Project Why did you join Draft?

[Nyx]

It's exactly what the name implies! How did you find out about Draft League? Why did you stick around? What do you enjoy about the format? Feel free to share your stories in as much depth as you'd like. The more people that are willing to share, the better!

I'll open this with my own, I first discovered Draft thanks to Mega Mogwai's coverage of his run in season 4 of the GBA on YouTube back in 2015. This led me to eventually going onto their fan website in January 2016, where people could post advertisements for their own leagues. I stumbled through numerous leagues for a year or so before stepping back until the start of 2018, where I joined an offseason draft tournament in a competitive Pokémon Brick Bronze server (shoutouts to vmnunes for running that), and from there I've stuck around the community ever since.

As for why I've stuck around, it's a mix of both the people but also the format itself. I've made a bunch of amazing friends across the years but the same can be true for any community. What I love about Draft specifically is the ability to find success specific Pokémon and then never try anything else because I like what I like and I don't try anything else, whether that be ORAS Keldeo, USUM Mega Gallade, SS Excadrill or even SV Hisuian Samurott (this thing is insane). There's just so many different archetypes to try with even just a handful of mons that its always been a great feeling even if it's my 50th time drafting Excadrill the SS part might be a lie, it may be every gen...

Hopefully a couple of y'all wanna share your thoughts, we'd love to hear them :3.

 

[Celestiial]

I originally got into draft from someone who used to be my friend, where we fucked around in a league we ran off of a google doc (not a spreadsheet, a text doc with a chart) that was based off of smogon tiers at the time. While I had many issues with the format we ran at the time (anyone you ask will tell you how much i made it known in that server) I decided to branch out because it was a new way to play a game I loved, but also make friends which have now become a lot of my core group in my exitance in the void of the internet.

which ties into why I stay, because of the people! The friends I have made here have not only helped me develop as a person, but also just as a strategist and a thinker because I have had a lot of people who have helped me really narrow down and control my wild thought process with pretty much anything haha

I also love being able to sit back and study a metagame, occasionally trying it and trying to figure out what makes it click, as sometimes i get even more enjoyment from pondering why something is good and how it could be experimented then actually playing with it and experiencing it (though i do still play now and then). Currently I've been hanging around to work on my own skills a lot more and develop my skills both in draft and ladder! Can't wait to see where everything goes from here :)

 

[Kerthwack]

Aight, my journey in pokemon started during quarantine when i was bored, a friend recently showed me pokemon showdown, and i started playing on it all the time, mostly low ladder with trash teams

Anyway i found a content creator, nathanlikeschicken, and he really got me into competitive pokemon, with his Monday tournaments (now gone, alas). My first draft league was in nathans server, but it was extremely scuffed and I didnt really understand the concept

TEC was advertised there, i looked into it, and this idea of draft leagues looked sick. I stayed up all night watching recourse videos and gypsy king, and the format captivated me because of how creative it allows the players to be, and how much strategy can be implemented

To be honest, im still trying to find my way around the community, i do not know what leagues, prestigious or casual, exist, and I am relatively mid in terms of skill, but I play on playing draft for a while. No other game I know of has this type of malleability in terms of strategy and finding new things always brings me joy

Im sure my crippling pokemon addiction has contributed hugely to the direction my life has gone, which I am very grateful for. See yall around (cactus emoji here in spirit it doesnt work on Smogon massive L)

 

[Scribble]

I was a huge fan of draft league content on YouTube back in 2015-2016. Some of my friends and I decided to host our own draft league, which was very scuffed but a lot of fun. Many of us moved on from playing Pokemon though, and the league died out after 2 seasons. This was the end of my draft career until 2022, when I got nostalgic for draft and I decided to try starting up a league again with my new friend group at my college. It was a huge success, but I wanted to play draft more often, so I decided to search for more leagues. I found a couple small public ones online, and I figured that was about the extent of the draft scene. Draft content on YouTube had mostly died out, and all the YouTube leagues I had seen in the past had been groups of YouTuber friends, so I naturally assumed that was about the extent of the draft format.

Fast forward to the release of Scarlet and Violet, when Smogon decided to incorporate draft formats onto the main Showdown server, and the larger draft community also migrated onto Smogon. I had no idea that draft league had a scene this large and with so much history, and since then I've become very invested in the format. I was an active ladder player in Gen 6/7, but my interest in mons had mostly faded until draft revitalized it. It's my favorite way to play Pokemon by far, and I'm really looking forward to seeing and helping the scene grow.

 

[not mishmesh]

I've gotten to draft through the freezai server, and specifically a guy named shmite. I knew about them before somewhat but he introduced me to draft, sent me invites to a bunch of servers and helped me prep for my games for a long time. The server I chose was actually Celeste server tdl, where I joined an off season and went 0-2. I grinded the smogon tours and got into some other stuff now and I'm chilling.

2 reasons why I still play dl, first one is the format, I used to ladder a lot in gen 8 ou but sv ou isn't a real meta game, so this provided a very nice alternative (also for me in the start knowing ur opp mons sounded crazy to me lol). Second one is the people ofc, met some really cool pals who became my friends and this became a nice escape kinda from irl. There's also some servers I'd consider to be my home servers, such as wpf, npba and more to come.

 

[TheMutantSpaceDancer]

I've only ever done it once before in a very small scale group before I didn't really know competitive pokemon mechanics that well, and now that I've gotten a lot more into showdown I've always been hungerin' for joining a draft league. I think it's a very fun and unique format to play pokemon in, I love the creativity it breeds and the sort of screwball strategies it sometimes requires you to use. Budget picks are also always very funny.

Overall, Draft is just really fun! I really wanna sign up for more after the Winter draft that I'm playing in right now. I need my wacky budget picks. Dunsparce 4 life.

 

[JJGAMES2007]

I got in because I simply wanted to be challenged mentally and I wanted to meet new people

 

[theuncultured]

I got into draft a year and an half ago. I’ve always been a fan of competitive Pokémon, however my focus for competitive gaming has been in Yu-Gi-Oh, but for a long while now I haven’t played the TCG and usually only play the official and easily accessible game of Master Duel, as a means to play with friends and not spend hundreds on opening physical cards. This also allowed me to analyse changing meta games and assist others in strategies for new releases for a server that I manage in.

Which then brings me to Pokémon. Until I've heard of draft league there was only really laddering on showdown and it just didn't stick with me too much. As I started higher education I was introduced to draft league by the Pokémon society I joined and built my first ever team in this format, which I ended up doing badly but learned so much in the process. Strategy type gaming and building has always peaked my interest and I like to be able to learn new things to then later help others enjoy things that I like. I also find it fun to use both overpowered mons and low tier mons in the same team like everyone else. I’ve been having a lot of fun trying to make viable teams and see what I can do better without always spending hours laddering on showdown.

 

[sapphiree]

i got into draft through a friend of mine, we were just talking about pokemon one day and he happened to mention "draft leagues" and that sounded like an other-worldly concept to me that i most certainly wanted to explore. i've been playing draft since 2020 (i think) and i have played multiple formats like ss drafts, natdex ss drafts, sv paldex, sv natdex, and sv uber+natdex drafts. in all i've managed to make playoffs in most of the leagues i took part in, and overall i won one (1) draft league which rly was a peak moment for my draft journey. achievements and technicalities aside, i stuck around mostly because 1) i enjoyed this tier a lot since before it came to smogon, and 2) i wanted to lead my draft to victory (which i managed to achieve only recently). since i've been playing draft before it came on smogon, most of my experiences have been in discord tournaments. many of my friends back then would host private draft leagues as well which i'd love to partake in. an aspect of draft which i liked was the whole "sports team" agenda, where you are the "coach" of your "team" which you've "drafted", the whole metaphor and the competitive atmosphere within which these leagues were conducted was a nice adrenaline boost for me. ranking drafts, a points table, preparing to beat different "teams" and the whole fantasy sports thing really made a difference.

regarding the concept of draft itself: i thoroughly enjoy making drafts, thinking of new cores to build around rly boosts my insight on pokemon, permutations and combinations, and my knowledge on certain pokemon in certain metagames (for ex; i draft a pu mon, and in doing so i come up with ways to make it viable in draft, while also finding ways to utilize it in pu itself). i also enjoy the unorthodox method of preparation that goes in each matchup, what different matchups bring alight in different pokemon, moves i'd not normally use in official metagames on the sim. sometimes i think about the time that i started my draft journey and i remember making just downright awful drafts, constantly asking experienced friends of mine for opinions on what to draft next and i see myself today and it brings a level of self-satisfaction because i can confidently say i can build a viable draft with complete self-sufficiency, and also help other friends of mine who are relatively new. another reason i stuck around was because of this stark improvement in my skill, which allows me to enjoy and appreciate draft more. in summary i'd say that drafts allow me to explore different pokemon in a different setting. the creativity factor of both drafting and prepping is what drives me to play this tier.

if you actually read this far, i appreciate you. it's good to have a platform to just ramble about your experiences. have a nice day to whoever reads this :)

 

[chimp]

Played ladder and was involved with smogon throughout highschool. When I got to uni, a friend of mine started recruiting people in our theatre club to start a draft league. We’re now going into our 12th season….. even though we have all graduated from that uni years ago at this point.

 

[Techno]

Found draft initially through youtube, specifically adrive (i know i know, i stopped watching him long ago, don't worry) Found a small league through his discord server in mid 2018 called EPTL, where i drafted the most hideous team of all time which included a round 1 jirachi... That league died & I took a break for a bit after that, and then in late 2018 I found a small new league in its first season by the name of WPF, and the rest is history :)

 

[attcris]

2015 era shadypenguinn as a high schooler -> fast forward 8 years I see a smogon announcement pop up on showdown about a draft tour starting out. I always had thought the format was fire but didn’t have the people to play with and didn’t care to search out a draft league. The smogon draft tours are the perfect solution for me to tap in when I’m feeling some draft.

 

[sablolol]

My first exposure to draft was back in around 2014-2015 with the GBA, primarily through aDrive and other Youtuber leagues at the time like the UCL, PPL, and NPA. I would only ever participate in one though in the summer of 2016 through the GBA fan site. What pulled me in really was the sense of community that I wanted to be apart of and figured I might as try playing given that I enjoyed watching draft league content.

First league I joined was pretty fun because I manage to met new people, doing well to get first in the standings, and becoming very invested in playing and prepping for my games. This eventually down the path of playing in various leagues and tournaments that allowed me to see the greater scope of the draft community and meet people that I enjoy interacting with. And thats what keeps me motivated to play the format, which is just seeing new faces show up and going along with the vibes with friends and people.

Draft as format is cool in terms of what hidden gems and tech you can bring and find success with. It also says what you you as a player like to do with building, drafting, and how you like to play, which feels close to what the spirit of Pokemon is. Even if there will always be a meta to follow and certain conventions do need to follow if you want to have chances of winning, theres always the personal aspect that will always be key to creating narratives for yourself and everyone involved with the league/tours.

 

[Niilo-Ori]

short summary: I watched draft leagues about 8 years ago and it seemed fun, but just now I finally got the confidence to participate

 

[olivia]

I found out about draft through a few friends, having never played any competitive Pokemon of any sort, having smaller teams to focus on seemed way less overwhelming than trying to learn what 900 different Pokemon do all at once. I've played Pokemon all my life but never seriously until around a year and a half ago. I really enjoyed our little private leagues and was dragged into the Smogon Draft server by those same friends. I am now hideously addicted and can't be budged.

 

[Soulblaze]

Despite the controversy, my heart has a soft spot for UCL which first got me introduced to draft. I was a really big Nappy fan before the whole situation went down (losing one of my favorite creators like that got me balling my eyes out for like 2 days straight). Joey, Shady, Adrive, MegaMogwai, Leo (6fthax), Nexus, Jay, PKSparkxx, Moe.. All these guys (+more) made banger content which inspired me to try it out for myself. I joined Leo's discord and joined the first ad I saw for a draft league. Made friends for life there that I will never forget and got me hooked on draft permanently. I owe it all to the UCL for inspiring me and the TAO Family. Jolteon4OU, Hacker, Zombie, Zayne, Nala, Devil, Russ and last, but not least Merkit. Thank you all for taking me in and giving me a chance. <3

 

[Professor Shuckle]

Someone saw me playing Random Battles in a university lab in 2016, and asked me to join a Pokémon club. I loved Pokémon so I joined the club and was taught what a draft league was. That's the origin story, but I would say I really got into the draft scene during the summer of 2018. I was searching for draft leagues to join on Reddit and a bunch of them required Discord. So I made an account and joined Discord and joined the draft league community. I became friends with this Aussie weirdo SkyhorseTamer and we started teambuilding and getting better at Pokémon together and eventually joined bigger servers and tours.

The initial plan was to quit Discord after a year and focus on undergraduate studies, but I met too many amazing people over the year and made a lot of friends so ended up sticking around.

Favourite part about draft is probably the teambuilding aspect - brainstorming strategies, planning out sequences and coming up with the heater techs. I also think it's very cool that my favourite childhood game has a competitive and strategy aspect to it.

 

[SkyhorseTamer]

Someone saw me playing Random Battles in a university lab in 2016, and asked me to join a Pokémon club. I loved Pokémon so I joined the club and was taught what a draft league was. That's the origin story, but I would say I really got into the draft scene during the summer of 2018. I was searching for draft leagues to join on Reddit and a bunch of them required Discord. So I made an account and joined Discord and joined the draft league community. I became friends with this Aussie weirdo SkyhorseTamer and we started teambuilding and getting better at Pokémon together and eventually joined bigger servers and tours.

The initial plan was to quit Discord after a year and focus on undergraduate studies, but I met too many amazing people over the year and made a lot of friends so ended up sticking around.

Favourite part about draft is probably the teambuilding aspect - brainstorming strategies, planning out sequences and coming up with the heater techs. I also think it's very cool that my favourite childhood game has a competitive and strategy aspect to it.

This is why we were unstoppable in doubles. Oml

 

[scionicle]

I've been using Showdown casually for over 10 years, but didn't learn about draft until Scribble started his league. I joined that and had a lot more fun than I was expecting (Doug my beloved ). It was a great balance of limited options that make teambuilding more manageable and the freedom to bring crazy sets or low tiers. Since then, I've entered all of the Smogon Draft tournaments and a few in other Discord servers. I'm very thankful for all of the friends I've made through draft so I'll probably be here for a long time

 

[Diviniya]

I've lurked this site since like 2010 so I was casually aware of the competitive singles landscape but ladder formats didn't interest me too much.

In late 2018 I got into shiny hunting and turned to various poketubers to pass the time while hunting, watching some various channels like Adrive and other various GBA coaches but was only watching - I had no idea how to start participating and wasn't about to reach out to these content creators to ask lmao so I was content just watching the battles week to week.

By chance, one of the guys in my Guild Wars 2 guild was a content creator for the GBA at the time (Xilicks) and we were randomly discussing stuff we had seen lately and the topic came up, so he found a small league and joined it with me and that was the start of my journey.

I've always been very motivated to play so I don't forsee quitting draft at any point, I love the strategizing of the draft process and the crazy levels of creativity that is possible in building.

 

[Choomie]

I was forced into doing online high school and so I was obviously procrastinating. One day when I'm like 16 I start looking for online pokémon browser games. Eventually I found Pokémon Showdown during Gen 7, and I was immediately drawn to monotype fir no apparent reason. I would spend hours trying out different combinations and try to win some room tours, or at least do well enough.

I think I was looking for OU teambuilding advice, and through the YouTube rabbit hole I found Joey's channel. This led me to blunder, and I started watching his streams on Twitch. After The Bionicle Saga, I randomly received a free month of subscription so I was allowed access into the Agency cord. There, I connected with some good people. There was talk about draft league, and it sounded entertaining. We organized an internal draft and u went gloriously 1-10 or something. I had somehow grabbed torn T and mega gallade but I remember dropping gallade for a mega Sableye. My one win was from a curse payback umbreon sweep.

From there I keot networking and meeting new people. Quarantine was my favorite era because I really got to make fun memories with a lot of fellow players. I stick around because I do genuinely enjoy these sick, twisted people and I try to fibd opportunities to make people laugh. It's darts at a wall so it doesn't always land but what can you do.

MMy favorite aspect if draft is the drafting itself. I love using new mons and trying to think of new uses for them. I'm kind of an intrinsically sinister teambuilder, where I'm drawn to the improbable and unholy rather than what's efficient. Depends on the league but I'd say there's maybe like a 10% success rate on average, bug I'm a gambling man so I can't help myself.

I know it may seem like I'm here to terrorize the community but I do mean well and hope to improve and continue making progress in all things as days go by.

 

[Silver64 (Real)]

The two phases of draft have very uniquely fun things about them:

The Draft Phase- It makes me feel like I'm playing an actual Pokemon game, where I build up a team of what's available to me, and it makes me consider my options in ways I wouldn't have before. It also is really fun being able to have that long period between picks where my brain is just thinking about team comps that I'd wanna make with whatever resources I have.

The Battles- Building for and against a very small pool of mons on the other team is very fascinating because your opponent has only so many options they can take, and you have to keep in mind that it's the same for them looking at you. This once more makes the team building and planning make you pull out very niche options and team comps you normally wouldn't to try and get and edge on your opponent, while also trying to not be too too predictable.

Both of these make the whole experience about using your knowledge in a way other formats don't and it's really fun to take part in.

 

[SolarBeam]

I got into draft through the same college league as Scribble/scionicle/olivia (and a few others). I had experimented with draft before, but the culture and level of competition in that league really hooked me and kept me interested. (I also liked teambuilding without the insane decision paralysis I get when building for normal formats, which has kept me playing mostly randbats for a long time.)

What stood out to me about draft is the biggest skill it tests: evaluation. Whereas other formats test evaluation mainly through figuring out which mons work against the current meta and which mons are most valuable in a specific battle, draft tests it the most. There are so many potential team combinations and dynamics/nuances that come from those combinations that you always have to reevaluate how good a specific mon would be on your team while drafting. The specificity of draft matchups also makes a consistent evaluation extremely difficult, and there's always little tricks you can use to get ahead in a matchup. I really like other games that heavily test evaluation, like MTG draft/sealed and Slay the Spire, so draft hooked me more than any other format.

 

[Grankie]

Around 2015/16 I stumbled across the GBA through ShadyPenguinn and I was hooked all seasons afterwards. I was obsessed with the storylines, the pokemon drafted and the coaches who played in it. When the UCL started on Youtube I watched every coach, every single week and loved keeping up with the league and looking at the stats, so I frequently checked the UCL reddit. There was a "Dream League" that was run (two of them actually), where players took the teams drafted by the actual coaches, and ran their own mock league. I missed the chance to join initially but replaced a coach midseason who had MegaMogwai's team. He was 1-5 (leagues were 15 weeks at the time), and I ended up making playoffs. I was finally part of a storyline myself, and I've been hooked ever since.

At first it was the thrill of drafting my team and seeing my star mons do well, and running cool sets I would never run in OU. Then it became about improving my own skills in this new meta, but the community was always what brought me back. I will always treasure my Dream League/Sim friends, I consider them some of my closest friends to this day.

But it was also the shitposters, the beef in community discords, people wanting to make a name of themselves. Leagues wanting to be the next NPL, PPL, Hive or LD. The TTM Tours, Team Tours. Your first league title. Your 10th farmed league title. People that played in 10 leagues at once and then proceed to drop half after going 0-2. That time when you smoked someone with a Shellos or a Haunter or with 4 Pokemon. Every player has their own big moments and story, and it doesnt matter who you ask.

 

[Ghalundra]

I joined a draft a little over two years ago on a whim and had a lot of fun. I played NatDex monotype for two seasons in FPL while it was still up, am currently in a NatDex Tera Captain format for SGBL, and have played in three more casual Revcord drafts (two ongoing, one of which is multi battle). Changing it up with different formats keeps things fresh for me.

For the most part I do pretty well, though I am pretty spectacular at choking in playoffs. Cinderace is still dead to me for whiffing Pyro Ball in semi-finals, but that's on me for running a Pokémon with mostly 90% accurate moves.