I see from the start that Lou has counterteamed me pretty hard, which isn’t a surprise, considering my Colossoil / Pyroak / Sableye is a team that I trust in almost every match. There’s a reason for that, though; Colossoil and Pyroak have monstrous HP stats and hit like trucks; Sableye’s Helping Hand boosts their attacks to downright retarded power levels while pissing off opponents with basically every good support option in the game. Lou’s Tomohawk was bound to make an appearance, as was his Togekiss. My fourth pick was split between Gliscor (which would have been the same team I beat him [and subsequently won the Team Tournament] with last time), because of his Hyper Cutter, high Speed, and amazing disruptive movepool, and Cyclohm, who overall has much fewer options than Gliscor but amazing raw stats and, being the only electric type I own, also the only thing that can reliably handle Togekiss. In the end I went for Cyclohm, because I was uncomfortable bringing four physical attackers to the match; it also boosts my team’s total HP to an absolutely monstrous 440 and hits harder than Gliscor does. Unfortunately, it turns out Lou even scouted the prize claim thread and saw me dumping UC on Cyclohm, so he came… as prepared as one can be for Cyclohm, and brought Kingdra instead of Kiss. Mission still accomplished on my end as far as I’m concerned, because Togekiss is an absolute disaster for my team, and Cyclohm can go toe-to-toe with his whole squad.

Lou leads Mollux and Tomohawk’s the Tomohawk lead was to be expected, but I’m actually surprised at the choice of Mollux instead of using Kingdra to discourage Cyclohm. Mental Herb on the Mollux means he almost certainly intends to use it to set Stealth Rock, from which point Lou can switch next round while I am hog-tied. Tomohawk can set Rocks too, which means he was almost certainly trying to bait a Colossoil by sending in that juicy slug to Drill Run. If Soil is in then I can’t switch him in to Rebound the SR that Lou wants to set (SR that will greatly reduce Pyroak’s effectiveness). Cyclohm is an obvious choice here, because Tomohawk has a faster Prankster Taunt than Sableye and maximizing Sableye’s effectiveness means getting rid of Tomohawk. However, I’m torn on my other lead. I don’t want to lead Colossoil because his giant fat ass is easily 4HKOed by Tomohawk’s Grass Knot. I don’t want to lead Sableye because I want to save his HP for when he’s most effective (ie when I’m ordering second) and Tomohawk on the field makes his life hard. I DEFINITELY don’t want to lead Pyroak unless I feel like losing a Pokemon the first round (and Pyroak is my best option against Kingdra, aside maybe Sableye). I tentatively decide on Sableye—it’s simply too hard for Soil to avoid Tomo’s Grass moves AND avoid Tomo’s Fighting moves AND foil the SR trap—and I look at my options for my orders. After all, if I don’t like any order set I can make, I can try again with a different lead pair. Wait actually before I look at orders I silently curse Objection for that coin flip :<

For now, I plan to focus on Tomohawk, because Mollux has so many options available to itself (such as a Protect [Pass] from Tomohawk or Bide) and doesn’t seem quite as immediately threatening. Since it only puts the fear of God into Pyroak, I want to see if I can manipulate the match so it’s the last one alive, in which case I have a good shot. Anyways, if this round works out how I think it will, then Lou is gonna switch Mollux for Kingdra at the end of the round, and I want Tomohawk to be as dead as possible so he can stop intimidating Colossoil (both literally and figuratively). That means for this round, here’s a quick shortlist of moves I have to fear: Fly, Sky Drop, Confuse Ray, Flash, Double Team, Protect (both used and passed), Roost, and Light Screen. The most obviously troubling are Fly and Sky Drop. I can handle them through slowing Tomohawk down—but am then prone to being paralyzed, through using Thunder (thanks to illuminate, it’s fairly reliable)—but am then prone to Sunny Day and with my luck, getting wrecked, or through Sableye using Gravity—but it then becomes taunt bait. Because every one of my ways to stop those moves requires at least one sub, I am better off subbing for them directly at some point. If Fly, use Gust should work—it doesn’t do as much damage as Thunder by a long shot, but all I’m going for here is discouraging the Fly. I’m in a similar situation with Mollux’s Light Screen, in that the only safe way I have to discourage it is a sub on Sableye with Brick Break, since it’s running Mental Herb (and I wouldn’t want to toy with Prankster Taunt from Tomohawk anyways). I’d normally prefer to use Sableye’s Feint to break Tomohawk’s Protect, freeing up Cyclohm to keep dealing big damage, but there’s the problem of Mollux using Protect [Pass] at 0 priority after Cyclohm’s been slowed down (by Thunder Wave) and bypassing it. I’m going to leave this question for later, but keep it in mind. Still on that problem list are the confusion moves, Double Team, and Roost. Fortunately, I can at least discourage Double Team sufficiently if I have Sableye use nothing but moves that will break DT, so I will write its main order set to include at least two of these.  Fortunately, Sableye doesn’t need to worry about Fly because of its super-nifty Stall ability. Lastly, I make Roost at the very least a pain to pull off by subbing that if it is used and Sableye isn’t taunted, I snatch it. That way, lou will have to waste a lot of time before he gets to fucking with my thunderbolts. Sadly, Sableye can’t use a sub to guard against Tomohawk Protecting or being passed a Protect. Also sadly, I can’t protect against more hax-based strategies. Furthermore, Cyclohm or Sableye will probably take big damage this round. On the bright side, Lou won’t pull too far ahead in the damage race, unless I missed something (Hopefully not). So my final actions become:

“Sableye @ Everstone and Cyclohm @ Expert Belt, you're up for now!

Cyclohm: Thunderbolt Tomohawk ~ Electroweb ~ Thunderbolt Tomohawk
IF Tomohawk is the target of a Protective/Evasive move AND it was used before you acted AND mollux is not the target of a Protective/Evasive move then use Power Gem Mollux that action (takes priority)
IF Tomohawk is in the damaging evasive stage of a move when you act AND you are still on the ground then use Gust Tomohawk that action9.

Sableye: Icy Wind (Stall) ~ Zen Headbutt Tomohawk (Stall) ~ Aerial Ace Tomohawk (Stall)
IF Mollux uses Light Screen and tomohawk does not use protect (mollux) that action then use Brick Break (Stall) Mollux that action (takes priority)
IF Tomohawk uses Roost and you are not Taunted then use Snatch that action”

-------Round 2, Replacement Phase-------

welp. It turns out my Sableye used Follow Me * 3, which is a fact that surprises me a lot more than it should have, given how threatening Sableye is. Despite losing the damage race by about 30 damage this round, I’m still fairly content with my positioning, since his Tomohawk is almost KOed and, thanks to my team’s massive starting HP stat, I still have a minor lead.

My replacement for this round is fairly obvious: Pyroak would have very little to do were I to send him in now, since his best match is against Lou’s back two. And since Colossoil outspeeds Lou’s whole team and has a lot of options, even though he’ll definitely force a switch, I know I can trust him to pull me a huge advantage against anything Lou does.

“Colossoil @ Expert Belt's turn”

-------Round 2, Counterswitch Phase-------

lol no I’m not giving up my second order.

“i figured you'd go for that but i'm not about to let a second order slip away, so no counterswitch”

-------Round 2, Order Phase-------

Because I’m a nice guy, I pointed out to Lou that Pursuit won’t let his Kingdra hit my Toxicroak before I order. He declines to give Kingdra a second sub, which I think is a big mistake—but hey it’ll let Cyclohm survive the round, so I won’t press the issue.

Three pursuits will deal 22 damage to my Colossoil, whereas one Low Kick will deal almost 40, so my course of action is clear: 3 damaging evasive moves. Next, I wonder who to target. It’s pretty clear that I can ORKO Kingdra and cannot ORKO Toxicroak, but who’s the bigger threat? If I can knock out that Kingdra, then Lou’s strategy of two Dry Skin Pokemon + SurfSpam will be ruined, and I’ll have a lot easier of a time getting rid of his Poison-types. Furthermore, thinking ahead to next round, I’ll put Lou between a rock and a hard place, as he’ll either have to send in Mollux vs Colossoil or a 14 HP Tomohawk which can be easily wiped by one Thunder Fang, leaving Toxicroak in a 1v2 situation. It seems pretty clear that knocking out Kingdra is the way to go this round. I can do this with a Dig ~ Bounce ~ Dig along with a DPulse * 3, taking 27 damage to Ohm and 22 to Soil in exchange for 100 to Kingdra—a good trade. But it’s got a lot of overkill damage, so there might be something better. If I switch Cyclohm’s second Dragon Pulse to a Draco Meteor, then simply two Digs from Colossoil will be enough to KO Kingdra, and I can then Bounce Toxicroak a3 for 21 damage (which, thanks to Kingdra being KOed, will not be reduced by Surf) and a 30% paralysis chance to boot. However, I then have a 10% failure rate if Draco Meteor misses, which, though not catastrophic, would suck a lot. I decide to #yolo and go with the Draco Meteor route, though, since it will save a lot of energy for Ohm and get some damage on Toxicroak, so Lou has no 100% healthy Pokemon, even though it will make the time until Objection refs significantly more nerve-wracking. As a side note, I find myself wondering if Cyclohm will ever be directly attacked, or if he will just die to NVE spread move chip damage.

“Colossoil: Dig Kingdra ~ Dig Kingdra ~ Bounce Toxicroak

Cyclohm: Dragon Pulse Kingdra ~ Draco Meteor Kingdra ~ Dragon Pulse Kingdra”
-------Round 3, Switch Phase-------

Colossoil knocks out Tomohawk with one Thunder Fang, so this is good news for me. Anyway, I have many reasons to switch here. First, it lets Cyclohm move second if it is to come back out next round, which allows me to keep it on life support with endure, or at least waste one of Lou’s subs on the move and then absolutely hammer him with some sort of combo from hell. Second, Pyroak is nearly useless against Mollux, and this is probably the last round where Mollux won’t be making some sort of appearance, so I might as well milk that hulk for maximum power. Third, I might get a counterswitch, in which case second order would make my life amazing. Fourth, #YOLO.

“hmmmmm... yeah ok, Pyroak @ Shell Bell will be sent in to replace Cyclohm.”

-------Round 3, Order Phase-------

I’ve already covered how I do first orders, haven’t I? Let’s get down to business then. This round looks to be harder than the first (…welp)