Smogon Premier League 8 - Postseason Overview

By Klefkwi.
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Introduction

If you've missed last time's edition, make sure to catch it here.

The Smogon Premier League (SPL) is Smogon's most prestigious team tournament, assembling a plethora of squads filled with distinguished Pokémon battlers competing in a multitude of Smogon tiers, ranging from the minuscule threats in Little Cup to the behemoths dwelling in Ubers. In the eighth instalment of one of the most highly anticipated tournaments in Smogon's yearly cycle, the ten squads will contend for the elusive Smogon Premier League trophy. This series seeks to address the weekly incidents in said tournament and provide a general overview of what exactly is going on in SPL, as well as featuring highlight matches in the aforementioned tiers. We've asked a few knowledgeable players coming from a multitude of different tiers to chime in and contribute to the weekly editions in order to obtain an unbiased and proficient outlook on the tournament. In this specific instalment, we will be covering everything related to the SPL playoffs. For all SPL aficionados as well as casual Smogon readers, the coverage of the 8th Edition of the Smogon Premier League is a weekly must-read.

The Postseason in Review

Semi-Finals

After a whole nine weeks of furious competition, the Circus Maximus Tigers were matched up against the then-undefeated Raiders for the first match of the SPL semifinals. Coming off of their only tied week in the season (all eight other weeks ended up being wins), the Raiders looked to assert themselves as the top team in the tournament by achieving a potential finals spot, while the Tigers looked to provide an upset after making it into the playoffs following an incredible final round that culminated in GOAO's memorable victory over PDC, eliminating the Sharks and consequently qualifying the Tigers.

Right off the bat, we can notice that the Raiders' OU core wasn't as dominant during this series as it had been all tournament long, with 5 out of its 9 OverUsed players dropping their games, even though steady performers like reyscarface and BKC still achieved their own wins. In a surprising result, Jayde ended up dropping his first game of the season, following an intense and interesting battle against Tokyo Tom, a midseason acquisition for the Tigers who had proven to be a strong contributor towards their turnaround. For the Tigers, Steve Angello, Tamahome and Mazar once again came out victorious, pushing their individual records towards the top portion of the pool in their respective tiers. To cap off the impressive week, OP, Major Bowman, Nintendi, and Zebraiken all achieved wins themselves, giving the Tigers an eventual 8-4 edge in the remarkable upset against the Raiders, who up to that point seemed infallible and poised to win the whole tournament.

On the other end of the bracket, the second-seeded Ever Grande BIGs roster matched up against an inconsistent yet dangerous Scooters team. Both teams had displayed flashes of brilliance during the regular season, but they still seemed far too erratic when compared to a potential Raiders opponent.

Coming into the semifinals matchup, the Indie Scooters started off the series at a scorching pace, taking 2 out of the 3 SM OU matches and also achieving important victories with Gunner Rohan in SM Ubers and with Axel10 in ORAS OU. To further his dominant hold over the competition in SPL, Biosci once again defeated his opponent, while Philip7086 and Crystal_ also obtained solid results, adding to the positive column for the Scoots. On the BIGs' side of things, very little ended up going their way, with Obliviate and ZoroDark achieving the only wins for the team, as the Scooters clinched the series incredibly early, leading to only 9 contests being played, as Jirachee, Ojama and Mr.378 all decided to sit out since the result was already determined. The Scooters were then set to play the surging Tigers in the finals, a matchup primed for high drama and interesting games.

Finals

[#3] Indie Scooters (6) vs [#4] Circus Maximus Tigers (6)
SM OU: Welli0u vs p2
SM OU: Tricking vs Eternal Spirit
SM OU: TheThorn vs miltankmilk
SM Ubers: Gunner Rohan vs Mazar
SM LC: Star vs OP
SM DOU: Biosci vs MajorBowman
ORAS OU: Axel10 vs Nintendi
BW OU: Jirachee vs Tokyo Tom
DPP OU: Philip7086 vs Tamahome
ADV OU: Ojama vs JabbaTheGriffin
GSC OU: Mr.378 vs roroyurem
RBY OU: Crystal_ vs Zebraiken (Game 1 | Game 2)
Tiebreak
SM OU: Tricking vs Tamahome
ADV OU: Ojama vs McMeghan
SM Ubers: Gunner Rohan vs Mazar

In the long-awaited finals series, the fourth seeded Circus Maximus Tigers were up against the third seeded Scooters, after both teams eliminated the top seeds in the tournament. From the beginning, both teams seemed extremely evenly matched, with neither team being able to completely pull away from the other, despite sizeable leads being amassed.

Biosci and Ojama, solid performers during the entire season for the Scooters, both obtained wins in SM DOU and ADV OU, respectively. Coupled with Star's victory in LC and Welli0u and Tricking's positive results in SM OU, the Scooters achieved five out of the necessary six wins to guarantee a tie, which was especially noteworthy since they found themselves fighting back from behind for the entirety of the series. For the Tigers, Mazar and Tamahome were crucial once more, clinching two victories for the team, which was added onto by positive results coming from roroyurem, Zebraiken, Tokyo Tom, and Nintendi, putting the Tigers 6-5 up, with one game remaining. After an unfortunate event that ended up in some unnecessary drama, the Tigers were forced to substitute Steve Angello out of SM OU, swapping in their backup DOU player in miltankmilk. With the pressure of the final game as well as the burden of learning a new tier in so little time, miltankmilk's valiant efforts weren't enough, as he eventually dropped his game to TheThorn, pushing the already exciting series onto a tiebreaker.

For the three additional matches, the Tigers selected to play Ubers, with Mazar as their player of choice, while the Scooters picked ADV OU, with Ojama at the helm. For the mandatory SM OU game, the teams placed their hopes on Tamahome and Tricking. After a somewhat quick match, Tamahome emerged victorious from the SM OU game after decisively putting down Tricking with a somewhat common variation of the popular stall that has taken over the SM OU metagame. On the other hand, Ojama was also able to win, pulling it back for the Scooters and placing the decisive match in the hands of Gunner Rohan, who was set to face the still undefeated Mazar in SM Ubers. Subsequent to some scheduling woes, Mazar finally clinced not only the week but the whole tournament for the Circus Maximus Tigers, who became the champions of the eighth edition of the Smogon Premier League.

Around The League

In this instalment's edition of Around The League, we will be interviewing the victorious manager duo for the Tigers (tennisace and atomicllamas) as well as former SPL host and current SPL champion Zebraiken. This segment will hopefully showcase what's going on in SPL from an insider's perspective as well as accentuate focal points and disclose what we should be keeping an eye out for during the remainder of the hectic season. Following the Smogon Premier League's playoff cycle, we decided to approach tennis, llamas and Zeb with a handful of questions pertaining to their team's performance in general as well as their own roles within the team.

#10 or #1?: tennisace & atomicllamas Interview

Can you guys assess this season as a whole and maybe describe some interesting moments or anecdotes that were particularly noteworthy along the way to the championship?

tennisace

This season, I started out with Jabba, MajorBowman, and OP as my retains. MajorBowman was easy; he had become one of the top SM Doubles players on the site in between SPLs 7 and 8, and getting him for 10k was a steal. Jabba was retained because I looked at the player pool for ADV and figured getting him for 13k was better than dropping 17k or 18k on a marginally better player. OP was retained for much of the same reason; I trusted him more than the rest of the SM LC player pool and for 10k figured he was worth it.

For the draft, I came up with a list of 5 "big name" players who I felt were worth upwards of 20k credits. These were players who llamas and I knew were good teammates who could win the majority of their games in their main tier but also help test and build in multiple tiers. My draft plan at that point was to get two of them for <50k and then fill out the rest of the roster with solid players for decent money. Not going to say who the other players were, but we ended up with McMeghan and Tamahome for 44.5k combined, which turned out to be a great combination. The only other player over 10k on our roster from that point was Giara at 14k, since we felt that GSC had a very weak player pool that was filled with high-risk players at the low end and very highly priced options at the top. From there, we focused on players who we knew had high upside. We were very surprised when people near the top of our draft board went for 3k, like Steve Angello (who had a good Season 7 on a champion Sharks squad) and Nintendi (OST finalist in ORAS), but that allowed us to do things like spend 6k on Zebraiken as a supersub and pick up miltankmilk and DeepblueC as testing partners.

Overall, I knew the squad was very high risk, high reward. Either everyone was going to gel and people would perform like I hoped, or we were in for a long season. Turned out ~pretty ok~ I guess.

atomicllamas

As for the draft, fact check: OP retain was 11.5k, tennisace actually tried to retain him for 10k in the retain pm as well cause he's a dingus and didn't listen to me when I said he was 11.5k (we wanted him regardless for the reasons stated by tennisace already). Other thing I'd like to say about our retains is that all three of them are really easy-going guys that made it so we didn't have to think too hard about personality conflicts during our draft. MajorBowman and Jabba were good friends with tennisace since before SPL 7, and I've been friends with OP since he was an LC random named h¡ddenpower (yes that's an upside-down exclamation mark). If you're gonna spend 9-11 weeks playing Pokémon with people, it might as well be with people you like.

I just want to say I insisted on McMeghan being one of the "big name" people we got, because in spite of a mediocre SPL 7 showing I know he is one of the top 5 players to grace this site and is a pretty awesome guy. I don't think the team would have been nearly as successful without either him or Tamahome, so we clearly made the right choice with our "big buys".

There were so many moments that made this particular SPL incredible. It would have been my favorite SPL thus far even if we hadn't won the whole thing. Some of the top ones that come to my mind include being in a call / the Tigers chat when GOAO was playing PDC (if GOAO won we were in playoffs, if not we were out) and going crazy every time GOAO made a play or got a crit and adding GOAO to the chat as an honorary Tiger after he won. Another great one was when Mazar won in tiebreaks and there was probably 2k straight lines of all capital celebration. Some more low-key moments I enjoyed include Nintendi winning with a set change that Tamahome had suggested and then pointedly not giving him a shoutout because Tama asked for one (I was so proud). Pretty much every Mazar - Steve Angello interaction was hilarious to watch because they interact like an old (German) married couple: always a little bit of bickering, but at the end of the day you know its out of love :3. One of the craziest things this season was that the same day the Patriots came back from being down 28-3 to win the Super Bowl 34-28 was the same day we came back against the Classiest to win 7-5 after being down 2-5 Sunday morning. That entire day was super tense but so crazy, and the energy carried us through the midseason. Midseason was also great, as we picked up Tokyo Tom, which upped our meme game in the Commencemeat thread (there was a point in mids where there were four Tigers posts in a row with 80+ likes and probably 10 with 40+ on the same page). Other honorable mentions include people being really salty when playing Tamahome, Jabba bringing BellyPass versus Ojama in week 9, McMeghan's Riolu game, Eternal Spirit telling tennisace to "quit playing Rocket League and test with me", and spending over two hours making the Legend of Zelda puns about putting Zebraiken in RBY. Being ranked tied for last in the power rankings coming into the season honestly made the season even better, since it's easier to play as the underdog when people have zero expectations of you than it is to be considered at the top and have everyone extra motivated to knock you off. McMeghan kept saying that our SPL season was basically a classic anime plot, and the crazy close victory in finals (complete with extra drama!) definitely made that true.

From a managers' perspective, can both of you elaborate on your finals lineup, in terms of your player selection (including the final SM OU sub as well as tiebreaker picks)?

tennisace

The finals lineup for us was pretty straightforward. We found a lineup that worked for us around weeks 8-9 and decided to roll with it. The top end of our lineup rarely changed throughout the season. p2, Steve Angello, and Eternal Spirit were solid throughout in SM OU, Mazar was riding a five-game win streak in Ubers, MajorBowman was hot again in Doubles, OP was playing very well in LC at the end of the season, and Nintendi was 7-2 in ORAS. Our gens 5-1 may have looked a bit... weird by the end of the season, but we felt it was the configuration that gave us the best shot at winning. We started by putting Tamahome in DPP, his main tier and his most comfortable. From there, we slotted Tokyo Tom in BW and JabbaTheGriffin in ADV, both of whom are more than capable players. That freed up McMeghan to play GSC, which isn't his main tier but he did really well in. Finally, that left RBY. Zebraiken picked up the metagame for week 9, and through Tamahome and Golden Gyarados's help (among others), he won both of his playoff sets. Tht was our biggest risk; Zeb was our "super sub" who we knew could sub in for essentially any OU tier + a couple others. As for the sub situation, we felt confident that Miltankmilk would be able to pick up SM OU and perform well in a one-game scenario. Unfortunately he didn't clutch out the win, but he didn't play badly, he just kinda got rolled in a matchup designed to trip up an inexperienced player.

For the tiebreaker, we had to pick our tier first, and we knew that Ojama was going to play for them in whatever their pick was (either BW or ADV), since he wanted to play against McMeghan. We were going to pick our best matchup versus them no matter what; that came down to either Ubers or Doubles. Mazar had beaten Gunner convincingly twice already this season and was undefeated in Ubers, while MajorBowman beat Biosci in the regular season and only lost in the Finals due to an unfortunate flinch. Ultimately we went with Ubers and felt comfortable knowing Mazar was on fire with both his play and teambuilding.

The Scooters countered that pick with ADV, so it was only natural we went with McMeghan, arguably one of the best players of all time in any tier. For SM OU, we went with Tamahome, since he finished with the best record on our team and is actually quite solid in SM OU; he had been testing and teambuilding frequently throughout the season and we felt confident in his general skill matching up with any of the Scooters' players.

atomicllamas

Not gonna elaborate too much on the playoff lineups because tennisace just about covered all of it. I do want to elaborate on choosing on choosing miltankmilk for our sub in the SM OU game. To be honest, we were kind of in a tough spot because the players most willing and capable to play (Century Express, giara, and miltankmilk) were singles players that hadn't touched SM OU yet (the former two) or a doubles player that had dabbled in the tier (miltankmilk). The reason we decided to go with miltankmilk is that he has a certain intangible "will to win" type of quality that would make me feel comfortable putting him in any do-or-die type of position. Week 7 vs the bigs when MajorBowman needed a break miltankmilk really stepped up to the plate and won in his home tier, without which we wouldn't have tied and would not have been able to make the playoffs at the end of the season. McMeghan and Tamahome also had insightful input for the lineup for the last couple weeks and agreed with my advocating for miltankmilk.

Finally, could both of you give us a word on your managerial counterpart, just talk a bit about each other and describe the overall feeling of working together for these 11 weeks?

tennisace

I've been friends with atomicllamas for... forever? Like, 2014ish? He was on my team in SPL 7 as a traded retainee, and with Sweep he helped a lot to form our draft plan that season. He's always calm and cheerful in chat and is always positive even when things are going badly. Even though his main tier wasn't included this SPL, I knew he was able to pick up and test tiers fairly quickly if given teams, which is always a helpful skill for managers. I said as much in my team shoutouts, but without him, we wouldn't have won a championship this season. He helped keep the team grounded and focused and was well liked and respected by everyone on the team. Fabulous/10 would manage with again.

atomicllamas

As for tennisace, he was one of the people I looked up to when I first started on the site in 2013 as some sort of BW RU / BW NU random because he was an ~important~ person in NU. As I got more into IRC and became more involved on the site, we became pretty good friends, and now he's one of the people I feel I can trust the most on smogon (he may or may not be the person I vent the most to about random stuff :p). Last SPL I managed to convince him that I am good at Pokémon in spite of being decidedly average, which landed me on the SPL 7 Tigers as a retain. I was moderately involved with the draft plan last year as well, which really had me interested in being involved in the management aspect of this SPL (especially since SM RU was not going to be developed enough to be in the tournament). I think tennisace and I worked pretty well as a management duo. We were probably a little more hands off than most of the other managers, and we both trusted our players to bring the teams they felt comfortable with and to use them well. That being said, tennisace was an excellent presence during the season, as he is always level headed and was willing to help test whenever necessary, even going so far as to quit his Rocket League games to do so. On top of that, the amount of effort he put into the team during the playoffs was kind of insane. I had a blast working with him and I would 100% love to manage with him again in the future.

From SPL host to SPL champion: Zebraiken Interview

From SPL host to SPL champion, could you elaborate on this season from your perspective, maybe giving us some valuable insight into your team's dynamics as well as your own reactions towards certain events in the season?

Even if we hadn't made it all the way, this season was easily the best time that I had playing on an SPL team. SPL 4 with the Tigers was pretty close, but the camaraderie between the SPL 8 Tigers brought us even higher. Everyone brought worthwhile insight to the table, and we all got along well enough to overcome some sour losses we had along the way. There are many players on Smogon with an extremely high play ceiling but not the ability to handle teammate losses well. I think it's sometimes neglected during the auction; having a hostile environment after a bad loss is super detrimental to mentality, especially for that particular player, and overwhelmingly so if they're new. We were lucky to have so many players that were empathetic after losses but also unwilling to allow the losers to slack. It felt like we banded closer together after each failure, rather than splitting apart at the seams.

As the host for SPLs 6 & 7, I saw many different team environments, and the best by far were the ones with mild-tempered, high-skill players. SPL 8 Tigers felt like the best of these. The last thing I want to speak about is the flexibility of our team. After we went into midseason as a top four team, we went through a couple of upsetting losses and actually sat in 9th place at the start of Week 7. Junior team captains [C-WI] Roro97-Kitesu and DracoMalfoy took the initiative and started discussion on lineup swaps, and thus they created Ubers legend Mazar (among others). When we had to make lineup changes, tons of our players were willing to step out of their comfort zone to improve our standing, and we came out much better for it. Honestly, I think McMeghan's shoutout at the end summarizes our overall season much better than I possibly could.

Some people credit their team, others credit their own preparation. Can you tell us what has been the biggest source of your individual success this season in RBY? Who were your biggest sources of aid within or from outside of your team?

I initially included both LC and RBY in my signup post, even though I hadn't played a game of RBY before the season. I decided against RBY, because even though I felt like I could pick up RBY for a team, it'd misrepresent my actual skill level during auction. When I talked to tennisace before the auction, he asked me if I felt comfortable playing more than just LC (they already had retained OP, remember!), and I told him that I wasn't sure I'd play to a SPL-competitive level in any other tier. I did say that I'd be entirely fine with serving as a 3k bench player and backup LC player. He drafted me anyway at twice the cost. Probably a bad business decision.

After going 0-2 in LC, I returned to the bench and did my best to continue helping OP and be a positive team presence. As Week 8 came to a close, McMeghan asked me if I would be able to pick up any other tier. I said that I could learn anything with some help, but of the options I was given I felt like I could perform best for the team in RBY. When we talked to the rest of the team about it, it was met with some questioning (does Zeb even play RBY?) and then transitioned into faith:

Tamahome devoted hours of his time to teach me RBY. We went over very basic theories of how to optimize your play in RBY, some specific scenarios, and he helped me to decide upon teams each week. Golden Gyarados, Pearl, Finchinator, atomicllamas, and others helped me play some test games, but I also played a hundred games or so on the ladder too to diversify my experience. It suited me just fine in order to get more comfortable with the damage rolls and general patterns in RBY, even if other top players tell you the ladder isn't a great place to learn.

Tama also took the time to break down some of my bad decisionmaking in test games. I have a very bad habit of locking myself into specific ideas of what my opponent will do (he's going to switch, he HAS TO!) and making poor plays as a result. Some of these bad plays were a result of not knowing exactly what to do in RBY, but many were just outright bad decisions. Analyzing each one helped me diffuse, though not entirely remove, this issue.

I lost against Peasounay in Week 9, but winning one game of the Best-of-3 gave me some confidence when we made it into playoffs and decided to keep the same lineup. I took game one in my semifinal series against Tobes with the help of a super Snorlax that got a crit, got a high Body Slam roll, and then boomed on Chansey. I took the momentum into game two and won by hitting Sing with a paralyzed Chansey.

Against Crystal_ in game one of the finals series, I got a lucky Blizzard freeze on his Chansey very early that let me push with my Counter Chansey mid-game and then whittle his team into range for a Tauros sweep. In game two, an awkward series of plays led me to flail against his Exeggutor early, but I made a good double and ended up trading Exeggutor for three Pokémon (it ate opposing Egg boom, put his Chansey to sleep, and boomed on his Starmie). Another Superlax crit made it tough for Crystal_ to win, and my Tauros pulled through.

I won't say I didn't get lucky in my series or that I didn't make misplays, but I feel confident that overall I made stronger plays and won those games on my own merit (and Tama-sensei's tutelage), and I'm very happy about that. Going technically 5-2 in a tier I picked up only Week 9 was a great feeling, and being one of the wins that clinched us an opportunity for the trophy was even better.

Battles of the Week

In this week's edition of Battles of the Week, we will be taking a closer look at the most intriguing games that have taken place during the SPL playoffs. Let's delve straight into the action, shall we?

Highlight Match

ORAS OU - Nintendi vs Axel10 - written by Finchinator

In a clash of two previously successful ORAS OU players, Nintendi of the Tigers and Axel10 of the Scooters found themselves matched up against each other for the second time this season in ORAS OU. However, this time had much more on the line than their first battle as it was for finals in a close series. Both players have handled high-pressure situations in the past and done well, so this battle had a lot of hype and excitement leading up to it. In addition, they both have some degree of familiarity with each other after witnessing the other play all season, so there were many possibilities for this game.

Axel10 brought a fast-paced bulky offensive team with Mega Diancie whereas Nintendi went with a slightly slower-paced bulky offensive team with Mega Medicham. Looking at the composition of both teams, it seemed clear that each player could threaten the other with various threats on their teams. For example, Nintendi's Mega Medicham could OHKO five Pokémon on Axel's team if he had the right moves and 2HKO the other. On the other hand, the combination of Weavile's Pursuit support and the offensive presences of Mega Diancie and Latios made defensive counterplay a challenge for Nintendi. Therefore, we should expect a fairly quick, aggressive, and fast-paced match from these teams where strong reads and optimal risk taking likely would decide the outcome barring any instances of relevant luck or misplays. The matchup looked relatively even on paper, but depending on the moves on Pokémon like Mega Medicham and various sets, it could sway slightly in either direction.

Before we get into the match itself, it's also worth noting that the defensive backbone of each team is relatively similar. Both players have a fairly common, reliable core of Tangrowth and Landorus-T. Additionally, both players have a somewhat bulky, depending on the set, Steel-type in Jirachi for Nintendi and Magnezone for Axel10. However, the Magnezone likely plays as more offensive, as Assault Vest is only common in SM and Nintendi also has an Excadrill, which is likely the Choice Scarf user, in the back as another Steel-type. With this said, breaking through these cores is very possible for both players given the offensive tools they have at their disposal, so a lot of the game will come down to how carefully the defensive measures are used compared to how aggressively the offensive measures are used by each player.

Getting into the game itself, Nintendi leads with Manaphy while Axel10 leads with Landorus-T. Nintendi opts to use the most spammable move in the history of Pokémon, Scald, and catches the burn he fished for on the Latios switch-in from Axel10, and this game of Pokémon has officially begun now that the first Scald burn has happened! However, Nintendi elects to stay in against the Latios, likely predicting a double switch, and catches a Tangrowth with Ice Beam. Despite it doing minimal damage to a specially defensive Assault Vest Tangrowth, it also landed a freeze, rendering the Tangrowth potentially useless for the remainder of the match or at least until it thawed and giving Nintendi a big advantage early on. Fortunately, the Tangrowth thawed out immediately as the Manaphy, greedily, went for a Tail Glow and found itself incapable of OHKOing the now Giga Drain-healed Tangrowth with +3 Ice Beam. Therefore, Nintendi pivoted out to his Jirachi on a second Giga Drain. From there, Jirachi revealed itself to be a Toxic variant as it landed a Toxic on Tangrowth in return for getting its Leftovers Knocked Off. Then, it pivoted out with a critical hit U-turn and Tangrowth Earthquaked into a Landorus-T as Toxic wore it down a bit. Landorus-T then U-turned into the opposing Landorus-T, taking Rocky Helmet damage and thus revealing crucial information about Axel10's team, but Nintendi went into Medicham, likely indicating that he has Ice Punch and putting Axel10's back to the wall with his aforementioned threat able to 2HKO or OHKO the entirety of Axel10's team.

Smoothly, Axel10 pivoted into Magnezone on a predicted Ice Punch, and then both players doubled out into their Ground-types, Excadrill for Nintendi this time and the aforementioned Landorus-T for Axel10, on the following turn. This gave Axel10 some much needed breathing room after previously losing momentum and being seriously threatened by a Mega Medicham, which feared Scarf Magnezone and wanted to stay healthy and avoid potentially crippling prediction had it stayed in. The Landorus-T then U-turned into the opposing Landorus-T, also taking Rocky Helmet damage and revealing that both players happened to be using this variant of Landorus-T. Additionally, this gave Axel10 an opportunity to get his Weavile in safely. It proceeded to Icicle Crash twice into a Manaphy, first chipping it and then KOing the it, giving Axel10 an early 6-5 advantage. With this said, damage and lack of Life Orb revealed that Axel10's Weavile was using Choice Band and, therefore, locked into Icicle Crash, giving Nintendi the ability to go into anything he'd like to take advantage of this position in the coming turn. He opted to go to Jirachi and he U-turned into a Magnezone pivot from Axel10, giving him the ability to safely get Landorus-T back in.

Nintendi used this opportunity to set up Stealth Rock, as Diancie has not yet Mega Evolved and he wanted to punish Axel10 for consistent switching throughout the remainder of the game. As this happened, Axel10 went to his own Landorus-T, once more. Instead of setting up his own Stealth Rock, Axel10 wisely U-turned into a Mega Medicham switch-in from Nintendi, likely expecting it to come in and threaten the entirety of his team. This U-turn led to the aforementioned Diancie to come in without taking any attacks on the Mega Medicham. In a conservative and safe fashion, Axel10's Mega Diancie went for Protect, fearing an attack from a then quicker Mega Medicham and wanting to potentially scout for a problematic Bullet Punch. On this turn, Nintendi elected to pivot to his Tangrowth, taking advantage of the Protect to get into an advantageous position. Then, Tangrowth Giga Drained into the opposing Tangrowth, traded its Assault Vest getting Knocked Off for a weak Hidden Power hit, and then finally took a Sludge Bomb from the opposing Tangrowth before finishing it with another Hidden Power, evening the game up at 5-5. The Weavile then came out for Axel10, and he immediately Icicle Crashed into Nintendi's Landorus-T, which was likely just used as fodder as it already set Stealth Rock and pivoted in earlier on in the game, leaving it relatively easy to fodder off at this stage in the game. As a follow-up to Weavile, Nintendi went to his Mega Medicham and used Fake Out, hitting the weakened Magnezone on the switch, and then High Jump Kick, killing the foddered Magnezone through Chople Berry and evening the game out at 4 a piece as we approach the later stages of the game.

At this point, it was clear that Nintendi was threatened by the opposing Weavile whereas Axel10 was threatened by the opposing Mega Medicham. However, Stealth Rock was up on Axel10's side, meaning that Weavile had limited longevity, and Nintendi's Mega Medicham potentially had priority to deal with the Weavile. However, it had not actually revealed Bullet Punch, which could make taking out a second Pokémon or dealing with Mega Diancie very troublesome, as both Mega Diancie and Latios outsped and KOed Medicham; however, they're also both vulnerable to Bullet Punch given that Latios was weakened and Mega Diancie is 4x weak to it. Moreover, a significant portion of the game depended on the fourth move that Nintendi's Mega Medicham packed on this team. If it lacked Bullet Punch, then it would be a struggle for him to win the game, as his Excadrill was likely walled by Rocky Helmet Landorus-T and his Tangrowth was significantly weakened whereas he could not keep up with the fast, offensive Pokémon remaining on Axel10's team. On the other hand, if the Mega Medicham had Bullet Punch, then it posed a threat to the entire remainder of Axel10's team and Nintendi was likely in the driver's seat.

Getting back to the game, Latios was the follow-up to Mega Medicham after Magnezone fainted, and it simply used Life Orb Surf into the opposing Jirachi before using Defog into a U-turn on the following turn. U-turn KOed the Latios, and Nintendi went to Mega Medicham. In order to potentially check the Mega Medicham, Axel10 brought out his Mega Diancie, as it was quicker and could kill. However, this opened up a strong possibility for the aforementioned Bullet Punch to break open Axel10's team in the coming turns if the Mega Medicham happened to have this move. Fortunately for the Brazilian ORAS prodigy, he had the move on his Mega Medicham—unleashing it after a timely Fake Out and KOing the Mega Diancie for absolutely nothing in return. Then, the game looked to be, more or less, over, as the Mega Medicham dealt with the two remaining Pokémon on Axel10's team. Sure enough, Ice Punch took down the Landorus-T and then Bullet Punch chipped down the Weavile significantly, failing to KO it due to Stealth Rock being Defogged away and Intimidate from the previous Landorus-T weakening it. However, this opened up the way for Scarf Excadrill to finish the job and KO Weavile, giving Nintendi a 3-0 victory over Axel10 in this battle for SPL finals and helping the Tigers maintain their lead.

Looking back at the battle, the teams, and the set, Nintendi played well enough to win despite being vulnerable to Weavile because he had Bullet Punch Mega Medicham and played it properly given the opposing team. Axel10 couldn't do a ton nearing the later portion of the battle, and he did not misplay much at all; however, he was very vulnerable to this Mega Medicham during the later portion of the game, as he had multiple Pokémon weakened and he had nothing solid for it to begin with, which is kind of the nature of Mega Medicham in ORAS if you lack a Slowbro or Bold Clefable. The key plays in this battle involved both players gaining momentum from each other during the early and middle stages of the battle, but ultimately Axel10 was fighting a losing battle due to the presence of Mega Medicham and his lack of long-term counterplay, whereas Nintendi executed his gameplan well given his sets and position throughout the match. Regardless of this individual game, both players had successful break-out seasons and should be very proud of the results they generated and how well they played and prepared throughout the entirety of the tournament. Hopefully we will see both compete again in the future, and there will be plenty more high-stakes battles to comment on. Sadly, this is all that I have for this SPL, and it was a pleasure writing for each week. Thanks to everyone that read!

Featured Replay

SM LC - OP v Star - written by Kingler12345

The final LC match of SPL 8 was between OP of the Circus Maximus Robbers and Star of the Indie Scooters. The Tigers were up 6-2, meaning that they just needed one victory out of the four remaining to win the tournament; otherwise, if the Scooters won all four, the finals round would go to a tiebreak. This match was therefore pivotal and put the burden of saving his team's season on Star's shoulders.

The match saw both players using Shellder, both of which could beat the other team with a little prior damage on the key team members. Star made a smart decision by bringing Scarf Drilbur, which paid off seeing as how OP lacked a Ground switch-in. OP lacked Pokémon resisting Psychic as well, making Star's Abra a massive threat, but at least he had Diglett (which was likely to have Beat Up) to trap Abra. The match began with Star getting down Stealth Rock and a layer of Spikes in exchange for his Dwebble, a trade he was more than happy to make because of how Drilbur 2HKOed all of OP's team members with the chip damage. OP allows Abra to KO his Mienfoo, getting the revenge kill with Diglett's Beat Up. Star sends in Drilbur, and OP has to let one of his Pokémon get KOed; seeing as how Diglett was relatively useless to him from that point on, he decides to fodder it off. He sends in Foongus to threaten the Drilbur, which Star replies to by simply going Pumpkaboo. OP goes Kabuto, the most disposable member of the team, trading off its life for removing Pumpkaboo's Eviolite. OP sends in Elekid against a now-full Pumpkaboo and gets a critical hit on Synthesis that would allow it to win the one-on-one matchup. However, Star can go to Drilbur with little risk aside from that of a Fire Punch burn, KOing Elekid and getting damage off on Shellder. He can then safely go to Timburr and KO the Shellder, which has a miniscule chance to KO Timburr. Star proceeds to win by hitting the last Pokémon, Foongus, with Knock Off and finishing it off with Shellder's Icicle Spear.

The game shows the use of an underrated threat in Scarf Drilbur to take advantage of the lack of Ground-resistant Pokémon that is often found in LC teams in the current meta. Star managed to simplify the game well by getting entry hazards up quickly and forcing Diglett to come in by bringing out Abra early so that he could get a free kill. OP wasn't left much room to outplay Star, partly due to the matchup and partly due to good early-game decisions on the latter's part. This match brought the Tigers - Scooters score to 6-3.

SPL Top Performers

Following the 11 weeks of interesting matches, some players ended up performing at a level above the rest of the competition. This section hopes to showcase and commemorate said achievements as we say goodbye to this year's edition of the Smogon Premier League:

SM OU: reyscarface (Raiders): 10-0
SM OU: TDK (Raiders): 6-0
SM OU: KratosMana (Raiders): 6-2
Honorable mentions: FlamingVictini, PDC, Steve Angello, TheThorn
SM Ubers: Mazar (Tigers): 6-0
Honorable mentions: Level 56
SM LC: zf (Falcons): 7-2
Honorable mentions: ZoroDark
SM DOU: Biosci (Scooters): 8-3
Honorable mentions: I Am a Rookie
ORAS OU: Nintendi (Tigers): 7-3
Honorable mentions: Axel10
BW OU: Jayde (Raiders): 9-1
Honorable mentions: SoulWind
DPP OU: Tamahome (Tigers): 7-2-1
Honorable mentions: roscoe
ADV OU: Ojama (Scooters): 7-4
Honorable mentions: undisputed
GSC OU: BKC (Raiders): 7-1
Honorable mentions: d0nut
RBY OU: Peasounay (Cryonicles): 8-1
Honorable mentions: Lusch

Feel free to check out the remaining records here.

Conclusion

I hope you've all enjoyed this wild ride that has been SPL 8. It was undoubtedly a dynamic and intriguing tournament, with the Circus Maximus Tigers clinching it in what was a heavily contested postseason. For any further information that may pertain to Smogon Premier League, make sure to check out the following resources:

See you all next year!

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