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Welcome back to the OU Player Interviews! This week, we have one of the newest OU Council Members, Ox the Fox. It's the year of the Ox, and boy has he lived up to it. He was an integral part of US South's WCoP win, and he recently crushed OLT as well, winning against some really tough opponents. On top of this, he's had a strong showing in SCL so far, and you cannot forget his ability to top the OU Ladder whenever he chooses. As always, leave any questions you have for him below. See y'all in the next one.
Ox the Fox
Most Known For: Winning WCOP, winning OLT
Favorite Pokemon: Makuhita
Most used Pokemon: Landorus-T
Where did you get your name from?
Used to play RuneScape way back in the day and oxmanlyfire123 got randomly regenerated from that. Over time changed it to Ox the Box because I thought it sounded cool, and then eventually changed to Ox the Fox because I liked the aqua color on showdown more.
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Irl my name is Aaron and I’m a 21 year old guy in my last year of college studying finance. Mons is my favorite hobby rn but I’m also big into running and playing the piano. Entertainment wise, my favorite TV show I’ve watched recently was You and I’m also currently reading Crime and Punishment.
How and when did you get into competitive battling?
I started playing mons competitively when I was around 14 years old. I remember watching pokemon showdown videos on youtube and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Ended up getting hooked on it and started to play it a ton. I managed to qualify for stour and peak #1 a few times on ladder in the timeframe of 2014-2016, but asides from that I never really had much success as a player. Basically completely stopped playing around the end of 2016 because IRL became busier and then I started playing mons again around June of 2020 as I was bored during quarantine.
What are your thoughts on the SS OU Metagame?
I think the metagame is in a really good spot right now with a lot of different viable mons. There’s a lot you can do in the builder and the recent rise of the galarian birds, zapdos and moltres, show that the meta is still constantly evolving. I also enjoy how the metagame has been shifting away from corviknight builds – hail becoming relevant forced people to stop using corviknight as the only steel on a team and has shown the flaws that corviknight has in general.
To add on to that, what's your favorite tech that abuses current metagame trends?
My favorite tech to abuse the meta trends has to be the core of toxic protect melmetal + magnezone. Most teams will rely on pivoting around the water + landot + the steel to pivot around melmetal and if the steel gets taken out of the equation with zone this pivoting becomes unviable. I brought this core to OLT finals vs SoulWind and it worked out perfectly in the game. I managed to trap soulwind’s melmetal after getting an intimidate off and then I was able to use my own melm to easily break through his team. He had a slowbro which somewhat deals with it but once you toxic it and get rocks up you just need one flinch with double iron bash (which has a 51% flinch rate) and you’re able to break through it.
Do you feel that there is anything that is suspect worthy at the moment?
I think that stored power is a pretty stupid move that leads to way too many cheese wins, but it doesn’t have nearly enough usage to warrant a suspect test. I also doubt the community would ever be convinced in it being broken, as I’m aware this is a very minority opinion. In terms of pokemon, I think kyurem is broken right now. It has barely any checks and would-be checks like spdf clef or corvi will eventually get frozen.
What's your favorite playstyle and why?
BO – I think there’s the most room to outplay your opponent and to get over any RNG when using it. It’s also the least volatile in terms of its matchup spread – you will often get average matchups and rarely get terrible or amazing matchups. Compare this to something like HO or stall where the matchups on the far end of the spectrum become much more common and it’s a lot more likely the game becomes decided solely on preview.
What's your favorite generation of OU and why?
Gen 8, it’s the only one I’ve put any sort of time into recently. I played gen 6/7 a decent amount for stour but I haven’t explored them enough to really understand the nuances of the tiers, although I will say that gen 6 is dogshit and omniboost z-moves are broken in 7.
Can you explain your team-building process for tours a little bit?
First I’ll look through my opponent’s teams and try to find one or two mons that I think will not only match up well vs them, but vs the meta in general. I generally advise people against attempting to counter team your opponent as the chances of them bringing the exact type of team you want them to bring is extremely low. In terms of actually building the team, I don’t have too structured of an approach, I just have a good grasp of what’s good in the meta based on the games I’ve played + the tourney games I’ve watched and can naturally come up with mons that work well together. In the beginning of the week I try to go for quantity over quality by just creating a lot of different teams with potential ideas. Over the week I’ll test the teams and then normally decide on something a couple of days before the game.
Anyone you want to give a shoutout to?
s/os to everyone who’s been supporting me through OLT and to south/islanders
Finally, can you provide us a team that's a good fit for this metagame and reflects your playstyle, with a brief explanation of how it works?
https://pokepast.es/0acd6f59052ce020
This is a team I’ve brought four times to tours within a month and what I think is one of the best teams in the metagame. It’s a variation of a team I’ve been using since WCOP R1, with the original version having band urshifu > scarf. What I love so much about it is how you’re able to outplay any matchup with future sight + three extremely powerful threats. There’s also a lot of room for slight variations in the team with options such as band shifu and SD kartana being viable.
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As always, leave any questions below. See y'all in the next one!