Interview with Bad Ass

Interview by bland. Flavor by Lady Salamence. Art by elcheeso.

As I jump out of the plane, I question what exactly I was doing with my life. I pull the parachute cord, sending me floating slowly down through the air of Florida. As I lead my parachute to land me where the big red X was, I notice a limousine pull up, and my interviewee steps out. I make a mental note as I land to chew out my employer for being so short-sighted.

Welcome Bad Ass, congrats on making it to the finals of the Grand Slam.

Thanks a bunch!

Your run of Grand Slam was pretty good. Winning Ubers Open was a tremendous feat, thoughts?

Yeah, I got eliminated from all of the other Opens, so I knew that I had to ball out in Ubers if I wanted to have a chance at the playoffs. I had a lot of help from my friends Dice and HSA, too; a ton of testing and teambuilding. I had never played BW Ubers before I entered Grand Slam, actually.

Really? That makes it even more impressive.

Yeah, but Dice and HSA are mainly Ubers players so their expertise was really nice in helping me learn the tiers, although I'm sure I annoyed them with my seemingly stupid questions...

I know that feeling; I've been pestering blarajan for weeks to get back into Little Cup.

We both laugh a bit, and then cringe as we remember late-night conversations that we wish never happened.

How have you adapted to playing other unfavorable tiers?

Well to be honest, I really haven't adapted to LC. I don't know anyone that mains Little Cup and it's not like I can transfer my skill from other tiers as much because of all of the differences. I probably think that it is clearly the weakest of my Grand Slam tiers, so my strategy there is to try and steal a win.

Ah, ok. What about the other tiers?

RU is probably my favorite. It has a great level of diversity and nothing is really obscenely broken as seen by august's bird team when he played against me. A very good tier overall.

A strange look passes over Bad Ass' face—It might have been a look of resignation, as if he didn't like something but had to deal with it anyway.

UU has been quite boring for me lately, I guess I'm known as a UU player, but I really don't play it except for official tours—most of the teams are just pretty stale.

Interesting.

And I think that the tier made a mistake with not banning Victini. I think NU is kind of the same as UU except more offensive. It would be quite good if Scolipede and Jynx were banned—right now its just so easy to make a quick offensive team based on Scolipede. The fact that there are no spinners doesn't help. But as far as playing them, it's just Pokémon; you can really apply your skills to most any tier if you are genuinely good at the game.

I start asking another question, but Bad Ass clearly had more to say about the subject, so I let him continue.

The hard part of this tournament is, in my opinion, team building.

Really?

Yeah, prediction is pretty similar across all tiers. Risk and reward, putting yourself in a solid position, et cetra. I think that the best players of their respective tiers (FLCL, august, et cetra) are good because they are good at Pokémon in general and have extensive metagame knowledge. My strategy is to build solid teams—sure, probably not as good as the best at the tier would build—and play very well.

Well, that has certainly payed off then, hasn't it?

Haha yeah, certainly helps that I've had some tier specialists helping me (Dice, HSA, Nails, and Soulgazer). But I still mostly build my own stuff!

That's great! Has there been anyone who you've dreaded facing at any point through the Grand slam?

Well to be honest my two opponents so far are people I dreaded facing.

august and Bloo?

I shared teams and stuff with august and Bloo during the preliminaries but I didn't feel particularly nervous like I couldn't beat them. I looked forward to a solid series and that's what I got. The one guy I really do fear though is Heist. I don't think I've ever beaten him in anything of importance; he's just straight-up good, unpredictable, and he knows me well. Very scary dude.

Ah, don't worry, I'm sure you have your fans and I hope you still have your support group!

Yep, my friends are with me and I hope I can just get through this last set and finally get the long awaited trophy.

You certainly deserve it!

Thanks, appreciate it!

Are there any of the Slam tiers that got you particularly interested in and may actually pick up? Maybe get a head start and look into once they roll around into next gen?

Yeah, the BW tiers are pretty dead, honestly, so probably not them. But I do think that I'd like to pick up XY RU as soon as that exists. The playerbase is quite good it reminds me a lot of the GOAT tier, DPP UU.

I really did want to get into DPP UU myself, maybe you can show me a few things haha. We do have one last-minute question—do you have your own battle music when playing the games?

Haha I do actually! I'll listen to some really intense music usually. I actually have a fight playlist.

Give us a taste of what songs you like to listen to when you're battling?

Much to my disaappointment, Bad Ass starts listing off stuff he listens to. I was hoping he'd sing his songs, but maybe I'm hoping for too much...

It contains such paragons of intensity as Converge, Pig Destroyer, Wu Tang Clan, Refused, and Public Image, LTD.

Truly a man of great taste, and a great finalist. Thanks for your time, Bad Ass!

As I collect my notes and prepare to leave, Bad Ass starts playing a song that can be listened to here, as he walks into his limousine and waves goodbye. The song lingers in my ears as I walk to the closest town to pick up a ride to the United Kingdom.