Project After Action Report v3

[ausma]

Original threads hosted by Spohky and TPP. V3 approved by the OU Forum Leaders and Moderation team

One of the most effective skills for anyone to have is the ability to learn from their mistakes; in fact, it is the quintessential way in which we can improve any kind of skill, including the art of Pokémon battling. In this thread, the goal is to share old replays that demonstrate consequential mistakes, and determining why they happened and how to improve from them so they not only don't happen again, but so you can overall improve your game-to-game thought processes. From time to time, some moderators may post replays of their own or of tournament games and break them down to instigate discussion and improvement, too. Discussion is encouraged!

This is the place where people can take a look at how you play and critique you. However, to maintain and promote quality and productivity, there are some submission guidelines that should be abided by:

Requirements:

• You must include an importable of the team(s) used in the submission. This essentially means sharing your team so we can give accurate and applicable suggestions.
• You must explain in 1-2 sentences CLEARLY what you think you need help with. Basically, you must justify why you're submitting your replays. Saying vaguely "I want to improve my decision making" or "I think my team is bad" isn't helping reviewers with your case. Asking questions such as "I couldn't stop the enemy Dragapult from killing one of my allies on turn 10. How would it be possible for me to better control my enemy's Dragapult?" is more conducive.
• The submitted replay can't contain inherently unsalvageable content. There's little to improve on if the replay consists of a team that can't possibly be expected to win (i.e. using a NU team against an OU team).

Suggestions:

1. If possible, include 2-3 replays instead of just 1. That way, criticizers can get a better idea of how you and your team operates.
2. Try not to use this for simple publicity's sake.

Providing feedback for others:

• Be respectful to each other. We're here to help each other grow, and insulting one another or starting fights is counterproductive and will not be tolerated. Fights, however, are not equal to simple and respectful discussion and disagreement; this is not only ok, but encouraged!
• Provide reasoning to allow the user who submitted the replay to better understand why the suggested play was better instead of just saying something like: "You should've gone Heatran here." There is no point to providing a criticism if there is no justification or thought process to contextualize the suggestion and help the person in question understand how it can be applied.

With all this said, we encourage you to put up replays and see what went wrong and what could have gone better. Everyone here's to improve, and getting an outside perspective is arguably one of the best ways of doing so. This thread won't be strict in terms of moderation, but please try to stay on topic! If you have any questions, feel free to message us and let us know!

 

[Abhi]

Hello there
I'm going to be showcasing a team of mine along with a replay of me using said team and then I'll be criticising my own plays to showcase my mistakes and what I could've done better.

Ok, so basically I was trying to build ghost-spam to take advantage of the lack of ghost resists in the tier and that's why I started off with Choice Specs Dragapult as a base. Then I started looking through tiers for another Ghost-type that pairs well with Dragapult and can cripple Ghost-resistant pokemon easier. I had a couple ideas, one being Block Aegislash to take advantage of Tyranitar and Blissey and remove things like Clefable and Spdef Toxapex along with it to make Dragapult mire threatening and that team can be found here. But later on I found myself struggling to break Mandibuzz and that's why I thought of Trick Gengar which can Trick things like Blissey and Mandibuzz and completely ruin them, while also acting as a wincon with Nasty Plot while also acting as speed control with ChoiceScarf. Then I went on to add a basic defensive core of Landorus-T, Blissey and Corviknight to cover basic threats like opposing Dragapult, Rillaboom Zamazenta-C and Sand. Then I found myself kinda weak to Rain teams and Heatran and I wouldve used mixed defensive Heatran, BUT I remembered this one team I saw a couple days ago with Assault Vest Slowbro and realised that would cover my rain weakness very well in conjunction with Blissey as well as check Heatran very well with Earthquake. The EVs on that avoid the 2HKO from Choice Specs Tapu Lele.
​

Game: Me vs Mario34
This game started alright for both of us, although Mario has a bad matchup since theres a lot of pressure on Mandibuzz which Gengar can Trick to cripple, although I am unable to take advantage of this since I'm overwhelmed by Zamazenta-C through the game. At the beginning I do make a mistake by switching Slowbro into Rotom-W although not an important one, this does however save my Blissey from extra chip damage which doesnt matter all that much since I'm able to use Soft-Boiled later on. However on Turn 6 I am put in a very awkward position against Tapu Lele as both my checks to it being AV Slowbro and Corviknight are weak to Thunder and take a whole lot of damage from it. In an attempt to rectify this situation I switch to Blissey to tank a Thunder and possibly get off a Thunder Wave; Mario double switches to Landorus-T this turn to force out Blissey but I use Soft-Boiled instead predicting Stealth Rock. The next few turns are alright but I do start struggling against Zamazenta-C since my Landorus-T lacks Rocky Helmet; the game would have been a lot easier to win if I had Rocky Helmet here. Turn 21; I missplay again by trying to predict a Thunder and Teleporting with Blissey having to take a very strong Psyshock instead of hard switching into Slowbro/Corviknight, this is mostly a problem in my prediction. On turn 22, I dont necessarily play wrong but I do play passively by switching into Landorus-T, when I couldve played more offensively by going to Dragapult and then U-turn to Gengar to cripple Mandibuzz as he switches in, which puts a lot more offensive pressure on the opponent making it harder for him to recover from that. This is a very bad missplay from my side since my team depends a lot on offensive pressure to deal with Zamazenta-C since I dont have Rocky Helmet on Landorus-T. Turn 25-26; this was very rng dependent but I do take advantage of Corviknights pivoting to heal Blissey making it a lot easier to deal with Dragapult later on. Turn 30-31; I Earthquake on Zamazenta-C getting it in Eathquake range but then I U-turn predicting a switch instead of playing safely and using Earthquake. Turn 36; oh my god this dog lives at 1% can we ban this already, this and my Landorus-T being weakened and left unable to switch in safely makes it hard for me to get up Stealth Rock making it very hard to kill Zamazenta-C from then on. Turn 37-38; I trick Mandibuzz although this does help me out, it's rather late to do so, if I had played more offensively earlier on I would be at a much better position. After this I'm very overwhelmed by Zamazenta-C and then brought to a 50/50 where I need to win the speed tie against the opposing Dragapult to win the game, which I dont; GG.
My most important mistakes were mostly in the teambuilder, since I lack a check to Tapu Lele with an Electric-type move and also made the mistake to use Leftovers over Rocky Helmet in a meta with Zamazenta-C. There was also me playing rather passively that cost me the match since I could have very easily taken advantage of his over reliance on Mandibuzz to check Ghost-types to overwhelm him after tricking the Choice Scarf. Something to learn is to see all possible plays in a situation and play more offensively when possible.
​

That's all I have to say about my match, if you'd like to say something please do!!
Bye!

 

[Katy]

Hey Abhisdn417,

I think you played well in this game as you pretty much focused on a clear endgame, which was your Dragapult bursting through with Shadow Ball at the end.

You pretty much figured out your mistakes on your own, although at the turn in which Mario stayed in with his Zamazenta-C you could, as you mentioned, played a bit more agressive towards it. I also think figuring out, that you could have provoced a Trick with Gengar on Mandibuzz much earlier, was a great point to make.

Regardless Tapu Lele, ya there aren't much Thunder versions running around so there was no way of figuring it out that this Tapu Lele was indeed carrying Thunder, and even then most Tapu Lele run Thunderbolt over Thunder for Pokemon like Corviknight as a genral midground play against them without the drawback of a potential miss caused by Thunder. So I feel that this particular Tapu Lele caught you quite off guard and surprised you with it. I think you played pretty well, but in any case, as you figured, you could have played a little bit more agressive early on in the game.

What I think is letting Corviknight knocked was a mistake and also wasn't a mistake at the same time, since you needed pretty much every item on your Pokemon, so you had to make a deal with the devil right here, which Pokemon you wanted to letting get knocked, and I feel Corviknight was 'the best choice here' overall, as you other teammates needed their items more.

But in overall great replay and great showcase and good explanation on what you could have done and you figured out all your mistakes by yourself.

 

[ausma]

For the future, I will help guide discussion with weekly/semi-weekly talk points (depending on the activity of this thread). While this thread is a retrospective, it's also important to be able to understand key aspects of battling, and learning about the ways in which we can execute them.

As an added bonus, for every few observations, I will create a Strawpoll at the end of each discussion cycle, where people can vote for what they believed was the best dissection or contribution to the discussion. In other words: do not be afraid to make yourself heard! The results will be tallied and announced between each cycle!

As always, you are welcome to post your replays, and moreover, you are encouraged to apply discussion points to shared replays, too! Remember that this is to help guide the discussion, as opposed to dictating it.
____

Resident moderator and OU councilman Finchinator has recently made some videos detailing his WCoP battles, and does so with great depth, recognizing his mistakes but also making it clear how he mapped his battles and the long term wars between certain Pokemon. If you're interested, you're welcome to find them in the spoiler tag below:

finch "i" nator

I share these replays with you as a testament to the strength of retrospection; as players, we are capable of growing to incredible heights with the simple step of self-reflection. The step that follows is action. However, more importantly: I would like you to think about how these observations can be applied.

1: What did you think of Finchinator's analysis?
2: What did you like about Finchinator's playing? What didn't you like?
3: In what ways do you think that Finchinator can make use of his observations in future games?
4: Did you notice anything interesting in these games that he didn't bring up? If so, how can he apply these new observations?
5: Any other thoughts?

 

[AM]

Edit: About his game last video in hide.

1. The boring answer is fine because Finch pretty much stated most of the things obvious to more experienced players. A lot of the stuff he is explaining is very mechanical especially his mid grounds where mentioned.
2. Watching a replay and analyzing it is easier in hindsight than when you're in the moment in an environment where your win counts/means something in a team tour. I dont like criticizing things to a degree of not liking unless it's real obvious or asked personally. Think his play was fine stuff he regretted I agree with the Flash Cannon on Clef where he assumed Ferro would come in was pretty free. He was going to preserve Ferro as much as possible for Weavile anyways going to Ferro could've been a nightmare late game because he doesnt know what the Kartana set is yet. He can keep the Ferro sack to have something for chip against his mostly physically offensive mons as shown later after that turn.
3. Couldnt say
4. Not really it was pretty basic stuff, maybe a bit more advanced for more novice players.
5. Nope.

 

[Red Raven]

Before I talk about the game I wanna have reviewed, I wanna mention that when I played this battle, I was not expecting nor trying to win. I had a really bad headache, one of my teachers was making us do something really obnoxious and it was right around midnight so I was somewhat tired. I basically just went 'one little battle couldn't hurt could it'

The question I wanna ask is, am I being too reckless? The things I would mention in the specified turns are things I would do regardless if I am in a better state of mind or not. It's not always exactly the same as in other battles but it's more or less the same. I know that in a battle you must take risks so I'm wondering if these kinds are too much

From this point, whenever I start a new paragraph, that would mean it's the next turn. I might skip one or two turns but the general thought process is there

So, here is the team in details and this is the paste. Here is the replay

Hide

Before this battle began, I changed the smack down on Lando to knock off because metal birbs wearing helmets were starting to cause me some problems. Everything else in the paste is the same with the exception of that one change. In team preview, I was like 'ok Imma just get rocks up' and the guy went Fini so I went 'I don't care what items you have. You're not gonna have it' and then my Lando died. When Lando died, I knew that I was at risk of losing to his Garchomp

Second turn, I already starting to give up any hopes of winning. The headache certainly wasn't helping me and I just went to the most logical answer to a scarf Fini. Knowing that he wouldn't stay, I doubled into Garchomp expecting his own Slowking so I can get a free kill. However, the guy was ballsy enough to send a Garchomp against a Slowking

So, I was like 'ok Imma scale shot and ez win blyat' and the guy was ballsy enough to send in a Tapu Koko against Garchomp

I was like 'whatever. I swore to myself that I won't get mad if I play like a moron so the sooner this battle is over the better' and then suddenly, the guy uses u turn

That was completely unintended. I guess that would count as a good play so that was when I decided 'maybe this is still winnable' after his Fini eats an earthquake so I made the logical choice of going to Slowking

I made a wild guess that he would go into Melmetal since it is the most logical switch in so I clicked flamethrower. It only did twenty six percent so I figured that it must be assault vest. I am not familiar with Melmetal as a pokemon and the damage ranges involving it

I switched to Corviknight since that is the most logical answer and even if it wasn't, at least it would hurt itself. As expected, he went for thunderpunch and hurt himself

So, I decided to just spam roost since if he keeps attacking, he's gonna die and he did attack again. My Corviknight is minimum speed, no speed ivs and relaxed nature so I wasn't sure if it was actually faster than Mel. When I saw that I was faster, I was like 'ok die'

Just as I go for body press, he made a good move into his Slowking

I decided just just gtfo and go into my Urshifu. Here is where I actually got invested to the battle and started analyzing everything that has happened thus far. He had a scarf Fini which could mean that he wanted to get rid of my Dragapult before it can do anything useful and he chose not to risk a speed tie against my Garchomp. I begun to consider that his Garchomp might be tank chomp. If it is tank chomp and with Melmetal injured, that simply means that the moment I use scale shot, I have won. I don't care if his Garchomp toxics mine. I will just kill his team before the poison does so I decided 'fuck it. Surging strikes go brr'. As I thought, it was a tank chomp so I decided to just kill myself since all I really need is that scale shot

I send out my own Garchomp but I thought the guy was gonna be ballsy enough to send another fairy so I played it safe but the guy went Moltres

At this point, I actually took my time to think. Fini and Mel are injured, Koko and Slow dies to one earthquake, Chomp and Moltres are not a threat. All things considered, if my Garchomp gets that scale shot I win so I knew that he couldn't afford me getting that. Since Moltres can't touch my Garchomp, I went for earthquake against a Moltres

On turn fourteen, it actually paid off as Fini was now dead. He goes into Koko and I thought that no matter what happens, he needs to kill my Garchomp. If he doesn't, he loses. I decided to think about that dumb move of leaving Garchomp in against a Koko. Even at this point, I have no idea if it's specs or boots so I just did the sensible thing and went to Slowking

Now, he can either switch to Melmetal and risk it getting flamethowered or Garchomp to take the flames. I wasn't too sure if he would go Chomp or Mel so I just went future sight

To my surprise, he actually went Garchomp and I knew that he wanted to burn sleep turns so I went 'die' and he surrendered after that

To put into details my question, on turns 1, 4, 11 and 14, was I being too reckless? Clicking surging strikes against something that I'm sure has a helmet is something I always do and end up regretting, which is why I replaced smack down with knock off. Garchomp staying in against Koko is sensible if Koko is boots as that set doesn't one shot chomp but I had no clue what set it was yet I chose to stay. While on turn fourteen, that Moltres could have had scorching sands and if it did and I got burned, it would have been over for me since based on how he was playing, I doubt I would get a chance to sd up. I do this stuff whenever my wins get to my head so, were these risks worth it or were they a bit too much and should I play more carefully?

 

[MilkyWay]

Before I talk about the game I wanna have reviewed, I wanna mention that when I played this battle, I was not expecting nor trying to win. I had a really bad headache, one of my teachers was making us do something really obnoxious and it was right around midnight so I was somewhat tired. I basically just went 'one little battle couldn't hurt could it'

The question I wanna ask is, am I being too reckless? The things I would mention in the specified turns are things I would do regardless if I am in a better state of mind or not. It's not always exactly the same as in other battles but it's more or less the same. I know that in a battle you must take risks so I'm wondering if these kinds are too much

From this point, whenever I start a new paragraph, that would mean it's the next turn. I might skip one or two turns but the general thought process is there

So, here is the team in details and this is the paste. Here is the replay

Hide

Before this battle began, I changed the smack down on Lando to knock off because metal birbs wearing helmets were starting to cause me some problems. Everything else in the paste is the same with the exception of that one change. In team preview, I was like 'ok Imma just get rocks up' and the guy went Fini so I went 'I don't care what items you have. You're not gonna have it' and then my Lando died. When Lando died, I knew that I was at risk of losing to his Garchomp

Second turn, I already starting to give up any hopes of winning. The headache certainly wasn't helping me and I just went to the most logical answer to a scarf Fini. Knowing that he wouldn't stay, I doubled into Garchomp expecting his own Slowking so I can get a free kill. However, the guy was ballsy enough to send a Garchomp against a Slowking

So, I was like 'ok Imma scale shot and ez win blyat' and the guy was ballsy enough to send in a Tapu Koko against Garchomp

I was like 'whatever. I swore to myself that I won't get mad if I play like a moron so the sooner this battle is over the better' and then suddenly, the guy uses u turn

That was completely unintended. I guess that would count as a good play so that was when I decided 'maybe this is still winnable' after his Fini eats an earthquake so I made the logical choice of going to Slowking

I made a wild guess that he would go into Melmetal since it is the most logical switch in so I clicked flamethrower. It only did twenty six percent so I figured that it must be assault vest. I am not familiar with Melmetal as a pokemon and the damage ranges involving it

I switched to Corviknight since that is the most logical answer and even if it wasn't, at least it would hurt itself. As expected, he went for thunderpunch and hurt himself

So, I decided to just spam roost since if he keeps attacking, he's gonna die and he did attack again. My Corviknight is minimum speed, no speed ivs and relaxed nature so I wasn't sure if it was actually faster than Mel. When I saw that I was faster, I was like 'ok die'

Just as I go for body press, he made a good move into his Slowking

I decided just just gtfo and go into my Urshifu. Here is where I actually got invested to the battle and started analyzing everything that has happened thus far. He had a scarf Fini which could mean that he wanted to get rid of my Dragapult before it can do anything useful and he chose not to risk a speed tie against my Garchomp. I begun to consider that his Garchomp might be tank chomp. If it is tank chomp and with Melmetal injured, that simply means that the moment I use scale shot, I have won. I don't care if his Garchomp toxics mine. I will just kill his team before the poison does so I decided 'fuck it. Surging strikes go brr'. As I thought, it was a tank chomp so I decided to just kill myself since all I really need is that scale shot

I send out my own Garchomp but I thought the guy was gonna be ballsy enough to send another fairy so I played it safe but the guy went Moltres

At this point, I actually took my time to think. Fini and Mel are injured, Koko and Slow dies to one earthquake, Chomp and Moltres are not a threat. All things considered, if my Garchomp gets that scale shot I win so I knew that he couldn't afford me getting that. Since Moltres can't touch my Garchomp, I went for earthquake against a Moltres

On turn fourteen, it actually paid off as Fini was now dead. He goes into Koko and I thought that no matter what happens, he needs to kill my Garchomp. If he doesn't, he loses. I decided to think about that dumb move of leaving Garchomp in against a Koko. Even at this point, I have no idea if it's specs or boots so I just did the sensible thing and went to Slowking

Now, he can either switch to Melmetal and risk it getting flamethowered or Garchomp to take the flames. I wasn't too sure if he would go Chomp or Mel so I just went future sight

To my surprise, he actually went Garchomp and I knew that he wanted to burn sleep turns so I went 'die' and he surrendered after that

To put into details my question, on turns 1, 4, 11 and 14, was I being too reckless? Clicking surging strikes against something that I'm sure has a helmet is something I always do and end up regretting, which is why I replaced smack down with knock off. Garchomp staying in against Koko is sensible if Koko is boots as that set doesn't one shot chomp but I had no clue what set it was yet I chose to stay. While on turn fourteen, that Moltres could have had scorching sands and if it did and I got burned, it would have been over for me since based on how he was playing, I doubt I would get a chance to sd up. I do this stuff whenever my wins get to my head so, were these risks worth it or were they a bit too much and should I play more carefully?

You were definitely playing pretty reckless on turns 1, 4, 11, and 14, but I think the only play that was truly egregious was leaving your Lando in on his Fini on Turn 1 instead of switching to Slowking-G. Your aggressive plays seemed to work out in this match and you even kinda got in his head when he finally tried to call your bluff and go for Gleam with his koko on turn 15, but you switched out that time and got momentum. I personally would’ve gone for U-turn on turn 11 opposed to Surging Strikes, but I don’t think that was an awful play because you couldn’t have known he was helmet and it would’ve been reasonable to think that Fini was offensive and wouldn’t wanna take a banded SS. Additionally, you probably should’ve switched to Corviknight on Turn 12 once you saw he was helmet so you wouldn’t kill your Urahifu-R (plus Helmet means his Chomp is probably not offensive and can’t really touch your corviknight).
That being said, I saw from your RMT that 1650 is the highest elo you’ve ever reached so it probably wouldn’t hurt to try playing a little less reckless. In the particular replay you posted you kinda got away being reckless, but in general I think you’re gonna get punished for playing like that.