OU Player of the Week #4: Mazinger

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maybe this is heaven
is a Tournament Directoris a Forum Moderatoris a Top Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a defending SPL Championis a defending SCL Champion

Welcome to the SM version of OU Player of the Week! This project will feature interviews from some of the most accomplished and influential users in the tier so that we can learn more about them.
If there is a user that you would like to see interviewed be sure to let me know.

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Mazinger
most known for: SPL, used to be for playing but nowadays more people might associate me with hosting. Also I won best cong poster.
favourite pokemon: Tough one, think I'll have to go with Latias but this is liable to change any minute
most used pokemon: Garchomp? idk really

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself outside of Smogon?
I'm 20 years old, born and raised in Germany, currently studying at university. What I'm most passionate about is probably music, specifically hip-hop, but I also read a lot and follow local and global politics. Aside from that I mostly spend my time hanging out with friends or journeying through the internet. I used to play a lot of video games (some favorites are dota, metroid prime and okami), but these days it seems like the motivation is gone aside from the occasional game of pokemon or hearthstone. I don't think I'm the right guy to tell you about my own character, so I'm afraid there's not much else to talk about without getting into personal details.

Where did you get your name from?
For most of my smogon life I was just Ginku (it doesn't mean anything), but at some point I started using Mazinger on irc after this dropped. It's not my favorite song or anything but the name stuck. Shortly before SPL 7, McMeghan had the idea of changing it to Esteemed User Ginku as a call back to a certain series of events from season 5, so I went with that for a while. Then as I was getting ready to host season 8, rozes informed me that using that name as the host is kind of obnoxious, to which I agreed, so I had it changed to Mazinger. Sam wasn't having it though, so I was stuck with Esteemed SPL Host Ginku until recently.

How and when did you get into competitive Pokemon?
After having been a fan of the games for a long time I started entertaining the idea of playing competitively, made an account on PO where I became a mod after a while, met some cool people like Django and LuckOverSkill as well as some insane people like CrashinBoomBang and kokoloko, and was eventually banned for no particular reason in early 2012. I'm still banned (that's a quarter of my life) and I still don't know why, but there's not much to gain from being unbanned, so that's fine. We then moved to smogon which some of us had been tangentially involved with, and I guess the rest isn't part of the origin story anymore.

What’s your favourite generation of OU and why?
My favorite OU would have to be Black/White. I'm not sure if this is because of the gen itself or because it was the first one I played from its earliest stages or because it's where (I think) I peaked as a player, but it's definitely where I feel "at home," so to speak. More specifically I preferred bw1 over bw2 and am not the biggest fan of the current meta, but overall I just enjoy the pace of the games and the weather war dynamic. Honorable mention to GSC, vastly underrated gen.

What’s your favourite playstyle to use and why?
I generally stick to balance, it's just what I'm most comfortable playing and have the most experience with. I try to stay away from things like sm stall or bp because I hate the idea of just losing from turn 1. Other than that I don't mind playing any kind of team, but being too defensive gets boring and I hate having no options for defensive switching, so if I'm building myself it'll almost always be around some kind of offensive synergy with a defensive backbone.

What are your thoughts on the current metagame? How do you feel about SM in comparison to ORAS?
SM is quite enjoyable to play, but up until now I've found it really difficult to build in because it felt like you had to bring one of metagross or scizor (to counter metagross, if it's not hp fire) or face a disadvantage, with ash greninja and cb zygarde making things even more difficult because of the few viable grass types, not to mention volcarona almost mandating a 101+ scarfer that can ohko it. Still, as I said, the gen is fun to play, and in this regard I vastly prefer it to ORAS, although I must say that I never really actively played OU in the latter.

How do you feel about Mega Metagross being banned?
good

Do you believe that anything else deserves a suspect test in the near future?
I'm honestly not sure, so I guess I'll tie this together with the metagross question. As I mentioned, metagross was one of the factors that made it incredibly hard for me to build teams, and it had a strong influence on the metagame, so it's hard to tell right now what will be a problem when things settle down. Some people are talking about greninja, which I think is a possiblity, but it's far from oppressive, so I don't think an immediate suspect test is needed. Then there's the sableye crowd but sableye simply isn't good outside of its niche on full stall, so I can understand the council's position on it. I don't play a lot of stall but it seems like the thing that makes it so hard to break is Unaware, but then again I don't know if stall is even viable at all without it, so banning that might be going overboard. Overall I don't think anything sticks out as needing a ban this instant, so I'd rather wait and see for a while.

You recently hosted SPL. What was the biggest thing you learned from that experience? What were some of the most/least enjoyable aspects of hosting?
Well, I wrote an article about it, so the long answer is there. In short, I guess the main thing I learned (or I guess consciously experienced, since the idea itself seems pretty obvious) is that in most cases, arguing for a result that favors you is a lot easier than arguing for one that's fair. The most enjoyable aspect was definitely getting to watch all the games and hang out in team channels without any personal stake in it, which made things pretty light-hearted as long as there was no rules drama going on. Least enjoyable were the two bigs decisions at the end of week 9 and finals, as well as essentially having to be everyone's nanny because barely anyone seemed capable of solving disputes through communication.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone trying to break into the tournament setting?
I got pretty lucky myself by getting into spl through friends and going 7-1 in my first season, so I'm afraid my own experience doesn't offer much to learn from, but I think the best piece of advice is to try to get along with people and avoid stirring unprovoked drama, because chances are it's only going to make people less likely to notice if you're actually doing well in tournaments. I can't speak for everyone, but I know that if given the choice between someone who I know is decent at the game but doesn't get along with people and someone who might not be great but is pleasant to have around for my last 3k, I'd go with the second one every time. Basically, join official tours, hang out on smogtours, don't pick fights for no reason, and it should be a matter of time, unless you're bad. (If you are bad then not all hope is lost, but you'll need friends first.) If you have friends involved with tournaments from other areas of the site, try getting them to find you a spot on a wcop/spl team.

Who are some of your favourite people in the Smogon community?
Someone has to be first so I'll go with McMeghan, great player and just a great guy in general, one of the few people online I know I can trust. Then there's CrashinBoomBang who I've known for almost 6 years now and is always good for a laugh, though he goes overboard beefing with people. John is a coward who won't face me in combat for fear of another beating by sub sd marowak but he's also always been a pleasure to have around. Haven't known TDK and for as long as the othes but he's a good friend as well, was a great teammate in spl and helped me a ton throughout OST. We don't talk a whole lot these days but I've also always been a fan of Earthworm and babidi1998. Have to cut it short somewhere so a general shoutout to the people from #etc and its numerous successors will have to do, sorry to everyone I didn't mention by name.

Finally, can you provide us a team that you think reflects your current playstyle, with a brief explanation of how it works?
I could give you some cb zyg tangrowth shit but that's no fun, so
Zygarde-10% @ Life Orb
Ability: Aura Break
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Thousand Arrows
- Substitute
- Pain Split
- Toxic

Chansey @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 Def / 252 SpD / 4 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Soft-Boiled
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic
- Seismic Toss

Tapu Bulu @ Rockium Z
Ability: Grassy Surge
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Horn Leech
- Stone Edge
- Substitute
- Swords Dance

Magnezone @ Choice Specs
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Flash Cannon
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Volt Switch

Tapu Lele @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Psychic Surge
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psychic
- Moonblast
- Shadow Ball
- Focus Blast

Latios @ Soul Dew
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Psychic
- Roost
- Defog
When I found out that zygarde learns pain split, I knew I had found my true calling. Of course, the dog doesn't provide a whole lot of utility since it can't switch into much of anything, so after some futile attempts at building around it, I decided that the only archetype it could work in is chansey offense. Next, I needed an arrows resist and was tired of using tangrowth all the time and had ash greninja covered, so I went with bulu, who also does well against stall. Sub rockium seemed like the best set, but it needs magnet backup because it's walled by ferrothorn. I then realized that running chansey means I can run a scarfer that isn't chomp/keldeo/greninja/nihilego for once, so I put a landorus there, which was later replaced by lele. I'm really not sure which one is better because the spot isn't really needed for anything specific and both do a good job killing fast shit. For the last slot I figured I shouldn't be running chansey without hazard control, and tyranitar isn't everywhere for once, so I went with standard offensive defog latios and replaced life orb with soul dew because not taking 10% while attacking seems better than an 8.33% increase in damage output.
The game plan really depends on what the opponent brought, but generally it'll be to stay afloat and wear things down with dog and chansey, take out steels and then clean with the scarfer. The team is basically 5 pokemon and the added bonus of being the guy who brought sub split dog, so if you wish to bring it to a real game you should probably replace it with normal zygarde, either sub toxic coil to keep the spirit or just cb.
 
Who are you favorites to win Smogon Tour?

If you could ban/unban something from a past gen, what would it be and why?

Who are your top 5 players of all time on smogon?

any up and coming users people should keep an eye out in future tours?

Favorite music artists?
 
Bewear or p2?
Bewear is a deeply unsettling pokemon and p2 is an internet duck so that's an easy choice. If you're referring to users then I don't know who Bewear is but it's probably him because p2 is worthless.

who do you fuckin hate in smogon
"fuckin hate" is a strong choice of words so I don't think anyone presently qualifies, especially "in smogon" because stratos (who has no redeeming qualities that I know of) is banned. I once said Ununhexium disgusts me because he has no regard for human life but that was about a year ago and might have changed; if not then neither has my opinion. I guess some people would expect my answer to be Aldaron who in a way reminds me of an evil version of myself, so he gets a shoutout as well to satisfy popular demand.

whos the shittiest player uve played
The real answer would be some low ladder person I don't know, and it's hard to pick out the worst out of the bad people I've played and remember, so I'm going with WhiteQueen who provided no challenge whatsoever when we met in spl and has been on my nuts about it for the past 3 years.

Who are you favorites to win Smogon Tour?
I think this tour is super hard to predict, mostly because it seems like people in the top 16 are either not good enough to win, have already won, or are destined to fail, so I'll just stay loyal to the crew and say SoulWind blunder and Poek are my favorites.

If you could ban/unban something from a past gen, what would it be and why?
I'd unban sun from bw, the ban just never seemed convincing to me. Sun wasn't the strongest type of team in the metagame and relied on garbage pokemon to even exist, plus I think the metagame was more enjoyable with 3 viable weathers and not just 2.

Who are your top 5 players of all time on smogon?
I really don't know how to measure pokemon skill so my answer isn't worth much, plus level and time of activity aren't equal, so I'll just have to go with my gut, which tells me McMeghan and Earthworm are the easy answers, babidi1998 has always been very impressive when he's not bringing random shit, Bloo's skill can't really be denied, and while he's not an obvious pick Bluewind has gotten unduly lost in time so I'll give him a shout and let him know league of legends is trash.

any up and coming users people should keep an eye out in future tours?
Another hard question, mostly because I almost exclusively follow important games and thus mainly established players. As such, my answer isn't worth much yet again, but the only that comes to mind right now is obii who seems dedicated and isn't an idiot, which is like 90% of what you need to do well.

Favorite music artists?
I wrote a longer answer to a similar question in that one thread that got locked after a week (presumably for being something interesting in firebot, which we can't have), so I'll keep it short and make it a kind of overview: A Tribe Called Quest, MF DOOM, Outkast, Lupe Fiasco, Nas, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, no particular order.
 
idk, I generally don't mind weird shit but after one listen I can't say I'm a big fan of this, not really my kind of sound and a bit too scattered I think.

why did you not play wcop for the past few years?^^
I generally wasn't around or not active enough, didn't do well in the 2 years I played, have never been close to the german pokemon community and think national pride is a terrible thing

plus wcop is a farce
 
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