Tournament Anything Goes Premier League - Semifinals

Perish Song

flaunt
is a Tutor Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Staff Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnus





Banner by Ticken
Week 5

Rules
Replays
Records Spreadsheet

Nefarious Nidokings (2) vs
Horrendous Houndooms (4)

BO3: Skarph vs Catalystic
USUM: Drakus04 vs Alpha Rabbit
USUM: BaconEatinAssassin vs skysolo14
USUM: Terracotta vs Alkione
USUM: Dj Breloominati♬ vs GRNBLN
ORAS: DontStealMyPenguin vs absdaddy

Vivillons advanced to finals for having the best record in the round-robin stage. As it is stated here, the winning team will face against Vivillons in finals.
Deadline to complete matches is Sunday September 22th at 11:59 pm EST
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Kate

Metamodernity
is a Tiering Contributoris a Past SCL Champion
RBTT Champion
BO3: Skarph vs Catalystic- skarph can probably unleash some special move from an obscure anime that aired 22 years ago. Weeb power?
USUM: Drakus04 vs Alpha Rabbit- this name could've been Alpha Giraffe, or Alpha Elephant, but this man went with a fucking legend of an animal. Meanwhile drakus has number in his name, and p much everyone who has that sucks.
USUM: BaconEatinAssassin vs skysolo14- it's a bacon eating an assassin. Wait, or is it an assassin eating bacon?!? Imagine if you got fucking dumped by a guy casually munching on some bacon.
USUM: Terracotta vs Alkione- honestly one of the coolest things you can build with in Minecraft. But hard to fit, but if you can make it work, it's super aesthetically pleasing.
USUM: Dj Breloominati♬ vs GRNBLN- maybe if I predict Arcanine to win, they won't constantly pm me (respect). STOP IT, JESUS CHRIST IEJDKDJDKDDKKDKSK
ORAS: DontStealMyPenguin vs absdaddy- Dsmp is a cool guy (cuz he's around penguins, I actually hate him) but I'm predicting against absdaddy because that name makes me physically uncomfortable because it seems one step away from being banned from this site.

These are incredibly accurate predictions, I spent hours crunching the numbers to determine the most likely winner,.except for oras, why is oras in a major tour? I feel bad for anyone who plays oras. Also pichus called me mdbad and it completely backfires so hah. Am I high right now? No because I'm in school. Thank you.
 

MZ

And now for something completely different
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
BO3: Skarph vs Catalystic - Cata is a top 6 player and Skarph is a top 3 player
USUM: Drakus04 vs Alpha Rabbit - Drakus has not been that bad this tour but when Alpha isn't completely floundering with a weird team or something he's picked up AG fine
USUM: BaconEatinAssassin vs skysolo14 - Skysolo has also been good at picking up AG but hasn't seemed strong enough to instantly rival bacon, who's been pretty solid in both this and OMPL
USUM: Terracotta vs Alkione - As long as he doesn't bring hot garbage I just think terra's looked better in AG so far
USUM: Dj Breloominati♬ vs GRNBLN - It's harder to completely luck and jank people out in USUM. Far from impossible but until we see a solid performance GNRBLN is looking stronger
ORAS: DontStealMyPenguin vs absdaddy - Dsmp is pretty uncool a lot of the time but absdaddy doesn't look like he's remotely enjoying ORAS, a sure sign that he's sane.
 

absdaddy

Banned deucer.
ORAS: DontStealMyPenguin vs absdaddy- Dsmp is a cool guy (cuz he's around penguins, I actually hate him) but I'm predicting against absdaddy because that name makes me physically uncomfortable because it seems one step away from being banned from this site.
That's the most retarded thing I've ever seen anyone say about abstract daddy. Join date checks out. Go team, beat em up and ignore the nobodies.
Appropriate message #666
 
Last edited:

vivalospride

been up all year my third eye aint even blinkin’
is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Staff Alumnus
Last predicts of agpl, sorry they're late, jk ik none of u other than Fardin care :psycry:

Nefarious Nidokings (1) vs
Horrendous Houndooms (5)

BO3: Skarph vs Catalystic - honestly skarph seems like a broken ag slot but im bolding cata's name as an attempt to motivate him to make a spreadsheet u god damn nincompoop fucker.
USUM: Drakus04 vs Alpha Rabbit - You know, it'd be great if i had a SPREADSHEET to see how these guys are doing b/c idk fuckin anything about EITHER of them. But I don't because you're all lazy assholes. I did /pick
USUM: BaconEatinAssassin vs skysolo14 - huge fan of both users, I haven't talked to or seen baconboy on the ladder in quite a while tho, while it wasn't all that long ago skysolo and i were cyberbullying GL Volkner in unison.
USUM: Terracotta vs Alkione - terra is great but Alkione beat the mighty tttg last week, just when I didn't think he could get any better he somehow proves me wrong in a david vs goliath matchup last week (tttg being goliath)
USUM: Dj Breloominati♬ vs GRNBLN - GURN BLURN is definitely the superior ag player HOWEVER, dj is on my zupl team. Which means I want him to win, but this is agpl where green bleen will have the home court advantage so him being on my zupl team doesn't mean jack shit unfortunately :(.
ORAS: DontStealMyPenguin vs absdaddy - After however many weeks it's been of predicting, I still don't know a fuckin thing about absdaddy. However he did call MDB retarded (kinda) in the post above which I find hilarious so I might have to give him the nod this time around.

The fact that this is so one sided doesn't seem right at all but fuck it who cares. It's been a fun tour lads and lasses, im beyond livid the yeet squad didnt make it tho >:(((.
 
I don't really know how to sum up my agpl experience really. I cannot deny that I am disappointed with a number of things about this tour; Building was pretty non existent in this tour, there was about 5 players the entire tour building for everyone else or players just recycling teams over and over. This means there is a lack of innovation on the whole and I don't think the meta has progressed much at all. I haven't really seen any new meta trends/mons that performed surprisingly well from agpl, barring wobbuffet and gliscor which speaks volumes. ORAS AG is a pretty big joke, I understand it has to be included in AGPL but it's completely uncompetitive and honestly should only be considered a fun tier to mess around in than anything else. Our team did finish last; did we deserve to? Absolutely not, but we didn't deserve to make playoffs given how poorly some of our games were played. We also did get a little unfortunate, but if we played better (myself included) I believe we could have got 3rd but it is as it is.

However, I will say that there were some enjoyable games to watch and I did get the opportunity to play top players again; win or lose, I live for the moments to come up against the best players like skarph and hunter, and at least I can say I got the chance even if I do come up short. In addition to this, I was happy with the players I drafted in the end and they all put in effort to try and get us wins. I didn't have any problems interacting with any members of the team, they were all very chill to talk to and I had very little regrets drafting wise.

The beginning of my draft went very well I thought and according to plan; I had intended to draft icemaster and Mysterious M from the beginning, along with pigeons or cata for a solid USUM slot and ORAS support. From there it got pretty sloppy. I was too careful with my spending as I wasn't sure how much some players would go for, and I missed out on getting another really solid bo1 usum ag slot as I thought players such as drakus04/dockiva/laballade/terracotta went for too much, even though it turned out I could have afforded it easily in the end. Frankly I didn't mean to buy leafstorm, I kinda panicked about getting an ORAS slot and bought them by accident. I was happy with getting illama for ORAS and adf test for the final bo1 slot, but I did end up with too much money on my hands and bought way more players than I needed, such as subs like ag is ass/bigtalk/unicorn. However, with all that said looking in hindsight I was happy with my draft. While my subs didn't net any wins, they always helped out with teambuilding and provided good overall morale which made them good additions to the team.

I do have to say that the people who were outraged by the fact lots of non ag mains were drafted over ag mains look pretty foolish now. I don't have the spreadsheet lol but from what I can tell they did not perform that well or certainly not better than the non ag mains. There is a complete disconnect between ladder and tours that people amazingly fail to understand; tours is a completely different environment and frankly I'd pick a competent tours player with little ag experience with a decent team over an ag ladder main. If there is another agpl I do hope this kind of thing doesn't happen again because it's pretty ridiculous. Houndooms and Vivillons comprise of ubers and om mains respectively and they're in playoffs/finals so they obviously did pretty well off.

individual shoutouts:

ice-master-523: thanks for being a very cool co-manager and helping me out a bunch, from helping out with the discord to building for players when I couldn't. You easily put the most work into the team and couldn't have asked for a better person to rely on. While I imagine you're disappointed with your record and how the last couple of series went, I think you have the most potential out of any player and this will be a huge learning curve for you. You'll come back stronger in ssnl, and I do hope I get to face you sometime.

Pigeons: really big help to the team as you were able to build a little for both oras and usm. Got really unlucky in both the series you lost and deserved a better record honestly. sorry you never got to play in the bo3 slot even though you asked, you're overall a pretty cool dude though and was definitely worth the hefty price I had to pay for you.

Mysterious M: Sorry I wasn't able to build for you as much as I would have liked, but you did well with what you had and came up to some pretty rough mus. I do hope you still come and play ag from time to time, you're overall a really solid player that I respect and admire a lot. You'll have to convince me a lot if you want me to come play ubers though :p

iLlama: Wasn't sure what your activity was going to be like but was really happy when you were available for every week barring one and were pretty active in the disc. It was nice getting to know you a little since I've barely talked to you, but you seem like a cool person. Not much more I can say, the one week you won was the one where you brought 6 darkrais so... I think you played pretty well every week, unfortunately didn't know about a game mechanic against absdaddy and darkrai was way too broken against dsmp. Hope you'll stick around ag for a bit before gen 8 comes around.

Unicorns: I actually feel pretty bad only playing you once given how active you were in the discord. You were a really good presence and I'm really glad I drafted you in the end, I almost didn't but icemaster and pigeons managed to convince me. Thanks for being really helpful, even though you lost the one game you played you were a great asset to the team.

ADF Test: Came out with a 2-0 record which was great, I liked your cool and innovative teams that you came up with. I had planned drafting you from the start and don't regret it, I appreciate the effort you put into the games and look forward to playing you in the future.

bigtalk: Another really cool player with some nice teambuilding ideas. The transition from ubers to ag is always pretty tough but I think you're getting the hang of it and I think if you keep at it you could become a really decent ag player. I don't think you deserved a 0-2 record, I think both mus were tough and you didn't play exceptionally poorly. If you ever need help testing/need teambuilding advice I'd be happy to help.

ag is ass: As far as I know you're a relatively new player, so I think this agpl experience will help you a lot to progress. I'm sorry I had to throw you in against cam last minute, I'm sure it's not a nice position to be in and must have put you off somewhat. You seem to have a good grasp on the meta and was able to contribute somewhat which was helpful, good luck on any future ag tours you may participate in.

Leafstorm121: You were pretty quiet in the disc but sorry you only got one chance to play. You seem like a nice person and even though I didn't mean to draft you I was happy to get you in the end regardless. I hope you can get on more often and play more ag, I think you're a somewhat competent player.

Perish Song: Thanks for hosting, you put up every week on time and made the tour much more organised.

PurpleGatorade Skarph pichus Quantum Tesseract frogger1387: Thanks for being cool managers and making the tour really tense at the end. Every match up in week 5 was important and did make for a dramatic week; hopefully this will be continued through playoffs and finals.

As for myself, I've obviously been pretty miserable about how things have gone recently and I blame myself a lot but I'll be still playing. I figure with gen 8 around the corner I may as well give it one last shot this ssnl to win something big. I've lost a lot of motivation and confidence in my ability in ag with how OMPL and AGPL concluded, but I've become too absorbed in this meta to drop it altogether. Would winning SSNL make up for it? Possibly, it seems much more competitive than last ssnl which makes me excited for it and I hope I can get my revenge on a few players. I'll see you all in for that and whatever happens I'm sure I'll get to play a great series or two.
 
This agpl was fun despite how bad the series were, but my teammates are what made this whole experience very amusing and got to know more of them individually throughout these weeks.

frogger1387 you were a good manager despite the whole inactivity you stayed true to what you like doing and that is checking up on us each week and you are a very good player and hope to maybe be on your team again the next pl, thank you for taking me in with the team.
MDB before I actually got to know you before agpl I just thought you were a troll, but these weeks really opened my eyes that you are a very cool person and have your own character you put out to everyone. You are a good player and I hope people notice that one day instead of looking at just a troll, there’s more to ya than what others make it out to be.
martha im sorry this whole experience wasn’t entirely the best for you, but I had a good time with you in pms and trying to help you out early on in this pl and I hope you accomplish your goal that you mentioned in pm. If you ever need someone to chat with or anything just message me anytime.
RaJ.Shoot my dear ro, you did good in oras despite how crappy the meta is. I know you have some experience in Ag and maybe after this agpl you’ll know more of what you’ve seen here. Good teammate and friend, have fun at the temple!
xavgb you're a goat player tbh, I expected as much from you because you have played in ompl and are experienced a lot. Thank you for being a good presence in the chat room and being there for everyone else on there, don’t let mdb meme teams get to ya. :0
Lavaclaw you didn’t get to play much sadly and I would’ve loved to see that paraspam with marsh on it tbh, it’s a cool team. Maybe you’ll be more active for next gen in Ag and that would be fun as heck.
DanDaMan99 dan you are a nerd ha, you didn’t get to chat much with the rest of us but I know you are a good person and player with everyone else and do good no matter what, don’t be too antisocial :)
LaBalladeDesCieux i knew you since an ag ssnl and as well as for aglt, you are a good player and hope to see more of you in the future. See ya later on if you enter this seasonal coming up.
AnythingGoesLegend psyspam nerd, you were a great player this pl despite only using ho and psyspam but I know you have a lot more teams. Cool person and very good at communicating with the rest of us losers in the chat. I hope you do well in the future and accomplish things while learning new stuff on the way.
GotCookies your hatred for a certain someone is wild, you didn’t chat much but you did good on that week for agpl. Kind of regret not asking to put ya in before that week but it’s alright, hope to see more of you in the future and as well for the others.

Anyways, here is yveltal yeet squad in a nutshell:

EBE70635-045B-4A76-BCC1-591978386E84.jpeg

ED6B254D-6425-474B-B6F0-96A9962C2915.jpeg

BEF97E5F-9A6A-47D6-B3AC-A5F4B2920574.jpeg

D917C0DC-3F49-4D12-84AD-D7CED05F1CB1.jpeg

84B657ED-6D91-4B48-8C8D-4B2CB708C6EC.jpeg

E983D00C-3B64-4196-B245-7ABCE79DDBED.jpeg

2C110BB8-FC03-43C9-B875-E1E9E3916E38.jpeg

B7CA8ED1-4C61-4C51-97FC-6692EE5FFF34.jpeg


Thank you all for being good teammates again.


BD12D296-9164-4782-8833-A0F9D6AE1EB7.jpeg
 
This agpl was fun despite how bad the series were, but my teammates are what made this whole experience very amusing and got to know more of them individually throughout these weeks.

frogger1387 you were a good manager despite the whole inactivity you stayed true to what you like doing and that is checking up on us each week and you are a very good player and hope to maybe be on your team again the next pl, thank you for taking me in with the team.
MDB before I actually got to know you before agpl I just thought you were a troll, but these weeks really opened my eyes that you are a very cool person and have your own character you put out to everyone. You are a good player and I hope people notice that one day instead of looking at just a troll, there’s more to ya than what others make it out to be.
martha im sorry this whole experience wasn’t entirely the best for you, but I had a good time with you in pms and trying to help you out early on in this pl and I hope you accomplish your goal that you mentioned in pm. If you ever need someone to chat with or anything just message me anytime.
RaJ.Shoot my dear ro, you did good in oras despite how crappy the meta is. I know you have some experience in Ag and maybe after this agpl you’ll know more of what you’ve seen here. Good teammate and friend, have fun at the temple!
xavgb you're a goat player tbh, I expected as much from you because you have played in ompl and are experienced a lot. Thank you for being a good presence in the chat room and being there for everyone else on there, don’t let mdb meme teams get to ya. :0
Lavaclaw you didn’t get to play much sadly and I would’ve loved to see that paraspam with marsh on it tbh, it’s a cool team. Maybe you’ll be more active for next gen in Ag and that would be fun as heck.
DanDaMan99 dan you are a nerd ha, you didn’t get to chat much with the rest of us but I know you are a good person and player with everyone else and do good no matter what, don’t be too antisocial :)
LaBalladeDesCieux i knew you since an ag ssnl and as well as for aglt, you are a good player and hope to see more of you in the future. See ya later on if you enter this seasonal coming up.
AnythingGoesLegend psyspam nerd, you were a great player this pl despite only using ho and psyspam but I know you have a lot more teams. Cool person and very good at communicating with the rest of us losers in the chat. I hope you do well in the future and accomplish things while learning new stuff on the way.
GotCookies your hatred for a certain someone is wild, you didn’t chat much but you did good on that week for agpl. Kind of regret not asking to put ya in before that week but it’s alright, hope to see more of you in the future and as well for the others.

Anyways, here is yveltal yeet squad in a nutshell:

View attachment 195287
View attachment 195288
View attachment 195289
View attachment 195290
View attachment 195291
View attachment 195292
View attachment 195293
View attachment 195294

Thank you all for being good teammates again.


View attachment 195295
Epic
 

Kate

Metamodernity
is a Tiering Contributoris a Past SCL Champion
RBTT Champion
Hey all, mdb here(s/o if you get the reference). I said before that I wanted to do a reflection on my experiences in my first ever team tournament, so here they are. I struggled to even sign up for agpl because I figured I had too lackluster of tour records. However once I saw that I got selected in both mocks, I was pretty certain I was going to be participating. I have to admit, post draft left me with a lot to be desired, yeets were unanimously considered the worst team and I was disappointed since I figured we wouldn't go anywhere. Because of this, I decided to be a solo player mostly to try and put my name out there more. I quickly realized that although our team was bad, we were all a bunch of goofballs and great people to talk and prep with. Before I continue on, I really just have to say how much this team meant to me. By the end of week 4, I could not have imagined being on another team. We weren't tryhards, we weren't supposed to do anything. Yet we did try, and we were oh so close to proving everyone wrong and sneaking into playoffs. (I still think skarph rigged the oras match because I was promised RO if yeets made playoffs.) I'll get into individual shoutouts later, but seriously, this was the best group I ever could have asked for. Thank you.

I finished agpl with a 3-1 record (screw act), which was much better than I ever thought I'd get. The one week I lost is not a mu where I think I got destroyed on or completely bodied; rather, I didn't prep well, and i wasn't confident. It showed in my play. Overall though, this has been a huge learning experience for me, the amount of teams I was pumping out was already more than I do normally, I build like one new team a month otherwise lol. If anything, I accomplished what i set out to do. I showed people that I'm not just a solid ladder player. I can translate it to tours. My wack teambuilding proved an asset imo, things like Mkanga and reg don and ofc heatran that most sane people wouldn't think of using, I brought and made work. I think that's the overall part of my game that has drastically improved, I've always thought that I can predict with the best but my teams often lacked a spark. I think I've found it, and as a result have still not found my peak performance in ag. I agree hardcore with Zen on oras, I mentioned it before in this post, but goddamn this meta is ass for tournaments. The argument for including it is "it's fun" which is not an excuse for something that makes ag tourns even more of a joke. Anyway, with that out of the way, onto individual shoutouts!

frogger1387 thanks for being a great manager. Your draft may have gotten a lot of flak, but your calm demeanor and willingness to give into the jank really showed. Our team really was firing after week two, and that's because you stuck to a format and reliably coached people. Just find a sub next time lol.

Velvet Blood yeah, I thought you were a bit stuck up prior to this, but u were always there to help every single one of our teammates and helped me test and prep quite a lot. I know you were upset about your record, but you frankly played extremely well, and hung with the best of them. Those last two games were garbage though.

AnythingGoesLegend long time friend who I make fun of a lot, but your cheesy HOs are awesome. Heatran is still better than Lele though

Lavaclaw a resident meme lord, you didn't play much but you're a fun guy in general.

xavgb super chill dude to talk to, you've got an amazing sense of mons in general that allows you to do what others dream of. It's p great how fast you managed to pick up ag and play it at a high level.

LaBalladeDesCieux nice guy who brings(ew) normal teams. You're great at prep, great at playing, and you've only got more to grow. I have a feeling you'll be a threat for a while.

RaJ.Shoot yeah, you got the classic oras bullshit, but like stresh you just know how to play mons. However you wouldn't ban me from tp so therefore I don't like you anymore. Grrrrr.

pichus thanks for the prep in week five. It really helped even if the main team that was worked on lost. Chill ro.

Tic-Tac-Toe Guru boi I know you're going to see this anyway. Ik we still talk but it is kinda weird to see you(hopefully) leave mons for good, especially since you were a major motivator in my grinding my ass off in ag. Thanks for everything.

In conclusion, fuck Darkrai.

Thanks ag
 

MAHOH

is a Former Smogon Metagame Tournament Circuit Championis a Former Other Tournament Circuit Champion
UPL Champion
i'd like to take a moment to share some information with you all. user vivalospride is the only person to make predicts every single week without fail. such dedication, such commitment, SUCH DILLIGENCE, should be looked at with gratitude and be honored. in conclusion to this, I have went through every week of agpl including the 2 games that have been played so far this week and checked how accurate mr vivalospride is with their predictions.

(not including people being subbed in/out or predicting a tie)
27/53 50.94% correct

u went positive, noice. also lmao nidokings gonna win this week FYM? prepare to go under 50% noob

also i'm not positive if I counted correctly so if someone wants to take like 9 minutes out of their life to go back and double check the accuracy then go ahead weirdo. lets go nidokings
 
Last edited:

pichus

is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Battle Simulator Staff Alumnus
OMPL Champion
hihihiiii, time for a shoutout post! ill talk about my first ever experience as a manager, give my thoughts on this tour + other random stuff. ill try to keep this less salty but lets seeee.

this is the first time ive managed a team and i feel like i didnt do too bad. obviously im pretty disappointed that we couldnt make it to the playoffs especially because we were the favourites to win this tour. my players worked really hard for all their games but the last couple of weeks were just straight up unfortunate for us. ill talk about this later tho, first ill talk about my draft.

oh and why did i pick 'Precious Pichus' as the team name? i really wanted to use 'pichus' in my team name (idek why, self obsession maybe?) and precious was the best adjective i could find. pretty below par team name but definitely not the worst one in this tour lol.

the draft
pretty understandable if you guys dont wanna read this part. so in short, my draft actually went better than i planned. i got the best oras ag player, a solid usum core and plenty of cool bench players.
first off I really did not want to buy myself. I felt like it wasnt worth spending 15k on myself after my horrible ompl performance. That being said, I was ready to provide teambuilding support to my teammates, which i did. I just did not want to play.
I desperately wanted to draft Thimo and he did turn out to be my first pick. Hes one of my closest friends on this website and is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the best ag player. He is super creative and is super nice presence in general as well so he was a pretty obvious pick. By my draft plan, I saved 25k for him but I got him for only 17k which made my draft MUCH MUCH easier. I bought him and this instantly made my ORAS slot super solid & guaranteed a positive record.
I asked who he wanted to be paired with and his immediate reply was HunterStorm. I was pretty sure that there was no way that I'll be able to draft both of them but I added him on my player list anyway. I decided to spend a maximum of 15k on him because I expected thimo to go for much more and I really wanted to get 8 players. Getting thimo for cheap allowed me to spend more on Hunter and I managed to buy him for 20k.
Now I had spent 37k on 2 players, but I knew that this core was super solid and guaranteed a great combined record. Now I really wanted to buy another decent USUM slot so that I could guarantee atleast a tie every week. My eyes were on Megazard / Baconeatinassassin / Mysterious M / velvet blood / icemaster / Pigeons / Holy Break. I planned to spend maximum 13k on these players but I knew that it was impossible to get megazard, bacon and a couple of others on this list for so cheap. anyway, my priority picks were HB, Bacon and Mysterious M because they're all really good playing wise and can do great with proper support. plus theyre not super famous in ag so that means I can get them for cheap. I ended up buying Sitonai. He was super rusty at the time so I knew that I'll easily get him since managers usually dislike overpaying on rusty players. thimo sitonai and hunter are pretty good friends too so I'm super happy that i got him. team chemistry is always appreciated.
At this point I had spent a solid 50k on three players, I had around 30k left and 5 players. My next 2 players were Cam and byronthewellwell. They're both ubers main so that instantly makes them a pretty decent ag player. ok yeah not a great logic maybe but I knew that they were really good players and will appreciate the solid building support provided by the other 3 players and myself.
with 15k and 3 players left to buy, my next pick was Sets. This one was pretty unexpected honestly, I really did not plan to buy him. I was just randomly upbidding so that I can burn other manager's money. I knew that he was a great player but I also knew that I couldnt buy him because I'd be short on money. I accidentally got him for surprisingly cheap and he turned out to be great pick. Next up were neomon and nehtri . Most of you probably havent heard of neomon but ive been friends with him for over a year and he makes really cool ag teams and is pretty good playing wise as well. I got him for 3k which was pretty great. nehtri is another top ladder player and I got him for 3k as well.
With my final pick I chose power, which was probably one of the best decisions i took in this draft. He requested me to buy him DURING the draft. I knew he was hunter's manager for ompl and used to be OU RO at one point but I rlly did not show much interest in him because I had never seen him play ag and nominated some other player as my 9th slot. I got outbid on that one and decided to buy power instead because he, thimo and hunter convinced me that he will be a great pick. he did turn out to be a solid player and got crucial wins for our team.
so ya pretty interesting story i guess. this draft was super fun and I'm honestly surprised that i did so well here. looking at the mock draft results, everyone, including myself, were convinced that i'll have the worst draft but guess who just proved all of you wrong?!

gonna give a short summary of every week as well cuz why not

first 2 weeks were pretty clean. our record was 1-1 so it was a pretty ok start for us. only thing that went wrong was a minor teambuilding mistake which costed us a game vs nidokings. we wouldve tied the week if vs nidokings if this didnt happen so that sucks.
vs skarms was a pretty decent week as well. most of it was fine minus the hunter vs zenithial series was probably the worst series ive ever watched, super haxy both ways but id say that hunter was definitely the unluckier player here. spectators were annoying af. likeee, i really dont get it why you people wont stfu and just watch the game. theres a reason why theyre playing such an important game and you guys are still struggling to hit 1900 on ladder. i feel like we got robbed from seeing what wouldve been one of the best series in this tour. we won this week anyway but I'm sure that this loss demotivated hunter a lot because he worked really hard for this.
we had to tie atleast 1 of the next 2 weeks and we wouldve secured a spot in playoffs, which didnt look really hard. this is where things get interesting tho. spoilers - RNG just said hard no. the next para is kinda salty. you guys really dont have to read it cuz youre not gonna miss out on anything. just skip to the next para if you want please. already apologizing to purple, catalystic and their players. read at your own risk.
we played houndooms in week 4 and I was pretty sure that this wouldve been an easy tie for us cuz their record was kinda meh at the time. they had some solid players but most of them were ubers mains and didnt quite prove themselves in the first 3 weeks. anyway, we won and lost 2 games each, fair and square. one of my player choked his game but thats fine. i wasnt worried at all though because 2 of my best usum players, hunter and sitonai were yet to play. this week as well they worked really really hard. im like pretty sure i played 50+ test games vs both of them in just one day.
As usual, Hunter just got hard haxed. I'm pretty sure his opponent didnt ever prep/scout, cuz like, i usually wouldnt bring webs twice in a row in a super important series, especially vs an opp who loves to use magic coat arceus teams. ofcourse this is a great choice if I my opp always brings teams which lose to webs, or if I know that ill 100% get lucky. idk what his plan was but either way it definitely worked out. tbf even a 1800s ladder team wouldve won with such luck. the sitonai game had a similar story but he just got hard outprepped and im really unsure how. his opponent brought the one thing which beats his stall and critted the chansey with it so it was pretty much game over at that point. the team also lost to every standard HB build so im like pretty confused what the plan was. one pretty obvious reason for this weeks loss was hax but theres another side story which is much more interesting. i wanna give a bit of context before i begin though - skarms and my own team were helping each other this week. I/my teammates really trusted most of the players on their team + both of us needed just 1 win to secure playoffs (i think) so we figured that this will be a cool idea. not really though, this one skarm player just decided to leak one of my player's team to his opponent. not gonna mention the snake's name for obvious reasons. I dont have solid evidence + I hate calling out people unnecessarily. i also dont wanna name the opponent for the same reason pretty much. I was super super mad when i heard about this but honestly now im just sad. not sad because this costed us the week and the playoffs. not sad because it completely demoralized my player to a point where he didnt even feel like building for the final week and just blindly brought a team which one of my players passed to him. what im sad about is that my trust was broken. I kinda trusted you a lot dude. i honestly never thought that you'll do this, likeee, if you didnt wanna help us you couldve just said. we never pressured you and im sure that Zenithial didnt force you to help us as well. I know youre happy that your friends made it to the playoffs though. thanks for teaching me that the 'dont trust anyone' rule applies to internet too. and ya this is for everyone - please dont PM me asking who is was, the person who did it is reading this and he probably feels a little guilty and realizes his mistake (i really hope he does). ill just remove this whole part if someone gets offended or brings it up lol. Its just one of those things which have disappointed me so much that I just dont wanna talk about it.
dont feel like writing more about this. week 5 was basically hunter prepping 20+ hours and getting haxed again. byron lost a couple of speed ties as well which costed him the win i think. thimo got critted, im not sure if it mattered but he said that he won if it didnt happen. the standings mess up was pretty dumb too. like, obviously theres a huge pressure difference when you think that you have to win the week vs when you have to tie it. but this really isnt a solid excuse to miss playoffs, I shouldve kept track of the standings myself.

I think I talk about the tour now? I think it ran pretty well considering this was our first ever PL. The replays usage and spreadsheet delay was uncool but we got it done so thats fine. 100% agree with zen that most people just reused their teams but I'm glad that my team brought fresh stuff every week. it was a pleasure to see quality games every week except for ORAS. I think its kinda proven that oras ag is just not a good metagame but I feel like it still deserved atleast one slot. IDK who I can blame for the low quality oras games. Its like, im unsure if i enjoyed that 6 darkrai team winning a game. sure it was a cool fun team but it shows how much ORAS revolves around this mon and how easy it is to just brainlessly win with it. Theres a bunch of other ORAS games which darkrai just straight up won. idk why but the steel fairy thing basically saw 0 usage. Wouldve been pissed if this thing also farmed easy wins like rai did. but I genuinely do not understand how you can like this metagame. Most of the people who actually 'like' this are the same ones who end up complaining when they lose to speed ties, keys or rai. That being said, I feel like we should work on our old gens once gen8 starts to hopefully promote more creativity and expect higher quality games next AGPL (this means that we'll still probably have gen7 and gen6 smogon tours in gen8, yay!). USUM games were pretty fun though. I think we also saw some significant metagame changes, mons like Ho-Oh, Ultra Necrozma and Pdon are definitely much more viable now. other stuff like steelceus just kinda disappeared. but yeah its always fun to see the meta change. I know theres a lot of people who think that having an AGPL was be a bad idea which is fair because our playerbase is kinda underdeveloped but I feel like we needed to have one before this gen ended. one positive was that we saw a lot of rising stars like vivalospride, MDB, Drakus04, skysolo14, xavgb and Dockiva~~ who have definitely proven themselves as a player.

shoutouts time

HunterStorm : You built like 5 teams per week? seriously dude, I had no idea that youre so hardworking lol. please dont let the 1-4 record disappoint you, you prepped super hard & came up with innovative stuff every week. I know youre really unhappy with the record especially because of your high price tag but youve proven to be the best usum player, in my eyes atleast. I feel kinda sad when I see players working so hard for their games but their managers just do not appreciate them at all because their record sucks, and its mostly always because of hax. Ive experienced this myself and I know it sucks to be called overrated but theres just not much you can do about it. I just wanna let the people know that your record shouldve been 5-0 if it wasnt for the trash luck. youre probably upset that we couldnt make it to the playoffs but dont blame it on yourself, you worked really hard and im super happy that i drafted you. hope to play with you again soon!

Thimo : heyy we got to play together <3 thanks for being awesome and grats on the 4-1 record. I know you really wanted to get to the playoffs and you really deserved it, so im sorry about that :(. come back to ag soooon i miss u already

Sitonai : thanks a lot for the crucial wins and helping players with teams. You were a great presence and Im really happy that i picked u for this. good luck with future tours!

power : yoo I really had no idea that youre so good lol. last picks are always the best. hope to see you around, keep playing ag!!

Cam : ^w^ im really sorry for not giving you enough weeks. youre a great person and im glad that i got a chance to play with you. you gotta start maining ag again though >:(

byronthewellwell : heyy dude you played really well, the team building mess up week 1 & unlucky speed ties week 5 were super unfortunate but you still did great. talk more though, you were the quietest person on our team :p

Sets : thanks a lot for the 2 crucial wins, it was super fun to prep with you. keep coming up with the cool teams! good luck for the ag seasonal

neomon : duuuude im so sorry that i couldnt provide you the teambuilding support which you deserved. you missed another chance to officially prove yourself as a player. youre a great player and one of the most innovative builders in ag. gl for seasonal!

nehtri : im really sorry that i couldnt give you playing time, tried to contact you in earlier weeks but i couldnt, and the last 2 weeks were just super crucial and i couldnt risk removing my main players from the lineup, sorry again and good luck for future tours

i think any shoutout post is incomplete w/o mentioning these guys

Perish Song : yoo thanks for hosting this. you posted the lineups on time and made this tour so organized, i hope you had fun >:D

Catalystic : all spreadsheet memes aside, youre the reason why we had this tour and i cant thank you enough for it. thx a lot for convincing the TLs and writing up all the OPs with me. good job and good luck with your uni stuff!!

Megazard : i was honestly pretty pissed when you forced us to not have double oras and self purchase but it all makes sense now. idk how all your decisions turn out to be right every time but its pretty impressive and i really respect you for that. keep doing your thing, our meta is in safe hands for sure.

Pigeons : exactly same as above honestly ^ but youre also a good bird ^w^

Quantum Tesseract : i was super surprised when you self purchased right before the draft but you did pretty well. grats to your team for getting #1 seed and good luck for finals.

frogger1387 : i feel like you got too much unnecessary hate because of your draft but im super happy that you didnt finish last. pretty sure this said a big fuck off to the hamslam dude who memed you week1. gl with future tours

PurpleGatorade : really sorry to you and your players for the salt. i think you/anyone wouldve def felt the same way if they were in my position. good job on making it to the playoffs tho!! ubers mains are just too good. i can only imagine how much teambuiling pressure you and cata had every week tho lol. gl w/ semis

Zenithial : idk how you guys finished last and i really dont wanna know anyway. you guys played really well but bad matchups other stuff were super uncool. gl in seasonal but youre rlly not winning it cuz its rushi time.

Skarph : great season but you better win this, alright?

see you guys next year, pichus out~
 
Last edited:
well played houndooms, ggs and good luck in finals

Not gonna write an essay, but shoutouts to all my teammates, this was my first team tour and I had a blast, and this is all thanks to you guys. Thank you so much Skarph for drafting me, I'm obviously a bit sad about how your last series went but in my eyes you're still hands down the best ag player on smogon.

See you all soon for the ssnl (and gen 8 i guess if it doesn't completely suck).
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top