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OU SPL XI - GSC Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Diophantine
- Start date
Once spl ended, I really wanted to make a GSC dump thread similarly to the one Lavos made. However, I didn't end up going through it because I just got too lazy and I also started considering saving up some of the ideas for a future time where i'd play this tier.
Rewatching my run today made me feel a bit nostalgic about everything though, and since i don't think ill play the tier much ever again i decided to make this post. It doesn't have the cute little format or a lot of writing like i planned way back... just felt like talking through things. Most of the teams here have shown to be successful post spl as well, being used on smogon classic a lot by some of my friends. Also thanks to d0nut , ABR and McMeghan for helping me with building most of these.
Also i didn't bother much with fixing the grammar otherwise i'd probably never write this so sorry if it triggers you.
Let's get to it
Week 1: Mr.E
https://pokepast.es/aac1c5cb48a96b64
For week 1, I noticed mr.e's very clear love for firelax, so i was dead set on having 2 checks for it, which ended up being gengar and rhydon. I also noticed most of the teams he had used recently were pretty weak to machamp so I felt great about it as well. Rest of the team is kind of just standard offense glued together, honestly at this point I had very little experience building GSC(i went into the tournament with little to no knowledge whatsoever except for random practice games for past SPL teammates and making random teams) and I just felt proud of d0nut giving me the thumbs up for this team, but I think it's definitely on the weaker end of the teams overall here. But things worked out just fine
Week 2: Gorgie
https://pokepast.es/fb1fad87ca1818da
Easily the most frustating week and a "wake up call" for me for future ones. Not scared to admit i underrated floppie here, and he went on to have a killer run in the tour. I was obsessed Espeon(and pixies) at the time and really wanted to use it, I thought it was a great idea considering gorg was an offense-only machine thanks to espy's good speed tier, and I just ran up with something fun and a little crazy. I knew lkiss curselax would be incredibly annoying to most skarmless teams, and the early sleep also worked pretty well to get espeon free growths/subs later. Overall though this is easily the weakest team I made by far, i should have tested it more and considered more options. As you can see here I also played a terrible game.. all good for experience though
Week 3: FOMG
https://pokepast.es/68b522ceb13c325f
I was super unmotivated to build after week 2, made this team middle of week 2 or something, thought it looked good vs what fomg likes (lkiss lax or hypnogar on almost every team I saw), put Thunder on lax bc I didn't see much Lix and thought it worked great on this, and that was it. Rest of the week was mainly practicing trying to get better at playing the tier. This team's alright, definitely not anything special, just something standard and average. game itself was also pretty bad, I got an early crit that sealed it, though I thought I had a pretty good shot to tie and I'd still have a pretty solid amount of chances to get luck and break through until it started getting really dire.
Week 4: Sulcata
https://pokepast.es/5729d0a7a33b81f1
Now we finally get to the teams I like and want to talk about! This week, I was 100% certain Sulcata was going to use offense. His games with fatter builds just weren't working out well, he was missplaying way too much, so I thought at worst if he does happen to bring it again I'd still have a shot. Anyway, the main core I went with for this game was eggy+LKiss Nidoking in the back, the idea being to blow up immediately vs almost anything, because most Sleep Talk users in this metagame come in on egg, mainly Snorlax/Zapdos. After one of these get nuked, you get to put Nido in the field and get an easy early lead. Also had Rtalk Curselax which is also another absolute devil for offense, so I felt pretty good about this one.
The main "innovation" here would be Pink Bow Egg since I was so set on blowing it up early. Pink Bow increases the chances to OHKO lax from 23 to 81%, stopping it from slowly healing back into the game later on. I'm not gonna outright call it innovative because someone's probably gonna tell me fossilman2 used it to win SPL in 300 BC, but yeah.. Anyway, everything went like planned and this is easily one of the most fun teams I made, be sure to give it a try if you want.
Week 5: Fear
https://pokepast.es/9fba61487dd36c17
Well this is why you're supposed to make these posts earlier I guess, I thought about so many different things for this game and i don't remember most of it ngl. Anyway I was really hyped for this week, I had a chance to beat the supposed best player in the tier so I went pretty hard on prep and tests. This is easily my favorite 6 Pokémon I "came up with" this entire tournament. I think it's ridiculously potent both in breaking and walling, it's super hard to beat and just so consistent. I also somehow didn't use a golem up to this point even though I always considered it to be one of the best mons in the tier.
There's a lot to say about the sets and pokes chosen that i don't remember but I do know I really wanted Suicune for this game because of fear's addiction to using "random unorthodox attacking Pokémon" is how I'd explain it... I also had absolute zero cune usage so I didn't expect him to see me using one. As for the game itself a lot of bullshit happened. I misscheduled and then he misscheduled and then I stayed up for forever waiting for him and he didn't show up, so I was most likely gonna end up playing a sub the day after but I got online during work break to see how things were going and he was on and because I didn't want to miss the opportunity to play him really badly i played during the break, rushed everything because I didn't have much time, lost, and went on back to work without eating feeling like a selfish dumbass for my team.
Week 6: Conflict
https://pokepast.es/2dce749f63cd58c4
Had no motivation for prep once again and for the one time this season I ended up going with a team i didn't build from scratch, in this case d0nut's team, because he believed conflict's builds were weak to moltres a lot of times. This team's pretty awesome though, with the standard combo of boomlax+hera and just a very strong offensive presence that can break about every team if you play your cards well. Don't have much to say since i changed 0 of the original, mostly just tested around the week.
Anyway d0 made an incredible call because flict was in fact extremely weak to the chicken , so i'd give most of the props of this week to him. Also fun fact I learned about those sunny day mechanics like literally the day before in a test game, and it ended up being pretty big on the game itself lol.
Week 7: McMeghan
https://pokepast.es/6f95222d0601393f
Very hype week once again considering roro's probably my best friend on the entire site, and we prepped a lot for these together already. I went with something I had already made to use vs him in tournament of superstars finals, I really wanted a good defensive core because he can go wild with offense sometimes and I expected him to use his standard Quagsire Starmie stuff if he used something more bulky, which is why I had HP Grass Roarkou. Forretress also looked pretty neat considering I only used it once, and I wasn't using enough Gengar considering how stupid broken this thing is. Although I don't expect people to watch this replay , it was imo one of the best games of the tour, and thanks to a little bit of luck here and there I managed to grab the dub after fighting for it for a while. For what's worth if anyone ever uses this change raikou to HP water unless your opponent loves quag.
Week 8: aim
https://pokepast.es/7d669f0bcb04f6b1
I don't remember what I had in mind for diophantine who was supposed to be my opponent originally, but I ended up changing to this after finding out I'd have a sub, in this case it ended up being joey. I liked this because it was very unorthodox and offensive, I also didn't expect him to feel comfortable stalling. Anyway around this week I was messing around with P2 a lot, I think it's super underrated in many ways. I remember making some team with curse P2 and restalk FlameLax that i liked a lot as well. For this team, the main idea's to cripple things early on with p2 to help out both Vaporeon and 4 atk Lax, Golem was there once again as the momentary lax check as well as spin, and the rest is just to glue things up as usual. To be honest probably the most fun team I made all season. The game itself was very quick with a super unfortunate start for him, though after seeing all mons and stuff i feel pretty safe to say i was looking very strong for that game unless hera passes by zap, but you never know I suppose.
Week 9: dice
https://pokepast.es/255b881352011caa
This week has a fun little story behind it. So this was obviously the last week of SPL before playoffs, and my team had to win our week to make it or something. I decided to leave the game for sunday night and thankfully dice agreed, I didn't plan on playing this game though. I thought that we'd for sure either be in or out by that time, and just planned on having someone sub for me later. The chances of my game deciding our fate just felt way too unlikely, but well, that's exactly what happened. I got back home from work to find out that's what decides our season, but I never even prepared a team. So I ask dice to delay the game for 1 hour, PM ABR, and we go crazy on the prep for a good 2 hours. And we end up deciding on literally using the week 5 team I used vs fear, because those 6 mons are just way too strong and I couldn't think of something else so rushed on time. We did optimize it a lot so after thinking of a ton of different scenarios, and came up with what I think is the best team I had for the entire season. Everything on this team just clicks extremely well. Lkiss Lax+Golem is great for getting Cloyster early, Flamelax+Bug Forre is great for being super annoying to Forre/Mie as they attempt to spin, this team's just super hard to break but also keeps up momentum without breaking a sweat. As for the game I just had to play my cards right for the most part, being cautious of boomlax early on helped things quite a bit and then pulling the trigger with raikou sealed the deal.
This team and the next one were also used by my buddy SoulWind a ton during his smogon classic win, in this case this team brought him a win during playoffs semifinals , which I feel pretty proud about.
Semifinals: Mr.E
https://pokepast.es/63de6f129ddcc815
The most I've prepared for a pokemon game ever. I really wanted to grab another win because i had not reached 8 wins in a team tour till this point. I went through every single one of this man's smogon posts, every single replay/game pastebin he's had, all of his opinions on each pokemon etc. , talked with multiple people for ideas.
I had this opened/wrote on it while playing as well
Anyway very proud of how the prep turned out in the end. I would be lying if I said i remember how everything went, but basically, me/ABR/d0nut wanted to have something sturdy enough that he'd never be able to break with what he generally liked to use as offensive pokemon, we wanted ResTalk Skarm for extra safety vs Marowak/Bdrum lax, we wanted FlameRtalk lax for consistent break vs his defensive teams as long as we'd have spikes up in the field, and Thunder Starmie also helped on checking a couple of different things as well as reliably spinning to keep up the pace of the game vs offensive teams. Hypnosis on missy for extra insurance vs a firelax+suittar duo, and the rest is pretty straightforward I guess. This team may just look like some fatass stall to some, but it can break pretty badly if you don't take over the hazard game, so it's a lot about playing your cards right and keeping momentum for most of the game, which i managed to do despite a couple scary headaches near the end.
Finals: FOMG
https://pokepast.es/f814d2ac10e127de
I was very confident fomg would use something offensive this week because he wouldn't feel comfortable with stalling after last time and I saw him saying he prefers stalling vs "weaker opps" somewhere. After trying a couple teams I settled on this one because of how different it was from the kind of stuff I generally used all season, the TTar set is also a bit out of standard which can be good for situations like these. Anyway as for the team itself, it's basically a mix of a team I saw fear using+the one Roro loves spamming(quag mie lax etc), with Reflect Zapdos supporting all 3 of the main attacking mons. I pretty much got about exactly what i was hoping for in the match , but unfortunately I was the one who had to deal with early luck at the start, and that was how the season ended except for one last whooping to lose the finals tiebreak in a different tier to get us eliminated from the tournament. It is what it is, yeah?
-Other Ideas
https://pokepast.es/4c34ef9b963a53bd
Of course there's a lot of teams i made and didn't use but this is one of the coolest ones. It's the original team I thought of for FOMG in finals. Gengar set's supposed to grab an early lead vs most things, and hypnosis ends up coming into play with nightmare zam later. Nightmare on zam is also pretty cool to fuck around with restalk lax/zapdos middle game. The rhydon set was made by abr I think? The main idea's that Eqlax always Eqs rhydon as it comes it on curse, because it's expecting roar, and then u just counter and ohko it straight up. The decrease in spdef i believe was to always ohko zapdos or something. We also made a version with sub nightmare mie over zam.
Snorlax (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: none
- Double-Edge
- Ice Beam/HP Grass
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
I think restalk lax with whatever coverage move's best for the team is the most broken poke in the tier. I really wanted to use Ice beam as coverage on a ton of different teams but never actually ended up doing it. Both attacks u get when u sleep talk are annoying for Zapdos and pressures it a lot, IB is also great for golem/rhydon, and the main idea I had was that it's just nice for fishing for hax. GSC games tend to be slower than the usual especially with solid defensive cores so with IB+Sleep Talking IB you get a ton of different chances to freeze things like skarmory and then you open up for the rest of your team a lot. The idea for HP Grass was reliable 3ko on Cloy as well as nuking golem/rhydon, but never actually thought about this further bc of the DV decrease. I think the coverage move on Rtalk lax can still be explored a lot though.
Lapras @ Leftovers
Ability: none
- Ice Beam
- Whirlpool
- Perish Song
- Protect
Call me crazy, but I legit think this thing has mad potential and I would have absolutely used it this next SPL season if I planned on playing. Use it alongside LKiss lax to get things like cloy sleeping early, and it's actually a pain in the ass. The reason why this thing works is that most phazers don't enjoy coming into lapras, skarm takes a hefty chunk from IB, and things like rhydon and golem obv can't switch in. The only main mon would be Raikou, but Roarkou's pretty easy to force to rest, taking 25 from IB+spikes on the switchin you can eventually pressure it. Once everything is set you should be able to grab at least 1 or 2 mons with this devil set, thanks to lapras' impressive bulk you can even handle a couple of random thunders if needed. If someone ever wants to try it out, I suggest a very fat build with a spinner to give lapras a lot of safe switchins.
Jynx (F) @ Bright Powder
Ability: none
- Ice Beam
- Lovely Kiss
- Psychic
- Swagger
Had this on the original team I was gonna use vs mre. Basically we made some calcs and tried to figure out the best way for jynx lead to be favored against zapdos lead turn 1, with other ideas like d0nut's nevermeltice blizzard(which has a chance to kill and was considered but only if the rolls were a little better). Anyway, Zapdos does like 46 to 55 to jynx+70% accuracy so we calc'd and it was a little above 50% chance to beat jynx on the 1v1, so BrightPowder makes you favored. It's also just a nice clutch item for random things that can happen in the game in general, and considering jynx's general frailness leftovers doesn't really play a huge role without Sub anyway. We had swagger last move to just play all kinds of odds vs lax and other things, other options considered were Counter and Dynamicpunch. Either way, mostly something to play the odds early on and see if you can get an early lead.
Flareon @ Leftovers
Ability: none
- Fire Blast
- Growth
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
Moltres but it doesn't blow up to zapdos and actually gets even more powerful. Never experimented much with it outside of theory though, but thought i'd throw it in here cuz why not.
Aerodactyl @ Berserk Gene
Ability: none
- Ancient Power
- Earthquake
- Fire Blast
- Roar
Same thing as flareon, didn't try much outside of random games but sounded pretty fun and super deadly in the endgame, although with berserk gene you're obviously always gonna rely on luck a bit. Roar's nice to panic check lax because aero's typing deals with most lax sets well, but maybe there's better things for last move.
Also quick claw is underrated and a decent gambling alternative on cloyster and machamp imo, but maybe not for big games.
Rewatching my run today made me feel a bit nostalgic about everything though, and since i don't think ill play the tier much ever again i decided to make this post. It doesn't have the cute little format or a lot of writing like i planned way back... just felt like talking through things. Most of the teams here have shown to be successful post spl as well, being used on smogon classic a lot by some of my friends. Also thanks to d0nut , ABR and McMeghan for helping me with building most of these.
Also i didn't bother much with fixing the grammar otherwise i'd probably never write this so sorry if it triggers you.
Let's get to it
Week 1: Mr.E
https://pokepast.es/aac1c5cb48a96b64
For week 1, I noticed mr.e's very clear love for firelax, so i was dead set on having 2 checks for it, which ended up being gengar and rhydon. I also noticed most of the teams he had used recently were pretty weak to machamp so I felt great about it as well. Rest of the team is kind of just standard offense glued together, honestly at this point I had very little experience building GSC(i went into the tournament with little to no knowledge whatsoever except for random practice games for past SPL teammates and making random teams) and I just felt proud of d0nut giving me the thumbs up for this team, but I think it's definitely on the weaker end of the teams overall here. But things worked out just fine
Week 2: Gorgie
https://pokepast.es/fb1fad87ca1818da
Easily the most frustating week and a "wake up call" for me for future ones. Not scared to admit i underrated floppie here, and he went on to have a killer run in the tour. I was obsessed Espeon(and pixies) at the time and really wanted to use it, I thought it was a great idea considering gorg was an offense-only machine thanks to espy's good speed tier, and I just ran up with something fun and a little crazy. I knew lkiss curselax would be incredibly annoying to most skarmless teams, and the early sleep also worked pretty well to get espeon free growths/subs later. Overall though this is easily the weakest team I made by far, i should have tested it more and considered more options. As you can see here I also played a terrible game.. all good for experience though
Week 3: FOMG
https://pokepast.es/68b522ceb13c325f
I was super unmotivated to build after week 2, made this team middle of week 2 or something, thought it looked good vs what fomg likes (lkiss lax or hypnogar on almost every team I saw), put Thunder on lax bc I didn't see much Lix and thought it worked great on this, and that was it. Rest of the week was mainly practicing trying to get better at playing the tier. This team's alright, definitely not anything special, just something standard and average. game itself was also pretty bad, I got an early crit that sealed it, though I thought I had a pretty good shot to tie and I'd still have a pretty solid amount of chances to get luck and break through until it started getting really dire.
Week 4: Sulcata
https://pokepast.es/5729d0a7a33b81f1
Now we finally get to the teams I like and want to talk about! This week, I was 100% certain Sulcata was going to use offense. His games with fatter builds just weren't working out well, he was missplaying way too much, so I thought at worst if he does happen to bring it again I'd still have a shot. Anyway, the main core I went with for this game was eggy+LKiss Nidoking in the back, the idea being to blow up immediately vs almost anything, because most Sleep Talk users in this metagame come in on egg, mainly Snorlax/Zapdos. After one of these get nuked, you get to put Nido in the field and get an easy early lead. Also had Rtalk Curselax which is also another absolute devil for offense, so I felt pretty good about this one.
The main "innovation" here would be Pink Bow Egg since I was so set on blowing it up early. Pink Bow increases the chances to OHKO lax from 23 to 81%, stopping it from slowly healing back into the game later on. I'm not gonna outright call it innovative because someone's probably gonna tell me fossilman2 used it to win SPL in 300 BC, but yeah.. Anyway, everything went like planned and this is easily one of the most fun teams I made, be sure to give it a try if you want.
Week 5: Fear
https://pokepast.es/9fba61487dd36c17
Well this is why you're supposed to make these posts earlier I guess, I thought about so many different things for this game and i don't remember most of it ngl. Anyway I was really hyped for this week, I had a chance to beat the supposed best player in the tier so I went pretty hard on prep and tests. This is easily my favorite 6 Pokémon I "came up with" this entire tournament. I think it's ridiculously potent both in breaking and walling, it's super hard to beat and just so consistent. I also somehow didn't use a golem up to this point even though I always considered it to be one of the best mons in the tier.
There's a lot to say about the sets and pokes chosen that i don't remember but I do know I really wanted Suicune for this game because of fear's addiction to using "random unorthodox attacking Pokémon" is how I'd explain it... I also had absolute zero cune usage so I didn't expect him to see me using one. As for the game itself a lot of bullshit happened. I misscheduled and then he misscheduled and then I stayed up for forever waiting for him and he didn't show up, so I was most likely gonna end up playing a sub the day after but I got online during work break to see how things were going and he was on and because I didn't want to miss the opportunity to play him really badly i played during the break, rushed everything because I didn't have much time, lost, and went on back to work without eating feeling like a selfish dumbass for my team.
Week 6: Conflict
https://pokepast.es/2dce749f63cd58c4
Had no motivation for prep once again and for the one time this season I ended up going with a team i didn't build from scratch, in this case d0nut's team, because he believed conflict's builds were weak to moltres a lot of times. This team's pretty awesome though, with the standard combo of boomlax+hera and just a very strong offensive presence that can break about every team if you play your cards well. Don't have much to say since i changed 0 of the original, mostly just tested around the week.
Anyway d0 made an incredible call because flict was in fact extremely weak to the chicken , so i'd give most of the props of this week to him. Also fun fact I learned about those sunny day mechanics like literally the day before in a test game, and it ended up being pretty big on the game itself lol.
Week 7: McMeghan
https://pokepast.es/6f95222d0601393f
Very hype week once again considering roro's probably my best friend on the entire site, and we prepped a lot for these together already. I went with something I had already made to use vs him in tournament of superstars finals, I really wanted a good defensive core because he can go wild with offense sometimes and I expected him to use his standard Quagsire Starmie stuff if he used something more bulky, which is why I had HP Grass Roarkou. Forretress also looked pretty neat considering I only used it once, and I wasn't using enough Gengar considering how stupid broken this thing is. Although I don't expect people to watch this replay , it was imo one of the best games of the tour, and thanks to a little bit of luck here and there I managed to grab the dub after fighting for it for a while. For what's worth if anyone ever uses this change raikou to HP water unless your opponent loves quag.
Week 8: aim
https://pokepast.es/7d669f0bcb04f6b1
I don't remember what I had in mind for diophantine who was supposed to be my opponent originally, but I ended up changing to this after finding out I'd have a sub, in this case it ended up being joey. I liked this because it was very unorthodox and offensive, I also didn't expect him to feel comfortable stalling. Anyway around this week I was messing around with P2 a lot, I think it's super underrated in many ways. I remember making some team with curse P2 and restalk FlameLax that i liked a lot as well. For this team, the main idea's to cripple things early on with p2 to help out both Vaporeon and 4 atk Lax, Golem was there once again as the momentary lax check as well as spin, and the rest is just to glue things up as usual. To be honest probably the most fun team I made all season. The game itself was very quick with a super unfortunate start for him, though after seeing all mons and stuff i feel pretty safe to say i was looking very strong for that game unless hera passes by zap, but you never know I suppose.
Week 9: dice
https://pokepast.es/255b881352011caa
This week has a fun little story behind it. So this was obviously the last week of SPL before playoffs, and my team had to win our week to make it or something. I decided to leave the game for sunday night and thankfully dice agreed, I didn't plan on playing this game though. I thought that we'd for sure either be in or out by that time, and just planned on having someone sub for me later. The chances of my game deciding our fate just felt way too unlikely, but well, that's exactly what happened. I got back home from work to find out that's what decides our season, but I never even prepared a team. So I ask dice to delay the game for 1 hour, PM ABR, and we go crazy on the prep for a good 2 hours. And we end up deciding on literally using the week 5 team I used vs fear, because those 6 mons are just way too strong and I couldn't think of something else so rushed on time. We did optimize it a lot so after thinking of a ton of different scenarios, and came up with what I think is the best team I had for the entire season. Everything on this team just clicks extremely well. Lkiss Lax+Golem is great for getting Cloyster early, Flamelax+Bug Forre is great for being super annoying to Forre/Mie as they attempt to spin, this team's just super hard to break but also keeps up momentum without breaking a sweat. As for the game I just had to play my cards right for the most part, being cautious of boomlax early on helped things quite a bit and then pulling the trigger with raikou sealed the deal.
This team and the next one were also used by my buddy SoulWind a ton during his smogon classic win, in this case this team brought him a win during playoffs semifinals , which I feel pretty proud about.
Semifinals: Mr.E
https://pokepast.es/63de6f129ddcc815
The most I've prepared for a pokemon game ever. I really wanted to grab another win because i had not reached 8 wins in a team tour till this point. I went through every single one of this man's smogon posts, every single replay/game pastebin he's had, all of his opinions on each pokemon etc. , talked with multiple people for ideas.
I had this opened/wrote on it while playing as well
Anyway very proud of how the prep turned out in the end. I would be lying if I said i remember how everything went, but basically, me/ABR/d0nut wanted to have something sturdy enough that he'd never be able to break with what he generally liked to use as offensive pokemon, we wanted ResTalk Skarm for extra safety vs Marowak/Bdrum lax, we wanted FlameRtalk lax for consistent break vs his defensive teams as long as we'd have spikes up in the field, and Thunder Starmie also helped on checking a couple of different things as well as reliably spinning to keep up the pace of the game vs offensive teams. Hypnosis on missy for extra insurance vs a firelax+suittar duo, and the rest is pretty straightforward I guess. This team may just look like some fatass stall to some, but it can break pretty badly if you don't take over the hazard game, so it's a lot about playing your cards right and keeping momentum for most of the game, which i managed to do despite a couple scary headaches near the end.
Finals: FOMG
https://pokepast.es/f814d2ac10e127de
I was very confident fomg would use something offensive this week because he wouldn't feel comfortable with stalling after last time and I saw him saying he prefers stalling vs "weaker opps" somewhere. After trying a couple teams I settled on this one because of how different it was from the kind of stuff I generally used all season, the TTar set is also a bit out of standard which can be good for situations like these. Anyway as for the team itself, it's basically a mix of a team I saw fear using+the one Roro loves spamming(quag mie lax etc), with Reflect Zapdos supporting all 3 of the main attacking mons. I pretty much got about exactly what i was hoping for in the match , but unfortunately I was the one who had to deal with early luck at the start, and that was how the season ended except for one last whooping to lose the finals tiebreak in a different tier to get us eliminated from the tournament. It is what it is, yeah?
-Other Ideas
https://pokepast.es/4c34ef9b963a53bd
Of course there's a lot of teams i made and didn't use but this is one of the coolest ones. It's the original team I thought of for FOMG in finals. Gengar set's supposed to grab an early lead vs most things, and hypnosis ends up coming into play with nightmare zam later. Nightmare on zam is also pretty cool to fuck around with restalk lax/zapdos middle game. The rhydon set was made by abr I think? The main idea's that Eqlax always Eqs rhydon as it comes it on curse, because it's expecting roar, and then u just counter and ohko it straight up. The decrease in spdef i believe was to always ohko zapdos or something. We also made a version with sub nightmare mie over zam.
Snorlax (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: none
- Double-Edge
- Ice Beam/HP Grass
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
I think restalk lax with whatever coverage move's best for the team is the most broken poke in the tier. I really wanted to use Ice beam as coverage on a ton of different teams but never actually ended up doing it. Both attacks u get when u sleep talk are annoying for Zapdos and pressures it a lot, IB is also great for golem/rhydon, and the main idea I had was that it's just nice for fishing for hax. GSC games tend to be slower than the usual especially with solid defensive cores so with IB+Sleep Talking IB you get a ton of different chances to freeze things like skarmory and then you open up for the rest of your team a lot. The idea for HP Grass was reliable 3ko on Cloy as well as nuking golem/rhydon, but never actually thought about this further bc of the DV decrease. I think the coverage move on Rtalk lax can still be explored a lot though.
Lapras @ Leftovers
Ability: none
- Ice Beam
- Whirlpool
- Perish Song
- Protect
Call me crazy, but I legit think this thing has mad potential and I would have absolutely used it this next SPL season if I planned on playing. Use it alongside LKiss lax to get things like cloy sleeping early, and it's actually a pain in the ass. The reason why this thing works is that most phazers don't enjoy coming into lapras, skarm takes a hefty chunk from IB, and things like rhydon and golem obv can't switch in. The only main mon would be Raikou, but Roarkou's pretty easy to force to rest, taking 25 from IB+spikes on the switchin you can eventually pressure it. Once everything is set you should be able to grab at least 1 or 2 mons with this devil set, thanks to lapras' impressive bulk you can even handle a couple of random thunders if needed. If someone ever wants to try it out, I suggest a very fat build with a spinner to give lapras a lot of safe switchins.
Jynx (F) @ Bright Powder
Ability: none
- Ice Beam
- Lovely Kiss
- Psychic
- Swagger
Had this on the original team I was gonna use vs mre. Basically we made some calcs and tried to figure out the best way for jynx lead to be favored against zapdos lead turn 1, with other ideas like d0nut's nevermeltice blizzard(which has a chance to kill and was considered but only if the rolls were a little better). Anyway, Zapdos does like 46 to 55 to jynx+70% accuracy so we calc'd and it was a little above 50% chance to beat jynx on the 1v1, so BrightPowder makes you favored. It's also just a nice clutch item for random things that can happen in the game in general, and considering jynx's general frailness leftovers doesn't really play a huge role without Sub anyway. We had swagger last move to just play all kinds of odds vs lax and other things, other options considered were Counter and Dynamicpunch. Either way, mostly something to play the odds early on and see if you can get an early lead.
Flareon @ Leftovers
Ability: none
- Fire Blast
- Growth
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
Moltres but it doesn't blow up to zapdos and actually gets even more powerful. Never experimented much with it outside of theory though, but thought i'd throw it in here cuz why not.
Aerodactyl @ Berserk Gene
Ability: none
- Ancient Power
- Earthquake
- Fire Blast
- Roar
Same thing as flareon, didn't try much outside of random games but sounded pretty fun and super deadly in the endgame, although with berserk gene you're obviously always gonna rely on luck a bit. Roar's nice to panic check lax because aero's typing deals with most lax sets well, but maybe there's better things for last move.
Also quick claw is underrated and a decent gambling alternative on cloyster and machamp imo, but maybe not for big games.
You had a great run this past SPL, I enjoyed watching you especially on the latter parts of the tournament. Our game was pretty memorable to me since you played a careful and disciplined game around your spike with a stall based team, quite unlike of what I had seen you play on earlier weeks.
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