychic Slowking. The hilarious thing is that this set has literally no other practical use other than (kind of) checking Conk. While Colbur berry and 4th moves that aren't Calm Mind are perfectly viable options, Psychic itself just makes Slowking a worse Pokemon. There is no situation where you say to yourself "oh thank god I have Psychic on Slowking" other than when a Conkeldurr is at +1 +1 in front of you. Even then, the most it can hope for is trading for damage and having teammates revenge kill. Not to mention it can Knock once on the initial switch then beat your ass in the next sequence.

Something something but wait there are revenge killers! Yes, there are, in the form of stuff like Celebi, offensive Crobat, Nidoqueen, and Roserade. The unfortunate part is, they really are nothing more than revenge killers to a weakened Conkeldurr. They are in no way, shape, or form actual counterplay to Bulk Up Conkeldurr. No matter how safe they may seem on paper to switch in once on a barely Attack invested Fighting-type, I'll let these fun calcs do some of the talking here.
252 Atk Sky Plate Crobat Brave Bird vs. +1 240 HP / 0 Def Conkeldurr: 254-302 (61.8 - 73.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 16+ Atk Conkeldurr Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Crobat: 187-221 (60.1 - 71%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Get rocks up and you will always win 1v1 with a healthy Conk while Bulking Up on the switch

252 SpA Celebi Psychic vs. 240 HP / 252 SpD Conkeldurr: 254-300 (61.8 - 72.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 16+ Atk Conkeldurr Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Celebi: 312-368 (91.4 - 107.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Nidoqueen Sludge Wave vs. 240 HP / 252 SpD Conkeldurr: 208-246 (50.6 - 59.8%) -- 82.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Sheer Force Nidoqueen Sludge Wave vs. 240 HP / 252 SpD Conkeldurr: 160-189 (38.9 - 45.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery (Knocked on the switch :cwl:)

252 SpA Life Orb Roserade Leaf Storm vs. 240 HP / 252 SpD Conkeldurr: 277-328 (67.3 - 79.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
16+ Atk Conkeldurr Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Roserade: 147-174 (56.7 - 67.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Roserade Leaf Storm vs. 240 HP / 252 SpD Conkeldurr: 213-252 (51.8 - 61.3%) -- 96.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
I could go on and on and talk about stuff like the Choice Band set's immediate offensive presence also makes an unrevealed Conkeldurr that much more threatening, but this should do. Point is, it's no secret how hated this tier is by outsiders looking in and even those who played actively towards the end of the gen, and I would even agree with them in that it is an objectively flawed meta. This Pokemon is fucking stupid, way more so than any other threat in ORAS UU, and this UUPL is a perfect opportunity to see how a shake up could potentially push ORAS UU closer to its true potential as a tier.
 
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Pak

We're not banning Conkeldurr from ORAS UU in UUPL VII.

As you've said, Conkeldurr is a centralizing force in the meta, and this means that removing it would cause ORAS UU to be an entirely different meta altogether from the one everyone signed up for. Banning Conkeldurr would not be fair to the players; they would have to essentially learn a brand new tier from scratch in the midst of high tournament play. In addition, this cannot and should not be viewed as an opportunity to make changes to ORAS UU itself because of the talk of freezing oldgens lower tiers. I'm sorry, and while I do believe that conk is overwhelming in ORAS, removing it is not in the best interest of UUPL in order to maintain fairness and simplicity.


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In other news, player signups have been closed, and it's time to prep for the draft!

Remember, folks, the draft is happening March 31 at 3PM GMT! Be there, if it's not like 3AM for you. It'll be fun and a lot less of a meme than the mocks.
 
If you ban my Luna/ScytherPass in ADV you gotta give a chance to at least reconsider banning Conk. I could even make an argument that banning conk would have even less of an impact than banning Baton Pass in ADV. Everyone's still gonna be running Sylveon, Crobat, Cress, and Florges, albeit to a lesser degree than before due to the centralization, but it still won't be as big as no BP in ADV. As a disclaimer I don't really agree with changing the old gens in this tournament in the first place, but if we're gonna open the box, we might as well go all the way right?

oras is dong
 
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