Reports

Published on February 23rd, 2015 | by Dreykopff

14

Of Low Budget Team Building and Other Struggles: A Premier Challenge Alpha Season Report

Hello my fellow nuggets and nuggettes. It’s been a while since my last team report on Nugget Bridge. My year of Pokémon in 2014 mainly consisted of bad memories, so it very much makes sense you haven’t heard much from me recently. Will that change this year? Only Nostromdamus knows, I’d think. Anyway, I’m back with a team that may be worthy to share.

The New Tale of the Cuccoo and the Mole

Well, you may have already guessed what this “low-budget team building” thing is about. The full story is that I took my sweet time playing through the new game casually, so there was no way I’d be able to soft-reset for a bunch of competitively viable legendary Pokémon in time. There wasn’t much time for me to build a team before the first Premier Challenge using the new standard format on the 3rd of January in Berlin. It would have been more feasible to get some legendary Pokémon for the second (24th) and third (31st) Premier Challenges at the same place, but it turns out I couldn’t motivate myself to deal with soft resetting and instead rebuilt the low-budget team from scratch. Now with the forced tournament break of February, I couldn’t justify continuing to approach the game in the same way. In other words, what I’m going to present you throughout the next set of paragraphs pretty much is a finished product for the time being. I daresay it’s fairly potent for the restrictions it has been made under.

With that out of the way, time for some actual Pokémon talk. The first core I wanted to use was Mega Metagross + Hydreigon, likely but not definitely accompanied by typical Rain stuff. There was another core that I would have actually played around with a year before, had the format not been limited to Kalos Dex: the infamous Togekiss + Excadrill combination. In case that doesn’t ring a bell, I suggest you go right to R Inanimate’s author profile and check out his various Team Reports from 2013. That’s probably my favorite team/core/whatever that I have neither built nor used myself. It’s just very entertaining to watch and play, and at times it’s also an intriguingly strong metagame call.

It happened when I already was in the middle of breeding my Rain Pokémon, assuming I would use Rain. I jokingly asked Simon what to play at my first Premier Challenge. He replied Excadrill. With how I was assuming that people would tend to bring 2014ish teams to early tournaments, and that not too many people would have Landorus and friends already, Excadrill almost looked like a knight in shining armor (and it in fact has armor, so that’s not at all far-fetched!). I threw together an informal draft and played a bit of Showdown, as long as my sanity would let me. Togekiss, Excadrill, Tyranitar, Bisharp, Salamence, Smeargle. It was actually sad how I could cheese people out at times, but that was the absolute minimum of confidence I needed in order to run the team at an actual event. The only issue was that I didn’t like Smeargle much, or rather, I was far from sure of how to play it efficiently, unlike Unreality and Porengan. So, I simply dropped it in favor of a Talonflame, which I was much more familiar with. And with that, my team for the first of three events was complete.

Minor footnote: I heard through the grapevine that Lajo might be trying to bring his infamous Levitran team from 2013 back. That has humiliated me often enough for a whole lifetime, and Togekiss/Excadrill just so happens to be its arch nemesis. In fact, he brought something similar to the only tournament he attended, but joke’s still on me because a) we never got to play each other, and b) he definitely had better answers to the duo this time.

Jan 3: The Official Tournament Debut of the 2015 Standard Format

The Team: Modus Operandi

While I could very well comment on the team in detail, it’s probably better just to leave it here bare and naked. It’s pretty much your typical first-time-playing-the-format team, and as such has its fair share of problems, which in their sum are not acceptable.

Easy Mode (Togekiss) (F) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Serene Grace
Level: 50
EVs: 236 HP / 196 Def / 4 SpA / 12 SpD / 60 Spe
Bold Nature
– Air Slash
– Follow Me
– Tailwind
– Protect

Lunatic Mode (Excadrill) (F) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Mold Breaker
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Earthquake
– Rock Slide
– Swords Dance
– Protect

Bisharp Mode (Bisharp) (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Defiant
Level: 50
EVs: 68 HP / 252 Atk / 188 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Knock Off
– Iron Head
– Sucker Punch
– Protect

Reverse Mode (Tyranitar) (F) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Sand Stream
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
– Rock Slide
– Crunch
– Ice Punch
– Superpower

Hyper Mode (Salamence) (M) @ Salamencite
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
– Hyper Voice
– Draco Meteor
– Fire Blast
– Protect

Hero Mode (Talonflame) (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Gale Wings
Level: 50
EVs: 12 HP / 244 Atk / 100 Def / 4 SpD / 148 Spe
Jolly Nature
– Brave Bird
– Flare Blitz
– U-turn
– Quick Guard

The First Premier Challenge

I hadn’t played a single competitive battle on my actual Pokémon game yet, so there was no denying I was horribly out of practice. This demon I sought to hide crept up to the surface of the Earth very quickly, letting me make mistakes that were unacceptable without any doubt. While I did win my first round, I shouldn’t have: I somehow managed to stall my opponent’s Trick Room without noticing it, and with only Sylveon and Cresselia in red health left, I let both of my Pokémon Protect. While he didn’t punish this move with a second Trick Room, I did foolishly give him this chance for free. In the second round, I made the next big mistake: I forgot that Follow Me in Tailwind would no longer redirect Fake Out. Changing the priorities of moves every generation back and forth and back again is no good for aged people like me! This gave my opponent a full free turn, and that ended up making the difference in an otherwise good game. My third game I handily won with useless favorable RNG. The fourth and last round was completely full of RNG antics, with close damage rolls, flinch vs. no flinch, and all that stuff. I was on the worse end of it this time.

With that, I finished at 2-2 and 5th place, netting me absolutely nothing because we were stuck with I think 10 Masters or so. Had I somehow won my last match, someone else with a 3-1 record would have bubbled out of Top Cut, Champion Points, and prizes. As vexing as my finish was, I ultimately was very much fine with the result. If you mess up this badly on low level game mechanics, you don’t deserve to win — that’s my own opinion, at least. Had I really gotten a full 20 CP out of this day, you’d have seen me struggle for the rest of the year to erase that shame from my record and then probably not even get it done.

Nugget Bridge Live: The Salty Runback

If there was anything to help me out of my misery, naturally it would be practice. While I didn’t really feel like Battle Spot grinding, this very site we’re on right now offered a live tournament during the evening following my bad PC run. I thought there would be no harm in entering, and enter it, I did.

The Swiss rounds started off about as shakily as I expected. That could have been explained by any combination of me feeling like I didn’t play too well and the team just being far from perfect, really. Still, I got a nice win streak going because most of my opponents somehow didn’t see the threats that I saw, and thus basically threw away the victories they could have sealed. Misinformation and its funny ways also played a part: One game, I opened up with my Salamence unprotected against my opponent’s Thundurus, believing the worst that could happen would be Thunder Wave or Swagger. Later, I learned he had Life Orb Hidden Power Ice and that his Thundurus outsped my Salamence, but because my opponent didn’t take the free knock-out, I got some sort of momentum going to carry me through this whole game. Small things, great impacts.

I did at least lose once during Swiss, in a nice and glorious 0-4. My opponent had a Mega Swampert Rain team, and I had no answer to Swampert. On the first turn, I went for the hard read, double-targetting Swampert with Tyranitar and Bisharp. I got the prediction totally right, with Swampert’s partner Protecting, but the Swampert just survived and Earthquaked my team to an instant 2-4. To let that happen and not even have a real way around it, that’s where quality team building shows. Or not. Anyway, I finished the Swiss portion at 6-1, guaranteed Top 8.

Top Cut gave me two good Swiss rematches, both of which I won, and then a Seafoam Islanders final against Simon, which I also ended up winning by getting good momentum with Togekiss/Excadrill and cheesing my way past Landorus with some infamous Togekiss luck. To sum the whole NB Live experience that night up, I got the best luck I could have ever asked for, with no bad RNG ever stealing games from me, and opponents that should have beaten me using moves that made them lose. If anything, I want that kind of luck in a tournament where there’s actually something on the line, but alas, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

On the bright side, at least some of the games I played well. Suddenly, there was hope. And three weeks to prepare for the next Premier Challenge, to finally…hopefully…maybe break my curse of that lifelong 100% Top Cut missing ratio at official Pokémon tournaments.

Jan 24: Some Footnotes in the Pages of History

I decided I had to get some kind of new team, first and foremost. I’d come up with the idea for what I wanted to try only a few hours after the previous night. I’d keep Togekiss and Excadrill (because they were strong), add Kangaskhan and Milotic, build the team from scratch that way, and see how it played out. The motivation behind this particular “core” was a mix of skepticism and curiosity. I actually believed Kangaskhan was rather bad and that people should use other Mega Evolutions before her, but as we all know, all sorts of usage statistics had it the other way. I also have to admit that my old team didn’t deal with Kangaskhan too well. Additionally, there’s that fun fact that I haven’t used Kangaskhan a single time throughout all of 2014, so there might have been some catching up I had to do. At this point in the season, I wasn’t going to think about what I wanted to play at Nationals later. Anything’s fine in love and war, so why not give “the best Mega” (spoiler alert: she still isn’t, friends) a shot? Milotic was mostly the curiosity part. I needed a break from Bisharp and its shortcomings, but still wanted a way to punish Intimidates. I also had a very special job for Milotic, which you’ll soon discover.

What took me maybe a bit too long was filling the last two slots. I juggled around Pokémon like Hydreigon, Talonflame, Rotom, Sylveon, both Charizards, and some others I can’t recall. However, none of them felt good even on paper. I don’t exactly remember how I found it, and I’ve encountered it a lot before already, but once Scizor crossed my mind and I did the calculations, I was keen on working it in. One of the various issues with the old team was its generally underwhelming position against Terrakion — a problem that Kangaskhan also inherits from Tyranitar and Bisharp, and a problem that Milotic on its own can’t solve. Thus we have Scizor, with a Life Orb Bullet Punch being all it takes to remove your standard Sash-less Terrakion with one action. I was fine with adding more Sylveon hate as well, because people at my previous PC had been using it just like the rest of the world.

Even with Scizor being set, the last slot was still not easy to fill for me. The given party of five was rather Charizard-weak, and just the Scizor alone called for a dire need to get rid of that Charizard before it could move. That’s a tough requirement. There aren’t many ways to do that besides random Stone Edges. Again I looked at Hydreigon and Rotom, but didn’t like how that looked. The inability to find a convincing non-Mega for this job brought me to do something I had never officially done before: run double Mega Evolutions. Salamence, I choose you!

The Team: German Fairytale Princesses

First, let’s have a moment of silence for umlauts and the ‘ß’ character. I’m playing my cart on English, and for some reason that only Game Freak knows, that influences what characters you have available for use. RIP.

Schneeweißchen (Togekiss) (F) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Serene Grace
Level: 50
EVs: 236 HP / 196 Def / 4 SpA / 12 SpD / 60 Spe
Bold Nature
– Air Slash
– Follow Me
– Tailwind
– Protect

Set. I am sad if you don’t know this very well yet, but I guess I should introduce the newer players to it a bit. Follow Me is the main purpose behind Togekiss. It is attack redirection that cannot be ignored, and thus nothing less than the one and only best move in the game. Air Slash is probably the best STAB, as it does acceptable damage with Togekiss’s Base Special Attack and has that 57% Chance of making slower foes flinch thanks to Serene Grace. While Tailwind happens to synergize intriguingly well with that, putting Togekiss at double its Speed, it’s even more so used to make Excadrill next to unstoppable against faster teams. As tempting as Dazzling Gleam or a Fire move would be, I do like Protect in the last slot. It helps keep Togekiss around as long as I want, and also protects it from any offensive Fake Out plays (assuming I don’t forget the mechanics again, you know *cough*). Finally, Sitrus Berry is one of the best items in a fast-paced environment, effectively gives the naturally bulky Togekiss 125% health. This enables it to use Follow Me to even greater effect.

Numbers. The Speed and HP numbers I ripped straight from R Inanimate. The former lets Togekiss outspeed Adamant Choice Scarf Landorus in Tailwind, and the latter yields a good HP number for residual damage as well as an immediate Sitrus Berry trigger after Super Fang. What I changed from the original is the Defenses. The old spread, in my opinion, was absolutely perfect in its time, but with the current metagame leaning towards very strong physical attackers, I think taking some points out of Special Defense is prudent. To bring in practical examples, my EV spread lets it survive all Iron Head damage rolls of Life Orb Bisharp and Jolly Mega Metagross. Mega Salamence at +1 Attack also can’t OHKO with Return.

Etc. Game Freak, please let me have Normal/Flying back. Thanks. Even with the slightly inferior new typing, Togekiss still is one of the absolutely greatest Pokémon you can use. Who hasn’t lost hard to one yet? I see it surviving on pixels of health so often and it makes a humongous difference in the flow of battles. Sadly, untimely critical hits against Togekiss serve just as well to break my own neck instead of my opponents’…

Dornröschen (Excadrill) (F) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Mold Breaker
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Earthquake
– Rock Slide
– Swords Dance
– Protect

Set. This Pokémon is ripped straight from R Inanimate’s work. This Excadrill is a bit tricky to use with how useless it is against the more popular than ever Wide Guard, but if the team building is good (reminder: the initial version of this team full of multi-target moves is a good example of bad team building), you can get around that. This Excadrill simply has the best moves that are available from its movepool. Excadrill mainly wants to attack with Earthquake and boost its Attack with Swords Dance when momentum calls for it. This Mold Breaker Ability is a little subtle thing that both Garchomp and Landorus would eat their hearts out for forever, because it often turns teams that are quite hostile to Ground into teams that are actually weak to Ground! Rotom, Heatran after Levitate + Skill Swap, Gengar, Cresselia, you name it. No Aron or Shedinja cheese as well; I much appreciate that because I lost an important tournament run to Aron once. Rock Slide I’d still say is the best coverage move, because an Electric-immune Pokémon really wants to hit Thundurus hard at the same time. You aren’t doing that with Iron Head, and Stone Edge forfeits both slightly better accuracy and flinch chance.

Numbers. Outspeeds Modest Kingdra by one point and does the maximum damage possible. Focus Sash takes care of the defensive deficits just fine.

Etc. The answer to what’s the best Ground Pokémon is mostly situational, but Excadrill is a very entertaining break from our old, boring friend Landorus when you can get it going. Pity shoutouts to Mega Gyarados, which sadly is but an inferior version of Excadrill at the end of the day.

Schneewittchen (Kangaskhan) @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy
Level: 50
EVs: 212 HP / 116 Atk / 4 Def / 76 SpD / 100 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Return
– Sucker Punch
– Power-Up Punch
– Fake Out

Set. You’ve all seen it before, really. I went the Return + Power-Up Punch route because I wanted the bulk and not another glass cannon, and Togekiss would offer redirection from a theorymonical viewpoint. Having no space for Protect sucked as usual, but it is what it is.

Numbers. This is mostly based on Yoshi’s spread, except I made Kangaskhan faster in order to improve my possibly troublesome Mamoswine matchup. However good that spread may appear, though, it was better to not copy it blindly. I made the oversight of not knowing that other Kangaskhan would OHKO with Fake Out + Low Kick, and without an easy Intimidate available that could have turned into a huge problem.

Etc. Well, so much for what could have well been my only Mega. Kangaskhan was a big disappointment for me. It was all right but far from outstanding during Battle Spot practice, and at the Premier Challenge Kanagaskhan’s only real contribution was to take care of a Whimsicott/Greninja/friends team for me. Everyone else I played was full of Kangaskhan hate, with multiple Gengars and Terrakions, a Virizion, a Ferrothorn, some Rocky Helmets, your usual Intimidates and more, if not much more.

Rapunzel (Milotic) (F) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Competitive
Level: 50
EVs: 12 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 236 Spe
Timid Nature
– Scald
– Ice Beam
– Hydro Pump
– Hypnosis

Set. And here it is, the very special something of this team: Choice Scarf Milotic. On paper, Milotic would protect Kangaskhan from threats that I expected. Apart from that, I took the popular Choice Scarf Politoed as inspiration, which I think is mostly inferior but still has fulfilled its job usually. About the moves: Scald is your reliable weak STAB, Hydro Pump is needed to OHKO 4/0 Terrakion and possibly other Pokémon weak to it, and Ice Beam to hit and preferably OHKO the various Ice-weak Pokémon out there. For the last slot, one could run pretty much anything. Icy Wind, a Hidden Power, Safeguard, or whatever. I chose Hypnosis because I didn’t see more value in any of the other options, so I might as well try to bail myself out of difficult situations with random unexpected Sleep. It has worked wonderfully, for in the rare cases that I’ve entered it, it has yet to miss single time. Other than that, a really beautiful thing about a non-attacking move like Hypnosis is that you can use it to punish Sucker Punches hard, as they don’t even use up the first turn of Sleep when they in fact attempt it.

Numbers. I used Timid because Modest would be too slow for outspeeding a few threats. I put Milotic a few points above Adamant Scarf Landorus in order to prevent it from U-turning out as it would like, and to maybe even snipe something else around that benchmark. In hindsight, that additional Speed creeping possibly wasn’t the best decision. I didn’t go all max Speed though because a Milotic like that really doesn’t enjoy taking physical attacks at all, so this is some alibi of shifting damage rolls a bit. The specially defensive side is looking better: Charizard still can’t OHKO with Solarbeam, and the worst thing that can happen from weaker STAB Thunderbolts is the stupid 10% Paralysis chance. Finally, max Special Attack is needed to not miss important OHKOs.

Etc. While I have’t seen Milotic and opposing Intimidates on the field simultaneously as often as I would have liked, it still did its job as a simple Choice Scarf user. Those tend to never be outstanding, but helping lock up win conditions is good in my book.

Rosenrot (Scizor) (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Technician
Level: 50
EVs: 28 HP / 252 Atk / 228 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Bullet Punch
– Bug Bite
– Knock Off
– Protect

Set. Bullet Punch is Bullet Punch. I’ve never seen a Scizor without it since Diamond and Pearl. Life Orb makes Bullet Punch OHKO popular targets that are weak to Steel. Protect is Protect. Believe me, you want it on Scizor. Knock Off is for hitting Aegislash, and occasionally useful for removing items that could be problematic. I wasn’t sure if I should use Bug Bite at first, but it definitely paid off against all the Cresselia I faced, so no regrets with just keeping it anyways. The other move I was looking at would have been Feint. If you have ever read my older Reports, you may know that Feint is one my favorite moves ever.

Numbers. Speedy Scizor to fit with the offensive role I intended for it, where something like being outsped by most Rotoms would be pretty much unacceptable. With this middling Speed, Scizor can also benefit from Tailwind very well. However, that hardly ever happened in actual gameplay, because I just used Bullet Punch anyway most of the time. The HP EVs are for optimizing Life Orb recoil, and the Attack is at the number where it is because I trained Scizor on random victims and that’s what they happened to reward me with — I think I couldn’t have gotten any luckier there. ツ

Etc. Scizor is really neat. Obviously, it being a hard counter to some (very) popular stuff is a factor, and if you have trouble with exactly that stuff, you better not duck out of at least trying it. Even when that popular stuff isn’t present, Bullet Punch is just Bullet Punch, and that is still a ridiculous move even with our new friend Talonflame the Brave Bird™ having an even more ridiculous move per se.

Aschenputtel (Salamence) (F) @ Salamencite
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
– Double-Edge
– Earthquake
– Leer
– Protect

Set. What Bullet Punch is for Scizor and Brave Bird is for Talonflame, DOUBLE-EDGE is for Mega Salamence. Only that and Protect; everything else is filler, and nothing more. I chose Earthquake for anti-Steel/Rock/Electric coverage, and for occasionally dealing spread damage when the situation called for it. And Leer of all things I chose because I think Mega Salamence is a bit too strong, so I had to handicap it a bit in order to give my opponents a fighting chance.

…Well ok, I confess I fooled you. Let’s be serious about this, because I actually am serious in using this move over other options. I had no use whatsoever for Dragon Dance as the “most obvious” choice because of the way I used Salamence: super-fast glass cannon right from the start. There also wasn’t much merit to yet another coverage move because I already had DOUBLE-EDGE, which is the best general coverage move for the coverage move. Maybe GIGA IMPACT might actually be a thing, but the metagame isn’t at that stage yet. The best thing in my case that is not Leer would probably be Substitute for dodging Sucker Punches and punishing defensive play better, but I simply didn’t think of it until I saw it on another Salamence. Another move I considered was Tailwind (“boring”), and I would have likely switched to that in case Leer (“not boring” and “no harm in just trying it as long as failure is allowed”) disappointed.

So, now about Leer: As you may have noticed, this team is mostly about attacking physically, most prominently with Excadrill and Earthquake. There isn’t always time to get a Swords Dance in and Intimidate may mess with my general damage output too, so this fast Leer offers an entirely different out to to manipulate damage to my favor, and it also lets me occasionally and surprisingly circumvent all the detriments that simply attacking with DOUBLE-EDGE could give me.

Oh, in case you didn’t know it: Leer hits both foes at once. It’s essentially “a permanent Helping Hand with normal priority”.

Numbers. I needed Jolly because Adamant would be too slow. For the rest I simply had no better idea; didn’t see merits in not going for the Speed tie when they could just slaughter mine with surprise Draco Meteor for free while mine was still stuck with DOUBLE-EDGE.

Etc. I am so happy that I picked this beast for my sixth slot and not some random weak Pokémon as I was going to originally. Salamence did all that Kangaskhan failed to do: in short, be a good Mega slot. One can say, the team literally changed “on the fly”.

The Second Premier Challenge

First and foremost, the footnotes in history say: attendance almost doubled from last time, so for the first time this shop would have a Top 8 Cut. Top 8 would also receive Championship Points, and five rounds of Swiss would be played instead of just four. If we can now forever keep that, that would be excellent.

The Swiss rounds this time went about as well I could imagine. I got rematches for both of my losses from the first time, and also for the game I should have lost. This time, I cleanly won all three of them. My matches against the others went well too, and with that I entered the illustrious best-of-3 stage as the undefeated first seed. However, I still wasn’t done. 20 CP would have been good last time, but 20 CP would not be good this time, obviously because I had to make up for that debacle. With that out of the way, here’s my first account of a Top Cut run ever.

Quarter Final: vs. Joshua B.

Apparently a completely Mega-less team, don’t see those too often. This was the only lineup of the entire day basically screaming for me to bring Kangaskhan/Milotic.

Game 1. With how offensive both teams were in design, this game played out unusually defensively, as I didn’t do him the favor of knocking out the Whimsicott quickly. Instead, I occasionally sent a Scald its way to discourage him from manually bringing in something better unpunished, and dealing with Whimsicott’s partners alone at any given time wasn’t too hard.

Game 2. This game didn’t go so well. I decided to bring the same four as before while he also brought the same, only switching around the order. First, I was physically disrupted mid-game, and missed parts of a turn because of that, losing my focus a bit. With that having happened, momentum swung in my opponent’s favor, letting him have both Terrakion and Thundurus on the field with a fresh Tailwind. The game could have been just barely recoverable, but the RNG decided otherwise: Kangaskhan flinched from Rock Slide, then was lost to a Thunderbolt critical hit on the next turn. From there, the game was definitely over. I was doing my best to conceal my being upset from the mid-game disruption and what it led me into, because I still wanted that top 4 more than anything else at this point.

Game 3. Carefully reconsidering my options, I figured that while Milotic was certainly good against his individual Pokémon, it had the most severe issues with his Speed control. After all Milotic did, I assumed that I would not see Arcanine in the last game, and this opened up the option of using Scizor’s Bullet Punch to get around the unfavorable Speed matchup, and get around Terrakion specifically, while Kangaskhan and a well-timed Excadrill took care of the rest. This worked out beautifully, with a six turn game to end the set.

Semi Final: vs. Christian C.

Rematch from last round of Swiss. His Cresselia had Trick Room and Ice Beam, who by herself isn’t too much of a problem, but in combination with the rest of the team, it was a generally tricky matchup for me, and my game plans would heavily rely on what he brought.

Game 1. My first notable action was scouting for Charizard’s Speed. Excadrill got outsped by Charizard twice, effectively trading itself in early for most of Charizard’s health. Of the other three each of us had left at (near-)full health, mine handled his very well, and that was the first game for me.

Game 2. In the second game I wanted a bit too much. I sacrificed my Salamence without even getting a knock-out just to get Togekiss/Excadrill going unharmed, but then the combination of a fresh Trick Room, Hitmontop (naturally with Wide Guard) and Ferrothorn were a bit too much to handle. Scizor couldn’t help me out of this position, and so the game got handily lost.

Game 3. Well, I had wanted top 4, and I got top 4. The matchup was far from easy, and we knew (almost) everything about each other’s habits by now, so it was time for me to come up with yet another one of my infamous blood-sacrifice game plans, but this time actually do it right (maybe).

Actually, it was almost simple. Hitmontop ruined my fun in the previous game, but if Hitmontop were knocked out quickly this time, Togekiss/Excadrill would eventually have their way with his team, possibly even if Rhydon finally appeared. Knowing that Excadrill would “outspeed” Charizard in Trick Room and that Follow Me would do all the rest, I wasn’t afraid at all to send Scizor in as a fiery sacrifice, just to weaken the field for Excadrill where no Protect was to be expected and where Salamence could actually be successfully saved in order to then pin Charizard as the only remaining threat down. No regrets, stop at nothing, we’ve had our fun.

The endgame itself did have its own ways, and it still got very close. First, the Leer + Earthquake play definitely looks like a misplay, and technically was one, I guess, because I could have just gone for Double-Edge (I mean: DOUBLE-EDGE?!) instead. I believed that this Earthquake from Hell would be enough to knock out whatever it hit at this stage, and catching a possible Charizard switch-in with Leer would have been desirable. I in fact had gotten a DOUBLE-EDGE OHKO on his Charizard during our Swiss match, but knowing the calculations all too well, I didn’t want to believe the beauty at first sight. Being faster than Excadrill told me nothing about Charizard’s defensive investment, so it being a damage roll was still a very realistic possibility. I wanted to use DOUBLE-EDGE on it, and not weak Double-Edge. Thus, I figured that anything between critical hit and burn (well, and miss) was (way) less likely than failing the damage roll, and then I would ultimately win the game 0-0 if all went right. On the other hand, if I lost the damage roll, I would lose the game, the match, and the tournament, period.

But then… Excadrill and Charizard were Speed-tied and we never knew until now! Way to ruin the epic finish, game. Thanks a mil, but I shall take it.

Naturally, Christian did calculate DOUBLE-EDGE/Double-Edge against his Charizard afterwards, and it was indeed a damage roll.

Final: vs. Kai S. (colspan)

Game 1. I’d been tempted. I was so fed up with fast Icy Winds in about half of my games by now that I brought Kangaskhan against this team just to block the Gengar from doing it again. While he did actually give me the leading Gengar for free, I totally did not expect the Gengar/Amoonguss lead, and then he just Spored all my team for free as well. It all fell apart from there, and I took my sweet time to lose and maybe figure something out.

Game 2. To be honest, I was somewhat exhausted by now, and seeing yet another painful lead matchup in Salamence/Scizor vs. Bisharp/Amoonguss I basically became desperate. I was very happy going out right here. Thus, I decided that if I go out, I go out with a bang: use Leer and bring Bisharp to +3 Attack in order to actually be able to OHKO it, all-in! The turn didn’t go well for me, as I lost my Scizor for it without a move. However, the fortunate detail of the turn was that he didn’t Spore the Salamence, and that way I was able to still turn this game around with Togekiss and a couple Earthquakes, because all he brought was just like in the first game Amoonguss and the three weak to Ground.

Game 3. I was so drained, I just wanted it to be over! Thinking of it now, this had legitimately been the longest I’d ever played in an official Pokémon tournament. Yes, that’s actually a sad thing to say, I know, but can’t take the big steps before mastering the small ones, I guess. At least this was definitely going to be the final game of the event. Continuing with my small “tradition” for this run, have a video:

My very last productive idea of the day was that playing Togekiss/Excadrill aggressively might be worth it. His leads always were Amoonguss and something to be OHKOed by Excadrill, and investing everything into an Excadrill lategame yet again could get stopped much more easily by a Salamence in the back, whereas Excadrill was good against the rest without Attack boosts anyway. As his Salamence again was nowhere to be seen (Scarf Milotic was his biggest worry, he told me later, so even her absence proved valuable to me), my other physical attackers along with Togekiss’s support successfully finished the work that Excadrill had started.

Special shoutouts go to my precious 1/8 female Togekiss. Kai’s Pokémon hadn’t gotten a single move off after any faster Air Slash they received in the whole set, and also factoring the rest of the day in, I can only remember one turn without a flinch. I will likely never have so much Togekiss luck again.

Jan 31: Back Down to Earth

The Team: Back to Solo-Mega

Although Kangaskhan actually did contribute to my previous win, the contribution was so small that I thought someone else non-Mega could do it as well, while also both working together with Salamence and helping with some of the more difficult matchups. For this I picked Conkeldurr, and expected it to…

• be helpful against Trick Room,
• make me less weak to Ferrothorn,
• still take care of Greninja,
• fix my admittedly underwhelming Kangaskhan matchup and
• not be trolled by Gengar.

Practice on Battle Spot went just as well as I desired, so I felt like I made the right decision. Here’s the full set for you, with the rest of the team unchanged.

Meistergriff (Conkeldurr) (M) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Guts
Level: 50
EVs: 212 HP / 44 Atk / 140 Def / 108 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 13 Spe
– Drain Punch
– Mach Punch
– Stone Edge
– Knock Off

Set. I chose Assault Vest so he could tank the Special hits he feared, most prominently from Charizard. Generally you want to be able to take hits well when you’re slow, and Conkeldurr will always be slow due to how this team works. Guts was used to punish Burns, because they’re still everywhere. Drain Punch and Mach Punch are pretty much mandatory. I just couldn’t drop either of them in good conscience. This sadly fed into a painful moveslot syndrome for the last two: Ice Punch for Landorus, Knock Off for Ghost or Psychic types, or a Rock move for Charizard? As you see, I ended up caring the least about Landorus of all things — had seen only of them at the PCs which I knew was going to be dropped most likely, and even if some more popped up, I felt like this wouldn’t make or break the matchup for me. I might have been irrationally scared by Charizard and Aegislash, though. I picked Stone Edge over the more common Rock Slide, as the latter move could be blocked by Wide Guard. The additional damage was a nice bonus when it actually hit.

Numbers. Taken straight from TheBattleRoom’s Worlds team, no change whatsoever. I wasn’t too happy with the lack of Attack, but attacking for low damage was still better than not getting to attack at all, with the set being Protect-less and the given means of Speed control not doing much to help Conkeldurr.

Etc. Was this change actually worth it or not? One can argue for both answers. A thing that definitely got lost is the Team Preview mindgame of whether I would bring Kangaskhan or not, or more specifically, the possibility of coercing people into bringing their Kangaskhan counters and making them a bit more predictable that way. Truth be told, I’ve ran into enough matchups where bringing Kangaskhan at all made absolutely no sense. On the other hand, as I explained, Conkeldurr gave the whole team more options without coming with the natural Mega drawbacks.

Conkeldurr not happening to be female as well naturally ruined my nickname theme from before. And then just from how funny Conkeldurr’s German name is to begin with, I quickly coughed up a new nickname theme entirely based on that. But to defend my ridiculed digital friends: at least I’m not using any Pokémon in my team whose German names I actually forgot over time. Yes, that has really happened a few times. Shoutouts to all who get the jokes.

• Togekiss: Todgebkuss
• Excadrill: Stahlober
• Salamence: Brutalsandra
• Scizor: Scherenochs
• Milotic: Miilohntnich

The Third Premier Challenge

With my win from the previous week and some good practice in the bag, you can bet I was feeling good. Already knowing beforehand that the good participation numbers would likely be reached again (and they were), I assumed that I could go into this event totally relaxed. That’s because last time, all 3-2s made Top Cut, and repeating Top Cut was exactly my goal for the day. From there, whatever happened, happened. I assumed getting 3-2 wouldn’t be too hard as long as I made no major mistakes. Oh how wrong I was, my friends, oh how wrong I was…

In fact, I did end up getting a 3-2 result, but for some reason we had a lot more 3-2s this time. My resistance was a horrible joke, and thus I missed the cut by light-years, finishing in 13th place. What’s funny about my finish is that it totally felt like a 0-5 run in the end. That’s how horrible it really was.

The two actual losses are simply explained: I played overly defensive instead of properly hunting for win conditions and/or getting good reads, so I just lost by playing poorly. One of them was kind of a dreadful matchup, though, as my opponent had Megagross with Meteor Mash and Life Orb Thundurus, both of which could just snipe Togekiss, and then even more annoying attributes, which elaborating on now would go too far. The wins were as far from convincing as they could possibly be. I was paired down to a Junior not yet too good at the game and ruined his day for absolutely nothing. I won a match that I should have lost because I got a critical hit at the very end of the game to steal it just like that. I might have been able to prevent that entirely by playing the matchup better, but alas I didn’t! I also won a match against a genuinely horrifying matchup in Charizard Y, Ice Beam Greninja, and Choice Scarf Garchomp, because a) Rock Slide never made my Pokémon flinch and b) my opponent, having almost no prior tournament experience under her belt, unfortunately mismanaged her resources while I still played too anxiously for my liking.

That general pattern again reared its ugly head during the NB Live tournament right after I got home; the day was just cursed. One of the more notable things about it is that it reminded me that Smeargle is still around. I ran into a full three of them in the six teams I played. I had no good answers to it, and so I just had to rely on any combination of benevolent RNG and opponents making mistakes. Twice I succeeded, once I failed, with a 4-2 total at the end, a few chip Nugget Points for my “endeavors”, and my inner self compelled to make fun of me for a long time to come in the worst case.

The Aftermath

Naturally, this final day of the month was absolutely terrible and the only good thing about it were the friends I met and the fun I still had. That being said, I have seen way worse days in my time of playing Pokémon before, so all I can really do is laugh about it and (hopefully) do better next time. While it didn’t go well for me personally, at least I got to see first hand the local player-base thriving, and I will get to see that wonderful picture many more times in the future. As someone who has been playing and enjoying Pokémon competitively for more than 12 years now, these Premier Challenges are literally a dream come true. That alone was worth it to keep playing for so long and showing my support to begin with. PCs motivate me to keep playing in the future and… maybe, you know, “git gud”, as they like to say.

In addition to the videos showed above, I have selected three more replays to share. You should be able to watch them for the next few weeks on your trusty games if you choose to do so.

• 6KDG-WWWW-WWXA-MXPW (final Swiss round of Jan 24, also vs. Christian C.)
  This is the back-story I referred to in the respective section, and also one of my favorite games of the day.
• QDFW-WWWW-WWXA-MXLU (game 2 of the final vs. colspan)
  The Leer-on-Bisharp play is right here. Not suitable for children!
• CZNW-WWWW-WWXA-MX85 (taken from Battle Spot practice between Jan 24 and 31)
  I messed up horribly at team preview and 2-4 is the price for it. The dark magic you then see afterwards, I daresay, is a pretty good example of why running all Protect-less teams is very risky especially in this current metagame full of Tailwind.

Some more words on the team to take it away? While I did improve it by a considerable amount over time, the final version you’re looking at pretty much completely neglects the possibility of Mawile in Trick Room. This evidently was not too silly of an assumption in the early metagame, but that fun of Mawile being criminally underrated is not going to last for much longer. Another thing is the recent surge in Megagross, especially in a core of Hydreigon and Landorus around it. I may or may not get back to working on this team depending on what happens when- and wherever, but for the present I can say the team has done its job. I as the player have mostly screwed up on my job, and now it’s time to move on. See you at the next Premier Challenge, Nationals, bigger Report, or whatever else there may be.

(…And this is as far as this 2013 revival thing went for myself. Sadly my own 2013 team most likely is unplayable in this format. But we won’t ever let old spirits rest, will we?)

About the Author

Dreykopff has been playing Pokémon competitively for longer than a decade. He has participated in the 2009 Pokémon World Championships, also qualified in 2015 and still hopes to eventually make it back into the most important tournament of the year. His all-time favorite Pokémon is Moltres.

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