Smogon Snake Draft 2019: LC Discussion

[Luthier]

Osh vs jake - honestly haven't been impressed with osh's play so far and his teams don't have that creative spark to push him over the edge. jake on the other hand has finally stopped using evio vull. His play is good and now that his teams aren't garbo hes def someone to look out for.
Kingler12345 vs BurntZebra - def my personal highlight for the week. both are top tier players. loaf has been giving me a weird feeling. It's not like hes been playing poorly or anything. last week i thought he played quite quite well actually. although he did get robbed idk if the outcome of the games wouldve changed. either way itll come down to support here imo. both are solid players but bz has star support. kingler will have to tap into creative teambuilding or other helpers and if he doesnt just lose at matchup i think kingler should be able to play it well.
trash vs Zoro - trash is my boy but i was very impressed by the way that zoro played against webs las week. there were maybe like 1-2 mishaps but i think that zoro pivotted around it incredibly well. trash played decently vs tazz last week and got sadly crit with abra which couldve changed outcome of the game. i dont think im concerned about either being washed but the lack of teambuilding on trashs side while zoro has support from shrug is rather concerning here. tko can build for sure but like the rest of this community, we're sick of sm lol. pls bring swsh faster.
Lily vs Tazz - tazz is unbreakable. building is good. play is good. choking doesnt really happen. creativity is def there too. hes played the last couple of weeks v well. on the other hand im rather unimpressed with lilys play. her week 1 not very indicative of snake level play and then her w2 was practically won at preview although great job with prep for her w2 game. however i just dont see her beating tazz without a radical team reliant on winning 6-0 or losing the other way.

Thoughts on snake so far: I think it's really interesting how records are supposed to be indicative of an individual's playing. And to most and to me as well probs i would agree the same. however i think this specific LC pool at this current time is really weird because the records for certain individuals do not show at all how well they have played. In the end that is the game we play. Note: take this with a grain of salt. also there could simply be bias coming from my direction but zoro being 1-2 while he has been playing so so well is something that comes with the small sample size of 3 weeks. who knows if itll continue this way but i was also rather unimpressed with last week of snake. I thought that only game that week which didnt have subpar playing from either player was zoro vs zebra. zebra had a couple of hiccups that game but zoro played that game incredibly well for the most part. most of us were skeptical about his pr ranking but i think hes starting to live up to it. maybe not #1 level but certainly up there. the lack of meta knowledge is starting to show in few of his plays but i think those wrinkles will be removed with time.

 

[Scottie]

Luthier vs London - London looked fairly impressive in his opening game vs Jake, didn't do anything overly flashy and kept it real the whole way through with a solid team and solid play. Luthier raised a few question marks in my head with his team selection the last couple weeks, i'm unsure as to why he brought the teams he brought when he could just bring something good and win vs most players on the list, his week 2 game especially was quite uncharacteristic and although Lily bailed out last week vs him, I think he definitely still should of closed that one out in the end, will give the edge to London.

Kingler12345 vs BurntZebra - Kingler is off to a rocky start but I can only see things getting better from here on out, He's got one of the higher ceilings in the pool and I believe he's due for a win if he can shake off the last few weeks. Zebra looked good in his opening 2 weeks but took his foot off the gas last week. I think there is definitely room for zebra here to win here as this is probably one of the more tossup matchups of the week but I cant see Kingler going 0-4.

trash vs Zoro - Zoro played a very good game last week in what seemed to be a really difficult macthup, if he continues to play with that intensity for the remainder of the tour, he'll surely live up to his Number 1 seed. I'm also quite high on trash however and I wouldn't be surprised if he took this one but I think that will come another week as Zoro looks to have found his form again.

Lily vs Tazz - Unlike a lot of people I have been very impressed with Lily's play so far. She did bail out last week but she made an absurd amount of correct decisions and her execution was spot on in a matchup that looked over from the beginning. She seems to be getting better with each game she plays and I could see her finishing really strong in the end. Tazz has been a bit unimpressive for me personally, he made a lot of questionable plays in his opening weeks, I believe he's a bit more prone to choking than people label him however I do think he's a solid player. Between the two I personally believe Lily has the higher ceiling and isn't afraid to pull the trigger in situations where tazz could of in his prior games even though he's coming out with a 2-1 record, it really could of been anything.

 

[Shrug]

im waiting for my laundry so might as well write up a few predicts for the games here. i guess im less fond of categorical statements about players in a game where we have such a small sample size of actual meaningful data points and no means of mathematically determining things like teambuilding trends or the correctness of plays.

Osh v Jake - this seems a matchup of two different types of creativity in teambuilding. jake is more likely to come through with constructions formed around a new or underused mon and has an unusual talent for making the nontraditional work in the confines of a metagame. Osh is quite good at making teams that present as standard but gain advantages from having hidden a surprise set somewhere in there -- this is a man who loves mienfoos that hold a different item than what you might expect. i actually dont even want to make a pick but i suppose i have to by the nature of the form, so im picking osh, but im excited to see this game.

Luthier v London13 - London raises a lot of questions, at least to me, ones like: why is the number 13 the most common number appended to internet pokemon names? why do i hear the line "just touched down in lon-don town" from the song "american boy" whenever i read his name? what's unquestionable is that he touched down in the snake tournament (i am going to kill myself) in a big way last week, defeating jake in a game that Could Have Gone Either Way. I do wonder about his diversity in teambuilding -- i thought i saw a definite comfort zone in his replays that i tried to exploit w1, which a webs diceroll (+ coinflip) made irrelevant. Luthier, though indian, was nearing white guy levels of irked-by-internet mons

figure 1: luthier's wall after he got haxed in smogon snake draft 3
after an unfortunate defeat to lilyac. im in general impressed by his commitment to bringing nontraditonal teams with a clear structure for how to win games, even if some nerves have understandably gotten to him a little. again, predictions are whocare, but i'll give luthier the win.

trash v zorodark - i hope everyone has fun and tries their best.

kingler12345 v Burntzebra - i think kingler needs to get back to the basics that have allowed him to farm win after win in this tournaments like this: wise midgrounds, using the whole timer, having a clear plan, kidnapping his foe's mom and holding her at gunpoint and threatening to blow her brains out if the opp doesnt make an obvious misplay in the early endgame, preserving eviolites, etc. burntzebra has been playing p well, though it's hard to get a good read when some of the games have been weird -- webs last week, a monster foongus mu in week 1, and so on. i think loaf excellence means kingler gets on the board here, but who knows.

LilyAC v Tazz - this is again a solid matchup of two players getting acclimated to the snake scene. i dont think anyone is going to pop off here and radically outplay the early or midgame. we're going to see an accumulation of small advantages that lead to an endgame the leading player will have to execute. there will be chances in there for the backfoot player to make the game trickier to the point where the player who "should" win will have opportunities to gutter it, either subtly or in ways dramatic that lc discord will never forget. ive written this and havent convinced myself who is more likely to be either player, so im bolding a name.

 

[jake]

2-2 Week 3, 0-1 in my games

Luthier vs london13

I'll start by quoting myself from last week's predictions:

I don't think Luthier has to go as hard-in-the-paint matchup-wise as he has been, even after he found success with fast Foongus (???) of all things against Kingler.

I'm 99% sure Bulk Up Evio Rufflet + Munchlax both fall into the "hard-in-the-paint matchup attempts" category. Munchlax in particular is a pretty niche pick that has fallen out of favor ever since the Wingull era ended. Despite shooting himself in the foot during prep by never bringing the most universally dominant Pokemon in the history of SM LC, I still have faith in the homeboy. His play has still been pretty solid overall, and he handled a pretty dangerous threat, the +2 Pawniard, well last week. There's a time and a place for metagame innovations, and I don't think it should come at the expense of handicapping yourself.

It's kind of weird talking about someone when their only official teamtour game thus far has been against you, so I'll refrain from saying too much about our game here. I thought there were a few turns where there were stronger plays than the ones he made, but I had a litany of mistakes myself in our set, so it's hard to judge based off that experience. I think london has a lot of potential, especially as teal seems to be staying in OU for now, but I also think he has extremely strong tendencies in builds that can be capitalized off of a player with an eye for those trends. When I put together a scout for london, basically every team looked exactly the same with only a few discrepancies between teams. I hope london rolls up with a tazz-like build and blows me away.

trash vs ZoroDark

Oof, owie, ouch, my tko. An 0-3 LC start for the Lindworms is tough to rebound from, though I think that trash did pretty okay last week. I'm not sure what the Snubbull obsession is there, but that mon is BAD and not very good. The team around it felt more cohesive this team and didn't get crushed by Foongus, but it still had a Snubbull on it when a Spritzee looked like it fit better. Even though I think Lindworms are on the up-and-up from here, no matter which of the two are playing...

...ZoroDark with a full head of steam is the scariest player in this pool. His team last week looked nothing short of standard (though Spritzee doesn't count as a water resist, punk) and he played well. It's easy to forget that he's got Shrug, too, and that's a mean LC core. It's really tough to envision ZoroDark dropping future games, and this one is no exception to that.

Kingler12345 vs BurntZebra

Where's the stereotypical Kingler luck that we usually see by this point? Kingler got blasted by a few fatal turns last week in a game that felt like fate just decided he had no chance to win. He also brought the dumb fish ghost monster, after losing to Luthier piloting it. The more I see Frillish, the more I'm sure it's one of the worst viable Pokemon in LC atm, despite seeming antimeta. Its passivity is unlike any other Pokemon in the tier, and as soon as people start realizing that there's more counterplay to Will-o-Wisp than we're currently seeing, Frillish will fall hard. When the primary play is to take 40% from an attack and click Recover while you pray Cursed Body activates, we're looking at a goon-worthy Pokemon.

OK but also more about not-Frillish12345: He played a lot better early on than he did in previous weeks, despite having to crawl back from a turn 1 HJK miss into Mienfoo death. We never found out about the set exactly, but the foo was a threat, and the loss really made it challenging for Kingler to come back with Frillish vs Pawn + Vull. The endgame was... strange, to say the least, but this game felt like he never really had a chance.

Zebra, on the other hand, showed up with a very Star-esque webs build last week. All of the Dewpider turns felt really clunky to me, even though there probably wasn't a better series of plays knowing the Vullaby set. It really shows the difference between the "good" Vullaby sets and the "bad" Vullaby sets. Overcoat Scarf? Bad set, probably, even though it generally made sense in his team. There's a lot to lose when you drop Weak Armor.

I think this is another close one, but I'm gonna go with a gut call and put my chips with Kingler this time. He's due for a win, and this is a really important time for him to get his first. I think BZ is also trending downwards a little -- I'm not sure this is the week that he'll figure it out.

LilyAC vs tazz

tazz is psychic. How else do you know that you will go directly from "ban me" (Vullaby) into "ban me too" (Diglett) in that order in the game?? Also, there were some good doubles last week, and tazz got away with a psychic crit at a pretty opportune moment. The team itself is a different take on a standard Mienfoo-Diglett-Shellder core, and I'm not sure it's actually any better than Mienfoo-Diglett-Shellder. That said, it worked out, despite being just as matchup-focused as some other builds this Snake.

Lily's last few teams are in a style that I'm fond of. There's a strong backbone with enough offensive presence that Lily can make plays no matter what kind of position she's in, and I'm looking forward to her next build as well. She's also stayed true to the name "low timer lily", rocking a sub-30 seconds timer throughout the vast majority of last week's game. It's pretty impressive how she can keep up with the competition despite handicapping herself with the stress of timer management throughout the game.

In all honesty, this one is a tossup for me. I am going to pick tazz because I feel like he has the better support (though I don't really know who's supporting Lily if anyone at all tbh), and is more likely to roll up with a unique team that handles Lily-style builds better.

Osh vs jake

It didn't work out for me last week, but I think my prep for london was an anomaly (and also I played poorly). There's no such thing as too much confidence... probably. I'm a little sad that this isn't a 3-0 vs 3-0 matchup, but that's all on me, eh?

In all seriousness, I am mad excited every time I get to play Osh. Like I said before, I think that Osh is one of the best players in this pool, and it seems like we always have down-to-the-wire kinds of matches. I think this is a game where I will have to play very well to win, and I hope I live up to that challenge.


P.S. I'm glad Plas gets a shot in a non-LC tier, too, though he's definitely going to lose. Better luck next week, buddy!

 

[Luthier]

 

[taranteeeno]

>> Snake LC Week 5 Predictions here <<

The form will stay open for about 48 hours from this post, and games played before this closes won't be included.​

 

[jake]

2-2 Week 3, 0-1 in my games
2-2 Week 4, 1-0 in my games (0-1 in Plas game)
5-5 overall

ZoroDark vs tazz

This one's my highlight of the week. It's a tough call, but I think ZoroDark pulls back into a winning record here. tazz's team last week looked a lot like a rehash of a team that he's built before -- I think it was a sick team that preys on Diglett and Onix use, but I don't think Lily is the type of player that you can expect success against with overload concepts. The EQ / Final Gambit plays were 9000 IQ to me, but tazz didn't lose that interaction... I think. From there, NP Vull webs really just overran tazz's build. It was weak to NP Vull in general, I think, but the webs just made it that much harder for tazz.

ZoroDark's team was more back-to-basics with a cool all-out attacker Staryu + Gastly build. I think he piloted it really excellently against trash, which makes him like 4/4 on the "games played well" leaderboard. Even with the unfortunate luck of getting double 2-hits with Rock Blast, he left pretty much no room to doubt that game. I also think that this game really displayed ZoroDark's strength in jumping out to an initial lead and just maintaining it throughout the game.

When it comes down to it, I think I will favor ZoroDark on his game against anybody in this pool. This one is really going to come down to prep and whether or not each player can capitalize off of early positions. I think tazz is bound to bring a flashy squad to this one, and I think Zoro will bring something a little more tame but still hellish to play against. I hope this is a great, exciting game, because I think it has the best potential to be like that this week (outside of me vs BZ, which I think will be fun to watch too).

Luthier vs trash

trash has been dealt the unfortunate hand of playing two of the top end players in the pool for his two games. I think his performance has been steady, if unremarkable, but he really needs something to kick him ahead of one of these games. The birdspam that he brought last week seemed like it had the form but not the function; Scarf Pawniard speed control is not super useful on those kinds of teams, and his defensive backbone against Staryu dropped to a (likely speed tie?) Thunderbolt. ZoroDark really just needed to click the "correct" buttons each turn and he snagged a pretty convincing win. In order to beat Luthier, trash has got to pull the rabbit from the hat and find a really strong team composition in order to steal one away.

Luthier, on the other hand, has finally used Vullaby in a game (that, naturally, he won). Clamperl teams are always extremely matchup-reliant, but he made the right call in noting that London was pretty consistently weak to it. I think he keeps on a winning trend here -- bringing something solid and relying on his risk-vs-reward playstyle will carry him far in this game. It's not impossible for trash to pull the upset, but I would be really surprised if Luthier didn't take this one convincingly.

LilyAC vs Kingler12345

Two thoughts here. Lily has won every single week that I've predicted against her, and Kingler has lost every single week regardless of what I do. Naturally, this means that Kingler123345 wins this matchup, as I am siding with the air coolant queen this week. I loved her team last week despite how matchup-y webs can get. Double HORSE is heat even if it's inconsistent, and the techs that she prepped were really cool. Electrium Z Ponyta... really nice.

In honesty, Kingler's performance in the last game just seemed like it lacked foresight on the playing end. It's not like the team was bad and it's not like the matchup was bad, but he traded a ton of HP on Staryu for an equal amount of HP on BZ's Staryu really early on. In terms of whether or not that trade was worth it: no. Staryu was super valuable that game, especially with Diglett available to trap a Foongus in the midgame, and risking a Thunderbolt to try to catch an offensive Staryu showed that he didn't have enough respect for Ponyta.

I really can't believe that Kingler12345 has gone from 0-1 to 0-2 to 0-3 to 0-4 and now might be on the verge of 0-5. I personally want him to have success, but he seems genuinely lost in the meta so far. Maybe the Kingler Luck is not showing up in his games and is instead what has powered his team to three victories and a tie in four weeks. Regardless, I favor Lily pretty heavily here.

London13 vs Osh

I liked London's team last week -- Carvanha is a cool and niche pick, and he supported it solidly with the team. He makes levelheaded decisions, he brings seemingly well-rounded teams, and he's got a good grasp of what's dominating and what isn't in the meta. The more that I see London play, the more I like what I'm seeing. At the same time, this is not an easy game, and I think London has to be more than just "good" to win it. Osh is tied for first place in LC records for a reason, even if his last team wasn't exactly what I'd call, eh, good.

I think Osh rebounds from a weird loss into a dominant win here. His games so far have all felt fairly competitive with Osh getting lucky in a few critical moments, which leaves me wondering whether or not these wins have been more on him or more on the luck end of things. This is the right time for Osh to just show up and outplay, outplay, outplay. London13 is absolutely capable of taking this game, and he very well might, but I'm gonna bet all on black and take Osh.

jake vs BurntZebra

Preview of our game:

Looking forward to this one. I hope I bring some whack stuff that you'll never expect out of me and I cruise on matchup alone, but if I don't get that, I hope we have an enjoyable match as we fight for the position of zebra pack leader.

We should play in BW LC btw haha

 

[tazz]

Luthier vs trash
I think despite being even much of Luthier's difficulty has been due to terrible luck (him vs Lily) or unwinnable MUs (him vs Jake), so if he can avoid one of these categories I think he should do well against trash and tko, who have had trouble thus far getting back into the meta. This is still the Luthier that won open and went 9-0 in LCPL, he just hasn't been as fortunate here lately. I do think trash has the potential to rebound but that is happening a bit more slowly than it needs to.
LilyAC vs Kingler12345
I don't think that Lily will be intimidated by kingler and is back to form from week 1, especially after nailing me on MU last week. I think we're seeing that drafting Kingler without any team building assistance was a huge mistake on the part of his managers (you should have watched the smogcast is the moral of this story, we tried to warn you!), and I simply don't see him suddenly recovering from years of being unable to prep properly. Decent edge to Lily here, I think Kingler is currently the weakest player in the pool.
London13 vs Osh
I Think this matchup is dependent on factors that can't be known without insight into the prep process of these teams. When I was watching Osh's game last week and saw his team I had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't still mid 2018—I can't believe that Plas let him bring such a grossly outdated team. I find it likely that Plas might not have helped him as much that week, and it really showed. Much of his success thus far has also been thanks in large part to getting lucky at critical moments, so I have a really difficult time ranking him very high. I feel that London got exposed a bit last week, as despite Luthier playing like garbage London was repeatedly not prepping for Clamperl and someone finally called him on it. His team variety has been disappointing for a long time and while he doesn't choke often his play isn't for me particularly remarkable. Luthier had the team variety and building skill to exploit this, but I am almost sure that Osh on his own does not. I think this matchup hinges on Plas helping Osh, with it being in Osh's favor if this is the case and around even if not.
jake vs BurntZebra
I think both of these players have been playing pretty decently thus far with one or two exceptions (Zebra choking against ZoroDark by letting him get rid of webs and Jake playing really passively against London) so I have a difficult time putting one over the other. I do think highly of these two and am looking forward to this game probably the most. Zebra is heat so I'm bolding him, but a Jake predict is very defensible.

 

[Kingler]

jake

I'll concur on the staryu stay in being pretty much a game-losing play (especially because I didn't recover the next turn). In general I needed staryu healthy for a lot of his threats, and I expected him to pivot rather than attack on a very likely foongus switch; it became apparent like 5 turns later why this wasn't ideal, and my follow-up to the tbolt wasn't great either. I don't think it's unfair to say my matchup wasn't great, though; NP Vull wasn't something I'd accounted for in building very heavily, and it definitely showed. This isn't to say that's he reason I lost, but just something to consider going forward in the builder. Pretty much straight-up losing to the pony was a combination of the staryu turns and guessing incorrectly (thought it was z sunny day...), but I'll live with it.

I'll try contributing to this thread or cast when I have the time, but figured I'd get at least some thoughts down since we're 4 weeks in.

 

[Kingler]

apologies for the double post, but just played for snake. I think some people were confused about some turns in the game (that's somehow possible in my games!), so i'll try explaining some of them. The IDef on her vull's z was because I usually live z into bb on +2 vull, barring rolls. It also wasn't a lock for physical vull, which meant that having vull boosted before her vull came in was important for NP Vull wars. Unfortunately it was max roll (a 1/16), which meant that vull needed to only do 24% (which is the damage bb does to a +2 vull). 236+ Ada Vull also usually 2hkoes my munchlax set, which would've activated BJ, which is why I switched to it. Brave Birding on her part the second time was correct, as that was the possible route for victory. I won't really go in-depth into the team but levi can post about it if he'd like to.

 

[Luthier]

 

[taranteeeno]

>> Snake LC Week 6 Predictions here <<

The form will stay open for about 48 hours from this post, and games played before this closes won't be included.​

 

[tazz]

c'mon guys these predictions aren't supposed to be merciful.
Don’t hate me too much please.

Shrug vs Luthier
It seems that Luthier has finally gotten a chance to face his idol, hopefully he doesn't accidentally use a team he asked Shrug for in PMs last year, especially if that team is anything like some of the garbage Shrug has been giving Zoro; I don't care how many techs you have, this:

is not something you can bring when fighting types exist. It's difficult to really evidence my opinions about shrug's playing ability considering that he didn't care much about LCPL and has been benched in LC for the entire tournament, and while Luthier's play can't be complained about too much (except for that game against London) I feel like many of his wins and losses came down largely to some combination of matchup or hax. I think that this matchup will come down to team preview to some extent, and on that basis I'll have to give this to Luthier. Sorry Shrug, you can talk about how perfect your teams are in theory all you want but until they get more than two wins I'll have to retain my suspicions.

trash vs Kingler12345
yikes, where to start with this one...



Kingler's ability to pull out wins using an almost supernatural combination of hax and choke-baiting has seemingly dried up this season, forcing him as of last week to adopt the Levi philosophy completely: win on matchup or don't even bother. If he was facing any other player I would accordingly write this match off as completely as dependent on mu-fishing (an art that Levi is unsurpassed in, to be fair), but trash and tko are the only team that has struggled this snake more than Kingler. I felt kind of sorry for them the first few weeks as both of them were out of touch with the meta and had little time to acclimate, but it's now week 6 and trash brought this last week:

We are now half way through the tour and this team is if anything worse than the ones they were bringing the first couple weeks. I think that the pair of tko and trash are suffering from motivation issues, and while I think that trash does have the ability to turn it around if he really tries to learn the meta it wouldn't happen soon enough to matter this week. I have faith in Levi to carry even Kingler to a decent record now that they're finally just MUing people, so solid edge to him.

BurntZebra vs Osh
This is probably the most out of line predict in this post considering the difference of these two on the sheet, but I really don't think that the records are representative of the skills of either of these players. Osh may have one of the best records, but the individual games that that record consists of aren't particularly impressive. His win against Kingler was ensured by incredible hax early in the game, his win against myself came down to a speed tie, his win against Zorodark had Zoro using the questionable team I screenshotted above, and his win against London wasn't particularly impressive because London isn't particularly impressive. His only loss against Jake consisted of him bringing a terrible team and Jake cruising to a win despite some questionable plays. His play, while solid, hasn't been as good as his record would suggest and his teams haven't been consistent at all. Zebra has had some blips in some matches (most notably choking out a probable win against ZoroDark), but I think that his losses were much closer (or largely from matchup) and that his wins were more impressive. I think that Zebra will bring a better team and the gulf in playing ability is not nearly enough for him to not have an advantage from that. Slight edge to Zebra.

London13 vs LilyAC
I think that from what we've seen so far its safe to say that London is the worst team builder in this tournament (well, except for Kingler, but that's an impossible standard). During LCPL he was running basically the same 3-mon defensive core every single week, which is fine in a smaller tournament but you'd think before coming into the hardest LC tournament of the year he'd think "hmmm.... maybe I shouldn't run the same easily CTd defensive core every single week." His first two weeks seem to indicate that this never occurred to him and when Luthier CTd him week 2 even Luthier playing like complete dogshit couldn't save his self-imposed terrible matchup. Obviously after that match against Luthier he was forced to branch out, but if this team:

is what branching out looks like for him this dude is gonna have one long snake LOL.

Lily has seemingly recovered from her disastrous debut against Jake, a game that showed her pretty convincingly that bringing standard boring teams is not the way to go at this level (I guess her playing terribly helped Jake a bit too). She's positive now, but I don't think she's had the cleanest of runs so far in terms of play, with one of her wins coming from terrible hax, another coming from a matchup win, and her only win from play alone being against the only 0-5 team. Her last and most convincing loss came from Levi nailing her on matchup (munchlax seems to be the way to go against her if her games against Luthier and Kingler are any indication), but London of all people is not going to be able to find the good matchup that gave her trouble in those two games. London has probably been playing slightly better, but just off the massive gulf in prep Lily is the obvious choice here.

jake I'm coming for you, the Bushmasters are winning this thing

 

[Kingler]

Work with levi once, be called a matchup winner for life; sigh...

Shrug vs Luthier - he's been starting for the entire time, and shrug has been out of this for a while imo

BurntZebra vs Osh - I think he's the best LCer in the pool, slight edge

London13 vs LilyAC - as the only person this week who bolds London probably (maybe other than shake), think his play has flown under the radar. Getting the right matchup might be an issue, but an even matchup and I'm taking him. Close game though.

Jake vs tazz - experience, also think he's played better overall and I value that highly

 

[taranteeeno]

K I’ll stop begging people to post in this thread and write my own predictions.

Shrug vs Luthier - I think just looking at the sheet you’d have to go with Luthier because he’s been starting all season and has looked pretty good despite a game or two. On top of this, he has managed to get some solid match-ups vs players like Lily who are known for snagging the right match-up. I will say that it really can’t be overlooked that Shrug is basically Luthier’s dad and when Shrug is on point, he is one of the most aggressive, mind-reading players in LC. I wouldn’t be surprised if LCPL8 Finals Shrug shows up like an alcoholic dad who’s been out all night and beats his son down in the living room that is Stours server.

trash vs Kingler12345 - Things were looking pretty grim for Kingler going into Week 5 0-4 and up against a player in Lily who seemed to be snowballing in momentum. Then, he shows up with a wild ass team winning a wild ass game and stealing my heart by bringing BJ Hex Gastly, a relic from early 2018 meta LOL. I don’t know what the fuck happened, but it was fun to watch. We might even see him win not one but TWO GAMES this Snake when he goes up against unmotivated trash. Lindworms LC has been disastrous as predicted, but there was hope in the preseason that maybe trash would get back into the meta and help tko net some positive matchups during the season. Nope, none of that. In fact, I’m pretty sure some random sent trash the team he used last week on stours. Could be wrong! You know me, I’ll believe anything I hear. Anyway, trash hasn’t played that bad imo and has had some close matches + unfortunate luck. I’ll go with Kingler for this as long as levi concocts some unholy shit again, otherwise it’s a coinflip for me. Sorry dad!

BurntZebra vs Osh - Hmm this is a tough one. Zebraman has struggled to make his mark as one of the best in the pool despite being ranked #2 in the prestigious Corporal Levi PR’s . I think his teams have been mostly fine, but he’s had a couple of negative MUs and he’s also had some notable misplays. Osh, on the other hand, has had a triumphant return to LC going 4-1 so far and seasoning the competition with a fair bit of salt due to some luck or speed ties or just winning vs lesser opponents or bringing teams tazz doesn’t like LOL who knows. From what I’ve seen, the builds have been a little inconsistent but still successful. I personally liked the bird spam he brought last week although I can’t decide if Electrium Staryu is just total jank or not. I’ll probably go with Osh on this in a sort of 51-49 match-up because I do think Zebra is capable of winning this. Regardless, BZ has won all the matches he was expected to and lost all the ones he needed to be considered the top dawg in this pool, so I’ll just settle for the one who looks better on the sheet.

London13 vs LilyAC - elo m8 this week we have two blokes havin at it in some twee fisticuffs. Last time I saw em engage in a bit of argy-bargy, London gave Lily a kicking and blimey was I surprised. I think London has played awright but brought a bollocks team last week. Been pretty chuffed about Lily’s snake and yknow even if she did give the ol crab his first win, I reckon she’ll stay on course and win in a nice one, really.

jake vs tazz - I’m gonna skip explaining this one since I’m tazz’s “support” but I hope it’s a good, clean match!

 

[Shrug]

A TOTALLY SCIENTIFIC, ACCURATE, VEGAS-BEATING MODEL FOR PREDICTING POKEMON GAMES (google image searching each players name as-is, taking the third image and predicting based on which picture i think would win in a fight)

trash v kingler12345

vs

trash is represented by a regular-sized plastic top-open garbage can. kingler is represented by this absolutely heinous youtube thumbnail of an ru seasonal r2 matchup with a user called hurtadoo. as someone who has used that exact type of garbage can before, i recommend taking it out early and often -- if you go even three minutes over when you're supposed to make contact with it it will make you want to kill yourself. i clicked through on the kingler thumbnail and skimmed to the end of his games. kingler suffered an ignominious defeat in r2 of ru seasonal. that would be more respectable if it was a difficult tier like lc, uu, nu, gen 5 ou, lc uu, pu, ou, monocolour, [voice fades out of audible range for like 4 minutes but im clearly continuing to speak], NFE, dpp lc, or ubers, but i mastered ru in the ps room for it with natural talent and tko back in 2015 and have been pressuring my managers to let me in with no success thus far. what's more, kingler brought both screens and webs to this ru seasonal set like an absolute pedophile. their pokemon playstyle jives well with their image representations -- both should want to get out front early and play downhill, because theyre quite good at controlling games when theyve cemented a solid position in the opening. but i wouldnt want to be at the foot of a slope with that garbage can full of trash's teams for the past 3/4 of a year or the clutter of that screenshot rolling at me w/ pace. first one's heavier.

BurntZebra v Osh

vs.

zebra is unfortunately a regular human woman who posts tweets w the handle "burntzebra". osh appears to be a town in kyrgystan and also a dish native to that region. the online zebra appears to be a normal woman who makes low-engagement posts about living in england, the fucking awful sports they like there, her family, etc, which raises the question as to why she decided on the actually quite disturbing image of a zebra holocaust as her @ (and also why our own burntzebra did so). i cant decide if the dish presented in that image is good or bad, it has a definite pasta + meat + some spice vibe which i appreciate but there appears to be a chaotic spread of the items on the plate that suggests a violent, bad-vibes food. as for the game, i cant give either of these dudes advice on playing seeing as i am a mere debutante this week, but i can give mrs burnt zebra some posting advice to boost her engagement: fewer sincereposts that are quote tweets of things you approved of in general UK life, more "ironic" posts where you talk about killing yourself, more creating satirical characters tomake fun of posters who both left this website to join the Jesus is zaddy glee club and then also accidentally-on-purpose abbreviate it to every woman they dm, talk about albums from the 2000s despite the fact that no one listened to music during the long 10-year recovery from 9/11, and so on. Osh -- all of the player, who has been splendid thus far; the food, which is again chaotic; and the place, which has real "CIA site with powersaws and drills" energy -- is scary, though, so im bolding him.

London13 v LilyAC

vs.

well fuck. absolute banger of a picture mu. people from london are not to be underestimated. they subjugated the world, remember, powered by some flight logs energy and a steadfast demand for spices they under no circumstances would add to any of their food. lilyac appears to also be a band full of sweedish goth perverts -- i didnt click through for fear of having my FBI watchlist status upgraded to "high priority". london's picture takes a thousand-foot (approx) view much like tazz and others have of his teams, whether this has set in or not. the lilyac band is very marilyn manson behind-the-times, and though lily's team shtick may not be two decades old it may not be on the cutting edge of this wretched soft meta the way it was a month or two ago -- this game moves fast. i initially favored lily but was persuaded to change by the images. never underestimate the ability of the british to adapt, or to boot the absolute living shit out of anyone who gives off the slightest hint of freakiness (freakiness being reserved, of course, for locker rooms at their goody-goody boys schools).

jake v tazz

vs.

nestled within fields of dissimilar images came these two. jakes was heavy on jake paul, and most tazzes appear to be cars aside from this absolute unit here. the jake dog seems like it's from a show for 8 year old girls that jac likes for some inexplicable reason, while i think the tazz guy is a pro wrestler, though in the picture he looks like he's watching his wife get fucked on the set of Deal or No Deal. (scene: deal or no deal set. guy's playing the game [idk how it works] and opens the suitcase to say "you get to pipe down one member of the audience". he picks some lady, a curvy 8 with bangs, and starts absolutely going to town on her on top of a bunch of money like that scene from wolf of wall street. howie mandel sheds his lifelong germaphobia to join in. then, from the shadow, emerges: tazz). like the surprise from the images, this game is hard to predict because of solid plays and a diverse set of builds on both sides, but im going tazz to carry on the Huckabee tradition of large southern oaf manchildren killing dogs and getting away with it.

 

[taranteeeno]

>> Snake LC Week 7 Predictions here <<

The form will stay open for about 48 hours from this post, and games played before this closes won't be included.​

 

[taranteeeno]

>> Snake LC Week 8 Predictions here <<

The form will stay open for about 48 hours from this post, and games played before this closes won't be included.​

 

[taranteeeno]

>> Snake LC Week 9 Predictions here <<

The form will stay open for about 48 hours from this post, and games played before this closes won't be included.​

 

[0NI]

i curse u osh

 

[taranteeeno]

>> Snake LC Semi-Finals Predictions here <<

The form will stay open for about 48 hours from this post, and games played before this closes won't be included.​

 

[taranteeeno]

>> Snake LC Finals Predictions here <<

The form will stay open for about 48 hours from this post, and games played before this closes won't be included.​

 

[taranteeeno]

Big thank you to everyone who participated in the Snake LC Predictions Tour! With the tour finally over, we have a surprising outcome. There are two winners!

Tied for first place with 450 points: Coconut and trace!

The enormous $10 prize will be split between them and they both will get the coveted Snake LC Prediction Tour Winner role in the LC Discord.

 

[jake]

despite the bitter end, i'm really happy with how this snake went. this was my best team tour performance by a good amount, surpassing my SPL 4 run. (oh my god. that was seven years ago. i need to stop playing this game, dude.)

i want to give a specific shoutout to Sken and Merritt for consistently being my test buddies week in and week out, and for tko for tons of ideas and feedback. i also appreciate the handful of games i got from other folks, and the tests i got from my teammates. i had TONS of team support, which i never really expected as the sole drafted LC player on my team. Mana and Chaitanya both played games against me weekly (sorry i never ended up using scarf shellder mana), and ABR was constantly in the channel reminding me that staryu is the best pokemon in SM LC. (it's definitely top 5 in my books.)

anyway, as a sort of goodbye to SM LC as SS LC is just around the corner, here are all of my teams. i added thoughts on how and why i built them, and links to the games i used them in & my thought processes in those games. i hope this is valuable for anyone who wants to learn or who just likes reading LC stuff.

vs LilyAC (week 1, win)

team building

team was initially built around the concept of fast rockium z mudbray luring vullaby for timb & scarf gastly. staryu was twave, vulla bb/knock/turn/tect with jolly. thanks to @ sken for the initial idea -- he killed it with support this tour. after a lot of playtesting, i changed around a bunch of sets because i was unsatisfied with how well the team handled some threats. the team was super reliant on ferroseed to handle a lot of things, and i was too susceptible to a good double and losing my answer to a lot of stuff (snivy, abra, etc) to a trapped or pressured ferro. i swapped dgleam for psychic on gastly (thanks merritt) and ended up dropping mudbray for the better horse.

i was really happy with how this team played. biggest weakness was electrics, especially scarf mag, since i had no elec immunes. (also sdef frillish -- shoutouts the like 4 people i tested this team against who used it in a row). i ended up going into the game with this team despite the electric weakness because i felt like the only way i would be losing to elecs would be if i was being consistently outplayed.

game link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-454150

in the game, there were a few weird turns. i led pony because it had the best matchup; i suspected z-vull and vull was a solid lead vs my team, so i didn't want to lead my own (i don't kill with zbb w/o prior dmg). i stayed in turn 2 for a couple reasons: going ferro was an incredible momentum suck, i didn't expect lily to ever click hydro on that turn, and catching mienfoo with a wisp would have been just incredible for my position. on turns 3 and 4, i did a few pivots that looked strange, but it was mostly to scout the moveset on staryu. i was 95% sure it was an all-out attacker set on staryu from team preview, but going staryu > ferro allowed me to scout for tbolt & get up rocks against foongus if she wasn't tbolt star.

i think going hard gastly was my best play. sub was the most dangerous move lily couldve had there and ferro was too valuable after i scouted star set to sack to a hjk. lily also used a lot of subsd acro before, so gastly comfortably tanked acro and forced it out if i needed. afterwards i was actually a little fearful of z fight foo into my vull, but there was no better play and i was still 95% sure it was z-bb vull. bb crit helped in that i didnt need to hit two waves vs pawn, and once pawn was low i had basically two kills lined up with z-bb. crit mattered vs foong (it was a 1/16 roll to kill) but i think i was in a great position with low HP foong, esp since she was eviolite dig.

onto luthier. -

vs Luthier (week 2, win)

team building

i was pretty set on bringing guts BU timb no matter what he brought here. he had been super heavy on status move boys and sken CRUSHED me during a test the week before with a BU timb squad. i tested all sorts of variants, including an elekid version, but after looking through luthier's typical teams i felt like birdspam with timb would be too overwhelming for him to handle. there were a good number of teambuilding cycles i went through, but i was ultimately really satisfied with this team.

couple thoughts on the weird choices: roar is the fourth on onix. it helps some vs shellder, as 14 speed can be terrifying esp if it gets to set up on pursuit-locked doduo. i also really really really loved the idea of roaring out a wishing spritzee, which is dangerous vs this team, and it's insurance in case he tried to cheese me and bring shellos. ran the same vull with a slightly different (more optimized, for this team, i think) spread. also chose to use psychic > covet on spritzee specifically because i struggled some vs gastly, and because i didn't have IP on timb to chip foongus if he had it.

game link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-455227

i was so worried about how i wanted to play the lead. doduo had the best matchup by far, but i was very worried about the potential for sash surskit. they almost never run ice beam, but the threat of losing my best pokemon in this matchup turn one made it really hard to click knock. i knew 95% from team layout that he was sturdyjuice onix because for some reason people like to use it with webs, so i was really comfortable with clicking knock (it 2hkoed skit too).

(also, scouted hp fire skit by pivoting ferro > spritzee).

i made several decisions working backwards off of luth's typical mindset of punishing what he sees as the correct play from me. the spritzee turns were extremely prominent bc of that -- i lived lo sludge bomb 15/16 times, and switching vs abragast is, more often than not, really stupid and will lose you the game. even if he subbed, the chip damage would prove essential for lining up a timb endgame, which is one of the most reliable ways to win games in lc. those turns went extremely well for me.

luth had to play extremely hard around vullaby in the endgame because if i caught his pikipek on any non-bb move i 6-0'd (and even using bb on vull forces him to sack something to go dig and sucker and then some combo of my pkmn wins). same deal with onix, who actually wins automatically if he clicks rock blast. at the same time, i don't need to make anything other than safe plays because my position was so good here. his doubles were good to position abra, but as soon as he killed something with it i had doduo in back to pursuit and clean with timb.

overall, pretty happy with how i played. i think there were a few turns that i could've done something more optimal, but i think i played well enough to win and that i did.

(side note: this team was also featured for team of the week on the facebook page. nice!)

onto teal. -

vs London13 (week 3, loss)

team building

i was SO sad i didn't get to play teal this week. had the gameplan, and the ideas, and the :val: tripped me up some. i'm actually writing this the week afterwards because i'm a little baby and i kind of wanted to forget that this game actually happened.

i cycled around a lot with my builds, struggling to find anything i really liked. london had some heavy tendencies in his LCPL builds -- basically every team followed the structure of vull / fight / rocker / foon or spritz / dig / 19 spe poke, and i really couldn't pin down something that i liked stylistically against him. i ended up with building around scarf bunnelby, but i'm sure there was something better.

i found out later that hp on bunny is more optimal for living timb mach, but i don't think it mattered much in the game. the concept was just to chip and pressure resists between foo and bunny. i tried to keep myself away from using ferro this game, but ultimately ended up tacking it in because i felt really limited building otherwise. i think this vulla set is really meh, at least with this composition of teammates.

perhaps the largest issue is how reliant i was on ferro in the end. it was my only staryu switchin, it was my means of handling spritzee, it was half of my abra check, it was my only gastly switchin. bunnelby is a challenge to build around, but i'm sure there was a better team i could have brought here.

game link & thoughts

as far as the game itself goes, i made a ton of misplays, i think. the biggest was forgetting my avatar.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-456009

the early game was OK, but i really fell behind when he whipped out the mudbray. honestly, my team was way too weak to the donkey -- weak enough that the team should have been reworked instead of playing that day. i took a lot of time to think about the best way to handle it without losing as many pieces as i did, and i'm relatively satisfied with how i played my foo against it, given how much work it put in.

at the same time, i played super passively and gave it the opening to come back in and get another KO. the rest of this game was playing off of my back foot, and i never really felt comfortable enough to get back into the game.

i think the truly pivotal turn this game was turn 34. i had scarf bun, full health, in a position where it could KO every single remaining member of his team. mach was a high roll to KO my bunny from fully because i was a poor spread, and i felt like he was certain to click it given his play to that point (and so i wanted to go hard pony, hoping for the 30% burn chance so i didn't have to worry about trying to win the mach roll). you have no idea how much my gut made me want to stay in regardless, though, and in retrospect i wish i would've. that was the closest point of the game in which i could have still pulled out a win.

alas, i got rolled, and served up some light justice after i was probably getting too big for my britches. had to go back to ground zero for the next week, though.

onto osh. -

vs Osh (week 4, win)

team building

by the way, this is stupid but i alphabetize all of my pokemon before i play a tourney game. it helps me avoid giving information away based on my team layout (i usually stick whatever i'm building around in the first slot) and i like it more than completely randomizing because i keep a level of consistency. you'll also notice that my nicknames are universal among all pokemon, mostly for the same reasons. shoutouts king roro for showing me how great pokemon card names are -- even if there aren't any good ones for that pokemon, i can pretty easily come up with something similar in quality (i really like gravel engine for mudbray).

i started this build a lot like my london week in that i couldn't really settle for what i wanted to use. i initially wanted to use timburr + diglett + mareanie because it felt like a solid core. against osh, it was extremely important for me to have a super consistent fight resist. i don't often use one, and when i do, it's usually susceptible to lures. (these weeks of spritzee have been pretty out of the ordinary for me.) i also wanted to double down on magnemite checks because i think it's the most outstanding weakness i've had in building so far, mostly due to the fact that i had used 0 diglett previously.

a few early builds flopped, though. i couldn't find 3 pokemon that finished the team in a way that i was satisfied with, so i ended up scrapping some of the pieces i had. i ended up picking snivy. personally, i think snivy SUCKS, but it trended really well against a lot of osh builds. a lot of folks on smogtours noticed that my final build looked really weak to foongus, and to an extent, it was.

as stupid as it sounds, the heavy weakness was kind of intentional -- it makes the line of play for my opponent pretty linear, and it makes the number of chip moves and lure moves i have that much more prevalent. it's a different take on an "overload" concept, like fightspam or birdspam, where you try to wear down a handful of specific checks by using pokemon that share counters. i think a flawlessly played foongus could definitely beat the team, but i was counting on being able to win a few turns in the game.

i think the biggest weakness of the team is the lack of early game presence. i don't have a lot of true breaking potential here, so i was reliant on staryu looking very scary and hopefully pushing knocks with timburr and snivy. it was scary not bringing vulla but i think it turned out well.

game link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-457493

thankfully, i remembered my avatar this week. i was pretty happy with the matchup, and i was beyond pleased with how the first few turns went. chipping vullaby and timburr was huge for my own timburr to win the endgame. i talked about it with my team afterwards and i think using EQ turn 7 was a misplay; without foongus i autowin with snivy, so there was never a chance that he would stay in and there was no other switch-in. it cost me rocks that game, which stunk.

i preserved mudbray to deter him from clicking volt switch with magnemite. the knock off play was the safest option on a hard turn. there was almost no chance of him staying in, but pursuit doesn't 2hko while flash cannon does, and i had a comfortable lead that i didn't want to risk giving up. on turn 14, everyone in the universe knew i clicked psychic. spritzee was not particularly useful at that point, and taking flash cannon damage on anything else would be silly. i was reluctant to click protect because it gave osh a chance to get regenerator hp on foongus.

i'm happy with how i played against the tirtouga. osh's team was set up to look like tirt was the rocker, and i suppose it might've been, but knocking was ALWAYS my play there. bar an earthquake, nothing that normal tirt sets run KOed pawn from there, and i was particularly afraid of a bj shell smash set because it put a ton of pressure on me. scarf pawn and +2 tirt would have been a tie (and no way does he run jet after he clicked liquidation on my switchout), so that was a secondary option to handle it if mach didn't KO.

the only genuine misplay i had that game was not clicking leaf storm turn 21. i did a good job keeping the head in the game and trying not to lock into one win track all the way until that turn, where i lost my mind and worried over potential leaf storm misses and wanting to keep foong in ice punch range for timb. from there, i just played it out like i should've. i was a little afraid of memento dig in the end, but it didn't seem to be the case.

onto burntzebra. -

vs BurntZebra (week 5, win)

team building

i love a lot of star teams -- i played a test game against him last snake where we straight up brought the same webs to the test. with that in mind, i decided relatively early on that i was going to out-offense star and burntzebra. this team went through very few iterations in comparison to a lot of my other builds. i was inspired by lily's web team the week before and built dewpider webs. picked dewpider because it doesn't suck like surskit does and because spinarak is a "utility" webber that doesn't accomplish anything. dewpider is useful pre-web and excellent post-web, as it outruns everything short of elekid/diglett/scarfers after the web is up and hits like a nuke.

i was also inspired by an earlier osh team for the gastly. sub is super overlooked atm, and it was crucial in my game vs bz. i also almost never use hp fighting or tbolt on my gastlys, so they worked out really well in the game. i had elekid over abra in the initial build because i wanted the sleep immune and because i felt elekid would do well vs his style of teams, but after a few tests elekid was really meh and i wanted the pressure that abra creates. it was an easy flip. i also picked sd pawn because he used 1 fighting type over 4 games and i wanted it to be an option if he didn't bring another fight.

otherwise, pretty simple webs.

game link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-458466

i played under Zebraiken to truly create the battle of the zebras. i was pretty happy with my earlygame, though turn 5 was a play to discuss. i surfed that turn for 2 reasons: first, it nets a kill on anything other than foongus, and second, i believed bz to be the hp fight defog vulla variant. given the context of his team and my general lack of safeguards against boosted vulls, i felt the surf was likely to be the stronger play. i think web also would have been OK.

i stayed in turn 6 because i'm a little baby and didn't want to risk anything. also because an abra with a sub was a mega threat -- i clicked surf here 100 times out of 100. also, my vull didn't KO, and my pawniard plays had to be awkward to force it out. this is a turn where i could have been more aggro -- preserving this means gastly absolutely wins lategame.

the turn 7 and 8 plays were, uh, the weirdest in the game for me. i had no idea what the abra set was, and abra was mad threatening to me. i sent pawniard because i felt like he had energy ball, as his team struggled decently against a stacked-up mudbray. i clicked iron head because i felt that going timburr was a comfortable choice for him. i clicked iron head again because i'm dumb and didn't want to risk him going timburr on my sucker. i lost pawniard for that one, but then felt reasonably comfortable he would not be psychic / hp fight / protect and eball, so i sent mudbray.

i won't pretend to know the exact thought that he had as far as sacking abra, but as soon as he did, i was ecstatic because gastly straight-up won. i was a little fearful of dodging his rock blast and EQing into an eviolite onix, but i was pretty sure he was Z. going vullaby might have been an objectively better play, though fsr i wanted to conserve it because it beat the rest of his team. all i really needed to do here was play to my outs, and i luckily made the right play and got behind a sub on the spore turn.

onto tazz. -

vs tazz (week 6, win)

team building

from here on out, i didn't have the time to get to writing these weekly. these are all written post-snake 3, so forgive me if i don't remember exactly why i picked one option over another.

the first thought we had was that tazz had been really meticulous to this point. with his commentary on team quality and in the lc casts prior, i felt comfortable that he was going to prepare something for what i had been bringing, and i wanted to do something different or unexpected.

i really REALLY wanted to bring scarf timburr. with max spe + jolly it hits 21, and there are tons of mons that you can lure and screw over with very fast timburr -- abra, gastly, doduo, the gang. it was really hard to build around, though, and i never ended up using it. shortly after realizing that that was a horrible idea and i shouldn't do it, i moved onto my next horrible idea and tried to build around nascar np croagunk -- particularly the poisonium z variant. someday he'll be good, too, but he was also scrapped.

after some discussion, abr and sken and i settled on just abra + diglett + mareanie. we wanted to run some kind of counter trap dig, and went for scarf. the pieces sort of fell into place from there, and it ended up becoming a team that looked a decent amount different from what i had been using. i also used osh's cb mienfoo team that he used against zorodark as a template, changing a few mons and sets to make it more for my purposes.

replay link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-460384

the vullaby switch on turn 3 was ultrabad. might've been the worst play i made in the game, risking an unnecessary burn. it did put me in a great position for handling the pawn, but if he burned me he could have comfortably stayed in with mareanie, and the game would have been SIGNIFICANTLY harder. i probably would have lost this game on that turn if he burned, so that was just a really abhorrent play. lucky for me that it worked out, however.

i was in a good position after forcing a KO with my z-move. i cannot remember exactly why i pivoted to diglett and again think that it was a misplay (i think i was trying to be fancy about pivoting into mareanie, and also fearful of z-moves). a few of my pokemon were not valuable at this point: notably, ferroseed. fortunately, i didn't have to backtrack too hard, sacking ferro afterwards.

the following turn where i pivoted out mareanie was a 50/50ish turn. he could have subbed again and probably won on my switch, but if i broke the sub staryu was trappable by dig. (and dig is great in this endgame, depending on what his own dig set is.)

i wanted SO SO badly to immediately pivot into diglett when he first brought mareanie in, but i had no balls. we then played for many turns deciding who was going to make the diglett switch first and i finally nabbed it on a recover turn, then cleaned from there.

reviewing the game now, this might've been the worst game that i played overall. lots of opportunities to play it better and i got bailed out. it's a good one to learn from.

onto shrug. -

vs Shrug (week 7, win)

team building

i went sporeless on the foong because i noticed that shrug liked using ferrospritz almost as much as i did. it was important for me to bring something that could "break bulky". i decided very quickly that i wanted to use mudbray or z-earthquake diglett against shrug because i felt both were very strong against his preferred kinds of teams (screech is also for spritzee). i cobbled together an early version with cm spritzee of my own, but we ended up cutting it because it didn't fit the momentum of the team. instead, staryu came in. i had water + psychic coverage until the 11th hour before the game and then switched to tbolt / ice beam... which both helped and hurt me in the final game, as we'll see. i also opted for scarf vull because i wanted to have extra insurance against webs, and because i like scarf WA vull.

sorry there's not a lot here -- most of the conversation in the lc chat this week was just some back and forth on the above thoughts, with nothing else in particular. i wish i had the time to be constantly updating these as we went through the season. i'll try to do so for SPL!

replay link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-461266

you might be surprised, but i did expect mirror coat on the snivy set on turn 4. i still felt comfortable going for a sludge bomb there because snivy was such an overwhelming threat, and because checking snivy was all that foongus was really good for (and making another play could prove extremely fatal for my gameplan). i could follow it up with staryu or vullaby to force a kill what i didn't expect was exactly how fat the snivy was going to be -- it was nearly max/max, i think. the poison helped confirm a kill the following turn.

i'm happy with the decision to stay in on turn 6. i felt in my gut he would always hp grass there because he wouldn't get another chance to have the vulla be at +2. worst case was that i could just go timburr and mach afterwards, so i'd get to keep my onix.

he made a great couple of pivots after, though i comfortably got my star in on the mare. i hydro pumped on that turn because he was 100% never ever ever going to stay in and risk losing to timburr, so i could catch a potential cheeky diglett or pawn on a tbolt. the abra double was also great by him, as if i caught any move from his pawniard, onix swept.

not clicking z-eq when we were dig vs dig on turn 17 was an incredible lack of foresight on my part at the end. i assumed he would be scarf diglett, actually, and my overclocked brain was thinking that if i somehow lived i wanted to preserve the z-move for the mareanie. (i didn't need to.) thankfully, i called the ensuing staryu-vs-mareanie-and-low-diglett turns OK. this is where the staryu set change sucked; i didn't have psychic to cover both options and autowin the game. i still was very heavily favored, i think, but there couldve been some bullshit or an awful choke by me to lose the game.

my team was super mad i didn't hydro, but the stupid mareanie lived, dude. also, hydro sucks and i would never forgive myself if i lost this game on risking a hydro miss if i didn't have to.

taipans locked playoffs here! yes!

onto tko. -

vs tko (week 8, win)

team building

this is by far the worst team that i built and used. not gonna make any apologies for it. probably not even gonna talk about it.

ok i lied i'll talk about it, almost exclusively because sisyphus age is my favorite nickname that i came up with this season. this monstrosity came about for one reason: i wanted to use resttalk mudbray.

other reasons that this team was created: i felt like hazards would be a good matchup. i wanted to use frillish even though it sucks because i kept talking trash about it and i wanted people to feel like they couldn't get a vibe for the kinds of teams i used. this game wasn't important for us (though it was important for my record). i thought the fast boom ferro would be fun. i was starting to get burned out on making teams. that's about it.

honestly, it just kind of slipped through the radar because we were on a high of doing so well. i was, too.

replay link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-462008

the leaf storm miss turn 2 "mattered" but also didn't matter. i was perfectly willing to sacrifice frillish to snivy to get rid of it for the donkey, and frill lived that LS in 15/16 rolls iirc. don't ask me about turn 6. ok you can ask me about turn 6 but only because i thought it was going to be scarf mag for some ungodly reason.

i deserved to lose this game about 450 times over but mudbray clutched. thank god for mudbray. and thank god for nice sleep talk rolls. i would have outrun the mare anyway because i have the best donkey spread known to mankind but mudbray is god incarnate.

onto kingler12345. -

vs Kingler12345 (week 9, loss)

team building

i reused the team i used vs tazz here, with iron defense mare > knock. i felt like iron defense was pretty good against kingler on average, and i wanted to reuse a team here no matter what. not worth revealing anything to playoff teams, and worth adding the idea that i wasn't against reusing something that i'd already used (especially since most of my teams were unique from week to week).

replay link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-462619

i made a few mistakes throughout this one. the crit brave bird on the mudbray sucked turn 2, but i should have likely made a different play there always (i like clicking z-brave bird there -- i don't think he stays in with vullaby ever, and worst case is that i remove his vullaby and waste my z. also extremely unlikely he goes to mag, as both sets get smacked by my vull.)

i was comfortable allowing magnemite to come in on ferro in exchange for rocks, but i thought it was scarf. the magnemite set was a great pick vs me and forced me to give up 2 pokemon. i knew it was z-tbolt as soon as he subbed, but there wasn't really any other option than to drop timburr. however, turn 8 i made the worst play: hard diglett. this enabled kingler to defog. i should have always gone abra, allowing me to keep my hazards. i made this play because i mentally defaulted into only one win condition: iron defense mareanie. i wanted to trap the magnemite to ensure that it could be a possibility, and didn't think about the long term.

from there, the game just kind of played out. i probably always lost even despite the choke at the end (should've clicked scald) because i had less recovers than his mareanie, and he probably had knock. glad that i made the meme dream come alive, at least, but i was very upset i didn't win out.

we eliminated the cobras here, and went on to face the astrotias in semifinals.

onto shrug. -

vs Shrug (semifinals, win)

team building

this is my favorite team that i built all season. i decided during week 7 that my plan for playoffs was always going to be webs and birdspam. i felt like both would have good matchups, and i felt confident that i could beat anyone using either. i actually didn't start this team with webs -- i wanted to bring abragast balance, as suggested by tko in my pms. after many different iterations, i ended up going back to webs, but i wanted to build a team that was functional without them if need be. tko also sent me a goony surskit + scarf dewpider team in my pms a week or two before, and i decided i wanted to use scarf dewpider. almost every response to dewpider just involves a faster pokemon trying to ohko it, and crushing vullaby, onix, doduo, and gastly would be so worthwhile.

i also doubled down with scarf vullaby. not only would he never expect either to be scarfed on webs, but it meant that i basically autowon a webs mirror. scarf vullaby actually won both of the semis games btw. it's not the worst viable vullaby set by far, you dirty naysayers.

psychic terrain abra was a late addition, but it was a cool pick bc it would have won games in a few situations. the other option was energy ball, but we decided to ride with psychic terrain for the cool factor.

replay link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-464059

i think this was also one of the games i played best all season. i got up rocks, identified that he was NP vulla and didn't enable it, and got two kills with my Sneaky Set. i possibly should have set webs on the ponyta turn, but without knowing his set at the time, i could've been in a bad place against it. it's important to note he didn't go ferro because he didn't think i was scarf and i would have just set webs there and won.

it might have been better for me to go a different pokemon over abra. i could have comfortably uturned with vullaby, actually, and forced a better situation for myself. abra wasn't bad but it enabled him to trap with diglett, which gave me less options in the endgame. turn 13 i should have pivoted into onix and boomed right away. i feared psychic spritzee which is why i didn't go hard gastly, but onix was safe. enabling the cm gave me the biggest OH I FUCKED UP goosebumps but i resettled and played into it ok. the poison sealed the deal, but i think i had a comfortable advantage even if gastly got trapped in the end.

onto luthier. -

vs Luthier (finals, loss)

team building

if i'm honest, i don't want to sit and think on this one too long. i had a lot of shit going on the last week, and we ended up building a few teams the night before before finally settling on this. we tried mag builds, we tried a cool z-diglett + pjab timburr build (which would have won now that i think about it...), we thought about birdspam, and i even built a meowth team. finally settled on a boosting spritzee team because we felt it'd be consistently good against luthier. wanted to have scarf foo as a cleaner. i played a few games with it and felt comfortable i could win.

replay link & thoughts

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-465074

lots of turns i regret, lots of turns i am still thinking about. i was SO fucking close to clicking rock blast on turn 5. so close but i wussed out. and i blew up onix early on the timb, thinking i'd get to pressure with spritzee early. maybe i should've gone vull first. happy with letting star eat the z-bb, but i knew the stupid lax was going to be facade so why did i scald when my best counterplay was sleeping it or beating it through vull.

i clicked hp grass on the lax because i thought he'd go onix. clicked again because i thought he'd go onix and not risk eating a knock on spritzee. stayed in to knock because i thought he could have assumed i was scarf vull and that it was a free wish for him. moonblast on turn 23 lost me the game. it was a great play by him, to be sure, but i won that game with foo (and also with vull) if i sludged that turn too. we were so close to getting the tie, man.

it was a good game, but lingering regrets are gonna taint it for me. alas.

onto spl. -

 

[Luthier]

Alright since nobody really wants to get this going, I guess I'll just be the first one to do it. Obviously before i get started, keep in mind that some of these teams aren't for consistent use and that should be kept in mind when youre really stealing anyone's snake teams - they are built for specific people with specific intentions and simply using those teams to ladder is just generally not a smart idea. That being said, I'm gonna hop right in and show you what i got :o.

Week 1 - Kingler12345

Not much to really go off here. When i began to scout kingler, I had no idea what to do. His only replays were from LCPL and all of his teams belonged to star. And with star one the serpents and kingler on the cobras, I had no idea what interaction was going on. So I just said screw it and started to play around with certain mons and sets that would be able to counterteam standard and stuff of the sort. I used the set inspired by LilyAC and I thought it was great when paired with frillish and diglett. The mienfoo set destroys slower teams and then diglett + frilish destroys the 19 speeders and gastly, which are the 2 main concerns to the mienfoo set. Although the mienfoo set didnt get to flex too much in the snake game, it was still a good bring. Also frillish is actually pretty good, i would argue. Don't pay attention to what jake says about it lul. I was forced to run pawn here as the rocker since I completely lacked gastbra answers. Fril + foongus can handle webs pretty well so I wasn't completely scared of that and then fril can somewhat handle cheese. But I think this team was near the top of my creativity. You will see that slowly over the course of this snake that my creativity died down, but I def think this team is good and fun.

Week 2 - Jake

Yea please dont use this team lol. I was just having fun this week and my personal apologies to suapah and Genesis7 for bringing this. It's actually not too bad and it contains everything that a webs team should - deterrence for spinning and defogging. However, people would quickly learn that bringing webs vs jake is not the move. In open I had beat jake which had me pretty confident about this game. But after seeing him use corebreaker week 1, I had no idea if his meta knowledge had changed or not. So I stuck to something I was comfortable with, which was webs. Looking back I had made some other things that I shouldve stuck with - bleh hindsight 5050. Either way its a super fun team to play with. The sets all have interesting purposes but yea. Just dont play against scarf pursuit doduo and you're chilling lol

Week 3 - Lily

As you guys can see here, I made a couple of versions for Lily. I just found out about bulk up rufflet when i was playing around with some random sets. I don't remember who it was but it might've been Fille. Not sure... but either way I found this super cool wincon and it paired like.... insanely well with munchlax. We can get to the munchlax discussion later, but i think that rufflet + munchlax is an insane combo because the only things that beat BU rufflet once its at +1 are special attacks and then crits from onix and whatnot. And the mon that beats every single 19 speeder and special attacker? yup. So while scouting for lily, i was expecting the pony star + pawn/bray type stuff that she loves to bring. In the end, the match up was really nice. Unfortunate way that it had to end, but I think this really set the tone for munchlax. truly is a shame that its doubted in SM cuz I think it should def be up there as one of the best anti-meta mons right now.

Week 4 - London

oh my GOD this week was so bad. It was so whack cuz i won on preview. Like london played better than me the entire match but all I had to do was bring the perfect mon. The moment i started prepping for london, I knew I was bringing clamperl with HP fire tect. It was just a matter of what exactly I was going to pair with it. Looking back, there is only 1 real change id make to the team. The foongus should be HP fire for sure. Ferroseed are incredibly annoying to get the initial break on for this team. Luckily I managed to just avoid it by playing around it and not let it hazard stack in my game. But i think this week was incredibly important for my season just to validate my prep. I felt like I was losing my ability to prep properly or play in general. Even after nailing the prep on lily, I didn't win the game in real time, which sucked a lot. But that being said, this week also goes to show that you can win your match prior to playing it if you put in the right amount of thought.

Week 5 - Trash

I struggled a lot with prepping for the Lindworms. I wanted to bring some anti cheese stuff which led me to being pretty intent on bringing snivy. I also wanted to bring some sort of strong water type. I had rolled with LO staryu and even dabbled a bit with corphish, but I always found myself being stupid weak to ponyta. So in the end, I threw in the towel and said that I'd bring one of tazz's old teams. So yea, I cannot take any credit for this team, but bringing timburr was also a great idea since timburr is just v good overall and had some p cool synergy with the mareanie and snivy. Not really much to say about the game vs trash. He brought no fighting resist and timb wouldve won if trash didnt get me with the lure.

Week 6 - Shrug

I had a few ideas for shrug, but i ended up rolling with the top most one. Not much to say about it other than the fact that it really lacks knock off users. I was originally running onix but I was forced to use pawn just because i lacked a knock off user. This really came to bite me when Shrug brought NP ID Vull and CM spritz. The pony was made special because it's so great vs onix. a wisp turn into an hp grass kills onix. that really was what made me want to use the set. Obv it killed me later since the Spritz couldnt be touched. Either way, super fun team - please try it out.

Week 7 - Osh

lol

Week 8 - BurntZebra

MAN this team is so much fun. Any bandfoo team is like that tbh. The layout and idea is pretty simple - bandfoo to break. Pawn as rocker cuz i don't wanna simply lose to gastly. Diglett w screech to trap spritzees. Late game NP vull = gg. Staryu to deal w annoying onix and throw off paras. Foongus as fighting resist and snivy deterrence. The foongus is is turbo so it can deal with the incoming timburrs and whatnot. But yea p simple team but its fun and fire.

Week 9 - Tazz

I'm not linking the team cuz it's not within my jurisdiction. I linked the tazz team cuz it's already so damn public. But this team is just all around super solid. Loses to clamperl and webs, but other than that, every single matchup can be outplayed. Ponystar is just a super solid pick in general and im super comfortable with pivoting around it. I didnt bring it all tour and I had no idea what tazz would bring since his team was out. But regardless this team had an insane MU vs tazz and won p handily. Do keep in mind that pony star teams get demolished by shell smashers and tazz was actually thinking about using perl vs me. And if he had done so, I would've gotten 6-0ed lol. dodged a bullet there

Semis - Osh part 2

So I wanted to go back to my routes and bring that super heavy breaker. So I was working around with LO abra and a lot of other random stuff like gastly, ID mareanie, offensive star, etc. I ended up taking that team in the middle. Its super super good. I think its one of my favorite SM teams. If u watch the replay, the game was insane. I clicked too much at the end, but the start of the game was probably the best early game ive played ever in SM. Too bad that I tossed it down the drain, but the goal is to freely click volt switch with magnemite whenever you feel like it without a punish. They go into onix? You have a staryu. They go into diglett and kill you? You reverse trap with your diglett and then LO abra wins. I had to run turbo foongus cuz im so weak to timburr, but another option i used was to click knock into z move with pawn since nobody clicks mach punch with timburr after switching into pawn. So that is something you guys can try. I would say this is a top 3 team from my teambuilder this snake. Super fun and super fire.

Finals - Jake part 2

WOW this team sucks. It is super hard to pilot and forces you to pray for no foongus and ESPECIALLY no snivy. If they load a foongus, you need to keep doubling to make sure you are in a good spot against it. And if they load a snivy, you can click the x button. As i explained in the video, I had nothing to do other than just like pray for no foongus or snivy. Sadly jake brought one, but we managed to pull out the win somehow. Also, without any fairy resist you need to also pray for no Trick room spritz or else the game is over lol. But thankfully jake hasnt brought it all sna- nvr mind. But real talk, I wanted to bird spam him since his onix usage was abysmal on non webs teams. Jake was on some next level prep tho and ended up bringing an onix. Either way, this team requires a lot of thinking and tier knowledge to play and i highly suggest that people DO NOT use it.

tazz Osh LilyAC BurntZebra trash tko Shrug Kingler12345 London13 teal6
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