The Official Glyx
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1v1 Player Interviews
#1 | #2 | #3 | #4
#5 Le Creme Brule
Favorite Pokemon:
Most used Pokemon:
Most known for: Winning the recent Spring Seasonal, competency as a 1v1 player and builder, and considerable involvement in each facet of the 1v1 community.
Welcome to the show! I'll admit I missed the mark of timeliness for this interview, considering your Seasonal win happened just over a month ago, by now, but oh well- Either way, glad to have you here! Why don't you go ahead and tell me about yourself? What should the world know about Le Creme Brule?
Howdy fellow gamers, It is I, Le Creme Brule aka VG aka Kebia aka All41. I'm just a girl who's in search for the ultimate knowledge (specifically in relation to 1v1 sets) I'm from California and I swim, just like my good friend Waylaid. In fact, we've probably raced each other at some point. I'm 18 and just graduated High School.
Oh nice! Congratulations on finishing school! I suppose your school is doing some kind of smaller scale thing for graduation as well, right?
We already did a graduation event, it was 12 hours of 1 family at a time getting golf carted to a small stage, which was pretty funny.
Luckily I got to go early in the morning, so it didn't mess up my day that badly
Oh, interesting. I can only imagine having to sit through all of that-
Anyways, how's life been for you since then?
Life has been pretty good, I've been doing a lot of shopping for college, as my school actually opens in the Fall, so I'm preparing to move up a few states. I've been learning to cook quite as well, which has been a great experience. I recently got into reading manga, so overall I've been doing a lot of new things.
Glad to hear you're making the most of these weird times we're in-
So, to get us started here, what exactly are your roots with Pokemon? Where'd you start? How'd you wind up getting into competitive?
I started playing Pokemon at a young age, with just like the DS/GBA games. I started with Leaf Green and Pearl, both of which I was utterly horrible at. I slowly got more into it, and focused on the analytical aspect of the game. I then got into PS in middle school when a friend introduced me, and I played a lot of XY UU (I was still awful). If you're asking about how I got into 1v1, I watched an Elo Bandit video, and thought it looked fun. I was kinda hovering in and out of interest until I started talking about 1v1 at lunch with my good friend Yech aka XinosXinos. This is when I started to really care, as it gave us something to do at lunch.
For Clarification, me and Yech went to the same school before we both graduated this year
Oh, so you're yet another Elo fan who got into 1v1 through his videos? Nice!
So, before we get too deep into mons, one thing I've always been curious about is what's the deal with all the names? Do they have any significance to you or any kind of story behind them?
Fortunately you listed them all yourself so I don't have to-
Alright, a fun topic! So, VG Jungle stands for Vainglory Jungle, referring to the video game Vainglory. As a kid, I played the hell out of it, and I was nearly at a pro level in it, and that was around the time I started PS. AllFourtyOne was the alt I made to start 1v1, a horrible play on All For One / One For All, but autoconfirm smacked me so I mainly went by VG Jungle. The only reason I started going by Le Creme Brule was to piss off The Dark Alakazam because I had had so many name changes before. I decided to just change my voice account to something completely meaningless and random, so Le Creme Brule it was (Miss Spelled in true me fashion). And Kebia's just my name.
Interesting! I never would have been able to guess any of those- Here's hoping you find a PS name that sticks, lest we end up getting even more confused-
Now, back to mons. Naturally, a huge highlight for your time spent in 1v1 is the recent win in the Spring Seasonal; how was it? The overall experience from start to finish and how you felt along the way, etc, as well as anything you felt was a personal highlight throughout the duration of the tournament.
Spring Seasonal was really fun for me. It came on the tail-end of PL, which was a tour I had quite a bit of fun building for. I didn't really care that much about the tour until like Round 6 or so, because it just felt like I was going to get double eliminated soon enough. But I just kept winning and winning, and having more and more fun building. The big part of the tour started when I played against Gym Socks, as he was my first big opponent. This is the point where I really focused on building at least new teams for every series. Once I beat Iron Crusher, that's when the tournament started to feel real to me. Spring Seasonal was something I could win, something that might not be taken out of my hands like it was last year. The Grand Finals and Reset were a big highlight of the tournament for me. I built 10 brand new teams (1 of which being carrying the infamous Wigglytuff) and I was pumped for it. It was almost surreal that I won in g5 of Grand Finals reset using a lure set, even if it didn't lure what it was meant to. Especially with the Dark Pulse flinches.
The seasonal format may be simple, but I still find it really fun.
Glad to hear you enjoyed yourself!
Now while we're talking about Seasonals, are you excited to host the Summer Seasonal? Better yet, will you be doing another one of your banners for it like you did with your previous tours?
Oh god, I am definitely excited to host the Summer Seasonal Spectacular (tm). The format is just like the 1v1 Startup I hosted at the start of Gen8, so it shouldn't be too tough. I have also not been informed whether or not I am allowed to make a banner like I've done for a lot of 1v1 tours, but I would definitely like to. Amir's fantastic yet serious art always feels slightly out of place with the quirky nature of SSNLs imo.
I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to, especially considering some of the "quality" banners we've had for much earlier tournaments- Any ideas you had brainstorming for it or have you not thought about it yet?
I have currently not started it, but I might do it tomorrow.
I'm sure you'll think of something amazing, or memey, or amazingly memey.
On another note, with your win in the Seasonal, you're now guaranteed for the Championship playoffs. Are you excited? Intimidated? How well do you feel you'll do there?
I am excited, but not really intimidated. I have no reason to be, just qualifying means I'm not horrible. I think I'll do pretty well, however, DLC 2 might just change everything about the metagame on a fundamental level.
I think it'll be a hype tour to say the least, I can't wait to see who else qualifies for it!
Moving on to team tours, how do you feel about the currently ongoing World Cup? Is the team vibe still there despite the absence of dom and kard on your roster? Do you feel like West has it in them to make it to finals and win it all?
Ok so first, What do you mean by "dom isn't on our roster"??? He's literally right there at the bottom. WC seems to be going great right now. We definitely have a good team vibe going, as we help each other build a lot. West can and might smash all our enemies and win. We've had notoriously awful luck in WC in the past few years, so it's up to our new blood to break the curse.
Glad to see spirits are still running high!
Now, you in particular have been pretty involved with just about every tour we've had, so I'm sure some of the newer people are curious to know: what's the vibe like for tours? Is there a huge difference in how you feel when it comes to team tours versus individuals? Or even smogon tours in general in comparison to just laddering.
The tournament vibe is very fun. There is a lot of trash talk, which I have to admit I love participating in. Individuals are fun because it feels like you can build with a lot of people, and they feel more communal. Team Tours on the other hand, are also very fun, but more because it's an us vs them scenario, where you're building secret tech and secret teams that your team will use to crush your foes. Tournaments vs Laddering is a big discrepancy, as 1v1 ladder is notoriously wack, as you can go up or down a few hundred elo without even realizing it. Tour matches feel much more real and rewarding to me, even if I had been a ladder fiend in the month before Ladder Tour.
Makes sense. Do you think you'll be participating in the coming Snake Draft? More importantly, do you think Snake Draft as a whole will go over well?
If snake draft happens, I might try and manage. I honestly don't think Snake Draft will go well, as interest in 1v1 OMs is always pretty low.
Also the playerbase of each really overlaps so it'll be hard to get enough decent players.
I'm hopeful that we can at least make something out of it-
Do you have any advice for people trying to get into doing tournaments?
For tournaments, you've got to build your own sets and teams. Having a good understanding what each team member does is crucial to being able to make good picks in tournaments. Also, figure out your optimal conditions. For example, I like to play without music sitting at a desk. Optimizing your play conditions can give you a boost.
That's good advice in general if you ask me.
With that in mind, let's more on to something more metagame-focused: As someone who's as involved in the metagame side of things as you are, what's a team you've been absolutely in love with using and why? Naturally, if you don't wanna leak things you plan on using for wc you can just pull out an older team.
Well, Spring Seasonal happened during Pre-DLC so I think teams from that era would be appropriate. This was my masterpiece during the Mimikyu Meta. "FWGBEFTIRBLOM" aka Fire Water Grass but Every Fire-type is Replaced by Life Orb Mimikyu. It spawned many variants as the core was overall really solid, with metagame phenoms such as Felucia and Krytocon adopting the strategy. This team and it's variants where what I used to stay on top of the ladder for 28 consecutive days before Ladder Tour started.
I'm known for using a lot of weird sets and weird combinations of Pokemon, as well as just generally weird Pokemon. This is a great example of this. It's a team I used in Seasonal Grand Finals twice against Sice. A friend recommended that I should build a team with Dragapult, and I begrudgingly agreed. I had built a Kebia (hey that's my name) Berry Shiinotic set that I thought fit really well with Curse Dragapult, so I decided to use that. And to finish it off, I loved to use Berry Sawk, such as Kee or Aguav, and Aguav with Bulk Up + Laser Focus fit perfectly for this team.
These teams definitely scream you-
On the topic of DLC stuff, how do you feel the meta's been shaping as of late? We're now just over a month or so in after the recent DLC dropping. Would you say the meta's starting to stabilize now after all the craziness?
Personally, I think the current meta is fantastically diverse, however this is definitely a "hot take". I don't think the meta is stabilizing, but that might just be because I'm a mad scientist and have had to keep everything secret due to World Cup. The metagame is also just plain fun to build in for me.
Yeah, I can definitely imagine your builder's gone up at least 200+ "Untitled X" since DLC-
How about the effect on your job as VR Council and QC? Has it been difficult having to account for each new thing again and again?
VR Council has been really fun for me, and QC is also quite fun. It's not really difficult to account for each new thing because 1v1 has its own section in my brain where I'm processing it 24/7.
Now that's some dedication-
Expanding on your roles as VR Council and QC in general, do you feel like they've been generally fulfilling roles for you? Do you feel like the VR and analyses as a whole are shaping up to be great resources for people?
I definitely think that they've been fulfilling roles. It allows me to have an impact on resources for newer players. I definitely think the dynamic nature of the current VR and the large amount of mini analyses are good resources. In particular I think Analyses are more useful for 1v1 than other metas, as our sets are typically so complicated.
I'm sure your contributions to them are making the end result that much better.
With that said, your dedication to 1v1 is pretty clear to see at this point. Is there a reason why you've stuck around as long as you have and contribute so much? Some kind of goal?
Nope, I just like the community. I've met a lot of people who have become IRL friends like Waylaid, Synonimous, and Maki's Fox, and it helped me become better friends with Yech, so I think I'll be sticking around : ).
Fair enough-
Any last words you have for the readers?
Hm... Free Zacian. Ask me whatever questions you want. Have a nice day, and I hope you have a fun tomorrow!
Thanks for your time :)
======================================================================
Duration of interview: 1 hour, 59 minutes
If you have any questions of your own for Le Creme Brule, feel free to ask them here!
As for the next interview, don't expect a consistent schedule behind these-
1v1 Player Interviews
#1 | #2 | #3 | #4
#5 Le Creme Brule
Favorite Pokemon:
Most used Pokemon:
Most known for: Winning the recent Spring Seasonal, competency as a 1v1 player and builder, and considerable involvement in each facet of the 1v1 community.
Welcome to the show! I'll admit I missed the mark of timeliness for this interview, considering your Seasonal win happened just over a month ago, by now, but oh well- Either way, glad to have you here! Why don't you go ahead and tell me about yourself? What should the world know about Le Creme Brule?
Howdy fellow gamers, It is I, Le Creme Brule aka VG aka Kebia aka All41. I'm just a girl who's in search for the ultimate knowledge (specifically in relation to 1v1 sets) I'm from California and I swim, just like my good friend Waylaid. In fact, we've probably raced each other at some point. I'm 18 and just graduated High School.
Oh nice! Congratulations on finishing school! I suppose your school is doing some kind of smaller scale thing for graduation as well, right?
We already did a graduation event, it was 12 hours of 1 family at a time getting golf carted to a small stage, which was pretty funny.
Luckily I got to go early in the morning, so it didn't mess up my day that badly
Oh, interesting. I can only imagine having to sit through all of that-
Anyways, how's life been for you since then?
Life has been pretty good, I've been doing a lot of shopping for college, as my school actually opens in the Fall, so I'm preparing to move up a few states. I've been learning to cook quite as well, which has been a great experience. I recently got into reading manga, so overall I've been doing a lot of new things.
Glad to hear you're making the most of these weird times we're in-
So, to get us started here, what exactly are your roots with Pokemon? Where'd you start? How'd you wind up getting into competitive?
I started playing Pokemon at a young age, with just like the DS/GBA games. I started with Leaf Green and Pearl, both of which I was utterly horrible at. I slowly got more into it, and focused on the analytical aspect of the game. I then got into PS in middle school when a friend introduced me, and I played a lot of XY UU (I was still awful). If you're asking about how I got into 1v1, I watched an Elo Bandit video, and thought it looked fun. I was kinda hovering in and out of interest until I started talking about 1v1 at lunch with my good friend Yech aka XinosXinos. This is when I started to really care, as it gave us something to do at lunch.
For Clarification, me and Yech went to the same school before we both graduated this year
Oh, so you're yet another Elo fan who got into 1v1 through his videos? Nice!
So, before we get too deep into mons, one thing I've always been curious about is what's the deal with all the names? Do they have any significance to you or any kind of story behind them?
Fortunately you listed them all yourself so I don't have to-
Alright, a fun topic! So, VG Jungle stands for Vainglory Jungle, referring to the video game Vainglory. As a kid, I played the hell out of it, and I was nearly at a pro level in it, and that was around the time I started PS. AllFourtyOne was the alt I made to start 1v1, a horrible play on All For One / One For All, but autoconfirm smacked me so I mainly went by VG Jungle. The only reason I started going by Le Creme Brule was to piss off The Dark Alakazam because I had had so many name changes before. I decided to just change my voice account to something completely meaningless and random, so Le Creme Brule it was (Miss Spelled in true me fashion). And Kebia's just my name.
Interesting! I never would have been able to guess any of those- Here's hoping you find a PS name that sticks, lest we end up getting even more confused-
Now, back to mons. Naturally, a huge highlight for your time spent in 1v1 is the recent win in the Spring Seasonal; how was it? The overall experience from start to finish and how you felt along the way, etc, as well as anything you felt was a personal highlight throughout the duration of the tournament.
Spring Seasonal was really fun for me. It came on the tail-end of PL, which was a tour I had quite a bit of fun building for. I didn't really care that much about the tour until like Round 6 or so, because it just felt like I was going to get double eliminated soon enough. But I just kept winning and winning, and having more and more fun building. The big part of the tour started when I played against Gym Socks, as he was my first big opponent. This is the point where I really focused on building at least new teams for every series. Once I beat Iron Crusher, that's when the tournament started to feel real to me. Spring Seasonal was something I could win, something that might not be taken out of my hands like it was last year. The Grand Finals and Reset were a big highlight of the tournament for me. I built 10 brand new teams (1 of which being carrying the infamous Wigglytuff) and I was pumped for it. It was almost surreal that I won in g5 of Grand Finals reset using a lure set, even if it didn't lure what it was meant to. Especially with the Dark Pulse flinches.
The seasonal format may be simple, but I still find it really fun.
Glad to hear you enjoyed yourself!
Now while we're talking about Seasonals, are you excited to host the Summer Seasonal? Better yet, will you be doing another one of your banners for it like you did with your previous tours?
Oh god, I am definitely excited to host the Summer Seasonal Spectacular (tm). The format is just like the 1v1 Startup I hosted at the start of Gen8, so it shouldn't be too tough. I have also not been informed whether or not I am allowed to make a banner like I've done for a lot of 1v1 tours, but I would definitely like to. Amir's fantastic yet serious art always feels slightly out of place with the quirky nature of SSNLs imo.
I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to, especially considering some of the "quality" banners we've had for much earlier tournaments- Any ideas you had brainstorming for it or have you not thought about it yet?
I have currently not started it, but I might do it tomorrow.
I'm sure you'll think of something amazing, or memey, or amazingly memey.
On another note, with your win in the Seasonal, you're now guaranteed for the Championship playoffs. Are you excited? Intimidated? How well do you feel you'll do there?
I am excited, but not really intimidated. I have no reason to be, just qualifying means I'm not horrible. I think I'll do pretty well, however, DLC 2 might just change everything about the metagame on a fundamental level.
I think it'll be a hype tour to say the least, I can't wait to see who else qualifies for it!
Moving on to team tours, how do you feel about the currently ongoing World Cup? Is the team vibe still there despite the absence of dom and kard on your roster? Do you feel like West has it in them to make it to finals and win it all?
Ok so first, What do you mean by "dom isn't on our roster"??? He's literally right there at the bottom. WC seems to be going great right now. We definitely have a good team vibe going, as we help each other build a lot. West can and might smash all our enemies and win. We've had notoriously awful luck in WC in the past few years, so it's up to our new blood to break the curse.
Glad to see spirits are still running high!
Now, you in particular have been pretty involved with just about every tour we've had, so I'm sure some of the newer people are curious to know: what's the vibe like for tours? Is there a huge difference in how you feel when it comes to team tours versus individuals? Or even smogon tours in general in comparison to just laddering.
The tournament vibe is very fun. There is a lot of trash talk, which I have to admit I love participating in. Individuals are fun because it feels like you can build with a lot of people, and they feel more communal. Team Tours on the other hand, are also very fun, but more because it's an us vs them scenario, where you're building secret tech and secret teams that your team will use to crush your foes. Tournaments vs Laddering is a big discrepancy, as 1v1 ladder is notoriously wack, as you can go up or down a few hundred elo without even realizing it. Tour matches feel much more real and rewarding to me, even if I had been a ladder fiend in the month before Ladder Tour.
Makes sense. Do you think you'll be participating in the coming Snake Draft? More importantly, do you think Snake Draft as a whole will go over well?
If snake draft happens, I might try and manage. I honestly don't think Snake Draft will go well, as interest in 1v1 OMs is always pretty low.
Also the playerbase of each really overlaps so it'll be hard to get enough decent players.
I'm hopeful that we can at least make something out of it-
Do you have any advice for people trying to get into doing tournaments?
For tournaments, you've got to build your own sets and teams. Having a good understanding what each team member does is crucial to being able to make good picks in tournaments. Also, figure out your optimal conditions. For example, I like to play without music sitting at a desk. Optimizing your play conditions can give you a boost.
That's good advice in general if you ask me.
With that in mind, let's more on to something more metagame-focused: As someone who's as involved in the metagame side of things as you are, what's a team you've been absolutely in love with using and why? Naturally, if you don't wanna leak things you plan on using for wc you can just pull out an older team.
Well, Spring Seasonal happened during Pre-DLC so I think teams from that era would be appropriate. This was my masterpiece during the Mimikyu Meta. "FWGBEFTIRBLOM" aka Fire Water Grass but Every Fire-type is Replaced by Life Orb Mimikyu. It spawned many variants as the core was overall really solid, with metagame phenoms such as Felucia and Krytocon adopting the strategy. This team and it's variants where what I used to stay on top of the ladder for 28 consecutive days before Ladder Tour started.
I'm known for using a lot of weird sets and weird combinations of Pokemon, as well as just generally weird Pokemon. This is a great example of this. It's a team I used in Seasonal Grand Finals twice against Sice. A friend recommended that I should build a team with Dragapult, and I begrudgingly agreed. I had built a Kebia (hey that's my name) Berry Shiinotic set that I thought fit really well with Curse Dragapult, so I decided to use that. And to finish it off, I loved to use Berry Sawk, such as Kee or Aguav, and Aguav with Bulk Up + Laser Focus fit perfectly for this team.
These teams definitely scream you-
On the topic of DLC stuff, how do you feel the meta's been shaping as of late? We're now just over a month or so in after the recent DLC dropping. Would you say the meta's starting to stabilize now after all the craziness?
Personally, I think the current meta is fantastically diverse, however this is definitely a "hot take". I don't think the meta is stabilizing, but that might just be because I'm a mad scientist and have had to keep everything secret due to World Cup. The metagame is also just plain fun to build in for me.
Yeah, I can definitely imagine your builder's gone up at least 200+ "Untitled X" since DLC-
How about the effect on your job as VR Council and QC? Has it been difficult having to account for each new thing again and again?
VR Council has been really fun for me, and QC is also quite fun. It's not really difficult to account for each new thing because 1v1 has its own section in my brain where I'm processing it 24/7.
Now that's some dedication-
Expanding on your roles as VR Council and QC in general, do you feel like they've been generally fulfilling roles for you? Do you feel like the VR and analyses as a whole are shaping up to be great resources for people?
I definitely think that they've been fulfilling roles. It allows me to have an impact on resources for newer players. I definitely think the dynamic nature of the current VR and the large amount of mini analyses are good resources. In particular I think Analyses are more useful for 1v1 than other metas, as our sets are typically so complicated.
I'm sure your contributions to them are making the end result that much better.
With that said, your dedication to 1v1 is pretty clear to see at this point. Is there a reason why you've stuck around as long as you have and contribute so much? Some kind of goal?
Nope, I just like the community. I've met a lot of people who have become IRL friends like Waylaid, Synonimous, and Maki's Fox, and it helped me become better friends with Yech, so I think I'll be sticking around : ).
Fair enough-
Any last words you have for the readers?
Hm... Free Zacian. Ask me whatever questions you want. Have a nice day, and I hope you have a fun tomorrow!
Thanks for your time :)
======================================================================
Duration of interview: 1 hour, 59 minutes
If you have any questions of your own for Le Creme Brule, feel free to ask them here!
As for the next interview, don't expect a consistent schedule behind these-
