gen9_regd_s9

I went into this season basically trying to decide if competitive Pokemon is actually fun to me. Playing to Master Ball is extremely fun, it's fairly low commitment and you can make weird teams work just to get there. But I wanted to try really getting into it and studying matchups, and trying to win. More thoughts on this later. My PB was #359 but I hovered in mid/low thousands most season.

This team is a Trick Room team. The whole team is slow (compared to the super fast meta), but not extremely slow. The very fast teams can overpower it immediately, and the very slow Trick Room teams will beat it if they get set up. But in general, the ability to beat other Trick Room teams out of Trick Room, and then beat most non-Trick Room teams in Trick Room- it all works out nicely.

Meowscarada: The prime Trick Room setter. This had max Attack and Speed. This is a fast Pokemon so in Trick Room, it's going slow. But part of why I made a Trick Room team is that I felt the entire meta was so ridiculously fast, that even a 252 EV Speed Meowscarada is still getting outspeed by so much, that in actuality in Trick Room it sometimes was going early. The hardest part of playing this team is turn 2, because you have to decide what to do with Meowscarada. It's either hard switch, or Sucker Punch. I originally had U-Turn on this set but I opted for Taunt. I'm a little indifferent on which one I like better, but someone on the team needed Taunt I felt. I almost never Tera Ghost, but there were a few times where I used to block a Close Combat from Urshifu. Meowscarada fell out of favor in the meta I feel, but it's still such a good Pokemon in the right context - Flower Trick is incredible and Meowscarada has a ton of versatility in playstyles.

Gallade: Gallade often lead with Meowscarada, and would Wide Guard, which almost no one was ready for on Turn 1. What a badass role Gallade had on the team. Sharpness is such an incredibly powerful ability, so he would hang out in Trick Room and unleash very strong attacks. His speed is slow but faster than the extremely slow Pokemon like Torkoal and Amoonguss, so out of Trick Room he can deal with them. Safety Goggles caught many Amoonguss off guard. Sacred Sword + Sharpness is just so strong, and Psycho Cut's crit chance legitimately helped in the long run. I ran Night Slash instead of Feint for awhile, but I felt that Feint was much more of a surprise. Bulky Psychic types like Cresselia hard walled Gallade unfortunately because of that, but Feint helped me deal with the onslaught of Pokemon that would spam Protect in Trick Room to stall out the turns. Gallade's natural Special Defense came in clutch a lot, and Tera Steel was especially helpful for anti-Fairy. Gallade really surprised me and was very fun to play with.

Iron Hands: This is probably the least interesting of the crew and is a pretty common Pokemon in the meta, but it really complemented the team well. It just lives, forever. It is crazy to me how he takes STAB Earth Powers from Gastrodon like it's nothing sometimes. The most notable thing about this Iron Hands is that I swapped Drain Punch for Brick Break. It was a hard consideration but I saw a ton of Grimmsnarls on ladder, and I immediately went from losing almost every Grimmsnarl battle to winning them. Tera Grass for obvious anti-Amoonguss and survivability

Baxcalibur: I used this Pokemon the least, but Baxcalibur had a very specific role against Landorus-Therian, who really was a gigantic problem for the rest of the team between Intimidate and Ground/Flying coverage. Baxcalibur also dealt with non-Fairy teams really nicely. Any time I could find a team that was either weak to Ice Shard or Glaive Rush spam, I'd bring him. Admittedly that wasn't a lot, but when Baxcalibur gets a Swords Dance and starts Ice Shard'ing the enemy, it's incredibly powerful and hard to stop. I never really settled on a Tera I liked for Baxcalibur, but defensive Tera made the most sense on it. I used to use Ursaluna on this slot for awhile, and although I think Ursaluna is incredible, having to basically burn another turn in Trick Room to get setup with Flame Orb/Guts would sometimes be too much. But I definitely missed Ursaluna routinely.

Gastrodon: The tank. In the right situations, especially with a Tera Poison, Gastrodon lived forever. A handful of battles came down to Flutter Mane vs. Gastrodon, and Tera Poison Gastrodon tanking Moonblast and Yawning the enemy then deleting it. Gastrodon's ability Storm Drain basically forcing enemy Urshifus not to come to battle on team preview/select is very powerful. Tera Poison covered for Rillaboom, one of the few actual Grass Pokemon around (and Rillaboom was everywhere).

Enamorous-Therian: I took a pretty big gamble with this Pokemon being on the team but it really worked out. It's a coverage machine and basically if I got Trick Room set up and was able to get Enamorous out, it secured knockouts left and right. Life Orb Moonblasts do so much damage from this thing, and it's quite tanky. Tera Electric helps against the numerous Water Teras running around, and often I would do it preemptively on Urshifus that would Tera Water (when they were expecting Moonblast). I think I probably would have gotten more usage out of Dazzling Gleam over Mystical Fire, but there were definitely times where lowering Special Attack was clutch. Earth Power caught many Heatrans off guard. Overcoat ability is super good for this Pokemon too. Big fan of Enamorous, but it really needs Trick Room to shine.

Overall the team handled the onslaught of other teams well. The extremely meta teams would still beat it. Chien-Pao and Dragonite would just cleave through and I really never got a good solution to them (and a few others). But I would have favorable matchups against a lot of non-meta teams, and honestly people just didn't know how to handle the mixups on Trick Room (but not always Trick Room).

Calling out one play that was probably highlight of the season. In battle, 1 more turn of Trick Room and I needed Trick Room up. I hard predicted a double Protect, then I did a double Trick Room with Meowscarada and Gallade (back when Gallade had it, before Feint) to reset the Trick Room timer. It was awesome

So trying to answer the question of whether or not I think competitive Pokemon this time was fun or not while taking it seriously.. it's kind of a mixed bag. I sometimes think that comp is really great. The randomness is sometimes a bit much but generally it's fine. It is very fun to learn how the meta works and to make small alterations to your team that help it in the long run. For example, I began to understand more about how players would use Fake Out, and playing around it with smart call outs was really rewarding. I don't even really mind losing (though of course I want to win) - a good battle is always fun to me. And executing the grand design of your team and getting rewarded for it is a great feeling. Trick Room is a very committal strategy, but having options in and out of Trick Room, and also being able to almost always get Trick Room going if I really wanted it, all of that is really fun. And you feel the improvement of making better calls as you stick with a team.

My main criticisms with comp come down to a few things. Sometimes I feel like EV customization in general is a little too off the rails. Bear with me on this example, and I've been holding back this whole pastebin but man, Flutter Mane is legitimately not fun to play against, and it's so dominant in the meta that it defines the rest of the teams around it. The amount of insane privilege this Pokemon gets for free is just ridiculous, between its incredible typing, accurate moves, and amazing stats (55/55/55/135/135/135). Straight up, I don't know what they were thinking. Despite Flutter Mane's "bad" HP/Def stat, it can invest EVs to be bulky and survive so much. As the player trying to combat something like Flutter Mane, getting basically 1 turn to "guess right" on the EV spread and item choice feels like it's completely stacked against you. One (even slightly) wrong call means Flutter Mane is either Choice Specs Dazzling Gleaming your team to death (even when resisted), or has Focus Sash/Assault Vest and kills you anyway when it doesn't die and gets so much for free, or Flutter Mane decided to use Moonblast instead of Dazzling Gleam, so you're dead in a different way. My point is that one of the coolest things about Pokemon team building and customization, EV spread management, also feels completely busted in the hands of certain Pokemon to the point where the guessing game isn't very fun to me. I don't think a good strategy game in abstract should have this element of 'guess wrong once and lose', and I can't help but feel like it's pretty common with a ton of these meta Pokemon (Flutter Mane, Dragonite, Chien-Pao and Urshifu in particular)

The ladder is probably part of the problem - I do think that open team sheet is probably more fun than on ladder, because you could probably intuit a lot out. Like I said, losing battles doesn't bother me. But getting swept by some surprise "home cooked" bullshit is not really fun either, and it's pretty common. And when you start to think about it, after considering the extremely meta teams (featuring Flutter Mane and Urshifu raining hell) and the jank ass teams that sweep you because Drifblim got Double Team off and you could never hit it, it starts to feel like the good & fair fights you get are pretty low. And when I think about wanting to play more long term and get into comp more, I get pretty discouraged

Lastly, I kinda can't believe there's only one ruleset for VGC at a time. I almost definitely won't be playing when legendaries start appearing more and more. Regulation D was overall pretty fun but I cannot say that I think the onslaught of legendary Pokemon coming into play sounds appealing to me at all. It'd be awesome, even if they were ladder only, to have other leagues or rulesets (like UU or something)

All in, I definitely had a good time playing Regulation D Season 9. It was a fun team to play and experiment with. I still can't really decide if I think comp is like, a good thing to stay into longterm, but I often lean towards "unless you super go into it hard, it's probably not" Without a doubt, solely getting to Master Ball with pretty much any team you want is mad fun. But past that, especially on ladder, it feels like the fun factor drops off hard, and it's really about convincing yourself that getting a high rank means something. But the good battles made it worth it too. GG