i had a blast this tournament. it was a pleasure to (try and) help rope the team together, even if we were unsuccessful in some regards (@psychicmewtwo @yjh971203). as always the meetup was a fun part of the tour for me..... as ben said it's hard to know where to start.....

i'm very thankful to be a part of this team. everybody trusts the other to do what they can, the best they can. nobody is overly rude or tries to get their way at the expense of another. we listen to each other, we take reasonable input and suggestions, and we do our best to help each other. West has a certain tenacity. even when personal mistakes are made, the rest of the team is there. i'm grateful to have been able to draw from this, after losing a huge game in pools and personally spiraling the team into tiebreaks. but i'm also glad to have contributed hard fought wins to help us get to that point. i'm thankful the team trusted me, and I'm happy to have put trust in the rest of the team. no matter how bleak things looked, we always gassed each other up and looked for the brighter outcomes.

[B]@z0mOG[/B] you're amazing. not to belittle you or try to attribute myself to you, but you do remind me of myself starting out on the website. you're more successful than i ever was - and a better leader. you have an awesome ability to find the humor in any situation. you're always around and there to help. you're not incredibly self-involved and you don't toot your own horn - you don't let your ego get in the way. you have a joy of figuring things out and doing things in your own way. you have a natural ability to take on handle and handle responsibility. you can make decisions with all the variables in mind - no matter how dark some of those variables can be. you are and always will be a strong leader - for the community and any team you find yourself on. you have an interest in the history of tournaments, and you have contributed to that history yourself now. I have a lot of respect for you ryan and I look forward to working with you again in the future.

[B]Lavos[/B] i've known you since we bumped into each other on the Pokemon Online ladder. i remember breaking into tournaments around the same time as you, I remember spamming Genesect Duggy Rain when you were spamming Genesect Duggy Sun. how embarrassing it is for me to be here with you now. you've accomplished so much more than me over the years. you've accomplished complete mastery of the game. you've singlehandedly defeated the 'greatest players' in their own archaic tiers. meeting you in person was an absolute treat. you're a super down to earth guy. this post-tournament drama has me livid man. you're one of the players on the team that deserves the trophy the most. you're the best player on the website.. and I have a strong feeling this is not the end. we will certainly have the opportunity to meet again.

[B]@Philip7086[/B] you're a legend. you're an absolute legend. you're veteran, upper echelon, and I think that has made it hard for us to connect in the past. at the start of my smogon tenture, I was bottom-sucking meme-y, click-click mindless offense guy figuring things out for myself. I was always too loud and rude towards others outside of my circle. i've never been considered a top player by the smogon elite, i've never paid them heed or communicated with them in a respectful way. the culture I started pokemon in rewarded those who were loud, made the flashiest plays, and talked the most crap. in retrospect this is a pretty cancerous mentality and I've done my best to dial that back with my return to the tournament scene. meeting you was so humbling phil. you've always been a part of the community way above my head. being able to sit down, talk and hang out with you was a very grounding experience. you're an exemplary person, not only in this community but also in life. you have your shit figured out, and you're able to use that as a way to help and guide others. thank you so much for contributing and seeing us at the meetup. congratulations on all of your recent success, congratulations on your house, and congratulations on this tournament. you're gunna be a crazy good dad.

[b]@undisputed[/b] Kevin SWOLE :swole: What a beast! One of the few to have been to both Westcons.. We've known each other for a long freaking time. You were on my first tournament team (SPL 4 BIGs .. my only negative tournament record .. you probably loved me!). I loved your reference earlier in the season to our BW suspect test ladder games .. I specifically remember how hard your Tentacruel was to kill then. I've been trying to win a smogon trophy for all these years now.. And it feels surreal to finally win one. It's a pleasure to win alongside you. Undi, you carried us magnificently and completely. Our tournament came down to your tiebreaker game against South, and you know what, I wasn't worried about it then. You're an absolute animal, and you carried the team on your back on multiple occasions. You're a beast, you're a savage, you're the best ADV player on the site, prove me wrong.

[b]@Oristeros[/b] i definitely had mixed feelings about you in the beginning. your addition to the roster was last minute, and I was weary about moving lax out of bw after a solid performance last year. but after hearing that you were old friends with hugo, and meeting you in SF, a lot of my worries were eased. you're one of the few on the roster that have won both years West has made it. you holding down bw opened up lax to play and carry in another tier. you nabbed crucial wins that we would not have qualified the playoffs without. admittedly I didn't get to know you this year. we had a plethora of bw support and I had the feeling the help you got from lavos and z0mog would be more accurate and sturdy than my suggestions. bw is a very volatile and specialized tier. i think you did a fantastic job of picking the metagame back up. you have a good understanding of gamestates. I hope that you will stick around the tournament scene, and I hope to get to know you better in the future.

[b]@craing ;_;[/b] Ben Gay. of all the people i've played over the years, no one has had my number quite like you. i've always been able to take a game or two off of people, no matter who they are. not you man. i remember sitting there, challenging you game after game, just to lose one after the next. you are and always will be a better player than me. you have such a deep understanding of the game and all of the possible gamestates moving forward. that allows you to thread incredible plays together - plays that no one else would consider. this allows you to leap ahead in matchups were you should lose. but it can also bite you if your opponent does not play accordingly. this is why you also change your gameplan based on how good your opponent is. you take so many factors like this into consideration that most people don't even know to think about. you think about the nature of the game you're going to go into - the opponent, the time, the day, the scheduling, the tournament scenario. pokemon they've used in the past, pokemon they haven't used in the past. these are just the obvious things .. you take every external factor surrounding a game and find a way to use it to your advantage. you have a deeeeeeeep understanding of pokemon as a whole and the current metagames. nobody alive has such an extensive framework of the tiers burned into their minds. this allows you to build any sort of team you want, using whatever crazy, offbeat pokemon you can think of. because you're going to cover the general metagame as best you can regardless of what it is you're using. or, whatever you expect out of a specific matchup. these factors and so many more make you a unique individual. you've got a mind like no other, and boy have you gotten results with it. it is important for you to have other people to help you direct this, though. otherwise you're likely to go too far off and lose your grounding in reality. ben, you're such a strong consistent player. making it to the finals of OST twice is so freaking ridiculous man. i've made it there once and couldn't imagine making it there again. this demonstrates unparalleled consistency. you built the heavy majority of our SM teams, and they all worked out man. thank you for giving so much of yourself to the team. can confirm that my SM loss this tour was with a z0mog team. you're an extremely unique individual and it was awesome to meet you. i'm sure we'll have the opportunity to do so again in the future. cheers dude.

[b]@lax[/b] LAX ON RAX ON STAX. We're looking at a god damn CHAMPION here. Lax, it's embarrassing for me dude, our relationship started out on the wrong foot. I was one of the people that didn't want you on West three~ years ago. I'm looking all types of foolish now, I hope we're cool now. You've been chill to hang out with IRL, we've had good times in SF. I'm not sure at what point it was but you overtook me in CG OU man. In the test games we played this year you blew me back. You have such an aggressive, but somehow methodical style when you play. It's honestly just a pleasure to watch you safely, but still dominantly, overpower your opponents. You're the most dominant SM OU player on the website - I'm gunna go ahead and say Lax Top 1 SM OU.

[b]@blarghlfarghl[/b] Oh my LORD. What the f*ck dude. In my efforts to bring as many players back from last year, you and I started talking on PS a few months ago. You had lost touch with a lot of the team and there was some supposed beef between you and z0mog. After hearing about that, and seeing you act like a general annoying f*g in general chats, I wasn't so sure if this was going to be such a good idea. But you had already joined back to the West discord and maybe there was no going back. You did relieve a lot of my worries in some conversations we had, but I really felt bad for the #wcop discord throughout the duration of the tournament. While I will often join in to control the flow of a general chat, one thing I noticed about you is that you can hold your own in any situation. No matter how rude people are to you, or how much they poke you, you always manage to construct a good comeback on the spot. This is a trait that annoying people SHOULD possess - if you're going to be active, loud, and out there, that's an important trait to have. But noticing this also helped me realize that you're totally fine on your own. As troll as you are, as loud as you are, as annoying as you are, you're decent at pokemon man. Of course, I still crush you when we play (there was that ONE you got off me..). It was awesome to team with you again blargh and you're a big part of the New West. i'm glad we all came together and you did an amazing job in the playoffs. i hope that you can make it to the next meetup, it would be awesome to meet you. burrito gang.

[b]@rozes[/b]

[b]@Meru[/b]

[b]@ima[/b]

[b]@Mithril[/b] [b]@Shiba[/b]

[b]@Zepherox[/b] thank you for stepping onto the big stage when we needed you most.

[b]@imsosorrylol[/b] thank you for popping in (now and again) to offer teams and a fresh perspective on our SM OU builds. thanks for sharing some of your music. you sound like a trippy dude and I hope you're able to make it to a meetup.

[b]@emforbes[/b] congrats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU263Ud3LM4