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Calling act on mish because we scheduled a time and he missed it.
I actually have plans the rest of the week and am not re-scheduling a match I did due diligence to pre-arrange; dq me if that's a problem, I don't care.
NailsToday at 8:04 PM
hey
wanna fight for letters
ArcticblastToday at 8:05 PM
uh
I never built a team
take the win
NailsToday at 8:06 PM
wp
ArcticblastToday at 8:06 PM
gg
This round isn't late!! It's early!! Thank you everyone for finishing your matches early!! We might actually finish this tournament before Christmas and that way I won't get scolded by MajorBowman!!
jon asked me to test out the format because he thought it'd be fun and wanted someone to test with. the first thing that i realized about the format was that protect being nearly nonexistent was that you can kind of just kill them if you set up a position to do so, because they like. can't do anything about it. hard trick room was my first thought on how to do that because it's really good at just setting up and killing them. it turns out only having one trick room/tailwind setter makes it kind of mediocre as a dedicated archetype. so it was hard trick room with 2 scarfers. victini uses a bunch of weird letters and playing 5v5 makes it easier to take enough kills during your turns, and ttar was the cleanup after tr ended. gleam mew because the team scoops to kommoo otherwise.
Incineroar @ Aguav Berry
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 100 Def / 156 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Fake Out
- Overheat
- Knock Off
- U-turn
Tapu Fini @ Wiki Berry
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 140 HP / 216 SpA / 152 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Brine
- Calm Mind
- Protect
this is the first good team i made. i was Extremely inspired by seeing marilli use light clay screens koko in spl a year ago and i made my own version which i cut a vgc regional with, so it was one of the first things i gravitated toward building. i couldn't use snorlax so i wanted some other fat booster that could chill behind screens forever, and eseed cm cress seemed like a natural choice. we identified pretty quickly that volcarona was a really important mon because it gets value out of the letters q and o which are otherwise really hard to use, and screens abuses boosting really well so it went on. azu and zard are boosters which function as volcarona checks, because setting up screens means you kinda let your opponent do whatever and so volc checks seemed important to have for a cresselia team. tpunch zard gets the terrain boost and breaks waters for azu.
the last team taught us that boosting in a format where your boosted mons can just hit stuff and take kills was really good, so we decided to do that again; but this time with veils instead. diancie blocks rocks for volc, beats their volc (and zard) and is fast and strong; psych up should be protect but a lot of the other boosters on the team are good for volc to psych up and it's way funnier. volc is a volc and busted, zygarde is a fat booster, milo is anti intimidate mons, and grassy terrain gains value when veils are up + it breaks waters/tar for volc and generally enjoys being in a format where 1/2 of their mons probably can't protect and gets messed up by scarf wood hammer.
after building the last team, jon decided we should do it again but this time with sd chomper (inspired by . zardy also fits the theme of "can blow up stuff that can't protect real nice" and tailwind + sd chomper is scary. by this point we realized that screens/veils were really good because they made up the gap in bulk that most mons suffer due to not being able to protect, so we just kind of slapped them on. the rest of the team is just spamming weather and terrain boosted stab into slots with a bit of offensive synergy. jon wanted wide lens because he a bitch.
no one used this team in the tournament because it's not the best.
Tapu Koko @ Electrium Z
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Wild Charge
- Volt Switch
- Brave Bird
- Quick Attack
Heatran @ Life Orb
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Heat Wave
- Ancient Power
- Nature Power
- Overheat
i had a thought that maybe physical koko was really good. my good buddy gavin michaels used cb koko in vgc on a hard trick room team and i was blown away by how much damage it dealt, so it seemed like it'd be fun for me to use too. except z wild charge because it does even more damage. [jon note: include that we wanted to use it because it's a lot of use out of w and b and incineroar is awkward to use in this format.] by this point we just kind of decided that zard x was the best mega. it beats metagross, beats fini, and does a pretty effective job of cting marilli, so it got a spot. seed cress was busted the last time we used it and we thought the format just really struggled to deal with it as a whole so it got a spot. heatran was originally sub protect and cress was icy wind toxic but after testing we realized that those choices sucked so we made them both more offensive. serperior was the filler "we have next to no letters left and want something that can fight lando" slot, and it ended up doing a really good job in my game against animus.
Moltres @ Wiki Berry
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Tailwind
- Overheat
- Air Slash
- Flamethrower
jon wanted to build heracross because it kills cresselia and hates getting intimidated but control is harder to pull off and heracross can't hit into protects in this format, so we did it. milo was added for lando hate, lando was added for lando love, z wild charge koko was added because it's still pretty busted, serp helps with lando and is just generally really good when it can boost, and moltres is a tailwind setter that gives another volc check and fits the letters that we had left. the team is pretty solid and it should've beaten me but i dodged an important icy wind in the mid-lategame. jon and i were supposed to play in finals but level 51 is a rude dude who deserves all of the scoldings that should come his way.
for finals we decided that rain bodied the crap out of fespy's team he used for the last 2 rounds, and in retrospect we should've built rain earlier. every mon gets exactly 1 water move because there's barely enough letters to go around. quick attack was to break pheromosa's sash, air slash over hurricane because hydro pump was too important. swampert and pelipper are +spe to outspeed scarf staraptor and +1 timid volc after tailwind/swift swim. ferrothorn is +def because he didn't really have many special attackers. politoed is a useful mon as is but there's also legitimately no other moves it can use without gimping another more important mon (swampert needs eq and ice punch so encore and ice beam don't fit).
thanks first to yoda for making the alphabet cup team building wizard tool, it made building for this format so much easier. thanks to jon for making me do this and being there every step of the way, and for missing icy wind. thanks to 51 for hosting, you do not in fact deserve scolding from jake. thanks to fespy for putting up with my johns tonight, and marilli for playing some test games early on. i ended up really surprised by how deep the format was, and how much fun i had with it. bring on spl!
Thank you to everyone for playing in this tournament, especially Nails and Ezrael for really getting so deep into the meta—it means a lot to me to know that people are finding these formats fun and interesting! The Minitour Champion role has been transferred to Nails for now, but look out for a third minitour coming up [[soon?????]]!
I hope everyone who played in this tournament had fun with their games and their building. Once again, if you have any ideas of your own for a minitour, or would like to host one even, don't hesitate to drop me a PM here, or a DM on Discord!