Battle Stadium Singles Premier League Teams and Recap

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 The eleventh edition of BSSPL recently concluded and I played and managed the Magic Meowscaradas alongside my friend Char. This was the first major tournament I played Champions BSS in and I am really happy with the teams I made this time around. I managed to use a different mega every week and perform quite well. Here are the teams I made for BSSPL XI.

Week 1 - PURPOSE GENERAL

Mega Scizor, Garchomp, Archaludon, Mimikyu, Rotom Wash, Mega Lopunny

    Week 1 of BSSPL put me against perhaps my toughest opponent right away, MichaelderBeste. Michael is not a BSS main, however he is a top tier player in all of VGC, Random Battles, and OU, so this would by no means be an easy match. Regrettably though, I didn't have a lot of time to refine my team this week, and ended up essentially using the first draft of what we had come up with, with some very minor optimizations. The basis of the team was this Mega Scizor set that I thought was really neat, with Curse and Night Slash to set up alongside and then crit its way through other Defense boosters like Corviknight and Archaludon. Everything else honestly had very minimal thought put into it and I really wish I had been able to dedicate more time to actually optimizing this team, as I was hoping to have a better match against Michael. Sadly, though, because of my lack of preparation and practice, I loaded a really tough matchup against Mega Starmie Rain, and proceeded to play particularly poorly, resulting in an 0-2 loss for week 1 of BSSPL. My team was able to secure the tie, thankfully, but I knew I would have to step it up in the coming weeks if we were to be able to make it far. 

Week 2 - moments of nothing and bridges to nowhere

Mega Charizard Y, Hippowdon, Corviknight, Meowscarada, Garchomp, Basculegion

    Week 2 put me against a new face to BSS, Silent Waltz. Waltz is a top OU player so he definitely has some pokemon experience, but BSS is another beast entirely, so I knew I could probably knowledge check him. The team initially started as a dual mega build with Mega Garchomp and Mega Charizard, but I very quickly ended up going back to base Chomp with an item. I decided to just go all in on supporting Charizard Y after my Garchomp experiment failed. Standard physically defensive Hippowdon was added as weather control and hazard support, and Corviknight was added with the rare Defog to allow Zard as much entry as possible. I opted for Overheat on Charizard as my last move in leu of any coverage, simply doubling down on firepower and relying on that to muscle through most things. Lastly, I added Basculegion, but since my Choice Scarf was on Meowscarada I opted for another build: Agility. Agility allowed Basculegion to lock down endgames just like scarf, but with the added benefit of being faster than most other Scarf users once an Agility is up. The tradeoff of course being that keeping Focus Sash intact to actually get said Agility off is rather difficult, but I was able to make it work in testing. 

    This set was one of the more lopsided of the season. I loaded a pretty good matchup against a Mega Scovillain team, and Charizard proved to be very dangerous. There was a slight scare with Flash Fire Ceruledge being revealed in game one, but I managed to play around it and win that game. In game two Charizard just swept from the word go, destroying Scovillain as it came in and not even allowing it to mega evolve, and a Dragon Tail miss from his Archaludon sealed the deal, though this wouldn't have mattered in the long run. The damage was already done by that point and all I had to do was get Charizard in again to close it out. Good fortune had smiled upon me somewhat, but I performed well regardless and I was confident that I had won regardless of any rng that happened. 

Week 3 - IT GET DARK IN THE NORTH

Mega Floette, Hippowdon, Archaludon, Basculegion, Sneasler, Mega Charizard X

    Week 3 put me against a new face, YouanMingxue. The biggest challenge here was scheduling, funnily enough. They are from China and I am from America, specifically Minnesota, so finding a time that was reasonable for both of us was something I was expecting to be difficult. The team itself was a lot of fun to put together. I wanted to us Floette and Charizard X since they have great synergy as Megas, covering each others problem matchups very well. Browsing blogs for sets and support casts for Floette I ended up coming across the mixed defense Hippowdon and shuffler Archaludon that appear on this team. In testing they ended up being extremely potent and often won games before either Mega had to hit the field. This team had a tendency to heavily soften up opposing teams and trade its defensive pieces, so Scarf Basculegion was an obvious addition. Sneasler ended up taking advantage of Floette checks and had the benefit of absorbing Toxic Spikes in the event I faced them. Finally, there were teams that ended up being difficult for Charizard but had something like mixed Aegislash to stop Floette, and we wanted to be secure in the event we faced something like that. Taking a page from Flutter Mane's book, we decided to use Charm instead of a coverage option on Floette. This did the trick, as barring Iron Head crits, Floette could neutralize Aegislash's threat with Charm and safely set up on it. 

    The set itself was pretty good. Game one was won almost single handedly by shuffler Archaludon. Once Hippowdon removed Garchomp, neither Scizor or Basculegion could break through Archaludon and it simply shuffled them into Foul Play range and won. Game two was over in a flash, Archaludon traded itself for Mega Dragonite and then we got to play guess the Charizard. Having not revealed my Charizard form in game one, I brought it in against their +2 Defense Corviknight to bluff Charizard Y. They fell for it, running away to Basculegion, which allowed me to get the Dragon Dance I needed and close the set out with a 2-0 win. 

Week 4 - NORTH LIKE KOREA

Mega Lucario, Garchomp, Aegislash, Archaludon, Meowscarada, Mega Dragonite

    Week 4 put me against mj, an all-rounder with a history mostly in Random Battles. I decided that shuffler Garchomp would be a good idea and wanted to build a squad that could take advantage of its support. Immediately, Mega Lucario came to mind. Its mind-bending power is made even more dangerous when everything has to eat hazard damage switching in, let alone is already weakened thanks to Garchomp's shuffling. Aegislash was taken as a bulky attacker capable of dealing with most checks to Lucario, and Archaludon taken as a faster Specially Offensive pokemon, this time utilizing White Herb to maximize immediate damage dealt. Meowscarada is the best Choice Scarfer in the metagame so that was chosen for my speed control and revenge killer. The backup Mega went through a few variations, the triple steel core, while powerful, obviously invites Ground-types and can be heavily annoyed by them. Dragonite was suggested by a teammate and performed excellently in testing, so by the day of the set it was my selected backup Mega. 

    Shuffler Garchomp almost single handedly won game one, with the Speed investment allowing it to continually shuffle around mj's team and pick off Ceruledge once it was forced to stay in. From which point Meowscarada and Aegislash simply needed to pick off the weakened Rotom and Scizor. Game two was even more dominant and showed Mega Dragonite's value immensely. My faster TankChomp got the jump on mj's slower variant and once again forced Ceruledge in and removed it thanks to the Speed investment, from which point Dragonite came in and simply needed to click Dragon Pulse and Flamethrower for Garchomp and Scizor, respectively, securing the 2-0 win. 

Week 5 - BAPTIZED IN ASH

Mega Mawile, Swampert, Corviknight, Gyarados, Garchomp, Mega Delphox

    The final week of the regular season put me against another Random Battles main in PigWarrior19. This week also marked the shift to Regulation M-B and gave us a whole host of new pokemon and items to play with. Initially I wanted to use Mega Dragalge, as its Corviknight stall core was proving incredibly annoying. During teambuilding I was coming to find this core has a lot of issues and does particularly poorly outside of a best of 1 environment. The team went through many different iterations until eventually settling on Mawile and Delphox as my Megas. I took Swampert as my hazard setter thanks to its ability to pivot via Flip Turn. This allows me to position Mawile and Delphox with pinpoint precision, which is very important when accounting for the fragility of them. Garchomp was selected as my Scarf user, which led me to picking Defensive Gyarados to round out the team and facilitate the rain matchup.

    This set was the first one of mine to go the full distance. I took a gamble on my opponents Charizard being X, and was punished by a Solar Beam deleting my Swampert turn 1. I was able to position Corviknight well, but my opponent saved Mimikyu for their last mon and I was thus unable to touch it with Body Press being my only meaningful damage source on Corviknight. Game two I was able to isolate and remove Mimikyu, and knowing Meowscarada was not the Scarf user allowed me to abuse Protean by forcing it to become an Ice-type via Triple Axel and then clean both it and Charizard with Rock Tomb from Scarf Garchomp. Game three I decided to pull the trigger with Mega Mawile. I knew that it had the potential to do tons of damage if positioned correctly, however the obvious threat of Charizard meant it was one of the riskiest things I could do. I led Garchomp into Meowscarada and immediately pivoted to Mawile, and then made the play that would win me the game. I revealed my coverage move to be Thunder Punch, and this successfully caught their Charizard, leaving it at just 5% HP. From there it was just a matter of positioning and making sure it couldn't roost off the hit. Eventually I was able to force a sacrifice and Charizard was said sacrifice. From there Mimikyu and Meowscarada were totally vulnerable to Garchomp's Earthquake and Mawile was more than healthy enough to come in and stop Meowscarada from freely revenge killing it. The set ended in a 2-1 win and one of the best sets of the tournament for me. My team managed to win or tie every regular season week, which put us in second place overall heading into playoffs.

Semifinals - DIRTY REALISM

Mega Venusaur, Hippowdon, Umbreon, Skeledirge, Garchomp, Mega Metagross

       Semifinals saw us running it back with Espathras but against a new opponent in Hex, who played my friend StarkGod the last time our teams played. My initial idea for this week was to use Swampert rain, I switched angles to screens offense, but towards the end of the week I was still finding the style to be incredibly unreliable. With just over a day before I was set to play I decided to make an entirely new team, which resulted in what you see here. Metagross is the main damage dealer with the rest of the team being almost entirely dedicated to getting Metagross in position to run through the opponent. Mega Venusaur was taken as a backup mostly against rain, but proved useful agains other bulky archetypes as well. This was also the first time we had tried Umbreon as a support pokemon this tournament, and we were very impressed with its performance. 

    Game one of the set was fairly quick, I brought the Metagross mode and ended up trading into a Skeledirge vs Mega Staraptor endgame. I was fortunate that they had saved Staraptor for last, as Garchomp being preserved could have easily made things difficult. With that in mind I decided to bring the Venusaur mode for game two. Hex also ended up going for a more defensive approach with their Toxapex mode. The game ended up lasting 50 turns, with both of us trying to out position and wear the opponent down. Thankfully I managed to come out on top and win the set with another 2-0, and with that, we were onto finals once more. 

Finals - UGLY SUNDAY

Mega Starmie, Glimmora, Umbreon, Meowscarada, Bellibolt, Mega Pyroar

    Finals put us against our week 5 opponent, and put me up against Irene; a player who I have gone back and forth with over the years. I knew the set would be doable, but I also knew that Irene is very familiar with my playstyle and capable of beating me. I briefly experimented with screens offense again before jumping ship to Mega Starmie, as I knew I could make a deadly core with it. Taking a page from other top players in Japan, I decided to pair Starmie with Bellibolt, forming a deadly pivot core that would allow me to position Starmie with pinpoint accuracy. After seeing Umbreon's potential as a supporter and how deadly Mega Starmie is when it has longevity, it was an easy addition to the team, Meowscarada came along yet again as a Scarf user to put the hurt on rain and setup sweepers, and then came the backup Mega; Pyroar. When testing this team Mimikyu was a constant annoyance, able to sweep at a moments notice without much in the way of recourse, especially if Starmie had a bad matchup. After mulling over options, we decided to just try Pyroar for a bit, and it ended up being exactly what we needed. Pyroar offers high damage output like any other Fire-type Mega, but it has the benefit of its Normal-typing allowing it to be a near perfect stop to Mimikyu and variants of Ceruledge that lack Close Combat. Glimmora was added as a hazard setter to assist in breaking down bulkier teams via Stealth Rock and Toxic Spikes, and with that the finals team was ready. 

    As anticipated this set was one of the most difficult of the tournament. Irene brought a very weird screens team with Shell Smash Mega Barbaracle as the main workhorse. I was caught out by it in game one, with Starmie failing to revenge kill with Aqua Jet thanks to Reflect. In game two I was able to stop Barbaracle and tie up the set, then we went to game three. I decided to lead with Meowscarada to put out as much pressure as possible, and was able to catch Irene's Mega Dragonite lead. She pivoted to Orthworm as I U-turned into Starmie to stop the Shed Tail attempt. Orthworm ran away to Dragonite once as I clicked Liquidation and broke its Multiscale. I unfortunately missed Zen Headbutt the following turn and was forced to take a Thunder Wave, but this was manageable. Bellibolt was able to come in and get the Toxic off on Dragonite while preserving Starmie for priority. Bellibolt caught Orthworm with a Soak and removed it with Volt Switch, setting the stage for Meowscarada. Irene revealed her last to be Barbaracle, and Bellibolt took its Earthquake and removed it with a boosted Volt Switch, isolating Dragonite and enabling Meowscarada to win the set with Triple Axel, and with that my season was complete, and all that was left was for my team to finish the job.

    We ended up finally managing to take home a BSS team tournament title this BSSPL, and I couldn't be more proud of everyone. We worked so hard every week, and in the end it was rewarded as we stood together as champions. Shoutout to my lovely cat gang, you guys made me so happy and watching all of you work together was a wonderful experience. Hold your heads high, you've earned this. Until next time.