Hello and welcome back to OM Interviews! Today, we've brought in BH's best wincon spotter...
Hello sevag and welcome to OM interviews! How are you doing today?
Aye OM~!, sorry to keep you waiting, but I'm doing well today ^^
I'm not gonna lie, I've always wanted to do an interview for a while now, so I'm super happy to be here. How have you been captain?
I'm good thanks! So, you've become a major actor in OMs in the past year or so, and every character needs their introduction. So, could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Yes ofc ! So, I'm from California, 21 years old, and currently a Senior at college studying Engineering . I absolutely love to play soccer and tennis, and do so whenever I can and lately I've been really into slacklining and hacky sacking! I currently work in a lab on my college campus, and over the summer I went to Armenia to work at a solid state chemistry lab. I tend to often be really swamped with school work, but whenever I get the chance I love to cook new recipes, especially for my roommates.
Hacky sacking.... Sick. Moving on, you're also a major portion of the BH metagame and community! How did you even end up getting into ps and oms?
yeah, lmao. Me and my roommate decided to buy one, on some random thursday evening, and ever since we've been hooked
Aha, so this is actually a long one
In 8th grade / freshman year of high school I was obsessed w/ ORAS, and started to get really into breeding. Thus, I wanted to find a community where I could trade my pokemon w/ others, so as one does, I set out looking for said community. I first went to serebii because that was where I tended to get all my pokemon information from, but couldn't really figure out how to navigate the website, so I went looking for a different platform, and I ended up stumbling on pokemon showdown. So, I got really into the WIFI community then, and because my brother had a DS I was able to becoem a certified cloner and got a lot of clout from that. I remember I amassed around 4 full boxes of competitively bread pokemon with half a box being dedicated to all the Victini events from BW and ORAS at the time, all at max EV's and a variety of competitive movesets. During this time was when I also got into battling on randbats / OU / VGC (which i was absolutely TERRIBLE at and still am). Unfortunately, our house was broken into and my DS was stolen (rip DS), and I didn't have the willpower to start all over, but I wanted to remain on the site so I began to do some pokemon battling, mainly OU & AAA. And then one day (winter of sophomore year ~2015), my second cousin told me about this awesome pokemon metagame where you could give shedinja sturdy and make it unkillable. From that point on I was hooked on BH. I would play off and on throughout high school, and got a fairly adequate level where I'd every so often enter high ladder, but no more. I didn't actually get a smogon account until three years after this when I got name locked b/c someone used an inappropriate account name on PS, and I wanted to as I put it then "get back to battling!". So, I created my smogon account to submit said appeal form. After High School I didn't really play much, but got back into during the pandemic. I pretty much went no life here for most of 2020, and got really knowledgeable in the meta game. A second place finish in the 2020 BH Open, and a few posts on the BH forum later and I was asked by A LOSR to join the council. From then I went on to get drafted in OMPL (by the two best OMPL managers (unbiased opinion ofc) if I do have to say so myself) and ended up doing pretty well there. Since then I've been part of BH council helping out whenever I can, and I'm now really looking forward to OMWC ^^
That sounds awesome! (except for the getting the ds stolen saga.) So, how is it being part of BH & it's community? Any stories you'd like to tell?
omg yeah it's been great I really love the BH community and everyone who's a part of it
I think it's been really awesome to have joined the Sinnoh Remakes Circle Jerk and I've met just so many characters from that. One of the coolest things that has come from that has been the whole chess side of that server that has popped up. After the queen's gambit a bunch of us began to get really into chess, so me city and ivar began to play chess against each other a ton and we've all gotten a ton better. And then we have retired (i think) BH player Shedinja_Headinja whole totally school us all everytime we challenge him cuz he's like 2100 or something.
Of course though, I can't talk about Sinnoh Remakes with out mentioning PURPLE FROG. You see purple frog is essentially shiny Mega-Swampert and I'm not sure how this really happened, but dinodude for some reason was obsessed with this mon and its nickname (in SR we like to attribute various nicknames to certain pokemon and that becomes part of the pokemon's identity) and as a joke we all began to idolize "Purple Frog" and talk about it as if is a deity. Because of this in nat dex bh, almost all of our teams would contain "Purple Frog" and from the sheer number of games and exploration that we did play with this mon we wound up pushing from C to B+ on the ndbh VR. Even though ndbh does't currently have a ladder we still look up to Purple Frog and hope that one day we can spam it on ladder once again. :purple_frog: :orz:
Furthermore, what about BH draws you to the metagame? What does it provide that other metagames... don't?
As I mentioned earlier, I was initially drawn to BH by sturdy shedinja, but what really got me hooked to it was the pure sandbox(ness) that BH provided, while still maintaining a balanced metagame. I really enjoyed spamming broken things and using whatever wanted. I enjoy the fact that in the builder I have complete control over my teams, and I can put (or try to put) together literally any idea that I want. I feel the most creative when building BH, and having all these different options with how you can mess with a mon (moves, abilities, nature, etc), is what gives me the most joy when building, something other metagames often lack. I just think that being able to build anything and having to be prepared for literally everything is pretty awesome.
And how has it been being part of the BH council? Are you guys currently looking at anything in the metagame, or do you feel like it's settled?
Aye yea, it's been super awesome. Working with city, losr and stresh has been a blast. It's been really cool to just discuss the metagame and talk about in what direction the metagame should go. It's a huge privilege to be in a position where your thoughts on a metagame are really valued and can influence the metagame in the future, and I'm just honored to be a part of council. After banning sleep, we actually haven't discussed any potential banworthy things, because somehow, there aren't any obvious ones. If I were to look at ~one~ thing though, it would be Thunder Cage. The move on it's own is kinda borked. In general it's super good coverage since it's able to hit pokemon like Ho-oh and Tapu fini super effectively. It also has a rediculously high pp which lets you trap really passive pokemon and literally run them out of recovers with it. In conjunction with leech seed it honeslty looks a little icky, but I don't think we have enough information yet to decide whether it might be banworthy or not. But over all, I'm realy happy with where we're at right now, and I think it's the most settled the meta has been over the entirety of gen8bh.
Good to know! As someone's who's been your manager before, I can say for certain your teambuilding style is one of the most fun out there. For the readers, could you go in depth in what you do & look for when building your teams?
In general all my teams start with either a pokemon / idea I have in mind, or a team structure I'm going for. When looking at an offensive pokemon I have in mind, I'll start off by pairing it with a mon that can come in on its checks and make progress. I'll then pair these two pokemon with either one or two improofers, and then try and find a pokemon that compliments said improofer. At this point I'll usually have 4-5 pokemon on my team, and then I'll add a final pokemon to perform a role that I think the team is lacking, this might be a hazard remover or setup check. With these structures, I'll tend to cycle through a ton, via test games / the eye test looking at how it kinda flows, what pokemon it lets in, how easy can I bring pokemon in off of others, and how the imposter MU goes.
https://pokepast.es/0e6ff4e56d1b3bec here's an example of a team where I kind of followed this structure.
The idea of this team is that Kyu-white and Rayquaza work really well together, because Rayquaza is able to bait in ice scales pokemon and nuke them with v-create, and kyu-w is able to come in on prankster pokemon and click buttons with Boomburst. I then improofed them with Lanturn and gave it glare for speed control. I decided to then add Etern as a secondary improof, and then added Xern as a late game cleaner and priority user. I didn't have a set up check or hazard remover so I shoved Giratina into the team. This isn't the best team, but it's fun to use! There's also this team that followed a similar idea that started off with Blace and Kyu-B, and then went from there.
https://pokepast.es/2d89b049b3586a7c
When looking at building certain team structures in mind, it definitely varies, but it revolved around finding certain synergetic cores and then building a team that covers everything between them. This is most often in stall, Here I generally have a formula and try to work within that and then add a twist at the end. So a simple stall formula I might follow is pheal 1, complementary pheal mon 2, ice scales, fur coat, set up check, "the spin"
As well, you're a fairly active tournaments player! How do you feel about the games you've played for any major tournament so far, and does any one come off as particularly memorable?
Yea, not sure how it happened but I've somehow managed to become a tournament goon. I'm actually really happy with how most of my tournament runs have gone. I'm proud of getting 2nd in the BH Open and reaching top 6 in the Stabmons ssnl. I think it's fun to branch out and play other OM's but it's sometimes a little frustrating learning how many of these OM's work because of how different the maneuvers that are common in these games, are to BH's. I think for sure, I'm most proud of my BH Open run since that was my first ever legit tournament, and just the stress I'd feel before every game and the triumph after which win was awesome. Going 6 - 2 in ompl, and beating stresh in semis was also pretty awesome, but just having that first tournament run, and getting 2nd is sick. (I'm still a little traumatized by jungle healing tho... Stresh has beaten me with that move one too many times shudders)
From BH specifically, it makes me a little sad sometimes seeing so many people drop it. There are a ton of old players who've retired, a good amount due to how different bh8 is from bh7. I hope that bh8 can be in a place where some of these people might wanna come back and check it out. Along these lines, I think it would also be sick to host a Hackmons PL or something of the sort. I think it'd be really cool if some of these older players would come back for this and we could watch them duke it out in gen 6 & 7 bh. This would also be super cool, cuz I know almost all of SR would be able to participate here, and there are a ton of BH players there, who many ppl haven't seen that I think deserve the opportunity to play in tours. I haven't put any planning into this and not sure if I'd ever have time to organize, but it's just something I'd love to see happen. As for myself, I kind of hope to just keeping doing what I've been doing. I'm not to pushed on more tour accomplishment (although I am trying out my hand at the om circuit rn for fun). Personally, I'd just love to explore more BH archetypes and try to perfect them and write RMT's and document these times. I suppose I get this from the scientist side of me
As well, are there any other metagames you dabble in? What draws you to them?
Well recently I've tried out AAA and Stabmons and I've really enjoyed both metagames. I think stabmons I mostly played it purely for the OM circuit points , but I've really enjoyed using Dr. Phd. BJ's HO teams. It's pretty fun to play a metagame where HO is forces to have a specific structure and you can kind of just throw together pokemon and not instantly lose to imposter because of it :P
But I think I've definetely enjoyed AAA more out of the two. I enjoy how the metagame operates, and the plays you make to get your breakers in. The metagame to me feels offensive forward so often times people will be trying to make hard reads and predicts everyturn, which results in super dynamic games which I've enjoyed a lot.
What are you looking forward to in WCoOM? Are there any players you'd be excited to see, and what would they bring to the table?
If there's one thing that makes me patriotic OM~!, it's sports. And I'm just hyped to (hopefully) represent US West, I'm also super hyped to build some kick ass teams with our BH Core. We've got some amazing players and builders in City, quojova, and Onyx and I'm not sure if we'll be able to fit all four of us on the team, but I'm super excited to work with them and see what we can come up with
Penultimately, is there anyone you'd like to shout out?
a loser,
dinodude,
cityscapes,
fwqef,
Churro,
Onyx Onix 7,
TTTech,
lph,
idea,
Ivar57,
Varrio,
quojova,
Stolen Identity,
Quantum Tesseract ,
A Touch Of Crazy, ,
draegn,
opfish,
Brandoogie,
Nihilslave,
anaconja, Smeds,
Osake,
Dragonillis,
Palapapop,
Aethernum,
xavgb,
willdbeast, Hfroste,
beauts,
Dr. Phd. BJ,
KeeganSkymin4444, the whole sleep slowkings gang, everyone I was with in temper tyrantrums, and a bunch of other people. I've met so many awesome and amazing people on PS from all over the world, and I did my best to remember as many as I could. If I couldn't remember you I'm sorry but you know who you are and you all mean a ton me :))
TheCoastsOfToast
And finally~ Anything you'd like to say to the viewers?
lmao, hopefully I didn't talk, type? you ears out, but thank you so much for reading my interview and thank you OM~! for hosting me. This was super awesome. And if you're reading this and we haven't met yet, feel free to hit me up, I love chatting with new people and am more than willing to play some bh games or help you get into the meta if you want !
Feel free to ask him questions below!
(If my tags fail can you dm me ur smogon on discord OM~!#9639)