Spanish Power: 2012 Worlds Masters 3rd Place Team Analysis
Hi all, For those you don’t know me I’m gonna do a brief presentation. My name is Abel Martín Sanz but I’m better known by flash_mc or just Flash. I’ve placed 3rd in Masters Division at this year’s Pokémon Video Game World Championships after having placed 2nd in the Swiss rounds the day before with a 5-1 record. I was the first Spanish Player to start playing VGC back in 2008 before they announced the first European tournaments for 2009. I have been haxed out of every National I’ve participated in, but I’ve reached the semifinals 3 times (4 times counting Worlds Semifinals). Still, I’ve only qualified for Worlds for the first time this year (thankfully they increased the amount of paid trips from 2 to 4!). Now that you know a bit more about me I’ll start with this World Championships 3rd place team analysis. I hope you like it! It’s the first public team analysis I’ve done, and English isn’t my main language. I hope you forgive my mistakes. 😉
Team Building
First of all I’ll clarify the goal of my team. It was designed to keep the pressure up every moment, using hard-hitting Pokémon with unconventional EV spreads and moves. The team is designed to easily remove some threats and frustrate my opponent, seeing how my Pokémon were faster and hit harder than their Pokémon, nabbing surprise KO’s. Though it wasn’t designed for it, my team also had the tools it needed to stall if necessary.
Let’s start with a brief look at my whole team and the order I added every Pokémon:
Metagross, a powerhouse designed to destroy everything; I’ve unconsciously used it every time it was available by the rules. It was the first Pokémon I added after the analysis of the metagame I did in conjunction with:
Cresselia, a great lifesaver wall that has a lot of tricks and hit harder than some people think. Then the ever-present:
Thundurus, a Pokémon that shifted the metagame completely around him his virtually every partner could benefit in any form from its support moves. Then I wanted to add even more bulk to the team without losing power, so I decided to add:
Tyranitar, a behemoth with Sand Stream boosting its defensive abilities even further and a Pokémon that hits like a truck. Then I tested some Pokémon and the next one was a no-brainer:
Hitmontop, its unique combination of Fake Out + Intimidate that hasn’t lost any viability despite its popularity because 0f how amazing it is. Plus, having a STABed Close Combat doesn’t hurt either. Now I wanted to round the team with some speed and wanted to maintain the offensive pressure, so I chose:
Latios, the main reason to carry at least one Steel-type per team and a couple of specially defensive Pokémon to try to stop him. It was the perfect Pokémon for the job because it added some key resistances and immunities too.
The team at a glance (in the same order I had on the DS):
The Team
Now let’s analyze every Pokémon on its own:
Lauritaaa (Cresselia) (F) @ Fire Gem
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 224 HP / 72 Def / 136 SAtk / 76 SDef / 4 Spe
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
– Hidden Power [Fire]
– Helping Hand
– Ice Beam
– Psyshock
I wanted to keep Cresselia from my Nationals Team. There’s nothing I can say that you don’t already know about this defensive powerhouse. It’s one of the best team supporters and can hit some of the most threatening Pokémon of this metagame hard. The move I wanted to keep most was the move I used least — in fact I never used in the whole tournament — Helping Hand. I quite liked the boost in power it gave to the rest of my team, but in every game I felt that attacking with her was most valuable (for hitting for SE damage, breaking Focus Sash and Berries, finishing off some opponents or to put them in KO range for the rest of my hard-hitting guys). It wouldn’t have been much of a problem if it was just a filler move, and sometimes I missed having another way to manipulate the speed of the battle (Thunder Wave, Icy Wind, Trick Room, etc.) but in all my practice battles having fast guys and semi-bulky Thundurus with Thunder Wave support were all I needed.
I’ll explain the EV spread. 136 SAtk EV’s allows Cresselia to OHKO non-Occa Berry 252/4 Scizor 100% of the time while dealing more damage to Metagross, Garchomp, Thundurus, Hitmontop, Terrakion and every Pokémon hit super effectively by her.
With 224 HP EVs she reaches a 223 HP stat, adding a lot of bulk and losing less HP points by Sand Storm, Hail, Burn, etc, in the process. At an HP stat of 224, it loses one more hit point every turn of Sandstorm while her maximum is 227. After 4 turns of Sandstorm, an HP stat of 224 would actually be about 28 EVs-worth of health less than at 223 HP. Every HP EVs on my team are designed to minimize the damage from weathers and status.
The rest of the EVs are placed to maximize natural bulk and to get the most of the EVs, for example from 72 EVs to 76 in SDef, you get two stat points instead of one.
Have in mind that you have to consider the IV spread for Hidden Power Fire so you have some 30’s in the mix, and more to get a nice spread with low Attack in Diamond. So if you input this spread on PO or similar, you will maybe notice some wasted EVs, but there aren’t any.
K-OS (Thundurus) (M) @ Flight Gem
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 40 HP / 48 Def / 128 SAtk / 104 SDef / 188 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
– Thunderbolt
– Hidden Power [Flying]
– Thunder Wave
– Substitute
One of the greatest Pokémon of my team. I hated bulky Thundurus Swaggering and paralyzing me to death, but it was too good to not use it. It has decent speed and bulk. In fact it outspeeds neutral 102’s (Garchomp) and positive-natured 88’s and below (most notably Excadrill). Those aren’t Pokémon I can do massive damage to or paralyze, but it helped me to guess the nature of these Pokémon and to finish them if given the right scenario. It outspeeds common Thundurus to put a Substitute before they T-Wave me and deals a great amount of damage to them if they are faster. It helped me with Hydreigon, Latios, Thundurus and other Gem holder Pokémon while giving me invaluable T-Wave support. Hidden Power Flying given those EVs allows me to OHKO standard 252/0 Hitmontop and Rain Ludicolo 100% of the time, while faster Volcarona are killed as well with more bulky variants being KO’d 100% of the time after a -1 Fake Out. I never faced a Volcarona in the actual event, but I had the right tools to stop the infamous Hitmontop + Volcarona leads without sacrificing any aspect of my team while doing so. As you maybe have noticed it reaches 177 SAtk, the same as Timid 252 Thundurus, Exeggutor or Zapdos, so it hits hard with Thunderbolt too.
The EVs are placed to maximize Thundurus’ bulk without wasting any EVs given my IV spread. The Defense EVs are placed in conjunction with HP EVs to resist some physical attacks designed specifically to deal with Thundurus easily.
MITHOS (Latios) (M) @ Dragon Gem
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
– Draco Meteor
– Energyball
– Psyshock
– Protect
Standard Timid Latios with the addition of Energy Ball instead of Substitute. A lot of people think about discarding some Atk or SAtk EVs from their Pokémon just for one reason: they don’t gain notably OHKO, 2HKOs or 3HKOs doing so. But as the 5th Gen calculator shows (in fact any calculator, or any person with basic maths knowledge), the more powerful your attacks or your Attack stat is, the more you will notice it when you apply multipliers (Dragon Gem, Helping Hand, STAB, SE damage, etc). For me it doesn’t make sense to always reduce the Attack stats for this reason. For example, your Pokémon with max SAtk deals from 60% to 74% to a specific Pokémon, so you reduces its Special Attack stat to deal at least 51% to it. But doing so you lose the ability to finish it with another Pokémon or to finish it if it has prior damage and that is something so common in this meta with all the switching. Never think about raw calculations between 100% HP Pokémon because you won’t be in that situation frequently. About the Speed EVs, if you are the fastest dragon available, go for max Speed, at least you will be in a Speed tie against opposing max Speed Latios and you will outspeed positive-natured Garchomp and most notably HP Fire Latios.
Well, now I’ve explained my thoughts on the spread, I’ll explain why I added Latios to my team. I wanted a fast Pokémon that could put a lot of pressure on the opponent. And Latios fills in that role more than perfectly. It puts a big dent in a lot of things, even specially defensive or Steel Pokémon if they aren’t out when you fire off your Gem-boosted Draco Meteor, and given the fact that I’ve never seen a Pursuit Tyranitar, Scizor or Metagross, it’s safe to switch it for later, though it can even 2HKO some Pokémon with another unboosted -2 Draco Meteor. Psyshock is there for Pokémon like specially defensive or Subbing Thundurus, Hitmontop and even Volcarona to an extent. For Pokémon with higher Special Defense stat basically, something so abundant given the amount of Intimidate users to nullify them. Protect is Protect and on a “frail” sweeper like Latios is so valuable.
The final slot deserves a paragraph on its own. Sure, Energy Ball isn’t something new on Latios, but it isn’t used much. I opted for it just because Latios is one of the first Pokémon abusing Substitute in this years’ metagame, barring the genies. And seeing how every Pokémon of my team has its own trick I didn’t want to make an exception with Latios given its enormous movepool. I tested Magic Coat to counter Thunder Waves from Thundurus at least for one turn and Helping Hand (for bypassing Fake Out) among others, but in the end I decided to go for Energy Ball given the amount of Gastrodon, Rotom-W, Tyranitar, and the rising amount of Swampert. Talking about Gastrodon and Swampert the decision is obvious: if they don’t carry Rindo Berry, it’s a clean OHKO, and if they do carry it, it’s the same as Tyranitar and Rotom, it’s designed for finishing them or to 2HKO them without needing to use Draco Meteor, so you can save it for later. There is nothing as frightening as watching how a Latios has defeated one of your Pokémon without wasting their Dragon Gem and without decreasing its SAtk two levels. It’s even more frightening than having chosen the wrong leads with your Cresselia, Tyranitar or Steel-type in the back. That’s the reason that finally convinced me to use it after having discarded it so early in my Team Building process.
My following Pokémon have max Attack too, so that is why I’ve spent so much time explaining my thoughts about that. People often think that their spread is better because it’s more mixed, but sometimes it’s not the case. It depends of the team, and the damage calculator is why I run those Pokémon with max Attack, I never go for the easy route of 252/252/4 without prior research on the Damage calculator.
DonSteve (Hitmontop) (M) @ Fight Gem
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
– Fake Out
– Close Combat
– Detect
– Stone Edge
The glue of the team. Standard spread, I could have opted for a more defensive spread to endure hits such as Psyshock or Psychic from Latios, but it didn’t bother me so much because I had Tyranitar, Cresselia and Metagross, three Pokémon that can stop it. I had Thunder Wave and Fake Out support and a Latios of my own so it didn’t worry me. And that is one of the reasons I don’t have Sucker Punch on Hitmontop. Fake Out and Intimidate allowed me to ease prediction on switch-ins and bad matchups and helped my whole team to better tank physical hits. The uses for Fake Out are countless, from helping Thundurus to paralyze one of the foes or helping him setting up a Sub if I didn’t know what to expect.
Detect was mandatory in this set because it was the slowest member of my team and one of the most annoying Pokémon in this metagame, to help it survive longer. Close Combat is a no-brainer, it overcomes the drop in both defenses with sheer power. I tested other Fighting moves but they didn’t work as well as Close Combat. Being the slowest Pokémon of the team helped with that too, because if it was faster than the foe I was targeting he easily would be removed before it has any chance to attack, and if it is faster, well, you don’t have to worry about defenses drops most of the time.
And finally the last slot, the trick of Hitmontop. Stone Edge allowed me to grab some unexpected KO’s on Volcaronas, Thundurus and Chandelures. I’ll show you some calculations:
- Specially Defensive Thundurus: 73.51% – 86.48%
- Fast Thundurus 4/0: 87.74% – 103.22% OHKO after Fake Out
- Chandelure: 252/0: 67.06% – 79.04%
- Bulky Volcarona 252/0: -1 Stone Edge 100% – 118.75% guaranteed OHKO even after being Intimidated
As you can see, it’s useful against common Pokémon that don’t expect it. Thundurus could wall Hitmontop all day otherwise, and Chandelure could set up Trick Room expecting Sucker Punch or it could stall its PPs with Protect. But the most important is what it deals to a 252/0 Volcarona after having received an Intimidate. So against the common Hitmontop + Volcarona leads I could destroy them with Hitmontop + Thundurus. First turn Fake Out and second turn I could decide if I could risk a miss of Stone Edge for the OHKO against Volcarona and grab another OHKO on Hitmontop with HP Flying, or go for the easy route OHKOing Volcarona with Hidden Power Flying and switching Hitmontop for Cresselia or something that could resist the incoming Close Combat.
FLASH (Metagross) @ Choice Band
Trait: Clear Body
EVs: 116 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SDef / 132 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
– Ice Punch
– Earthquake
– Meteor Mash
– Bullet Punch
Now I’m going to introduce you the two MVPs of my team. Let’s start with Metagross. Two weeks before Hawaii I did one of my articles/documents/analysis as every year of the metagame, with every move, item, strategy, ability with the slightest impact on speed and how to control it, including a 7-page section about how to counter the most notable speed-modifier of the metagame, Thundurus. In the end it seems I didn’t follow it as much as I should have done it because of Helping Hand on Cresselia. But it helped me to build this beast. As it is Choice Banded, I maximized the Attack and never went back and gave him enough Speed to outrun neutral 85s with no or small Speed investment, and to outrun base 86s (most notably Rotom-A) with no investment and to tie with it if it had 4 EVs in Speed. It was important because Rotom was a pain for me to beat, I had to rely on Latios to beat it, so knowing its Speed between Cresselia, Metagross, Tyranitar, and Thundurus was key. Remember Thundurus had enough Speed to outrun positive-natured 252 Rotom. Then Cresselia had less Speed than Rotom in case they were running some sort of Trick Room Rotom, and Tyranitar and Metagross had enough speed investment to know if an opposing Rotom had speed investment or not.
Now the attacks, well, it was a tough decision between Zen Headbutt and the 4 chosen moves because as I’ve said I was afraid of Rotom, but I didn’t want to lock myself into an attack that couldn’t touch the likes of Tyranitar. In the end I decided to opt for a priority STABed attack (I lacked any other form of priority besides Thunder Wave and Substitute on Thundurus), a strong STABed attack with the option to boost the Attack stat of Metagross to monstrous levels mainly to demolish neutral foes and weaker resisting ones. And two coverage attacks: Earthquake for opposing Metagross, Tyranitar, Excadrill and to some extent everything neutral to it (the spread damaged helped too) and, the reason I used this Metagross, Choice Banded Ice Punch designed to always OHKO 252/4 Thundurus.
I didn’t like the Swagger/Lum/Persim thing, so I preferred to go for the Choice Band route — that is the reason I used Helping Hand Cresselia. With Helping Hand it always OHKOs 252/0 YacheChomp and can OHKO opposing Tyranitar and Metagross with Earthquake if they didn’t have 156 HP EVs or more and always maintaining a 55%+ chance of OHKOing Metagross, even the 252/4 variants. I’m talking about Metagross because Tyranitar is less physically bulky, so it needs more HP investment to survive an Earthquake. In the end I watched myself launch Hidden Power Fire to Metagross to finish it off instead of Helping Hand and attacking Tyranitar to break its Sash and demolishing it later with Hitmontop or Metagross while it couldn’t touch me.
VERA (Tyranitar) (F) @ Focus Sash
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 44 HP / 252 Atk / 212 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
– Low Kick
– Rock Slide
– Avalanche
– Protect
And now the last member of my team and the other MVP. With that amount of Speed it outran and destroyed so many threats and it wasn’t a Thunder Wave bait given its “poor” speed. Low Kick for Heatran and opposing Tyranitar, Rock Slide for spread STABed damage, Protect for scouting and to keep the Sash alive longer and finally the trick of Tyranitar, Avalanche. I was hyper-afraid of Garchomp, I think due to the fact I’ve played 8 single elimination VGC Nationals and I’ve always been eliminated by hax, and Garchomp is one of those annoying, haxer mons. Between Sand Veil, Rock Slide and great Attack and Speed, its critical hits, avoids or flinches hurt a lot. It has a 25% chance of OHKOing standard YacheChomp and 95% after a Fake Out from Hitmontop, the weakest attack in my team, so basically, if it had any kind of prior damage, it was cleanly OHKO’d if he had attacked me that turn. Remember, Avalanche has a -4 priority and 60 base power which is doubled if you receive damage in the turn used. A lot of people has asked me why I had Avalanche on a fast Tyranitar. Most of the time, it was directed to already faster Pokémon like Thundurus, Latios, Garchomp, and Salamence, and knowing how the rest of the team were all fast for their speed brackets and that they could all deal with Hitmontop, the most threating Pokémon for Tyranitar, I only found myself once wishing I had Crunch — in semifinals against Wolfe’s (Wolfey) Exeggutor in the second match, and for his Cresselia for the whole round. The Speed EVs made it reach a stat of 108, one point faster than Metagross, a pair I used so often against slow teams. As Tyranitar has less power, I wanted it to go before Metagross to break possible Substitutes with Rock Slide and give Metagross the chance of destroying them before they could even touch it.
Team Synergy
Now let’s analyze synergy:
Metagross + Cresselia
A well-known pair. It’s not a secret that Cresselia works amazingly well with Steel-types given its bulk, typing, ability and movepool. It was a great lead combo or a mid-game switch-in that could change the momentum of the battle. It’s a slow combination, but with the power and bulk they make up for that. With the addition of Helping Hand, Metagross could destroy everything in its way and Cresselia helped by removing or weakening some threats as Garchomp or Scizor, most notably the last one.
Metagross + Latios
A great combination too. Metagross hits hard for the physical side and Latios hits as hard or even harder for the Special side of the spectrum. This pair has once advantage versus the mentioned above: Speed. Latios is one of the fastest Pokémon available, and the one that hits the hardest if you balance Speed and power. Metagross covers every weakness of Latios barring Dark, but most Dark-types were eliminated by this pair, such as Weavile, Tyranitar or Hydreigon. And Latios covers every weakness Metagross has, adding Levitate to help Metagross fire off Choice Band-boosted Earthquakes. Both have decent bulk too. That means they can resist every super effective attack thrown at them except one or two exceptions each.
Metagross + Thundurus
The last Flying or Levitating Pokémon to help Metagross deal with Ground-types while being immune to its own Earthquake. Metagross resists every weakness of Thundurus and Thundurus is immune to Ground and neutral to Fire but can help Metagross with Thunder Wave support and can help him deal with fast Chandelures or Volcaronas. A hard stopper pair of the popular Hitmontop + Thundurus leads. Metagross scares Hitmontop, so most of the time it’ll be who receives the Fake Out….. just to be killed by Gem boosted HP Flying. Then next turn Thundurus could paralyze the Pokémon replacing Hitmontop and Metagross could destroy Thundurus giving me in most cases an effective 3-2 or 4-2 lead in a couple of turns. If he decides in the first turn to Fake Out Thundurus, the result is even worse because Thundurus will be out in one shot and Hitmontop will be out the next turn against a fast Thundurus, all with Metagross ready to hit the Thundurus replacement.
Tyranitar + Thundurus
A great pair that often goes overlooked. Thundurus resists every weakness Tyranitar has (Bug, Fighting, Ground, Grass and Steel) except for Water, and it can hit Water-types super effectively as well as Bug-, Fighting- and Grass-types. Add Thunder Wave support to a slow hard-hitting Pokémon and you get a great synergy. Tyranitar doesn’t resist any weakness of Thundurus, but it can hit Rock-types super effectively with Low Kick and Ice-types with Rock Slide or Low Kick too.
Tyranitar + Cresselia
A combo normally walled by Scizor but that’s not the case for this team. With Cresselia carrying Fire Gem Hidden Power Fire, it can destroy non-Occa Berry Scizors, and Occa variants are destroyed with a combination of Rock Slide + Hidden Power as both are faster than most of the Scizors most of the time. Cresselia is a monster at removing Fighting-types too with Psyshock and to a lesser extent helps to deal with Grass-types thanks to Ice Beam. Tyranitar helped Cresselia with the Ghost-types (mainly Chandelure) who otherwise with the right team support could be difficult for me to beat. Fortunately I didn’t face any Chandelure with that team support. This pair wasn’t often together just for one reason, they are better as a core:
Hitmontop + Cresselia + Tyranitar
As I said it wasn’t a stall team, but it could function that way when needed. With Tyranitar resisting every weakness of Hitmontop with the Intimidate support, and the Sand Storm, they were three great Pokémon. Then Cresselia makes life easier for Tyranitar, invaluably helping Tyranitar with his big weakness to Fighting-types. Against Bug-types Hitmontop was the key and against the Ghost-types aimed to Cresselia, Tyranitar was the answer. It was a well-rounded core. Not a perfect one, but it was my defensive core. Now that I’ve introduced Hitmontop I have to agree with Wolfey, it works well with every team member, so…
Hitmontop + Everyone
Every member of the team liked the Intimidate support he provided, and the Fake Out support was great to help deal with bad match-ups. Once I’ve said that, I’m going to analyze the synergy between the Pokémon that liked the support most.
Hitmontop + Thundurus
Thundurus is naturally more specially defensive than physically defensive, so the Intimidate support is great for it. Then Thundurus has Substitute to help it deal with powerful Gem-boosted Special attacks. And the most important part of the pair: Fake Out + Thunder Wave. Even considering it was harder at Worlds than at practice to effectively put this strategy in action, the times I could do it, I had the matches in the bag. As I commented before both were designed to destroy in one or two turns a combo of Hitmontop + Volcarona or Hitmontop + Thundurus (this pair is covered better with Metagross, but still, it has the advantage of Stone Edge for Thundurus and Hidden Power Flying for Hitmontop).
Hitmontop + Latios
A common pair of leads back in the Nationals days. Now it is less used, but it is even better for me because it is a great combination that helps Latios survive some attacks like Crunch from Tyranitar if he decides to stay Intimidated or with its Sash removed due to Fake Out and destroyed in the next turn. Hitmontop helps Latios with is powerful assaults, allowing it to almost always fire off a Dragon Gem-boosted Draco Meteor thanks to Fake Out. It can fire it even in the face of a Metagross, Scizor or Tyranitar. And now to finish…
Everyone + Everyone
I could spend all day explaining every possible combination because every Pokémon is a powerhouse on its own, allowing them to be with any partner at any time. Even Thundurus and Latios against Hail teams could go well with Hidden Power Flying to Abomasnow, T-Wave support for Scarf users of Blizzard and neutral Draco Meteors to every hail-dependent Pokémon. As you can see it’s a bulky and relatively fast team that uses relatively slow Pokémon with an enormous damage output. I think that is better to give 100 speed EVs than giving 510 EVs in HP, Defense and Special Defense. If you hit before them with strong Pokémon that covers their weakness very well, you will have more EVs to give to the attacking stats to deal more damage to naturally faster threats, don’t you think so?
Closing Comments
I wanted to have a Standard team with tricks (not gimmicks, don’t get me wrong), but I think Tyranitar had enough of a special EV spread to be considered as a trick, seeing how the teams were bulkier and bulkier every day that happened. I didn’t want a trick move on every Pokémon but in the end that was the case. Most of them were designed to defeat some counters without losing the ability to defeat the normal Pokémon it should defeat. And with Tyranitar it was the case, but later I realized I lacked a way to super effectively hit Cresselia and Meteor Mash Metagross wasn’t an option. During the Swiss rounds I only used Avalanche once, against Ray in the first match, it was the key to the victory in that game but it hurt more than it helped because then I lost the round.
Basically, I had two teambuilding failures (Helping Hand Cresselia and Crunchless Tyranitar) because I was afraid of hax (Tyranitar with Avalanche) to the point that I even though about running Unnverve Tyranitar to destroy Garchomp 100% of the time, albeit losing the invaluable Sand Stream ability for itself and for the rest of the team, and because I was used to a metagame where a KO could result in advancing a round (Helping Hand Cresselia) where luck matters less than in Single Elimination, instead of focusing more on speed control and threat removing in the long run once the whole team was uncovered (Crunchless Tyranitar). The rest of the team had its twists but were as effective as always against the common Pokémon they counter or even had more coverage, every Pokémon barring Tyranitar. But now I have learned valuable lessons. I’m happy about my 3rd place finish in my first Worlds attendance and now I know how the metagame changes from Single elimination to Swiss + Top Cut best-of-3. I have to congratulate Wolfey because he recognized and used those two failures against me in the semifinals.
Then I would like to thank all the people that helped me through this year without results and the people who still help me. Mithos for RNGing this awesome Latios, and Kaphotics for the Modest Thundurus I borrowed from him. I’d like to thank K-OS, Neku, Donsteve, Brajan, Vera, Kotx and to my ex-girlfriend Laura (my Cresselia has her name, Lauritaaa, she is my ex since Hawaii, she didn’t want me to go, but it is another story) and basically every person that has helped me with the team building process or with the testing process or just supporting me, especially my sister and my mother. I’m very reserved with my teams, I don’t show them to everybody, so I’m glad they helped me even without knowing that they were helping me because I realized some mistakes of my teams in talking about them with people, even if they know nothing about Pokémon.
And of course I’d like to thank the Nugget Bridge staff for giving me such recognition and allowing me to make this team analysis.
Article image created by ryuzaki for Nugget Bridge. See more of ryuzaki’s artwork on deviantART.
About the Author
Flash Abel Martín Sanz, better known as flash_mc or just Flash, was the first player in Spain to play VGC. He placed 3rd in the Masters Division at the 2012 Pokémon Video Game World Championships after having placed 2nd in the Swiss rounds the day before with a 5-1 record - the highest of any Spanish player in the Masters Division.
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