by Doc – Owner, Founder, Bets That Legalizing Xerneas Throws All of This Out the Window
6v6 singles tournaments have started popping up over the span of the internet, with one being reported on the other day and another one having just come across my desk recently. Let’s analyze THAT Royal #4, which I understand to be one of the most recent singles tournaments in memory.
The below image shows us the team loadouts of each player, and while it’s certainly a reasonable observation to make that there is quite a bit of character diversity in this – for example, the top player is also the only one to have used Salamence, Scizor, Florges, and Falinks, with other teams basically also all having at least one Pokémon unique to them – there is also a tremendous amount of similarity. The visually obvious one is Mega Clefable. It’s really quite convenient that there are five of them lined up vertically on this team sheet; that’s pretty funny.
As I wrote the other day, Mega Clefable gets brutalized by Steel and Poison types, namely Metagross, but serves as a specific counter to Garchomp and to Ground types like Excadrill that are not packing a Steel-type move (provided she’s packing the appropriate moveset). I don’t think it’s a coincidence then that while there are five Mega Clefables, all but one of the teams packing a Garchomp also have a Clefable – they expect to find a Metagross, so they bring Garchomp to beat Metagross, but they also expect they will need to counter Garchomp. The Metagross, Clefable, Garchomp trio is the most present pattern across all of these teams, occurring in three of the eight teams.
I should mention that this tournament occurred only on the 22nd of this month, less than a week after release. It’s possible that most people had not identified the tremendous utility of Gyarados, as he only appears twice on this team sheet. Still, he appears twice on this team sheet and it appears that several players intended to counter him, hence the Jolteon in the number two spot, the Ampharos in the number six spot, and the Raichu in the number eight spot. There’s a pattern of anti-Gyarados thinking prominent in these team sheets, or at least anti-Water thinking.
Curiously, I only see one Excadrill. I do wonder if Excadrill is brought solely as an intended counter for the prominent Metagross appearances, or if that player instead had some sort of anti-meta strategy opinion revolving around baiting a Metagross or Garchomp into an attack that can then be circumvented with one of the other Pokémon on the team. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that some threats are not all that present, as Skarmory only appears in the number eight slot as well despite his promising early appearances. Ditto for Lucario.
Takeaways
Here’s what I see: I see two 700 BST Pokemon, Metagross and Garchomp, prevalent in this list, and a host of 600+ Megas potentially operating here too. I see Mega Clefable likely operating either as a counter to Ground-type Garchy or as a coverage pick given her wide moveset. Everything else orients around this basic setup: Sableye, Charizard, Camerupt, Avalugg, Jolteon and so on seem to primarily have a role to play in countering Metagross, Garchomp, or Gyarados. I’m not saying the meta is centralizing around these three, but it sure looks like they’re at the center of most people’s minds.
Amiibo Doctor 