Tournament CAPPL VIII - Commencement Thread

[Da Pizza Man]

1) Cannon Crawlers
2) Weatherman Whismicotts
3) Thatcher Begone Bagons
4) Aogori Aurumoths
5) Lechonkers
6) Storming Saharajas

I refuse to elaborate

 

[Voltage]

Fuck you all, here an independent power rankings (I haven't seen matchups yet, so take this with a grain of salt), also on my phone so forgive the typos and formatting.

6. Aurumoths - who tf is building in any non current gen metas. Team has pilots and I have confidence they'll win a week or two, but innovation rests upon players who aren't necessarily cap mains, and they may suffer against other squads who have the depth + building innovations. If they can find the squads to win matches, they'll do alright.

TIE 5/4 - Saharajas and Crawlers - I have a very tough time deciding qhich of these two are the one I think is "better", so I will lay out why they're both here. The teams both have a number of established CAP players (TNM on Crawlers and shsp on Saharajas), solid builders and then a number of pilots that have some experience in other tours. The reason I feel they tie comes down to building experience and me not having a good read on which team will be able to generate the better squads as a result. It's a cop out, but I don't know right now. I'm obviously not counting anyone put yet, especially these teams, as both team's leadership have proven to be effective, but I'm gonna keep my eye on all of them.

3. Bagons - 10 players means there's no room to hide, everyone on this team will need to show up each week and play hard. Luckily, there are players on here that will do exactly that. Momentum for the begins will be key: if they get into a rut even a little, it'll take a lot of work to dig themselves out of the mental deficit. BUT! This team is definitely quality over quantity, in my eyes, the question will definitely revolve around how their pace is, and whether they can maintain it.

2. Lechonkers - 17 players means two things, you have depth, but you also have to make sure no one goes inactive. There's plenty of noncapmain pilots backed up by competent builders across the old gens. This team will win the ORAS mus most weeks, and I have faith that dex will pull some crazy shit out of his ass wrt lineups and builds. I want to see this team's SM matches as I don't see an immediate SM *star*, but all very competitive and competent players here.

1. Whimsicotts - depth is a little tight, which is the one spot where I think the weatherman may falter, but there's a ton of builder and pilots across all three gens in this team. It's pretty impressive to see the collection of all these players together and I think that should games go their way, the whimsicotts will handily make playoffs, if not finals. I'm happy to be wrong, but I think this will be the one Lasen takes.

Roast my takes, thanks for reading :]

 

[The Number Man]

CAPPL VIII - Commencement Thread
View attachment 433746

cpapl

CAP APPLE

 

[pannu]

who tf is building in any non current gen metas.

 

[Lasen]

?

 

[quziel]

 

[spell]

building in cap isnt a technique one has to learn from a grandmaster or something

 

[velvet]

You don’t have to build, just run book and win a 1v6 game.

 

[Garrett]

View attachment 435113

Is that condensed discord light mode

BW's Honest Power Rankings (which are just me talking shit) in no particular order:

Aurumoths -

I feel for Ainzcrad especially, who has to deal with some of the most annoying people on the site as team members. Pannu and Kate are very creative builders and should be able to stay afloat with the camel making SS new for everyone, but holy shit would I have cancered on site with this as a Discord presence for two months. Playerwise, they're on the sus side: decent pilots that will have to take Pannu's teambuilding as taciturn gospel.

Saharajas -

When I was watching the draft, I was initially in the CAP Discord's VC with a couple people. We were making fun of this team for not picking anyone in around 20 nominations. Then Lily got drafted, with me shortly after that; it was less funny once reality set. Baloor's antics + LBN trying all 3 of the Sinnoh starters in SM is enough to keep the light on in this Discord forever. ORAS is fun. I have no idea how BasedBurner got it in our server.

Crawlers -

I don't have anything here, their team name kinda boogaloo tho. Something about Offler TR and Lurantis is my understanding here.

Bagons -

Spoo bought some good ass players but none of these buys are Irish-British enough to enjoy his edgy 9th grade team name. His Discord will be very professional and dead by week 4.

Lechonkers -

Snaga fr wants that custom :100: I expect this team to do extremely well, depending on the number of times Airfare needs to sub in last second.

Whimsicotts -

Whoever laced rabia's coke pre-auction did a great job intentionally and unintentionally. It allowed Lasen to truly feel the dwindling wealth of his nation on and off the virtual landscape of PS, but also gave them some really great picks out of sheer aggression... and also from people forgetting to bid higher on cbrevan as ausma lost internet and everyone asleep took a 30 second nap. Speaking of 30, let's hope the bo3 buy of crying for 30k was worth it. I mean it was because we got a bingo square, but whether it'll be fruitful for the Whims is another, likely not-in-English story.

 

[spoo]

CAPPL VIII Power Rankings

The Process:

I sent out full player rosters from the Week 1 lineup to each team a few days ago, requesting for the managers to rank the entire pool from top to bottom. The scores were compiled and averaged out to get the final result below; each team's final ranking is the grand total of all of their individual player rankings + their "overall" ranking. Originally I asked for managers to rank their own players within the pool as well, but after receiving the managers' results, it was clear that every team (including mine) had their own biases about this; in the end, I decided to leave out how managers ranked their own players and adjusted the rest of their scores to accommodate.

In addition to ranking the individual players, I also requested that managers rank the teams overall from 1-5 (excluding their own). This was to account for factors like roster flexibility, team environment, building support, managerial strength, and depth of substitute pool that would not be reflected merely in individual player rankings. I considered this factor to be especially important, and made clear that I would give it increased significance in the final point totals. While this is metric is mostly arbitrary, I ended up multiplying the averages for each team's overall ranking by 1.3x; this essentially means that teams who were ranked better overall were rewarded slightly more, while the teams on bottom were punished slightly more.

With that out of the way, let's get into team overviews (in alphabetical order). Special thanks to SHSP for writing the Bagons section.

Aogiri Aurumoths

Overview

Bo3: Kate
SS: astralydia
SS: Fakee
SS: Fc
SM: pannuracotta
SM: anique
ORAS: avarice
ORAS: DugZa

To everyone's surprise, the two NatDex managers drafted a team of NatDex players. And it honestly doesn't look bad. Hoping to make up for the less-than-stellar run Kate's team had in CAP Champions League, she's back with the young pannuracotta as her assman and a roster with no shortage of talent. Still, not everything's smooth sailing for the Aurumoths: the biggest question on most people's minds is if they'll have enough building muscle outside of SM for a winning season.

It makes perfect sense to see Kate in the Bo3 slot this tour; she's arguably the team's strongest pilot, has recent SS experience from CAP CL, and should do fine in SM given experience in similar enough metas like NatDex, especially with support from pannuracotta. Astralydia returns from an absurd 7-1 season last PL, surely hoping to repeat some of that success –– though, with a middling individual ranking, the pervasive attitude seems to be that her previous performance was one of a kind. Fakee and Fc round out SS, with the former having solid past showings in CAP despite low faith from outside this time around, whereas Fc seems in dangerously good shape following an impressive run in WCoP.

Outside of pannuracotta in SM, the Aurumoths' pastgens are one of the biggest unknown elements in the tour. Pannu has tried their hand at building ORAS before to decent success, but whether or not they can support these slots in addition to SM every week is yet to be clear; there's likely much that depends on how self sufficient avarice, DugZa, or other potential ORAS subs will be. With the Auru's combined ORAS just barely avoiding last place, faith in this doesn't seem to be high –– but perhaps that's all the motivation they need to prove the PR wrong.

Cannon Crawlers

Overview

Bo3: Dj Breloominati♬
SS: Piyush25
SS: The Number Man
SS: Atha
SM: neomon
SM: AM
ORAS: Micaiah
ORAS: Blui

Freshman manager Zephyri joins forces with Steelix D's Brambane (along with shadow manager Spitfire, jai hind) to try and draft the whole subcontinent of India, a goal of which they actually made decent progress towards. If this team is lacking in anything, it's certainly not star power: with TNM in SS –– one of only two players, along with crying, to be unanimously ranked first in their pool –– Micaiah in ORAS, also ranked first, and Spitfire in Bo3 with a modest second place ranking in a fierce pool, this team's heavy hitters are coming out swinging in Week 1.

To say the rest of the team doesn't live up to this same high standard would be unfair, but the lineup's topheavy nature is hard to ignore. Piyush in SS drew mixed opinions, ranging from 12th place all the way to 2nd, while expectations of Atha are generally low coming back from his retirement and an even longer tenure away from CAP. Thankfully though, the Cralwers hedged their bets with a strong roster of SS and pastgen substitutes (a whole extra lineup of them, in fact) in case their starting players don't work out as planned.

Pastgens on the Crawlers are good, but not great. While AM and neomon are assumedly (?) building for themselves and can certainly can hold their own in this tier, that might not be enough to escape the slightly below average placements both of them landed at. Micaiah at first place is the exception to this of course, but with Blui at tenth, their ORAS as a whole ultimately leaves something to be desired. Still, all this team needs for a clean victory is for one or two players to perform better than projected –– something that's not difficult at all to imagine happening.

Lechonkers

Overview

Bo3: Mimikyu Stardust
SS: snaga
SS: DetroitLolcat
SS: RaJ.Shoot
SM: velvet
SM: swordstrike
ORAS: Steam Buns
ORAS: tier

Dex and luisin, coming off of a winning Champions League season together, seemingly had just one thing in mind during the draft: Buy Everyone. At 17 players –– two full lineups, and an extra sub just in case –– this team managed to barely squeeze past the two 16-player rosters and claim the title for largest squad in the tour. By that same token, though, this is one of the hardest teams to evaluate. Some of their strongest potential players like luisin and TJ aren't starting for Week 1, effectively driving this team's ranking down, while many of the non-mainers here are hard to make heads or tails of. Whether or not the non-starting players will completely ghost this team, too, is a big question mark for anyone not in their team chat. Still, dex showed how truly impressive his team support can be during CAP CL, and if they ever field their strongest possible lineup, this team could be a force to be reckoned with.

Speaking of non-mainers who are tough to evaluate, Mimikyu Stardust's performance in the Bo3 slot is hard to pin down with any certainty. Despite whatever strengths as a pilot he might have, he finds himself in a sharkpit of a player pool with questionable pastgen support, and his 6th place ranking reflects exactly that. SPL winner snaga is yet another unknown, even just judging by his PR rankings where some placed him at third overall while others put him dead last. DetroitLolcat and RaJ are much more known factors –– the former is a longtime CAP main, even recently finding some respectable success in OU, while the latter is a familiar dex pick-up who many have high expectations for.

Despite this roster's massive size, its pastgens looks among the weakest in the field. Aside from the Lechonkers themselves, no one really seems to know where they'll be getting their 3 SM teams every week, or if they'll even be any good. Steam Buns is the predicted ORAS builder, but if the recommendation in his signup has any truth to it –– "don't drop more than 3k" –– the Lechonkers might face difficulty with those slots, too. Then again, dex somehow managed for his BW slot to not go 0-x in CAP CL even though he drafted arguably even less support than this, so the Lechonkers' fates are far from sealed.

Storming Saharajas

Overview

Bo3: Lily
SS: clean
SS: zioziotrip
SS: Baloor
SM: SHSP
SM: LBN
ORAS: BasedWhat?
ORAS: Kaede

CAPPL VII's champion manager Wulfanator returns to the fray, this time backed by our most recent Topic Leader, SHSP –– despite some blind spots between themselves in ORAS, the strength of this managerial duo should be more than enough for a championship run. Their lineup is one of the most well-rounded in the tour; SHSP is the standout player on the team, ranked at second place in SM, while the rest of the squad forms a lineup that might look lacking in star power on first glance but is nonetheless primed to carry their team to the finish line.

A lot of this team's success revolves around whether or not their SS core can stand up to the competition; with the Saharajas taking risks on two out of their three SS pilots new to CAP (The LOOR will go x-0), they're banking hard on that risk paying off in the long run. Still, given the skills these players have shown off in OU, it's not hard to imagine them translating their success over to CAP, especially with a decent pool of substitutes to reach into should things go south. Lily fills the Bo3 slot as expected, and despite her middle-of-the-pack PR ranking, the pieces might be perfectly lined up for her this tournament –– strong building support in all three gens, as well what's likely a highly active and fun team environment, means she could easily surpass expectations this CAPPL.

The Saharaja's pastgen selection is much safer by comparison, with an above-average combined lineup headed by HO... er, SM afficianado SHSP. If having the fewest letters in your name gives you an advantage over the pool, then the Saharajas should have no trouble holding down SM; ORAS on the other hand looks quite self sufficient, with BasedWhat hoping to replicate the 5-1 success he found last CAPPL, and Kaede, who's no stranger to ORAS CAP but has yet to prove themselves on a bigger stage.

Thatcher Begone Bagons

Overview

Bo3: jonfilch
SS: D2TheW
SS: Potatochan
SS: Revenge Killer
SM: Jordy
SM: Clementine
ORAS: spoo
ORAS: gorex

Any discussion of the Bagons has to start with their managerial duo of Spoo and D2theW. Both have shown prowess both in game, with D2 having several SS tournament wins under his belt and Spoo performing quite well both in that tier and in ORAS, as well as in management positions before. The two have put together a strong, albeit smaller draft, and with good support from the pair in charge are well set up to make a deep run into the playoffs of CAPPL.

The SS slots are spearheaded by highly ranked D2, with some questions remaining in the slots below them. Both Potatochan and Revenge Killer are solid players, but their relatively low ranking in the pool points both to the overall strength of the SS slots in the tournament and their apparent unfamiliarity with the metagame. With solid support, this could be significantly less of an issue, but the question of how players adapt to the new territory is always there. D2 himself ranks incredibly highly at second overall, but time will tell if his play, building, and internet connection live up to the expectation.

The rest of the lineup of the Bagons appears similarly strong, but with some lingering questions. Bo3er Jonfilch has had incredible results, but will likely rely on the support around them to succeed at their peak. The old gen slots are anchored by manager Spoo and SM legend Jordy, both of whom should put up strong performances in difficult to fill slots. The biggest question about the Bagons is their depth: with only 10 players, their ability to sub in and out will be quite limited, and their margin of error is slimmer than most other teams in the pool. In this way, the Bagons are high risk, higher reward: if their strategy pans out, they'll have a great chance of celebrating a championship, but if it fails, their season may be gone instead.

Weathermen Whimsicotts

Overview

Bo3: crying
SS: Rabia
SS: Darek
SS: Rage.Spam.Quit.
SM: JayHeaven
SM: iKiQ
ORAS: quziel
ORAS: cbrevan

Dodging everyone's expectations to buy himself in the draft, Lasen and Rabia instead decided to invest the 12.5k into building the ultimate CAP mainer lineup –– with none other than 30k crying confidently helming the Bo3 slot. Aside from iKiQ who has little to no CAP experience, and crying, a mainstay in CAP team tours but still far from a mainer herself, the Whims decided to bet hard on active and proven players in the CAP community for what shaped up to be one of the most dangerous teams in the running.

As long as Rabia can avoid a rerun of his washed Champions League season and live up to expectations, the Whim's SS core is easily the hardest to take down in the field; Rabia and Rage.Spam.Quit. are both comfortably top 5 in the pool, while Darek is a strong contender himself, even given the tougher competition this tour compared to his previous runs. Quziel's building support is just the icing on the cake here –– with the Whims somehow managing to steal him for just 10.5k, the cheapest he's gone in years (maybe ever?), crying and Rabia will have no shortage of SS teams (read: Chromera) at their fingertips every week.

Even considering the strength of their SS core, the Whims had to make relatively few sacrifices to shore up their pastgens. While Heaven Jay might be a tad out of practice in SM, his ranking reflects the fact that he's still considered top-notch and can be expected to put up a strong record. iKiQ on the other hand is much more unknown in CAP, but with Lasen's confidence and building support behind him, he'll surely hold his own. Quziel and cbrevan head up the last of the fairygens, and although quz is a shoo-in for a positive season, the latter's success isn't as certain this tour.

Individual & Overall Rankings:

Bo3

SS

SM

ORAS

Overall

Grand Totals

 

[Baloor]

You don’t have to build, just run book and win a 1v6 game.

 

[Rabia]

someone ranked baloor as high as 6? have you SEEN this guy play????

 

[Rabia]

then again you guys ranked me, the make-a-wish participant, quite highly, so maybe these PRs are fine

 

[Garrett]

People say the camel is good but I just saw it drop to a +6 Cawm from full in BIG CHAD LOOR’s game ? What’s the deal with that guys???

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Week 1 Bingo Update:

 

[velvet]

I’m probably dumb af but what do the average rank numbers mean (Lower numbers=good?)

 

[spoo]

I’m probably dumb af but what do the average rank numbers mean (Lower numbers=good?)

Yeah this is correct. It's just the average of all of the manager's rankings; if Player X's rankings were 10, 11, 9, 14, and 8, they would be ranked 10.4th in the pool on average. So lower numbers = better

 

[Voltage]

dex and I did a recap of a couple week 1 matches, come and watch / listen to it! It's long so enjoy it :]

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Week 2 Bingo Update

This is more just me forgetting to mark Serene Grace camel last week. We didn't really hit any actual spots this week (We did have an ORAS Birdspam team but it wasn't by the Whims unfortunately).

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Week 3 Update:

The amount of jank I saw last week pretty much forced me to mark down "Chinese Sets", even if none were technically used.

 

[SHSP]

Week 3 Update:

View attachment 442585
The amount of jank I saw last week pretty much forced me to mark down "Chinese Sets", even if none were technically used.

Jho robbed us of Lurantis, unbelievable

 

[dex]

Week 3 Update:

View attachment 442585
The amount of jank I saw last week pretty much forced me to mark down "Chinese Sets", even if none were technically used.

Yeh I may have stolen Charge Beam Zapdos from a particular site.

 

[Jho]

Jho robbed us of Lurantis, unbelievable

There are still more weeks do not fret

 

[Brambane]

Week 3 Update:

View attachment 442585
The amount of jank I saw last week pretty much forced me to mark down "Chinese Sets", even if none were technically used.

we have seen Chansey this tour, so NFE has been loaded (i.e https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7cap-1623711167)
unless we mean NFE CAP lol

 

[Da Pizza Man]

we have seen Chansey this tour, so NFE has been loaded (i.e https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7cap-1623711167)
unless we mean NFE CAP lol

Chansey is the one NFE that I'm not going to count.