Some time has past since my team got knocked out of OMPL so the feelings that accompanied that event have mostly faded, which is why this shoutout post is going to be a bit more brief than i originally intended it to be. To my assman
Lasen thanks for nudging me in the direction of managing - i had been flip-flopping on the decision for a while before you mentioned it, but I wasn't really sure who I'd manage with, so you approaching me (half jokingly) made up my mind.
To the rest of the boomers
DerpyBoi cityscapes Icemaster kythr Betathunder Stolen Identity Terracotta Havens Eris thanks for doing your best and accompanying me on this wild ride of a tournament. We did really well in the beginning keeping the no-loss streak alive but faltered in the end. I attribute much of the blame for our stumble to myself and my dissapoining performance, I'm sorry I wasn't able to do better - both as a player and as a manager supporting your guys' prep. With that said I hope you guys still had fun and would be down to team with me again. I'd love to team up again with every single one of you!
To the helpers in our discord: thanks for hanging out with us and helping us along the way!
To the people who helped me test AAA and Camo (you guys know who you are!
): massive thanks for always being up to play games, I enjoyed them and it helped me figure out if my teams were working or not.
E: I'd like to thank the hosts for a well run and mostly drama free tour as well as Tcot and Think for organizing the commentary. That was one of my favorite parts of the tour and I hope you guys stick with it for future tours!
With that out of the way, I'm gonna post some thoughts on the metas I had a hand in building for.
1) AAA (I actually wrote pretty long descriptions for each team but then i refreshed, losing all progress so I'm gonna be shorter this time around.)
Some metagame observations:
Talon is complimented really well by Desoland, until people start running Flash Fire Corv/Skarm. But when people are checking Talon with bulky waters and PSea it gives alot of openings to your desolander to come in and fire off strong fire moves.
I ended up liking AV pert + Daunt Skarm a lot over the course of the tour cause it felt like a very solid bulky offense core. They form a solid "skarmbliss" blanket check core, with Skarm being preferred over corv due to access to hazards and Counter/Toxic/Whirlwind letting it actually serve as anticheese (beats Kommo, for example). Psea Koko (alternatively Zapdos) compliments the core very well, since it patches up the biggest holes in DesoTran and physical Fire types (ace, talon etc). This gives you a good amount of freedom when filling out the rest of your team, as seen in my w5 and 6 teams.
Specs Psea Weather Ball was a very nice response to people running DesoLand as their water resist. I often found myself kinda forced into running Pert with Zarude since grassy terrain makes most other grounds unviable and you cant really run Dragonvally with Zarude cause then both your electric resists lose to Koko. These teams can't really afford to run Water Absorb over Deso without some concessions, since you lose out on the very important Fire move damage boost that way. After seeing the success of Specs Psea I decided to build with it myself and came to the conclusion that NG Genesect and Primarina complement each other very well. If the opposing team's water resist is DesoTran (as it often is), then Prima will weaken it for Gene. If their water resist is Blissey, Gene beats that while crippling its checks with Zap. If they have an actual water resist (Fini/Dragonvally) it doesn't matter since both actually lose to Gene/Prima longterm. Blastoise is probs one of the few things that fares "well" vs this core.
CM Latios is "lowkey broken" in the sense that only Weavile and Scarfers with a strong Uturn cleanly revenge it at +1. Everything else fails to ohko which can be devastating. It obv doesn't like slow uturns but you can work around that somewhat.
+
It took me a while to hop on the unburden seed wincon train, but its the real deal. Unburden basically mimics Triage wincons in the way that it only takes one turn of setup to potentially take over the game, but it bypasses alot of usual countermeasures such as Dazzling/Psysurge or trying to outspeed with sth that resists the Triage move. And the seed boost is significant too. I personally feel like Lele and Latias are the best unburdeners, but I also tried Chandelure and I know Necrozma and Mowtom were used by other players as well.
Sometime over the course of the tour i ended up really disliking the standard bulky offense defensive core of Pert + Blob + Corv which basically aims to pivotspam the opponent to death. This is cause it feels very weak to attempts at bypassing pivotspam (Triage, speed boosting setup and uninteractive cheese such as demon mew) as the mons in question dont have any offensive presence themselves - so you have to include countermeasures to these within your breakers. This also ends up being an issue when you find yourself in a MU where your breakers are all checked in some way and you would need your defensive core to help overwhelm your opponent's walls. Swampert is pretty much the only one that can contribute to that with Toxic or Whirlpool shenanigans, which means that you need to pair this core with something that plays off that. I don't think this core is unviable per se, but it's not as splashable as I used to think and needs some (a bunch) teambuilding concessions to make work. The week 1 teams used by the Spindas (corv pert blob arche zarude zam) and mlove (corv pert blob zarude kiss archeops) are good examples of how to make this core work. Also more recently, the Terrak + Scarf Azelf team by Unnerftalonflame.
Teams:
W1 vs jrdn (L): triage prima + specs latios
https://pokepast.es/87cc9c9dfec31d40
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1353714971
I initially wanted to use FF SD Scizor vs jrdn, cause i felt that it would do well vs his style of teams, but ended up realising Scizor is kinda bad cause it doesn't have the BST to 1v1 anything it doesn't explicitly counter. So i switched to Triage Prima + synergystic breaker. I felt that Specs Latios would pressure DesoTran pretty well, since that's the hardest prim counter so I paired her w that. If I were to build this team again I'd probs do CM Lati and Corv over Mandibuzz. I'm not happy with the way I played this game, especially the lategame choke that cost me the game, but props to jrdn, he outplayed me for most of the game.
W2 vs mlove (W): talon + desotran
https://pokepast.es/f17e883c809aadda
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1357502102-pfmj11trboaowfokfsxnbvr36tzz8l0pw
I wanted to use Talonflame this week cause it's really good. It's hard to properly account for it without going out of your way since most bulky waters run low BP moves (scald, flip) and thus fail to ohko, letting you score 2hkos at +2. Rock types kinda don't exist, so the best way to prep for it s Psea elecs (koko zap) and FF steel birds (Corv skarm). The latter were nonexsitent at the time so I paired it w tox/tect desotran which felt like a good way to pressure most things that can prevent talon from making progress. I filled out the team with Zarude for terrain support and cob + pert + zap which is a nice defensive core. I was really happy with the team and it performed quite well too.
W3 vs booty (W): koko + weav MGspam
https://pokepast.es/ea33ed9cbba18eec
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1362109721
I went for double MG Koko + Weav cause they have p good offensive synergy. Paired them w baloon desotran to take advantage of swampert, since neither of the two actually pressures it that well, while giving myself a check for triage dkiss. Weavile is low kick to get past cobalion, so I paired it w whirlpool Pert to trap Fini on defog and clear the way for Knockspam to win the game. Bounce bliss as my tran check, Skarm as my spiker and anticheese. Pretty happy with both this team and the way I played this game. I got a crucial bounce off which let me force a whirlpool on cob as my opp went for rocks again which let me clear the way for weavile to start picking up kills.
W4 vs atha (L): Togekiss balance
https://pokepast.es/f6a291326bf3eb0e
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1366172315
My least fav team. It's kinda shit tbh. If i were to prep again I'd build very different, while keeping Togekiss. The idea was that Tinted pod would lure Kiss checks such as Pex and offensive Fire and Steel types, but i neglected to consider that Atha runs intim corv A LOT, which handles pod pretty well, thus preventing it from actually making progress vs togekiss checks. I don't love the way I played the game either, I lost the ferro vs bounce mindgames early and misplayed around the geneset + terrak. In my defense, playing around an unknown gene when there's a supporting breaker with an amazing MU vs your team is very hard.
W5 vs bush (W): double band + demon mew
https://pokepast.es/2950c55f570a8ecf
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1370489327
I took inspiration from Atha's W1 team. CB Weav + CB Ace has pretty nice offensive synergy since they share a subset of checks (bulky waters), while beating the other subset of each other's checks (bulky steels, bulky grounds and dragons). I knew I wanted to pair them w bounce mew to cover the hazard weakness, but i opted for demon mew instead of spikes cause I felt that the teams that can adequately check both my breakers (Psea Zap + Regen Cob) fold to demon mew pretty hard. The actual game was a pretty quick sac war of Weav vs Prima that I would eventually lose, but fortunately Mew was able to sweep a weakened team.
W6 vs MZ (L): unburden latias BO
https://pokepast.es/026cc5f52e722339
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1374782430
After getting owned by motherlove's unburden teams in tests i decided to build my own. Specifically i wanted to do zarude+tran+unburden cause i didn't wanna lean too heavily offensive. I ended up slapping together this core and SkarmPertKoko (my favorite at the time). I built a version with Lele over Latias first
https://pokepast.es/38dea34f723e37bb, but I didnt love my FF Ferro MU so I went with Lati in the end. This is the loss I am most dissapointed in, because it was the most preventable. Basically, with proper play I should have never lost the game. If i went Zarude on the latios' memento (which I knew the Latios had) I could then bring in Lati on anything that tried to set up and win the 1v1. Failing that, if I just scouted for Solarbeam instead of playing like the game was already won i could have avoided the scenario in which i had to hit 2 magma storms to win (basically 50/50 odds). Sadly I didn't hit the magma storms so i lost.
W7 vs geerat (L) NG genesect + specs prima
https://pokepast.es/47b9bb50126be8ac
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1379231621-weh9ligiv85ibpi0t87zv7348oobg1xpw
I took inspiration from the frequent usage of Psea specs breakers and decided to build my own take on it. I paired my primarina with Genesect cause i felt like the offensive synergy was close to perfect as I've already mentioned. The rest of the team was just filling out the roles that were missing, while straying a bit from my usual approach since I had a feeling it would get cteamed. I ended up doing Regen Bliss cause I had Prima to take advantage of DesoTran coming in, a physically defensive core of Cob + Intim Flip Turn Mew and Scarf Wandering Spirit Lando. These last 2 mons are a bit nonstandard, but I have p good justification for both. I ran flip turn on mew because the talonflame MU was pretty bad otherwise, with the only answer to +2 talon being my scarf lando. So i wanted my mew to be able to pivot in on it and pivot out while doing a decent chunk to basically make setting up much harder in the future. As for WS lando, it was initially dazzling, but the team was insanely weak to unburden kommo. I went for WS since it checks almost all triage variants about as well as dazzling while also covering unburden sweepers and punishing certain regens. Sadly I ended up facing Triage Celebi lmao, the one Triage it actually
doesnt check, but that would not have been a problem if I hadn't thrown away HP on genesect vs gapdos, thinking it was slow because my scarf lando (that specifically crept 409) outsped it. Another loss I'm pretty disappointed in, since it felt like a game I should have won but didn't because I chose the wrong openings for my breakers.
Overall I think my teams were pretty good, apart from the one I brought W4 vs Atha, so I really don't think my 3/4 record does them any justice. All of my losses were preventable with even slightly better play, but that's obviously hindsight speaking. Despite my dissapointing performance I had a lot of fun building, testing and playing AAA this time around. I think the meta is in a pretty good spot, probably the best it's been since I joined the council and I'm excited to play more of it in the seasonal, ladder tour, hopefully world cup and of course the much anticipated AAAPL if that ends up being approved.
2) CAMO
While I played exclusively AAA in this past OMPL, I also had a hand in building Camo for my team some of the weeks.
The teams:
PRE BANS
https://pokepast.es/9ab0f1f37b728f1e
This team was built around the idea of using Lati + Horse as dual special cheese mons to bank on finding a matchup where at least one of them had the capacity to easily win. Supported by av reuni and conk as answers to opposing bulky setup cheese while breaking well with FS + fighting move.
https://pokepast.es/bcf45ada8cd3a4ff
I think Beta ended up using Victini over Volc as his fire type, but the idea here was again trying to fish with dual special wincons that cover each other's weaknesses while trying to not lose to opposing fishes. Victini fits just as well here cause it checks things that check Hydreigon, while forming a good breaking core with Pheromosa.
https://pokepast.es/c4a7926790253d19
The idea here was supporting Naga as best as possible while again trying to cover most possible bulky setup cheeses, but unfortunately we ran into a physical spam HO which was a pretty abysmal matchup.
POST BANS
None of these teams were actually used, but some sets informed our building for weeks 6 and 7. With the bans of Lati@s, Hydreigon and Glowking, the most signicant change in the metagame was Levitate becoming significantly less common, which made checking certain Ground/X combination much harder. For example, while Ground/Steel, Ground/Ice and Ground/Fire were previously checked by the immensely splashable Water type Latis and Hydreigon, finding good switchins to these combinations is much harder now.
https://pokepast.es/5c3c5c7cb069494a MamoMosa + PexBro
The first mon I had my eye on was Mosa. With the best levitaters gone, Ice/Ground CB Mosa has no real reliable switchins besides Water/Bug, assuming you can Knock everything's helmet off. I paired it with CM Glowbro, basically an attempt at replicating Glowking, albeit noticably less strong.
https://pokepast.es/2023e0f1e679e84b
Another mon that felt much better was Melmetal. This was partly also a response to the prevalence of Water type Mew that chose flip Turn as its Water STAB of choice. Due to Melmetal's massive bulk it can be EVd so that uninvested STAB Flip turn from Mew never breaks the sub, which makes Melm a very dangerous threat to teams that rely on Water Mew to beat Steel/Ground mons. This team did very well in testing, with Melmetal taking over multiple games. Terra ended up using a modified version of the set on his trick room team he brought against the Zoomers.
https://pokepast.es/cb062d9e8af3e52a
Another team with the melmetal set, this time paired with flying NP torn. NP Torn is featured on both teams, as it felt like the next best special "bulky breaker" now that the latis and hydreigon were gone.
https://pokepast.es/6f9c31d7710b95ae
Last mon that felt much better since levitating steels weren't a thing anymore is DD Roost Landomew (Brave bird/EQ). This mon did really well in tests as well, having very good sweep potential with a minimal amount of support. It's also unexpected since Mew usually runs utility sets so people don't really play with it in mind until it's revealed. Unfort I built this team after the Boomers were already knocked out so we didn't get to use it. I also haven't really built a Landomew team that completely satisfied me yet, but the set has been good enough that it usually just won anyway.
I don't really have much more insight into the meta since I only played test games, however another thing that felt good to me was Spect + Guts Normal type. The reasoning here is that Spectrier is a Dark type that doesn't beat opposing Spectrier, so unless you wanna stack Darks you have to find some other way to check it. While Normal/Fairy Blissey works, its not ideal in a meta dominated by Poison type Tornadus, so I ended up gravitating towards offensive mons that blank the horse - FF Normal/Fairy Arcanine and Guts Conk/Hera. Given that the horse is more of a wincon than a breaker, I felt that Guts mons fit horse team comps better so you aren't filling out 2 offensive slots without a dedicated breaker as you would with Horse/Arcanine.
Camo feels a bit matchuppy atm, but it's still a fun meta to build for. Hopefully the removal of the ladder can spark some more interest since its now eligible for omotm voting again. And perhaps we may see a tournament in the future as well...