Predicting Melbourne Internationals.

Hi guys today I am back with kind of a different post, this weekend as we all know would be the Melbourne, 2^nd International Championships of the 2017 VGC season, last one was the London Internationals, stirred the metagame by a lot, now I am here to present my own view as well as give a prediction on what metagame it may bring, without further discussing the content, lets get into this post:

In Comparison To London Internationals:

London Internationals made a big stir in the metagame of this season, with things like leech seed celesteela dominating, there were a lot of surprises like the dominance of gastrodon as well as some teams including gigalith, araquanid became a thing as well as kartana was picking up a lot of popularity after that internationals. However this time it will be much different.

The reason for that in my opinion would have to be that in London there barely was a metagame to follow upto, the best and the finest metagame choices were brought out by the biggest names and the best of players that attended the internationals, londons in my opinion more or less formed the basis of this metagame, after that it as morphed a lot lately things seen like double ducks and tapu bulu were not getting any attention after some time at all, introduction of cores like the AFK core (Arcanine, Tapu Fini and Kartana) are in complete dominance heading into this international championships. Most American regionals have shown these teams and cores in dominance, however there have been a lot of different and diverse and surprise teams that have won, mainly pointing here towards the teams of Enosh Sachar and most noticeably Gavin Michaels who has won two regionals with a very similar full trick room archetype, that hasn’t seen much use after that at all.

Lead in up to the conclusion that there will be two types of teams in this metagame, the most expected metagame choices as well as the surprise teams, as internationals is an event next to worlds and as the trends have shown that usually in this level of play and tournament everyone does keep their hidden tactics to overcome others.

Big Metagame Surprises:

Like I said above that in Londons metagame, the higher classes of the players brought many influential pokemons that completely took control over the metagame, leading into this major tournament the metagame is very well defined, however there are a few things in my observation sparking up that might pick up huge popularity and will prove much effective in the Melbourne Internationals:

Bulky Tapu Lele:

Bulky tapu lele gets thebiggest vote here, with the recent invitational, non official tournaments taking place in this format, we have seen some of the biggest players compete there, many players featurned a bulky tapu lele on their team, most noticeably Shoma Honami as well as Enosh Sachar, and a recent question that I asked enosh, he replied saying that the Bulky tapu lele is the best kind of tapu lele. The reason for this is not very bad at all, tapu lele ha always been looked upon as the weak and frail pokemon with offensive pressure, it almost always gets its terrain overcome due to the larger popularity of pokemons like tapu fini , many things like arcanine speed tie with it and are able to land huge attacks on it before it gets out much offense. Most bulky tapu lele will carry either an offensive item like choice specs or something a bit different like the 50% recovery berry to give recovery and a longer stay on the field.

Bulky Tapu lele doesn’t make much sense or looks as a viable choice on paper, however in the actual game the utility it provides in the actual game is quite amazing, as I have tried it out on the multiple teams and have like it quite much! Most tapu lele are either paired with a drifblim or a mandibuzz, so they can get speedy upon setting up a tailwind. The main defensive aim for a bulky tapu lele is to survive an attack of smart strike from a kartana, which otherwise OHKO’s all other tapu lele. Just like I gave my reasoning for bulky tapu bulu, I feel like bulky tapu lele can be the next best thing as an individual variant.

Razor Leaf,Scope Lens Kartana:

Kartana saw a weird trend in the recent invitational players that have made it into the top cut of the world championships, came out and made this into a very good thing, there are two major changes that may occur in the variants of kartana as mentioned above.

The main reasoning for scope lens is to make kartana into a crit machine, with the crit ratio of leaf blade being turned upto a 50% with the scope lens, kartana can do a lot to a lot of things in this metagame, it can mainly be there to hinder some setup strategies that you can’t get much against or even can be utilized to break some specific calculations on opposing teams. Scope lens kartana also found great attention in the St. Louis regionals.

Razor leaf kartana is something used in the variants of assault vest as well as choice scarf kartana can be used as a tactic to offer kartana with a spread attack, which can do a lot if stacked up with a lot of boosts from its ability, also the high critical hit ratio makes it further a bit more viable.

Magnezone + Tapu Bulu:

This duo was found on the top 2 placing teams on the Sheffield regionals, magnezone in general did pick up some more spotlights here and there and in the Sheffield regionals found great success, also winning the regionals on a full trick room team, magnezone will be quite an option for some people to use after its recent success in the Melbourne internationals.

Other quite viable options seem like Substitute Araquanid as well as Rock slide Garchomp Becoming more common.

Conclusion:

I hope you guys this a bit of a diffeent kind of post and really liked going through it, bye for now!