ok the above has inspired me to go into the vault and withdraw some rare shrug sets. i have, unlike jake, seemingly forced myself into two additional months of this wretched meta so i will not be dropping everything i have. sigh. but here you go, along with recommendations for the albums i lifted the nicks from when i went in.
week 2:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-455548
Omanyte @ Waterium Z
Ability: Weak Armor
Level: 5
EVs: 36 Def / 200 SpA / 240 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 SpA / 30 Spe
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Shell Smash
here is the big beautiful omanyte zoro brought against osh. unfortunately we picked the version without spritzee and ran into bandfoo, this dude might have had more success otherwise. but the idea was to create an omanyte set that was never bad in a mu. this is done by making it wa, allowing it to come in and fire off a z-hydro, and hp fire for ferros that usually come in for free. it has shell smash in case circumstances favor a sweep, but it's not really something you're looking for most games.
week 3:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-456656
Pawniard @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Defiant
Level: 5
EVs: 156 Atk / 36 Def / 116 SpD / 196 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Knock Off
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Stealth Rock
lol the gogglesman. had zebra down as a foongus user, got webbed and zoro played well out of it, but the point behind the team was to create the impression of overcoat vulla (spritzee + no grass type) to bait sludge into pawn then get the extra turn on the spore letting me rocks + knock on the first time this guy came in. WA vulla + pony could then be checks for fighting types freeing up NP vulla in the back. obviously no foong meant this didnt work but thankfully it did live enough gastly suckers to get us the w.
week 5
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-458776
Lust For Life (Foongus) @ Eviolite
Ability: Regenerator
Level: 5
EVs: 156 Def / 80 SpA / 156 SpD / 80 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 SpA / 30 Spe
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Synthesis
jake used this too, but here's an idea for a three attack nonspore foongus. everyone loved using sporeblockers for obvious reasons so i figured why not skip past that step and create a foongus that breaks down ferrospritz cores held together by dig and also is favored in foongus wars. in the game against tazz he brought trapstar which was quite good against the team we brought, water resist foongus got taken off the map and we didnt have a dig (another variant did) to punish the star. that, plus the mag turn we got wrong, meant an uphill climb.
album is called "album" and it's by the band girls. bedroom pop that's not afraid to move a little in kind of beach boys / beatles patterns.
week 6
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-460303
Run On Love (Spritzee) @ Eviolite
Ability: Aroma Veil
Level: 5
EVs: 212 HP / 196 Def / 12 SpA / 76 SpD / 12 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Calm Mind
- Wish
- Protect
my entry into the battling fray went pretty well, all told, in large part thanks to this guy. i felt like cm was underrated + surprising, which i needed given how well luthier knew my building patterns. it was a strange causality of the covet / psychic revolution for some reason, but with a trapper (dig for me) this thing still went off. most teams have to take a turn to remove the evio allowing you to get a boost + a wish up and the momentum gathers up from there. i'm particularly proud of the way i bluffed fast psychic with this set and used that to start boosting, def one of my favorite plays I made in the tour.
album is tove lo's "queen of the clouds", the second best pop album of the decade (jai paul's leaks are #1). i recommend the deluxe edition (it's called something stupid) that has "love ballad", the best song on the album released as an extra for some reason.
week 7
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-461266
Zen (Snivy) @ Eviolite
Ability: Contrary
Level: 5
EVs: 156 HP / 80 SpA / 240 SpD / 16 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 SpA / 30 Spe
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Mirror Coat
- Synthesis
brought the bulky snivy to my first game against jake. he's a noted ferrospritz user so i planted this guy front and center to try to pick him apart. caught a foongus instead, which mirror coat took off, but at the cost of a poison, which caused me to fuck with my plan. im still debating whether the coat was right at all. hed still have had foongus even if i went pawn or whatever, and rocking there wouldve put the scarf vulla on a timer in a way that was really pleasing. i keep coming back to the fact that i wouldve had to eventually because snivy was key to checking his onix say or revenging diglett. maybe i couldve strung together doubles but against someone who had been playing as well as jake i figured simple was best and took the foong off. the poison was annoying because i intended to recover after dig killed something, forcing him into a gambit (great for whichever of abra / mare was left) or making him go out to a say vullaby which would be on a timer after i went after rocks aggressively. poison fucked with the plan because i wasnt really in a spot to be making marginal hp gains as wouldve been possible in a clean snivy scenario. then i got the vullaby play wrong in a way that prevented me from taking the game more offensively. i made a couple good plays to stay in it but he finished the advantage well. jake was rlly our best player during this tour, hm.
album was Re-up Gang's "We Got it For Cheap Vol II", one of the best mixtapes ever released. in a way it's the complimentary twin to "hell hath no fury", revealing the degree to which the precision and beat specificity of that album was a conscious choice used to create meaning. (hell hath no fury is one of the most tonally consistent rap albums ever and one of the best looks at american capitalism created in any medium past the turn of the century). but in we got it for cheap they just let it rip, delightful stuff.
week 8
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-462292
Real Earth (Tirtouga) @ Psychium Z
Ability: Solid Rock
Level: 5
EVs: 4 HP / 212 Atk / 12 Def / 76 SpD / 180 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stone Edge
- Zen Headbutt
- Shell Smash
- Stealth Rock
was struggling for inspiration in the build against kingler. he can use anything and levi was dropping a lot of good shit on him that was difficult to prepare for. in the end i looked back to gen 6 and absdaddy's six wincon team that he used to make shakeitup quit lcpl in tears. the centerpiece of that team was rocks smash tirt, which i resurrected with a twist in the z-psy. the idea was that at preview the bray + tirt makes him think smash tirt rocks bray and causes him to orient his gameplan around saving the timburr or the foo to stop this. then get this shit in early against lead vullas or what have you then put up rocks. this makes him think resttalk / scarf bray and suddenly reenter his foo or foongus into the tirt gameplan. then, bang, smash up and z it off. beauty. didnt end up happening in that game, obviously. p happy with how i played it, sd pawn was an obvious problem, as was shellos, but i knew if i could either make shellos try to stop tirt or come in behind timburr in terms of boostcount i could deal with it. which is what happened, i played the timburr v pawns just right and made progress with the double and knock, which eliminated vulla as a check as well as foongus afraid of ice punch, leaving shellos as the backup. just get abra to take the sleep and then i had two free setup turns on shellos coming in and out. kingler played much better than his record suggests this tour. obviously he'd like some of the games back but he was unfairly maligned by dudes who didnt really observe his plays.
album is "The Cold Vein" by NYC underground rap duo Cannibal Ox. only ninjadog, who really does have good taste, knows about this album, but it is a fucking gem. basically the premise is what if new york city circa 2000 was a different galaxy? it appeared as a wall poster in the insufferable boyfriend's room in lady bird, which was an attack, but it really does bang.
week 9
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-463315
livin' was easy (Budew) @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
Level: 5
EVs: 116 HP / 236 Def / 36 SpA / 36 SpD / 76 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Sludge Bomb
- Sleep Powder
- Spikes
- Synthesis
wont really go into the game as much because im a little irked with myself about it. went berserk with the timburr early, really did an insane amount of work with it, then played like a fucking oaf and put myself in a position where i could be lucked to lose. just had to save the spritzee for the staryu, shouldnt have been in that spot, fuck. whatever, didnt matter for the team, bleh. budew has been a pokemon ive liked for a long time now that no one has really tried to use competitively. they were wrong and i was right. faster than timburr, able to sleep, comes in on fight checks, lays spikes, dents vullaby, it's really quite good. shame i couldnt honor it with a win. this is the best set for it, sludge / giga can be swapped around.
album is "the glands" by the glands. indescribable and lovely, an hour of just great vibes, listen to it
semifinals
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-464059
Agoraphobia (Diglett) @ Eviolite
Ability: Arena Trap
Level: 5
EVs: 36 HP / 236 Atk / 236 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Beat Up
- Pursuit
- Final Gambit
tough game because it took us very close to the edge of elimination and i thought i really fought myself back into a winnable position from a bad matchup. i thought because of the effectiveness of snivy against him (i brought it like three weeks earlier) he'd go out of his way to stop it by nonwebbing and having like multiple counters. he, conversely, thought i wouldnt use snivy against and brought a team that snivy went crazy on. mindgame battle: lost. abragast with hidden powers went fucking nuts on the ferrospritz i brought, esp with webs because i had the diglett check. but i decided to be patient and look for a trap on the gastly and for spritzee cm kills from there. it nearly worked. i was surpirsed by scarf dew, which took mega health from vulla when i mightve got rocks, but i kept webs off knowing hed be afraid of pony with what i thought was z dew, because i could kill and hp grass or fc might have been really good. then scarf vulla got me. i went to foo trying to set up a reflect and preserve spritzee's evio, but scarf fucked me, didnt matter because i got the spritzee up on his fear of hard gastlying on the psy. what the poison did was prevent me from getting into a loop where i recovered on the foo / vulla he had to go into to avoid killing my ferro with his gastly and getting trapped. he didnt have knock on foo so id have been ok if i doubled back to spritzee when he went foo on the ferro-gast mu. maybe i couldve considered harding into dig on a sludge even -- i wouldve been left with 1 hp. that wouldve been a mega good play too. sigh. if you told me id have been in that spot from preview id have taken it prolly. good game though.
album was "microcastle" by deerhunter. not their best album (Halycon Digest) but still got that deerhunter mix of indie rock bangers, sunshine indie pop, and rlly effective ear-filling space-occupying slower shit.
overall i think i had a p good snake. shouldve won more than i did but it's cool. i think what writing this reflect has brought to mind most is the need to consider how we want tiering to work in gen 8. having trapinch around made the meta and building more fun in the inverse way that webs made it fucking insanely annoying. i think notions of "broken" hide a more interesting discussion around the idea of skill-promoting elements in the meta. this means teambuilding skill as well as ingame skill. trap meta you could come up with a cool concept and build a team to support it and then play your way to a win from a bad mu or get outplayed from a good one. this meta saw dudes bring webs two or three times to try to pop a coinflip off at the start, leading to some lopsided games that were annoying to watch. idk. seems like we should be trying for the former one there.
thanks to
EviGaro for taking a last-round chance on my stupid lc main ass. shoutout to
ZoroDark for bringing the fire (rip clauncher). thanks to
Luthier (nice trophy bud),
jake ,
Kingler12345,
LilyAC for some good games. and to everyone who has been my friend on this website since i got on here like five (5) years ago (?). tht a wrap