Reports

Published on July 23rd, 2013 | by Scott

10

Live and Let Live: 11th Place US Nationals Report

Howdy friends! Scott here again, this time with my annual reminder that I do play this game in addition to writing about it sometimes! While I feel like I spend more of my time writing about and commentating on other people playing Pokemon these days than playing it myself, I did get the chance to dust off my own Pokemon for US Nationals this year. Nationals was not a super high stakes event for me this year because even finishing in the top 64 would have guaranteed my Worlds invite with how we predicted Championship Points standings to look after Nationals and with how things actually played out I didn’t need to play at all. Given my historically terrible performances at Nationals, I still really wanted to have a decent run this year to validate my last year or so of play a little bit. I was also in a bizarre situation where I wasn’t sure if I was going to need to help with commentary before Swiss ended, so I ended up having a really stress-free tournament experience as a player this time because I wasn’t expecting any of my games to matter. I ended up having a great time playing this year and made it to the round of 16 before I had to drop, which was hopefully at least a little redemption after 17th and 33rd the last two years.

My plan for Nationals was to focus on Pokemon I thought had the most individual strength, with a stronger focus on having overwhelming power in best-of-one play than usual. When I build teams for best-of-three play, I focus much more on synergy than I do when I just want some best-of-one wins, because in best-of-three it’s important to maximize the amount of powerful combinations of my Pokemon I can create in order to give myself as much flexibility as possible when playing the same opponent multiple times. Since the focus here was more on just getting through Swiss without collapsing to secure a Worlds invitation and avoid embarrassing myself, I wasn’t trying to have a ton of overall team synergy this time, instead focusing on having a few coherent attacking options and enough tricks to be able to coast to where I wanted be. I think focusing on best-of-one play made more sense for my situation than using something that was really hard to take out in the top cut, but that might have had more issues getting there this time.

These were the six Pokemon I used at Nationals. I started out by selecting Tyranitar, Cresselia, and Landorus-T. I think Tyranitar and Cresselia’s general power is pretty well documented at this point. As a player who tends to be inclined to play more defensively than the average player, they tend to be my favorite place to start when building a team right now because of their natural bulk. I decided that the next thing I really wanted to work in was Intimidate, because there are so many potent physical attackers in the metagame right now and I dislike having to make room for Reflect or Will-o-Wisp. I think Intimidate is particularly important against the popular Sand archetype, which are often weak to the Intimidate users to begin with. While Hitmontop is the most common Intimidate user, I think it’s usually a weak choice on teams that aren’t planning on being extremely aggressive and fast overall, which wasn’t my goal here. As such, I was basically left with Scrafty, Gyarados, and Landorus-T for viable options. While I absolutely adore Scrafty, I find Tyranitar is awfully redundant with Scrafty, both offensively and defensively, so for the umpteenth time this year I was forced to leave Scrafty in my PC in spite of how good I think it is. I didn’t consider Gyarados as seriously as I probably should have, so Landorus-T was in, which is a Pokemon I had wanted to use alongside Tyranitar after losing to Excadrill mirrors in the top cut of the last two Regionals I played in, anyway.

With Tyranitar and Cresselia as a core part of the team, I knew I either wanted to give Tyranitar a Choice Scarf or to develop a Trick Room mode. While several players did well with it, I didn’t love Scarf Tyranitar as a play at Nationals because the electric Legendaries’ and Dragons’ usage seemed a little down and because Breloom and Conkeldurr usage was up, so I went the Trick Room route mostly to be able to use Protect on Tyranitar. Tyranitar isn’t going to be sweeping any teams these days, so I looked for a primary Trick Room sweeper in my next slot to serve as my main gun beside it, with Tyranitar being more of a defensive pivot. I tried out a handful of options — Metagross, Scizor, and Escavalier being the most notable — but I wasn’t super enthralled by any of them. Metagross basically required me to run Swagger on Cresselia if I wanted to be able to get any quick wins, but I didn’t want to make room on Cresselia’s moveset for Swagger. Escavalier’s accuracy issues and lack of coverage was something I found to be very frustrating, especially because I knew I already had inaccurate Rock-type attacks on two of my three current Pokemon. I ended up building a version of this team around slow Scizor that a couple other players used during Nationals because I thought it was the most appropriate of the three options, but after watching Japanese Nationals and seeing how hard Conkeldurr was hitting things I decided I’d try it out myself. While Conkeldurr’s defensive synergy on this team was pretty mediocre, the massive damage compared to other options made it pretty obvious that if I just needed to set myself up to clock a few people for easy wins, Conkeldurr was the way to go. Conkeldurr solidified its role with the added bonus of bringing boosted Mach Punches to easily swat any Choice Scarf Tyranitars I ran into, as well as to snipe low HP opponents like Scizor even without speed control. Conkeldurr seemed extremely appealing even if its primary STAB attack was not perfectly accurate like Scizor’s is. Fortunately, Hammer Arm only missed twice at Nationals, and I was able to recover both times.

In a perfect world, I would have completed the team with two Earthquake immune Pokemon to help build a fast mode around Landorus-T that had comfortable flexibility with switches. However, at this point in the team I needed to make my Pokemon choices based on matchup weaknesses and pick Pokemon based on that. At this point in the teambuilding process, my read included needing help dealing with Togekiss teams, Rain, and certain Flying and Psychic types. One of my biggest issues was that I needed a better way to deal with enemy Trick Room teams, because I didn’t have any way to disrupt setup if I didn’t want to fight in a more dedicated team’s Trick Room mode beyond the unreliable counter of using the move Trick Room myself. I was fairly sure I didn’t want to play a full Trick Room team, so I needed some set-up disruption and some quicker Pokemon to create a viable fast mode to use as an alternative to my Trick Room mode in games where I wasn’t just mix-and-matching for a matchup advantage. I also lacked a Steel-type, so I was going to have to make sure I had ways to manage Dragon-types if I didn’t choose to add one. While I hadn’t used Thundurus-I on a serious team since 2011, I felt like it was probably my best option here, being immune to Earthquake for Landorus, capable of surviving a boosted Draco Meteor, good against most Flying Pokemon, good against Togekiss, good against Rain, and giving me an alternate form of speed control from Thunder Wave for games where I didn’t want to set Trick Room up. Thundurus even has Taunt to help me stop other people from using Trick Room and burning my sweepers with Will-o-Wisp, which was important for one metagame read I didn’t commit to as hard as I should have, which is that many of the top players were focusing on disrupting the metagame’s many physical sweepers.

While I knew I didn’t want a third Flying-type, ideally I wanted a Pokemon with Levitate in my last slot to help Landorus get Earthquakes off safely. Sadly, the list of potential Pokemon with Levitate that aren’t weak to Ice is pretty bleak outside of a couple Rotom form-eees, and since I didn’t want a third Ice weakness or a Rotom on this team, I decided to go a different route. I didn’t have a clear vision of what I needed in my last slot, so I opted for Volcarona because I think it has a great bag of tricks for this event and its typing helped out with some Pokemon that were annoying me. While Cresselia and Thundurus are technically special attackers, neither of them really present a meaningful offensive threat, so I liked having Volcarona to allow to me to apply at least a little offensive pressure with a special Pokemon. The Overheat/Ragepowder set is my favorite on Volcarona, giving me some fun options like the ability to OHKO the Bronzongs on these cheesy Eruption Heatran teams and another way to give Conkeldurr openings to attack outside of speed control, vastly improving my ability to deal with best-of-three matches.

The Team

Tyranitar (M) @ Expert Belt
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 200 Atk / 20 Def / 36 SDef
IVs: 0 Speed
Brave Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
– Crunch
– Rock Slide
– Low Kick
– Protect

So, Expert Belt. When I was preregistering, I had expected that I wouldn’t be playing more than a few rounds of Swiss in the actual tournament. As a result, I wasn’t quite as meticulous about checking my work as I normally am. Apparently, I put an Expert Belt Tyranitar I had been testing this team with in my Battle Box rather than the more specially defensive, Chople Berry-holding version I had intended to use. The item mistake wouldn’t have been a huge issue, except that I discovered Tyranitar’s item by not surviving a Mach Punch from JRank’s Conkeldurr during round 3 of Swiss because I lacked the Chople Berry. Cleverly, I had intentionally not switched out of because I thought I had the Chople. Beauty.

I normally use a spread that is functionally identical to the one on Ray Rizzo (Ray)’s 2012 Worlds team, but for the Expert Belt experiment I had moved about 80 EVs from Special Defense to Attack and changed the item to Expert Belt to pick up some KOs I couldn’t pick up otherwise, or too often, to almost pick up some KOs I still couldn’t get. Expert Belt does allow me to make some cool plays, such as normally KOing Thundurus-I with Rock Slide(5/8 chance before Sand damage against Aaron’s old Thundurus-I spread, which I suspected would be the most copied spread for it), and especially to make plays with a Helping Hand boost from my Cresselia, which let me get some KOs on other Pokemon I wanted such as certain Cresselia spreads with Crunches(7/8 chance to OHKO with Helping Hand against my own Cresselia spread before Sand, for instance), Rock Slides, and Low Kicks (Helping Hand+Expert Belt brings the Low Kick on Excadrills from never OHKOs to always or almost always OHKOs pending EV spread, for instance). In the end, I decided most of the situations Expert Belt appreciably helped in were a little too unreliable to justify what I was giving up by not having Chople to protect me from Mach Punches and Intimidated Drain Punches and Close Combats, but I inadvertently ended up using it anyway. While I hadn’t meant to use it, I think the Expert Belt setup is pretty effective, but the damage was just a hair lower than what I thought was acceptable. The other EVs are still pretty standard: 252 HP and 20 Defense allows Tyranitar to always survive unboosted Metagross Meteor Mashes, with the general bulk being a big part of what makes slow Tyranitar the monster it is.

In spite of being by far the best Pokemon in the ruleset in my opinion, my good pal NOSTROM!!! the Tyranitar didn’t see quite as much play this time as he did on my teams for the past two Regionals, though he was still in about 3/4 of my games. As someone who has been playing Pokemon games since I was a wee boy and tends to anthropomorphize my Pokemon a little as a result, it felt kinda cool to be using the same Tyranitar for what is now three live tournaments in a row even in this era of easy replacement Pokemon, especially since he also heromoded a match in the second Korea/USA friendly for me with his original teammates. Part of his job is normally to help me control Rain while also functioning as my secondary TR Sweeper and my secondary(or this time, primary) Draco Meteor sponge, but I saw surprisingly few of the things he normally counters. I only saw a single Latios and didn’t see any Rain, which limited the impact Tyranitar had on my day as far as countering other Pokemon went, but he synergies offensively pretty well with Conkeldurr because of his Rock- and Dark-typing letting him counter the Flying-, Ghost-, and Psychic-types that wanted to slow down Conkeldurr, so he still had his fun.

Cresselia (F) @ Sitrus Berry
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 220 HP / 28 Def / 180 SAtk / 76 SDef / 6 Spd
IVs: 0 Speed and 1 Attack
Sassy Nature (+SDef, -Spd)
– Psyshock
– Ice Beam
– Helping Hand
– Trick Room

Cresselia is a Pokemon that has been on a majority of my teams since 2012 with few changes, though I temporarily dropped her during the most recent set of Regionals. 180 Special Attack EVs allows Cresselia to always OHKO 4 HP/0 Special Defense Salamence, 220 HP EVs gives Cresselia the maximum HP it can have without taking extra damage from Sandstorm, and 76 Special Defense gives me a bonus point from Sassy Nature. Remaining points are dumped into Defense for general bulk because I didn’t like anything I could do with them specifically. The 6 EVs in Speed aren’t usable by the spread because of my IVs and the number of stats I’m investing in.

While Trick Room is the only move here I felt was mandatory, the second most important move to me is actually Helping Hand. A lot of players pick it just to pick it as a filler without knowing their damage calculations very well and don’t really make much use of it as a result. For me, it tends to be essential to my strategy when I play this sort of team: I don’t think there was a single game where I picked Cresselia but didn’t use Helping Hand. I think with these Trick Room hybrid teams, Cresselia only threatens a very specific pool of Pokemon with its attack options, so Helping Hand is a big deal for it to help its sweeper teammates pick up KOs they otherwise couldn’t get to avoid being counterattacked and losing momentum, and I would much rather guarantee my KOs with Helping Hand than hope I can stall for a second hit with something like Swagger. Without a Steel-type on this team, Ice Beam is pretty mandatory to help clean enemy Dragon-types up before they become too problematic, and it is also a great move to help combat the progressively more common Landorus-T. It isn’t uncommon for Japanese players running similar sets to use Swagger in the remaining spot instead of a STAB Psychic move, but with Tyranitar as one of my Trick Room sweepers and all forms of Attack reduction being a massive problem for my Trick Room mode, I thought Psyshock was a much better choice to help control Pokemon like Hitmontop and Rotom-W. While I usually prefer to combine Helping Hand with items that boost damage on my other Pokemon to stack the multipliers — evidenced by four of my other five Pokemon holding Expert Belt, Life Orb, Electric Gem, and Fire Gem — one of the best synergies on this team is actually with Landorus-T and its puny Choice Scarf. Landorus’ unboosted Attack stat of roughly nine million lets it OHKO all Tyranitar and Metagross that aren’t holding Shuca Berry or Focus Sash with Earthquake instead of coming up just short like it normally would after Cresselia’s Helping Hand.

Landorus (Landorus-T) (M) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 28 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 224 Spd
IVS: 30 Special Defense, Special Attack, Speed
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
– Earthquake
– Stone Edge
– U-turn
– Hidden Power [Flying]

Landorus is not running the most cerebral spread ever made. The Speed puts it just above max scarf Rotoms, as well as some other things I’m more concerned about like +1 Speed neutral nature Heracross. Attack is maxed, and the rest of the EVs are distributed pretty uninterestingly mostly into HP. The moves are likely more interesting than the EVs. Earthquake is a given, as it is the reason Landorus-T is an offensive threat. I didn’t think U-turn was optional, either. I very, very rarely play Trick Room hybrids that don’t have U-turn or Volt Switch, and Landorus is where I chose to get it this time. I think the hit-and-switch moves are basically mandatory to keep momentum when setting up Trick Room for offensive use. Unlike most Volt Switchers, Landorus-T helps protect the setup by Intimidating Pokemon like Tyranitar that threaten Cresselia. U-turn is also fantastic for getting chunks of free damage while switching out against Landorus counters like enemy Cresselia. Putting the switching move in this Pokemon slot, which might be Excadrill on a more pure Sand team, prevents me from being forced into picking Thundurus-T or Zapdos later, allowing me to use the more defensive Thundurus-I. Stone Edge’s accuracy is a nightmare, but I think it’s pretty much mandatory as Landorus-T’s obligatory Rock-type move because of the prevalence of Volcarona+Hitmontop and the amount of bulk several Pokemon have in this metagame. It doesn’t matter how much more accurate Rock Slide is than Stone Edge, because Rock Slide is never going to KO Volcarona through Wide Guard or do enough damage to Thundurus-I to knock it out in a single blow. To use Aaron’s old spread again, Stone Edge OHKOs 100% of the time against Thundurus-I, while Rock Slide doesn’t even get close. Sadly, the version he used at Nationals would have had a chance to survive, but at least I’d have gotten the copies, which was the point.

From that point in the planning process I could have gone in several directions with Landorus. I tried Yache Berry and Focus Sash, but in practice I found Choice Scarf was the best item for this team, helping to give me a fast mode that is at least somewhat threatening to make it more of the Trick Room hybrid it was intended to be rather than just a Trick Room-and-pray. The Choice Scarf also helps with getting U-turns off before getting embarrassingly knocked out without attacking, and helps give me a way to avoid instantly losing to enemy Choice Scarf users and other fast Pokemon when I can’t or don’t want to get Trick Room up for whatever reason. Not having Protect did open me up to some potential issues like Fake Out and …Exeggutor…, but I’ve had at least one Choiced Pokemon on each of my teams for the last three live events and for two of the last three Wi-Fi tournaments, so I’m pretty comfortable with the limitations of Choice items. Without Protect, I felt like the conventional options for the fourth moveslot are pretty mediocre. There’s basically just Rock Slide, which is super redundant with Stone Edge but gives me the ability to hit two targets off the ground and a more accurate option vs. Flying types, or a Fighting move like Superpower or Brick Break, both of which rarely OHKO anything and are usually awful moves to lock into. Instead, I chose to go the quirky route of taking advantage of Landorus’ legendary status giving it usable values in all six stats and whipping out Hidden Power Flying. It is one of the more situational options I could have picked, but like Stone Edge it actually lets me OHKO some things I couldn’t otherwise, in this case Heracross without defensive investment and all Breloom.

Landorus-T is a monster. I knew I wanted to try using it more when I saw how high its usage was in Japan’s Wi-Fi qualifiers and I wasn’t disappointed. Intimidate + U-turn is pretty much the cheesiest thing in the game that isn’t RNG-based, and it is really helpful for (con)trolling teams with a lot of physical attackers. While Landorus-T usually started out games by U-turning for me, if people tried to lead frail or Ground-weak Pokemon I was perfectly happy to Helping Hand Earthquake and win the game for free, though sadly I didn’t get to play against enough Metagross+Tyranitar type teams for it to happen at Nationals. Landorus-T is also a huge jerk to Sand teams while dealing with a lot of other common duos like most Breloom pairings and Topmoth pretty well, making it pretty adept in our current metagame. Plus, look at that design! I always thought the incarnate genie designs were pretty lame, but Therian Landorus is a beast that can’t be stopped and its sprite would like you to know that.

I should note this set is the main problem I thought the team had with dealing with best-of-threes, which I mentioned earlier wasn’t really my focus this time. I think Choice Scarf is great in best-of-one play, but it tends to be a much weaker choice in best-of-three when your opponent knows you have it while they’re picking their Pokemon. It’s a little harder to eyeball Landorus’ Scarf on team preview on this team than it is for, say, most Scarf Tyranitars, so it worked really well in best-of-one play, but I think I’d have had more problems in best-of-three. Hidden Power Flying probably compounded that a little, since it is a lot weaker once you know it is there beyond adding a little extra threat. I think I picked Landorus in all of my top cut games anyway, but Choice Scarf was not the most appropriate set for that type of play.

Conkeldurr (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Iron Fist
EVs: 72 HP / 252 Atk / 184 SDef
IVs: 0 Speed
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
– Hammer Arm
– Mach Punch
– Ice Punch
– Detect

These first four Pokemon comprised my primary Trick Room mode, and were basically my default option when battling. If I thought I could get away with these four, or if I didn’t know what to do, this is what came out, and they overpowered five of the seven games they teamed up for.

As with Landorus, boring math on this one because I didn’t need anything cool. I knew I wanted maximum Attack to maximize my OHKO potential, which is probably higher here than with any physical Pokemon in allowed in VGC for single targets. 72 HP EVs got me to 189 HP, which is 3 points under the next point I’d take more Sandstorm damage and one point under where I’d take more Life Orb damage. The remaining EVs go into Special Defense because I was more concerned about him getting bursted down on the Special side because of Intimidate, and I didn’t want to just dump EVs into HP on a Pokemon where I was doing percent HP damage to myself with Life Orb and Sandstorm.

Conkeldurr is completely ridiculous. It’s basically best-in-metagame damage for a single target physical attacker. It’s extremely slow in Trick Room, and if I can get it out on the correct turn Conkeldurr can even beat a lot of the stuff that would otherwise be able to handle it in Trick Room through Speed by Hammer Arming its own Speed down to make it slower yet. Hammer Arm’s Speed lowering quality was particularly theoretically valuable against Pokemon like Amoonguss and Escavalier, who were normally slower but could be OHKOd by Helping Hand boosted attacks after a Hammer Arm “boost” before they could move in Trick Room. Conkeldurr’s raw damage is absurd, OHKOing a lot of supposedly bulky Pokemon like some Rotom-Ws and Gastrodons with Hammer Arm and basically all Pokemon weak to Ice with non-STAB Ice Punch. Mach Punch does gobs of damage after the boosts from STAB, Iron Fist, and Life Orb as well, and it can OHKO some extremely frail Pokemon as a result. While there’s a few things like Jellicent that really slow it down, Tyranitar deals with most of Conkeldurr’s counters well, making them a pretty fun offensive pairing even if neither of them can switch into some of the Pokemon my usual leads tend to draw like Rotom-W very well. I’ve normally used Conkeldurr as more of a bulky, longer term sweeper, like I did in the first USA vs Korea friendly, but I think the glass cannon version is probably more effective because it’s more like a glass nuclear bomb, and it isn’t really all that glass even with the Life Orb and the Sand damage ticking away. Conkeldurr took over a majority of my games, and only really had problems vs. Crow in Swiss and vs. Maurice in Game 1 of top 32 because I foolishly let it get burned in both games, which was not $$$ this time. If only I had some sort of Fire-type Pokemon with Ragepowder to eat Will-o-Wisp for me…

Volcarona (F) @ Fire Gem
Trait: Flame Body
EVs: 244 HP / 4 Def / 44 SAtk / 28 SDef / 188 Spd
IVs: 0 Attack
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
– Overheat
– Bug Buzz
– Rage Powder
– Protect

Oh, Volcarona. That’s a Fire-type Pokemon with Ragepowder!

Volcarona was the Pokemon I used the least, and also the one I was least confident about going into Nationals. I had sort of wanted to replace it for something I thought worked better for giving me a coherent non-Trick Room mode featuring Thundurus-I and Tyranitar because I didn’t have many real match-up needs from this slot. It turned out that I didn’t have a clear enough vision for what I wanted in this slot as Nationals was approaching, so I opted not to make a rash change to something that might be theoretically better but that I hadn’t practiced with. Some of my friends who used this team for me when I was testing it — most notably Mike Papagianis(skarm) — defended the Volcarona pretty vehemently, and after Nationals I’m going to go ahead and give the nod to my teammates on this one because it was surprisingly effective.

Both of my real game losses were to Will-o-Wisp Rotom-W. In both cases, I hadn’t expected Will-o-Wisp to be on the set and hadn’t picked Volcarona because I feared Hydro Pump… a move one of the Rotoms didn’t even have. While in one case Hydro Pump and would probably have blown me up anyway, I may have been able to improve my record a little had I had more faith in Volcarona to help stop the burns. Outside of me not expecting this trend and Volcarona not being as appropriate a solution to Rotom-W as it is to other Will-o-Wisp users, Volcarona actually did a nice job for this team. It stole Mach and Bullet Punches away from Tyranitar, Will-o-Wisps away from my main three attackers when I remembered to bring it, and it could situationally take random attacks to protect my three physical sweepers. Ragepowder and Follow Me are part of a group of about ten moves along with some other stuff like Feint I think really help good teams and players pull away from less experienced players by pressuring predictions through taking away options, and Ragepowder/Follow Me was something I had kind of planned on trying to fit on the team for Nationals and Worlds if I could as a result.

I had originally EVed Volcarona to to normally survive Dragon Gem Draco Meteors like the one I used at Nationals last year, but I decided that it wasn’t worth it this time because Volcarona survives Draco Meteor with so little health that it can’t really function at that point anyway, especially with Tyranitar present in most games. Besides, I had more specific plans for the EVs this time. A Timid nature and 188 Speed EVs lets it outrun max Jolly Landorus-T, which is something I was very, very close to changing before Nationals because I found it wasn’t occurring enough in practice, but I ended up keeping it because I didn’t have an alternative spread I was in love with, which ended up netting me an important win in Swiss. The 44 Special Attack EVs are sort of generic, but help get some extra damage to ice some close XHKOs, with perhaps the most fun one to mention being the Hitmontop Spread Zach used at a Regional most recently, since I agree that his is probably the right default spread for Hitmontop, so I need that Hitmontop to faint. While the other EV investments were offensively inclined, a big part of this Volcarona’s purpose was absorbing hits with Ragepowder, especially after getting it’s Fire Gem Overheat off and reducing its offensive pressure as a result, so I gave it near max HP with 244 EVs, as 252 would have caused it to take an extra point of Sandstorm damage.

The one thing this slot really didn’t do for me is give me any sustained offensive pressure from a special attacker in games where I couldn’t hit half the enemy team for super effective damage with Bug Buzz, which was one of my team’s major weaknesses this time.

Thundurus (M) @ Electric Gem
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 196 HP / 20 SAtk / 236 SDef / 56 Spd
IVs: Attack 3, Speed 30
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
– Thunderbolt
– Thunder Wave
– Taunt
– Hidden Power [Ice]

56 Speed EVs lets me outrun Modest Kingdra if Rain isn’t up, as well as getting me safely over most non-scarf Rotoms. The HP and Special Defensive investments were to get as much HP as I could feasibly get while still always surviving Latios Dragon Gem Draco Meteors. The remaining EVs were used to help increase Thundurus’ chip damage and increase the odds of me picking up some odd 2HKOs, like Randy’s Togekiss spread after Electric Gem and Sitrus are consumed, though Randy himself ran Lum this time.

After this tournament I wonder why I haven’t been using Thundurus-I more. It’s still not my favorite Pokemon in the world — especially on teams like this one where Sitrus Berry isn’t available for it to use — but Prankster Taunt is pretty much the best anti-gimmickry tool in the world and Thunder Wave gives me a really great alternative speed control option to Trick Room that synergizes extremely well with my old pal Tyranitar and his Rock Slides. There’s nothing too exciting here — STAB Electric is really good against a handful of obnoxious Pokemon, and Prankster is broken — but there doesn’t need to be. Hidden Power Ice as the 4th move was the team’s most underwhelming move choice, but I really don’t like the loss of potential win conditions that would have come from not being able to hit Ground-type Pokemon with Thundurus. I considered Flight Gem Hidden Power Flying with all of the Fighting types flying around like I believe Stephen Morioka (Stephen) ended up running, which would have been great against this bizarre Grass Pokemon fad we’re having, but I felt like it wasn’t worth it without a Flying Gem and that I needed to keep my Electric Gem to help with Togekiss and Rain, which was a big part of why Thundurus was on the team to begin with. I didn’t end up playing any Rain teams or Togekiss, naturally, but I think it was the safer choice.

Like Volcarona, Thundurus was just here to tech in when I saw problems. The more I played this team, the more I was surprised by how frequently Thundurus was entering games, because Thunder Wave and Taunt solve many potential problems. Thundurus was the only Pokemon other than Cresselia and Landorus I used as a lead more than one time throughout the tournament, as I tended to really want to focus on letting the support Pokemon set the game up for Tyranitar and Conkeldurr with this team. If I were to adjust this team I might make some changes in the other Pokemon to let myself play the Thunder Wave game a little more than I did this time as Thundurus really proved its value to me. Thundurus, Landorus, and two of Volcarona, Tyranitar, and Conkeldurr was the second most common general mode for me this time after the Trick Room mode, which I ended up falling back on in games where I wanted Taunt or Thunder Wave.

Nationals Matches and Battle Videos

My notes this time are pretty terrible, so I’m not going to be able to go through battles turn-by-turn. I’m going to split this up by battle regardless in hopes its easier to read. There are two battle videos here, which sadly are much more effective than my recollection of my battles this time. I’m going to include my opponents’ final records as well as the records they had at the time we battled as I go through to try to give more context.

Round 1: Bye

I’ll spare you all the “it was a tough battle!” jokes, and will instead focus on lamenting how embarrassing it is that I was one of like four people who actually needed the top-16-in-CP-get-a-bye byes because I couldn’t get a normal one from Regionals. Next year…

Round 2: Paris Reid (1-0; 1-5)

Looking at team preview, I knew that only the eight million games of Wi-Fi I’ve been coerced into playing for trivial amounts of Championship Points this year could have prepared me for this moment. I’ve run into some bizarre teams in round two over the years, but this one has to take the cake. Like most games where I had no idea what was about to happen, I mashed the Landorus-T, Cresselia, Tyranitar, and Conkeldurr buttons and hoped things would work out.

There isn’t too much to say about this one. I ended up with a pretty big early lead that I choked up a little bit when Haxorus ripped my Cresselia in half with Guillotine. The high point of this battle definitely came from Paul Hornak (makiri), who was sitting next to me that round. After he had things wrapped up in his match he leaned over to see how my game was going. While at first he seemed curious, the expression on his face quickly turned to what I assume was pure disbelief as he looked just in time to see Cresselia getting Gulliotined by a Haxorus with a Machoke on the field next to it. He looked at me and mouthed something I’m not sure I can repeat because I don’t think our word filters work on articles, but needless to say we were both quite surprised.

Also, I was disappointed my opponent didn’t use Arbok, because Arbok is awesome. Rotom-W had Choice Specs and Spiritomb was a very frail offensive set that reminded me of good ol’ Choice Band Spiritomb in DPP Underused singles, though I believe he had a different item. I can only assume Machoke was just there because my opponent may not have known that No Guard doesn’t affect the accuracy of Machoke’s partner’s attacks.

I have played in Nationals three times, and each year my second round opponent started 1-0 and then never won a game again after losing to me. The streak continues.

Round 3: Jonathan Rankin (JRank) (2-0; 7-2)

While I wasn’t very excited to pull JRank, I figured after what amounted to two byes to start the tournament it was probably fair to have a few rounds where I battled known players.

I had mixed reactions to team preview on this one. I liked the look of his team from an objective perspective, which made it something I didn’t particularly want to battle. The Conkeldurr-Jellicent-Amoonguss trio reminded me of the two Japanese Masters finalists, which was a pretty obvious Trick Room option. I figured that it was likely Tyranitar was holding Choice Scarf given that the slow mode was covered and that it didn’t make sense for him to all-in with Trick Room with Zapdos and Volcarona on the team, and that I liked my team match-up in general here as long as I didn’t lose Tyranitar before I stopped needing him. I assumed Zapdos would probably be doing the Choice Specs Volt Switch thing, but I wasn’t really sure how Volcarona was likely to fit into what he was doing.

This was one of the games I got forced off of my standard grouping of four, instead going for geniemode with Thundurus-I and Landorus-T up front and Conkeldurr and Tyranitar in the back. I wanted try to use the genies to scout and disable the opposition a little with Thunder Wave, Intimidate, and potentially Taunt before Conkeldurr and Tyranitar came in to actually start doing my damage.

He led both of his choice Pokemon, which was a little awkward because I didn’t have a lot of immediate damage available and would have taken quite a large amount of damage if he’d just started firing away. I Thunder Waved Tyranitar’s slot, which wound up becoming JRank’s Conkeldurr, who fortunately had Iron Fist like my Conkeldurr, so this was not $$$ for him. Landorus fired off a Stone Edge on Zapdos, who I wanted to clear for Conkeldurr as quickly as possible. JRank did some chip damage with Zapdos to Thundurus, who actually got to use his special defensive investment for one of the few times that Saturday.

Neither of us remember the details of exactly what happened from there very well, but I believe I ended up losing Thundurus to a critical hit a turn or two later, which led to me having to expose Tyranitar slightly earlier than I’d intended. While that was happening, he ended up leaving his slightly weakened, paralyzed Conkeldurr unprotected against mine, and while I was ecstatic when he didn’t Protect, I ended up missing Hammer Arm, denying me a big KO. My miss set him up for an easy Mach Punch kill on my nearly full health Tyranitar shortly after, because it was at this point in the tournament I learned I had put the Expert Belt Tyranitar in my battle box instead of the Chople Berry one and I opted not to take my free switch to Landorus-T as a result. The combination of Hammer Arm missing and my item mistake ended up putting me in a bad spot, because even though my Conkeldurr finished his as Tyranitar fainted because I needed Tyranitar or Thundurus alive to finish his Jellicent off, who was now at a little more than 50 HP with Trick Room up. I ended up making a mistake when we were at 2-2 where I should have Mach Punched Tyranitar and Stone Edged Jellicent and just hoped Landorus and Conkeldurr could handle the 2v1 as Jellicent Recover stalled. I ended up misreading Jellicent’s health bar a little and mistakenly believing I could KO it with Ice Punch, except I actually didn’t have a chance to put it any lower than about 4 HP without a critical hit. Fortunately for me, Conkeldurr decided to make up for his Hammer Arm miss by getting that critical hit, which left him alone with a Scarfed Tyranitar locked into Ice Punch after Tyranitar picked up the KO on Landorus while Conkeldurr was taking out Jellicent.

While critical hitting my way out of trouble is pretty much the lamest way to win I can I imagine, I didn’t feel too guilty about it given how I’d gotten there. I definitely lucked out after misreading the damage roll on Jellicent, though, which is the sort of mistake I’m usually pretty good at avoiding.

Round 4: Greyson Garren (Greysong) (3-0; 6-3)

This was my third game against Greyson in a live event, with Greyson beating me during 2011 Nationals Swiss and me beating him during Swiss in the 2013 Ft Wayne Regional. Which definitely took place in 2012. There wasn’t a whole lot of reading to do on team preview for me this round because I’d battled Greyson on Wi-Fi using a similar team, and his current team was still very close to his 2012 team, which I had also battled.

While the previous two games were really close, I think Greyson would probably have liked to have selected different Pokemon this time. He went with Thundurus and Garchomp out front with Cresselia and Suicune in back, while I decided I thought I could get away with running a Trick Room mode with Landorus, Cresselia, Conkeldurr, and I think Tyranitar. If I recall correctly, I Trick Roomed while Stone Edging Thundurus with Landorus, who was still a little rusty early in the morning and whiffed. I knew from seeing the team on Wi-Fi he probably had Taunt, but I thought if Thundurus stayed in and Taunted Cresselia, Landorus would probably have cleaned it up and that Greyson would probably choose to use Swagger instead, anyway. Landorus didn’t get a KO and Thundurus used neither Swagger or Taunt, opting to Thunder Wave Cresselia instead. With Trick Room up, I eventually ended up getting my sweepers out and cleaning up pretty easily, while he lost momentum by trying to parafuse Cresselia who wasn’t doing much, anyway. If I wasn’t sure why I had brought Conkeldurr to Indianapolis from the previous game, he made sure to remind me by knocking Suicune out from about 80% with a Hammer Arm, which felt good after Suicune had very nearly stalled out my last two Pokemon all alone the last time I played Greyson.

Trick Room let me clean up pretty easily this time, but I suspect if we had played a best-of-three instead of a single game, the subsequent games would have been much closer.

Round 5: Ben Rothman (Nightblade7000) (4-0; 7-2)

I had a mixed reaction to this pairing. While I was a bit of a drama queen to my friends when I saw it on my phone, I was also actually kind of excited to play Ben. I knew I wasn’t going to get to finish the tournament anyway, so I wanted to play against good players for the experience. Ben went with Landorus, Cresselia, Tyranitar, and Metagross, while I went with Landorus, Cresselia, Volcarona, and a mystery Pokemon I can’t remember. As with Greyson, I had battled Ben using this team before, so I had a pretty good idea what to expect.

Our match actually ended up being on Nugget Bridge’s stream, but because the internet in the venue wasn’t very reliable I can’t actually link to it. It didn’t end up being quite as good of a game as it could have been because I had a pretty meaningful information advantage. I respect people like Ben and Randy Kwa (R Inanimate) who are willing to go into events not seeming to care who knows their teams in return for being much more practiced with their teams because they aren’t hiding. The disadvantage with that strategy is that it makes things a little trickier for them in the best-of-one segment of tournaments where they’re playing blind and the other side isn’t, with the eventual payoff in the best-of-three stage where they have the edge of being more experienced with their teams and where everyone usually winds up with all the information they need. Anyway, the point is that I had a minor lead early in the game and then blew the game open because I knew he was running Yache Landorus-T. I knew he didn’t have Choice Scarf or Focus Sash, so I knew I could outrun it and KO it with Fire Gem Overheat from Volcarona. I maneuvered a little bit from there to get set back up with Cresselia and Landorus-T out against Metagross and Tyranitar, and cleaned the game pretty easily from there with Helping Hand-boosted Earthquake. I suspect if we had played in top cut things would have been much more difficult for me with information being more even, but it was fun to get to play Ben in a live event, since I hadn’t before.

Round 6: Brandon Tang (5-0; 6-3): 76-46243-03019 YouTube

I was a little surprised to get a name I didn’t know at 5-0, but I was told later he had cut Nationals in Seniors before, so I guess the situation kind of makes sense.

I feel like having the video available probably gives all the information that is needed, so I’ll just add a couple extra comments on meaningful turns during the game.

Turn 0: I led my genies knowing that I probably couldn’t Trick Room against this team and that I was probably going to see some combination of Sableye, Volcarona, and Latios turn 1. I didn’t feel like most of my other Pokemon matched up very well, but I didn’t want to bring a defensive Cresselia in a game where I didn’t want to Trick Room and was against two Bug-types, and I felt like Tyranitar would struggle the most against two Fighting-types and two Bug-types of my remaining options, so Volcarona and Conkeldurr sort of ended up in the game by default.

Turn1: I regretted not Taunting Volcarona Turn 1 as soon as I Thunder Waved because I figured he would do what he did, but I didn’t think the potential payout of stopping the Quiver Dance was worth potentially having a zero progress turn if he had attacked with Volcarona instead. At least I cleared the Lum!

Turn 5: I made a mistake here when I Overheated Sableye’s slot instead of Bug Buzzing it. I was trying to pick up knock outs to help me coast through the rest of the game at this point in the match and it didn’t wind up mattering much, but if I had stopped to think about it, I would probably have guessed his last Pokemon correctly. His unused Pokemon were Terrakion and Breloom, and given that Breloom would have had to be very foolish to switch in, that Overheat would have been trivial to Terrakion anyway, and that if he had Terrakion to begin with I would likely have seen it already given my active Pokemon, I should have just Bug Buzzed in case of the Latios switch or to keep Sableye stuck on the field and not really accomplishing anything for another turn if he didn’t switch.

I felt pretty fortunate to have Thundurus on the team this round, since I think it more or less won the game on its own.

Round 7: Harrison Saylor (Crow) (6-0; 7-2)

I wish I could write more about this game without having a video to look at, but there just isn’t much to say. Crow was my loss at Nationals, and it wasn’t a close game. The game ended up “only” being 0-2 in spite of me somehow hitting 7 Stone Edges in a row, but I was never really in this one. Like with Ben, I was excited to get the chance to play Crow in a live tournament, but I didn’t really have a great plan for how I wanted to attack his team after team preview and it showed. He picked Landorus-T and Tornadus with Rotom-W and Escavalier in the back, and I tried to play the Landorus-T/Cresselia/Conkeldurr/Tyranitar mode because I didn’t really know what I wanted to try to do with his team preview. I essentially lost the game as soon as I made that decision.

I played his Rotom-W like it was going to be a more offensive variant rather than the way I should have played against the type of support set he was running, and ended up with most of my team burned as a result. My team’s lack of strong special attackers really hurt me in this one, and I really needed to have at least tried to pick Volcarona and/or Thundurus here to at least give myself a chance. In retrospect, I probably should have anticipated Rotom-W using a set closer to what he was actually using and reacted more appropriately, I just didn’t think hard enough for this one and deserved my loss. Crow had control all game, keeping my Pokemon weakened and successfully preventing me from doing real damage, but at least did me the favor of showing a big weakness with my team I need to fix if I try to use something similar in the future. I’m told that his games with Trista Medine (ryuzaki) were similarly paced, for anyone who saw those, though unlike Trista I didn’t really make any plays to make this one more interesting. Maybe the worst round I’ve played in the 2013 season.

Round 8: Geoff Hamilton (PROFESSORLABCOAT) (6-1; 8-1)

Another battle I had mixed feelings about going in. I had kind of hoped I’d get someone I didn’t know this round to free myself up to be a huge jerk and play hard, but I was curious what Geoff was running, and I knew this battle would be for the best. Geoff lead Ninetales and Exeggutor with Cresselia and Gastrodon in the back, while I lead Thundurus and Landorus-T with Conkeldurr and Tyranitar in the back. I knew I wanted to start with Tyranitar in the back to help manage weather and Thundurus in the front to help me deal with whichever of Trick Room or Chlorophyll I was going to end up needing to deal with, and the last spots just sort of worked out by necessity.

I started off really badly against Geoff because I opted to Taunt his Exeggutor instead of Thunder Waving it in fear of Sleep shenanigans, and ended up coughing up Landorus for free to Leaf Storm as a result. Since I benched Cresselia and Volcarona that game, Landorus was probably my best sacrifice in a game where I didn’t need his Intimidate, but ending up down 3-4 immediately is pretty irritating given that I didn’t even take my free Thunder Wave for it. Conkeldurr ended up coming in the game shortly afterward (but I believe not immediately after?) and OHKOing Geoff’s Gastrodon as it switched in to even the game at 3-3. Thundurus helped choke the game out from there, granting needed speed control for my slow sweepers and even managing the dreaded Thundurus-I-Prankster-Thunder-Wave-into-first-turn-Paralysis maneuver. Thundurus was eventually knocked out for the cause, but it was survived by mostly full health Tyranitar and Conkeldurr, who were ready to finish what was now a 2-2 game barring a Hammer Arm miss against a Paralyzed Ninetales and low health Cresselia. I opted to run here, because I knew it would push Geoff into the top cut, which seemed like the right thing to do as I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay in the tournament long enough to win anything, anyway. Geoff had a cool team I wanted to see in top cut, and my 6th win had clinched a Worlds invite for me basically no matter what happened at that point, anyway.

Fortunately for Geoff, he ended up winning his last round of Swiss anyway, because as an honourable Canadian boy I think he was a little flustered he didn’t take me down the normal way this time.

Round 9: FORGOT TO WRITE NAME DOWN (6-2; 6-3)

My opponent this time, whose name I have somehow forgotten to record, seemed like a pretty good dude. I had been mostly planning on giving this one up like the last one unless I got someone I wanted to be particularly vindictive to, which wasn’t the case here. At first.

My notes for this game were very vague and basically completely illegible, but I remember three things about this game.

1. While my opponent was a nice guy, he was a lot less experienced than I was, and I was never in serious danger of losing a Pokemon.
2. Landorus finally got to dunk a Breloom with Hidden Power Flying.
3. I was absolutely going to run even leading 4-1 until I missed Garchomp twice in a row with 100% accurate moves in a game where neither of us brought Tyranitar. Not this year, Brightpowder Garchomp.

Took the win. But he was a nice guy.

Top 32: Maurice Easterly (7-2) (Reeseesee)

It would be hard for me to have ended up in a stranger situation in top cut. I knew I would probably only be able to play one round of top cut before my services would be requested to prepare for commentary. As a result, this is a game I would normally have conceded, particularly to Maurice, who I like and who I think is a good player who I wanted to have a good Nationals. However, the bracket worked out so that the winner of our match would player the winner of the match containing Jason Fisher-Short (Fish), one of my close Pokepals. I had gone into Nationals knowing that the best I could probably do for myself was to help out my friends, so I had to make a judgement call here to try to help out one friend at the cost of another, and opted to play out a rematch of my Ft. Wayne top 8 match against Maurice, with the potential award of being hilariously eliminated from Nationals by one of my own teams in top 16 on the line.

A round where team preview wasn’t very helpful. A bunch of high BST Pokemon on Rotom-W. It was possible he had a Trick Room mode of his own with Metagross and Tyranitar, but I figured it was unlikely from Maurice. I have a tendency to be awful in the first game of top cuts after a break, and I didn’t buck that trend here. Game 1 vs. Maurice ended up being very similar to my Swiss match vs. Crow, where I played a Rotom-W as though it was going to be offensive and got slowly whittled down by Will-o-Wisp and Intimidate, this time from Salamence instead of Landorus. Maurice’s other two Pokemon, Metagross and Cresselia, are Pokemon I don’t have a lot of fantastic options for dealing with using the Landorus/Cresselia/Conkeldurr/Tyranitar grouping, so as I should probably have learned from the Crow game, I switched things up for Game 2.

One bit of information I had surmised was that I suspected Rotom-W did not have Hydro Pump, which I eventually found out was right. Without Hydro Pump, Volcarona was one of the more important tools for me in this match. Maurie hopefully predicted that, because he replaced Metagross with Tyranitar for Game 2, which ended up creating some trouble for me as I went with Cresselia, Volcarona, Thundurus, and I want to guess Conkeldurr in game 2. I ended up a little bit behind this game because he picked Pokemon that kept him in control of the team advantage, but in the middle of the game when he was beginning to gain a decisive advantage he got a little overconfident with his advantage and let me pick up a knock out on his Salamence with my Cresselia that he probably shouldn’t have, which let me turn the game around. I felt a little bad about this one, since it seems like all of my games with Maurice end this way. He usually starts out in the lead. I spend the rest of the game biding my time and not making any major mistakes. and usually I seem to get just enough of an opening to wind out on top. At Regionals, it was because of me having more experience with the timer and winning that way in games where I was having trouble getting knock outs, and in game 2 it was just me taking advantage of one mistake.

I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to give me anything easy in Game 3 after that, so I tried to summon up whatever remained of my focus to get the last win I needed for the weekend. I had been keeping an eye on Fish’s match to make sure I wasn’t doing this for nothing, and I saw he had won as we were getting started, which gave me a bit of a second wind for game 3.

Game 3 battle video: 21-91798-58239 YouTube

Again, the video is there to be watched, so I’m just going to give some notes for this one.

Turn 0: Nationals was Conkeldurr’s show for me this year, so I knew I wanted to get him involved in my decisive game. I figured that because of the Salamence mistake in the previous game, Maurice would probably be more conservative with it in the final game, which would give me a chance to set Trick Room up. I figured I’d best leave Tyranitar at home against this team. Instead, I selected Volcarona, to hopefully help out with Tyranitar, Cresselia, and potentially Metagross while giving me the option to use Ragepowder to protect Conkeldurr.

Turn 2: I predict the Rotom-W switch in. I expected him to be more conservative with Salamence in game 3 because of game 2 and do the Protect-into-switch thing he did on turn one and two. Rotom-W and Metagross are his Ice resists, so I have to Helping Hand the Hammer Arm to make sure I can pick up a knock out on the likely targets.

Turn 3: I get outplayed here. The game would have been over if I had predicted Tyranitar letting me attack it, but I didn’t capitalize.

Turn 5: I get outplayed again. I correctly predicted Salamence was coming in, but guessed the slot wrong, as I thought it was Tyranitar he’d want to preserve with my Volcarona on the field.

Turn 7: I double target Salamence’s slot, knowing he either gives me Salamence if I don’t miss Stone Edge by staying in, or gives me Tyranitar and Cresselia by switching Tyranitar in and moving my Stone Edge to Cresselia for me. In either scenario, I figured that as long as I didn’t miss Stone Edge, my Cresselia and potentially whichever of my other Pokemon that survives should be able to clean the game up for me, but I end up getting the ideal double KO scenario I’d expected.

Conclusion

I feel pretty good about my team’s performance this year. Depending on the way you count my running, I was either officially 8-3 and 3-3 vs. top cut opponents or 9-1 and 4-1 vs. top cut opponents over the tournament, with three of my other opponents finishing at 6-3. I forfeited top 16 without playing and ran from a Swiss game, so my record got warped a little bit, but I think I had a solid run either way. I’m not sure if the team I used was the best team I could have designed for a long top cut run, but I think if I’d been able to play it out I would have at least given my future opponents a good scare. All six Pokemon on my team battled at least four times in the 11 games I played, all 24 moves on the team were used at least once, and I think I picked up a KO with all 16 of my attacking moves, so I felt like I made good decisions about what I brought with me to battle this year. I had a great time with this team. Other than Worlds last year, this was definitely my favorite tournament experience as a player, even if it ended a little early.

About the Author

Scott started playing VGC in 2011. He finished 17th at US Nationals, then lost in the final round of 2011 Worlds LCQ. He finished 10th in the 2012 World Championships and qualified for Worlds again in 2013 after going into US Nationals second in CP. Instead of playing, he commentated at US Nationals and the World Championships in 2013 and 2014. Follow him on Twitter @NBNostrom!

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