Smogon Snake Draft 2019: LC Discussion

taranteeeno

taranteeeno

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Snake Draft Introduction
Snake Schedule
Weekly Match Schedule

Yahallo Little Cuppers! taranteeeno here to save the LC forum with a Snake Draft III LC Discussion thread! I encourage you to use this thread to discuss tour games, metagame trends, predictions, and anything else Snake Draft III related. This thread will be updated weekly for replays and such.

Pre-trade rosters
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Potential LCers:
Terminus Taipans: jake
Berry Forest Bushmasters: tazz, Serene Grace
Black City Mambas: LilyAC
Celadon City Cobras: Kingler12345
Shinto Ruin Serpents: Star, BurntZebra
Lanakila Nagas: Osh, Plas
Sky Tower Lindworms: tko, HT, trash
Ambrette Astrotias: ZoroDark, Shrug
Lake of Rage Leviathans: Luthier
Rumble Hall Rattlers: teal6, frisoeva, London13

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Week 1
[AST] Zorodark vs teal6 [RAT]
[LEV] Luthier vs Kingler12345 [COB]
[LIN] tko vs BurntZebra [SER]
[MAM] LilyAC vs jake [TAI]
[BUS] tazz vs Osh [NAG]
Week 2
[LIN] tko vs LilyAC [MAM]
[NAG] Osh vs Zorodark [AST]
[BUS] tazz vs BurntZebra [SER]
[COB] Kingler12345 vs teal6 [RAT]
[TAI] jake vs Luthier [LEV]
Week 3
[COB] Kingler12345 vs Osh [NAG]
[LEV] Luthier vs LilyAC [MAM]
[BUS] tazz vs tko [LIN]
[RAT] London13 vs jake [TAI]
[SER] BurntZebra vs ZoroDark [AST]
Week 4
[NAG] Osh vs jake [TAI]
[LEV] Luthier vs London13 [RAT]
[COB] Kingler12345 vs BurntZebra [SER]
[LIN] trash vs Zorodark [AST]
[MAM] LilyAC vs tazz [BUS]
Week 5
[AST] ZoroDark vs tazz [BUS]
[TAI] jake vs BurntZebra [SER]
[LEV] Luthier vs trash [LIN]
[MAM] LilyAC vs Kingler12345 [COB]
[RAT] London13 vs Osh [NAG]
Week 6
[AST] Shrug vs Luthier [LEV]
[LIN] trash vs Kingler12345 [COB]
[SER] BurntZebra vs Osh [NAG]
[RAT] London13 vs LilyAC [MAM]
[BUS] tazz vs jake [TAI]
Week 7
[SER] BurntZebra vs LilyAC [MAM]
[COB] Kingler12345 vs tazz [BUS]
[RAT] London13 vs trash [LIN]
[AST] Shrug vs jake [TAI]
[NAG] Osh vs Luthier [LEV]
Week 8
[BUS] Serene Grace vs London13 [RAT]
[TAI] jake vs tko [LIN]
[MAM] LilyAC vs Osh [NAG]
[LEV] Luthier vs BurntZebra [SER]
[AST] Shrug vs Kingler12345 [COB]
Week 9
[TAI] jake vs Kingler12345 [COB]
[AST] Shrug vs LilyAC [MAM]
[RAT] august vs BurntZebra [SER]
[NAG] Osh vs tko [LIN]
[BUS] tazz vs Luthier [LEV]
Semi-Finals
[TAI] jake vs Shrug [AST]
[NAG] Osh vs Luthier [LEV]
Finals
[TAI] jake vs Luthier [LEV]

[TAI] jake: 8-3
[NAG] Osh: 7-3
[MAM] LilyAC: 6-3
[LEV] Luthier: 6-5
[BUS] tazz: 4-4
[SER] BurntZebra: 4-5
[RAT] teal6: 2-0
[AST] Shrug: 2-3
[LIN] trash: 2-3
[AST] Zorodark: 2-3
[COB] Kingler12345: 2-7
[BUS] Serene Grace: 1-0
[LIN] tko: 1-3
[RAT] London13: 1-5
[RAT] august: 0-1
 
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With about six days until Week 1 is posted, I figured I’d kick off some post-draft discussion with my first impressions on each team’s potential LCers and their internal team support. I will not be accounting for outside help (or dcae literally helping everyone). There ended up being a lot of awkward LC drafting this time around.

The two teams that stand out the most in terms of starter quality and support are the Serpents and the Bushmasters. BurntZebra should be the starter for his team as Star will likely be playing OU. With support from Star, BurntZebra likely jumps up to first or second in the Snake PRs. Zebraman on his own is enough to take on snake but gets a strong boost from one of the best LCers being his teammate.

tazz and Serene Grace make up the Bushmasters LC core. The two strongest LCers in this pool on one team shows the questionable quality of the draft. They also have two great team testers between Eternally and passion; the former who had a good showing in LCPL 8 and the latter who made an example of literally everyone on his LCPL 7 Bunnelby Battalion team during SM test games using dual weather. Hopefully, tazz and Serene get equal showing this tour as both deserved their own starting slot. There could be drama over the Bushmasters starting spot as Serene Grace has recently overtaken tazz in the LPL MVP race.

The Astrotias picked up two high level players in ZoroDark and Shrug. ZoroDark had a legendary 9-0 run in Snake 1 and Shrug clutched finals in the same tour as well as he went positive. I think Zoro will be the starter with Shrug supporting with builds. I can easily see them rotating in the lineup, but I do wonder how Shrug’s motivations are going into this tour as basically a second-stringer and if this will affect his building support.

The Nagas picked up Osh and Plas, two people I’m pretty sure had beef at one point. Osh has been fairly active in LC since the beginning of Slam and carving his way through the ladder and individuals. I see him being the starter with Plas supporting. If Plas can support Osh like he did Kingler last year, I think Nagas LC will be fine, but I know Plas hates building in this meta more than anyone and this has affected his build quality. Also, hopefully these two have put aside any beef for the sake of their team.

The Taipans (jake), Mambas (LilyAC), Cobras (Kingler12345), and Leviathans (Luthier) all ended up with a single LC starter after the draft. jake should be fine on his own especially with ABR potentially looking over teams and robjr available as a tester. He also has years of experience in this game as well as previous Snake experience. LilyAC and Luthier both ended up on teams with a minimal amount of LC support. However, both are capable of holding their own in prep. Kingler has a number of people in his chat who can contribute to builds and testing like Finch, UB, Jyt and Kdot. He is an experienced LCer with a ton of great results, but I do wonder who will lead LC prep on the Cobras.

The teams with the biggest question marks are the Lindworms (tko, HT, trash) and Rattlers (teal6, frisoeva, London13). The Lindworms appeared to have gotten a collection of players who haven’t played a whole lot of SM LC recently. tko recently got back into the meta during LC Open. HT and trash both had great showings in LCWC but haven’t played much since. I don’t know who will start but I’m sure that if trash jumps back into the meta, their support will be sufficient for this tour.

The Rattlers have a peculiar LC lineup. teal6 had a fantastic Snake II run in LC, taking on the best LC had to offer. I could see him starting, which means London13 will have to support him. I’ve heard positive things about London’s building from Star and Kingler, but other than his LCPL 8 showing, not a whole lot to back it up. Friso could be an acceptable LC starter too if teal doesn’t want to play LC. I think in general the Rattlers could’ve done a better job with their LC drafting, but teal playing + London support could do it for them?

Like I said at the beginning of this post, LC drafts turned out to be very strange. Some teams got two starter-level players, some drafted none, and other teams picked up questionable support or none at all. Several players should’ve probably been drafted but weren’t: Ninjadog13, Heysup, Toadow and Fille. All 4 of these could’ve been starters, some even fantastic support especially Ninja and Fille (you outta ask these guys for help if you haven’t already). Regardless, I’m excited to see how this season turns out and hope others decide to contribute their post-draft thoughts!
 
okay so i made some effort writings and the like last time, so i'll do a serious appraisal of myself going into this season.

i think taranteeeno 's appraisal of me is a little too generous from last year. i had fairly decent numbers (6-4) but, in watching the games, you can definitely see some sloppiness. this is largely due to 2 things - arrogance on my part and an unfamiliarity with the meta. i was arrogant in thinking that i could wing it, play with "good teams" given to me by star, and just win. unfamiliarity with the meta meant that i couldn't look at a team and figure the sets, you can note the amount of times that i get bopped by something not 100% standard.

fortunately for me, i've learned from this mistake a bit. while i had absolutely no intention of playing LC until the draft, i will be there at least for now this time, and i want a third snake win more than anything else. i'm going to bring a new level of vitality to my preparation especially because i don't have the crutch of star, who would scout and build for me and i'd just say "ok" to everything. london is a fantastic help though - we have good chemistry with one another from before, so while i am in slightly unfamiliar territory, i trust him to help me out a ton. expect to see some weirder shit this time around, too, because i can throw my weight aroudn without star to veto things outright (hello larvitar!)

my goal is, very clearly, an undefeated record in this tier. i made a joke in the prior post (and back in like, LCWC or LCPL or whatever) about getting ranked low, but that never really actually bothered me. i don't take those tours seriously whatsoever, but this tour is incredibly important to me and i want to set a record by getting three before anyone else on smogon. the only real way i can help do that is by giving 110%, so i hope you guys get the chance to see SPL 7 metagame killing teal6 rather than a tepid performance where people think im phoning it in. another big + is that my managers are mcm and bro fist - mcm is one of my favorite players to watch all time, and john is an utterly fantastic leader. i want to perform for them and the rest of our team so much that i really see this as a key and amazing opportunity to do some incredible stuff on the playing field.
 
OP adapted from SPL Predictions Tour

SNAKE LC PREDICTION TOURNAMENT

>> Snake LC Prediction Leaderboard <<​

Welcome to the first ever Snake LC Predictions Tour! Similar to the SPL Predictions Tour, you have the opportunity to predict every LC match this season as well as submit preseason predictions. Each correct prediction will net you a certain amount of points.

At the end of Snake, the user with the most amount of points will win two prizes: LC Discord Role and $10 Gift Card of your choice (must be appropriate; funded by myself and Ninjadog13). Snake Players can participate in predictions, but are not eligible to win the prize for obvious reasons. See below for the prediction scoring system:

10 points per correct LC match prediction
25 points per correct LC player core to reach playoffs
50 points per correct LC regular season record
100 points for correct LC player core to win Snake​

As for the process, I will be posting a new form for predictions every Monday after the pairings that week have been revealed. You then have roughly 24 hours for predictions before the form closes that week and you can no longer predict. Games completed before the form closes will be excluded from scoring. Snake players are not encouraged to delay their games to accomodate for this, and should play when they're able to.

To start off though, the first form predicting LC records, playoffs participants, and overall Snake winner will be open from now until the start of Week 1.


Good luck to everyone participating!
 
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Week 1 is here, I'm expecting more tentative builds as only one or two of the players here has built seriously in public matches since LCPL (open being the exception, but only luthier made it far enough to have public builds. LilyAC takes discord tours seriously but she's probably the hardest to prepare for of all the players here so it won't do her opponent too much good). Hopefully we see some innovation, but I'm expecting most of the interesting builds to come out later in the tournament.
ZoroDark vs teal6
These two don't really show up in a serious way to smaller tournaments like LCPL and seasonal, making it difficult to predict how well they'll do considering that the former's last showcase was two years ago and the latter's one. I think that the prediction should still be pretty clear despite this, though: Zorodark's performance was more impressive two years ago, and with superior support in Shrug he's looking to be the top contender in this entire tournament. He might struggle to be completely up to date with some new sets, but I don't think that teal and London have the necessary building prowess to exploit this.
Luthier vs Kingler12345
This is my personal highlight of the week. Kingler seems like the instinctive pick from his extensive LC team tournament experience, but I think that Luthier's insane winning streak (when you count out seasonal, he hasn't lost a game/series in LCPL or open) more than makes up for any gap in experience. Luthier has stronger building and from what I can tell stronger playing, as long as he can avoid tournament nerves. I won't make this prediction as strongly as the first one though: nobody is better than kingler at drawing out nerves, and without significant support he might bring jank that Luthier is not prepared for.
tko vs BurntZebra
I think this match hinges on if and to what degree trash gets back into the meta. If he can update his old building to this new meta I think that tko will have a slight advantage, but anything less than this will se the tides turning back in BurntZebra's favor. BurntZebra is a great builder himself, and with star support should dependably have fantastic teams every week. If these two players roll up with similar teams of similar quality with an even-ish matchup I think that BurntZebra should take it, and since I think that Zebra's team will be better anyway I have to give the match to him.
LilyAC vs jake
Jake is the hardest person to predict in this tournament, as he has the experience in team tours many of these players lack but has been very unimpressive thus far in open and seasonal team-wise. I think that Jake has an edge over Lily playing-wise thanks to his experience, but Lily more than anyone else here should be able to bring out the weaknesses in his building that have prevented him from succeeding in open. Once Jake shows more building prowess I think that it will be less easy to predict against him, but if his team is anything remotely like those he bought against Luthier in Open LilyAC should take this comfortably.
 
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Official power rankings are up: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/smogon-snake-draft-iii-power-rankings.3653839/

To summarise the bit we're interested in, the LC power rankings are:
1. Zorodark - something something 9-0 in Snake 1
2. Kingler12345 - "Bad" player but everyone else is inexperienced
3. Luthier - On a hot streak, lacks big tour experience
4. Tazz - Consistent, makes few misplays, excellent builder. So we're gonna put him 4th
5. Osh - If he can transfer over his NU skills to LC, he'll get a good number of wins (even though he picked up NU a year ago after previously maining LC)
6. BurntZebra - New to the game, has Star support
7. Teal6 - Doesn't play LC, multiple mentions of Star/lack of Star support
8. LilyAC - Less hyped up than the other newcomers. Solid building skills
9. Jake - Experienced, but lacking in recent results
10. TKO - Why was he picked in round 6?

My personal rankings:
1. BurntZebra - I think my top 3 are all on a very similar level in terms of playing ability, so I'm looking at subtle other edges that each player might have. Given the importance of getting a good matchup and start to the match, I'm giving Zebra the edge on account of the support he has available.
2. Tazz - I think Tazz arguably has the edge on playing ability, and his powerhouse building skills seen in LCPL 8 mean that burn out and consistency will not be issues for him. This team also has the benefit of having Serene as a backup if Tazz's form does dip.
3. Luthier - He's been in unstoppable form in recent months, with crazy LC open and LCPL runs, and a strong performance in exhibition. I think his biggest weakness is underestimating opponents, which won't be an issue here. If he finds his feet quickly, I expect him to post a similar record to the two guys above him.
4. Osh - Very high skill ceiling, and has shown his ability with strong results in NU. My main question mark here is motivation. If he's motivated enough, he can easily go positive, making use of his SPL experience.
5. Zorodark - Easily capable of a strong showing given his experience and past results. I think he'll go close to even, but I'd expect him to clutch decisive games towards the end of the season.
6. LilyAC - IMO Lily is one of the most dangerous next-turn predictors on this list, and is capable of making very ballsy plays. I think her biggest issue will be consistency over the season. Her team has no support available for her, so she may burn out near the end of the season, but I think she'll seek help from notable undrafts to overcome this. I can see her beating anyone above her, but potentially losing to anyone below her as well.
7. Kingler12345 - Don't even know what to say here
8. Teal6 - Just gonna leave Teal alone
9. Jake - I think Jake's performance in the competition will show us how valuable it is to have big tour experience. He's not really up to date with meta and doesn't have recent results, in particular I felt Luthier controlled both of their games too well in their LC open meeting. I think his tour experience will make the biggest difference in early weeks, when others around him are finding their feet.
10. TKO - Seems to be inconsistent recently. He has Trash support but Trash has been out of the game for a few months so I'm not sure how well this combo will work. Could easily surpass these expectations though.

My rankings differ from the power rankings because I think the general lack of high level experience will only make a difference for the first week or two, and I believe most of the players involved will adapt to the high pressure situations far better than they have been given credit for in the PR. The fine margins will be settled by how well each team can pick apart their opponents building weaknesses and exploit them. Should be fun to watch
 
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Here are the game times that I know so far (in GMT) in case you want to watch them live on smogtours.psim.us (watching them live is a lot more hype than in replay form in my experience).
tazz vs Osh - Saturday 7 PM
Luthier vs Kingler12345 - Friday 4 PM
LilyAC vs jake - Tuesday 8 PM

It appears that the other two matches have not been scheduled yet, but as soon as I hear I will edit this post! Hope to see everyone there!
 
These are not the lineups anybody would have expected before the draft, seeing how some very strong players like shrug / london / jytcampbell / serene / star are on the bench or starting elsewhere so that they can support equally capable starters. The matchups do look pretty great - the one I'm looking forward to the most is BurntZebra vs tko, two of the most elite LCers on the planet backed by two of the best LC supports (Star and trash, respectively). The matchup I'm looking forward to the least is ZoroDark vs teal because neither has played SM LC since 2018.

The player I'm most disappointed to see go undrafted is ninjadog, who I believe is better than a good portion of the current starters, and whose exclusion will noticeably weaken the pool. That being said, my understanding is that he's supporting luthier, which should be a big help because ninjadog is a very respectable builder. Toadow and Fille are some other great LCers who went undrafted - it'd be interesting to see if they plan to support anybody as well.

I'm pretty surprised that Heysup wasn't drafted. I think his biggest strength has always been in innovating newer metagames - he's steadily dropped from 1st to like 25th best LC builder over the course of the gen for both gens 6 and 7 - so I'm confident he can come back far more powerful for gen 8 as a genuinely top LCer for the first tour or two. Kind of disappointed that I didn't get drafted either but oh well.
 
i can't believe everyone's sleeping so hard on teal6, even the corporal of lc himself. i'll be the first to point out that "recent tour success" seems to have been on everyone's mind when they were making power rankings (haha 9th baby), but teal6 is a dynamic playmaker and a versatile mind, and those traits haven't just disappeared since his last major lc tour action. he sees avenues of play that no standard little cup elite player would identify like brave birding slowpoke turn 1. he masterfully commands his team to victory, despite all odds.

honestly, working with london is going to be a blessing in disguise for his team. teal won't be relying on the lc mastermind star to feed him teams, which means he'll have to be honing his knowledge of little cup in order to be successful. there will be nothing like the mystery spider this year, i guarantee it.

it's like rock lee taking off his weights. he's not going to let the ghost of star hold him back, you birdbrained fools

ihddJvw.gif
 
jake said:
i can't believe everyone's sleeping so hard on teal6, even the corporal of lc himself. i'll be the first to point out that "recent tour success" seems to have been on everyone's mind when they were making power rankings (haha 9th baby), but teal6 is a dynamic playmaker and a versatile mind, and those traits haven't just disappeared since his last major lc tour action. he sees avenues of play that no standard little cup elite player would identify like brave birding slowpoke turn 1. he masterfully commands his team to victory, despite all odds.

honestly, working with london is going to be a blessing in disguise for his team. teal won't be relying on the lc mastermind star to feed him teams, which means he'll have to be honing his knowledge of little cup in order to be successful. there will be nothing like the mystery spider this year, i guarantee it.

it's like rock lee taking off his weights. he's not going to let the ghost of star hold him back, you birdbrained fools

ihddJvw.gif
Click to expand...
while i appreciate this i DID forget that frillish could switch out of diglett last year
 
Here are the number of average wins for each player based off the pre-season prediction forms (the full responses can be seen in teeno's post above), and from these the LC Power Rankings according to the public (for reference there were 33 submissions):

1. BurntZebra - 5.97 Average Wins
2. tazz - 5.67 Average Wins
3. Luthier - 5.33 Average Wins
4. ZoroDark - 5.18 Average Wins
5. Kingler12345 - 5.06 Average Wins
6. Osh - 4.82 Average Wins
7. LilyAC - 4.33 Average Wins
8. teal6 - 3.52 Average Wins
9. jake - 3.45 Average Wins
10. tko - 3.42 Average Wins

Compared with the official PRs a common theme here is that new players who are more involved with the community ended up seeing much better rankings across the board, most notably with Zebra seeing a huge boost from 6th to 1st. Tazz (up from 4th), and Lily (up from 8th) also saw rises, whilst Luthier remained steady at 3rd. People seemed to generally be in agreement on a bottom 3 of teal, jake, and tko, whilst Lily found herself isolated with the two biggest gaps between players being from 6th to 7th and from 7th to 8th.
 
glad to get off on a good foot for my first match this season, was quite happy with how it went overall, and think the team choice was smart as well. thanks to Luthier as, while he didn't pass me the team, we basically just stole it from replays (and made a few changes but w/e). i really liked the way it played and thought a webs w/o pawn was neat, as from last year, i'm used to it being "mandatory" on webs but i really liked this 6.

looking forward to facing my good friend big kingler this week. we've matched in officials many many times at this point, and we tend to win in our "home" tiers, but i'm looking to take one over him this time around ;)
 
Kingler12345 vs Osh
Kingler's teambuilding and play has left much to be desired and Osh is already looking to go positive this season, though he probably can't run scarf dig three times in a row without someone prepping for it.
Luthier vs LilyAC
I still think that predicting against Luthier right now is nearly impossible, despite his winning streak finally ending. Last week's game was probably the worst matchup I've seen in a long time, and I don't think that he will fuck around with matchup heavy teams again this week. This is going to be close though, as I think that as seen last week Lily is back to form and won't see a repeat of week 1 hopefully. I'll give a slight edge to Luthier, but Lily is heat and I would not be surprised if she pulled out a win.
London13 vs Jake
Both teams have a 2-0 LC slot going into this, but I think Jake's wins were against much stronger LCers. Teal's teams have also been very disappointing despite getting lucky on MU, and I don't think that London is as strong of a player as teal. This should go to Jake.
BurntZebra vs ZoroDark
I think these two are similar in playing capability (despite losing last week I think Zebra played very well), but with better support Zebra will likely show up with a better team. He also has the option of pulling techs that Zoro might not be up to date on.
 
For a serious post, Week 3 predictions:

Kingler12345 vs Osh

When I submitted my picks for the power rankings at the beginning of the season, Osh was in my top two players (and for a little while, I debated having him in my number one). I think that Osh has displayed an incredible degree of consistency of play in individual tournaments, and I believe that it's about time for that consistency to develop into team tournament success. Even though he's dipped into NU in the past with okay results, every time I've played him I feel like LC is really his element, and his results have reflected that belief so far (even if he's had some weird endgames). Might as well make it a triple Scarf Diglett btw.

On the other hand, Kingler12345 has peaked and valleyed several times throughout his career. This season, so far, has been the pits for Kingler -- he started off the season against two pretty strong players, for sure, but he has kind of floundered in execution. His matches have been riddled with some weird turns and a distinct absence of making decisions that win games. From an outsider's perspective, when faced with a critical turn, he hasn't been gutsy enough to pull the trigger where he needs to. I'm unsure if it's a lack of foresight or just wrong reads, but I think that Kingler really needs to go above and beyond in both the teambuilder and in the game in order to make a win here possible. If he stays where he's been -- the floor -- his record is gonna represent that.

Luthier vs LilyAC

I'm really glad that Lily got her redemption game last week. The first official team tournament game always feels like a trainwreck -- so much on the line, there's a timer ticking, and a whole crowd is picking at everything you do. And she did bounce back after our Week 1 game, dropping tko's hopes and dreams on their head. It did help that tko made a few, uh, blunders, but Lily made solid play after solid play and nabbed a convincing win. I also gotta give a shoutout to the nickname she used Week 2 because I really liked it: absolutely give yourself every mental edge you can, including owning your own weaknesses.

With that said, I'm not sure that the momentum will carry into this week. Luthier, carrying his LC Open crown and a banner for his YouTube channel, will be looking for a similar bounceback after a loss Week 2. tazz pointed out earlier in this thread that his team lost in a very matchup-y kind of game, which is true, but he still kept his head and played to win even after losing a lot of ground midgame. I wish there were a video up for it! I would love to be able to see his perspective! Or the colorful names he would use for my play when I stayed in with Spritzee! And there would be a Luthier Loss™ on YouTube (check out his channel!). I don't think Luthier has to go as hard-in-the-paint matchup-wise as he has been, even after he found success with fast Foongus (???) of all things against Kingler.

If LilyAC keeps up her trend of improved play and Luthier puts himself back together after his first loss in a while, I think this is absolutely my highlight game of the week.

tazz vs tko

Given how much I had seen tazz harp on structural weaknesses in teams going into the season, I figured there would be lots of standard builds coming from the Bushmasters, but CARVANHA (and SR Smash Tirt... and Screech Diglett...) of all things Week 2 made me super interested in the team selection this week. I think his play has been largely serviceable, but not spectacular -- and that's okay. I think tazz will win a good number of games. He will probably win this game, even. I'm still not totally on the tazz train (shoutouts Levi rankings for making that weird aura of hype-but-not-hype), but my opinion has definitely improved after watching his games.

tko, however, has been mostly in the same category as Kingler this season. I think his builds have suffered some from having only a few people to work with. They feel like they might have been ripped from his teambuilder from a couple years back... Snubbull in particular is a Pokemon that needs to be on a very specific kind of build to be successful, and it seemed like tko lost that game because half of his team was forced out by Foongus. In his other game, tko made some 11D chess plays like staying in with Foongus to Spore Vullaby. After it revealed Overcoat.

So, yeah, the pick is clearly to disregard everything I just said and bet on tko. Hey, blind faith works out sometimes. tko needs to stop fretting about just getting *something* in the win column, and to just bring something he's comfortable with and play. I feel like a lot of this unsuccess can be attributed to trying too hard to make something happen when there isn't anything there. Keep it simple, stupid, and screw your head on straight. It is extremely important for you to win so I get my LC Snake Prediction points.

BurntZebra vs ZoroDark

If I can pick two highlight games, this is highlight game number two. My younger zebra has been impressive thus far, even in a loss. Everyone always talks about how he has Star help in the back (and nobody talks about how tazz has Serene Grace help in the back, amazingly) but BZ is really solid regardless of that, in my opinion. I really liked the dual birds team, even though the Rufflet never had to do anything. I'm also fond of how he played against tazz, especially early against the Foongus. He did get bailed out a few times by luck (and ultimately lost), but I think he has tons of potential.

ZoroDark was my number one overall (and probably everyone else's, too). He has the highest ceiling out of anybody that's currently playing LC, I think, but these games so far have been pretty underwhelming. He lost to teal objectively on a Leaf Storm miss, but he was also beyond weak to Magnemite with webs up, so... I don't really know what to make of that one. I will also always root for anybody who brings Omanyte because that Pokemon is mad underrated, and I think the Waterium set is very solid right now.

Honestly, I think Zoro has had some of the most interesting builds of the tournament so far, and one is finally going to knock it out of the park. I think it will be this week. BurntZebra, though, can certainly claim one here too -- his teams have been good to great, and I think his play has been equally so.

jake vs London13

I hope it's a good game, and I will win.

"Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy." -- Brian Tracy
 
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