Week 4 recap, was signicantly busier this week and all the week 5 games are scheduled for Sunday, so gonna get this out today, but it will be shorter.
The Games
Altina vs M Dragon
Teams: Big fan of Altina's team, lot of offensive power and overlapping checks on both sides of the spectrum with Ludi/Regice vs special attackers and Meta/Pert vs physical attackers, with Mence to threaten all offensive teams while carrying 3 Booms and potentially EndPert to break defensive teams open. I'm personally not the biggest fan of UDTtar without Spikes, so I could see a different set here, although I understand wanting to use max Speed to limit the amount of switches Altina has to do with what is arguably a very slow offense.
M Dragon's team has a very oldschool look to it, but Celebi is a pretty surprising pick where most people put a Snorlax. SubSeed is actually pretty good at weakening things and creating free entries for Mence/Ttar. Not to mention Celebi can hold its own against many of the special sweepers Snorlax traditionally checks here, such as Zapdos or Suicune.
Game: SubCM Cune had a dream opener, as that set can carries so much momentum if it gets a free turn, which it did as soon as turn 2. Suicune pretty much trades two for one, but Altina's UDTtar makes a killing comeback right after by eliminating Metagross and getting a lot of damage on both Ttar and Celebi. M Dragon's arguably behind at this point as Magneton is traditionally a weaklink against Offense. In fact, Altina only wasted his special checks and has a healthy Mence and Pert to deal with MDragon's physical threats. Would have probably been ugly but M Dragon gets very lucky with Mence and takes the game by critting what I assume was an EndPert, and then flinch the Mence to remove all chances.
Final Note: MDragon had a strong opening, but I think he should have preserved Ttar/Meta against offense compared to Magneton. For example, Mag could have been used to weaken Ttar if he was Timid HP Fire. Mentionning again: big fan of Altina's team!
Pheo vs Sadlysius
Teams: Pheo's team is very neat. CM Pass engine with all kind of abusers, Wish+Spin to fend off TSS while you try to break them open with Zard/Pert/Ttar. Bonus points for originality. From the way it was played, it seems the Starmie was Offensive, and I'd have seen a Recover variant doing better here.
Sadly's team is very solid and a good take of SkarmBliss with offensive options. He went with Starmie over the traditional Aero/Claydol in that spot, which honestly works as it supports Meta/Skarm when it comes to handling Physical assaults early and spin for the team.
Game: Pheo did a good job always staying on the aggro side as Sadly tried to stabilize with his Spikes for the first part of the battle. Pheo definitely had to stay on the offensive or he'd just get eaten alive longterm. HP Grass Swampert was particulary strong here to force the Starmie out. On turn 32, Pheo gets a pretty big crit and it entirely removes Skarm from play meaning the Spin that happens two turns later gives him all the leeway he'll need to use his offensive options. Pheo goes on to win, notably with the key turn that was the Mence x Jirachi exchange. I wonder if this was DD Adamant Mence vs bold Jirachi or MixMence vs SpDef.
Final Note: Great game honestly. Sadly might have revamped that team from vapicuno with DD Fire Blast Mence, but in thise case, it's a bit greedy to run it without Dug support imo. Or Pheo was using SpDef Jirachi with BoltBeam coverage, which is not only usual, but was instrumental to the win.
mikmer vs starmaster
Teams: mikmer mentionned it in the battle, but his team was leaning on the fishing side. It suffered vs some combinations of Physical walls, and he had all the trouble in the world getting past Skarm+Gar+Flygon. Probably should have replaced Flygon with something packing more punch to get around this issue. It's not an awful team though, but geared toward beating Offense too much. I think the issue stems from using Flygon+Aero without a clear way to play the long game should it face Claydol or defensive Flygon.
star on the other hand brought a pretty standard Superman team featuring what seems to be PursuitTtar to enable ProTox Skarm and Flygon, just solid & good stuff.
Game: mikmer had a pretty solid first part of the game, where Spin Cloy proved useful to keep Ttar and Meta healthy and dent through star's team. However, star played cleverly as he never allowed his Flygon and Gengar to take unnecessary damage and used his Zapdos / Skarm to buffer mikmer's Cloyster and Metagross. At the end, Flygon and Gengar kinda blanked everything mikmer could muster up and star took the victory convincingly.
Ojama vs johnnyg2
Teams: Ojama brought the very popular defensive structure of the past few months in SkarmBlissDolCune. The last two slots are usually a mix of Jirachi, Dugtrio and Gengar. In this case, we had the unorthodox combo of Dugtrio (personally a fan on these teams) and Mence. I could have seen a DDMence over the MixMence he brought here to give the team extra punch vs Offense, and it could even carry Fire Blast over EQ as it gets Spikes+Dug support for the EQ-weak guys, while FB would prevent Skarm from getting free entries.
I have to wonder if johnny revamped the team I brought vs CyberOdin last year as it's very similar in its composition, featuring Cloyster over Forretress. The rest is pretty much the same, although Johnny's packing the forgotten Boah set on Ttar over a more traditionnal BKCTtar. I kinda wonder why he went with this set but I'd guess it's to further punish the Claydol/Impish Meta that Ojama often run. It's still very good at opening an Aero endgame, just worse defensively.
Game: Ojama's Suicune was supposed to be the star of the show, but being down to 50% this early in the battle definitely made it harder for it to succeed. Ojama used all the tools in the book to bring it back, thanks to a clever Wish sack on turn 23-24 and a very clean Spikes + Sunny Day Dug set-up later. However johnnyg2 had many tools up his sleeve to continunously fight through the threat between Roar Zap, Spikes on his own and two Booms. The game was pretty much always in johnnyg2's camp and he played cleverly to not let Ojama come back into it.
ABR vs Teclis
Teams: Big fan of ABR's team here, lot of explosive offensive power to open the game between CB Meta, CB Camel and Boom Lax, with Zap getting them in safely and soaking hits to set-up an endgame for Pert and Mence. Much like Altina, lot of overlapping checks vs all kind of attackers with Zapdos/Lax+Camel on the special side, and Meta/Pert/Mence intimidate on the physical side.
Teclis had a very unusual team consisting of a Dual Fight core powered up by Spikes, PursuitTtar and WishRachi. I believe from the look of it that it's a revamp of a team Altina brought in Callous Invitational, featuring Machamp over Blaziken and with Loom most likely being SD here. Very cool stuff from both players.
Game: ABR immediately puts to good use a favorite of mine, BP Zap into CB Gross, which covers so many leads. Meta immediatly takes down Skarm, you love to see it in ABR's posiition: no Spikes and Snorlax is fully enabled. Both players get a bit unlucky later, as Teclis misses Rock Slide to weaken the Mence and ABR gets fully paralyzed + crit on an opportunity to remove Machamp from play. Teclis plays well by trading Loom for Camel but gets surprised by ABR's MixPert outspeeding Tyranitar and getting a lot of Leftovers as Teclis navigates through the discoveries. Teclis uses Mence Intimidate to play around the Pert and then manages to Paralyze + weaken Zap, which opens a Machamp+MixMence late game winning position. ABR plays his out well by setting up his DDMence on Machamp and immediately crits Teclis' Mence and then avoid the para from Slam to run away with the game.
Final Note: Great back and forth from both players here. I think many events changed the fate of the game. For example, ABR gets FP'd + Crit with Lax in a sequence where Booming on Machamp would open up his Swampert late game. Teclis then gets critically unlucky vs ABR's DDMence when he was in a good position. I do think the kind of team ABR ran has a very hard time recovering from this kind of bad break as Snorlax was instrumental to create a 4v4 side where his remaining Pokemons can shine. Besides that, I think Teclis played very well around ABR's aggression and he always traded the Pokemons he needed the least to preserve his true wincons (such as sending Loom on Camel) and maneuvered very well around Swampert with Jirachi+Mence.
The Teams
- The numbers: 6 Spikes (4 Skarm, 2 Cloy), 5 Spinners (2 Claydol, 2 Starmie, 1 Cloy), 1 Mag, 1 Dug, 8 Ttars.
- Think we're getting to that part of the Tour where players are trying to branch out to avoid getting counterstyled. We saw many players straying off their norm, such as Teclis using dual Fight, Altina going MixOff and ABR using Boom Offense.
- Some sick team diversity this week, we got a bit of everything between Mag Off, DugCune, SkarmGar, CloySands, BoomTrades or CMPass.
- 3 really cool squads from Altina/Pheo/ABR without Spikes or Trappers.
- This is Mence season, and especially DDMence season in fact. Very good offensive option vs Offense with amazing defensive synergy alongside Meta/Pert/Jirachi to Intimidate physical threats. It showed up big time this week and is taking a lot of spots where we traditionally see Gengar or Aero as it's more flexible than the latter and more threatening in the endgame vs Offense than Gengar.
- I like how many players have been using Pert lately. Pert can be good but is often featured on team where it's overloaded on the Physical side and ends up not being enough against the combo of Meta/Ttar/Aero/Mence, especially if Spikes are in play. Pairing it with Meta, Starmie or Jirachi has been pretty good to buffer other threats and keep a back-up Rock resist should Swampert or its partner get low early.