Project The NU Battle Study Thread

[Evan.]

Approved by: Raseri
Status: Open
Art: None yet! metaphysical pls

Hello everyone, it's Can-Eh-Dian back with another new project in the NU Subforum. After starting the lab and being a part of it for a pretty long time, I had a great time helping the community and building all sorts of teams for people to use. However, after a while I lost my dedication to the project and lost my interest in building teams in my spare time. I instead started watching and trying to analyze replays in an effort to better myself as a player. I realized that outside of my group of friends, there wasn't really anywhere I could share and talk about my replays or high-level replays (SPL, late round NU open) in an effort to learn more about battling and how to improve. In an effort to rectify that, I have talked with Raseri and decided to open this project where you can do post your replays, and get hopefully constructive feedback from myself. Here users can post replays where:

• they didn't understand how they lost / won
• they want feedback on how they played / how they could improve in the future
• want an explanation for a play that they didn't understand

Now i'm not a god when it comes to Pokemon and i'll be the first person to tell you that, so please don't expect me to be some absolute don that understands everything and will fix all of your battling woes. I'm going to be helping people better understand competitive battling through experiences they had to the best of my ability. If you don't agree with my thought process, or think something I said was wrong, feel free to post your thoughts. I actively encourage discussion in a thread like this, since it makes everyone better because of it, just keep it civil though.

Rules:

- Have a short description with the replay you submit that explains why you submitted said replay for analysis. It just makes it easier for everyone.
- Do not post replays that show off your latest 6-0 with belly drum poliwag, or how you bodybagged the guy running an all NFE team. I can and will reject replays that I feel won't bring any benefit through analyzing them
- Do not post replays that have already been posted. If it looks like I forgot your post, kindly drop me a VM and i'll make sure to analyze it as soon as possible
- If you have any suggestions to improve the thread, feel free to PM me about anything.

 

[XenoTech N]

OK I guess I'll start this thing off (Yay).
What could I have done differently here that would have helped me win?
Edit: It was a really good game kudos to tennis.
Dis edit: hi I'm going to bump in here with a Cool Forum Feature that I think this thread would benefit from knowing

[replay]nu-273691307[/replay]

this will produce a replay in your post like so
[replay]nu-273691307[/replay]
Everyone should take advantage of this feature, it's really neat!

Edit: Disjunction would it have been too hard to make a seperate post?
Dis edit: people would have accused me of Like farming and I'm already used to hi-jacking all of your posts

 

[Blast]

OK I guess I'll start this thing off (Yay).
What could I have done differently here that would have helped me win?
Edit: It was a really good game kudos to tennis.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-273691307

Js but that wasn't tennis, iplay3dslol is actually that guy's main for some reason lol

Anyway I don't think there were too many bad plays on your side, the game became a lot harder to win once Vileplume got frozen which forced Samurott to take excess damage that it couldn't afford to. Although I feel you did misplay with your Pawniard at a couple of points; during turns 14-15 it would've been better to switch Pawniard in first then sleep fodder Claydol, since you really needed it awake and healthy to check Klinklang (your opponent couldn't afford to Sleep Powder vs Samurott and risk Lum Berry). It also went in hand with turn 22 when you switched it into Missy and sacked it to D-Gleam; it would've been better to bring in Rhydon on the Nasty Plot, since assuming you were the standard Tank you could have lived a +2 Shadow Ball, and then Rock Blasted and brought it down to where Samurott could've revenged with Aqua Jet. And from there the combination of Otter, Pawn, and Sawk would've won.

 

[Evan.]

OK I guess I'll start this thing off (Yay).
What could I have done differently here that would have helped me win?
Edit: It was a really good game kudos to tennis.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-273691307

haha thanks for being the 1st person, i was about to make a sample post but you beat me to it. Also sorry to say but that wasn't tennis you were playing, just an impersonator haha. also ninja'd by blast

anyways looking at your replay, at team preview i would have identified Jumpluff and Klinklang both as major threats, more Jumpluff than Klinklang actually, and I would have identified Samurott as your win condition. Blast beat me to it with playing around the Jumpluff with Pawniard since you took a ton of unnecessary damage and ended up weakening your rhydon to the point where it couldnt come in and live a +2 Shadow ball. Blast pretty much covered everything, but one play that i didn't really get was the double on Turn 4. Assuming that Jumpluff was his primary switch-in to Samurott (which it should have been) it probably would have been better to just Waterfall and get off damage since he didnt have a lot he could switch in. This would have helped you late game either way by weakening the jumpluff or the klinklang to a point where rott could win late game.

 

[XenoTech N]

haha thanks for being the 1st person, i was about to make a sample post but you beat me to it. Also sorry to say but that wasn't tennis you were playing, just an impersonator haha. also ninja'd by blast

anyways looking at your replay, at team preview i would have identified Jumpluff and Klinklang both as major threats, more Jumpluff than Klinklang actually, and I would have identified Samurott as your win condition. Blast beat me to it with playing around the Jumpluff with Pawniard since you took a ton of unnecessary damage and ended up weakening your rhydon to the point where it couldnt come in and live a +2 Shadow ball. Blast pretty much covered everything, but one play that i didn't really get was the double on Turn 4. Assuming that Jumpluff was his primary switch-in to Samurott (which it should have been) it probably would have been better to just Waterfall and get off damage since he didnt have a lot he could switch in. This would have helped you late game either way by weakening the jumpluff or the klinklang to a point where rott could win late game.

I was Scarf Sawk, and since Rott can't do jack to Jumpluff, going into sawk and hitting it with Ice Punch was the best play I had I felt.

Js but that wasn't tennis, iplay3dslol is actually that guy's main for some reason lol

Anyway I don't think there were too many bad plays on your side, the game became a lot harder to win once Vileplume got frozen which forced Samurott to take excess damage that it couldn't afford to. Although I feel you did misplay with your Pawniard at a couple of points; during turns 14-15 it would've been better to switch Pawniard in first then sleep fodder Claydol, since you really needed it awake and healthy to check Klinklang (your opponent couldn't afford to Sleep Powder vs Samurott and risk Lum Berry). It also went in hand with turn 22 when you switched it into Missy and sacked it to D-Gleam; it would've been better to bring in Rhydon on the Nasty Plot, since assuming you were the standard Tank you could have lived a +2 Shadow Ball, and then Rock Blasted and brought it down to where Samurott could've revenged with Aqua Jet. And from there the combination of Otter, Pawn, and Sawk would've won.

That was a misclick, I actually did mean to go into Pawn lol.

 

[TTFTW]

[replay]nu-269151502[/replay]

I lost, however I feel like a could have played better and won. I made some misplays early game, tried to fix those later on with agressive plays but ended up not working out and I lost. What were my mistakes?

 

[Brawlfest]

[replay]nu-269151502[/replay]

I lost, however I feel like a could have played better and won. I made some misplays early game, tried to fix those later on with agressive plays but ended up not working out and I lost. What were my mistakes?

Hmm I think you didn't actually play that poorly, you just had an insanely hard time dealing with that Scyther. SD U-Turn Scyther outright beat Gurdurr, Audino, Xatu, and Shiftry which made the game just a stupidly hard matchup for you. The fact that it got an early game crit on Lanturn to take off 70% only furthered the problem. In order for you to have even had a chance to win you would have needed to preserve Piloswine at turn 9 rather than allowing it to chew a Iron Head / Rock Climb which honestly sealed your fate with 0 Scyther checks left. With such a poor matchup I don't really think there is really any point going any deeper into plays because tbh if I was in your shoes idk that I could have won a match like that anyways.

 

[Machineae]

This is from the Dark Horse project. The team itself is pretty shitty, but I'd still like some advice.
[replay]nu-278617241[/replay]

I have trouble with a few things in some of my games:

• Finding the opportunity to get up hazards
• Playing around Jynx

I identified the biggest threats immediately to be Jynx+Garbodor. Jynx can just sleep anyone for free if they lead with it. I can't even beat it with my scarf Mag because they usually carry sash, so I have to rely on their sleep miss. Garb is a threat because I carry DE on Kanga, so recoil+rocky helmet is dangerous, and Kec has LO so I have to be careful with sending out physical attacks. I also don't have a spinner as you can see. Right now for the project I'm going without one, but later on I'd like to change the team a bit without swapping out the main two mons I built around (Lap+Basc) so I'll have a spinner on the revamped team. Anyways, I've handled Garb in the past w/ this team by using Basculin. People still expect the physical version primarily, so chunking them with surf and having them get real low makes it easier on my physical threats. The last couple turns were pretty clutch because of Kecleon. If I had burned his Colbur earlier somehow I would've won :< Although I feel like I played really badly.

 

[Kiyo]

This is from the Dark Horse project. The team itself is pretty shitty, but I'd still like some advice.
[replay]nu-278617241[/replay]

I have trouble with a few things in some of my games:

• Finding the opportunity to get up hazards
• Playing around Jynx

I identified the biggest threats immediately to be Jynx+Garbodor. Jynx can just sleep anyone for free if they lead with it. I can't even beat it with my scarf Mag because they usually carry sash, so I have to rely on their sleep miss. Garb is a threat because I carry DE on Kanga, so recoil+rocky helmet is dangerous, and Kec has LO so I have to be careful with sending out physical attacks. I also don't have a spinner as you can see. Right now for the project I'm going without one, but later on I'd like to change the team a bit without swapping out the main two mons I built around (Lap+Basc) so I'll have a spinner on the revamped team. Anyways, I've handled Garb in the past w/ this team by using Basculin. People still expect the physical version primarily, so chunking them with surf and having them get real low makes it easier on my physical threats. The last couple turns were pretty clutch because of Kecleon. If I had burned his Colbur earlier somehow I would've won :< Although I feel like I played really badly.

The biggest issue I saw with this game is that you were backed into a corner early by having a poor lead matchup and were forced to make predictable defensive plays throughout the early game which Orphic was able to take advantage of. since you identified Jynx as a major threat to your team I think your primary concern should have been to lead something that forced it out (i.e. Kangaskhan) you may have been trying to do this with Lapras, but Lapras really cant do much to Jynx offensively and gives Orphic a free Lovely Kiss. Leading with Kangaskahn in that situation puts you in a much better position as you threaten to break a potential sash with Fake Out and threaten the turn after with Sucker Punch, in that situation you can realistically assume the Jynx user will switch to their best Fake Out answer which is either Kabutops or Garbodor. If you predict the Garbodor correctly you have the opportunity to smash it with something like a Surf from Basculin, by constantly applying this offensive pressure you acquired at lead matchup you're forcing his threats to your team out and forcing him to take damage on the switch (which is essentially what he did to you for the first 6 turns). When you're in control of the match like this dictating when hazards get set up is more in your control, you can freely get garbodor in on Kecleon if he's forced to use that to check your Basculin for example, I dont necessarily think hazards were the most important part of this game (I think constantly keeping momentum on your side was) but in general the theory is you come in on a predicted attack and get hazards on the switch ( preferably an attack you force the opponent to go for, so they dont double predicting you and gain momentum) when you're in control of the game and you see hazards benefit you more than threatening the opponent with attacks, then you can create ample opportunities to get hazards up.

I'm tired as hell and typing this on a school computer so hopefully what I said makes some sense. The concept of keeping up momentum and offensive pressure seems easy in theory, but can be difficult to master in practice, trying to think 2-3 turns ahead with predicted switches / attacks can often help you swing the game in your favor.

 

[Machineae]

It definitely makes sense. I'm pretty shit at using offense teams because I often don't think more than a turn ahead and can't create offensive pressure and end up being pushed back. I used to do good in gen4 but after a break spanning bw2-oras I lost all battle sense :/ It usually only shows against really good players but yeah. I felt Lapras would be my best lead in general vs his time because I wasn't sure what he'd go for. I was thinking he might try and set up spikes immediately because I have no spinner so I wanted a strong special attack to fire off, and when I saw Jynx lead off I thought Lapras being slept is probably the least damaging for my team.

I definitely agree with what you've said with momentum and pressure, I need to work on it big time. Thanks so much man, you're always helping me out and giving great insight.

 

[honchkrow]

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-284920453

Here's a neat battle i had vs Blaziken1337.

[12:00:11] +tennis: wait what do i say
[12:00:13] +tennis: since i won
[12:00:20] +tennis: :x
[12:00:21] &raseri: ras said to post here so this thread lives haha