Approved by Rabia
background/motivation
welcome to the GSC NU + Omastar for-fun test tournament. with Omastar significantly falling off in gsc uu over the past year+, this tour provides the opportunity to test a version of gsc nu with a strong normal resist as well as a strong special attacker, both of which are somewhat lacking in the tier. in particular, any rest talk omastar is a counter to curse talk Wigglytuff, always 3HKOing with Surf, and sleep talk oma can counter curse Porygon as well with any of Ice Beam, Toxic, or Body Slam as its coverage move (Ice Beam presumably being the preferred option). offensively, while Omastar provides a slightly stronger special attacking water in comparison to Octillery, most gsc nu teams already have Omastar counterplay naturally: many offensive teams already have rest talk Primeape, which outspeeds, can 2HKO oma with both of its sleep talk moves while avoiding a 2HKO from Surf; while many defensive teams use rest talk Dewgong, which outspeeds, avoids a 3HKO from hp electric, has useful sleep talk rolls with both of its stabs vs an awake Omastar, while being able to freely fish for surf crits vs a sleeping omastar since even hp electric omastar does not have good sleep talk rolls against it. And ofc in addition Chinchou can answer any oma set, Gloom can answer hidden power sets, and Octillery can answer Ice Beam or Toxic sets. It is worth noting that while Octillery is slower than Omastar, it also has perfect sleep talk rolls against it with surf + hp electric, so even against omas with hidden power, Octillery is a reasonable switchin to Surf as long as it isnt in ko range of hidden power.
outside of being able to exploit Porygon and Wigglytuff, Omastar certainly will have various other impacts on the metagame. most notably, oma also counters rest talk Rapidash or Flareon that run Double-Edge, protecting teammates such as Ninetales, Xatu, Pineco, or Gloom that often give free turns to those pokémon. Omastar is also a water-type weak to Ground, potentially enabling ground types such as Graveler and Dugtrio to make progress more effectively; at the same time, because Omastar is not dependent on hidden power to threaten opposing Omastars, Ice Beam is a much stronger consideration, which in addition to countering Porygon and providing a much better sleep talk roll against Xatu and neutral targets, discourages substitute fishing from dug and prevents Graveler from ever fishing for an hp elec talk roll as well. Note that with Omastar's excellent defense stat, Dugtrio's Earthquake never 2HKOs Omastar from full and is a roll to 2HKO it after spikes damage. Omastar also obviously counters reflect talk Pidgeot as well as the rare sleep talk Fearow; Persian and Stantler naturally run coverage for Omastar anyway (cat's Thunder being much stronger coverage than deer's eq due to oma's poor spdef), while Fearow/Pidgeot can perhaps consider hidden power and/or thief sets if they would like to improve their oma matchups.
to be very clear, this is not any sort of official test that will directly lead to any tiering action. ofc if people like the impact of omastar on gsc nu in this tour then perhaps there could be a suspect test or such at some point in the future, but for now this test tour is just experimenting for fun.
obviously everyone who plays GSC NU is encouraged to build their own teams, but I will provide some teams specifically oriented toward GSC NU + Omastar when I post the first round to make this tour as accessible as possible. existing resources for GSC NU can be found here: Viability Rankings, GSC NU Discussion Thread, NU Old Gens Discussion, GSC NU Sample teams
Tournament Rules:
~ this is a single-elimination tournament; each round will last at most one week.
~ matches will be best-of-three in every round (defined as the first player to win two games, i.e. ties are not counted).
~ all tournament games must be played on Pokemon Showdown!, and all replays of all tournament games must be posted.
~ all matches will be played in the GSC NU format - challenge using this command:
~ all standard Smogon tournament rules apply, and can be found here.
Post "in" to sign up ~ signups will be open until Sunday, December 15th 11:59 PM GMT. (the first round will begin the week of the 16th.)
[addendum: since i was asked about this, depending on how this tournament goes and if there is any interest in further omastar testing, future tests could potentially include additional pokemon as well. arcanine could be a consideration for obvious reasons, and ice beam omastar is also a full counter to stun + sd vileplume and is a solid answer to sd + hp ground vileplume while awake; since vileplume cant fit a grass move without rly ruining its offensive potential (as it then either cant threaten weezing or cant boost), omastar could potentially open things up for a vileplume retest as well.
i think the best approach is to test oma by itself first, and if there is continued interest in oma after this tour then we can talk about plume or arc or whatever. also a dual-test was only brought up to me by one or two people, and the convos about this tour over the past few months have otherwise all been under the assumption of just testing oma by itself.]
background/motivation
welcome to the GSC NU + Omastar for-fun test tournament. with Omastar significantly falling off in gsc uu over the past year+, this tour provides the opportunity to test a version of gsc nu with a strong normal resist as well as a strong special attacker, both of which are somewhat lacking in the tier. in particular, any rest talk omastar is a counter to curse talk Wigglytuff, always 3HKOing with Surf, and sleep talk oma can counter curse Porygon as well with any of Ice Beam, Toxic, or Body Slam as its coverage move (Ice Beam presumably being the preferred option). offensively, while Omastar provides a slightly stronger special attacking water in comparison to Octillery, most gsc nu teams already have Omastar counterplay naturally: many offensive teams already have rest talk Primeape, which outspeeds, can 2HKO oma with both of its sleep talk moves while avoiding a 2HKO from Surf; while many defensive teams use rest talk Dewgong, which outspeeds, avoids a 3HKO from hp electric, has useful sleep talk rolls with both of its stabs vs an awake Omastar, while being able to freely fish for surf crits vs a sleeping omastar since even hp electric omastar does not have good sleep talk rolls against it. And ofc in addition Chinchou can answer any oma set, Gloom can answer hidden power sets, and Octillery can answer Ice Beam or Toxic sets. It is worth noting that while Octillery is slower than Omastar, it also has perfect sleep talk rolls against it with surf + hp electric, so even against omas with hidden power, Octillery is a reasonable switchin to Surf as long as it isnt in ko range of hidden power.
outside of being able to exploit Porygon and Wigglytuff, Omastar certainly will have various other impacts on the metagame. most notably, oma also counters rest talk Rapidash or Flareon that run Double-Edge, protecting teammates such as Ninetales, Xatu, Pineco, or Gloom that often give free turns to those pokémon. Omastar is also a water-type weak to Ground, potentially enabling ground types such as Graveler and Dugtrio to make progress more effectively; at the same time, because Omastar is not dependent on hidden power to threaten opposing Omastars, Ice Beam is a much stronger consideration, which in addition to countering Porygon and providing a much better sleep talk roll against Xatu and neutral targets, discourages substitute fishing from dug and prevents Graveler from ever fishing for an hp elec talk roll as well. Note that with Omastar's excellent defense stat, Dugtrio's Earthquake never 2HKOs Omastar from full and is a roll to 2HKO it after spikes damage. Omastar also obviously counters reflect talk Pidgeot as well as the rare sleep talk Fearow; Persian and Stantler naturally run coverage for Omastar anyway (cat's Thunder being much stronger coverage than deer's eq due to oma's poor spdef), while Fearow/Pidgeot can perhaps consider hidden power and/or thief sets if they would like to improve their oma matchups.
to be very clear, this is not any sort of official test that will directly lead to any tiering action. ofc if people like the impact of omastar on gsc nu in this tour then perhaps there could be a suspect test or such at some point in the future, but for now this test tour is just experimenting for fun.
obviously everyone who plays GSC NU is encouraged to build their own teams, but I will provide some teams specifically oriented toward GSC NU + Omastar when I post the first round to make this tour as accessible as possible. existing resources for GSC NU can be found here: Viability Rankings, GSC NU Discussion Thread, NU Old Gens Discussion, GSC NU Sample teams
Tournament Rules:
~ this is a single-elimination tournament; each round will last at most one week.
~ matches will be best-of-three in every round (defined as the first player to win two games, i.e. ties are not counted).
~ all tournament games must be played on Pokemon Showdown!, and all replays of all tournament games must be posted.
~ all matches will be played in the GSC NU format - challenge using this command:
~ GSC NU rules/clauses can be found here.
~ all standard Smogon tournament rules apply, and can be found here.
Post "in" to sign up ~ signups will be open until Sunday, December 15th 11:59 PM GMT. (the first round will begin the week of the 16th.)
[addendum: since i was asked about this, depending on how this tournament goes and if there is any interest in further omastar testing, future tests could potentially include additional pokemon as well. arcanine could be a consideration for obvious reasons, and ice beam omastar is also a full counter to stun + sd vileplume and is a solid answer to sd + hp ground vileplume while awake; since vileplume cant fit a grass move without rly ruining its offensive potential (as it then either cant threaten weezing or cant boost), omastar could potentially open things up for a vileplume retest as well.
i think the best approach is to test oma by itself first, and if there is continued interest in oma after this tour then we can talk about plume or arc or whatever. also a dual-test was only brought up to me by one or two people, and the convos about this tour over the past few months have otherwise all been under the assumption of just testing oma by itself.]
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