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Tournament NUSD II Team Dump Thread
- Thread starter Danny
- Start date
Heyo,
This NU Snake was so much fun to me that I decided that i'd dump the teams that I used except 1. I won't be dumping the week 1 team cuz arco built it. But the rest of them are ones I built myself and I rly enjoyed doing so, so here I am.
[WEEK 2]
I used this vs Danny cuz I was expecting some hard offense that had few to no switch-ins to copper. I also brought sash lazzle cuz at the time i was very afraid i'd lose to stuff like stoise that almost always had a good matchup against the team I was using esp in league. Xatu + Copper + Muds was such an insane core in zonger meta, and the rest of the team is classic, nothing much to add.
[WEEK 3]
Here is where I started to get out of the boring stuff again and started to be a little more confident in my building. I used ninjask + espeon a lot during zong meta, but this has to be my favorite version of it. Pads tsar is so fucking good, ninjask + espy was such a nasty combo in zong meta since ninjask usually attracted zong and espy kinda walls zong + forces it out and has little switch-ins. It was truly amazing, even tho i lost to elias to a timely crit which was kinda unfortunate. I think this team could still work now, even tho it's a little shaky against dragons that weren't popular at all at the time.
[WEEK 4]
Last week of zonger meta, Scyther + Exploud was a core I wanted to use for the longest time (wasn't hoping for anything and still got disappointed about exploud but that's w/e the team is cool I swear). It had so many advantages on paper during zong meta, the rest of the team was pretty classic tho nothing much to add.
[WEEK 5]
Probably my favorite team, rp diancie is just soo good now that zonger is gone. I was sure that going against meri's team week 5 i wanted to use it and that it'd have a great mu. Apparently i got another call wrong cuz mence had gunfisk + plume but thanks to a timely gunfisk sacrifice diancie just straight up won. Scarf togedemaru is rly good, as long as you don't consider it as a steel but just as a flinching machine, cuz I s2g this mon is jirachi and togekiss' love son but more on that later. This team originally had specs mowtom when I first built it, but figured my stoise + decid mu was terrible so went for Foul Play yache instead which is a pretty good surprise set imo. This team also has a second version (here), and with hindsight this might be better but i wanted to use rp diancie so badly that I went with the other
hot take but actually not so hot, specs sylv is by a strong margin the strongest breaker in the tier. I didn't use it during the first 5 weeks and decided to give it a shot. Vaporeon + Sylveon makes for a great pair, and since I was kinda scared of salazzle since my vaporeon had to check g-vally + goodra on its own (which it managed to do just fine in most games) I added a spd aero for safety matters against lazzle + exploud and another help against goodra which was pretty good. Classic u-turn core of toge + tsar (you start to see a pu main pattern here) and drapion is just a mon that fit well + helped against the myriad of ndd's that were around. A rly cool team tbh, especially when togedemaru flinches g-vallies to death (i'm not even sorry about that one esm n_n).
[WEEK 7]
Won't develop much on this one, I just picked a team that had a good way of dealing with kush's special escav and it turned out i lost to inteleon b4 getting a chance to breathe so yeah.
[SEMIS]
This team is also rly fun and i'm sad I had to run against the 1 stall that was used in the tour and that actually owns it rly bad. Gourgeist is a great pokemon, its speedtier is nasty outspeeding g-vally is amazing for it + it's a great check thanks to the combination of great defense + synthesis + power whip that ohkos. I recommand using it more. I had specs sylveon + scarf helio (blastoise says hello again cuz otherwise don't even use this thing it's dogshit) and iron press muddy for safety matters against lax, although I would've probably prefered having tox on said mu. Rock slide steel-vally with that attack investment ensures an ohko on tflame after some minimal chip as well as a 2hko on unviable mantine.
Just wanted to add up a quick thanks to Expulso for drafting me, you're an amazing manager and your investment was unmatched, you were covering every single tier perfectly (except dpp :p) and it was super inspiring to watch a manager do that much work. I'm sorry that I didn't do as well as I wanted to, but I'm rly happy that you gave me a chance and hope I didn't disappoint :D. Oh also thank you for giving arco a shot, hopefully now he'll stop flying under the radar cuz he is truly amazing, both in the builder and ingame. This tour was so fun and hope to see y'all again in nupl.
zs out
This NU Snake was so much fun to me that I decided that i'd dump the teams that I used except 1. I won't be dumping the week 1 team cuz arco built it. But the rest of them are ones I built myself and I rly enjoyed doing so, so here I am.
[WEEK 2]
I used this vs Danny cuz I was expecting some hard offense that had few to no switch-ins to copper. I also brought sash lazzle cuz at the time i was very afraid i'd lose to stuff like stoise that almost always had a good matchup against the team I was using esp in league. Xatu + Copper + Muds was such an insane core in zonger meta, and the rest of the team is classic, nothing much to add.
[WEEK 3]
Here is where I started to get out of the boring stuff again and started to be a little more confident in my building. I used ninjask + espeon a lot during zong meta, but this has to be my favorite version of it. Pads tsar is so fucking good, ninjask + espy was such a nasty combo in zong meta since ninjask usually attracted zong and espy kinda walls zong + forces it out and has little switch-ins. It was truly amazing, even tho i lost to elias to a timely crit which was kinda unfortunate. I think this team could still work now, even tho it's a little shaky against dragons that weren't popular at all at the time.
[WEEK 4]
Last week of zonger meta, Scyther + Exploud was a core I wanted to use for the longest time (wasn't hoping for anything and still got disappointed about exploud but that's w/e the team is cool I swear). It had so many advantages on paper during zong meta, the rest of the team was pretty classic tho nothing much to add.
[WEEK 5]
Probably my favorite team, rp diancie is just soo good now that zonger is gone. I was sure that going against meri's team week 5 i wanted to use it and that it'd have a great mu. Apparently i got another call wrong cuz mence had gunfisk + plume but thanks to a timely gunfisk sacrifice diancie just straight up won. Scarf togedemaru is rly good, as long as you don't consider it as a steel but just as a flinching machine, cuz I s2g this mon is jirachi and togekiss' love son but more on that later. This team originally had specs mowtom when I first built it, but figured my stoise + decid mu was terrible so went for Foul Play yache instead which is a pretty good surprise set imo. This team also has a second version (here), and with hindsight this might be better but i wanted to use rp diancie so badly that I went with the other
hot take but actually not so hot, specs sylv is by a strong margin the strongest breaker in the tier. I didn't use it during the first 5 weeks and decided to give it a shot. Vaporeon + Sylveon makes for a great pair, and since I was kinda scared of salazzle since my vaporeon had to check g-vally + goodra on its own (which it managed to do just fine in most games) I added a spd aero for safety matters against lazzle + exploud and another help against goodra which was pretty good. Classic u-turn core of toge + tsar (you start to see a pu main pattern here) and drapion is just a mon that fit well + helped against the myriad of ndd's that were around. A rly cool team tbh, especially when togedemaru flinches g-vallies to death (i'm not even sorry about that one esm n_n).
[WEEK 7]
Won't develop much on this one, I just picked a team that had a good way of dealing with kush's special escav and it turned out i lost to inteleon b4 getting a chance to breathe so yeah.
[SEMIS]
This team is also rly fun and i'm sad I had to run against the 1 stall that was used in the tour and that actually owns it rly bad. Gourgeist is a great pokemon, its speedtier is nasty outspeeding g-vally is amazing for it + it's a great check thanks to the combination of great defense + synthesis + power whip that ohkos. I recommand using it more. I had specs sylveon + scarf helio (blastoise says hello again cuz otherwise don't even use this thing it's dogshit) and iron press muddy for safety matters against lax, although I would've probably prefered having tox on said mu. Rock slide steel-vally with that attack investment ensures an ohko on tflame after some minimal chip as well as a 2hko on unviable mantine.
Just wanted to add up a quick thanks to Expulso for drafting me, you're an amazing manager and your investment was unmatched, you were covering every single tier perfectly (except dpp :p) and it was super inspiring to watch a manager do that much work. I'm sorry that I didn't do as well as I wanted to, but I'm rly happy that you gave me a chance and hope I didn't disappoint :D. Oh also thank you for giving arco a shot, hopefully now he'll stop flying under the radar cuz he is truly amazing, both in the builder and ingame. This tour was so fun and hope to see y'all again in nupl.
zs out
Despite having a solid 7-2 record, I had never really played BWNU or BW in general prior to this tournament. Players familiar with the tier should be able to see my teams progressively become better as the weeks go on. I think my run really highlighted how valuable prepping for a specific opponent is, since I had a great MU going into almost every week.
Insult was the top threat going into this tournament but his scout showed reliance on passive physical walls so I wanted to use Scarf Braviary to force them in and use strong Special breakers like Gardevoir and Missy to win. Skuntank is a great anti bullshit mon that you'll see me bring almost every week.
AtomicLlamas scout didn't have anything, so I just used some stuff I had been meaning to try out. Exeggutor seemed very underrated in the meta as it was a Grass type in the BWNU tier meaning it is very good! Also Sleep moves are allowed for some reason (huge meme btw can we fix that) and RestTalk Eggy beats stuff like Alo. Unfortunately I got Crunch defense-dropped and missed Sleep Powder, missed 2 Zard speed ties, missed a Wisp, lost half my health on Regirock to a Zard just through Air Slash flinches and such. Unfortunate game but I knew what I brought was still solid.
CBAJ's Scout was super weak into the "a bunch of bullshit that loses to Dark-types but can overwhelm them" archetype, and his teams were more weak to Ice than most, even though there's like 2 Ice resist's in the tier. I had LO HP Ground and Tbolt Haunter to decommission Skuntank and Mandibuzz so Duosion could win for free (unban stag :P) and Scarf FrostTom to clean up his team. I also had Timid Grass Knot Seismitoad but CBAJ brought Rindo berry so it didn't really make Rotom Volt as free as I wanted. FrostTom still cooked tho that mon is broken.
Nalorium all had teams cooked by Sawsbuck so I just made a standard Spikes balance with it. He revealed his Primeape wasn't Scarf so it alleviated a ton of pressure right off the bat. Team was hella weak to Eelektross but he revealed it was Specs too so it made pivoting around it easier.
NHelio's loved to use FrostTom and Zard so I wanted to use Camerupt (super dope anti-meta mon btw) with Scarf Rock Blast Garb and HP Rock Serperior. His defensive cores were typically Mandibuzz / Toad / Mola or something like that so HP Grass FanTom did really well to break that backbone too. Rotom with Healing Wish support kinda won at preview anyway but the prep really paid off for this game.
ik Lily only brought cheese but I thought Taunt Mandi would be enough to shut it down. It totally wasn't but I haxed the absolute fuck out of them so we take those. Hard to feel bad when its vs cheese but they should have won this week lol. Rock Slide on Pilo totally worked out tho shoutouts Danny for the idea.
vs CBAJ again and you know I'm gonna exploit that Ice weakness again. Sub 3 atks Lapras looked very heat and I've never seen it before. Unfortunately he had Jolly Golurk bc I'm literally EV'd for max speed Adamant. Also I got crit like 5 times this game and they all mattered and I should have lost but he also choked the end game super hard and Primeape ended up cleaning half his team with Scarf CC even though he had 3 forms of priority left. We take those ig.
Finals vs Lily again and I made sure to super anti-cheese this time. I actually made this team for Links to use vs Lily for last week but he didn't bring it and lost (L). Explosion Garb, Taunt Skuntank, Sub Zard, and Heal Bell support. The team did extremely well and I would have definitely won if I didn't get crit right at the end. Fun game regardless and I could have played in a way to avoid the crit I guess but still sucks bc it was tournament finals.
Insult was the top threat going into this tournament but his scout showed reliance on passive physical walls so I wanted to use Scarf Braviary to force them in and use strong Special breakers like Gardevoir and Missy to win. Skuntank is a great anti bullshit mon that you'll see me bring almost every week.
AtomicLlamas scout didn't have anything, so I just used some stuff I had been meaning to try out. Exeggutor seemed very underrated in the meta as it was a Grass type in the BWNU tier meaning it is very good! Also Sleep moves are allowed for some reason (huge meme btw can we fix that) and RestTalk Eggy beats stuff like Alo. Unfortunately I got Crunch defense-dropped and missed Sleep Powder, missed 2 Zard speed ties, missed a Wisp, lost half my health on Regirock to a Zard just through Air Slash flinches and such. Unfortunate game but I knew what I brought was still solid.
CBAJ's Scout was super weak into the "a bunch of bullshit that loses to Dark-types but can overwhelm them" archetype, and his teams were more weak to Ice than most, even though there's like 2 Ice resist's in the tier. I had LO HP Ground and Tbolt Haunter to decommission Skuntank and Mandibuzz so Duosion could win for free (unban stag :P) and Scarf FrostTom to clean up his team. I also had Timid Grass Knot Seismitoad but CBAJ brought Rindo berry so it didn't really make Rotom Volt as free as I wanted. FrostTom still cooked tho that mon is broken.
Nalorium all had teams cooked by Sawsbuck so I just made a standard Spikes balance with it. He revealed his Primeape wasn't Scarf so it alleviated a ton of pressure right off the bat. Team was hella weak to Eelektross but he revealed it was Specs too so it made pivoting around it easier.
NHelio's loved to use FrostTom and Zard so I wanted to use Camerupt (super dope anti-meta mon btw) with Scarf Rock Blast Garb and HP Rock Serperior. His defensive cores were typically Mandibuzz / Toad / Mola or something like that so HP Grass FanTom did really well to break that backbone too. Rotom with Healing Wish support kinda won at preview anyway but the prep really paid off for this game.
ik Lily only brought cheese but I thought Taunt Mandi would be enough to shut it down. It totally wasn't but I haxed the absolute fuck out of them so we take those. Hard to feel bad when its vs cheese but they should have won this week lol. Rock Slide on Pilo totally worked out tho shoutouts Danny for the idea.
vs CBAJ again and you know I'm gonna exploit that Ice weakness again. Sub 3 atks Lapras looked very heat and I've never seen it before. Unfortunately he had Jolly Golurk bc I'm literally EV'd for max speed Adamant. Also I got crit like 5 times this game and they all mattered and I should have lost but he also choked the end game super hard and Primeape ended up cleaning half his team with Scarf CC even though he had 3 forms of priority left. We take those ig.
Finals vs Lily again and I made sure to super anti-cheese this time. I actually made this team for Links to use vs Lily for last week but he didn't bring it and lost (L). Explosion Garb, Taunt Skuntank, Sub Zard, and Heal Bell support. The team did extremely well and I would have definitely won if I didn't get crit right at the end. Fun game regardless and I could have played in a way to avoid the crit I guess but still sucks bc it was tournament finals.
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Ok, here's my ORAS dump from this tour. Not my best showing building-wise, borrowed from Shaneghoul twice and Etern built a few times as well.
Week 2 vs robjr
Week 3 vs Abejas
Week 4 vs gorex
Week 5 vs Luck O' the Irish
Week 6 vs Drud
Week 7 vs The Goomy
Semi-Finals vs gorex
Finals vs The Goomy
Wish I was a little more motivated to build and had more consistent testing outlets, but overall I had fun this tour. Thanks to Aawin and etern for drafting me and giving me the chance to play. Thank you to quziel poh and Togkey for putting up with my antics in test games.
I hope more people get into building/playing this tier! Theres a ton of roomtours to participate in and if you see me on PS!, I'm always down for an ORAS game.
Week 2 vs robjr
I had some cool ideas this week that didn't come to fruition. For example, this Tropius team. Ended up going with a classic Shaneghoul team. It's a little dated and can struggle with Lanturn, which is evident in the first 4 turns of so of the game. The only real update I made was adding Protect to Camerupt, which ending up being key in the game. I'm a big fan of throwing protect onto Pokemon with a lackluster 4th slot, bonus points if they hold Leftovers, same with having Toxic Spikes or Choice item Trick. This team composition fits my playstyle best in ORAS, had a lot of answers to threats albeit passive answers, Rotom and Tauros can clean weakened or ill-prepared teams by themselves with good play.
Week 3 vs Abejas
I was struggling to build again this week, but the ideas were better. I really wanted to use CB Skuntank + Haunter + Prinplup, but we ended up going with Pelipper. Eternally built this squad, felt comfy in tests, and it ended up being good enough to win. In hindsight I'd have played the Steelix a little differently vs Chatot to keep it healthy for Kabutops Stone Edge deterrence, regardless CB Skunk was a good call and faired well.
Week 4 vs gorex
This is the first team I built and brought, didn't get a whole lot of help until the day before, but thats team tours sometimes. The Lilligant set is kinda cool, I like non-qd variants quite a bit. while this one has qd, idt the intent was to quiver very often, its more to lure vileplumes for hp fire chip and switch into random attacks and synth. I think gorex just prepped better this week, he lost to Pelipper the previous three weeks so in hindsight theres really no way I should have brought a Water/Flying type again, but for some reason I was set on making him prove it. Lanturn was good support for Peli but it makes the team awkward and gets heavily punished by comps that can hit boths waters hard. Kind of on the backfoot given matchup but I did what I could after making a few mistakes in the early game. This team definitely feels clunky and is probably better at vibe checking poorly built offenses.
Week 5 vs Luck O' the Irish
Etern built for me this week, I wasnt really feeling it and kinda dropped it on him with like 36 hours notice. Camerupt feels out of place here. There's not really enough rapid spin in the meta to justify mismagius for spin imo, it might be better to go with mesprit as the rocker and try to fit a better pivot into that slot. You can tell the team isn't my style by how quickly I clicked during the early game, I made some really crucial mistakes that I couldn't come back from even with best play. Team comfort/quality really matters in this gen, especially in bo1 where you need to make reads from team preview.
Week 6 vs Drud
Another week where I asked for help on like Monday and recieved little if any. My mental wasn't right for serious play so I brought a joke team, should be noted I also thought we were into playoffs guaranteed based on team chat speculation. 2 things really pissed me off this week. The first was that Drud was kinda buns to schedule with, felt like I was talking to a wall when I was at peak motivation for the tour, very disheartening. This could have been an activity win if I was a scumbag and fished. The second thing that pissed me off is that my manager decided to gloat in public discords for the better part of two days about how my match was practically in the books as a W and was almost certainly an activity win for kid kiyo. I guess this is normal in tour scenes? I was bothered by it but no one else spoke out. Seems like classic unsportsmanlike conduct to me, but so is does intentionally being lax with contacting and implicitly agreeing to deadgame if your set doesnt matter. I probably had a better shot at this than it looked on paper, could have played Victreebel and Shedinja less aggressively. The classic team composition with Custap Aggron would have been better than Lix here too.
Week 7 vs The Goomy
Brought another shaneghoul team because its not worth trying to prep for goomy outside of having answers to the webs team and bad stall. Matchup wasn't super rough but I got the important turns right which made it easy.
Semi-Finals vs gorex
Another bad prep week for me/us. At this point Quziel was in the chat and poh was helping out more which was nice, some other guys too but I'm too lazy to check exactly who. This was a five minute team that looked good on paper and won a test game. I'll be honest in that I hardly looked at the gorex scout when building and it kinda shows. I defaulted to tendencies again and he exploited really well with team choice. Should probably have been an easy win for him but I put up resistance and had the luck on my side at the end.
Finals vs The Goomy
I probably didn't deserve to win this game after Counter bopped chan, this is a fun team tho and works well vs most non cheese builds. Probably my favorite comp I built myself this tour outside of some meme builds.
Wish I was a little more motivated to build and had more consistent testing outlets, but overall I had fun this tour. Thanks to Aawin and etern for drafting me and giving me the chance to play. Thank you to quziel poh and Togkey for putting up with my antics in test games.
I hope more people get into building/playing this tier! Theres a ton of roomtours to participate in and if you see me on PS!, I'm always down for an ORAS game.
Week 1 vs zS
Body Slam Snorlax + Sirfetch'd is cool, firing off body slams early game to paralyze stuff for Sirfetch'd was this team's strategy. Lanturn is a unique pick; it provides heal bell, volt immunity, and talonflame check in one slot - something nothing else can do and this team needed.
Week 2 vs EviGaro
Specs Sylveon Balance - a recycled team that i made for confide in SCL. I didn't have much knowledge of Evigaro so i reverted to a comfortable balance team. It was a close game that ended on a 50/50, I decided to switch to catch his vikavolt but he multi-attacked instead.
Week 4 vs Meri Berry
a team i built around a cool diancie set, unfortunately, it didn't quite work out. The diancie ev spread is able to live a multi-attack from silvally-ground. I misplayed pretty badly this game by not going to Silvally-ground and SD'ing on his bronzong, it was obviously heat proof after seeing the burn damage.
Week 5 vs atomicllamas
I wanted to use grassy terrain because it had a good matchup vs hail, hitmonlee basically 6-0'd hail on its own. it looked like a fun team and i wanted to save my other teams for later in the tour or give them to teammates.
Week 6 vs freezai
I wanted to use an av copperajah cuz it's the OG tank, it's become more of a menace ever since bronzong left. this week is when i started using max spdef vaporeon for goodra. rock slide sandslash-a got me this game, good lure from freezai.
week 7 vs OnArceus
I wanted to use a quagsire vs OnArceus because i knew he liked to use hyper offense. Escavalier was also a great pick because it checked his psychic types and sceptile. I really like the core of quag + SD Escav, it can make some slower teams but generally very solid - especially when combined with good NP Rotom-Mow checks such as dragon types.
Semi-Finals vs zS
in week 1 zS used an HO team vs me so i wanted to use a quagsire this week. i've never really seen a good stall team so this is my rendition of it. weezing was also a cool pick because i felt like silvally-ground was as popular as ever. i feel like the team is generally pretty good, there's not really many weaknesses but the progress it makes is very slow, so you have to be careful with hazards up - generally it's not beneficial to have rocks on both sides, so you have to defog or pressure with tspikes.
Finals vs OnArceus
ID Glastrier is underrated in my opinion. ever since bronzong left we've been short of ID + Body Press mons. glastrier is also one of the few mons that can switch into Copperajah (only fearing superpower). starmie + rotom-mow is a cool core because you can never be sure which is the scarfer until it's revealed. starmie can lure talonflames that think they can u-turn, it also has the benefit of outspeeding +2 blastoise. no item rotom-mow bluffs scarf, foul play is for decidueye. i personally like to use protect ground types to scout scarf rotom-mow, and i've seen a replay of onarceus using protect rhydon so i thought he would've been likely to use a protect ground type.
Finals GW vs DaniYSB
I built this team for GW, I knew DaniYSB loves to use Xatu so I thought Druddigon would be a fire pick.
Something i've noticed is that good balance teams should have Heal Bell and Knock Off. Status is everywhere and your team will get worn down without heal bell. knock off is hard to punish and often necessary to break balance, there's alot of mons dependent on items such as sylveon/vaporeon with leftovers and talonflame with HDB.
Overall this was a fun season and i'm glad we won!
Body Slam Snorlax + Sirfetch'd is cool, firing off body slams early game to paralyze stuff for Sirfetch'd was this team's strategy. Lanturn is a unique pick; it provides heal bell, volt immunity, and talonflame check in one slot - something nothing else can do and this team needed.
Week 2 vs EviGaro
Specs Sylveon Balance - a recycled team that i made for confide in SCL. I didn't have much knowledge of Evigaro so i reverted to a comfortable balance team. It was a close game that ended on a 50/50, I decided to switch to catch his vikavolt but he multi-attacked instead.
Week 4 vs Meri Berry
a team i built around a cool diancie set, unfortunately, it didn't quite work out. The diancie ev spread is able to live a multi-attack from silvally-ground. I misplayed pretty badly this game by not going to Silvally-ground and SD'ing on his bronzong, it was obviously heat proof after seeing the burn damage.
Week 5 vs atomicllamas
I wanted to use grassy terrain because it had a good matchup vs hail, hitmonlee basically 6-0'd hail on its own. it looked like a fun team and i wanted to save my other teams for later in the tour or give them to teammates.
Week 6 vs freezai
I wanted to use an av copperajah cuz it's the OG tank, it's become more of a menace ever since bronzong left. this week is when i started using max spdef vaporeon for goodra. rock slide sandslash-a got me this game, good lure from freezai.
week 7 vs OnArceus
I wanted to use a quagsire vs OnArceus because i knew he liked to use hyper offense. Escavalier was also a great pick because it checked his psychic types and sceptile. I really like the core of quag + SD Escav, it can make some slower teams but generally very solid - especially when combined with good NP Rotom-Mow checks such as dragon types.
Semi-Finals vs zS
in week 1 zS used an HO team vs me so i wanted to use a quagsire this week. i've never really seen a good stall team so this is my rendition of it. weezing was also a cool pick because i felt like silvally-ground was as popular as ever. i feel like the team is generally pretty good, there's not really many weaknesses but the progress it makes is very slow, so you have to be careful with hazards up - generally it's not beneficial to have rocks on both sides, so you have to defog or pressure with tspikes.
Finals vs OnArceus
ID Glastrier is underrated in my opinion. ever since bronzong left we've been short of ID + Body Press mons. glastrier is also one of the few mons that can switch into Copperajah (only fearing superpower). starmie + rotom-mow is a cool core because you can never be sure which is the scarfer until it's revealed. starmie can lure talonflames that think they can u-turn, it also has the benefit of outspeeding +2 blastoise. no item rotom-mow bluffs scarf, foul play is for decidueye. i personally like to use protect ground types to scout scarf rotom-mow, and i've seen a replay of onarceus using protect rhydon so i thought he would've been likely to use a protect ground type.
Finals GW vs DaniYSB
I built this team for GW, I knew DaniYSB loves to use Xatu so I thought Druddigon would be a fire pick.
Something i've noticed is that good balance teams should have Heal Bell and Knock Off. Status is everywhere and your team will get worn down without heal bell. knock off is hard to punish and often necessary to break balance, there's alot of mons dependent on items such as sylveon/vaporeon with leftovers and talonflame with HDB.
Overall this was a fun season and i'm glad we won!
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I've submitted this one for the DPP sample teams and I did use it this NUSD, although I actually built it for the most recent DPP PL where I lost in a close one. In any case, since I brought it again and won with it in dominant fashion this NUSD, figured I'd post about it a bit because my boy Ampharos deserves a rank.
https://pokepast.es/a4a8b559c19d71cc
DPP PL: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4nu-566805
NUSD: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4nu-599085
Ampharos is honestly a great lead, matching up at least reasonably well, up to very well, into all of Charizard, Floatzel, Sharpedo, Regirock, and Jynx. Really, thanks to being a bulky TWave user, it matches up at least passably into every lead that's not a ground type (except Gligar... it beats that one even.) It's also not that easy to switch into since a bulky grass is hardly on every team, and even among those, Shiftry and Cacturne have to fear Focus Blast. Against a Vileplume or Meganium switch in, you should generally be happy to TWave and then fish with HP Ice. Nidoqueen is definitely the worst common matchup either as a lead or a turn 1 switch in (Camerupt even worse just less common) although thankfully I'm finding Nidoqueen to be somewhat less common these days too. I would strongly recommend folks start giving some less standard, bulky attacking leads a go. I've also enjoyed Walrein, Lapras, and Wailord for example, since Water matches up particularly well into all the current standard leads, and Jynx can be gotten around really by just a Lum Berry.
The rest of the team is largely just reasonably standard bulky offensive mons, with a RegiKing core, both with TWave, interestingly, not Toxic. This is not properly thought of as stall in any way, shape, or form, although battles may certainly take a long time to grind. Along with Ampharos, the team thus has 3 TWave users, which really end up making everything else quite the menace since these bulky mons are that much more difficult to handle when they are also getting the jump on the opponent's Pokemon. There's not a particular intended win condition other than just generally outlasting the opponent, since nothing here really has fire power, assuming Ampharos gets heavily weakened or taken out early on. That said the most likely mons to end up winning the game at the end are Regirock and Vileplume, since they really effectively abuse paralyzed foes and have pretty good longevity.
The team is stacked with multiple defensive checks to most things.
Max defense Vileplume and Slowking really don't fear just about anything physical between the two of them, though Medicham can certainly try its best. That's where a Jolly Gligar comes in most handy. Using defensive Vileplume can often feel like a risk in terms of giving Drifblim turns to set up, but the combination of Taunt Gligar, Skuntank, and Regirock amply covers Drifblim.
While Skuntank is probably the single best Pokemon in the tier, Jolly Scarf Skuntank can feel like a waste of its excellent movepool. It is however a bit of an unfortunate necessity on this team to help address pains like Haunter. It's also very handy against Vileplume, who is a reasonably big sweeping threat to this team. Adamant Scarf Skunk does already outrun Modest Vileplume in Sun, but honestly, once you're already locking yourself into the somewhat suboptimal Scarf on Skuntank, you really should also be outrunning the common Scarfers in the 70-80 area.
Generally speaking, between TWave, Taunt, Leech Seed, Pursuit, and Explosion, the team has the necessary mechanisms to handle what comes its way. It is certainly not without its weaknesses though, just like any bulky team in the fast paced, no team preview DPP meta. The right offenses will always be a threat to any team trying to play slow games. A back Jynx or even Sharpedo for example can be quite a pain, as can a well played Toxic Charizard. I have contemplated various changes, such as making the Vileplume Stun Spore and the Regirock Curse Rest so that it's a specific win condition for the team and so it has a better matchup into Charizard and a dedicated sleep absorber, but it's not as if that Regirock reliably beats Jynx anyway and in general I prefer the current sets, which i think give greater flexibility in the majority of matchups, even without such a clear win condition. I also just tend to have horrible luck on sleep talk turns...
https://pokepast.es/a4a8b559c19d71cc
DPP PL: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4nu-566805
NUSD: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4nu-599085
Ampharos is honestly a great lead, matching up at least reasonably well, up to very well, into all of Charizard, Floatzel, Sharpedo, Regirock, and Jynx. Really, thanks to being a bulky TWave user, it matches up at least passably into every lead that's not a ground type (except Gligar... it beats that one even.) It's also not that easy to switch into since a bulky grass is hardly on every team, and even among those, Shiftry and Cacturne have to fear Focus Blast. Against a Vileplume or Meganium switch in, you should generally be happy to TWave and then fish with HP Ice. Nidoqueen is definitely the worst common matchup either as a lead or a turn 1 switch in (Camerupt even worse just less common) although thankfully I'm finding Nidoqueen to be somewhat less common these days too. I would strongly recommend folks start giving some less standard, bulky attacking leads a go. I've also enjoyed Walrein, Lapras, and Wailord for example, since Water matches up particularly well into all the current standard leads, and Jynx can be gotten around really by just a Lum Berry.
The rest of the team is largely just reasonably standard bulky offensive mons, with a RegiKing core, both with TWave, interestingly, not Toxic. This is not properly thought of as stall in any way, shape, or form, although battles may certainly take a long time to grind. Along with Ampharos, the team thus has 3 TWave users, which really end up making everything else quite the menace since these bulky mons are that much more difficult to handle when they are also getting the jump on the opponent's Pokemon. There's not a particular intended win condition other than just generally outlasting the opponent, since nothing here really has fire power, assuming Ampharos gets heavily weakened or taken out early on. That said the most likely mons to end up winning the game at the end are Regirock and Vileplume, since they really effectively abuse paralyzed foes and have pretty good longevity.
The team is stacked with multiple defensive checks to most things.
Max defense Vileplume and Slowking really don't fear just about anything physical between the two of them, though Medicham can certainly try its best. That's where a Jolly Gligar comes in most handy. Using defensive Vileplume can often feel like a risk in terms of giving Drifblim turns to set up, but the combination of Taunt Gligar, Skuntank, and Regirock amply covers Drifblim.
While Skuntank is probably the single best Pokemon in the tier, Jolly Scarf Skuntank can feel like a waste of its excellent movepool. It is however a bit of an unfortunate necessity on this team to help address pains like Haunter. It's also very handy against Vileplume, who is a reasonably big sweeping threat to this team. Adamant Scarf Skunk does already outrun Modest Vileplume in Sun, but honestly, once you're already locking yourself into the somewhat suboptimal Scarf on Skuntank, you really should also be outrunning the common Scarfers in the 70-80 area.
Generally speaking, between TWave, Taunt, Leech Seed, Pursuit, and Explosion, the team has the necessary mechanisms to handle what comes its way. It is certainly not without its weaknesses though, just like any bulky team in the fast paced, no team preview DPP meta. The right offenses will always be a threat to any team trying to play slow games. A back Jynx or even Sharpedo for example can be quite a pain, as can a well played Toxic Charizard. I have contemplated various changes, such as making the Vileplume Stun Spore and the Regirock Curse Rest so that it's a specific win condition for the team and so it has a better matchup into Charizard and a dedicated sleep absorber, but it's not as if that Regirock reliably beats Jynx anyway and in general I prefer the current sets, which i think give greater flexibility in the majority of matchups, even without such a clear win condition. I also just tend to have horrible luck on sleep talk turns...
Little late but here’s my builds from this NUSD:
Week 1 vs tlenit
This team is a team I’ve used a lot throughout this current and older meta of ssnu. I used it in PTPL finals to win for that slot and another tournament before I used it this week. The concept was simple, wear down vaporeon and Talonflame with Escav/Tsar to facilitate a Salazzle sweep. It worked well in this game, my Escavalier and Tsareena won on preview virtually. Encore Lazzle is a tech we spammed throughout the tour, as it is effective in ruining balances with good prediction. Fun game and still an effective team, especially with Goodra gone.
Week 3
Similar concept around the same Mon as the week 1 team, this one isn’t still usable, unless you make some serious changes to the team, but is still an amazing team built by my friend Togkey. I made some edits to it when I used it such as protect on Quag and the movesets on zong, but it is a brutal team to face. Very fun game, gave me some more momentum from the loss in week 2.
Week 5
This was my pop off week, all 3 teams we used hit, and were very effective. Had so many teams I decided not to even use mine and give my builds to the other ss players.
Sensei Axew vs Kushalos
This was a rehash of my week 1 team, as the encore Salazzle looked super good into Kushalos’s scout. I removed the Xatu and the tsareena and compressed their roles to make the team a bit more offensive in nature. Rotom mow gave the team speed control and hazard removal while making the team faster and scarier to kush’s builds. Silvally fairy was a Mon I wanted to try as a bulkier fight resist that is still threatening to teams. It works with Salazzle to wear down mudsdale and Talonflame for the other one. Glad it worked out because I think all the Silvally forms deserve exploration. Rest of the team is the same and it just worked well.
OnArceus vs xavgb
Danny vs GW
This is by far my favorite creation of the whole tour, I built it for my matchup vs freezai but as you will see it is good for a variety of matchups. I gave it to OnArceus this week for xavgb, and it absolutely cooked. It’s got it’s issues, such as poor hazard control and no speed control out of aerodactyl. Besides those issues though this team which is now a sample is very effective at ruining balances. The combination of SD aqua tail Drapion+aerodactyl breaks through most defensive cores besides Quagsire cores. And Copper usually deals with those effectively. This game really showed how good Copper is versus fat. My game vs GW, also linked above was a demonstration of the defensive core being scary vs unprepared teams. Sylveon, Mudsdale and Xatu ended up outlasting his team. Really like this team hope others can use it asw.
Danny vs freezai
This one is also a sample, but it is equally baller. Togkey built this one, but we have been working on this concept together since PTPL, where he helped me with teams. I ended up choosing to use the w1 team over this one, but it would’ve been just as good there. This is a slow offense which is really good into freezai scout since he had 0 vaporeon usage at this point. Use the other two wincons in snorlax and Silvally ground to wear down resists to let earthquake blastoise sweep. This is one of Tog’s best creations this gen, really glad it ended up working. Silvally ground just had a broken matchup this game, and copper and Silvally just singlehandedly whooped his team. Blastoise was a lost slot atp, but even with virtually 5 mons this team still owned.
Sensei Axew vs Raptor
Ryan asked for aurorus and we delivered. I built this shell and made it rocks aurorus, togkey built a different version, and recommend the trapper Vileplume to remove steels was added really early on in the building process. Fun team, kind of rushed build but we were under the impression that aurorus was unviable so that didn’t really help. Rest of team was just built around it, and sensei changed it to fully offensive aurorus right before the game, helping him out in the end. Plume removed the opps SpD wall in snorlax early in the game, making aurorus really scary. Fun team to use, glad we actually built it.
Danny vs TJ
So this is a concept I wanted to build around for most of the tour, and Ninja and we had both come to very similar teams very early on in the tournament with this idea. So I saw that TJ lost to any set up Mon possible, so I used the whirlwind copper+Scrafty concept and put it together into a cohesive team. WW copper helps stop Sylveon from consistently walling scrafty, and the two fight resists deal with sir/pass/champ. For some reason TJ brought a team that was identical to a togkey team that I had tested against a million times so this matchup was textbook. A quick bonus, got to use tog’s signature protox talon which absolutely farmed, and is a really good set. Fun team that I love a lot, glad it was able to be successful.
Hope you guys enjoyed the teams and can’t wait for the next NU team tour!
Week 1 vs tlenit
This team is a team I’ve used a lot throughout this current and older meta of ssnu. I used it in PTPL finals to win for that slot and another tournament before I used it this week. The concept was simple, wear down vaporeon and Talonflame with Escav/Tsar to facilitate a Salazzle sweep. It worked well in this game, my Escavalier and Tsareena won on preview virtually. Encore Lazzle is a tech we spammed throughout the tour, as it is effective in ruining balances with good prediction. Fun game and still an effective team, especially with Goodra gone.
Week 3
Similar concept around the same Mon as the week 1 team, this one isn’t still usable, unless you make some serious changes to the team, but is still an amazing team built by my friend Togkey. I made some edits to it when I used it such as protect on Quag and the movesets on zong, but it is a brutal team to face. Very fun game, gave me some more momentum from the loss in week 2.
Week 5
This was my pop off week, all 3 teams we used hit, and were very effective. Had so many teams I decided not to even use mine and give my builds to the other ss players.
Sensei Axew vs Kushalos
This was a rehash of my week 1 team, as the encore Salazzle looked super good into Kushalos’s scout. I removed the Xatu and the tsareena and compressed their roles to make the team a bit more offensive in nature. Rotom mow gave the team speed control and hazard removal while making the team faster and scarier to kush’s builds. Silvally fairy was a Mon I wanted to try as a bulkier fight resist that is still threatening to teams. It works with Salazzle to wear down mudsdale and Talonflame for the other one. Glad it worked out because I think all the Silvally forms deserve exploration. Rest of the team is the same and it just worked well.
OnArceus vs xavgb
Danny vs GW
This is by far my favorite creation of the whole tour, I built it for my matchup vs freezai but as you will see it is good for a variety of matchups. I gave it to OnArceus this week for xavgb, and it absolutely cooked. It’s got it’s issues, such as poor hazard control and no speed control out of aerodactyl. Besides those issues though this team which is now a sample is very effective at ruining balances. The combination of SD aqua tail Drapion+aerodactyl breaks through most defensive cores besides Quagsire cores. And Copper usually deals with those effectively. This game really showed how good Copper is versus fat. My game vs GW, also linked above was a demonstration of the defensive core being scary vs unprepared teams. Sylveon, Mudsdale and Xatu ended up outlasting his team. Really like this team hope others can use it asw.
Danny vs freezai
This one is also a sample, but it is equally baller. Togkey built this one, but we have been working on this concept together since PTPL, where he helped me with teams. I ended up choosing to use the w1 team over this one, but it would’ve been just as good there. This is a slow offense which is really good into freezai scout since he had 0 vaporeon usage at this point. Use the other two wincons in snorlax and Silvally ground to wear down resists to let earthquake blastoise sweep. This is one of Tog’s best creations this gen, really glad it ended up working. Silvally ground just had a broken matchup this game, and copper and Silvally just singlehandedly whooped his team. Blastoise was a lost slot atp, but even with virtually 5 mons this team still owned.
Sensei Axew vs Raptor
Ryan asked for aurorus and we delivered. I built this shell and made it rocks aurorus, togkey built a different version, and recommend the trapper Vileplume to remove steels was added really early on in the building process. Fun team, kind of rushed build but we were under the impression that aurorus was unviable so that didn’t really help. Rest of team was just built around it, and sensei changed it to fully offensive aurorus right before the game, helping him out in the end. Plume removed the opps SpD wall in snorlax early in the game, making aurorus really scary. Fun team to use, glad we actually built it.
Danny vs TJ
So this is a concept I wanted to build around for most of the tour, and Ninja and we had both come to very similar teams very early on in the tournament with this idea. So I saw that TJ lost to any set up Mon possible, so I used the whirlwind copper+Scrafty concept and put it together into a cohesive team. WW copper helps stop Sylveon from consistently walling scrafty, and the two fight resists deal with sir/pass/champ. For some reason TJ brought a team that was identical to a togkey team that I had tested against a million times so this matchup was textbook. A quick bonus, got to use tog’s signature protox talon which absolutely farmed, and is a really good set. Fun team that I love a lot, glad it was able to be successful.
Hope you guys enjoyed the teams and can’t wait for the next NU team tour!
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figured id make a post since i had tons of fun playing oras esp after it was unfairly nuked in oraspl and cldnt play it there. some of the pastes aren't what i turned up in game with, but what i believe are more optimised versions of those teams, will explain changes in the descriptions.
w1 vs luck o' the irish (L)
old team but has been one of my favs to use for a long while. was having trouble deciding what to use with irish public replays scout being quite dated and had a lot of like fatter stuff that the other teams i was testing seemed to have trouble playing into during tests, so i just figured id default to this and see how it goes. sash viv is rly fun to use cuz u own a lot of stuff, bar like vital spirit mons, pilo, cheops lead, and xatu mindgames. eball can be flexed w endeavor to chunk stuff like lix to ease breaking w specs mesp. can't rmb what lum lilli was for, but p sure its to play into fatter status stuff so u can force more pressure by getting 2 qds. i think in the actual game, i played rly obvious, but still had a chance to win in end game with the combination of miss / roll / freeze all being odds, but i ended up losing to miss into crit which eliminated the possibility of roll, which i thought was rly funny but irish played well.
w2 vs garay oak (W)
i asked to get dropped some stuff as ideas as i thought i was becoming too predictable for team trends across the tours ive been playing oras nu as i tend to default to comfort when i cant decide what to use. was passed this from bughouse and just went from there. also, ps: im bad and asked why we had hp grass and was informed gastro was in the tier, didnt know till then LOL. anyways, couldn't live with av lanturn being the only fire check AND no hazard removal which made it rly prone to getting worn down, so i changed it to cleric lanturn + av spin chan for added fire insurance. at this point, we realised we had no normal resist which is fked up with kanga tauros being q good + didnt want rocks on my breaker. additionally, specs swellow did not pan out well into garay's scout which was more diverse and also in tests, so we made it a steelix. however, our normal resist getting rolled by pyroar was not smth that was going to pan out well (garay ended up bringing pyroar) so we changed it to a regi instead. in the game, i think i got unfortunate initially by getting para'ed on the moonlight turn (altho that's partially due to bad sequencing on my part) and then ended up getting bailed by ice beam crit on malamar. didnt have signal like i initially had when i made the edits (its signal in the import cuz its better) cuz i let my team convince me into replacing it with hwish (for sure a bait here; got swayed cuz they mentioned it and i let them make the choice)
w3 vs robjr (L)
think this week i had army duty through the week, and just asked for teams (ya, this is somewhat of a trend this season i think). thought kangaspikes / normal spam looked good into robjr's scout so i just picked this one up and used it. in hindsight + during the game, realised that having 5 physical attackers with a scarfer as the only special presence is a no go, and have since changed it from lum sd samu to special, which would have also helped a lot in the game (i feel its genuinely much better in this team). also, during the game, i think i got hit with every status that's not psn, so that was funny i guess, definitely not my best game w the wrong variant of samu and my luck in that game, though it was quite a bad mu regardless, not much to say cuz i didnt have much input / adjustments this week.
w4 vs kiyo (W)
i was 1-2 at this point and had more free time, so i wanted to spend more time picking what i would use. at a glance, i thought kiyo's scout was a bit ice weak (4x yama / no pilo), so i picked 2 teams from when oras was cg, one with aurorus i made with tony a LONG time ago (so long that he probs wont even rmb this happened at all) and another one with cryogonal. i guess it was also cuz i faced 3x peli in the previous weeks (altho i dont rly recall this being a deciding factor, but it might've been i guess). think cryo's rly neat vs non pilo yama heavy scouts and also pairs rly nicely with busken here because it prevents it from being too worn down by hazards + lo which is nice for sure. got a rly good mu with kiyo not rly having much for busken / cryo / lilli combined, although at one point was genuinely worried about phys skunk and stayed in with cryo to get chipped (thought he'd pursuit on switch and i wld get turbo fked). honestly, if u wanna pick this team up cuz it looks cool, replace the haunter, i have no fking clue what it does, and u can have a better skunk mu that way.
w5 vs drud (W)
drud was subbed in this wk for highways who wasnt rly doing so hot, and his public scout didnt have much info on what he liked to use, so i decided to use smth that i was comfortable with in this pinsir lead ho. think it was an eternally team from like 2 yrs ago (?) that i edited to use earlier this year (2021) for nupl. lead pinsir to guarantee rocks is rly neat (except if ure GW who doesnt know how to guarantee rocks with lead pinsir - hint: u click it t1). changed the skunk to lum fog to have an easier time into lilli / hazard stack. got a bit lucky with edge dodge on lilli which made the game easier, but apart from that, think it was for sure winnable anyways. def a cool team i love using.
w6 vs spl4sh (W)
think i was at army duty through this week also, so i just picked some stuff that was dropped in my channel. well, also cuz spl4sh's scout was fking random as shit LOL, so figured bringing smth tried and true > prepping smth that might be ass. rolled up into a 6-0 jynx mu, which i then in typical gorex fashion, proceeded to not 6-0 cuz i tried to be smart and np on mantine instead of going for the safe sleep cuz i didnt wanna get played by a double switch into magmortar (which in hindsight wasnt even worth cuz i have a fking regirock). ended up playing it a lot closer than i had to imo and won because regigigas is an oras zu legend but does not do so hot in oras nu o.o.
w7 vs abejas (-)
handshaked with abejas for best reg ssn oras record. he proceeded to jinx me for poffs, which i then got unlucky in (will touch on this later), tf Abejas, u did me dirty
semis vs kiyo (L)
seeing as this was semis, i actually tried to build smth new! tried to get some inspiration from what i used vs kiyo earlier on in the tour, and just made some new version of archeops ho thinking i was cool. till i tested it... and safe to say, the team was ass lol. klinklang for sure shitmon and i didnt rly know what to replace it with + scarf malamar def looked better on paper but it flopped in tests. so as the game was coming up soon, i just turned back to something i was comfortable with and confident in piloting to a win. at preview, was definitely glad i chose to reuse this team and not the cryo one cuz he brought pilo + yama this time, man rly decided he wasnt losing to an ice-type this time around. things were going well till i missed the first megahorn on ferro, which made it not as autowin as it was supposed to be in that spot. things proceeded to go downhill from there, 2 lower rolls (than what was necessary) with +4 torrent jet on his samu, crash crit on rotom, and also got the 5050 wrong on turn 20 with drain vs ice punch. at that point in game, i thought i got cucked more with what looked like a low roll on pilo to wrap up the game, but based on his dump, appears to be an ok roll (actly quite high), but yea, game sucked q hard, frick u Abejas.
well, thats me done with my team dump, hope yall enjoyed reading thru my thoughts. hope i get picked up to play oras again in future tours, where i ideally build more than i lazily ask for teams cuz this meta is honestly rly enjoyable!
w1 vs luck o' the irish (L)
old team but has been one of my favs to use for a long while. was having trouble deciding what to use with irish public replays scout being quite dated and had a lot of like fatter stuff that the other teams i was testing seemed to have trouble playing into during tests, so i just figured id default to this and see how it goes. sash viv is rly fun to use cuz u own a lot of stuff, bar like vital spirit mons, pilo, cheops lead, and xatu mindgames. eball can be flexed w endeavor to chunk stuff like lix to ease breaking w specs mesp. can't rmb what lum lilli was for, but p sure its to play into fatter status stuff so u can force more pressure by getting 2 qds. i think in the actual game, i played rly obvious, but still had a chance to win in end game with the combination of miss / roll / freeze all being odds, but i ended up losing to miss into crit which eliminated the possibility of roll, which i thought was rly funny but irish played well.
w2 vs garay oak (W)
i asked to get dropped some stuff as ideas as i thought i was becoming too predictable for team trends across the tours ive been playing oras nu as i tend to default to comfort when i cant decide what to use. was passed this from bughouse and just went from there. also, ps: im bad and asked why we had hp grass and was informed gastro was in the tier, didnt know till then LOL. anyways, couldn't live with av lanturn being the only fire check AND no hazard removal which made it rly prone to getting worn down, so i changed it to cleric lanturn + av spin chan for added fire insurance. at this point, we realised we had no normal resist which is fked up with kanga tauros being q good + didnt want rocks on my breaker. additionally, specs swellow did not pan out well into garay's scout which was more diverse and also in tests, so we made it a steelix. however, our normal resist getting rolled by pyroar was not smth that was going to pan out well (garay ended up bringing pyroar) so we changed it to a regi instead. in the game, i think i got unfortunate initially by getting para'ed on the moonlight turn (altho that's partially due to bad sequencing on my part) and then ended up getting bailed by ice beam crit on malamar. didnt have signal like i initially had when i made the edits (its signal in the import cuz its better) cuz i let my team convince me into replacing it with hwish (for sure a bait here; got swayed cuz they mentioned it and i let them make the choice)
w3 vs robjr (L)
think this week i had army duty through the week, and just asked for teams (ya, this is somewhat of a trend this season i think). thought kangaspikes / normal spam looked good into robjr's scout so i just picked this one up and used it. in hindsight + during the game, realised that having 5 physical attackers with a scarfer as the only special presence is a no go, and have since changed it from lum sd samu to special, which would have also helped a lot in the game (i feel its genuinely much better in this team). also, during the game, i think i got hit with every status that's not psn, so that was funny i guess, definitely not my best game w the wrong variant of samu and my luck in that game, though it was quite a bad mu regardless, not much to say cuz i didnt have much input / adjustments this week.
w4 vs kiyo (W)
i was 1-2 at this point and had more free time, so i wanted to spend more time picking what i would use. at a glance, i thought kiyo's scout was a bit ice weak (4x yama / no pilo), so i picked 2 teams from when oras was cg, one with aurorus i made with tony a LONG time ago (so long that he probs wont even rmb this happened at all) and another one with cryogonal. i guess it was also cuz i faced 3x peli in the previous weeks (altho i dont rly recall this being a deciding factor, but it might've been i guess). think cryo's rly neat vs non pilo yama heavy scouts and also pairs rly nicely with busken here because it prevents it from being too worn down by hazards + lo which is nice for sure. got a rly good mu with kiyo not rly having much for busken / cryo / lilli combined, although at one point was genuinely worried about phys skunk and stayed in with cryo to get chipped (thought he'd pursuit on switch and i wld get turbo fked). honestly, if u wanna pick this team up cuz it looks cool, replace the haunter, i have no fking clue what it does, and u can have a better skunk mu that way.
w5 vs drud (W)
drud was subbed in this wk for highways who wasnt rly doing so hot, and his public scout didnt have much info on what he liked to use, so i decided to use smth that i was comfortable with in this pinsir lead ho. think it was an eternally team from like 2 yrs ago (?) that i edited to use earlier this year (2021) for nupl. lead pinsir to guarantee rocks is rly neat (except if ure GW who doesnt know how to guarantee rocks with lead pinsir - hint: u click it t1). changed the skunk to lum fog to have an easier time into lilli / hazard stack. got a bit lucky with edge dodge on lilli which made the game easier, but apart from that, think it was for sure winnable anyways. def a cool team i love using.
w6 vs spl4sh (W)
think i was at army duty through this week also, so i just picked some stuff that was dropped in my channel. well, also cuz spl4sh's scout was fking random as shit LOL, so figured bringing smth tried and true > prepping smth that might be ass. rolled up into a 6-0 jynx mu, which i then in typical gorex fashion, proceeded to not 6-0 cuz i tried to be smart and np on mantine instead of going for the safe sleep cuz i didnt wanna get played by a double switch into magmortar (which in hindsight wasnt even worth cuz i have a fking regirock). ended up playing it a lot closer than i had to imo and won because regigigas is an oras zu legend but does not do so hot in oras nu o.o.
w7 vs abejas (-)
handshaked with abejas for best reg ssn oras record. he proceeded to jinx me for poffs, which i then got unlucky in (will touch on this later), tf Abejas, u did me dirty
semis vs kiyo (L)
seeing as this was semis, i actually tried to build smth new! tried to get some inspiration from what i used vs kiyo earlier on in the tour, and just made some new version of archeops ho thinking i was cool. till i tested it... and safe to say, the team was ass lol. klinklang for sure shitmon and i didnt rly know what to replace it with + scarf malamar def looked better on paper but it flopped in tests. so as the game was coming up soon, i just turned back to something i was comfortable with and confident in piloting to a win. at preview, was definitely glad i chose to reuse this team and not the cryo one cuz he brought pilo + yama this time, man rly decided he wasnt losing to an ice-type this time around. things were going well till i missed the first megahorn on ferro, which made it not as autowin as it was supposed to be in that spot. things proceeded to go downhill from there, 2 lower rolls (than what was necessary) with +4 torrent jet on his samu, crash crit on rotom, and also got the 5050 wrong on turn 20 with drain vs ice punch. at that point in game, i thought i got cucked more with what looked like a low roll on pilo to wrap up the game, but based on his dump, appears to be an ok roll (actly quite high), but yea, game sucked q hard, frick u Abejas.
well, thats me done with my team dump, hope yall enjoyed reading thru my thoughts. hope i get picked up to play oras again in future tours, where i ideally build more than i lazily ask for teams cuz this meta is honestly rly enjoyable!