Tournament Smogon Snake Draft Overused Discussion

Finchinator

-OUTL
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Smogon Snake Draft


The Smogon Snake Draft's regular season is now over. 10 teams battled it out over three phases (each two weeks long) and every team had 4 SM OU players. Over the course of the regular season, 180 SM OU battles occurred and the tournament metagame shifted significantly. Many of the best players demonstrated their teambuilding and gameplay -- replays can be seen here, usage stats can be seen here, and records can be seen here.

For every player that was in SM OU at some point and is not in the playoffs (I have tagged all of you above), this is a thread to post your thoughts on the metagame, creative sets, teams, and anything else involving games played by yourself or others in the tournament. Feel free to include anything you believe relevant when posting if you elect to share your thoughts.​
 
Like i did for WCoP im posing some intresting thing i used in snake, hope u enjoy.


Greninja @ Expert Belt
Ability: Protean
EVs: 24 Def / 232 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- U-turn
- Spikes
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Hydro Pump
This gren set is really good, u-turn + ebelt let you fake the scarf and then bait many things after and thanks to grens great coverage and ability you dont need LO and recoil but Ebelt is enough for get the kill you need. 24evs in def are for live 100% pinsir QA at +2.



Reuniclus @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 200 HP / 56 Def / 252 SpA
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Signal Beam
- Hidden Power [Fire]
This reuniclus set is sooooo underrated imo, this thing has a scary fire power and destroys ur oppos plan in 1 turn after u click that devil button named Trick Room. psychic beam coverage + hp fire is really great, nobody expects an hp fire on this thing and then u surprise them with that and get a kill, signal beam is for not missing vs dark and it still has a rlly good chance of killing ttar after 2 layers spikes and rocks (it kills 100% after 3 and rocks) or u can just chip it pressuring it with other mons



Volcanion @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 40 HP / 252 SpA / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Steam Eruption
- Fire Blast
- Earth Power
The steamy one. This thing is beautiful, thats a mon i wanted to use in wcop tie-break but sadly i didnt had the chance to, this thing just eats balance itself by just subbing on pex/steela/ferro etc... and spamming damage and it just baits faster lando with shuca berry. Happy that my fren bro fist used this awesome mon.



DUREZZA (Kartana) @ Adrenaline Orb
Ability: Beast Boost
Happiness: 0
EVs: 248 Atk / 8 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Frustration
- Leaf Blade
- Sacred Sword
This is my favorite kartana set, since Lando-T is not an hard mon to find against and its usually a switch to this thing getting a kartana that uses dragon dance is great counting that the only 2 mons that can outspeed this after it gets to +1 aka ninja and tios, frustration is for hitting hard zapdos, u kinda do the same dmg as smart strike does to mon such tang/venu/guss u may lose a 2% or so.



LIMMORTALE (Latias-Mega) @ Latiasite
Ability: Levitate
Happiness: 0
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Earthquake
- Ice Beam
- Roost
- Defog
Its incredible how strong this mon is, i dont think theres too much to say on this we all know what this does, actually ice beam + eq does get almost everygame great match-ups



LAVIOLENZA (Tyranitar) (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Sand Stream
Shiny: Yes
Happiness: 0
EVs: 252 Atk / 80 SpD / 176 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Crunch
- Pursuit
- Aqua Tail
- Stone Edge
And for the last mon we have TTar, this thing just destroys stall by clicking sedge (u could use this with just that move), anyways as filler this has aqua tail since there are many stall that rely on hippo for check this thing, 80evs in sdef are for live a moonblast hit from non-specs lele.


Teams:


http://pokepast.es/69729c9edc6e0386


https://pokepast.es/8998392cc6d4801b


https://pokepast.es/09e5ae4049d2e276 (WoF's Team)


https://pokepast.es/18f45ff25bc7a3bc


https://pokepast.es/9b6604bfcd46c1fb


https://pokepast.es/b31dc54f8c38b3bc
 
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http://pokepast.es/8166f7689c71da52

I was never really big on sand drill in SM, but this team came out really cool, some of my friends enjoyed it and it picked up a few wins throughout the tour

I'm usually more of a specs koko kinda guy but this is a pretty nice set that I enjoyed using too


Tapu Koko @ Fairium Z
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Dazzling Gleam
- Hidden Power [Fire]


as far as innovation goes, there wasn't really too much from me personally, but I did like seeing what other people came up with and hopefully they'll post their stuff
 
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Posho

local gaymer weeb
is a Tiering Contributoris the Smogon Tour Season 23 Championis a Past SCL Champion
Well, SSD was sort of a blast for me regarding the building, though it was quite difficult as I'm not quite experienced in SM, and I'd rather be building BW or whatever... either way these are some cool teams/sets I've used during the tournament.

Teams:



wishmaster (Victini) @ Choice Band
Ability: Victory Star
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- V-create
- U-turn
- Trick
- Bolt Strike

apprentice (Venusaur-Mega) @ Venusaurite
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 248 HP / 52 Def / 208 SpD
Calm Nature
- Knock Off
- Giga Drain
- Synthesis
- Hidden Power [Fire]

7th seeker (Magearna) @ Electrium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 144 HP / 216 SpA / 148 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shift Gear
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast
- Ice Beam

master (Landorus-Therian) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Impish Nature
IVs: 30 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake

disciple (Greninja) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Battle Bond
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Water Shuriken
- Dark Pulse
- Hydro Pump
- Spikes

warrior (Kartana) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Defog
- Aerial Ace
- Leaf Blade
- Sacred Sword

This was the team I brought vs Axel10, definitely one of my favorites. It's based around band victini and basically support it as well as I can, with spikes, knock venu so I remove heatran's leftovers, spikes ninja, electrium z magearna for luring bulky waters and stuff, this lando set used to pack toxic, however while laddering I noticed stuff like mega pinsir and z wáter gyarados could easily run through my team so putting rock slide on it was my best choice, and lastly scarf kartana, which is a damn impressive mon against offensive teams, with spikes support and venu's knock off it can be a good late game cleaner.


Tapu Kingpin (Tapu Koko) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Dazzling Gleam
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Fire]

Landorus-Kingpin (Landorus-Therian) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- U-turn
- Hidden Power [Ice]

Kingpex (Toxapex) @ Black Sludge
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 52 Def / 208 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic Spikes
- Scald
- Recover
- Haze

Scizorpin (Scizor-Mega) @ Scizorite
Ability: Technician
EVs: 248 HP / 16 Atk / 44 Def / 200 SpD
Impish Nature
- U-turn
- Roost
- Bullet Punch
- Defog

Kingpintar (Tyranitar) @ Choice Band
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 120 HP / 184 Atk / 64 SpD / 140 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fire Punch
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Stone Edge

Kingperior (Serperior) @ Normalium Z
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nature Power
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Glare

Team I brought against zomog, it is not that original, because I've seen different variants of it such as the one some people use with zygarde and heatran, or omfuga's, which runs chansey and magnezone. Either way this version of the team is pretty solid, band tar + serperior is a pretty nice core that has prevailed ever since ORAS. Specs koko + scarf rocks uturn lando formed a pretty nice volturn core and also toxapex's toxic spikes were huge help as I could get some crucial Ko's thanks to psn dmg. As you may have noticed, serperior's using nature power which turns into thunderbolt, and thus I'm able to take on stuff such as celesteela, and even heatran if it's not a specially defensive variant.


Tapu Lele @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Psychic Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Psychic
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Focus Blast

Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Magma Storm
- Taunt
- Toxic
- Earth Power


Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 248 HP / 52 Def / 208 SpD
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Protect
- Power Whip
- Leech Seed

Latias-Mega @ Latiasite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Defog
- Roost
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt

Landorus-Therian @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Smack Down
- Fly
- Earthquake
- Substitute

Alomomola @ Leftovers
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 40 HP / 216 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Wish
- Protect
- Scald
- Toxic

This was by far my favorite team I made in this tour, I used it against nedor and it turned out pretty well, I was focused on trying to break through some balance-ish cores as I knew nedor liked bulky offense stuff and that lando set was the one that came into mind, it had knock off previously but when playing against stall I struggled a lot against counter skarm. As for the rest, it's pretty standard, ferro's my rocker, magma tran is so I break stalls with a bit more of ease, I still struggle against sableye, scarf lele is my revenge killer for the likes of mega pinsir, lopunny and alakazam mainly, and wish alomola which supports pretty nicely my team, specially sub lando.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some cool sets:



Latios @ Psychium Z
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Heal Block
- Defog
- Psyshock
- Draco Meteor

This is a pretty cool set I was planning on using vs Eo, I give full credit to TDK as he was the one who mentioned it to me, I feel it's a pretty nice set on paper but it's hard to put in practice without the right support.


Serperior @ Normalium Z
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nature Power
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Glare

This set isn't mine, but I felt it'd be worth mentioning, see my teams above where I describe it.


Clefable @ Electrium Z
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 232 HP / 32 Def / 160 SpA / 84 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Thunder
- Soft-Boiled
- Calm Mind

Set I came up with not really long ago, based off poek and ben gay's z stored power clef, I decided to take a step further and use thunder, mainly so I also lure celesteela and mantine as well, which I outspeed with that investment.



Reuniclus @ Psychium Z
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 232 HP / 204 SpA / 72 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Future Sight
- Focus Blast
- Psychic
- Recover

A set I could never build around without getting the classic venusteela team, I believe it's a cool one as future sight is a move that conditions a lot of switch-ins, I tried to pair it with specs ninja or scarf keldeo as they force stuff like Amoonguss and Tangrowth out and take advantage off this set. Also z future sight gets some nice chunks against some mons, so it's pretty nice.

Videos:

Also, as for my thought process during my games, you're welcomed to check all my games I uploaded on YouTube, they're both in Spanish and English:

Vs. NJNP (This one is from his channel as the replay wasn't avaliable at the time and didn't upload)
Vs. Eo (English)
Vs. Nedor (Spanish)
Vs. ABR (English)
Vs. Kickasser (Spanish)
Vs. Axel10 (Spanish)
Vs. zOm0g (English)
Vs. Void (Spanish)
Vs. Level 56 (English)
 
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Trosko

The Catalyst
is a Tiering Contributoris a defending World Cup of Pokemon Championis a Past SPL Champion
I hate myself for loving Pokémon and not having the time to play it as much as I wanted. However, when going work in the subway, at class or even having a shower, I come up with really cool shit at times. And that’s what I wanna share today.



Slowbro @ Psychium Z
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 192 Def / 16 SpD / 52 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Psyshock
- Slack Off
- Calm Mind
I’m not sure if that set is used in any other tier, but I came up with that idea thinking about the typical VenuSteela and CelePex builds. A lot of defense investment to take on Lopunny, Medicham, Zygarde, Swampert, Excadrill and pretty much every phys. attacker that’s not named Kartana, Tapu Bulu or CB Tytar. 16 SpD evs lets Slowbro take one DM from Specs Kingdra 100% of the times, the speed investment so u can outrun Toxapex and kill it with +1 Psychium Psyshock. That Z-Move helps in many other match ups, vs mons like Kyurem, Quagsire, Zard-X or Manaphy.



Swampert-Mega @ Swampertite
Ability: Damp
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Ice Punch
- Yawn
Swampert is one of the most underrated mons in the meta. Why do I say that? Because nobody seems to prepare for him. Typing is amazing + it has very few switch ins in the meta: Ferro, Tangrowth, Rotom, Mantine, Gyarados and defensive Pelipper (u can still run coverage like Superpower or Stone Edge). How can I punish all those pivots without losing my rain turns? By using Yawn. This move lets you gain all the momentum as nobody can afford to have a slept Ferro vs a rain team: click Yawn on the switch, then think about if it’s worth clicking Waterfall again or playing it safe and going to your own Ferro.



Thundurus @ Psychium Z
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Thunder
- Psychic
- Focus Blast
I didn’t get to use it, but BTB did with my team. That Thundu set lets you hit neutrally pretty much the entire metagame, so after a NP you can sweep a lot of balance builds. I wanted something to break through Venusaur teams, so I decided to test it. In fact, his potential is not only his sweeping power, but typing and speed tier: Thundu has the ability to check Kartana, Celesteela, Pinsir, Manaphy and Tapu Bulu to an extent.



Garchomp-Mega @ Garchompite
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 104 Atk / 152 SpA / 252 Spe
Mild Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Draco Meteor
- Fire Blast
The Dugtrio ban changed the entire metagame and we started seeing CB Tytar and Heatran on every team. That’s why I decided to build something with Mega-Chomp, a powerful wallbreaker that gains momentum vs Heatran + becomes even more threatening when Sand is up. In fact, when paired with Tyranitar, this Pokémon has the potential to OHKO/2HKO the entire metagame if you click the right move. In fact, Chomper can lure in a lot of Pokémon for a sweeper like Excadrill: seeing how uncommon M-Chomp is, you can bluff that you’re Z-Move until it’s time to break that Lando with a strong Draco Meteor.

Let me show you some calcs:

104 Atk Sand Force Garchomp-Mega Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable in Sand: 210-247 (53.2 - 62.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

104 Atk Sand Force Garchomp-Mega Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey in Sand: 315-372 (44.8 - 52.9%) -- 85.2% chance to 2HKO after sandstorm damage


152+ SpA Garchomp-Mega Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 124 SpD Celesteela: 204-240 (51.2 - 60.3%) -- 90.6% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

152+ SpA Garchomp-Mega Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Landorus-Therian: 246-291 (64.3 - 76.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Finally, the speed investment lets you outrun Adamant Lando, Heatran, Diggersby and lead Excadrill before mega-evolution (in fact, you can spin block him thanks to Rough Skin). Like the wise man BKC said, “if you can’t break CelePex you’re out of the metagame”.



Tapu Bulu @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Grassy Surge
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Wood Hammer
- Horn Leech
- Superpower
- Stone Edge
It might look weird at first glance, as we’re used to see Bulu setting up and breaking through fat builds. However, the speed that Choice Scarf provides to Bulu lets him check Koko and Greninja better: that is the reason behind the set. In fact, the terrain + typing that Bulu provides to a lot of balance teams are way more important than his wallbreaking power: making Heatran, Toxapex and Sub Zygarde even more annoying to deal with. Finally, I recommend trying Nature Madness on that set, it’s really good to force a Recover/Synthesis and having a free switch in, seeing that Scarf Bulu is not that strong.



Lopunny-Mega @ Lopunnite
Ability: Limber
Happiness: 0
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Encore
- High Jump Kick
- Frustration
- Ice Punch
I’m quite aware that Lopunny is not as good as it was in ORAS, but her typing + speed tier make Lop still very useful. Her strong STAB combination + IPunch break through every offensive team, seeing how the main phys. attacker answer for those teams, Landorus, get’s 2HKOd and doesn’t even run Rocky Helmet these days. Fake Out is good, but is not that necessary with the new mega-evolution mechanics so I thought I could find more potential on Lopunny by using Encore + a frail but really strong wall breaker: that way, you can force the Recover on Pex, the Soft-Boiled on Clef, the Roost on Mew and then bring Specs Lele (which also supports Lopunny with the Psychic Terrain) to break through your opponent’s team.



Kabutops @ Rockium Z
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Stone Edge
- Waterfall
- Superpower
Seeing how much I love Pelipper and how good rain is this gen, I’m always trying to make a better rain team, testing new stuff that can pretty much win in team preview. I came up with the Kabutops idea cause it lures in Ferrothorn for Swampert + helps me pivot vs flying types thanks to his typing. In fact, every team I faced when using the KabuPert core couldn’t deal with both mons: teams with Mantine/Ferro as their main water resists, lose to Kabutops; teams with Keldeo/Toxapex as their main water resists, lose to Swampert. Kabu’s speed tier was another reason to use him: outspeeds Bulu (and OHKOs with Z-Stone Edge after Rocks), Scarf Lati under rain and Jolly M-Hera. Finally, I want to say that the fact that Tank Chomp is now an unmon in SM makes Kabu even better (it’s actually a really good answer lol).
 
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Ricardo

Banned deucer.
Well, i had some cool ideas for snake draft but i never really had time to build and put said ideas to use so i'll drop them here so people can check some neat sets.



Serperior (M) @ Grassium Z
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Taunt
- Giga Drain

A cool serperior set i've been playing around for some time now.
I first came up with this set for pressuring dugtrio stall as serperior can't be trapped and taunt giga drain shut down stall for the most part as chansey gets taunted and recovers you a lot of hp after +2/4 giga drain and Clef always runs max def and loses to taunt fgrassium for the most part.

252 SpA Serperior Bloom Doom (195 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable: 240-283 (60.9 - 71.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery.

This thing also eats balance alive after heatran dies/gets too low. Pex dies to leaf storm into grassium and taunt even prevents it from hazing.

Resists like zapdos, latios and bulu also die to leaf storm into grassium.

This mon's decent bulk also makes it hard to revenge kill by most scarfers nowadays.

Really deadly mon when paired with band tar.




Starmie @ Waterium Z
Ability: Analytic
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Psyshock
- Ice Beam
- Rapid Spin

I have been playing around with offensive starmie for some time and this last time i built with it again by the request of my good friend and teammate Trosko.
Starmie is a cool mon on rain because of spin, it supports spikes which rain always has (Ferrothorn) and it has enough power to bust most water resists like Toxapex, Keldeo, Latios or Mantine with analytic moves. Analytic Waterium on rain is retarded.

252 SpA Analytic Starmie Hydro Vortex (185 BP) vs. 252 HP / 168 SpD Ferrothorn in Rain: 187-221 (53.1 - 62.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Analytic Starmie Hydro Vortex (185 BP) vs. 200 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Magearna in Rain: 214-253 (60.9 - 72%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252 SpA Analytic Starmie Hydro Vortex (185 BP) vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Eviolite Chansey in Rain: 313-369 (44.5 - 52.4%) -- 21.5% chance to 2HKO

This mon has all the coverage it wants for every rain check (energy ball for gastro lmao) and Analytic rain waterium can leave a big mark in most rain checks like Ferro to open up your swampert.

Definitely a cool mon to try out. Hp fire is good outside of rain
.



Greninja-Ash @ Darkinium Z
Ability: Battle Bond
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Hydro Pump
- Water Shuriken
- Taunt

Ash Greninja answers are getting more passive by the day, Keldeo and Tangrowth are falling over Toxapex, Mantine and Gastrodon in order to check this mons but this set shuts them down.
Taunt shuts down these mons from healing and their attacks aren't that strong so you can actually solo them and get your new form. Darkinium helps you packing a bigger punch to help your form.
Taunt also helps vs cheese like Trick Room or HO.




Jirachi @ Expert Belt
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 72 HP / 252 SpA / 184 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Icy Wind
- Thunder
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic

This Jirachi is an inspiration from Offensive Jirachi in BW.
Icy wind is nice for luring in lando and lowering some setup sweeper's speed like Volcarona so you can have an easier time revenging them.
Thunder pressures defoggers like Mantine and it dents pex quite a bit and paras are always nice.
Toxic is to hit fatter mons like Mew and Tangrowth so you can force rocks on said mons.
This Jirachi set was aimed at pressuring celepex and being an annoyance to defog mew.




Greninja (M) @ Fightinium Z
Ability: Protean
EVs: 92 Atk / 164 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Gunk Shot
- Low Kick
- Spikes

I came up with this Greninja set back in wcop and gave it to Pearl for his game vs ABR and it did it's job in luring Chansey.
This set is aimed at pressuring stall. with the spatk investment you 2hko Sableye on rain, low kick into fightinium busts chansey after a spike.
You can't really touch pex but you can spike on it and you could play around with the gunk slot if you want as fini is dead and you can use other teammates for clef.




Thundurus-Therian @ Leftovers
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder
- Hidden Power [Flying]
- Focus Blast
- Substitute

Another rain set lmao.
I took this set from Soulwind in one of his BW games.
This Thundurus pressures every rain check outside of gastro which wasn't even common back then.
Sub lets it fire powerful attacks for free and it can check some mons like Koko and Magnezone, blocking Lightning moves is a blessing too with Koko being so common.
Leftovers helps it's longevity vs mons like Toxapex and Celesteela but you could run another item like Magnet or maybe even Z move if you really want to.




Druddigon (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fire Punch
- Thunder Punch
- Outrage
- Gunk Shot

This mon is the best.
It's strong as shit and it rapes balance with Sheer Force and all it's coverage this mons can beat pretty much every type of balance as long as you have some mew/wisp check like Clefable.
Some people might see it as a slower Nidoking but Druddigon is MUCH stronger, better coverage and typing + bulk make it harder to revenge.
Crunch for Mew, Superpower/Earthquake for Heatran/Tyranitar, Thunder Punch for Toxapex and Celesteela, Fire Punch for Ferrothorn/Scizor/Skarmory, Aqua Tail for Landorus/Hippodown, Sucker Punch for Offense, Taunt, Rocks, this mons has a godly movepool and can just crush fat.

Some Calcs:

252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Druddigon Fire Punch vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 164-195 (49.2 - 58.5%) -- 98.4% chance to 2HKO

252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Druddigon Gunk Shot vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 403-476 (102.2 - 120.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Druddigon Fire Punch vs. 252 HP / 132+ Def Celesteela: 226-268 (56.7 - 67.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Druddigon Thunder Punch vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Toxapex: 200-237 (65.7 - 77.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

This mon is a fucking behemoth, definitely recommend trying it out
 

p2

Banned deucer.


Greninja (M) @ Fightinium Z
Ability: Protean
EVs: 92 Atk / 164 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Gunk Shot
- Low Kick
- Spikes

I came up with this Greninja set back in wcop and gave it to Pearl for his game vs ABR and it did it's job in luring Chansey.
hmm..

team dump:

https://puu.sh/y5X6x/82394f48cd.txt

https://puu.sh/y5X92/b5a8101122.txt


https://puu.sh/y5Xfo/e5b8467397.txt


https://puu.sh/y5Xii/4a87c41251.txt


https://puu.sh/y5XiX/3d98686909.txt


https://puu.sh/y5Xlt/f31bb93ae2.txt


built these for njnp since he wanted zard teams this phase, shame he never got to use em
https://puu.sh/y5Xq9/36a3691b70.txt
https://puu.sh/y5XrG/e5f04f72e0.txt
https://puu.sh/y5XsJ/3a14f5777c.txt
 

bruno

is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Past SPL Championis a Past WCoP Champion
World Defender
couldn't help my team as much as i wished but regardless..


Magearna @ Leftovers
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 248 HP / 116 Def / 136 SpD / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Pain Split
- Heart Swap
- Flash Cannon

Idea that came straight from ubers when me and Gondra made this stall team that i actually like a lot (chansey was supposed to be stoss toxic bell soft and without a cleric that game took 50x longer but yeah). I knew i wanted somebody to use stall immediately after dug got banned bc people would stop preparing for it. I actually got the idea of using mag on stall after seeing ciele/eo do it, and i actually like it a lot, because it puts a decent stop to a bunch of problems that appear to the playstyle after dug got banned, such as cb ttar(if it lackseq), hoopa, non fire fang mawile, specs lele, tapu bulu(got toxic'd by dug if it didn't pack sub/get to sub up and then stalled out by clef), Z kyurem-B, list goes on.
In this case, heart swap ends up being key here because it beats both cm clefable and cm reuniclus, which would otherwise rip the team apart. It also does some other cool stuff, like completely shutting down nastyplot heal bell togekiss. Heart swap doesn't have as much pp as one would wish for though so make sure to use it wisely.

Gengar @ Metronome
Ability: Cursed Body
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Sludge Wave
- Substitute
- Focus Blast

Metronome gengar is something i've kept for a while. I've actually been experimenting with this item a lot lately(brought a metronome hp ground kyogre to slam poffs even), i think it's mad underrated. League was gonna use it vs john but then he didn't :sob:. First off with the big rise of tyranitar lately any non choiced gengar is quite deadly in current metagame, imo. But regardless this set's just extremely fun, being able to take over pokes like toxapex, mantine and celesteela(the metronome boost still comes over if it uses protect).

As for teams, there's that stall team that actually appeared a bit from the pitvipers afterwards, and these two teams that were used by league and blunder(a lot of people asked me for blunder's so)



http://pokepast.es/98a3d69e83df5cfd


http://pokepast.es/3ee5f28ad5ad4c23
 

z0mOG

is a Top Tiering Contributoris a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis the Smogon Tour Season 26 Championis a defending SCL Championis a Past WCoP Champion
DPL Champion
teams i won with =)
http://pokepast.es/87c0eb7a3288301f vs. john/void
http://pokepast.es/b9834a8391055ec9 vs. suapah
http://pokepast.es/f470f059991be339 vs. p2
http://pokepast.es/88ce7872f4bcfa57 vs. snow (has dug)

teams i lost with =(
http://pokepast.es/0fbf7243f4709181 vs. cdumas
http://pokepast.es/615ac57a485cfd51 vs. posho
http://pokepast.es/04cc7677635465b3 vs. eo

i tried to avoid bringing any funky dinner to my games, cuz i wanted to actually get some wins >_<, but I still have some fun stuff that i would like to see used maybe in spl :O

funky dinner sets:
Gengar @ Electrium Z
Ability: Cursed Body
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Focus Blast
- Thunder
- Will-O-Wisp
pretty straight forward pex/cele lure, i never rly feel like im clicking sludge wave so i gave wisp a try

Tapu Bulu @ Leftovers
Ability: Grassy Surge
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Careful Nature
- Horn Leech
- Nature's Madness
- Leech Seed
- Protect/Toxic
shittier version of tang :)

Thundurus @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fly
- Bulk Up
- Thunder Punch
- Superpower
welliou used this vs iloveleague, its a pretty trash set though lul

Mawile-Mega @ Mawilite
Ability: Hyper Cutter
EVs: 84 HP / 252 Atk / 172 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Stealth Rock
- Fire Fang
- Sucker Punch
pressures tf outta teams where the maw switch in is steel type

Greninja (M) @ Psychium Z
Ability: Protean
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ice Beam
- Toxic Spikes
- Extrasensory
- Dark Pulse
pretty sure i got this idea from sweepage on ladder, and it mightve even gotten used in snake for all i know, having ur tspike setter being able to lure every1s favorite psn type is op

Tyranitar @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 208 HP / 160 SpA / 140 Spe
Modest Nature
- Fire Blast
- Ice Beam
- Stealth Rock
- Pursuit
support ttar + drill ftw?!

Gardevoir-Mega @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 232 SpA / 36 SpD / 240 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Protect
- Thunderbolt
- Will-O-Wisp
support garde ftw.. this is better in oras tho cuz garde bad in sm


Latios @ Darkinium Z
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Psyshock
- Defog
- Memento
like a latias but with +20 satk and a z-slot waster


thx for reading :)
 

Sabella

formerly Booty
is a Tournament Directoris a Forum Moderatoris a Tiering Contributoris a Past WCoP Champion
Since serpents are out now im going to share some of the stuff i came up with during the tour.


Charizard-Mega-X @ Charizardite X
Ability: Tough Claws
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Roost
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]

This set was something i came up with when i got annoyed that i felt like zard was so limited by hazards so this is like an anti hazard set, blitz plus hp will take ou defensive lando eq for tran and pex kinda self explanatory. Pairing it with good physical attackers that like lando gone helps alot to for teambuilding.


+


Tapu Koko @ Magnet
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 30 Atk
- U-turn
- Roost
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]

and

Volcarona @ Lum Berry
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 40 Def / 216 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Quiver Dance
- Bug Buzz
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Electric]

This was a core i had come up with but the credit for the set goes to leftiez, the electric terrain allows volc to blow through mantine and pex while also still doing neutral damage to heatran and hitting keldeo as well. See replay http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ou-318542
 
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Indigo Plateau

is a Community Leaderis a Top Tiering Contributoris a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Past SCL Champion
UU Leader
As a general question, does someone mind sharing their experiences with what archetype you found was usually preferred? I didn't have much time to look at most games (the ones I did were usually offense / bo), so I was wondering what archetypes were mostly common during the tour, what you found to mostly work/were comfortable with and what didn't work, any mons that you think have more potential in the upcoming future due to said archetypes, and so on
 

FlamingVictini

FV - msg on discord FlamingVictini#3784
is a Top Tiering Contributorwon the 16th Official Smogon Tournamentis a Three-Time Past WCoP Champion
I'm feelin' a little groovy...


Reuniclus @ Electrium Z
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 220 HP / 236 SpA / 52 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psychic
- Thunder
- Recover
- Calm Mind

This is my take on a reuni that won't be useless in some matchups. I really wanted to use reuniclus vs leftiez since he seemed to be tending towards the sort-of-passive side with stuff like cele + pex + hippo that reuni could take advantage of, but I also didn't want to get stuck in a MU where reuni would just be a useless blob that couldn't make any progress. Seeing as TTar wasn't too common in phase 1 thanks to dug still lurking around, I decided to go for an offensive set with psychic and z-thunder since it can ensure I can beat whirlwind hippo and generally get good damage right off the bat, and it would also allow me to potentially break unaware clef with good rolls/para/sdef drops. LO would also get me similar power, but I didn't want to get knocked off by something like clef and be left weakened, and having a 100% accurate super-thunder is super nice (at +1 Gigavolt Havoc ohkos Mega Scizor after rocks). I ended up getting the perfect matchup for Reuni, but Leftiez crit me with a high roll shadow ball from zam on the first try :(. I definitely think thunder is still the best coverage to run on reuni even with ttar more common now, as it's so versatile and overall helps you beat the most things. However, you probably do want a physdef-heavy variant nowadays so u don't just get dropped by cb crunch or suit.


Magearna @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 248 HP / 96 SpA / 164 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Fleur Cannon
- Ice Beam
- Volt Switch
- Heart Swap

Anti already posted about heart swap magearna, but in my personal experience of using the bulky lefties psplit set on one of john's tiebreak games for wcop, I almost always hated using it. While the bulk is super nice, I felt like magearna struggled to accomplish much as it was just very weak both stat-wise and attack-wise. This set is a bit team specific as I was weak to Pinsir and had Venusaur to cover SG Magearna and Waters, but shuca lets me eat a hit from +2 pinsir and the satk allows fleur cannon to put pinsir in range of rocky helmet damage from lando. Ice Beam was a natural fit with shuca to be strong against grounds and gives me a move to abuse with stolen heart-swap boosts that doesn't drop my satk or switch me out. Since the gearna isn't AV I was free to run heart swap, keeping my game winnable vs opposing cm reuni / clef if my own reuni or venu failed to win.

Magearna @ Figy Berry
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 28 Def / 228 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 22 Spe
- Fleur Cannon
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Volt Switch
- Heart Swap

This set is a bit more general, but again I really hated the psplit lefties set so I thought why not throw on a figy berry so you can still switch into gren pump or specs gar + rocks and avoid the 3hko (252 SpA Choice Specs Greninja Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 228+ SpD Magearna: 153-180 (42 - 49.4%) -- 21.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock, 252 SpA Choice Specs Gengar Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 228+ SpD Magearna: 130-154 (35.7 - 42.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock), while also making room for heart swap. I decided to drop flash cannon since I felt I didn't need that security vs clef, and HP Fire is nice to hit stuff like ferro, zor, opposing sg magearna, etc.


Charizard-Mega-X @ Charizardite X
Ability: Tough Claws
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Earthquake
- Roost
- Dragon Dance

Around the time I used this set 3 Atk Zard-X was the thing, but after seeing blunder get walled by a toxapex, I decided DD was the best way to use this beast. Roost was non-negotiable for me, so I decided on EQ to nail tran and pex harder, and I paired this with a CB TTar and Mew to help me get rid of stuff like scarf lati and mantine. A cool thing about Zard is if you're facing a standard defensive lando with EQ/HP Ice/Tect or U-Turn, u can completely abuse it as setup fodder in zard's unmega'd form, and Zard is also just really strong and good at breaking for another physical sweeper (or vice versa).


Tyranitar-Mega @ Tyranitarite
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 248 HP / 36 Atk / 56 Def / 72 SpD / 96 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake
- Pursuit

This set (and my team with it and Nidoking) was inspired by Finch's team/set. Mega TTar is just super duper fkin fat and great at setting up rocks and eating up hits to check stuff. Finch's set used Ice Beam with SAtk and reduced speed, but I really didn't like being unable to set up rocks vs Zapdos or Mantine (something which was crucially important to me on a team with Nidoking, especially for mantine) so I decided to roll with edge, some speed, and slightly more atk. I ripped the sdef from finch and it avoids the 2hko from scarf lele moonblast if already mega'd (ikr, absolutely insane bulk) and the defense also lets it just eat shit up (did u see it eat a Z-Freeze Shock from Kyu + Scarf U-Turn from lando in finch's game? That is freakin' bulky!). The speed outruns Mega Venu and everything under.


Victini @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Victory Star
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- V-create
- Bolt Strike
- U-turn
- Final Gambit

Victini! Honestly, I think the Z-Celebrate sucks and imo, this (or CB) is the only tini that should be used. Final Gambit lets u get off a usually favorable trade early game if Tini isn't needed, and u can use him to check stuff like Lele, Magearna, Scizor, Zard-Y, etc. if the need arises. Tini is cool :)


Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 48 Def / 208 SpD
Careful Nature
- Spikes
- Leech Seed
- Toxic
- Power Whip

I'm definitely not the first to use toxic ferro, but he is pretty cool for beating zapdos. If you want a little more heat...
Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 28 Def / 212 SpD / 16 Spe
Careful Nature
- Power Whip
- Swords Dance
- Leech Seed
- Spikes
Teehee... I added that to my ferro set on the gliscor + zone team I used vs Eo after I played ABR in an stour finals and realized knock off didn't have much value with knock zor and zone, and I really wanted to be able to beat sableye + hp ice zapdos more quickly... More practically, this thing is useful to beat cm clef without flamethrower / reuni without focus if gliscor falls, although I am now considering toxic considering how DPulse Stored Power tias should have wrecked me had it stayed in on ferro.


Diancie-Mega @ Diancite
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Moonblast
- Diamond Storm
- Substitute
- Endeavor

Sub Endeavor Diancie has been around since ORAS, but I'm not sure if it ever really caught on. Regardless, this thing is freakin' good. In a lot of normally tough matchups, you can just sub up and endeavor to get a lot of damage off, often allowing you to break through diancie's usual counters. Since this is still walled by pex until cie is heavily weakened (since pex has low hp but high defenses), I paired this cie with specs lele to really put the pressure on breaking and wearing down steels for each other. There is also the danger of being recover stalled out of endeavor pp, so sometimes you may want to use chip/rocks to your advantage and endeavor on a switch, or use a mon like zapdos to spread paras so recover stalling isn't as safe. I decided to roll with max satk since I felt the 2hko u get on physdef clef was more valuable than a stronger dstorm. Speaking of dstorm, the +2 boost can sometimes allow ur sub to survive some weaker hits, which can be really handy.


Mamoswine @ Metronome
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 248 Atk / 8 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Icicle Crash
- Earthquake
- Ice Shard
- Knock Off

This set should also already be known rn, but honestly, I didn't realize how good this thing is until I used him. Not having to deal with LO nonsense in endgames is a blessing (see my game vs ABR), and the metronome can make this thing surprisingly powerful very quickly, letting u power through stuff like clef without much trouble. Knock hits stuff like Cele and Mew and is probably just the most useful move to have in the 4th slot.


Landorus-Therian @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 248 HP / 216 Def / 24 SpD / 16 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Fly
- U-turn / Gravity / HP-Ice / Toxic

This idea originated from wcop with east, but this is basically a fusion between offensive flyinium lando and your standard defensive one. This helps me keep up the pressure vs tang and venu (or just generically lets me nuke something) while still being a nice bulky switchin to keep my team held together for a bit longer. I think I had hp ice in my game vs snow, but in retrospect, u-turn would have been better to maintain pressure, and I used toxic in my game vs Ricardo.


Sableye-Mega @ Sablenite
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 4 Def / 240 SpD / 16 Spe
Careful Nature
- Knock Off
- Will-O-Wisp
- Recover
- Protect

The key to using mega sableye is to not mega evolve... jk I'll stop now :P. Some cool cores:

+
with a twist...
Tapu Koko @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Grass Knot
- Volt Switch

Kyurem-Black @ Electrium Z
Ability: Teravolt
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Ice Beam
- Fusion Bolt
- Roost
- Hidden Power [Fire]
Electrium Kyu is a nice twist on the standard LOKB or expected Z-move in icium, and it's really damn strong under elec terrain. Because you don't need to add freeze shock kyu can afford to run roost, which is quite nice, and hp fire keeps you lit vs Ferro and Scizor if the electrium has been used up. Shuca koko helps with getting rid of the grounds so u can spam that fusion bolt and click gigavolt havoc under terrain without worry. Grass Knot is a neat tech that lets u lure gastro and hippo, making sure koko can do his job. The Kyu is basically a LO Kyu that doesn't care about knock from stuff like tang (along with greater longevity in exchange for some general power).

+

Mawile-Mega (F) @ Mawilite
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 120 HP / 216 Atk / 4 SpD / 168 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Sucker Punch
- Thunder Punch
- Swords Dance

Tapu Koko @ Choice Specs
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 1 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Dazzling Gleam
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Volt Switch
I already know people are gonna be like "what? SD Maw?" without knock off???" But really, for some reason I've never really liked fire fang so much (it is good though and probably the most splashable set), I just really love how SD lets maw break everything and lets u get off more damage on stuff trying to revenge you (knock off sucks, tpunch is needed for celepex and such). The terrain powers up thunder punch so u can break stuff like scizor more cleanly, and the goal is to overwhelm ferro anyway (and most of them won't stay in on a maw unless the lack of fire fang has been revealed). Bulky maw is also really nice, I've honestly forgotten what the given EVs do by now but I think it avoids the 2hko from scarf lele psychic and gives good odds to live specs gren pump.

Finally, I just want to say greninja is an amazing mon. That is all. :)
 
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Here are some of the sets I came up with / used during snake.



Heatran (M) @ Steelium Z
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Taunt
- Magma Storm
- Flash Cannon
- Earth Power

Right after the arena trap ban it was obvious magma tran was going to be potent, and Omfuga asked me to build with this set. Z-flash allows tran to hit lando, zyg, lati, clef, and ttar with greater power, and well ttar was the main goal because of the skyrocketed bandtar usage and z-flash avoided pursuit trapping. This set seemed to catch on and was used a few times later in the tournament which was cool to see.



Mawile-Mega (M) @ Mawilite
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 88 HP / 252 Atk / 168 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Iron Head
- Fire Fang
- Thunder Punch
- Ice Punch

I think sucker punch on non-sd mawile is really wasteful considering how many offensive mons don't mind it a ton (gren koko lele etc), so I found it best to just go all out in the coverage department. Fire fang and tpunch hit obvious targets, but ihead and ipunch are the unique moves here. Ihead is just good stab like play rough, but in particular ohkos clef and 2hkos venu which is pretty big because if you run PR then clef can twave/flame you and venu will just wall you endlessly. Ice punch is for lando.

Here's an alternative Mawile I used in my game vs Sabella, with sub over ice and a bulkier spread for sub + 1v1'ing venu purposes.
Mawile-Mega (M) @ Mawilite
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 248 HP / 160 Atk / 100 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Substitute
- Iron Head
- Fire Fang
- Thunder Punch




Zygarde @ Leftovers
Ability: Aura Break
EVs: 32 HP / 216 Atk / 8 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Substitute
- Thousand Arrows
- Toxic
- Protect

I somehow used this set twice and didn't get to send it in either game (sabella snake, kanto stour), but it's awesome. In the past zygs have been sub coil tox, sub setup tect, or sub Z, but never toxic + protect. I designed this set as a lando killer mostly, but it also messes up grasses like tang and bulu. You basically just toxic once and then sub tect forever until their hp is drained all the way down. It's kinda lame to not be able to break through ferro/sciz very easily so that should be taken into account, but it's still incredible vs most landot + magearna offenses.


Tapu Koko @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 128 HP / 188 SpA / 192 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Volt Switch
- Roost

After playing and watching many games with koko, I realized just how often it's in a 1v1 vs lando (also zyg ig). Shuca allows koko to eat hits from those aforementioned mons, and 2hko them with hpice. In particular, it's nice to be able to go for the elec move freely and not have to hard hpice on the switch to beat lando, especially when u usually wanna be clicking volt. The EVs allow koko to live cb zyg thousand arrows after sr, outspeed gren, and the rest is put into spatk. Volt + roost makes koko a really long lasting pivot and volt over uturn especially helps with the lack of power this set has otherwise.



Latios-Mega @ Latiosite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Psychic
- Earthquake
- Recover

S/o Omfuga. Ideally this mons paired with zone for ferro/sciz/celes, but it's still pretty cool either way. I often find myself using megaless teams in SM, but still sometimes using latios, so why not mega latios. Now not only is mega lati way bulkier, it also has 40 atk points over regular lati, thus a much stronger eq. EQ does massive damage vs mons like gear/tran/maw/tar which usually expect to come into a latios pretty safely. This thing gets a lot of free turns vs pex and the sort and is just a really consistent attacker in general rn.



Clefable (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 248 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Cosmic Power
- Calm Mind
- Moonblast
- Soft-Boiled

CM clef is really as good as ever, especially with spikes support + stuff to abuse pex if you lack tbolt. I wanted to use cosmic power alongside cm because it absolutely destroys some offensive teams, rendering physical revengers useless if you get sufficient boosts. Additionally, cosmic clef sets up in the face of many bulky pokemon such as celes/ferro, given that their crits don't even ohko and you can just set up +6 vs them.
 
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Stuff I used / made:



Magearna @ Psychium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 32 HP / 252 SpA / 224 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Fleur Cannon
- Focus Blast
- Synchronoise
- Shift Gear

I was looking for ways to beat Poison-types, when I found this; Z Synchronoise OHKOs Venusaur and nearly OHKOs Pex. Speed for CB Tar, 252+ Spatk and rest in HP.



Greninja (M) @ Grassium Z / Life Orb
Ability: Protean
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Grass Knot
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Ice Beam / Hydro Pump
- Spikes

Pair this set w Bulu for Grassy Terrain. Sableye gets smacked by grass knot in terrain, allowing you to get Spikes. GKnot also hits stuff like Keld / Zygarde / TTar for big damage.



Mawile-Mega @ Mawilite
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 192 HP / 176 Atk / 4 SpD / 136 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Facade
- Fire Fang
- Stealth Rock

Used this one back when Mew was common, idr what the EV's are for but Facade allows you to beat Mew / Pex in one slot.



Zygarde @ Groundium Z
Ability: Aura Break
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Thousand Arrows
- Extreme Speed
- Substitute
- Dragon Dance

Not much to say about this, but it's a pretty underrated set, really nice vs VenuSteela teams.



Toxapex @ Black Sludge
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Recover
- Baneful Bunker
- Haze

No one used this in a tour before fsr (afaik), but it's really nice; scouts out stuff like choiced Lele / Koko / Latios, and poisoning stuff on U-Turns / other physical attacks.

ban trapping btw
 

Finchinator

-OUTL
is a Tournament Directoris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Top Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Past WCoP Championis the defending OU Circuit Championis a Two-Time Former Old Generation Tournament Circuit Champion
OU Leader
I'm going to go through all of my games and post all of my thoughts on each of them, going all the way from scouting to specific prep/building to the game itself. My goal is to give people a bit of an inside perspective on what my thought process is going into games and during games at times like this. Additionally, I hope that this is an interesting read for those who follow the tournament and metagame itself if you actually elect to read this monstrosity. I personally love hearing the mindset of other players when it comes to preparation and gameplay and I think it helps me get better and expand my horizons as a player, so this is the least I can give back myself after being exposed to so much over the years. I will also try to add some creative sets and metagame opinions into the post, too.

Edit: had to do hide tags to avoid freezing browsers and stretching pages, ik it’ll fuck up the replay code — I’ll figure a way around it soon but I hyperlinked all the replays anyway

Phase 1 games - welli0u, blunder, and TheThorn

During Phase 1, I felt like I had a shaky grasp on the tier itself, especially seeing that I played NU a lot more than OU leading up to the tournament (yea, what a great OUTL I am, I know). Given this, I put the more time into scouting and trying to formulate ideas in order to improve my abilities and compensate for my lack of experience going in. Moreover, I will likely discuss a bit more preparation and pre-game insight here than I will for other phases, but I still expect to cover the games sufficiently. Without further ado, I will bring you what I have to say on the games in chronological order.

welli0u, of the Goldenrod Gliders, was my first opponent of the season. While some did not regard him as a household name quite yet, I personally knew that he was no pushover as he had been tearing it up ever since WCOP, where he went 3-0 during the first round, including a great performance in Grand Slam. I also knew that he liked to keep most of his smaller individual tournament games private, so I tried to scrounge up as much information as I possibly could from relevant tours as possible. First off, I remembered that I had my old SPL scout I made during midseason (and slightly updated before playoffs) on the Scooters SM OU core that I used for my team during SPL week 5 and SPL semifinals while sharing with the Tigers for the finals and tiebreak when I helped them a bit (RIP). Unfortunately, this did not have a ton on welli0u specifically and while it did give away some clear tendencies, I wanted to get some more recent dirt on the well, so I also made this on him specifically.

Right away, it became pretty clear that he was predominantly a balanced player, so that made preparation a bit easier as I did not need to stress speed control and revenge killing moreso than normal, opening me up to using whatever playstyle I wanted to. I knew that the possibility of him stalling was not completely off the table as Dugtrio was still allowed during this phase, Ciele was his manager and knew I had some struggles in this department in the past, and welli0u has resorted to stalling in various big games in the past. Given this and the fact that games like this happened, I knew I wanted to refrain from using a fatter balance of my own and I also knew that I did not want to bring out stall of my own for my first match when I was not too confident playing it quite yet, so my mindset defaulted to offense at this point. Overall, my vision was that if my team is faster paced and more threatening than his, then I can abuse the fact that I felt like I had higher outplaying potential than welli0u as a player, who tends to be more of an optimal, conservative player as opposed to a consistent risk-taker like myself. I feel like the gameplay aspect of scouting and preparation is something that people often neglect to consider, let alone factor in significantly, when planning what to bring against opponents. The way people play a game matters and my ability to analyze this and use it to my advantage is a huge reason for my success historically -- it is not quite as important than actual team scouting and what your opponents end up bringing, but it is still something I always keep in mind.

Getting into the teambuilding process specifically, I really did not have much of an idea as to what I specifically wanted to utilize in order to take on welli0u. Hell, as I was teambuilding aimlessly during the first phew days of the phase, I threw together (and eventually scrapped) all of these. Some of my main ideas included Specs or CM Z-Psyshock Tapu Lele, Magma Storm Z Heatran, and SD Kartana, but I ultimately felt a bit outside of my comfort zone, felt too passive in trying to balance out teams defensively, or simply could not get anything consistently good enough to go with. One element that I knew would be helpful in at least giving me something to work with in teambuilding and early on in games in order to turn the tide in my favor would be Spikes, specifically on Specs Ash-Greninja. You can see it was already on a handful of the teams I threw away during my initial sloppy attempts to get something going, but about two nights before I played welli0u, I sat down and made a serious attempt at making an individual team that I thought could do the trick. I took a short-cut that I normally avoid if at all possible and threw on a set that essentially covered an entire archetype, in Sub SD Stone Edge Mega-Pinsir. I had spoken with ABR a few days prior, who used it on a team and explained to me how it demolished standard stall and also caught Zapdos, so I figured I would give it a chance. After that, the team just sort of made itself -- I knew I wanted to provide Pinsir full support as it was my main win condition, so Defog + Healing Wish Scarf Latias was a natural fit for the team and momentum was also necessary to abuse Spikes and provide me with a means of getting ahead of welli0u as I outlined above, so I threw on another ABR set, Wise Glasses HP Fire Tapu Koko, to synergize well with Ash-Greninja, and AV Iron Head Magearna in order to cover pretty much everything on the special side, including opposing Double Dance Magearna thanks to the presence of Iron Head. Finally, I needed a way to get 'em up and also I had not used a Z-move yet, so I figured that Z-Stone Edge SD SR Landorus-T would be a good fit because it gave me a Ground resist, it cleared for Mega-Pinsir later in games, and Landorus-T finds its way onto pretty much every non-Stall team, so it just sorta felt right I suppose. I initially had HP Ground over HP Fire on Magearna, but after testing, I determined that momentum and speed on Landorus-T and Greninja helped me with Heatran enough to the extent that I did not need to compensate for the presence of Latias and EQless Mega-Pinsir with HP Ground, so I slapped back on HP Fire to help with Ferrothorn and Mega-Scizor and then I had my final team after testing and discussing with multiple teammates of mine as well as ABR.

- click for importable


[replay]smogtours-gen7ou-314603[/replay]

Going to use the code for replays, but in case people want to watch it in a separate tab, they can find the game here.

As I see team preview, I notice that Stone Edge Mega-Pinsir is going to be huge in the early-mid game as he has a Zapdos and it is pretty easy to see it coming in if I do not have rocks up yet to try and counter me, so I try to go into the game with that free kill possibility in the front of my mind. As for the long term, I know that I am going to need to be sure of his Magearna set before foddering much of anything and I know that Mega-Venusaur is a dick for most of my team, so I will either need to preserve my Mega-Pinsir or my SD Landorus-T in order to muscle past it, but I do have Healing Wish support to help me with this (thankfully, I do not need Latias to do much offensively and he lacks a Pursuit user, so this could easily come in hand later). The last thing to decide at team preview was what to lead with and I ultimately picked Landorus-T because it is just a pretty easy Pokemon to lead with seeing as it has SR and the ability to threaten his team, but in hindsight I think Tapu Koko or Greninja would be better leads as getting 'em up makes it less likely that he goes hard Zapdos on Mega-Pinsir and Landorus-T matched up poorly with his likely leads while also inviting in Mew to Wisp, Defog, and/or Ice Beam if it carried that move.

If it wasn't clear from above, lead Landorus-T did not work out as he led with Greninja, but this turned out to be only a minor setback as he was the Choice Scarf variant and U-turned into my Magearna into his Mega-Venusaur to get a quick mega evolution off, which was fine. I knew I did not want to get trapped in the vortex and I did not want to risk him getting off big damage on Pinsir, so I figured that I could risk eating a Knock Off or Earthquake in order to get my Pinsir in and prompt the Zapdos sequence that I outlined above. Thankfully, exactly what I expected to did happen -- I got Pinsir in off of the Volt Switch and proceeded to Mega and Swords Dance as he went Zapdos and then +2 Stone Edge picked it off, giving me a huge advantage early as his counter to Mega Pinsir was killed by it and he now lacks Defog if it is Stealth Rock Mew.

He went back to his Greninja and wisely clicked U-turn, expecting me to fear Rock Slide, as I pivoted into my safe defensive counter in Magearna and he sent out Landorus-T. Now, here I misplayed, or rather took an unnecessary risk, but it happened to work out very well for me. I did not need to keep my Magearna in against Landorus-T and I risked losing my ability to check his Magearna, but I knew it was likely he would be Stealth Rock as his Greninja was revealed to be the Choice Scarf user and I also knew that this was the most obvious turn to get them up, so I clicked Fleur Cannon given my gut feel. I also did so the next turn as I figured he would click HP Ice or something to set him up well to hit my own Landorus-T the following turn, which happened to be the case as he Swords Danced, but I think in hindsight that going to Landorus-T was the better play and it risked a lot less as worst case scenario we would have speed tied the following turn and I could afford losing Landorus-T much more than losing Magearna.

As the game progressed, I got to get rid of the Stealth Rocks Landorus-T set as I pivoted my Latias into Mega-Venusaur and he no longer had any ability to get up Stealth Rock, which was great for my Mega-Pinsir, and I revealed Iron Head on Magearna to check his Leftovers Double Dance Magearna barring a freeze, which made his path to victory very slim and almost only banking on a clutch freeze or paralysis and successive full paralysis. I got my own Stealth Rock up after pivoting Landorus-T into Mega Venusaur's Sludge Bomb and then kept them up as he went to Mew and Ice Beamed, predicting me to stay in, as I went to Greninja. From there, the combination of Mega-Pinsir and Tapu Koko offensively won the game, more or less, with Magearna in the back to check his Magearna that otherwise could have swept. This game was pretty lopsided in terms of score, but if he managed to hax through my Magearna or EQ with Landorus-T on my misplay, then he could've won, so this didn't feel like a true 6-0 and while I was happy with the result, I knew I could have played a bit safer and tried to kept that in mind going into the future. Regardless, gg well if you're reading this and cool team you used - I think match-up with my Pinsir and Magearna sets kinda did well in and that's not his fault at all.


blunder, of the Sootpolis Sidewinders, was my second opponent of the season. As many of you know, I used stall against blunder. It was a very calculated 'risk' and I will get into that in a bit, but before I go into any of what I have to say, I would like to link blunder's video that had the game involved. He was not in the best place at the time of recording this and I wholeheartedly understand why, but he has a pretty interesting perspective on the game and how I played nevertheless. With this said, I disagree with some of the things he had to say and I will try to explain some things that I did and why I brought the team I did throughout this, but I will say that I do feel bad for blunder for not enjoying our game and for causing him, as my friend, any inconvenience whatsoever as that was not my intention -- my intention was to win the game (as he noted within his video in different terms).

Anyway, I knew that stall was a great playstyle during phase one and it would be fairly unpredictable for me to bring it as I have never had success with stall and only used it rarely, so I kept this possibility in mind for all three of my matches. I was speaking to numerous friends and teammates who knew blunder as a player a bit better than myself and I noticed that one common thing mentioned was that it was very possible to tilt blunder into not being 100% on top of his game and bringing stall could very plausibly do so. I'm personally a big fan of the psychological side of the game (and other "extra" sort of advantages that can be found through outside-the-box approaches/thinking) and I knew that bringing stall could give me a chance to trigger this. However, I was not going to do so if I thought it would normally do poorly against what he used, so I did a bit of background checking.

First off, I knew that blunder did not always build what he used in big tounament games, but I knew that TDK was his manager and blunder's also friends with pretty much the entire jerk of top players, so I tried to look at the trendy teams at the moment and even searched through TDK's recent history. I ultimately determined that I did not want to use standard, SPL stall as I felt like metagame trends were lining up to naturally match-up well with that team and I also did not want to use Ciele stall as the common Tapu Koko + KyuB builds tended to handle that really well (specifically Tapu Koko tbh). I also knew that if I were to stall, I wanted to be good against conventional bulky win conditions (be it a single Pokemon or a complex strategy to outlast/break stall) against fat as blunder was not afraid to use fat balance, so I figured I would try to revamp one of my own variants of stall that had not seen much usage in the past.

I had a month or two old stall team that I made pretty quickly just to ladder that had Zapdos, Chansey, Dugtrio, Tangrowth, Clefable, and Mega Sableye that I essentially used as the basis for crafting my final team for blunder. Sadly, somewhere throughout the building process, I either deleted or overwrote this team, so I cannot share the full process, but I will try to get at the main changes nevertheless. By using Protect Quagsire as my unaware Pokemon (Koko check and better physical bulk), utility Magearna with Pain Split and Heart Swap (deals with anti-stall Reuniclus and Clefable variants while having longevity against Tapu Lele and non-Heat Wave Tornadus-T), Toxic on Mega Sableye (hits a TON of different threats across the board that I otherwise struggled to last against - super underrated move on M-Sableye and Wisp is far from a necessity, especially when everyone assumes you have it to begin with) and Skill Swap on Chansey (mainly for opposing Dugtrio, but also comes in handy with the Toxic + Skill Swap trick Eo taught me about and even neuters threats such as Mega Mawile), I felt that I had not only covered a plethora of the aforementioned things that could prove to be troublesome for normal stall that I mentioned in the previous paragraph, but I also felt like I had optimized my previously lackluster stall team to the extent that I would be confident using it in an actual tournament as opposed to random ladder games when I was trying to learn the tier to begin with. Oh and one final side note before I forget, after a while it became clear that Stealth Rock was in no way necessary on this team thanks to some things Eo pointed out and honestly Toxic is so huge when it comes to wearing things down consistently with stall that I am glad that I opted to use it on Chansey as opposed to the normally staple move in Stealth Rock (keep in mind I had Skill Swap, so I had one less slot than normally available on Chansey).

- click for importable


[replay]smogtours-gen7ou-315130[/replay]

Going to use the code for replays, but in case people want to watch it in a separate tab, they can find the game here.

I load up the team and my battle vs blunder starts. When playing stall, team preview is pretty important and given this, I feel like going through most of my thought process when the battle started would be a good idea.

First thing I notice from team preview is that he has a Mawile, which is something I am going to have to handle properly if I want to win - Dugtrio is obviously the main solution here, but also managing my position prior to getting Dugtrio in against it is crucial. On top of that, I see that he has a Landorus-T, Gengar, and Latios -- I know that all of these Pokemon can be threats to me depending upon the set they have. Thankfully, my Zapdos set is faster than all non-Scarf Landorus-T and invested in Special Attack to make quick work of it with Hidden Power Ice, but I still must watch out for it when it comes to switching in if he manages to have the right Z-move for a situation; he has to be Stealth Rock Landorus-T given the structure of the team (unless SR Mega Mawile, which didn't make too much sense given what I knew), so that was something to keep in mind. As for Gengar, any set on it can be somewhat troublesome, but the choiced variants are at least manageable as Specially Defensive Mega Sableye can always eat two hits if he does not get rocks up and doesn't crit/drop me, even with Specs. The worst case scenario when facing a choiced variant would be that it could trick something, specifically Chansey, or hax through Mega-Sableye, which could lead to tricking something else later on as well. If it is Z-Shadow Ball with Taunt, then I would be in a fair amount of trouble, but given his team structure, that seemed highly unlikely, especially since that set was far more common in the past and rarely ever used anymore in the present. Overall, I felt fine facing this Pokemon, but knew I had to keep my head in the game when it was on the field in order to properly maneuver around it. Finally, Latios seemed like it was just going to end up being Scarf Defog Trick, which is very manageable seeing as I can let Magearna take a trick more likely than not and I have numerous defensive answers to it regardless (not to mention I have no hazards at all to Defog away). Rotom-Wash and his own Magearna are in no way threatening to my team, but both can prove to be annoying with Volt Switch and pivoting effectively, so I wanted to weaken and/or eliminate these as quick as possible in order to focus on what truly threatened me.

I lead with Mega Sableye as he leads Magearna and click Protect in order to get my mega evolution up -- easy enough. He reveals Fleur Cannon, which led me to believe he was probably Assault Vest, which turned out later to not be the case, but I knew that if I could get rid of this, then I could cut off a key way for Mawile to get in on things like Chansey. Sure enough, he makes a strong double the next turn, getting his Mawile in on my Chansey. My early game plan was to go to Magearna in order to soft-check him and potentially threaten Mawile or whatever came in. I managed to do just that until his Landorus-T prompted my Zapdos to come in and he doubled to Gengar. As I said before, my Mega-Sableye should be able to deal with Gengar, so I went to it and he must have predicted Chansey, as he clicked Trick. Being on top of predictions in order to preserve Chansey and other necessary members of my team turned out to be a pretty important part of this game, to be honest, and I am glad that I did not make any unnecessary plays that could have crippled me such as going Chansey here.

The next turn is pretty controversial and some people said that me making it shows I do not know how to play stall, but I honestly think that is an incorrect conclusion to draw. Let's look at what blunder is likely to think here: 1. He has to switch as he is locked into Trick against a Mega Sableye, 2. He has no clue that my Mega Mawile lacks Will-O-Wisp, making Mega Mawile a bad play, 3. He does not want Rotom-Wash to lose longevity via being statused or Knocked, so that would probably not be ideal this early on in the game, and 4. Magearna is at full and has at least Fleur Cannon. Magearna was his clear play and seeing as I thought it was AV, the trap was 100% worthwhile if I could take it, so I did. I think a lot of people take an approach to stall playing that is far too linear and scripted, which is just holding them back in the scheme of things. The Magearna turned out to not be AV, but it still was removed, which was nice seeing as if it's not AV, then it is Z-Fleur Cannon, which can prove to be an issue if Chansey happens to take a Trick or continuous Volt Switches/Stealth Rock, so it still was a nice safety measure. I suppose people are wondering why I neglect to mention the fact that Dugtrio cannot OHKO Mega Mawile without the Z move and I mean sure this is true, but I have a Quagsire with Protect and Leftovers, a Zapdos that obviously outruns Mega Mawile, Skill Swap Chansey for Huge Power, and faster Pain Split Flash Cannon Magearna, all of which normal stall lack, so I think that while I was "vulnerable" to it, I had every right to use the Z move when I did and didn't lose much in doing so.

Anyway, back to the game and not justifying my plays that seemed to upset some people. He brought in Rotom-W and got a Volt Switch off into Mega Mawile on my Chansey, letting him Play Rough crit into Magearna -- this essentially helped me because I was able to Pain Split off more health into the Rotom-W, but I do not think it mattered too much. Eventually, he cockblocked my Volt Switch attempt with his Landorus-T, took Discharge damage with his Rotom-W double switch, and Volted out into his own Gengar, leading to the same sequence as before, where he Tricked into Mega Sableye. Here, in my opinion, is where the trapping of Magearna became even more important. I still had not revealed that I had Toxic on Mega Sableye, so his going to Mega Mawile on a potential Will-O-Wisp was out of the question, Magearna was trapped and killed earlier, and he could not switch in a low health Rotom-Wash, so he had to essentially fodder off his Latios, which could have been a threat depending upon the set or at least also forced me to predict properly around Trick, so I made even more progress by simply getting Mega Sableye in due to what I did earlier on with it and Dugtrio. A lot of people also wondered why I did not Recover on his Draco the turn after it switched in and this was to avoid letting him save Latios as fodder/a pivot and going to Rotom-W for free. The damage taken was not the end of the world anyway as I felt like I could outmaneuver the Gengar as I did up to this point still.

He brought in his Mega Mawile to attempt to revenge kill the Mega Sableye, but I pivoted into a weakened Magearna, knowing that it was serving its purpose doing just this, and then I volted into the Rotom-Wash, triggering the Iappa Berry and letting me get back into my Mega Sableye to heal. I think he finally caught on or simply said fuck it and went in as this time he pivoted his Mega Mawile into my Mega Sableye, correctly predicting my Recover. I foddered off the Magearna, as planned, and went to Dugtrio to attempt to severely weaken the Mega Sableye. Here's where I made my only misplay and, to be honest, it was not a true misplay in the eyes of some because it was essentially a 50/50, but I really did not optimize my long-term odds, so I shall call it a misplay. I was pretty sure blunder would Play Rough on the Substitute and this turn he got me -- he Sucker Punched into my Earthquake, making me lose Dugtrio for nothing. A lot of people thought that this gave blunder the lead, but that simply isn't the case. I still had plenty of measures for Mega Mawile and he was not even aware of two of them (Protect Quagsire and Skill Swap Chansey). With that said, I did lose a pretty easy win with that play, yea, but if my only misplay throughout the game was this, I was still very confident that I would emerge victorious given this position.

I followed-up with Zapdos and he pivoted around my attacks for a couple turns to get in Rotom-Wash as I got two valuable turns of Leftovers. Then, I Discharged into Rotom-Wash and he revealed that he was Pain Split, which I was not sure Iappa Rotom-Wash always ran. Anyway, we went through the cycle of attacking and recovering for a couple turns after he burned me until he Volted on a Roost into his Gengar. This was probably one of the three or so biggest turns in the game and I knew Mega-Sableye was the safe play even if it got 2HKOd, but I also knew that he was well aware of that and already got caught Tricking into it twice, so I felt like I conditioned him well enough to the point that when he had the opportunity to 2HKO the Mega-Sableye, he would take it. Given that, I went to Chansey on the Shadow Ball and put myself back in the driver's seat. Seismic Tossing the incoming Mega Mawile gave me much needed chip and the ability to click a move that made the entire SmogTours chat go LOL in the following turn, so I was pretty happy with this turned out. I Skill Swapped in order to let me eat a second Play Rough and recovered back up, essentially walling the Mega Mawile with my Chansey. As soon as this became evident to blunder, he went right back out to Gengar to try and make progress through alternative means (Tricking Chansey or Shadow Balling Mega Sableye). I was actually not as sure about what to do this time as the past three as they were sort of clear to me, but given that I just disclosed Skill Swap on Chansey and was at full, it was likely that he pegged me down as needing Chansey to win, so I figured, once again, that he would try and 2HKO the Mega Sableye that had annoyed him all game up to this point. Thankfully, I turned out to be right this time again, but I was not sure how much longer I could continue, so I knew I had to start making progress of my own before he crippled me to a point where I was in an uncomfortable spot. Oh and right, I Skill Swapped that turn so that I could Cursed Body any potential attack that he would throw at me in the next few turns as Huge Power was absolutely useless on Chansey.

He pivoted into Rotom-Wash to try and regain some momentum and essentially let himself eat a Toxic in return for a lot of health gained back from Pain Split, which was a good play as I had not revealed Stealth Rock on anything yet and he needed to be healthy regardless, but I simply recovered off the Pain Split myself on his Volt Switch out into Mega Mawile. At this point, I took a second and looked at his team -- he had two likely Trick users and a Pain Split + Iapppa Rotom-Wash, leading me to believe that there was a clear stress on crippling or chipping down opposing defensive pivots in order to clean with a win condition. Given that, I knew that Seismic Toss was 100% the better play here. I did not want him to Swords Dance on a Skill Swap as then I had to go out to Quagsire, opening up room for him to grab momentum once again and force me into a corner if he played it well, and I knew that worst case scenario he got off a Play Rough for about 60% max and I put him into range for Zapdos, Quagsire, and Chansey later on to kill in one hit with the Seismic Toss damage. I did not need Chansey "healthy" at this point as it still walled Rotom-Wash and Gengar defensively after taking a Play Rough. Anyway, he Play Roughed and got Cursed Bodied, letting me wall the Mega Mawile with Chansey and essentially win the game very easily. With all due respect to blunder and the couple dozen people who seemed to be adamant that this won me the game that I otherwise had "thrown away" (lmao), I still had Zapdos and full health Quagsire and he got impacted by a 30% Cursed Body after hitting seven straight Play Roughs up to that point, so I think I won from that position anyway and this is hardly getting lucky. Anyway, I healed up Chansey and let Quagsire take the trick as a middleground against Gengar as I no longer needed it healthy. We pivoted around for a couple turns until he got a now Specsless Gengar in on Chansey and I Seismic Tossed into it, catching a Mega Mawile double, leading him to forfeit and giving me my second win. I fucking hate using posts like this as a medium to justify myself or save face, but I wanted to explain my mindset and some misconceptions about the game/the proper line of play, so yea - don't plan to do that for the remaining games. gg


TheThorn, of the Shinto Ruins Serpents, was my third opponent of the season. Thorn was someone I avoided twice during SPL and was not too thrilled to see myself up against in my first big SM OU games since then, to be quite honest. I had a lot of respect for him as a player ever since he first made a name for himself and I knew that I would have to be at my best if I wanted to beat him, especially after a great SPL. Thankfully, Thorn had cooled off in the months leading up to Snake, having an average WCOP showing and I noticed that now that he lacked the support of CBB, John, etc., he tended to default to balance builds very often, so I at least had a basis for my preparations. My full scout on him can be found here. I expected to face a Celesteela balance with Mew or Zapdos as the Defog user and likely Toxapex being somewhere in the mix. However, I knew he was capable of stalling, especially when keeping in mind his roots as a Scooter and the fact that Obii was his manager, who successfully stalled z0mOG in SPL.

I also knew that they would scout me a bit and likely find me using a lot of pretty generic offenses, so I wanted to try and change it up while still keeping a focus on deconstructing bulkier cores and stall teams with ease. One of the first things that came to my head was the core of Z-Earthquake Dugtrio and Earth Plate Gravity Landorus-T. I was fascinated by this pairing because Z Dugtrio with Gravity can do so many things one would not expect and you cannot really prepare for that while both the Dugtrio set and the Landorus-T set naturally are quite useful against these types of teams, so I immediately started with this pair. I knew that I wanted to avoid compressing too many roles onto my Landorus-T and I also wanted to make this team have a more balanced pace, so I decided to throw on the next best rocker at the time, Heatran. I elected to go with a bulkier variant with Protect, Toxic, and Leftovers as it complimented my remaining members and scouted things out. From there, I wanted to use Mega Venusaur to compliment Heatran and cockblock a lot of the lousy HO builds circulating at the time that struggled to switch into and offensively break it, leaving me at least somewhat prepared for matchups I may not be expecting as I do not like building teams that do not function consistently in the tier.

Hydreigon might seem like an odd Pokemon, but it actually struck me as a fairly obvious next member to the team and it worked wonders for me in the game, on the team in general, and at this point in time in the tier when paired with Dugtrio in general. It helped the match-up against the type of teams Thorn frequented, opened up a lot of opportunities for Dugtrio, and always kept the opponent on the back-foot when I played aggressively, which is what I tend to like doing with bulky-offense when possible. Finally, I did not notice too many defensive weaknesses that I thought I would be likely to encounter (was pretty much Mega Pinsir and one other thing, if I recall correctly) and I knew that I needed speed control and preferably something not too weak, so I threw on Scarf Tapu Lele as I did not think I needed a 100+ scarfer and I liked having this here to clean. I changed a few moves and tested the team out until I was comfortable with it and then went into the game confident.

- click for importable (Pokepaste isn't working, so had to settle for Puush)


Sadly, replays were down during the time of this game, so all we have is the downloadable replay file that can be found here.

As I finished my training regime up in the depths of the mountains of northern New Jersey, working vigorously with my six pocket monsters in preparation for this highly important battle, I felt an uneasy sensation sweep through my body. With sweat dripping from my inflated eyebrow, I felt that something strange was happening and what was to come was not going to be ordinary, let alone easy to manage. Finally, I gathered whatever pride I had left in the tank after stalling blunder and making multiple google docs for Pokemon scouting purposes and entered the battle arena only to spot what I had sensed this whole time -- the goons.

Yea, Thorn decided to stall me. While I thought I had been pretty well prepared for it more often than not, I do think it was a respectable choice, especially when he hasn't used it much as of late. Anyway, this was an interesting build as it lacked Toxapex and Skarmory, meaning my Mega Venusaur could actually be annoying to keep in control, letting me use it as leverage throughout the battle. In addition, it was pretty clear what I needed to figure out before making too much progress -- the movesets and spreads of Zapdos and Mew, the moveset of Alomomola (specifically if it had Scald), and if the Dugtrio was Sash or not. A lot of this game involved positioning myself, using everything at my disposal to make as much progress as possible, and minimizing the amount of "breaks" or free turns he had. Knowing that I did not want to take my foot off the gas much during this game, I led Venusaur knowing that getting a mega evolution off safely would be key and getting some Knocks or poisons off would be much appreciated as long as I did not waste too much PP, which is also something I had to keep in mind throughout the game.

Early on, I just wanted to find out information and cripple as much as possible, as I said, so I simply Knocked an incoming Mew and got a Sludge Poison and then pivoted to Hydreigon as he Roosted twice. Hydreigon was pretty big here as it had U-turn, meaning that if he brought in Chansey, I could eliminate it immediately if it lacked Skill Swap whereas if he brought in Clefable, I could continue to make progress with Mega Venusaur and potentially other things as well as the game opened up. This time, he went Clefable on the U-turn and he simply went back to Mew on my attempt to Knock Off Clefable. Rinse and repeat -- Hydreigon in on Mew and U-turn, but this time he went to Alomomola, which still prompted the same Mega Venusaur response by me, but instead I revealed that I had Giga Drain just to see if it would do enough to truly threaten the Alomomola -- it didn't. Hydreigon pivot into Mew, U-turn into Clefable, Sludge Bomb into Mew, and Hydreigon on the Roost -- this game was pretty predictable at this point and I knew that I had to find some means of making more progress before I simply got outlasted or he made a move to fuck my pattern of plays up. I thought he might have done that on turn 13, but it turns out him going Zapdos did not achieve much as he just let himself get Knocked and Poisoned in return for trying to Paralyze me, which honestly would not have helped him too much and may have let me hang around even longer, but I guess having Clefable outrun Mega Venusaur was something he valued enough to let Zapdos get crippled while PP stalling Mega Venusaur.

Anyway, this is still pretty boring up to this point, even when I managed to pivot into Hydreigon on the Roost and do over half with Fire Blast, which was aimed at Clefable -- good play on his part to predict me and stay in, Roosting off some of the damage. He went Chansey on the following turn and I figured he might, so I made the middleground and went to Mega Venusaur to at least pressure it with Knock, but not risk my Dugtrio quite yet. Sure enough, he traded his Eviolite for a Heal Bell to cure the Poisons, so this was nice for me as Chansey was now crippled. I went hard Dugtrio the next turn in case he wanted to get cute and Stealth Rock or even Seismic Toss, but he made the smart play and got his Chansey as far away from the Dugtrio as possible, sending in Mew. I knew I wanted to get some Poisons up and try to prompt the same overall sequence again, but with it ending in me trapping Chansey instead, so I fished on Zapdos and got the poison, but then I made a sloppy play on turn 27 in going to my Tapu Lele. I still have no clue why he kept trying to Paralyze me, especially when he was getting low on HP that turn, but he Discharged and got the Paralysis on Tapu Lele, which would have been nice to have as an offensive threat, but was not the end of the world as it was only Scarf, not Z or Specs. He tried to trap the Lele, revealing that he was Sash Dugtrio in all likelihood, but I figured as much and went to Hydreigon. And then the sequence, the vortex..began again. Ultimately, I saw an opening to get my Heatran in and set up Stealth Rocks on turn 37, so I did that and he did not go to Dugtrio, but rather he pivoted around between Alomomola and Zapdos, passing wishes and taking Lava Plume + Stealth Rock damage that did not add up to much. I figured that Alomomola would try to Knock or Scald when it got a true free turn on my Heatran, which he did after I Toxic'd it, so I finally went back to Mega Venusaur to keep the Heatran in tact and sure enough he revealed Knock Off. I knew that he was probably going to try to pass a Wish and get on his way out to minimize poison damage, so I went hard Dugtrio again to trap the Alomomola without wasting my Z or getting counter-trapped by his Dugtrio, which I did by subbing up and then switching to Mega Venusaur on the turn he died to Poison. This was major progress and I could tell that I could eventually break through his entire team if I kept playing with momentum on my side and taking advantage of every single opportunity I could.

Zapdos was able to get a Defog off, so I went back to Heatran to set them up once more, but this time I figured he would go to his relatively safe, Focus Sash Dugtrio, so I double switched out to my basically unrevealed Landorus-T up to this point in terms of what set it is. I knew he would switch out, but I figured it might be to Clefable in order to defensively check anything I could throw at him, but instead he wisely went to Zapdos on the Earthquake, perhaps sensing that I could be Earth Plate. With this said, I knew he was Heat Wave Zapdos because when you lack Mega Sableye, you pretty much have to be as Ferrothorn becomes too annoying otherwise. I clicked Gravity in attempt to threaten his entire team knowing that my Landorus-T was safe, but he went to Dugtrio, likely expecting me to go back to Heatran. Thing is that Landorus-T was now trapped by Dugtrio due to Gravity and he had a 65% to 2HKO me with Earthquake now, so his play turned out to work out for a totally different reason. However, he did not take advantage of this, which I personally disagree with -- perhaps he didn't notice that I was trapped? -- regardless, he went to Mew and took a 51% Earthquake and then fired off an Ice Beam into Hydreigon for 48%, but his Mew was now very low on health and forced out as I U-turned into Clefable to get Mega Venusaur in as I knew this process overall was benefiting me.

After a Sludge Bomb into Zapdos, I got Hydreigon in on a Roost and I finally gave in and Dark Pulsed, predicting him to predict me to U-turn, but he went Clefable once again. However, he then double switched out to Chansey, which left his Clefable in 2HKO range from Hydreigon and let me go to my own Dugtrio on his Stealth Rock. I took his Chansey out with Z-Earthquake into regular Earthquake and then he went to his own Dugtrio to counter-trap mine, likely winning a tie, but it's not like he had much of a choice at this point. We maneuvered around for a few turns until I got Heatran in and set my own rocks back up as he went to Dugtrio to eliminate the Heatran, putting the score at 5-4 in my favor. I followed up with Mega Venusaur and attacked into Zapdos a few times until I went Hydreigon and Dark Pulsed, baiting a single Roost and then a Clefable follow up. I fished for a flinch that would essentially end the game, but I did not get it, leading me to backtrack into my Mega Venusaur and then him to fodder off his Mew after he wished back to a somewhat healthy range of HP with Clefable. Finally, he went to Zapdos and I pivoted to Hydreigon, I predicted him to go to Clefable and Fire Blasted, doing 51% and leaving him at 21%. He used Protect and then on the following turn I missed the Fire Blast that would have put it away -- suppose that's fair after all of the Poisons I got, even if they were kind of inevitable and he got the one paralysis that mattered, they did put quite the chip on multiple Pokemon. We exchanged some words here that amused me, tbh. I should not have opened my mouth to begin with, but all I said to start was "alas." and I don't think that was too bad. Regardless, it was the heat of the moment and I was still having fun with the game (I legitimately think trying to break stall without an auto-win/lose match-up like this game is the most fun Pokemon out there), but apparently he was not feeling the same and felt the match-up was not too great for him, which is unfortunate, but part of the game, especially when you bring Stall. Anyway, I went to Mega Venusaur, prompting the Zapdos once again, and then foddered my own Tapu Lele to it, making the score 4-3 in my favor.

Hydreigon was my follow-up at this point, but I was at 16% after Stealth Rock damage and his Zapdos was at 31% after poison, with rocks up on his side. I connected with Fire Blast this time as he went to Clefable, but I was running low on PP, so I switched out to Landorus-T. Sure enough, he used Moonblast instead of Wish or Protect, which struck me as odd at the time, but I very much took as Landorus-T only took 37% and after Protect, the Clefable died a vast majority of the time to Earth Plate Earthquake. I needed the roll and I got it, killing the Clefable on turn 89 with Earthquake and the Zapdos turn 90 with Hidden Power Ice leading to him forfeiting. gg


more coming, but in a new post :mad:
 
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Finchinator

-OUTL
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OU Leader
Phase 2 games - suapah, -Snow, and John

I came into Phase 2 with a 3-0 record against pretty strong Phase 1 opponents, so my confidence was quite high. The results of the games were not what gave me more confidence, however. Rather, it was the fact that I cracked NJNP's top 10 -- this honestly made life worth living. Jokes aside, I feel like my grasp on the tier was better than ever after working pretty hard for a couple weeks. With Dugtrio leaving, it opened up things even more, as well, so I was pumped to keep going and hopefully win plenty more games. My scouting became a lot less formal and elaborate at this point, as you might notice if you actually are still reading past this point.

Suapah, of the Ambrette Astrotias, was my fourth opponent of the season. I really did not have too much of a read on suapah and with replays still being down, I legitimately could not scout too much. While I did have a couple Canadians on my team, there still was not too much to be said about him, with the most I really figured out being this. Given this, I wanted to use something that struck me as effective at this point in time and with Dugtrio going, that happened to be Specs Tapu Koko.

I figured using some standard Tapu Koko + Kyurem-Black balance would not only be a departure from my norm, but it would also be a good metagame pick and something that can perform pretty consistently in general, as all I wanted here was a neutral match-up to outplay and win in. I figured I would go with the Z set on Kyurem-B since I was not using Z on Tapu Koko and from there, the rest of the team was pretty easy to complete. I wanted to be extra safe against cheese just because this guy could try to swipe a free one from me and I was vulnerable to offensive cheese types (rain especially) twice in the first phase, so I figured that using two Protect Pokemon in my defensive core to stall Rain/Veil would be nice, leading me to using Landorus-T's Stealth Rock Leftovers variant and Celesteela's Specially Defensive variant as my main defensive core members.

With these four under my belt, I knew I wanted to use Mega Venusaur again because I still liked how it did against the core of the metagame, being bulky-offense at the time directly following the Dugtrio ban, and I also feel like it gave me a nice check to things like opposing Tapu Koko and Greninja. Finally, I threw on Scarf Latios for role compression and general team completion purposes as it did all that I needed to -- this is sort of what Scarf Latios does at the end of the day -- even if it is objectively mediocre, it is needed on plenty of teams. As for my movesets, Celesteela and Landorus-T I went with the standard, most reliable movesets, but this led me to believe that I wanted to use Earthquake on Mega Venusaur to help them, Kyurem-Black, and Latios for Heatran. Finally, since Mega Venusaur lacked HP Fire, I opted to use HP Fire on Tapu Koko and because I like having longevity in the balance match-up and multiple fire moves, I opted to use Roost as the fourth move on Kyurem-Black. I noticed that Volcarona ate my ass, so I had to use Thunder Wave over Trick on Latios (I actually had Bulldoze at one point to help keep Mega Tyranitar and Volcarona slow while chipping Heatran, but ultimately it just was not worthwhile lmao).

- click here for importable


[replay]smogtours-gen7ou-318767[/replay]

Going to use the code for replays, but in case people want to watch it in a separate tab, they can find the game here.

Honestly, I came into this game in a bad mindset in hindsight and that is 100% my fault. I looked at team preview, saw what looked like a bunch of random offensive Pokemon thrown together with a Gastrodon, and was just kind of like wtf, who are they ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mega Venusaur looked pretty unkillable if he didn't have the right sets and I wanted to make progress with it early on while still preserving it for late (could easily recover on Gastrodon, Tapu Koko, and potentially Mawile, Landorus-T, and Kartana depending upon sets). I led with it to get a mega evolution off and perhaps do some damage, which I did with a Sludge Bomb crit into a seemingly Scarf Victini, who dealt a bit over half damage to me. Then, I doubled out into Landorus-T on his Kartana pivot. He double SD'd as I SRd and went to Celesteela. In hindsight, going hard Celesteela or Tapu Koko was better there as Bloom Doom hardly existed at this point and I did not gain much by getting rocks up besides not letting the Victini in -- for some reason, I put too much emphasis on this and let the Kartana set up. Regardless, he killed off the Celesteela and it was fine as I could just revenge kill it. I went to Koko and instead of clicking the move to kill it, I decided to risk the Pokemon that literally beat his whole team in Mega Venusaur. For whatever reason, he stayed in -- I don't agree with the risk vs reward here, but I am in no position at all to disagree because he outplayed me and deserves all the credit in the world for pulling the trigger at the right time, so well played dude if you're reading this, I'm still pretty mad at myself for how this whole game transpired lol.

Anyway, Mega Venusaur double into the Kartana, who stayed in and Sacred Sworded. I lived barely, but I think had to fodder my seemingly useless Scarf latios only to go back to Tapu Koko for a proper revenge kill. To add insult to injury, he went to Gastrodon on the Thunderbolt, forcing me out into my Kyurem-Black, which was probably the best middle-ground here as I could not let Mega Venusaur die and nothing else came in safely. The next turn I don't really understand, but at the same time I got really lucky. I just clicked Ice Beam as I wanted to use a STAB, but not waste my Z. He went into Mega Mawile, which I felt didn't add up because he had no need for his own Landorus-T, Mega Mawile is slower than Mega Venusaur (so if I fodder something, then I can heal up and then have a pretty clear path to victory of my own), and Mega Mawile is 2HKOd by Kyurem-Black. Unfortunately, I got a crit freeze and then he tried to Sucker Punch as he thawed and I tried to take advantage of the situation by going to Mega Venusaur. I clicked Synthesis twice as he crit a Knock doing a bit under half and then he foddered his Victini to Stealth Rock, only only to go right back to Mega Mawile -- don't really get this maneuver either, but he was probably not in the best state after the crit freeze, so that's perhaps why.

I used Synthesis once more as he clicked Swords Dance and then I predicted him to expect me to go to Landorus-T, so I Earthquaked to knock out the Mega Mawile and put me in a now much more manageable 4-4 position. Honestly, I just needed Mega Mawile or Gastrodon to kill something or to get Mega Venusaur in on a double for a relatively similar sequence to likely occur, but I do feel bad if the hax had any impact on how he approached it because I think it changed the way the game was played on his end even if it didn't impact the overall gameplan of my own personally. Regardless of this speculation of the impact of the crit freeze, the game was still not over, even if he struggled to get rid of Mega Venusaur at this point. He went to his Tapu Koko and traded his life for a 27% Thunderbolt and then traded Earthquakes for Giga Drains and Synthesises from his Landorus-T into my Mega Venusaur only to die off as I was at 54%. Finally, he went to Kartana, never trying to go to it before to scout if I had HP Fire or not, which I did not, and actually forced me out after essentially letting Mega Venusaur kill two Pokemon.

From here, I let my Landorus-T trade its life for a 48% Earthquake into the Kartana and then I went to Tapu Koko to revenge kill it once more. He was in Dazzling Gleam range, so I just clicked that as he went to Gastrodon, taking 34%, and then I knew I lived any single hit and could always go to my Mega Venusaur if he got a crit and heal up, so I Dazzling Gleamed once more figuring he would likely go for the desperation double back out to Kartana and he did just that, giving me the kill on Kartana, his forfeit, and a 3-0 win that I really was not too proud of. I could have won this pretty easily off of match-up had I played properly around Kartana or just with my Mega Venusaur earlier on in general. I still think I had a good shot with my Mega Venusaur after the bad double switch I made, but the crit freeze gave me an opening that I would have otherwise had to properly position myself to acquire and I acknowledge that this really sucked for my opponent at the time. gg out of respect


-Snow, of the Snake winning Pacificdlog Pitvipers, was my fifth opponent of the season. I went into this game 4-0 and confident, even if my game against Suapah was far from ideal. I have played Snow before, most notably in WCOP 2014 where I edged him out in XY OU. With this said, I knew Snow had some pretty radical tendencies. He sees no boundaries as a teambuilder and is not afraid to use whatever comes to mind as an effective strategy, especially when it comes to absurd stallish Pokemon (see: regular Altaria in XY, Mega Aggron in ORAS, etc.) -- point being that I had to be ready for just about everything when I probably could have cut some more corners against someone like Star, who I knew would go with some humble bulky-offense in all likelihood had we faced in phase 2 meta.

At one point during phase 1, I said that whoever played Snow on my team should use stall of their own as it tended to outlast his custom stalls and match-up well with his other teams, but without Dugtrio in the tier, that option seemingly slipped out of my personal grasp and I felt that I had more secure, consistent means of approaching preparation, especially after using stall myself last phase, so that initial idea came and went quickly. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that that I wanted to have a team that was well-equipped to handle any new-meta stall that could come my way, be it somewhat standardized or full of gimmicks, so I decided to take an approach that I normally do not, in using Mega Heracross. I felt like Mega Heracross covered pretty much exactly what I needed to as there really is only one hard counter to it in existence and that is fucking Doublade, which only someone like Eo Ut Mortus would use in 2017, so I figured that I would have a nice shot against any fat creations of the frequently gimmicky Italian. I then sorta messed around with a couple of ideas with Mega Heracross, as can be seen here. Eventually, I settled on the idea of weakening things with Taunt + Toxic Heatran and Mega Heracross, itself, earlier on only to clean with Scarf Tapu Lele, as I felt these two other Pokemon did fairly well against the balances that Snow used while took advantage of the fact that he was going to be super paranoid over Zard-X after getting boned by it twice during phase 1.

With Taunt Toxic Heatran, Scarf Tapu Lele, and Mega Heracross, I knew that I needed to throw on a Landorus-T for Stealth Rock because well I mean you need to do that on every team regardless anyway, but especially the fact that I lacked Stealth Rocks on Heatran. From there, I threw on Greninja for Spikes and the ability to nuke things that Mega Heracross and Tapu Lele appreciated going with Z-Hydro Pump. Finally, I knew Tapu Lele and offensive Waters troubled me, so I threw on Tangrowth. This build was one of my sloppier ones, to be quite honest. After speaking with ABR and a few others, it became clear that Spikes and Toxic Spikes were a bit over-problematic. Thing is, I knew I could pressure Spikes with Greninja and smart early game navigation to the extent that I was comfortable, but Toxic Spikes struck me as borderline unmanageable. I had four Pokemon vulnerable and no removal, when removal was starting to become pretty mandatory on teams like these. Eventually, I settled on making Greninja Z-Extrasensory in order to at least give me a shot at outplaying and keeping Toxic Spikes off, which also was nice for Mega Heracross assuming Toxapex was eliminated and took full advantage of Psychic Terrain from Tapu Lele. From there, I made my Heatran capable of killing opposing Heatran by editing my spread a little and added minimal attack investment to my Tangrowth to assure a 2HKO on SG Magearna after Stealth Rock. With that, I was pretty much finalized with everything else being more or less standard and what I felt gave me the best chance. I kind of accepted that Toxic Spikes would be hard to manage -- I knew that -Snow had not really used Toxapex much in the past and I had been prepared for it pretty thoroughly beforehand, but this was still a bit too risky for something relatively popular and it could very well bite me in the ass due to sorta cutting this corner.

- click for the importable


[replay]smogtours-gen7ou-319617[/replay]

Going to use the code for replays, but in case people want to watch it in a separate tab, they can find the game here.

First reaction was basically: FUCK he has a Toxapex. Thing is, the more and more I looked at it, the more and more I noticed that this game was very winnable if I managed to play well enough around what would essentially put my entire team on a timer. I knew I needed to pressure him a ton early on with Greninja as long as the full set wasn't revealed while timing my Z well for the situation that I inevitable encountered Toxapex. In addition, I knew that if I could get Mega Heracross a free turn on Ferrothorn or a potentially defensive Landorus-T, then I could make him pay if the circumstances line up and I get Stealth Rocks up. Ultimately, my gameplan revolved around removing Mew and minimizing the impact of Toxapex while cleaning with Tapu Lele or Greninja late game, with Mega Heracross and Heatran essentially clearing the way.

I got off to a good start, turning a Landorus-T mirror lead into Rocky Helmet chip on his quicker U-turn and Greninja doubling into his Landorus-T a turn later without my set being revealed at all. I got a Spike up and honestly I probably could have used Extrasensory, but if he went to Ferrothorn, which was safer imo because Toxapex was clearly huge for him in the match-up, then it would have been a complete waste, so Spikes at least assured me that I got something out of it and could pressure him to Defog at some point or another. Anyway, with his Toxapex in, I wanted to show that I could threaten it while doing damage and maybe getting lucky enough to flinch it or only get Toxic'd, meaning he lacked Toxic Spikes, but unfortunately I trade a bit under half damage for a layer of Toxic Spikes and now I knew this game was going to be an uphill battle.

To make matters worse, I rushed the Z-move. I should have just used Extrasensory, but I tried to get greedy and it backfired as he went to Ferrothorn. However, this probably did give him some sense of security as he let Ferrothorn take an HP Fire on the ensuing turn as he overpredicted and used Knock Off instead of Stealth Rock, which led me to believe he was Spikes Ferrothorn and Stealth Rock Mew as Mega Manectric without Spikes is quite bad imo and I was sure he would click rocks if he had it -- turns out I was very wrong with this set of assumptions. Regardless, I knew he would try to save his Ferrothorn, so I clicked Hydro Pump knowing his Ferrothorn was in range anyway and I would hit every other Pokemon harder, which I did as he went to his Hoopa-Unbound. Then, he foddered the Ferrothorn trying to cut his losses and get in my nightmare Pokemon, Mega Manectric -- this fucker is a mediocre Pokemon that I would not personally use at all yet it beat me twice this snake (also did during phase 3) lmao.

I figured he would predict Tangrowth, so I pivoted to Heatran on the Flamethrower, also avoiding letting something take a Poison. Eventually, he managed to get his Landorus-T in on a Taunt aimed at Toxapex and he got momentum in return for chip as I went to my own Landorus-T on the U-turn, allowing him to bring in Mew. I should have known it lacked Stealth Rocks when he doubled to Toxapex instead of clicking it there, honestly, but that was something that slipped my mind and these little things alongside one play later on are probably what cost me in the long haul. Over the next few turns, I let Tapu Lele and Mega Heracross eat one layer of Toxic Spikes, which probably could have been done better, in return for trying to gain some momentum as I figured the longevity on Mega Heracross could be nice if I was trying to SD up to kill something like Toxapex and Tapu Lele could use the same when cleaning later on if I can provoke that scenario.

Sadly, Snow got the better end of me with this sequence, going to Landorus-T on my Heatran double, predicting Toxapex or a Psychic attack, and then U-turning into his own Hoopa-Unbound as I went to my own Landorus-T. Here is the play that really fucked me up, to be honest, because keeping Heatran alive and healthy was vital to wearing out the rest of his team -- I figured that if Hoopa was his first response to my Landorus-T, then he would have an Ice move as Specs Dark Pulse did not always kill me, so I tried to get fancy and go to Heatran to reclaim momentum and neuter the threat, but I ate a huge Dark Pulse and paid a major unnecessary price in the process.

From there, I essentially had to throw away my Tangrowth just to get Mega Heracross in to 2HKO Toxapex with Rock Blast -- the first rolls probably looked Jolly to him, probably, but the 2HKO overall was slightly in my favor depending upon his spread, which he later revealed to me so I could confirm, meaning my minimum rules early helped me let him think to stay in and get the kill later, ironically enough helping me somewhat significantly there as Toxapex died to the second turn of Rock Blasts.

Then, the sequence happened. I knew that I needed my Mega Heracross alive and my Heatran healthier. Moreover, I pivoted the Heatran into the obvious incoming Flamethrower to gain leftovers. Then, I pivoted between Landorus-T on the Thunderbolt as Heatran was then in range and Heatran on the HP Ice, which did less than leftovers, for seven turns. I hesitated a lot on the sixth turn and almost stayed in trying to get him to pull the trigger at the wrong time and then I did the same on the last turn, but I figured that he might think I was bulkier or simply be ok with letting my Heatran live a Thunderbolt to only take a Toxic or barely invested Earth Power, but he took a stand and finally predicted my pivot, correctly Thunderbolting into the Landorus-T on the final turn I needed to get leftovers to be in range to have good odds to survive Thunderbolt and I went to Heatran predicting HP Ice on what was basically the eight 50/50. Sure enough, I lived the Thunderbolt, but that was only because he got absolute minimum and then he took me out next turn. Before I go on, I would just like to point out that while these plays did not work out, I think a lot of players kind of tune out and autopilot once they think they are in a losing position and often throw away opportunities to find some sort of odds to claw back into otherwise lost games. Like this and some plays in other losing games I made, I never try to lose focus in a team tournament game and always carry on until I run out of conditions to gain an edge when it seems challenging to. Had I pulled this off and forced Mega Manectric to Volt Switch or crippled it, the game would not suddenly be won by me, but it would be progress and with Toxic Spikes setting my team on a timer, Heatran being low, and Mega Manectric + Mew being so troublesome at the time, I knew this series of plays, no matter how seemingly far-fetched, was worthwhile. In almost every game, the person in the worse position has ways to manage things in a way that gives them some out to make progress that might not initially come to mind and I feel like a huge aspect of improving as a player is exploring these and all other options to figure out what truly is practically optimal as opposed to situationally optimal and comes to mind first. Sorry to ramble, but this is something I noticed a lot when I got to know the tier more and more and games tended to draw out like this, presenting many opportunities to change the pace things were going. Hopefully this made sense to everyone and perhaps opened some eyes to those who did not take this sort of approach previously.

From here, the game was slowly getting out of reach -- I tried to break through with Tapu Lele, but Mew had it checked, I tried to break through with Greninja, but the combination of Mew and a faster Mega Manectric had it checked, and I tried to break through with Mega Heracross, but Landorus-T being alive, the Poison damage each turn eroding away at my remaining HP at a steady pace, and my lack of opportunities to get in safely had it very much in check. While I did manage to push his back sort of against the wall, it was more just Snow playing safely as he knew his Mew was faster than my Mega Heracross by this point and that with some more Poison, I would be in Ice Beam range, letting him get the final few kills with Mew to win 1-0 in a close game that I felt he controlled from the middle of the game onward. Pretty upset with how I played a few crucial turns such as the turn I wasted my Z and the turn I threw away most of my Heatran's health, but otherwise I guess I was happy with how I played. The first loss was annoying to me, but the game was close and I knew what I could improve upon, so I was not too upset with myself afterwards. gg


John, of the Victory Road Rattlers, was my sixth opponent of the season. When I first saw i got John, I was pretty annoyed. Having already faced blunder, who was on council, I knew I did not want another game vs a council member. With that said, I eventually grew to embrace this -- I do like playing other strong players and John was almost universally seen as a top SM OU player, giving me lots of personal motivation. I wanted to prove I could compete with anyone in the tier I had been playing in the tournament, in the tier I had been leading for a while, in the tier that a lot of people did not see me as a legitimate player of, etc. -- you can insert whatever cheesy motivation mumbo-jumbo here, but the point was this game mattered a lot to me on more than just a "win for your team" level, which already itself means quite a bit, as my preparation probably shows.

Getting into it, I really did not have a huge idea of what John truly was like as a player. Funny thing is that I had legit never played John before this in anything, ever. I did have some replays to work with, however, and I tried to watch them more for team structure and gameplay purposes than assembling a hard scouting report since John indicated multiple times that he had a lot of fresh ideas for the post-Dugtrio metagame. I did not want to get too set on any past trends of what he used as I was not sure how much he built during WCOP by himself, I was not sure how the metagame changes directly impacted him, and I was not sure who exactly I was dealing with until I had a grasp on him as a player, so paying attention to detail and playing was best for me at this point.

It became clear that John was a pretty heavy momentum based player, meaning he found windows and made the most of them to get leads in the early-mid game and then played optimally late in the ideal game for him whereas he only truly made those pressure-packed off-the-wall kind of reads and plays later on, if pushed into a corner of sorts. It also became clear that John rarely played the extremes of the metagame, meaning I would likely encounter a bulky-offense or balanced team as opposed to some offensive cheese or stall, thankfully. Some small things over time that I did take note to some extent was that he liked Mantine as a defogger more than most and his teams often struggled with the right Volcarona set when they lacked Mantine.

My initial idea was to use some ORAS like Protect Mega Diancie + Volcarona team, but then the idea shifted to or simply integrated Hidden Power Electric Expert Belt Greninja, but then the idea kept Mega Diancie and suddenly revolved around Corkskrew Crash Shift Gear Magearna, but then...I noticed that I was not making any progress and the game was getting close. I kept trying to make this Mega Diancie idea that I will elaborate on later on in this post when I discuss some creative sets work, but it did not really fit together in a fashion that would allow for a team to be consistent and, on top of that, I was running into the same issues time-after-time, so I eventually said that this was not the place. Then I had a few ideas bounce around -- the classic Bloom Doom Heatran of the SPL era as a breaker being one idea, some fat shenanigans, like I had initially planned for Snow, as outlined above being another idea, and Specs Gengar, like iloveleague used vs John, as the last idea. Long story short, I stayed up until like 4am procrastinating this and building on-and-off, but came up with no really good teams even though I tried to convince myself that a team that lacked a Ground immunity was worth using for most of the day leading up to our game.

At this point, I was pretty amused with myself -- never had I been the type to build my team last minute, but I set myself up to do so for one of my most important games when the Yankees were also playing in the playoffs at the exact time. I guess my manager, d0nut, and teammate, HANTSUKI, kind of pushed me in the right direction by their continuous (it is still going on to this day as you can see) bashing of the best OU Pokemon of all time, Kartana -- it really made me want to use him. Sure enough, I threw SD Kartana and Choice Banded Tapu Bulu into the teambuilder because it just beat me on the ladder when testing one of my previously built teams an hour or so beforehand and then I was struggling to progress. Thankfully, Eo was there to help and asked me basic questions like what I wanted to use as a Choice Scarfer and Stealth Rocker. This ended up leading me to fill in Spikes Protean Scarf Greninja, which I liked against John and wanted for early game tempo, that I felt would be good vs a player like him specifically, and Stealth Rock Landorus-t, because, once again, why the fuck not -- this Pokemon is almost too good not to use ffs. I knew I needed Heatran or AV Magearna for things like Tapu Lele when I noticed that this team was growing very similar to a TDK team from WCOP I had used in the past, so, seeing as I was short on time and in need of some confidence in my team, I ripped his last two members and then customized my Kartana to have Defog in order to deal with hazards as I struggled with them against Snow and it was better this way in the current metagame anyway as opposed to the Scarf set that the team had, iirc. For those that want to make fun of this whole process, feel free to look at what I put myself through due to my indecisiveness and panic in the 36 or so hours before the game here. I do want to say that I do consider my final team to at least be partially mine as the sets are quite different from the TDK team, but they are the same six Pokemon and I do offer him/his team significant credit for influencing the finalizing of my teambuilding process and rounding out of a few sets/ideas that I ultimately incorporated, such as messing with the Kartana set, as alluded to above.

Regardless, I gave this team a few last minute tests and got pretty comfortable quickly, especially with the help of Eo's reassurance that it was fine, and then it was game time as the Yankee's game approached the eleventh inning lmao.

- click here for importable


[replay]smogtours-gen7ou-320433[/replay]

Going to use the code for replays, but in case people want to watch it in a separate tab, they can find the game here.

At this point, I actually was pretty nervous because I really wanted to prove myself -- not only to others, but also to myself at this point after the whole team preparation situation that I put myself through over the day leading up to the game. I rarely get nervous in team tournaments because I usually am well-prepared and ready for whatever is thrown at me while also composed properly going into games so that things do not (usually) spiral too far out of my control. This game I felt pretty composed for like normal, too, but I would be lying if I said I was not anxious and a bit nervous -- I wanted to play well here and also fuck the Yankees for not winning their game earlier that night instead of blowing a five run lead.

Finally, I stopped johning John as the Yankee game hit a certain point and the game began. I saw the MU and I knew that if I managed to get around his Kartana and Tapu Koko, depending upon the sets, while using my own Kartana aggressively at the right times, then I would be in good shape to win with Mega Tyranitar or a combination of other things later on depending on his sets. Overall, this match-up was very winnable and it even helped me settle down a bit upon seeing things all in front of me.

What proceeded to unravel me once again in the early stages was the fact that I usually led Greninja and clicked U-turn for momentum or Spikes to pressure opposing switches in the following turns, but I was like "oh hey, he probably knows it is a TDK team, so let me try and cheese the Tapu Koko lead for a free kill turn 1 with Scarf Gunk Shot when he thinks I am Specs Ash" -- never try to cheese the humble man, fool I was. I used Gunk Shot into the Landorus-T pivot turn 1 and then I autopiloted for a few turns -- Landorus-T on his Stealth Rocks, Stealth Rocks on his faster HP Ice, and then I stopped. I figured ok, he was likely going to Hidden Power Ice again, but I needed to find a way to get some momentum going, so I went to Magearna and figured I could get a safer double into Tapu Bulu or Kartana on the following turn, but he must have predicted that as he fucking Earthquaked into the Landorus-T to hit the Magearna on turn 4 of a 6-6 game, which is when I knew I had to fucking break out of it if I did not want to get absolutely destroyed in a similar fashion for the remainder of the game.

From here, I let my gut play for a while. I knew that I had to hard-outplay him if I wanted to win given the hole I put myself in and I also knew that he was feeling comfortable predicting around me early so he could put himself in the driver's seat during the later stages, as I outlined in my preparation -- this is the game I needed to avoid as he was not about to choke late game or give up a clear lead once the writing was on the wall. It all started the next turn -- I figured he would HP Ice, but I guess Knock Off was a fine middleground in case I went to Tapu Bulu or Kartana to reveal my sets, so I stayed in and Fleur Cannon'd. Then, on the seemingly obvious follow-up Earthquake, I saved the Magearna and went into my Kartana, taking a mere 35% from the -1 Landorus-T.

I figured he might still think I was Scarf and just some weird Sash Greninja lead, so I hard SD'd figuring he would go to the Toxapex or Tangrowth as I knew he would preserve the Landorus-T, which is what happened as he went to Toxapex. Sure enough, this was all to get him to fodder the Landorus-T the following turn, but hey I'll take it as it felt good clawing back into things those few turns. I then traded in my low health Magearna for momentum back on my side, as I got my Choice Banded Tapu Bulu in on the Tapu Koko, revealing Thunderbolt for the kill. At this point, I knew I had to be spot on as last sequence did not net a ton of progress and I was still slightly behind from the start.

My mind went through a pretty simple thought process at this point -- what is he clicking and what gives me the best position given this likely move? It was not long-term risk vs. reward as much as it was "let's get back in this RN", so I swung and missed with a correct Megahorn prediction into his Tangrowth, which was a good play by him anyway, but the miss was unfortunate for me. I did not take my foot off the gas here, however, as I knew I needed to do something productive, so I figured he would predict a follow-up Megahorn and go to his Toxapex once again, so I went to my Kartana, with the Grassy Terrain still up. This was absolutely perfect because it pressured his Toxapex so much that he did not have any safe move whatsoever thanks to the position I put him in.

At this point, I was quite weak to his Kartana, but I knew he wanted to put me away so that it got clear soon enough and he knew I was not going to let him do that easily, so he tried to make an aggressive read and go to his Kartana, but I made what probably was my best read all tournament and caught him with Z-Sacred Sword for the kill and now the game felt like it was very winnable, once again. He wen to Tapu Koko to regain momentum once again, which was fine by me as Landorus-T was fairly useless and if he was Specs, he would have to predict me properly. Sure enough, he was not Specs and he took out the Landorus-T with Dazzling Gleam after the initial Thunderbolt into it. Here was another simple fodder, much like the Magearna earlier on. The next play, however, was not so easy.

While I was pretty sure he would be the ABR Wise Glasses Tapu Koko, I knew there was still a decent chance that he was Z-Dazzling Gleam as he did not 100% have another disclosed Z move user and that would be his best bet at this point. Z-Dazzling Gleam killed Tapu Bulu very often after Stealth Rocks, so I knew that I had to go to Greninja. The thing is that I could essentially put him away by U-turning on a Toxapex pivot or Gunk Shotting, assuming I connected, into the Tapu Koko in front of me. At this point, it was clear I was Choice Scarf, so it really was a true read your opponent and try to outplay sort of risk vs. reward situation -- I hesitate to call it a true 50/50, but I mean I guess it was in a sense. Regardless, my gut said U-turn and it got me there, so I took the aggressive root once again and this time he was the better player -- he got me, stayed in, and claimed my Tapu Bulu over the next two turns.

However, this line of action did have a bit of a long-term silver limning had the short-term not worked out entirely according to plan -- the Tyranitar follow-up to Tapu Koko after foddering Tapu Bulu would be done under Grassy Terrain, allowing me to mega evolve and set up for at least the next turn in attempt to sweep from there. He went to Tangrowth, perhaps trying to abuse the Grassy Terrain with Giga Drain damage being increased. Sure enough, with the healing it granted me and the insane special bulk of Mega Tyranitar under Sand, I still almost always lived 2 Giga Drains, allowing me to set-up to +3, which let me kill the Toxapex to avoid haze and have a near 100% chance to kill standard AV Tangrowth. So, it came down to if he invested defense and/or had a +Def nature on his AV Tangrowth, which some do run for insurance against Tapu Bulu and some variants of Landorus-T, but it is far from universal on Tangrowth, let alone the standard.

I took the gamble and it didn't pay off -- he had significant defense investment, survived, killed the Mega Tyranitar, and walked away with the victory fairly easily from there. It was a matter of a few % and his spread did the trick there. This game was insanely enjoyable for me -- I had a lot of fun, even in losing, and I became more positive of the fact that I could compete with top players in SM after the mid-game sequence and positioning I managed to pull of with confidence. Yea, it probably is cheesy to try and make something out of a loss, but this one meant a bit more to me and I do not hesitate to say that personally. I do think I had a good shot had I hit Megahorn, but with Terrain, Regenerator, and Giga recovery, he could have worked around it had Tangrowth lived and he saved it while the whole remainder of the game could have gone in another direction had I hit, too, so it is not fair to say I would have won if I hit. This was my favorite game of the tournament I partook in just because of the nature of it -- we both traded big plays and made risks, some paying off and some not, and ultimately the better player won in a game decided by just a few %. very gg


---

As for phase 3, I plan to edit my specific thoughts in this weekend/next week after I get home for break for Thanksgiving, but I wanted to get this post in before everyone goes full SUMO mode, so I will just share the teams for the time being and edit at my own pace in the near future.

- vs Zamrock, replay
- vs BOUFF, replay
- vs Kory2600, replay


---

Creative Sets (some I did not use, but all I have built with and tested to some extent throughout the tournament - got lazy w/ the calcs at the end, but tried to explain most things of relevance. also, putting these in hides for the sake of not stretching the thread too long lol)

Landorus-Therian @ Groundium Z
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Gravity

One of my first ideas going into Snake, specifically for the Dugtrio Stall metagame. I really like Z-Ground Landorus-T in general and this set takes the fullest advantage of it specifically. Sadly, I only found a few teams that could fit this bad boy, but it was pretty solid back then and still has some viability rn. Would not just randomly slap onto teams like other Z Landorus-T sets, however.

w/ Gravity
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Celesteela: 492-582 (123.9 - 146.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 240+ Def Zapdos: 566-668 (147.7 - 174.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 398-470 (119.5 - 141.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Regardless
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 100 Def Mew: 316-373 (78.4 - 92.5%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 48+ Def Ferrothorn: 243-286 (69.2 - 81.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 307-363 (77.9 - 92.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 176+ Def Scizor-Mega: 210-247 (61.2 - 72%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 463-546 (65.8 - 77.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 72 Def Venusaur-Mega: 276-325 (76 - 89.5%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Quagsire: 280-330 (71.2 - 83.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery


--

Magnezone @ Steelium Z
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Thunderbolt
- Flash Cannon
- Hidden Power [Fire]

Not the only one to use this, let alone come up with it, but it is something I discussed a lot w/ ABR and Eo prior to phase 1 and it's quite good -- I like it mores than Z-Thunderbolt more often than not, actually. Imsosorrylol using it in phase 1 vs blunder kinda bummed me out because I had plans to use it and wanted to seem like some metagame innovator goat or w/e, but then my plans to use it changed and nobody else really got to showcase it, so I am glad he used it (him doing so had nothing to do with me, btw, so don't take this as me claiming credit for his team/set as that is 100% not the case).

252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Landorus-Therian: 346-408 (108.4 - 127.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Landorus-Therian: 342-403 (89.7 - 105.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock, 37.5% chance to OHKO
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Garchomp: 330-388 (92.1 - 108.3%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock, 50% chance to OHKO
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Latios: 264-312 (87.7 - 103.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock, 25% chance to OHKO
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Mew: 288-339 (71.4 - 84.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Zygarde: 300-354 (83.7 - 98.8%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Tapu Koko: 364-429 (129.5 - 152.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 40 HP / 0 SpD Mawile-Mega: 300-354 (119.5 - 141%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Lopunny-Mega: 297-349 (109.5 - 128.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ SpA Magnezone Corkscrew Crash (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Hoopa-Unbound: 229-270 (76 - 89.7%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock


--

Magearna @ Assault Vest
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 224 HP / 36 SpA / 248 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 16 Spe
- Fleur Cannon
- Iron Head
- Hidden Power [Ground]
- Volt Switch

Had one team with a couple complimentary lures and another team with Magnezone that AV Magearna happened to fit onto later on and noticed that HP Ground was really cool to hit Heatran that almost always pivot in at some point or another while also catching the periodic Magnezone. HP Fire is better more often than not, but if you have the right team, this is an option that is underexplored and decent. This is pretty much the same Magearna I used throughout the tournament in terms of other stuff besides the Hidden Power type, but just to elaborate a little bit: Speed IVs are to outslow Chansey and Iron Head is for opposing CM Magearna as well as the occasional Paralyzed Clefbale.

36 SpA Magearna Hidden Power Ground vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Magnezone: 248-292 (88.2 - 103.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO after 1 layer of Spikes
36 SpA Magearna Hidden Power Ground vs. 140 HP / 0 SpD Assault Vest Magnezone: 164-196 (51.8 - 62%) -- guaranteed 2HKO, this is a bad spread, but I lack a better one atm
36 SpA Magearna Hidden Power Ground vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Heatran: 212-252 (55 - 65.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
36 SpA Magearna Hidden Power Ground vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Heatran: 212-252 (65.6 - 78%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
36 SpA Magearna Hidden Power Ground vs. 248 HP / 220+ SpD Heatran: 160-192 (41.5 - 49.8%) -- 23.8% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
36 SpA Magearna Hidden Power Ground vs. 112 HP / 0 SpD Camerupt-Mega: 108-128 (34.9 - 41.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock xd


--

Omega Ruby (Sableye) @ Sablenite
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Careful Nature
- Protect
- Toxic
- Knock Off
- Recover

This is the Mega Sableye set I used on my stall against blunder -- Tama also used the team against pm2, but he changed this and multiple other sets to fit his personal preferences/comfort zone with prior stalls, so iirc this lacked Toxic for that game. Anyway, Toxic was really underrated on Mega Sableye and Wisp was in no way, shape, or form a staple move in my eyes. It is still this case, but to a slightly lesser extent now that stall has taken a substantial hit post-Arena Trap ban. You're often going to catch opposing Zapdos, Mew, stall Unaware Clefable, Tapu Lele, Mantine, Alomomola, and Keldeo coming into your Mega Sableye to try and support their team in the long haul or break through in the short haul and none of them like eating a Toxic, especially compared to Will-O-Wisp. I do not think this is really an innovation, but I think it is a move that should be used way more on Mega Sableye, so I figured I would include it in case anyone with a new meta stall boner wants to give it a go.

--

Kartana @ Fightinium Z
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 8 HP / 188 Atk / 60 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Leaf Blade
- Sacred Sword
- Substitute

This set has been used a fair amount in Snake and even OLT as of late and while I'm not personally big on "taking credit" or "claiming" innovations, I was probably the first person or one of the first people to come up with it. I had not seen it at all at least when I thought of it a few weeks before the Snake auction and then added it onto a few teams during the time between the end of the draft and the start of phase 1. Anyway, the set is able to take advantage of free turns to the fullest extent with the help of Substitute. The best showcase of this set in Snake is probably when Tama used it against Ojama here in what was a pretty close game that the Kartana ended up winning. The EVs allow you to eat Toxapex Scald behind substitute always.

0 SpA Toxapex Scald vs. 8 HP / 60 SpD Kartana: 54-64 (20.6 - 24.5%) -- guaranteed 5HKO
0 Atk Landorus-Therian U-turn vs. 8 HP / 0 Def Kartana: 56-66 (21.4 - 25.2%) -- 0.1% chance to 4HKO -- you can run like 8 or 12 more EVs in defense+HP to live this all of the time, but iirc the attack benchmark gave an important 2HKO with Rocks, so I opted not to use this on that specific team, but I have 1-2 teams with the spread with slightly more physical bulk too. just didn't want to go too far in depth when discussing 12 EVs on an offensive Kartana, so yea


--

Pondering Darkness (Heatran) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Fire Blast
- Earth Power
- Flash Cannon
- Hidden Power [Ice] / Hidden Power [Electric] / Flamethrower

Him. ILoveLeague used him in OST at some point down the line and various people tried Specs Tran throughout generation six, but it never has had a prolonged stay in the tier. I do not expect it to have one here, either, but it still is a nice surprise breaker that was cool in the weeks following Dugtrio's ban. I think it's definitely viable and some people should give it a try seeing as the damage output is massive and if you lock into the right move, you're often making major progress, but I totally understand that the vast majority of the appeal RN lies in the Z or general offensive Magma Storm sets, which is for good reason. If you happen to fit Specs Tran onto a team tho, it does quite well against bulky-o. The main drawback is locking into Earth Power against Toxapex being lame as you pretty much have to switch right after and it just gains Regenerator after taking a bit over half. Usually, I pair it with Pursuit and Sand (Band Tar) and just nuke as much as possible early on and it sets me up later on when I do use him.

252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 164+ SpD Toxapex: 176-208 (57.8 - 68.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Hidden Power Ice vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Zygarde: 408-484 (113.9 - 135.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Hidden Power Ice vs. 252 HP / 24 SpD Landorus-Therian: 460-544 (120.4 - 142.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Hidden Power Ice vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Garchomp: 452-532 (126.2 - 148.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Landorus-Therian: 324-382 (101.5 - 119.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 24 SpD Landorus-Therian: 315-372 (82.4 - 97.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable: 294-346 (74.6 - 87.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Flash Cannon vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable: 426-504 (108.1 - 127.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Mew: 270-318 (66.9 - 78.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Flash Cannon vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Mew: 196-232 (48.6 - 57.5%) -- 51.6% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Heatran Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Sableye-Mega: 177-208 (58.4 - 68.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO


--

Pondering Darkness (Heatran) @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 16 HP / 24 Def / 216 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Magma Storm
- Earth Power
- Taunt

This set I have thrown onto maybe a half-dozen teams and I'm pretty sure someone used it in Snake, but don't quote me on that as I know I didn't and I don't remember which teams I threw around got used. Regardless, it is nice to give you more leverage against defensive Landorus-T and a few other Ground types/pokemon that carry Ground moves that you otherwise would feel threatened by the presence of.

0 Atk Landorus-Therian Earthquake vs. 16 HP / 24 Def Shuca Berry Heatran: 276-326 (84.4 - 99.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Zygarde Thousand Arrows vs. 16 HP / 24 Def Shuca Berry Heatran: 252-296 (77 - 90.5%) -- 25% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Heatran Earth Power vs. 16 HP / 0 SpD Shuca Berry Heatran: 188-222 (57.4 - 67.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 Atk Charizard-Mega-X Earthquake vs. 16 HP / 24 Def Shuca Berry Heatran: 204-240 (62.3 - 73.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Pinsir-Mega Earthquake vs. 16 HP / 24 Def Shuca Berry Heatran: 232-274 (70.9 - 83.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock


--

Greninja @ Expert Belt
Ability: Protean
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power [Electric]
- Hydro Pump / Taunt / Toxic Spikes

My initial idea for John was to use this set + HP Ground Z Volcarona of some sort. He used a lot of Mantine and I noticed that getting the pressure off on Toxapex was also appreciated. Within the next week, people started to use HP Electric Volcarona here and there, this idea sort of crumbled, and I ended up building a team last minute instead, so this never saw use, but it is still a decent set and a fine idea. Bolt Beam coverage + support is always something that can be taken advantage of.

--

Landorus-Therian @ Yache Berry
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 248 HP / 88 Atk / 96 Def / 24 SpA / 52 Spe
Impish Nature
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Smack Down
- U-turn

Just a pivot Landorus-T with a bit of a twist. Not a Stealth Rocker, but rather a bit more of an offensive presence and means of pressuring Zapdos, Celesteela, Skarmory, and Rotom-Wash. Also nice when you're a bit Koko vulnerable or just want to eliminate it for something like Mega Pinsir. I do not think this set is anything too remarkable, but if I were to use Smack Down Landorus-T, it'd probably be on a set like this and the few teams I have with it (specifically back from phase 1 meta) all were relatively successful.

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Devil's Path (Greninja) (M) @ Psychium Z
Ability: Protean
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Hydro Pump
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Extrasensory

Ciele used something similar in SPL against TDK and while it is not too extraordinary to throw a specific Z move onto Protean Greninja, this is probably a bit less common than stuff like Z-Hydro Pump, which in general is somewhat common, or even Z-Ice Beam, which ABR popularized during Snake. This is nice to eliminate Toxapex or just generally nuke shit unexpectedly, especially with the help of Psychic Terrain. I used him against -Snow and I rushed using the Z move, which probably cost me the game, but regardless this set is pretty neat and I encourage people to try it and breaking holes + getting Spikes up earlier on in games.

252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 248 HP / 164+ SpD Toxapex: 266-314 (87.7 - 103.6%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Medicham-Mega: 255-300 (97.7 - 114.9%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Keldeo: 482-570 (149.2 - 176.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0- SpD Kyurem-Black: 271-319 (69.3 - 81.5%) -- 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 248 HP / 156+ SpD Venusaur-Mega: 306-360 (84.2 - 99.1%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable: 241-285 (61.1 - 72.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Rotom-Wash in Psychic Terrain: 313-370 (103.3 - 122.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable in Psychic Terrain: 363-427 (92.1 - 108.3%) -- 50% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Protean Greninja Shattered Psyche (160 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Gastrodon in Psychic Terrain: 271-321 (63.6 - 75.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery


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Diancie-Mega @ Diancite
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock / Earth Power
- Moonblast
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Protect

Another idea I had for John, like the Greninja I mentioned above, that just never worked on a team I was comfortable with was this set. Basically, the idea was to pair it with Magnezone and then control the hazards (specifically Spike) game pretty well. Protect Diancie, in my opinion, should still be the standard because getting a mega evolution off is so fucking hard early on against offense and there are so many instances where you lead against Greninja or Landorus-T and they set them up as you Protect and mega, which can be huge. I do not think I would use Mega Diancie without Protect rn, tbh, but I know a lot of people feel differently. Either way, this set specifically is neat as it + Magnezone work together well and take control of the hazard game, but it is quite situational, so do not just throw it onto teams for the sake of trying it if you do not want to build 'around' it.

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Magearna @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 32 HP / 12 Def / 252 SpA / 212 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shift Gear
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast
- Ice Beam

This set is meant primarily for Aurora Veil teams and it is pretty fucking potent under Veil as you often take super effective hits from Landorus-T, Zygarde, Heatran, and then random HP Fire, Earthquake, etc. coverage moves that do not do nearly enough w/ Veil up. The EVs allow you to live a Landorus-T defensive Earthquake always w/out Veil up and you do not sacrifice too much needed speed and the rest is straightforward. Don't get me wrong, Aurora Veil is not great right now, but if I were to use it, the team would definitely have this set as it is pretty potent under the right circumstances.

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Slowking @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 236 HP / 80 SpA / 192 SpD
Calm Nature
- Scald
- Psychic
- Fire Blast
- Dragon Tail

Slowking never really got toyed with in SM unlike ORAS and BW where it has had periodic success and I wanted to try it. Sadly, the metagame is far from favorable for it to succeed in, which might be why it has not truly been experimented with, but if you are going to use it, this is the set, imo. It is able to live things like 2 non-Ash Specs Greninja Dark Pulses to allow pivoting in to check it with Regenerator to happen and it also counters Tapu Lele and a handful of other common special threats. Finally, one of the few redeeming factors of this set besides checking a few common Pokemon is the fact that

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Zygarde @ Choice Specs
Ability: Aura Break
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Core Enforcer / Draco Meteor
- Earth Power
- Sludge Wave
- Hidden Power [Ice]

Fucking PDC told me to try this one out and it has been surprisingly effective (somewhat meme, but also somewhat serious) in tests when it comes to HP Ice'ing the Landorus-T and getting a surprise nuke here and there. It loses a lot of effectiveness once it fires off the first hit, but it also is hard to truly counter, especially when paired with Magnezone for Celesteela, Skarmory, etc., which is what I've done with it when I use it. Kinda want to see someone give this set a more serious, in-depth chance, but I think it would be a stretch to say this is one of the better Zygarde sets out there.

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Tyranitar-Mega @ Tyranitarite
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 248 HP / 24 Atk / 68 Def / 52 SpA / 72 SpD / 44 Spe
Brave Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Ice Beam
- Earthquake
- Pursuit

Pretty sure FV shared his set that was based off of this, but yea basically it's fat Pursuit trapping mixed Mega Tyranitar, meant to be a really bulky presence and offensive utility that can get them up when you can afford to put the mega slot here. The EVs do a million things -- creep is for Magearna, bulk is for a couple different Focus Blasts and some situations vs special fairies on the special side and for Landorus-T mostly on the physical side. Special attack lets you nuke offensive Landorus-T and attack is to assure Pursuit killing against Latios, iirc. It can probably be optimized even a bit more, but this was ideal for my team against Zamrock and it lived Z-Freeze Shock + Landorus-T U-turn, so I'll take what I can get. Cool set w/ amazing utility that I'd advise trying.

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Latios @ Dragonium Z
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Roost
- Psychic
- Defog

Really not sure who came up with this first, but I thought of it around when Dugtrio got banned in order to nuke Tyranitar and never got to use it a ton. I did not mention it at all and yet Tamahome used it on his team against Reyscarface, so clearly he or multiple others came up with it around the same time or beforehand, too, but I do not see it shared, so I figured I would post it here for those who want to try and get a bit of an edge on opposing Tyranitar teams (unless you face a nasty ass AV Tar, then you're fucked -- ABR is gay btw).

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s/o Zebraiken and d0nut for drafting me, the entire Leviathan team for being amazing outside of dice, and Eo Ut Mortus and ABR for helping me improve in this tier/as a player during Snake

Really looking forward to playing with all of OU's new toys in the coming days and continuing my involvement in this tier and on council. This post was insanely fun to write, even if it might seem tedious from the outside, because I got to recount a lot of my experiences during the tournament and specifically playing this game that I am pretty passionate about. Thanks to everyone that made this possible :toast:
 

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