I can't express how awesome CAPCL was as a first-time manager. Shoutouts to every Breezi who got us here, especially
Darek for being my day 1.
I went on an absolute building
spree in this tour. I built an armada of teams for SS and Monotype, and I am more than happy to give y'all a peek behind the curtain. Some of the teams are a bit outdated considering the Venom-E and Roak changes, so use at your own risk.
SS
SS is fun to build in, not to play in. I think that is a big issue. There are loads of mons that are viable, which is super cool, and you can easily get away with off-meta shit like Stratagem (which I think is actually quite good now) and Equilibra. That being said, it doesn't fix the fact that a lot of SS now just feels like a race to see who loses control vs. offense first, and the tier is just too highly-saturated with threatening sweepers and breakers. I think SS relies incredibly heavily on Weavile, Landorus-T, Tapu Fini, and Ferrothorn to just sorta hold everything together. The tier is precarious to play, to say the least.
In week 1, both Raj and The Strap wanted to bring base book to see what all the fuss was about. The team itself is fairly straightforward balance, and it gives away what I think is the best balance core in the game atm, that being fini/astro/ferro. Those three together can make most teams perform adequately.
Raj came up with the idea of book+colossoil to punish Zapdos seeking to check book, and I gotta say the concept worked well. Urshifu-R and Dragapult break for an eventual book sweep, while ferro and zap handle the bulk of the physical attackers in the meta.
This team is fully based around chipping and denying lando to the point where Tapu Koko can sweep, hence the seemingly outdated core of Astrolotl+Slowking. Corviknight was used to get Dragapult in freely on Venomicon-E, and the hazard stack of Astro+Lando does the rest.
The breaking core of Tapu Lele, Volcanion, and Bandapult is a fucking terror and a half. In retrospect, zone is not totally necessary on this team, and should probably be a Ferrothorn to allow Tornadus-T to run AV, but all in all I think this team can work magic.
This team was based around the breaking core of Bandvile+Venomicon-E, and I think this is one of the better teams I crafted this tour. The two break for each other really well, and while they are both rock weak, we have double defog for that.
Originally, Raj asked me to build him Naviathan. I went and did that, pairing it with CM Glowking as a sort of insurance. Turns out, Navi is 9/10 times not the choice, so we replaced it with I think Ferrothorn? Either way, this team ended up playing pretty well, despite the fact that I think Glowking is just not as good as it once was.
Double The Strap, Double The Spooky. This team is my absolute favorite of anything I made this tour. Pajantom+Blacephalon can just rip apart any team without a Blissey, especially with Balloon Frog backing up their breaking power. I wanted to challenge myself to make ghost-spam without Dragapult, and the result was surprisingly not only viable, but actually quite good. If you want to take any team from this dump, this is the one I would suggest.
This team was the beginning of what I think is going to be a defining trend in CAP for the foreseeable future of SS. You can simply stack 2-3 bulky wincons that offer some modicum of defensive utility, and one of them is going to hit the right matchup. This time, I went with CM Fini + DD Dnite, and the result was a team that is incredibly easy to pilot and just play to your win condition. I even brought an altered version of the team to OST and won despite going against Nihilego+Celesteela.
We uncorked an Indian tech for this team: Expert Belt Dragapult. I cannot remember what exact matchup we were fishing for with this set, but the set itself has a decent amount of surprise factor with catching stuff like lele, melm, and weavile off guard. Pretty straightforward team with one wack set.
SS CAP has come to the point where you can stack threats/sweepers and bank on one of them being able to break through. This team really shows that: Zeraora and Venomicon-E provide two, fast as fuck sweepers that can take off at a moments notice, while the rest of the team is just doing their best to open up the game for them.
What do you know, I stacked bulky sweepers again. This team was explicitly designed to break the standard TNM balance that he had been bringing pretty much nonstop every week. Obviously Weavile is the main thing that stops double dance reu from just winning, so we ran Shed Shell ferro to prevent zone from trapping it. We went with Specs koko, which honestly is an underrated set atm, to more quickly break for one of our 3, yes, 3, sweepers to win.
Honestly, my brain was fried come tiebreaks from building non-stop for 8 weeks, so this is not my best work. It's really just 6 good mons, nothing really special about it. Probably works in the hands of a good pilot, which I am not.
Monotype
Before we get into the Mono teams, I do want to say that monotype and ORAS were easily the most fun metas in the tour. I know there were doubts about monotype being a matchup based tier, but so is SS CAP and BW CAP, so I don't think that is really a valid knock. I had an absolute blast cooking up teams for monotype, and it is probably one of, if not the, most fun CAP OMs out there. Matchup will always play a role in monotype, but with good prep and scouting, the tier becomes something really special.
I played CAP Monotype back in MOMPL (yes, that is the name of the tour), and this exact team ran absolute train there where most people playing the tier had no idea what a Revenankh did, let alone what Necturna was capable of. I do want to say that I no longer think Ghost is the best type (it is absolutely Flying fyi), and I don't even think Rev is the best mon on Ghost. Rev is undoubtedly strong, and it takes a B-tier ish type and boosts it noticeably, but Necturna is up and away a much bigger threat. Many types cannot deal with Geo Nect, and it was THE defining mon for when we were building. If you haven't seen this Ghost team before, try it out next chance you get. Fuck it, bring it to a CAP room tour, it will probably win.
Electric is a very strong type in monotype in general due to how dumb Alolan Raichu is with terrain up. Caribolt frees the team to run the much better Rotom-W over Rotom-C, and is an absolute threat vs. Ground.
This is literally just standard SS Fairy with one difference: Unaware Clefable. Unaware Clef is necessary so you dont get rolled by Necturna. Otherwise, completely standard team.
Now this is probably the best, most consistent CAP Monotype team. Book fixes (or fixed, depending on how the nerf plays out in this tier), a lot of Flying's iffy matchups. This team is so good we brought it twice, and it notably matches up exceedingly well into Ghost (surprise surprise, we ran into ghost with it and won).
Fire is such a wack type in monotype. It alone has access to a weather extending item, and fucking Cinderace is legal. I've run a team similar to this in MOMPL with Screens astro, but Scarf simply felt better and more in-line with what the team does. HWish lets you play omega aggressive with Volcarona and Victini, and honestly with sun up, this team can feel unstoppable at times.
Venomicon gives Poison teams an actual setup sweeper that fits on the bulky semi-stall style the type plays, and I think the mon makes this type wholly annoying to play against. This team came so damn close to winning an otherwise not good matchup that I do think the team works well.
This team is not one we brought, but is one I built for the Chomps at the request of one
spoo Sr. Just as Venomicon provides that missing piece to Poison and Venomicon-E to Flying, Krilowatt gives Water Balance an incredibly important tool as an offensive pivot with outstanding coverage, notably matching up well against Poison due to the type's reliance on Amoonguss and Toxapex forcing things out. The move selections are a bit wacky and probably need some more fine tuning, but Kril Water Balance is definitely a solid, if unexciting, build.
Maybe it was me being cocky, maybe it was the fact that I couldn't stand going a team tour without bringing Gravity Sand, maybe it was my monotype genius overflowing, but this team is without a doubt the most fun, the most crazy, the most "me" CAP, let alone monotype, team I have ever made. Gravity sand is not a new concept to monotype (landorus-t regularly runs it), but Fidgit adds a whole new level to the archetype, and frees Landorus to run coverage and Bulk Up. It also lets drill run rock slide over spin, and it gives the team Knock Off support, which can be absolutely massive. Adamant Band Drill with Gravity up actually has no switch-ins, while Mamoswine revenges half the notable offensive threats the tier has to offer. Even though this team features my boi the spider, I think the funnest part of this team is Float Stone Gastrodon, which was designed to beat Tapu Koko/Alolan Raichu trying to sweep with Grass Knot. All in all, this team is a fucking blast to play with, and I can't believe I finally got to see Gravity Sand win in a team tour. Bless Monotype CAP, I don't deserve you.
BW
For the record, I think this tier is absolute buns (hehe). It's more matchup-based than SS (and way more than monotype), and there is just fucking threat overload out the fucking ass. Tomohawk is oppressive as shit, but the main problem with this tier is that it is BW. This gen is not fun in my opinion, and while CAP adds some interesting stuff like Mollux and Kril, they don't fix what is an inherently anti-fun metagame. Most weeks, we just brought Smurf HO cause none of us really knew BW, but for Tiebreaks, I put on my big boy building pants, called in a favor from Ophion, and with some help from D2TheW, crafted the team that would win it all.
Micaiah had been spamming sand balance at a ridiculous level of consistency, so I asked Ophion how to beat it given that there is a mon in the tier that has Prankster Haze. The response was the first five mons and Weavile/Garchomp, which felt good but not great in tests. However, the team was notably weak to opposing Garchomp and Sash Alakazam, so D2 suggested that the final mon be Scarf Mamoswine, which, turns out, was an excellent call. CM Dark Gem Keldeo was for breaking through the omnipresent Jellicent, and in conversation before the game, we thought it was actually very good at bluffing Scarf, which we would then use to bluff band on Mamo. Thundurus is incredibly important to this team for punishing Ferrothorn and Tomohawk consistently. Ferro is Ferro, this is BW after all; it has a Rawst berry to heal off Burn specifically and not give trickers a more helpful Lum berry. SpD Cruel was our designated Hawk switch-in, with Sludge Bomb over Toxic to hit Breloom. All in all, the prep that went into this team paid off, and we finally fielded an actually not-braindead BW team for the first time in the entire tour. Too bad it took until tiebreaks for it to happen, but that's what happens when very few players play a tier, I guess.
CAPCL was a blast from start to finish, can't wait to break the meta once again with CAP 31. Thank you all for making this an absolutely great experience!
