Premier League Spotlights: UUPL

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Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Premier League Coverage! Premier Leagues have long been one of the most popular tournament formats on Smogon because they combine the rush of bidding with the collaborative atmosphere of team play. The Smogon Premier League is the largest and most prestigious of these tournaments, but many communities on Smogon have Premier Leagues of their own. Today, we are covering the UnderUsed Premier League.

Introduction to UUPL

The UnderUsed Premier League is one of the biggest tournaments for the UU community, being held annually. This year, the fifth season was hosted by none other than one of the UU Tier Leaders, Hikari, who also happened to be one of the hosts from last year. Back then, the Pewter Porygon2s, managed by Omfuga, beat the Littleroot Lindas to win the tournament. Omfuga has since returned as the manager of the Cerulean City Sailors to defend his title. However, there was one crucial question: would his team sail through the tournament again like the S.S. Anne or crash and sink like the S.S. Cactus (that's the Abandoned Ship before it crashed for you casuals out there)?

Initially, there were some disagreements regarding what format to follow, mainly with regards to the number of starting player slots and the number of slots of each tier. By the end of the discussion, the format of 4 SM UU, 2 ORAS UU, 2 BW UU, 1 DPP UU, and 1 ADV UU was decided upon, which meant the abolishment of the Manager slot, something that's been present in every past iteration of the tournament. This time, managers could play but were not required to do so.

Another big change that occurred this year was the implementation of retains. As there was no such thing last year, every team was allowed to retain up to two players this year and could buy retention rights off other teams. Tony, the manager of the Mikan Island Monsters, seemed to enjoy this change the most because for some reason, other managers loved tossing auction credits his way before the auction even began.

The Auction

Once the managers were chosen and the tiers selected, it was time for the draft. Eventually, the teams were finalized to these rosters:

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In this auction, dodmen was the most expensive player, who was bought by the Route 30 Youngsters for an exorbitant 27k. This did not come easily, though, as Ark of the Black City Burglars immediately slammed down 15k the moment he was nominated. The same could be said for FLCL, which featured the Mikan Island Monsters and Black City Burglars furiously fighting to outbid each other; he ended up going to the latter for 22k.

That said, the overall best event of the auction has to go to when Omfuga mistakenly bought Ernesto thinking he was Ernesloru, his Hispanic Premier League teammate. Ernesto ended up getting traded to the Black City Burglars but not without leaving us with the beautiful moment:

The Early Weeks

Now let's have a look at some of the things that happened during the first four weeks. Within the first half of the tournament, the dominant players and teams had already established themselves. Pulling ahead of the competition were the Blackthorn City Battle Girls and the Mikan Island Monsters, who had not lost a single week thus far. However, the Route 30 Youngsters, Dewford Town Delinquents, Black City Burglars, and Safari Zone Smashers were no slouches either, trailing behind closely. Unfortunately, the Cerulean City Sailors and Slateport City Socialites weren't having such a good time; they'd be forced to play catch-up in the later weeks. Here's a look at what the standings looked like as of week 4:

The players who had the best individual records so far were dodmen (with some very loudly proclaimed love from Ice Tea) of the Route 30 Youngsters, Sacri' and Rodriblutar of the Blackthorn City Battle Girls, Pearl of the Mikan Island Monsters, SOMALIA of the Dewford Town Delinquents, and Tricking of the Safari Zone Smashers, all of whom stood at 4-0.

Anyone who's ever played a team tournament on Smogon, though, would know that there's way more to the tournament than just the scoreboard and record. What would they be without the omnipresent salt about hax and "shit plays" that runs through every week's thread followed by the legendary memes that surface? Let's take a look at week 1, for instance: the BW UU game between Advantage of the Blackthorn City Battle Girls and GULLY of the Slateport City Socialites only lasted 3 turns before Advantage got the timer win, which started a wave of snake-themed memes and salt. Technically, he followed the rules and got the win for his team, but this didn't stop others in the slightest from producing masterpieces like this (iplaytennislol is Advantage).

Highlight Match Analysis (1)

The first highlight match comes from week 1, and it was between Aquadext and John (who went by bro fist at the time). Aquadext was a decently known presence in the UU community who had yet to find his footing in the tournament scene, while John was someone who was already very well known on Smogon as a great player. From Team Preview, neither player seemed to have a major advantage. Getting into the game, John secured an early advantage by getting the lead matchup in his favor, which allowed him to get a free U-turn with Scizor turn 1 and give Aquadext's Alomomola a Choice Specs with Trick turn 2. However, Aquadext gained a lot of momentum in the next few turns with a combination of double switches and relatively risky predictions, allowing him to cripple Scizor and Latias and set up Stealth Rock. John managed to remove Stealth Rock and heal Scizor back up without losing much; however, one good double switch into Nidoking at turn 14 put Aquadext back into the driver seat by letting him KO Tentacruel. He also managed to set up Latias for free; at the time, Z-Move Calm Mind Latias was not very common, so it caught John by surprise when it revealed Gigavolt Havoc, KOing his relatively healthy bulky Scizor and leaving him with no way to beat Latias without losing another Pokemon. Aquadext knew that John was forced to wear down Latias with Knock Off, so he used this as an opportunity to get rid of the Choice Specs on his Alomomola. Finally, with another double switch, he got his Scizor in against John's Cobalion and put him in a terrible position, as nothing on his team could afford taking Superpower at that point. From there, it was a relatively straightforward win for Aquadext.

The Later Weeks

As the weeks went on, each team got different mixes of the usual matches, salt, hax, and memes. There were also signs of teams breaking down within themselves, such as with the Route 30 Youngsters where several players supposedly quit; their manager Ice Tea really wished that there was a midseason auction at that point. Regardless, one big common thing that teams had in mind was their chances of making it into playoffs. Here were the team records after week 6:

By the end of week 6, the Slateport City Socialites and the Cerulean City Sailors were knocked out of the contention for a spot, while the Mikan Island Monsters had already secured their place. However, the other three spots were still up for grabs. This led to a pretty complicated situation going into week 7.

Essentially, the Blackthorn City Battle Girls had their spot under lock as long as they didn't get destroyed by the Safari Zone Smashers. On the other hand, the Smashers were good to go with either a tie or a win against the Battle Girls. As for the Route 30 Youngsters, they just had to at worst lose to the Dewford Town Delinquents by 3-7, and even if they did lose by a greater margin by that, they could hope for the Smashers to lose. The Delinquents were shooting for an 8-2 victory themselves. However, a lot of these hypothetical situations could've been warped depending on the Black City Burglars, who needed a commanding victory over the Mikan Island Monsters in order to have a shot at playoffs.

The week itself didn't go so smoothly, though, as some issues came up regarding the match between Snowy of the Safari Zone Smashers and Kink of the Blackthorn City Battle Girls. Tensions were already high, and Kink unintentionally messed up his scheduling when giving his time of availability, which gave the Smashers a case to call for an activity win. Without being sure then if his team would make it to the playoffs, Kink was noticeably flustered and tried getting the Smashers to substitute someone in place of Snowy to play the game. Normally, he himself would be able to substitute someone in as well, but because he messed up by not sending in his lineup on time, he was forced to make four substitutions at the start of the week, leaving his team with no substitutes remaining for this situation. The Smashers ended up waiting until their playoff spot was secured before substituting Amaroq in, whom Kink ended up beating.

Looking at the other matchups, the Black City Burglars didn't manage to prevail over the Mikan Island Monsters, which eliminated them from the competition. Between the Dewford Town Delinquents and the Route 30 Youngsters, the Delinquents had already won the week, being 6-2 up at that point. However, the remaining two games were still very important, as the Delinquents needed to win both in order to make playoffs, whereas the Youngsters only needed to win one. Freestylerking did not manage to play xMarth, which forced a double substitution; Lax, who took the place of Freestylerking for the Youngsters, ended up prevailing over teal6, the Delinquent's substitute, sending the Youngsters to the playoffs. While the final game between dodmen and Christo had no impact on the teams that advanced, it was still significant game for a number of reasons: Christo and dodmen were both very established players in the UU community; Christo gave Pearl of the Mikan Island Monsters his only loss so far this tournament, so some were wondering whether he could do the same with dodmen; and most importantly, it decided whether the Youngsters would be the 3rd or 4th seed in playoffs. Christo beat dodmen, ending his winning streak and placing the Youngsters as the 4th seed.

Heading into the playoffs, Sacri' was left as the only undefeated player among those who played every week. One would surely wonder whether he could keep this streak up. As for the team matchups, the Smashers would face off against the Battle Girls for the second week in a row, while the Monsters would play the Youngsters. The Monsters were the favorite to win due to their undefeated record at that point. On the other hand, the snake-themed memes of week 1 stuck with the Battle Girls, as they were mainly seen as the "villains" of the tournament and lovingly dubbed the Battle Snakes.

Highlight Match Analysis (2)

The second highlight match was between two mainstays of the UU tier: dodmen and Christo. At the time, dodmen was undefeated, and Christo had just snapped Pearl's winning streak the week before. Both players brought aggressive offense teams that generated pressure on the opponent from turn 1. From Team Preview, dodmen's Talonflame posed a significant threat to Christo's team if it managed to grab a Swords Dance boost, while Christo's Venomoth did the same to dodmen's team after a Quiver Dance, with a full HP Gale Wings Talonflame being dodmen's only reliable way of revenge killing it. This also made it extra important for dodmen to keep Stealth Rock off his side of the field. Getting into the game, dodmen removed the Toxic Orb on Christo's Gliscor early with Knock Off, but it didn't seem to really matter in this matchup. Christo played around a potential Taunt effectively and managed to both set up Stealth Rock with Gliscor and use U-turn to generate momentum on the incoming Blastoise, something dodmen was not expecting, since this implied that Christo was running non-Roost Gliscor. dodmen managed to prevent Venomoth from setting up by letting Azelf act as sleep fodder and then forcing Venomoth out with Lucario. The next series of plays involved both players letting their respective Stealth Rock users get KOed, as they'd already done their job for the match, and neither player could risk letting either their foe set up or something else on their team take massive damage. After being forced to let his Froslass go down, Christo would once again get Venomoth in against dodmen's Blastoise, but this time, it was forced to stay in, as dodmen couldn't risk Venomoth setting up, and he really didn't have much that could take on a Savage Spin-Out, especially at +1. This meant that dodmen would be unable to clear Stealth Rock to support Talonflame. At that point, though, Venomoth wasn't as big of a threat as it could've been, so keeping Gale Wings intact wasn't that big of a deal. dodmen elected to revenge kill the Venomoth with Talonflame, allowing Christo to bring in his Sharpedo and try to accrue speed boosts. Turn 11 left it unclear whether dodmen was running Supersonic Skystrike Talonflame, which was its most common set, as he didn't use the Z-Move then, which would have guaranteed the KO on Mega Sharpedo with Lucario's Vacuum Wave or severely weakened one of Christo's other Pokemon; even Sharpedo being switched out then would have left it within range of Vacuum Wave as well after the Stealth Rock damage. However, without the damage, dodmen was forced to rely on a roll with Vacuum Wave. He didn't get this roll, so he was forced to let his Krookodile get weakened, which also gave either Christo's Latias or Cobalion a free turn depending on what move dodmen chose to lock it into (it was most likely Choice Scarf). Cobalion took advantage of Krookodile's Knock Off to weaken dodmen's Latias, survive a Life Orb Psychic to set up a Rock Polish, and proceed to KO dodmen's last two Pokemon for the win.

Playoffs

Semifinals

The series between the Blackthorn City Battle Girls and the Safari Zone Smashers was neck and neck early on, with neither team being able to get an edge over the other up until they were 3-3. However, after Colchonero beat Tricking along with Eyan choking against Sacri' and thus not being able to get his revenge from week 7, the Battle Girls pulled ahead. Teddeh planted the final nail in the coffin for the Smashers by beating Meru pretty handily using the best ORAS UU team ever created; good job Pearl, no one can deny your genius now.

As for the series between the Route 30 Youngsters and the Mikan Island Monsters, the Monsters didn't waste any time in asserting their dominance against the Youngsters, winning four games in a row after dodmen first picked up a win against rozes. It wasn't long after that before the Monsters secured their place in the finals. With all that said and done, one would have the agree that even though he and his team lost, meepsvictory was the true winner of this series, as he was finally able to Mach Punch a Bisharp with Conkeldurr, something that he failed to do in week 1. Congratulations!

Finals

Blackthorn City Battle Girls (2) vs Mikan Island Monsters (7)

SM UU: Sacri' vs Poek

SM UU: Aquadext vs YABO

SM UU: King UU vs TDK

SM UU: Slurmz vs rozes

ORAS UU: Rodriblutar vs Pearl

ORAS UU: Teddeh vs Tony (DNP)

BW UU: r0ady vs Finchinator

BW UU: ADVANTAGE vs Bugzinator

DPP UU: Eo Ut Mortus vs Malekith

ADV UU: Colchonero vs Floppy

The Mikan Island Monsters's performance against the Blackthorn City Battle Girls wasn't that much different from how they did in the semifinals to be completely honest. To start things off, Poek picked up a monumental win against Sacri', finally ending his winning streak throughout the tournament. It was a pretty good game overall, but Sacri' himself admitted that he could've played better for sure. This doesn't take any credit away from Poek, though, who played well to Pursuit trap his opponent's Metagross early on with Choice Band Scizor. Sacri' did do his best to come back, but he ended up getting pressured a lot by Poek's Keldeo, which opened up the door to getting swept by Scizor's Bullet Punch.

Soon after, Aquadext managed to pick up a win with the help of some luck in return against YABO to even things out. It was Aquadext's Froslass hyper offense against YABO's variant of bulky offense. Aquadext's team was already inherently weak to YABO's Talonflame, and within 10 turns or so, it was set to sweep. Unfortunately, it got paralyzed by Thunder from Aquadext's Latias, which shifted the game greatly in his favor. Towards the final turns of the game, YABO made a series of plays that made sense to him, but he did not account for non-Waterfall Mega Sharpedo when thinking ahead, which ultimately cost him the win.

However, this didn't stop the Monsters from steamrolling afterwards. As though executing some secret plan, most of the remaining games waited until Sunday to be played. When Pearl won his game against Rodriblutar, it seemed to have acted as a cue to set the rest of the Monsters off because a while later, they won the four remaining games they needed to close out the series within the span of two hours, featuring Malekith and his trustworthy pal Antonio in this premier DPP UU game filled with the most competitive strategies available.

Highlight Match Analysis (3)

For the last segment of this, we're bringing you two highlight games from the semifinals:

The first highlight match here is the one between YABO and Lax. From Team Preview, Slowking looked like a big threat to Lax's team late-game, and he didn't have a solid Nidoqueen switch-in. That said, YABO didn't have much counterplay against Mega Blastoise, especially if Stealth Rock was up. YABO got the lead matchup advantage and immediately revealed Leech Seed Mega Sceptile. From there, both players made some decent predictions, with Lax pivoting with U-turn Hydreigon and YABO with U-turn Mandibuzz. This, however, ended when YABO managed to get his Nidoqueen in against Lax's Sylveon, forcing him to try and play around it. YABO ended up going for the safe Sludge Wave play and got the first KO of the match. Afterwards, YABO was forced to play around Blastoise to safely bring in his Sceptile, but Lax used this opportunity to set up Stealth Rock with Gligar and get some damage off with U-turn, which ended up being a critical hit, massively crippling Sceptile. With Lax's switch into Metagross, it gave YABO a free opportunity to set up a Calm Mind with his Slowking. None of Lax's Pokemon could OHKO a +1 Slowking, so he tried to scare it out with Hydreigon, which didn't work out so well, as he simply stayed in and used Slack Off. When the same situation came along, though, YABO knew that the only things Lax was going to for would be either a Dark Pulse critical hit or causing Slowking to flinch multiple times, so he went into Cobalion and proceeded to set up a Swords Dance, almost KOing Gligar afterwards. Lax was fairly behind at this point, but a few smart plays and a timely Attack raise on the now-revealed Life Orb Metagross allowed it to KO Mandibuzz and almost do the same to Sceptile. YABO's Nidoqueen and Lax's Hydreigon then traded hits, which crippled both and also let YABO go into Diancie on the next move from Hydreigon before going back into Nidoqueen on Lax's switch into Blastoise. However, Lax negated any advantage YABO got by smartly going into Metagross on the expected Sludge Wave. Metagross revealed Grass Knot and traded hits with Slowking. Although Metagross went down first, it put Slowking at very low health, which made healing it up not worth it at that point. In the closing turns of the match, YABO used the Nidoqueen he still had at low health to his advantage by letting it go down to Stealth Rock damage after his Diancie set up its own, preventing Blastoise from using Rapid Spin. This series of plays ensured that YABO's remaining Pokemon were ultimately able to beat Lax's Blastoise and Hydreigon, securing him the win.

The final highlight match of the tournament is the one between Pearl and soulgazer. Looking at team preview, Z-Move Calm Mind Latias looked to be a threat to both, but it was very unlikely that Pearl would be running that with a Decidueye on the team (Decidueye only really runs Decidium Z unless your Smogon username is Lord Moet). Mega Aerodactyl seemed to be a massive threat to Pearl as well, whereas Decidueye could potentially at least get one KO and cripple something else with Sucker Punch. Pearl got the lead advantage for sure but didn't really accomplish much from it, as soulgazer went into Empoleon and crippled the incoming Tentacruel with Knock Off. A couple of turns later, they ended up with Pearl's Cobalion against soulgazer's Gliscor; Pearl set up Stealth Rock, while soulgazer set up a Swords Dance, but the latter ended up with the advantage by using Ice Fang on the switch to Togekiss and KOing Pearl's Tentacruel two turns later, which depending on Pearl's EV spread could've meant soulgazer was running a significant amount of Speed and not maximum bulk (we later found out that this was, in fact, the case). Pearl went into his Latias afterwards, and knowing that it couldn't be Z-Move Latias and that both Life Orb and Choice Specs variants threatened to KO Gliscor, soulgazer switched into his Empoleon to tank the Draco Meteor and Defog as Pearl went into his Decidueye, which allowed it to trap soulgazer's Cobalion with Spirit Shackle and KO it the next turn with Sinister Arrow Raid in exchange for Cobalion setting up Stealth Rock. soulgazer really threatened Decidueye with Mega Aerodactyl and used this to his advantage by significantly weakening the incoming Cobalion with the uncommon Fire Fang, putting Pearl on the back foot. However, Pearl used his Krookodile, which was Choice Scarf, smartly, playing around Mega Aerodactyl and weakening it with Pursuit twice as it tried to switch out without letting it get a single KO. soulgazer aggressively double switched back into Aerodactyl again, though, which forced Pearl to let his Togekiss go down before finishing the Aerodactyl off with another Pursuit from Krookodile. Pearl traded his Cobalion against Gliscor to set up Stealth Rock, which it was able to do no matter what due to the Shuca Berry. From there, Pearl made use of Latias forcing in Empoleon to set up a Swords Dance with Decidueye. At that point, soulgazer had to either get a burn with Scald or win the infamous Sucker Punch 50/50 war with his Latias; he didn't manage to burn Decidueye, and after a couple of turns, Pearl caught Latias with a Spirit Shackle on the Roost, KOing it and ending the game in Pearl's favor.

Final Analysis and Shoutouts

Looking back, there were quite a number of interesting trends that evolved from this tournament, going from being extremely underrated threats to being actually effective in the current metagame. This includes the Flame Orb Conkeldurr mentioned by Sacri', which was initially thought to be a pretty gimmicky set by a large part of the community, especially with Facade. However, players soon realized how threatening it could be to most teams right now, mainly the more passive ones. Another interesting trend was the evolution of primary Latias sets throughout the tournament; during the earlier stages of the tier and the first week or two of this tournament, the most common Latias set was Defog for the utility. It wasn't until the later weeks when people found out how incredibly good Calm Mind variants and others like Choice Specs could be, which was really shown by the usage of it afterwards. Some other Pokemon that flew under the radar for the most part prior to this were Venomoth and Metagross, both of which had impressive win rates. It's intriguing to see how so many ideas can warp the metagame over a single tournament.

That said, most of the things shown on the usage stats were fairly predictable, such as Clefable, Latias, and Mega Aerodactyl being the most used in SM UU due to how easy they were to fit onto teams. The same could be said for Sylveon, Hydreigon, and Mega Aerodactyl in ORAS UU. It's hard to imagine we'd expect otherwise.

As far as final records go, shoutouts go to both Pearl and Sacri', who both finished the tournament with an impressive record of 8-1. Here are some overall thoughts of UUPL this year from them:

Of course, those two weren't the only people who were impressive this tournament. Some other worthwhile mentions are those that went 7-1 like Poek, who did very well despite being primarily an OU player, which is the mark of an overall exceptional player; Pak, someone who's been hibernating his ORAS UU skills since SM came out; and dodmen, a clearly recognized UU player who's really once again shown what he's capable of.

Finally, shoutouts should be given to OrdA for making sure the auction started and ended properly despite all the hiccups along the way (*cough* mid-auction trades *cough*), BOUFF for posting week 6 while Hikari was busy only to have his likes stolen, and Hikari for doing a good job hosting this tournament amid his struggles to not get wasted at the same time and for giving even more likes to BOUFF than he originally had like the generous dictator he is.

Closing Remarks

Overall, the fifth season of the UnderUsed Premier League had a number of good matches, innovative sets, and surprising records, for good or for bad. The Mikan Island Monsters had an extremely smooth season; from scamming other managers pre-auction with retention rights and the team going undefeated to the memes of fake games and worshipping Turtonator (which is amusing but leaves us wondering why they aren't the Mikan Island Turtonators), everything went according to Tony the mastermind's plan. Will he return and repeat this feat next year, though? We'll just have to wait and see. For now, congratulations to the Mikan Island Monsters! Catch you guys back next year.

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