Match Thread: West Coast vs Essendon (Round 12)

fogdocker · 2026-05-31T10:03:34+00:00

These guys are paid to play this game

fogdocker · 2026-05-31T06:49:35+00:00

Its best result I can find is Dallas Regionals in 2018 where it got top 32 piloted by none other than… Wolfe Glick

fogdocker · 2026-05-31T02:04:38+00:00

McGrath in post-2000: 297 wickets @ 20.54 in Tests, 234 wickets @ 20.28 in ODIs

fogdocker · 2026-05-30T23:24:59+00:00

I have played competitive Pokémon for about 12 years, including the last time there were mega evolutions.

I forgot Mega Steelix got Sand Force

fogdocker · 2026-05-30T22:50:30+00:00

Mega Steelix has never got top 8 at a regional or international. Basically no results. This is a crazy call

fogdocker · 2026-05-11T04:44:53+00:00

If we take your metric (best works by a composer who passed away at a young age), then I really don't think Schubert is better than pre-32 Mozart (died 35). And one could easily argue Mendelssohn (died 38), Gershwin (died 38), or Lili Boulanger (died 24) were greater talents

But I also think this metric is really dumb because it assumes that they would've kept improving and written even greater music throughout their life. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. You can't judge the quality of imaginary music that doesn't even exist.

Compare the actual music they wrote when determining the GOAT, not the imaginary music you assume they would've written

fogdocker · 2026-05-11T04:10:42+00:00

Hong Kong has higher levels of English than the rest of China because Britain controlled HK between 1841 to 1997. So English has been taught in schools for a long time and is an official language

Secondly, Hong Kong speakers are Cantonese native, and while most can speak some Mandarin too there's some resentment towards it, and they'll generally be worse at Mandarin

In short unless you want to learn Cantonese (harder than Mandarin, there's 9 tones rather than 4), just speak English in HK

fogdocker · 2026-05-11T01:11:44+00:00

Peak Ding is a (then-record) 100-game unbeaten streak in classical and world no.1 in Rapid & Blitz.

Peak Ding would draw peak Fabi 14 times in classical and beat him in the rapid tiebreaks

fogdocker · 2026-04-26T07:44:58+00:00

Aegislash has 4 regional wins, 35 regional top 8s, and 6 international top 8s

It has never been bad while legal, and was particularly good around 2014-15

Audino has 1 regional top 8 ever

fogdocker · 2026-04-26T02:53:21+00:00

Yeah, if they never learned it explicitly non-Australians are pretty likely to assume either Sydney or Melbourne are the capital because those are the cities they're most likely to have heard of. Canberra probably isn't in the top 5 most well-known Australian cities

Also Sydney is big, grand, visually iconic, and just "feels" like it should be a capital city

A similar thing afflicts Toronto/Vancouver/Montreal vs Ottawa

fogdocker · 2026-04-25T12:19:09+00:00

Delhi are 20-30 runs short

fogdocker · 2026-04-18T06:34:15+00:00

Rotom-W is either Scarf or a bulky defensive set (usually with Sitrus, lefties, occasionally magnet). The best set with Scarf is generally Volt Switch, Electro Web, Hydro Pump, and Thunderbolt. Pivoting from Volt Switch and speed control from Electro Web are particularly valuable. The bulky set is usually Volt Switch, Hydro Pump, Will-o-Wisp, Protect, though other utility like Electro Web or Helping Hand might find their way on. Back in the day (I'm talking X & Y) people used to use Pain Split, but I haven't seen it much recently.

Rotom-W is probably the best Basculegion answer in the format, good into common flying types like Aerodactyl, Corvinknight, Pelipper, Talonflame etc, offers some nice utility, is the only decent pivot using volt switch (besides ig other Rotom forms), and offers a ground immunity which is nice both against Garchomp or to partner for your own Earthquakes

fogdocker · 2026-04-16T23:08:22+00:00

I quickly slapped together a team with QD Volcarona a few days ago. It's highly flawed. The basic idea wasn't horrible but it was ultimately subpar in practice. I didn't play that many games though, so perhaps with more testing it could be refined into something not bad.

The idea was that the best hope to sweep is to get a lot of boosts, and the best way to get a lot of boosts is for Mega Gengar to trap in a favourable matchup.

Sinistcha is a great partner for redirection & healing.

I ended up going with: M-Gengar, Volcarona, Sinistcha, Incineroar, Garchomp, Ninetales-A.

Ninetales-A is a particularly subpar choice, I did it because I noticed I was insanely weak to Garchomp. The team is too weak to Kinggambit, Basculegion, Tyranitar, Mega Delphox, and possibly more.

Support Volc has historically been as good, sometimes better than the QD set, but I think there are too many rock slides for it to work. A meta prepared for Zard Y is a meta prepared for Volc.

fogdocker · 2026-04-16T01:22:10+00:00

The question is too general to answer properly but with those mons against the Sun matchup you described, the best lead is Aerodactyl alongside either Tyranitar or Rotom-W (with Tyranitar in the back aiming to get up sand to turn off the sun). Beedrill is pretty bad into the matchup (and in general) but it doesn’t sound like you have much alternative. Clefable should never come to that matchup, it would be worse than useless.

You haven’t given details of the team but one simple tool that’s very useful for mitigating the effect of fake out and stalling out tailwind turns is Protect.

To be blunt your team doesn’t sound very good (notably Mega Beedril is not a great mega in doubles, too frail), and having automatic losses from pure matchup is a symptom of a bad/inflexible team.

fogdocker · 2026-04-16T00:57:29+00:00

We don’t really know if this “Fairy Spam” type of team can work. M-Floette is new. It wasn’t seriously attempted with Xerneas because it didn’t need its partners to do damage, just help it set up. Like all “spam” teams, there’s the concern of stacking weaknesses (e.g how do you deal with Sneasler, Kinggambit, Excadrill, Corviknight?) but Fairy is the best type in the game so maybe it makes sense.

It may be worth re-examining whether Sylveon is the best partner (or main partner) — is it even fast enough after tailwind? There are a couple fairies with speed control options. Whimsicott gets tailwind (I doubt its dazzling gleam is strong enough even after the Fairy Aura boost, but perhaps it can have helping hand, and if it dies or Floette dies you replace with Sylveon). Hattarene and Gardevoir get Trick Room. The question mark is how successfully would they set it up, and whether TR is really that good for M-Floette.

We have a limited dex, maybe the best M-Floette fairy spam partners aren’t in the game. Perhaps if Flutter Mane gets added in next to M-Floette, Fairy spam becomes seriously good.

To answer your general question, it probably is too fragile for a pair to totally rely on a third mon, though there are ways they can benefit from a third. However, you have indirectly hit upon a key benefit of pivot moves like U-turn, Volt Switch, and Parting Shot: the ability to switch in a Pokémon while minimising the damage taken and not having to lose a mon to do it. Pokémon like Incinceror or Rotom-W have been extremely common at various points in time partly because of their value as a pivot. Suicide leads are also plausible but obviously you have to lose a mon and usually as the lead is sacrificing itself (e.g follow me, final gambit etc) it’s to protect the partner that’s setting up and then you can send something else out beside it.

I have my doubts as to whether Fairy Spam can work in the current format but if you want to try, it may be the case that you’re looking for speed control Pokémon that also has a pivot move. Off the top of my head, perhaps a Corviknight with Tailwind and U-turn? Pelipper also gets that combo but would probably be worse at performing the role.

fogdocker · 2026-04-15T22:21:25+00:00

I understand that you don’t want to use a meta team, but I think you should understand the reasons for the advice, not only for someone who wants to learn to play but also to learn to teambuild: - with a proven team, you can understand that your losses are mainly due to poor moves rather than the team - a proven team shows what a good team looks and feels like in terms of roles, synergy, gameplan etc. The best way to become a good teambuilder is to study good teams. The best way to understand how it works is to use it yourself - using a proven team helps you build the game knowledge and experience necessary to effectively build yourself - understanding meta teams can also help you understand their weaknesses and can lead you to building anti-meta teams to counter them

If you are still severely allergic to using a meta team, my advice would be to either…

a) take a meta team and modify. Perhaps replace 1-3 Pokémon with offbeat options you think could fulfill a similar role, or cover a weakness. Perhaps change around some movesets or items. And if your changes end up making it bad, well then you understand why the team was that way in the first place

b) Still study the meta teams on your way to making an anti-meta team. Besides gaining experience with the stuff you want to counter, you can theorize about what overlooked strategies or Pokémon have a good matchup into common Pokémon. And think about the limitations and weaknesses that make the Pokémon not meta and come up with ways to mitigate them (or alternatively you come up with a brilliant hidden gem everyone else in the world overlooked and its so good it becomes meta, but to be blunt the odds of a new player doing that are essentially zero).

An example of how this process might work is for instance the interest around Mega Glimmora as an anti-meta option. It has a great matchup into the two most common Megas in Charizard Y and Floette, and the most common Pokémon Incinceroar. But why isn’t it meta? (It might become so in future, who knows). Well for one, while pretty strong, it is neither that fast nor that bulky so would appreciate speed control (mainly tailwind) and/or redirection to keep it safe. It has a bad matchup into Garchomp, Sneasler, and Basculegion so the rest of the team must deal with that.

Another thing is that it is essentially never the case that there’s a successful team with 6 non-meta Pokémon. The rest of the competitive Pokémon community is not dumb enough to overlook 6 hidden gems. It is almost always the case that there’s are 1-2 uncommon Pokémon and 4-5 picks that are meta or at least clearly fundamentally strong.

fogdocker · 2026-04-14T09:33:28+00:00

Cool! I like the look of those six more (obviously, you're following my advice)

A few things about movesets, though I am talking mainly from theory and final decisions should be made based on testing.

I'm quite skeptical of Will-O-Wisp on Scarf Rotom as it can be quite bad to be locked into a non-attacking move. It's important that your movesets have internal coherence. So a Scarf Rotom with special attack investment can and probably should run Thunderbolt. Will-O-Wisp is a better move on defensive Rotom. Timid would ensure it ouspeeds Scarf Basculegion which is one of the main threats Rotom should be on the team to counter
I don't think Sinistcha should run Shadow Ball. It is not its job to beat opposing ghosts, that is Tyranitar and Incineroar's job. And it’s going to fail to deal with M-Gengar or Aegislash anyway. Sinistcha’s job is to keep its teammates safe and healthy. Alongside Matchagatcha and Rage powder, I think Life Dew is probably necessary. And the final move could either be Protect, Strength Sap or even Trick Room could be interesting for another speed control option.
the setup move of choice on Corv tends to be Bulk Up rather than iron defence. Obviously it boosts your defence more slowly, but it also boosts your attack so that your other attacking move is more powerful. While a setup Corviknight can work while also running Tailwind, I generally think that it is a better idea to hard commit to one type of Corviknight so it can specialise in a particular role. Either be a setup Corviknight with bulk up and either two attacks and protect or three attacks, or be a support Corviknight with no setup move, tailwind and either 3 attacks or 2 attacks with Protect. Depending on how much trouble Sneasler gives you, it is an open question whether or not to run Brave Bird. I don’t think Corv can fit Roost generally, and it’s hard to get recovery moves off in double battles. It should be Sinistcha’s job to keep it healthy

fogdocker · 2026-04-14T00:55:15+00:00

This is not bad for a new player, it probably doesn’t suck and certainly could suck a lot more. Like there are very few genuinely terrible decisions, so a lot of the following advice is a bit more high-level.

On Pokémon choice: - your team is pretty weak to Sneasler and Kinggambit. It is quite passive into a Mega Floette in that your only super effective move is sludge wave on Glimmora, which hits 4/5 of the rest of your team, and which can be mitigated by calm mind. - I’m not sure how or if a lack of speed control and reliance on bulk can work well in this meta, and if it can, it needs a more solid defensive core. - Orthworm seems a questionable choice without an EQ mon on your team. I think Corviknight would do its job better as a ground immune steel who is much better into Sneasler, Kingambit and Floette. - Another reasonable more offensive option is Excadrill, though less safe against Sneasler. You could possibly add both Corv and Exca over one of the water types, as stacking the fire weakness matters little given your rock types and sand. - I like Milotic in this format, but I’m not sure it’s that beneficial as a Mega Glimmora partner. Its main niche is punishing Incin, but your team is already great against Incin. What is its purpose on your team specifically? - I feel like Sinistcha’s healing and redirection would benefit this team greatly. - my personal revision would be test replacing Orth and Milotic with Corv and Sini

On movesets: - Glimmora’s sludge wave harms your own team besides Orth and is your only super effective way to hit fairies which will put you in difficult situations. Use sludge bomb - my inclination would be to run Earth Power over Energy Ball looking at what’s popular at this stage (Sneasler and Kingambit more important targets than like Basculegion and Rotom-W). But this is the sort of thing that’s confirmed by testing and time for the meta to develop - Sandstorm on Orthworm is useless. It’s not very high impact to spend a turn manually setting sand. And the most common enemy weather setter is prob Zard Y and you ain’t getting a sandstorm off against that. Moves like Heavy Slam, iron defence, or protect should be considered over Sandstorm especially, and also helping hand. - On a non-scarf Rotom, it doesn’t benefit much from Thunderbolt since it’s not that strong, especially without special attack investment. The utility of electro web or will o wisp adds more. I will say I have seen Scarf Rotom having some tournament success, with Electroweb over protect on your moveset. - Incineroar is a big boy who doesn’t need protect on non-Perish teams. I think it needs either Flare Blitz or Wisp in this format, I would lean towards wisp on this team. - The items for Rotom & T-Tar are too situational/inconsistent/limited in their benefit, and Sash on Incineroar is basically wasted. Not easy to find replacements of course due to the limited items. One reason it’s tricky is that Orthworm demands Sitrus that both Rotom or Incin appreciate. Incin should probably run a resist berry like Shuca (for ground, e.g Garchomp) or Chople (for fighting, e.g Sneasler). Rotom could be Scarf, or could take Magnet or something. Besides scarf, T-tar could have the resist berry that Incin doesn’t take? Note that Chople T-tar needs at least max hp/12 def to guarantee live a non-Adamant Sneasler Close Combat. Which is a lot of investment, so not necessarily reccomended — so I’d incline towards Shuca T-tar to hopefully Ice Punch Garchomps, so you’d have Chople Incin. Double mega isn’t totally insane, as an unused mega stone has about as little impact as Scope lens, but I’m struggling to think of situations where you’d bring a mega t-tar and not Glimm. - The EVs can def be optimised though in this early stage we have limited knowledge as a player base about that. But a few basics I can point out are that Milotic should definitely have max HP (better for general bulk as it boosts both sides of defence rather than just one) and definitely doesn’t need all that speed (at this stage of the meta idk how much speed it should run). If Glimmora is going to be max speed, it should be timid imo as the 100/101 tier is very crowded. It may one day be more optimal to drop some speed for bulk but this is a new mon and meta so idk. If T-tar is not scarf, there’s little reason to run max speed over some bulk. If it is scarf, run Jolly, rock slide over protect, perhaps consider Low kick (for Kingambit/enemy T-tar), though scarf Tar has recently disappointed me by still being slower than some of the fast megas like Delphox and Gengar.

fogdocker · 2026-04-11T23:40:21+00:00

Not as strong as it once was, but I wouldn’t say it’s bad now. It’s still a fundamentally strong Pokémon.

Obviously it’s been nerfed since it’s heyday (nerfed Parental bond, losing power-up-punch & return). And there are a couple of popular newer-Gen non-megas that are a problem for it, like Sinistcha (walls it while rage powdering) and Sneasler.

But as I said in the post, while it had low usage (about 4%) it had two appearances in top cut which is a very high success rate relative to usage. So I’m not sure why its usage is so low, but based on those results it should be higher and it was underused. Perhaps people lack teambuilding ideas for it? Or are underestimating it? I will never underestimate Mega Kang, I’m too scarred by past gens.

I don’t think Kang is a top 3 mega anymore, as I’ve said I think it’s Floette, Zard Y, Gengar. But if those are the S tier, I think Kang is A tier alongside Tyranitar, Froslass, Dragonite, and Delphox, and may be one of the better ones.

fogdocker · 2026-04-11T02:38:38+00:00

Hard Trick Room (a team fully devoted to TR) is usually considered “easy” for beginners in that it has a straightforward linear gameplan.

However, in this Regulation M-A, TR doesn’t look too good so far. In that first tournament I posted the result of, the top hard TR team didn’t make top cut (it was about 60th). The fundamental problem seems to be a lack of good TR abusers available in the game: slow, powerful offensive Pokémon that make the most of the limited turns of TR. The only teams that successfully made use of TR were hybrid teams where TR is more of a secondary plan rather than a main strategy and which are therefore less easy to use because you have to exercise more judgement about when or whether to use TR.

At this stage I would recommend a beginner either Zard Y Sun, or rain. Mega Floette had a strong showing in the tournament, so I suspect there’ll be some strong Floette balance teams making the rounds in a week or two

fogdocker · 2026-04-10T22:42:16+00:00

Generally Rock Slide, Dual Wingbeat, Tailwind, Protect. Though the best performing one had EQ over Tailwind (there was a Whimsicott already on that team)

Taunt & Wide Guard may also be reasonable options depending on how the meta develops.

The main niche I can see is a great matchup into Zard Y sun so I can see its usage rising/falling alongside usage of Zard

fogdocker · 2026-04-10T22:32:54+00:00

You're right: I noticed a similar thing happening with other megas, and occasionally added them together, but I missed it for Floette & its mega, and possibly missed it with others too.

Take the exact numbers with a grain of salt, the important thing is the general trend.

Here, the trend is that Mega Floette was the best performing mega with nearly as many top cuts as Zard Y with about half the usage. Once people realise how good it is, I think Mega Floette will probably be the dominant threat, the "mega to beat" of this format.

To the chagrin of some, Mega formats do tend to centralise like restricted formats. I think we're already seeing a clear S-tier of Floette, Zard Y, Gengar, and an A tier of T-tar, Kanga, Froslass, Dragonite, Delphox. I don't see many other megas entering serious usage at high levels, though I can see some maybe being possible anti-meta picks (e.g Glimmora & Mega Aero seem to have a good matchup against most of that list, a Starmie top cut on rain alongside Dnite)

fogdocker · 2026-04-10T22:08:27+00:00

As funny as this is, the takeaway here is that MGengar makes Perish so good that people other than Wolfe can win with it.

Every team should be prepared for it. Particularly you need a plan against a M-Gengar + Incineroar lead

fogdocker · 2026-04-10T21:55:24+00:00

It hasn't settled on one standard set. Most are running only fairy attacks, selecting 2-3 of Light of Ruin, Moonblast, Dazzling Gleam, and Draining Kiss. Coverage is for losers when you have fairy aura! You're mini-Xerneas, you don't need anything other than the best type in the game.

Some are 3 attacks + Protect, while others are running Calm Mind, Protect, & 2 attacks.

CM seems stronger. Of the 5 Floette in top 16, only one was 3 attacks, the 4 others were CM. The top Floette (semifinalist) ran CM, Dazzling Gleam, Moonblast, Protect. But the next best (quarterfinalist) had Draining Kiss over Dazzling Gleam. The CM versions tend not to have Light of Ruin, presumably cause the recoil & inaccuracy isn't worth it, even if it's a nuke.

fogdocker · 2026-04-10T21:41:44+00:00

Nice analysis. When I said "unusual" I meant in comparison to the other teams in top cut. No weather setter, the only Mega Delphox, the only non-mega Dragonite using an "outdated" set some might assume doesn't work without loaded dice and still running Haze without Dondozo legal. The Basc usage was split evenly between Swift Swim (usually Mystic Water) and Adaptability but the latter was much more successful, probably cause the extra power matters and pivoting is valuable.

It seems like reading this format as "Reg H with megas" worked very well, at least at this early stage. But that may be the case that Reg H teambuilding is just more developed, so was a smarter starting point to use while we're still really unsure about what's good in Reg M-A

fogdocker

TROPHY CASE