appreciate the contributions from the players, really cool to get insight to the mentalities going in. finished up my bi-weekly op updates that probably should be twice as frequent, and odds are they will with the regular season coming to a close. seems as though contention for the remaining play-off slots are pretty tight, with what I believe to be the exception of tyrants (maybe more, i'll admit to focusing more on the games than their implications in the long term), so hopefully the games will express as much.
i think it's quite interesting to note the shape the metagame has taken over the course of this season. the influx of bronzong in particular struck me as quite surprising if only for the tenacity one must exhibit to break away from the stigma of it being a bad pokemon, though time will tell if applicable pursuit users will rise in response to this (as of course psywave + protect zong is equipped reasonably to sidestep escavalier to an extent) and stunt its performance as they did in oras. beyond this, i'm pretty stoked on the love given to tyrantrum these past few weeks, which i feel is long overdue for just how brutal its choice sets, and even occasionally boosting ones as seen through sv v.tdk, where so often it feels like it's one prediction away from picking up a ko via head smash upon entry. virizion seems to be in a very similar boat, and has become all the more versatile with the recent adoption of sub > coverage to punish the tendency to pass over non-rose poison- or flying-types a noteworthy rise in toxicroak and ninetales usage comes across as largely reactionary, especially as blastoise becomes more dangerous and, for better or worse, salazzle finds itself underperforming somewhat. these tendencies do, however, tend to reflect a generally lower baseline for speed control on your average team nowadays, something I'll admit to chill shadow and myself looking to exploit via gigalith stoutland.
as far as highlights for me, while i did not care for the final product much at all, silentverse's use of both florges (which tricking used as well!) and bulky rose touched upon a mis-evaluation of both being fairly unusable, i think. while to me florges remains slightly less broad in its application than i think most would like, it does remain a perfectly acceptable cleric and even calm mind user in certain capacities, and defensive rose has perhaps become the most self-sufficient in putting spikes on the board for its flexibility in poison fishing v.the generally free buzz switch. windsong v.sg in week 8 was probably the tightest of the past couple weeks and put the spotlight on perhaps my favourite under-explored pokemon in this meta, noivern, so that's a must-watch for my money. nat vs.sv exhibited what was the best application of an escavalier team-wise (imho, mind), as well as a bunch of other very "new ru" picks a la scarf ttrum / ninetales / a cool blastoise, as well as what looked to be an interesting (albeit not quite as good or iconic, ofc) edit on the very team i played nat with during the snake draft from sv. lastly, and i hope this doesn't come across as conceded in any way, trying to be as objective as possible here, the chillshadow v.feliburn game was a really cool watch. i feel as though both players executed really well, many of chillshadow's techs hit (hypno zong and bulky shuca croak being the most impactful), and it came down to a really tight endgame, worth your time if you didn't watch live.
otherwise, looking forward to some cool ones going in to this week. i'm planning on doing a mass tag after the regular season to get those who don't make play-offs to [hopefully] share their experiences and perhaps give insight to their performances, more interesting sets and concepts, etc. look forward to it! beyond that i'll just leave w/the matches for the week, and try to actually keep up with ascribing playtimes to them haha
[TGRS]lighthouses vs. Feliburn [SCTR] - Thursday, 7 PM
[RUIN]Chill Shadow vs. Arifeen [SHRK] - Sunday, 10 AM
[WOLF]PokeTCG gamer1288 vs. J0RIS [TYRN] - Saturday, 10 AM
[RAID]mael vs. Bouff [CONG] - Sunday, 6-7 AM
[BIGS]Windsong vs. Nat [CRYO]
i think it's quite interesting to note the shape the metagame has taken over the course of this season. the influx of bronzong in particular struck me as quite surprising if only for the tenacity one must exhibit to break away from the stigma of it being a bad pokemon, though time will tell if applicable pursuit users will rise in response to this (as of course psywave + protect zong is equipped reasonably to sidestep escavalier to an extent) and stunt its performance as they did in oras. beyond this, i'm pretty stoked on the love given to tyrantrum these past few weeks, which i feel is long overdue for just how brutal its choice sets, and even occasionally boosting ones as seen through sv v.tdk, where so often it feels like it's one prediction away from picking up a ko via head smash upon entry. virizion seems to be in a very similar boat, and has become all the more versatile with the recent adoption of sub > coverage to punish the tendency to pass over non-rose poison- or flying-types a noteworthy rise in toxicroak and ninetales usage comes across as largely reactionary, especially as blastoise becomes more dangerous and, for better or worse, salazzle finds itself underperforming somewhat. these tendencies do, however, tend to reflect a generally lower baseline for speed control on your average team nowadays, something I'll admit to chill shadow and myself looking to exploit via gigalith stoutland.
as far as highlights for me, while i did not care for the final product much at all, silentverse's use of both florges (which tricking used as well!) and bulky rose touched upon a mis-evaluation of both being fairly unusable, i think. while to me florges remains slightly less broad in its application than i think most would like, it does remain a perfectly acceptable cleric and even calm mind user in certain capacities, and defensive rose has perhaps become the most self-sufficient in putting spikes on the board for its flexibility in poison fishing v.the generally free buzz switch. windsong v.sg in week 8 was probably the tightest of the past couple weeks and put the spotlight on perhaps my favourite under-explored pokemon in this meta, noivern, so that's a must-watch for my money. nat vs.sv exhibited what was the best application of an escavalier team-wise (imho, mind), as well as a bunch of other very "new ru" picks a la scarf ttrum / ninetales / a cool blastoise, as well as what looked to be an interesting (albeit not quite as good or iconic, ofc) edit on the very team i played nat with during the snake draft from sv. lastly, and i hope this doesn't come across as conceded in any way, trying to be as objective as possible here, the chillshadow v.feliburn game was a really cool watch. i feel as though both players executed really well, many of chillshadow's techs hit (hypno zong and bulky shuca croak being the most impactful), and it came down to a really tight endgame, worth your time if you didn't watch live.
otherwise, looking forward to some cool ones going in to this week. i'm planning on doing a mass tag after the regular season to get those who don't make play-offs to [hopefully] share their experiences and perhaps give insight to their performances, more interesting sets and concepts, etc. look forward to it! beyond that i'll just leave w/the matches for the week, and try to actually keep up with ascribing playtimes to them haha
[TGRS]lighthouses vs. Feliburn [SCTR] - Thursday, 7 PM
[RUIN]Chill Shadow vs. Arifeen [SHRK] - Sunday, 10 AM
[WOLF]PokeTCG gamer1288 vs. J0RIS [TYRN] - Saturday, 10 AM
[RAID]mael vs. Bouff [CONG] - Sunday, 6-7 AM
[BIGS]Windsong vs. Nat [CRYO]
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