At ladder season 1's conclusion, I thought I'd do a write-up of the first original team that dragged me into the triple digit ranks (before crashing out again) late in the season by accidentally targeting an apparent pocket metagame consis…

In preparing for the first official weekender competition of generation 8, my analysis of the meta was based on a shallow and, at times, alarmingly swingy experience comprised of a total of 79 games on the ranked console ladder across 4-5 …

Note: this was written a few days before the full datamine of the games. With a new generation of pokemon come new challenges to overcome and new opportunities to grab some delicious ranked ladder points. It is in this spirit that I have c…

The final weekender competition of generation 7 gave players another take at Ultra No Holds Barred, only this time with a completely unlimited roster of pokemon to choose from. The goal of this post will hopefully give a decent picture of …

For September's mid-season climb to 1700+, I adapted (read: made objectively worse) a Tapu Lele + Charizard team that reached 2000 points during season 15. nouthuca: blogs: https://hanamiti19.hatenablog.com/entry/2019/06/19/200950 (origina…

For August's post, I have chosen to recount the tale of a committed Lopunny team that features interesting complementary options such as Sap Sipper Azumarill and SpDef invested bulky berry Excadrill, and which the team's original author us…

For July's post, I decided to explore a sweet triple Z-move armed Decidueye team the team's author successfully piloted to 1900+ during season 15. What made this team stand out to me was not only the fact that this team comes equipped with…

And now for something completely different. Now, of course, it is a truth universally acknowledged that in order to play the game in ranked, all one has to do is click the find match-button on the Battle Spot. But I am here to inform you t…

For the start of Season 16 I went so severely overboard with failed original jank that a palate cleanser was in order for the initial climb. To this end, I found myself dusting off the old BSS standby, Metagross + Charizard X. To make thin…

May's blog posts seeks to open up a solo-mega Mawile team without dedicated speed control, apparently seeing regular play across the team author's three separate accounts, the highest finishing as high as 2100 at season 14's end. nouthuca:…

Whenever I come across a well-performing Kommo-o team, I can not help but dig in. Call it bias, call it obsession, I care not—for when scales need to be clanged, they simply need to be clanged. So, here I am, once more, with another Kommo-…

This month's post features an aggressive, momentum-based team heavily focused on Tapu Lele's Psychic Terrain synergy, mainly through Volcarona's Z-Psychic. This team's main core I mostly adapted from SnowParty (twitch.tv/picture7200), who …

This post features a team that has done well in the hands of a single player across multiple seasons and iterations, repeatedly placing above 2000 points. Built around Vivillon, it brings a bench deep enough to provide answers for its most…

The team I landed on for this month's blog post is not the highest placing thing ever results-wise, apparently only finishing in the 1880s in season 13, but features enough spicy heat to warrant picking up nevertheless, especially for anyo…

January 2019 brought with it another weekend-long singles online competition on the PGL. So laddering will have to wait, I thought, and decided to spend some time figuring out a team to run in this event. As a result, this post ended up be…