(stupid image made by me lol)
Welcome to my SPL Thread. I’m gonna be rambling about a lot of different things related to SPL and also talk about my season as a whole.
Before even joining this tournament, I had decided this would be my last smogon tournament. I wanted to make it a big project to celebrate my ~decade or so of being semi-active in the community. So I thought the following idea:
“Hello, this is me, I guess its bruno but I kinda wanna get another name change, writing from Noember 21. Ive been thinking I kinda wanna play SPL one last time, ive skipped a lot of them and ive been kinda missing playing. Main issue is nerves but I also want to learn to beat that before im done. Also, I want to write all my experience of the tournament, kind of like a diary. I think this just sounds really interesting and fun, and no ones really ever done it before. Idk, maybe no one gives a fuck, but I’d find it super interesting if someone did it. Also just seems fun to do in general, to go over what im thinking each week, with a little bit of what was worked on each day, how im feeling about my team and the season etc. I want to at least try to be as honest as possible about everything.”
(shoutout to Pedrock for the diary idea. He didn’t make a diary per se but he did write all of his experience during world cup in the BR Forums and I remember thinking that was a really cool read, like, 8 years ago)
Then we had a couple different developments(I never wrote the date for this part but it was somewhere in december):
“Just realized spl is 9 weeks and theres 9 gens. I wanna play one tier each week, from gen 1 to 9. Im gonna make a signup where i explain ill tryhard a fuckload if u let me pull this off, then help every tier but also go through each one each week, this seems insanely fun, also perfect to do it now with it just becoming 9 gens. The time has come.”
“Hello, reporting back from January 4... LOL. It has been a while. i highly contemplated not joining but i still like this diary Idea and i kinda do wanna join again... Also fuck that idea from before i dont wanna try so hard like that lol(roro also helped getting me out of it). It would be amazing but also not worth the time sink for a fucking png trophy and hobby.
But I’ve been wondering what tier i should play. Im kinda considering just signing up for rby, i actually PMed Tony about playing it but it doesnt seem like he really cares if we teamed or if i play. I also PMd tdk on the other hand and he seems super hype If we could play together, which kinda hyped me too. I decided during this evening im gonna PM him again asking How much he wants to Win this tour, heres why:
Last couple times i joined SPL there were very specific reasons. First time i just wanted a chance to be in it and i won, then spl7/9 I wanted to manage, spl8 i played because i wanted to get the best record possible, spl11 i played because i was super interested in the tier(gsc), rn i dont care about any of that and i dont care If people think im good or not or any of that stuff anymore. This time im thinking of playing for a friend: Ive always liked tdk a real lot, and hes always come so close to winning this tournament, i would like to help him do it. It would also be cool to see obi win as another friend and also troller, whos one of the most consistent SPL players and still has no trophy, which is kinda sad. Tony/abr already won before, excal won scl, aug won classic, i would want rozes to win but dont rly think teaming with zom would be so fun(sorry zom). So yeah lets see what tdk says
Yeah as expected man wanna win bad, so im now telling him i wanna help and ill just play whatever they need a slot for atm, and that they can just ditch me If i end up too much and its not optimal, so i guess ill find out the tier im playing later, kinda hype
They actully opted for DPP, so i guess its time"
So yea, to sum it up, I ended up deciding to let Sharks take the tier I play because my goal this season was just to help them win, it feels more fullfiling than past selfish reasons and it still is fun. It’s also fun to just let another person pick the tier you play to me, was kind of rolling the dice and saying “ill deal with whatever happens”.
They ended up picking DPP, which is funny. Before the season started, I thought it was my weakest tier by far. I’ve played RBY for SPL before, had the 8-3 GSC season, played ADV a lot last year though callous and classic, BW through WCOP, ORAS/SM in SPL, and SS through WCOP, and I was keeping up with gen9 with the suspects and stuff. But when it comes to DPP, I’ve only played a side tour and had very minimal knowledge with both building and play.
But, at the same time, I was happy with it. The sharks decided on DPP because they thought I would be cheaptest there( except for RBY, but they retained Troller) and they weren’t too comfortable with any of the DPP picks of the season.
And so I just decided, whatever, I’ll take on the challenge, it’ll be fun. To be honest, I’ve always had some appreciation for DPP due to a lot of the supposed “peak players” being from it(prime Earthworm, Bab, Gouki, etc). Also remember watching a lot of cool games from the OG Smogon youtube.
Finally, there’s one last part I wanted to take from the diary(I actually wrote it until the end of week 1 then never again. Also unfortunately didn’t mark a date here):
“I’m not gonna lie, I’m already regretting going DPP. Its def my worst tier so I think im just gonna get fucked up lmao. However, at the end of the day It doesnt matter what happens this tour. Im just playing to help a friend, thats all im trying to do and its my goal from the beginning. All i wanna do is have fun, learn the DPP meta some more, have a fun time and just go with the flow. Theres 0 reason to be worrying so much about it, because im either doing bad for another team which accomplishes my goal, or im doing bad for the sharks which at the end of the day would be moreso their fault because they were the ones who decided on DPP when i gave them a tier to choose from, which is basically the tier i have the least amount of knowledge of i think.
Which is why I have decided that for each week i want to look back at 2 things, wins or losses:
What did i learn
Did i have fun
Thats all i wanna get from this season is to follow these things, outside of what ive already done now”
And so, our story began. I ended up signing up for DPP, and decided on playing every week under the name AICorder, which stands for Diary Recorder(terrible I know)(seeing as the entire season was planned to be for a diary dump thread) (also yes I swapped IA to AI because I was worried someone would realize from it lmao).
Fun fact:
You can see in my signup post I signed up with a little simz song. Songs fire but I also did this because tdk generally uses little simz nicknames. I did this as a hint for other managers because I thought what we were doing was a little unfair(him being able to pick whatever tier I play for him type stuff), so it was like a “alright if a manager actually realizes this and upbids tdk because of it props to them”. Idk im weird aite, obv no one realized shit
I ended up going 15k, which I thought was a little bit much for DPP at the time, I think second most expensive DPP player as well. Before week 1 I tried to peak the ladder and got obliterated thorough my attempt. I also remember losing to snow cloak sub froslass in hail and thinking the fact this is allowed is bullshit but never ended up being able to make something good with it the entire season.
Before going through the prep, I want to give a shoutout to Pearl . Seeing him prep for tournaments motivated me to make sure I enjoyed my time nicknaming and choosing my shiny Pokémon when preparing for my games. I’ve never been the kind of person who cared about this kind of thing but it made the entire experience more fulfilling in a way. Felt like I could print my personality to the teams in a way. Also fit nicely with having a different custom used for every week
Week 1 vs. oiponabys
Interesting how this is the most I prepped for someone by far and it was the one week I lost. At this point I was still very pumped with the diary idea so I tried to scout oipon a little bit every day. There’s a ton I wrote about him, I also read every single post hes made(battle frontier posts were a fun read lol). Not going to get much into it, but my conclusion was was that he was either gonna stall or use some nonsense offense with mixnite(I really struggled to understand the cohesion behind his teams, partly because of lack of experience too).
During the week I wrote this dumass shit
But honestly it was also kinda real. I was pretty lost on how to proceed with the week after gathering all the info. He was a pretty unorthodox builder to me, he had probably 9000 more games ive ever had in the tier, and I was quite sure playing DPP was Not It, so my confidence was at an all time low in general.
Regardless, I felt I had to build my team, even though I knew at the time it wouldn’t be that great, similar to the GSC season. The only way to get better is muscle through it and I need to learn to build, at least that’s what I thought at the time.
This is what I ended up using in the end: https://pokepast.es/afde835f4e2e039a
Team-wise, at the time I wasn’t really satisfied with how boring it looked. But I was like “Nah, I need to tryhard as fuck, I cant just fuck around especially week 1, I need to win week 1”. The team did mostly alright while testing, but I did write that almost every time I won it was because the ttar set did a lot of work in my team chat(just thought it was important to note because if you watch the game I ended up not being able to do shit with it lmao).
Nickname explanation:
Most of it were just lyrics from this song as it was what I listened to the most during the week.
Bocchi the penguin is from the anime Bocchi the rock, everyone started using bocchi nicknames and they were mostly winning so I entered the bandwagon
I live recorded almost all my games and this one is not an exception, if someone wishes to watch:
Game:
If you watch the video, you’ll see I was extremely nervous. I really, really wanted to win week 1. And I kept thinking “whatever happens, just play as optimally as possible, that’s the most you can do”. And yeah I ended up digging into that mindset so hard my timer went poof. I also spent a ton of time just trying to figure out his team in general which was really bad. Here was my conclusion while reviewing the game overall:
I ended up later discovering that his Flygon was even Adamant and not Jolly and I miscalced the Jirachi damage, could have calced Uturn damage on scizor and found out it was Ada. If I had known flygon was Adamant, I think I could have found a place to setup agility emp and win, whilst Jolly outsped and that’s all I had in my mind at the time. But that’s hindsight anyway, in general though finding out it was Adamant flygon later pissed me off really hard as well because at the time I thought that set just seemed stupid(jolly flygons speedtier being really nice) and just didn’t consider it much at all.
Needless to say this was by far the most frustrated I’ve felt with a loss. My first week 1 loss, a timeout loss with a ton of mistakes, from a 15k player to a 3k player, and a lot that just pissed me off in general. All this time spent writing a stupid “diary” too, but I was like, who is gonna care about this if I’m going negative anyway.
(I do want to take a moment to say I hope none of what im writing here is taking any credit off of oipon. I think his prep and play were just better).
Obviously looking back at this week now, I couldn’t have asked for a better week 1 lmao. I think it was a great wake up call, and for the next upcoming weeks I had a general thought of “im trash at this tier, so whatever, I just wanna have fun”. I ended up talking to a lot of my smogon friends about the week as I was bummed about the loss for a few days, even had a 2 hour call with jam about all the anxiety I felt before this game. It really helped out. Shoutout to all of McMeghan , blunder , obii and mencemeat for the mindset help.
My general conclusion for the upcoming weeks was: I don’t wanna do this diary project thing. Let’s be real, no one was going to read shit. And it was not being fun to me anymore. It was just something taking too much mental head space for a hobby I’m supposed to have fun with. I was making sure to write something every day which is just such a waste of time. It was mostly what caused so much pressure and anxiety for week 1, because of this “big last final project” thing. And nothing about this week 1 was fun to me at all. In general I figured that I wanted to have fun with this tournament and this was not the way to do it. Roro also really convinced me I should be happy with the teams I’m bringing, otherwise, there really is no point. And I was not happy with my week 1 team. I took so long to make something so blatantly boring. You will see from some of the upcoming weeks that I really took this advice to heart lol.
Week 2 vs. SFG
This week was a completely different mindset in general. I had a much busier week IRL, and we also just got fucked up as a team week 1. My main idea for the week was just to use whatever team and test it way more than last week, to make sure I feel more familiar with the metagame.
Unlike week 1, I did no scouting or watched any of SFG’s games. TDK made a couple team ideas he thought would work well with me and I picked the one used, except for a few changes.
I didn’t like Leftovers Starmie with this build due to it being so aggressive so Colbur was nice to get a spin off on tar, ttar spread was changed so it lives 2 Modest Specs Latias dracos(shoutout sadly for the spread :elgerro:). And finally, I made the lucario Specs.
Specs lucario was literally just an idea that came to my mind because I was like “I wanna use something cool, haven’t seen someone use a specs luc”. But it did pretty nice in testing as well so I just rolled with it. Hyper beam last move was another “this is fucking fun” idea and I was dead set on hyper beaming if I were to just get smashed during the game to at least I can go out with a bang. I would probably have used aura sphere last if I were to go back and be more serious about it but at the time I wanted to make sure I was gonna have an enjoyable time playing this game.
So yeah, this team was much more enjoyable to use for me. I didn’t like how I didn’t end up building this team though, I only changed some things to my liking. But my motivation was also dead at this point.
And so I rolled up with this: https://pokepast.es/1983d4bb75d25b54
Nicknames:
Jump, Around, wanna see you: Listened to this song most of the week so both from the theme
Leonardo!: Watched some random anime episode with soviet and TDK and someone screamed Leonardo and that was that
Post Purge S: My good friend Mazinger deleted discord and I wanted to use a nickname as a token of respect, this name then suffered a change to the resurgence of S as he actually ended up coming back instead(He uses the name S on discord)
Bocchi the star: Same thing as week 1 star>penguin
Game:
(Game Starts at 12:30)
You can tell from the live recording I was much more calm this game, and it really helped work things out. I’ll be honest I think I had no business winning this game, my team was quite bad, but I think I felt way more familiarized with how I should approach it with all the testing and it showed. I’m quite happy with pretty much every play I made here. I was definitely lucky early on and I think SFG didn’t play too optimally, so that definitely helped as well.
Not only was I able to play a game I was satisfied with, I also got to clutch with the Specs Lucario and using Hyper Beam. Needless to say, my motivation was definitely back after this week.
Week 3 vs. Jirachee
This week was quite awkward. I ended up opting to try my hands at building once again. I scouted Jirachee quite a bit and because he was on Sharks last season, my team had a lot of intel on him.
I don’t want to ramble a lot but this is the main team I wanted to use: https://pokepast.es/195f902e92981475 .
It was doing alright in tests and I thought it had a couple cool ideas. I think Focus Punch clef in general is an underrated set that’s really really good against fat squads(it doesn’t need to be as offensive as this set lmao, I just thought this set was broken alongside zone at the time. Focus Punch in general forces clef to use softs and has a ton of PP).
Ultimately, my team informed me I shouldn’t use this because it looks bad, and then I got lazy and we got to the day of the game. I had no team set but I did happen to test with Kristyl during this week, and she used an Aero Sky Attack gliscor that was really cool. It was an interesting coincidence because, during this same week, I happened to read Pideous’ RMT while scouting Jirachee last season. TDK gave me some logs of the DPP channel, and Jirachee himself happened to link it.
I thought the Lum Aero was genius from that RMT and I also liked how kristyl’s team looked so I ended up asking August if she was gonna use the team. He said she was planning on maybe doing so, but he sent me an alternate version.
After that I changed one mon to another idea I was obsessed with during that week(Ancientpower Jirachi) and also changed a few spreads. And finally, we had the week 3 team. This would be my first time ever using an SPL team without testing it once. Soulwind kinda motivated me to try it as he preaches it’s useless, and so I was like fuck it, it’s not like this team’s rocket science anyway. You pray the Aero set works and they don’t end up with Rocks with their lead+you get yours, and you just attack.
I don’t have much to say about the team itself as it’s just sash HO and I just ran it up last minute, but I recommend reading pideous’ rmt in general. https://pokepast.es/76e689e03e87e5c5
Nicknames:
Lady In Red: most listened song during the week
Dds twice: Reference to a Jirachee classic in reference to the time BKC dd’d twice vs ojama with Ttar and died to Adamant Dugtrio
Ozymandias(season): We were 0-2 during the season at this time+waltuh white
Perfect Bloo: We were playing bkc’s team, bkc video reference
The visionary: Jirachee’s nickname on sharks last season
Post Purge S: He had still not returned
Game: This time I didn’t record the game. I was using HO so I expected the game to end in 5 minutes and didn’t think it would be worth it. Here's the replay: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-672814
Don’t have much to say about this game. I exploded on the Jirachi to ensure DDtar couldn’t get a DD on tran. I could have played this better especially during the Gyarados turns to ensure I win but I thought the game was just over and was clicking hard. But a lot would have to go wrong still.
Week 4 vs. Mael
This is the funniest week when it comes to prep. Because simply put, I didn’t prep. I decided on paraspamming mael day 0. I had tested during the first 3 weeks against star and struggled so hard to beat that team so I asked him for it and that was that. I also expected him to prepare for offense because that’s all I used at this point. Also I thought he had been pretty lucky and expected that to turn around if I used a hax team.
Because this is not my team at all and I changed nothing I don’t think it’s right to share it. I also don’t have much to say when it comes to the team itself because I just used it for the game.
This was the second time in a row I’d play an SPL game without testing and I gotta say, it felt amazing. The mental head space of having to prepare for SPL is really exhausting to me, but I just felt really confident this team would work and had the chance to just do other things during the week.
Nicknames:
wake up f1ilthy: music producer tag
colosseun npc: I used this every week from here on out, it was a funny quote from a conversation with Tony, funnier bc he misspelled colosseum:
Meikyo Shisui, Mori Buntarou: From finishing the manga The Climber, amazing read.
Resurgence of S: He had returned
Bocchi the buff: bocchi nick again
(damn I didn’t use a song nickname, most listened this week was definitely never fade away though by far)
Game: I did record this game but messed up and didn't record my screen so it's just me talking lol. Here's the replay: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-674105
This was a pretty weird game overall. In retrospect I think I played the early game quite poorly, then realized I was just gonna lose if I didn’t wake the fuck up, and got some decent rng midgame to help as well. I don’t think I ever needed Zapdos to take a para and it pretty much would have walled the whole team. Idk. Breloom also walled his celebi and beat it as it’s sd facade(which did make the magneton Tbolt crit really hurt but yeah). Turn 53 54 were nice at least. Not much to say other than the “prep” went as well as expected and probably should have tested a little bit to get more used to the team.
Week 5 vs. DeepBlueC
With a strong bounce back from last couples weeks I was feeling pretty good to go vs DBC who I thought was the second strongest in the pool after Kristyl. DBC was also with the Sharks last season and TDK seemed very convinced he’d be able to pull a good matchup for me here with the last season intel, so I ended up letting him take the wheel for the most part. We were playing the raiders this week and really wanted to win so I didn’t wanna do any mickey shit, but I did want to make sure I liked what I was using as usual, to not make the mistakes of week 1.
This was the week where I decided to follow using a flying lead every single regular season week. Reasons were: I thought it’d be fun, I haven’t seen anyone do anything similar to this, it would be challenging considering there’s not many great flying leads so that is extra fun, and I also thought it would be kinda symbolic of this season. During week 1 I had so much anxiety but it felt like the past few weeks I had been just enjoying my time, mostly without testing which I never considered seriously, and it felt really freeing. So it was kinda liberating, much like flying like a bird. Idk, hope this makes some sense.
So, TDK ended up building this team which fit the criteria of Lead skarm as the flying lead chosen, and I made 2 changes: Rocks on Scarftar and Focus Punch on Clefable once again. I absolutely believe this set is great and I wanted at least some sauce so the team was not just plain boring stall. It was also really good in testing when it was fat vs fat. Focus Punch Knock Clef is so annoying for fat because of the amnt of focus PP you have to spam on opposing clefs. Rocks on Scarftar ended up being great. Actually tdk wasn’t happy with it having rocks but I’m glad I went with looking at how the game went.
Again not much to say here as I didn’t really build this team but this would end up being the last time I didn’t build this season, so expect more prep writing ahead. I did end up testing a fair amount as I thought I kinda mickey’d up my play last week.
This was the final version of the team: https://pokepast.es/2ad13992e5891345
Nicknames:
51 needles: I actually got no clue just edgy shit or something
Not a pattern: Shit inside joke with Roro(who’s on raiders) that is unfunny
Obi tdk polyphemus: I’ve seen a lot of people nickname mag like 3 dumb people from their team, so I picked obii tdk and then I put polyphemus as a Cyclops from greek mythology to break the pattern and actually have a one eyed themed thing alongside the usual 2 other teammates nickname. This explanation makes no sense. Im weird aite
=) : quag has a nice smile
Colosseun npc resurgence of s: both explained, both become staples from here on out, im not explaining it again
Game:
(Game starts at 15:40)
Pretty hectic and nice game overall I think. DBC kept up the pressure nicely and serene grace rotom had me thinking it was curtains for quite a while. I had a pretty good feeling Quagsire was strong vs the last mon by the way he was playing but never expected it to be THAT good lmao.
I just realized now that I haven’t really explained much about the games but it would kinda boring to write them all ngl, also I think u can understand my thought process better if u watch the live recording. But if someone has any questions about any plays any game feel free to ask.
Week 6 vs. Sakito
Finally, we’re getting to the weeks I really feel like writing about. From here on out I made all my teams from scratch and finally felt really confident I could understand how to properly do so.
This is hands down my favorite team I built. I think it’s really unique but also very well thought out, so I’ll try to break it down in detail.
This week I was playing Sakito. To my knowledge Excal was going to build his team. I knew a lot about excal, so I was looking forward to prepping here. I was always going to keep following the flying leads thing, it was fun and also honestly helped me have a good starting point to building. However, I was kind of running out of good flying leads. In fact, Gliscor was the only really good one left and I wanted to save that for the ruiners week as we were playing Scooters this week and that team was ass. So I decided I had to do a shitter lead here.
So my options were basically: Moltres, Togekiss, Crobat, Yanmega, Staraptor, Jumpluff(maybe as a rain dance setter).
I decided Crobat actually seemed quite nice here, nicer than Gliscor even. Sakito had at this point only spammed HO or Stall, and crobat is nice into both of them. Excal doesn’t believe in Aero so I could taunt azelf and also be pretty annoying and a nice pivot into a stall team. It also is a decent mon to come into Clefable as long as it’s not twave or CM.
And so it was time to build some balance team with Crobat lead. I remembered the time when Tesung used a Crobat balance build and I thought it was quite nice, so I wanted to try something similar.
Because I was facing Excal, I wanted to make sure I was really good vs mixgon. Apparently he even thought it should be ubers for some time, and while looking at my self scout every single team I used was pretty weak to it. So overall, the goals were: Be good vs Offense, be good vs Stall, be good vs some Mixgon Balance. I knew for the third option it would be something balanced because most of the “mainers” (people who mostly play DPP) don’t believe in Mixgon without spikes.
Another point to add is that, I really wanted to be very diverse this season. I noticed a lot of past opponents saying I used a couple mons/sets they didn’t expect from me(I mean I already knew it was good to be diverse through SPL but this season it felt more extreme for some reason). So, if possible, it would be nice if everything used here was fresh.
After trying a ton of different styles, I decided Crobat needs Donphan. It’s weird to explain, but Donphan being a great Tyranitar answer+having access to Rocks and spin was super important. I could not figure out how to afford all that with any other structure ever. It either felt way too weak(I wanted to make sure I beat stall), or it couldn’t check enough against an expected HO team(AKA, I wanted to be 100% sure that I was beating things like DD Dnite, DD tar, Gyara, Mixgon(mixgon in general was impossible without Donphan because the spinner would be Starmie as I think forretress is garbage, but Starmie means my Mixgon answer would be Clefable, and Clefable+starmie wasn’t really what I wanted, not that magic guard+spin sucks but it didn’t feel right on a balanced build, would be too passive to me)). Tldr Donphan was the role compression necessary for this build to actually work.
Next I decided on Milotic and Wish Jirachi. I think milotic’s just a great mon period, I was expecting mixgon and its one of the best answers, and it just fits with Donphan super well(as I said it was partly the reason why I wanted Donphan over Starmie, Starmie woulda been 2 water types). Wish Jirachi would be able to wish back Donphan to keep it healthy vs a fatter build, and in general just a break mon that fit the vibe. Also the best steel of the tier so yeah.
So I needed 2 more mons. I knew I needed pursuit with this Donphan set and CBTar just fit everything perfectly with Wish as well.I was a little hesitant as I did use CBTar this season already but it was just the prefect mon. The last mon ended up being Specs Tran for the typing+ability fitting amazing+in general, it is so good with CBTar. These 2 together basically beat any fat build. Crobat ended up glueing everything together even better than I could have ever imagined. It was the speed control that could be tossed into Breloom and soft check it all game, and it kept up momentum early which is always extremely important for a Balanced build(you don’t want to fall back when your team doesn’t have many tricks up it’s sleeve or many absolute bulky answers to stuff)
This team definitely has a few weaknesses that I hoped to not find in the game. SD Lucario for example completely destroys it. But, I don’t know, I think that’s just the nature of balanced builds in general.
It took me a long time to finally be satisfied with a 6 but I finally got there. But the drama did not end there, as my team did not trust this squad at all. I also ended up figuring out the 6 while at work(sometimes chill work days are life saving I suppose) like 2 days before the game and was about to play without testing again.
And so, one day before the game, I had to go convince the sharks this was the team. Not only that, I had just come back from a restaurant and was pretty drunk
It was a really annoying night in general because I was actually feeling really good about this team and had no other plans at all, but after all the talk I lost all my hopes in it. Nonetheless that ended up being the team anyway and fuck it we ball. I just thought this was important to note as I think this was the week where I really started to gain self confidence. I knew this team was good. I didn't have to fight with anyone to convince myself it was. I could have trusted myself more.
And so, we finally had my favorite team of the season: https://pokepast.es/640adb2c3a798a3b
I mean, just look at the color aesthetics.
This team looks beautiful..
Nicknames:
Starflash250 , Raahka, Voice of Akasha: All top competitive players from AWBW(advance wars by web), another niche competitive community I play a good amount.
Fact 8: There was a decent amount of talk about fact 8 of this video in a chat.(have I mentioned these nicknames are stupid already)
Game:
(Game starts at 3:20)
Despite all the worrying pre-game, everything went perfectly. The mixgon spikes team was right there waiting to get cooked. I absolutely did get lucky this game which made everything much easier but I am more than confident I would have walked away with the win, especially since I didn’t even need to use the wishes etc. Secret power para would have been annoying though, interesting tech for sure.
Not much more to be said honestly, I missclicked one turn clicking too fast lmao but other than that I just executed what I thought would happen vs mixgon balance.
Week 7 vs. zf
Week 6 went amazingly well and so I felt even more confident with trying another fresh squad. I also already had a starting point with using Gliscor as, again, it was the best Flying lead left.
Actually I did mess with yanmega for a little bit and had this gem of a game: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1812065378-eqfwpw7o1waiyzvucd3ia32tghrkvfzpw
But he was quite terrible and so the team hit the bin.
Anyway, after trying some Gliscor structures for a bit, I came to the conclusion that lead Gliscor sucks ass. However, I did remember seeing Malekith use some lead gliscor team and dug up the replay:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-424039
There was a lot I really didn’t like about his team, but it still definitely served as inspiration. My conclusion ended up being that the only good Lead Gliscor is Scarf, and I really liked using it with Rocks for lead Azelf/Aero on Taunt.
I was also really set on spdef empoleon, partly inspired from that replay, partly because it just seemed like a good mon, partly because I had not used it(again, trying to be as diverse as possible). I didn’t really pay attention to anything zf had used or any of the replays but I did have in my mind that he’d use offense, and I think spdef emp is really good vs that(stops a ton of water spam stuff in general and I think just a really annoying mon for it).
Another mon I really wanted to use was CM Clef. She’s kinda broken in general tbh but bold max def is genuinely just so good vs offense. I also had not used it at all even though I was convinced the set was amazing for the past couple weeks.
I tried a few structures with these 3 but Excal was the one who actually convinced me on the 6 I used in the end. We had been talking a lot about dpp ever since the game vs sakito since we’re friends and had played already now, meaning we could just talk without worrying about SPL. He told me how well Gknot Flame clef fits this build and I was immediately convinced that the vibes were strong with this team. This team is super strong into Heatran, Gknot is great for DDtar, Flame catches Scizor and Jirachi, etc. Just seemed like a phenomenal mon into Offense except for no Tbolt for gyara, but I had scarf Tfang glisc for Gyara too. So I worked on the sets and in the end this was el team: https://pokepast.es/ce34cd900c9ac458
Think this is my 3rd fav team. It kind of feels like the definition of my season. The 6 mons are extremely standard but the sets have my own personal touch and personality. I was super hyped to get to play this game with this team and didn’t test once again as I felt extremely confident with it.
Nicknames:
Beware the Water, Minerva: Had a boner for daftones this week
Qxf7# : Classic chess checkmate, decided I would put references to competitive games I play/watch frequently at this point.
30 flow: I got no clue honestly
Game:
(game at 13:40)
Another really hectic damage. I was hoping to not face Gengar(despite expecting offense lmao), probably lost on the spot if it Subbed but happy with how I handled it. Idk, I think this was zf’s game to win honestly, but I also am not sure if he made any clear cut missplay(outside of going Loom over Gar on Tar I guess). Needless to say the CM Flame Clef vibes were on point. I was expecting to be faster than Sciz with the Speed EVs(that I did put for sciz) so when it was faster I was scared out my ass but thankfully it wasn’t band(I don’t think band would be faster, fwiw, as you want bulk to consistently Pursuit stuff).
Week 8 vs. Kristyl
Unfortunately didn’t get to play this week due to IRL. Sucks because I still think Kristyl was the best player in the pool personally.
Plans-wise I was going to use Staraptor because:
Also Raichy actually ended up using Zapdos so that’s funny because it kept the Flying theme(altho it woulda repeated leads and I was never doing that)
Week 9 vs. Twash
The Twash Week. Twash uses fucking batshit insane stuff, how do u fight that? You go full batshit insane yourself.
Nah just kidding. I already had the Raptor lead locked so just had to figure out the 6. Staraptor+zone is kind of a non brainer, and I wanted to use Breloom, as I didn’t all season outside of it getting crit and dying. This mon’s amazing and it fit perfectly with diversifying and using different mons every week(Twash legit told me afterwards “he didn’t think I was a breloom guy”, so, glad that went well!).
After a lot of testing and changing things around this was the final team: https://pokepast.es/52126ab2ff7ed8cb
The star of the show being CB Latias. It fit phenomenally here. The triple priority was fantastic during test games, and literally no one expects CB Sucker Punch. When it wasn’t suckering, I’d generally just do a shitton of damage with Outrage(its actually surprisingly strong) and let it die. I honestly fell in love with this set so much, but I do think it needs Magnezone support. It’s kind of a better CB Dnite in a way, not weak to rocks, can be used to blanket check a ton, and the drop in Attack really never hurt me at all. Sucker is in a way a better priority move than Espeed here because legit no one respects it. I already had this set in my head for a long time and I'm glad I got to bring it at least once.
The clefable is a little weird but its super nice to just throw into everything and get rocks asap. Chople zone was a last minute add I was pretty happy about as I had been really fighting week for almost every week and was expecting him to abuse that in some way.
Overall definitely my 2nd favorite team to make. It was definitely the most experimental one and it was really not easy to get Staraptor to work(mon is garbo). If he used Shed shell Skarm I lost on the spot but that’s gotta be the most untwash thing ever(I would expect Skarm to be lum berry before shed shell)
Nicknames:
clodsire&musicians: dream
polyphemus: cyclops guy
red roses too: powerful song
stella mortua: roro request from this song
Game:
(Game at 6:10)
Game went pretty smooth overall. I crit the champer but I think getting the CB QA off the full para turn was somewhat the same result.
I’m really happy I switched to zone the Latias turn. I don’t think I could afford sacking a mon to Machamp from my position, and going hard Magnezone into Machamp and taking Dynamic with Chople is a way worse situation, because he can just switch, but if I have Magnezone in on Latias, I figured he’d be tempted to go to Machamp on it instead(granted I didn't know he'd have Infernape last, but yeah, thought Zone would bait Machamp to come in).
I was really, really hoping to finish the game with Sucker Latias on Infernape but unfortunately he wasn’t scarf…. Was a fun game overall, so glad twash signed up, big fan.
Semifinals vs. Student of Sinnoh
Our team popped off and we made it to the semifinals as I believe first or second team to qualify. I was never gonna continue the stupid lead flying shit for playoffs, no more mickey, playoffs is when you gotta give it your all.
I didn’t really prep much based on my opponent, I just decided I was gonna stall. While looking at my self scout I thought people would view it as “random offense diverse stuff”. So I thought just going ultra full stall was a good call. I was also feeling really confident with my play at this point and thought I could figure out a way to win with stall vs anything, I wasn’t worried about playing from the backfoot at all.
And so I went to hunt for The Best Stall Team. I watched a lot of games from heist/babidi, as I thought he always seemed ahead when it comes to stall builds, and the Scarf CM Recover Lati builds seemed super interesting to me. There were a ton of others I looked into as well.
Ultimately, I thought to myself: “lets be real, the best DPP stall has to be I crawled”. So I then watched a ton of bkc replays and one game that caught my attention was with a version where he used Toxic TTar(it was roar/rocks/tox/tect) and caught a Suicune early on. I didn’t watch SoS’ replays but I did remember seeing him use suicune and I feel like him and oipon just have a giga boner for the mon in general, so I was like: “ok, I’m vibing with this”. Toxic TTar is also excellent here as Crawled suffers a lot dealing with mixpert imo.
So I picked up the original Crawled and gave it my own touch. In my mind I didn’t expect to face a spinner, so I thought Rotom looked kinda useless, and thought Scarf Latias in the current meta is a better fit, with it’s amazing speedtier(faster than +2 gyara and Tar). I also really liked how Scarf Healing Wish can be an amazing tool for this build. People mostly think its good for Offense but bringing back a bulky mon that was weakened so your opponent can sweep with something can really be just as valuable. The other great addition with Latias is a water resist, which people did kinda catch up on as an issue for crawled(SD Empoleon rose in usage parly because it destroys it, at least that’s my guess on that, could be completely wrong)
BKC’s last version from what I saw had wishtect clef and I liked the sound of that as well, considering all the Toxic Spam and the fact Clef doesn't take Sand so it's harder to abuse than like Wishtect Bliss. Lastly, I ended up using Restalk Jirachi, inspired from when Sakito/Excal used it vs me. I thought it was a phenomenal Breloom answer for this team, but it also really helped me vs opposing Jirachi, which I personally always thought to be a little bit a problem for the original crawled.
Having Restalk Rachi also made leading Tar such a perfect mon. If they lead Breloom, you go Rachi, If they lead Machamp, you go Nido, if they lead pert/hippo you can tox immediately, you rock on most other stuff, etc. It felt perfect.
And so I had decided this was the team and went on to wait for the game without testing again. Team: https://pokepast.es/560a93f51c36c786
Nicknames:
Lavieenrose: week song
VERSION 1, Lust: Tweek and Samora's Smash Ultimate player tags. Used to be my favorites to watch from there.
Danielle(smileyonm): Danielle (smile on my face), one my favorite songs in general last year
Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-KxcIFFPfA
(Game starts at 17:10, long ass game so I'll just leave the replay too: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-682786 )
This is the most interesting game of the season to me. I don’t think either of us really misplayed outside of 1 turn from me. I absolutely got extremely lucky with a ton of turns, but idk. I choked going Skarm on TTar over just going Jirachi in the end, I didn’t expect Taunt DD and thought that was legit just something DBC used and no one else did(which I guess is the lack of meta knowledge catching up). Overall it was still a really close game. I guess looking back at it my prep was bad or predictable, I’m not sure honestly. All of Gengar Cune and Tar were going to be super annoying no matter what. I guess you could say I should have just tried to get Nidoqueen in on Rotom early and set up tspikes then, but if he crit / Froze Blizzard I’m just dead and I don’t even know if tspikes is good vs his team.
Overall, I would say SoS was just better when it comes to prep here. I guess that’s the issue with relying on moves like Wisp and Focus Blast etc(I did try to actively avoid inaccurate moves all season outside of Week 2, when I instead went no fucks and just used main stab focus luc lmao). But I still am happy with how I performed in the game, especially comparing it to week 1 and the mael week.
Also fun to see he brought a rotom-frost. I wonder if it was for the flying stuff lmao.
FINALS vs DeepBlueC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo8PhmU0BwM
And so we were on to the finals, where I had to play DBC again.
Much like Semis, I was already set on what I was using. In fact I had this planned for a couple weeks now: I wanted to use Sash Magneton HO for my final game with Custap Endure Tar.
I just thought everybody thinks Magneton’s just scarf(unless you play twash) and I felt it was pretty guaranteed to work ingame. Magneton’s a pretty strong dude and it also has access to Explosion, so I thought dealing with it with sash was a nightmare.
Custap Endure Tar fit well with mag(opens up coverage moves), and it was another idea I had for a while. At +1 Ada Tar jus kills flygon with Crunch, but if you use endure Salac you’re still slower than flygon at +2. I decided on Superpower for the coverage move but Ice Punch is good as well I think. I was super sold this set would get at least 1 kill then 1 surprise kill if I were to use it.
I ended up asking a lot of people for help during this week because I wanted to win really bad. August told me DBC probably uses offense so I did keep that in mind. ABR ended up suggesting imprison azelf without Taunt and I also thought that was super genius. I ended up deciding on imprison/rocks/uturn/twave. This would completely stop azelf(with speedtie), could stop a CB azelf uturn, and also completely shut down Uxie and Gliscor.
I was also thinking of doing Wfall, Outrage, sub dd wacan Gyara and ABR convinced me of Custap instead. Ngl seeing how the game went Wacan Outrage may have ended up better but Custap still went crazy.
I tried a couple structures with the last 2. This was considered really hard: https://pokepast.es/429067559a34fcb6
But overall I think Dnite Jirachi just ends up as best. The strong Espeed priority really helps with revenging and Jirachi is just the best steel.
I was absolutely fishing for no Swampert here(he doesn't use it much) but other than that I was happy with almost any matchup. Team: https://pokepast.es/78d15a1abdd1d1a5
Nicknames:
reach the clouds: Perfect nickname ngl, amazing song and fit the season theme as a whole
IDM hugoat: terrible nickname but CTC told me it would win if I used it, guess he was right
obi tdk POLYPHEMUS: The return, but this time more hype because finals
Apocalypse: The final book of the bible for the final game
the gmo 6 pack: Dragonite is a powerful dude+inside joke from the Hardcore Nuzlocke community, I hwas playing a ton of the Run and Bun romhack(gmo 6 pack=genetically modified organism, joke used for when you soft reset a ton for a good first 6 mons for your nuzlocke)
Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9bVffErR4M
(game starts at 7:40)
I won’t lie I think this game was absolute balls. I think we were both super nervous and there were a ton of better things to do. I clicked out my ass LMAO. One thing I wanted to say is that Adamant Ttar over jolly paid off a lot(jolly would have had to hax with Def drop), and it was another thing season I had to argue a bit to actually use as my team was convinced it shoulda been Jolly, but I trusted my gut one last time. I think BKC did a better job analyzing this game than I ever could here so not gonna write much more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhKpJ0xkGsE
Final thoughts:
I was gonna make another section to share every idea and team I had made that I didn't use but I don't feel like writing much more... So I'm just gonna drop some of what I remember and give it a little explanation:
- Iron Ball Bronzong: Good mon for offense, yes you're weak to ground but only temporarily until you trick, which is super helpful for setup glisc/scarf gon etc. I like it a lot because it's similar to Meta but you trade offense for bulk for a Rocker, but it also doesn' feel nearly as passive as Bronzong usually does(because you get to cripple 1 mon with Ball). Still gives you the amazing virtues of Zong for Offense like checking Scarf gon after you trick. Had a Raptor team with that was almost used: https://pokepast.es/0584a5209aaf8fcd
- Skill Swap Blissey with Knock Gliscor: Glisc knocks Loom, then you skill Swap it and it won't ever be Poisoned again later, making it an Itemless Breloom. Idea stolen from Eeveon using it in BW(which is originally from Roro). Skill Swap blissey is also excellent for Clefable.
- Protect, SD, Ice Punch, CC Lead Gallade: You SD on azelf Rocks and Tect on boom, solid lead for the most part
- Focus Punch Clefable in general: I brought it but didn't get to use, I swear it's really good
- Sub DD Lum Kingdra: Not anything creative but I think this set is phenomenal at least at the moment, you can do a lot of shit like DD on clef/rachi then sub, also wanted to use it a ton of weeks.
- Mail Curse Cradily: Pretty nasty on a bulky build
- Band/Scarf Hippowdon: I messed with this a couple times, both have good surprise value
- Paraspam with Froslass hail: Still think this is stupid and would be banned if someone actually tried really hard to make something good with it personally
- Hariyama lead with Toxic Orb: Pretty strong lead tbh
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I did enter this season hoping to conclude my thought of "what did i learn and did i have fun", so here's some conclusions:
If someone actually reads this thread they would surely notice I wrote the word “fun” and its synonyms like 90 times. That is because this was the most fun I’ve had when it comes to playing. After week 1 I just used things I felt like using. I had so much fun with building and, in the end, actually brought the things I wanted to. I barely ever tested so my only commitment was just figuring out the team(which is, in fact, really fun). I hope the “no test” thing didn’t come off as if I was bragging or anything, it’s just a really insane change to me because I used to test so much for ‘important” games. It was really exhausting and boring honestly, but I did(and do still kinda think so, but not the same level) think it was very important to get used to the team you’re using. Thanks again to SoulWind for the mindset change. I also think if you prefer to test that's obviously fine, just down to preference.
I`m really happy that, after week 1, I really didn`t have many nerves issues at all except for playoffs, which I`m ok with. Before this tournament I was kinda like "fuck, I really cant play this stupid game because of anxiety?", it pissed me off because I've been beating a lot of past obstacles of my life the past year as well. So that feels awesome.
Another thing is that I really used to try and abuse my opponent’s tendencies. And while I don’t think this is a bad way to go about it, it was once again pretty exhausting and boring, as it was mostly just executing what I thought they’d do. Instead this season I focused a lot more on playing as well as I can with whatever I was using. You will see in every single video Live Recording that I say some shit like “alright, doesn’t matter if you win or lose, just make sure you’re happy with every turn you’re doing”. That’s all I really tried to do. Outside of week 1 and the Sakito week I was way more invested in looking at what Ive been using and trying to use other things the tier has to provide. I think that was pretty important too. The amount of opponents that said “I didn’t expect x/y” was quite insane. You can’t exactly predict what kind of advantage you’ll get from varying your teams, but I can promise that it does make a difference. For example, maybe if I spammed breloom Twash would have used Chople Tar and I would have lost week 9. Does that mean you shouldn’t spam Breloom despite it being good? No, I’m just saying most tiers have a ton of tool to explore and I think it naturally pays off to try them. But that’s just me.
My main takeaway from this season was that I need to trust in myself as a person more. If you know me, you know my confidence is quite ass with basically everything. But midway through this season, I learned to fight for what I believed would work because I knew it made sense to me. And sometimes that’s all that matters. It’s not that you’re going to go full narcissist and ignore everyone’s suggestions, it is moreso evaluating what they have to say and then process it with yourself and the person rather than just listening in and making that something you’ll worry about forever. Everyone has different opinions and that’s ok, but you need to fight for what you believe in as long as it really makes sense to you. A little lesson for life to me.
My final record ended up being 9-1, which I think is the best SPL DPP record there’s ever been. It’s pretty magical because my SPL seasons went as follows: SPL6 6-2, SPL8 7-2. SPL 11 8-4, and 9-1 now. You could say I improved slightly every season with a +1, which is kinda cool.
My overall record ended up being 30-8 for what is my absolutely favorite tour of smogon, and I think It will finish like this. It is the best record there is. My losses were:
kevin garrett, sg, steve angello, njnp, fear, fomg, empo, oipon
I`ll be real outside of FOMG(who I`d say I lost to in a really unlucky game) I think I`d always have issues with every single one of these players, in any tier, every time. I`ve always struggled to beat the “rachet” plays and hyper aggro type stuff, idk. I’m not sure if oipon truly fits too, but when it comes to unorthodox teams he certainly does. If you’re having trouble understanding the kind of players I’m talking about, Think like Eternal Spirit, blunder, Alexander. Those are some that come to my mind to me, that I have a hard time “reading” I guess. That just make a small reward big risk play because of intuition. Props to them for beating my ass and thanks for the games.
As for the wins, I’m not going to go through that shit but I’m happy I won vs players like ABR, McMeghan and BKC, who I consider the best the site has to offer.
This is probably the last tournament I’ll be doing on smogon. I’m not going to say it is because that’s stupid and I’ll just play again if I really feel like it, but I doubt it. For a long time during my early teenage years I wanted to stop playing only when I was considered the best. Then, I wanted to stop playing only when I was considered the most creative player. Am I considered the best now? No and I don’t think I am, but I did grow to believe I can beat anyone at any tier if you give me time. Am I considered the most creative? Nah, most people just think like ben gay and that’s fine to me I am and I’m happy with it. Personally I do think I am most creative but it's whatever.
Shoutouts to the DPP Community in general, really nice people, loved everyone and everyone was super chill to schedule with and nice. A big thank you to McMeghan , Kristyl , august , Jirachee , johnnyg2 and Star for the help with tips for games or testing, I really really appreciate it.
Finally, I wanted to give a big shoutout to the community and SPL as a tournament. Thank you for coming up with the idea LonelyNess . You have no idea how many times this tournament was important in my life. The tournament's idea is amazing and no matter how dead this community has gotten playing it always feels magical to me.
Shoutouts to -Tsunami- and Koko for drafting me SPL 6. It was amazing to win together and that tournament was hilarious In general.
Shoutouts to Shake for managing with me during SPL 7. We got really close, losing the finals tiebreak and it was an absolute blast of a tournament. Shoutout to blunder for the insane clutch vs reiku in the finals, still one of my favorite games.
Shoutouts to the SPL 8 Raiders, still the best team of all time, and a ton of moments I’ll cherish forever from that team chat. Caught el mazaring during the semis. A legendary season that amped up my play from just being around so many good players.
Shoutout to the SPL 9 Wolfpack, when I managed with Tony assembled the most insane draft ever and just ate everyone’s ass. Thank you to tony for accepting managing with me, and ABR for showing me why he’s still the best player there’s been. Big shoutout to Trosko, Asta, SoulWind and Fear as well that season, big inspirations.
Shoutout to the SPL 11 Classiest, where I felt like I had to take the role of a leader for the first time, when I just wanted to play some GSC LOL. We were so close and really hurt to lose both Finals and Tiebreak during that time, but it was a phenomenal season and one of my favorite team chats there’s been.
Finally, shoutout to this season’s Sharks, which just solidified my love for SPL. It was like it had the little bit of magic of every season but at it’s best. I loved every member in the chat and had an incredible time in general. We all know how we feel about how the Finals went but it doesn't matter to me.. I think everything in life happens for a reason truly, and losing a chance for a png trophy is maybe what we need to mature our young little minds, I don't know.. I am sorry to TDK, obii, Troller and nat in particular, who I know really wanted to win. I guess I did what I could. You are all awesome people and I hope life makes up for this to you in a beautiful way.
Man, I was so lucky to have 6 phenomenal seasons. I don’t know why this tournament is always so nice to me, but thank you to everyone who was a part of these seasons, I’m sorry I didn’t shout out all of you, but fuck that LOL
I’ve always been really lucky to be on the best side of Smogon I feel. And I’m really grateful for that. There are friendships I made from here that I don’t take for granted. Thank you to everyone from all the chats I’m in for making it a fun time.
That is it from me. Not sure how much I’ll be around from here on out but it’s been, well, fun!