Pudding Predictions S4W2

Predictions this week may be a little shorter than usual, since I have my first week of classes starting back up tomorrow. I’ll be dedicating a small section at the top of each week’s predictions to the last week’s predictions, limiting myself to 1 sentence unless it is a really good game worth more discussion.

Last Week’s predictions

Score in parenthesis is the actual result of the match.

Dolly 0–2 Tyrannosaurus X (2–0 FF kind of)

As usual I don’t understand Dolly’s teams but they’re always good (feel better TX)

Matieu 0–2 Fatsloth (2–0)

Fatsloth meme’d and I as always got his prediction wrong

Coahre 2–0 Tiramisu (2–0)

Put ice beam on seismitoad against 4 ground immunities

Dogical 2–0 skynumber5 (0–2 FF)

Don’t queue for a dota game during your match time

Korgoth 2–0 Siixu (2–0)

Gallade and mantine shut down the entire team

Patchthomas 1–1 Glitchtastic (0–2)

Prankster was used on dark types and Patch got tilted

LoneWolf 2–0 Holoホロ(2–0)

Don’t set up a sweeper when there’s a ditto right there

Sultann 2–0 SPACEDUDE360000 (1–1)

Put encore on whimsicott so people will stop losing to cosmic stored power sets

Deathbypudding 2–0 FJFJFJJ (2–0)

Toxtricity remains in my hands

bsvhsvj 1–1 Apeshift (2–0)

Basculin actually just squashed a whole bunch of bugs

Burrahobbit 1–1Toth (2–0)

Give it 3 seasons and burra has finally figured out mono fire

bloodninja 0–2 killazoid (0–2)

Mamo sat

Style 2–0 DoomCow33 (0–2)

Vaporeon is actually just insanely powerful, unlike klinklang

VinnySal 1–1 DerpyDots (0–2)

Don’t switch your only pokemon that can take a hit into a hit or you’ll get swept

Glump 2–0 aponzeus (2–0)

Ice team vs gigalith & dugtrio-a rip

So that makes it 6/14 (ignoring forfeits) for this week. Not my best performance but I’m sure this week’s predictions will be better (they won’t.)

This Week’s Predictions

Glump vs Dolly

The current two top seeds, Glump and Dolly both won their week 1 matches with a very high differential. As last week’s prediction showed us all, I as usual have underestimated Dolly’s drafting abilites. I don’t fully understand his team or what it can do to Glump’s very good tricore and utility mons. I think Glump’s team is top 3 in the league, thanks to how strong his tricore is, especially with support from the likes of gigalith and dugtrio-a. I heavily favor Glump in this matchup, but be very prepared for me to get this one wrong as well. 2–0 Glump

Coahre vs Deathbypudding

2–0 Deathbypudding. Coahre’s team is another one of the teams that I think is really strong, thanks to it’s across the board high speed and offenses, backed by good utility mons in golurk and rotom-w. Luckily for me, his team has a lot of weaknesses to electric, and my team is undeniably really fast as well. I’m looking to use my strong and fast electric types to try and take out Coahre’s general lack of easy switch-ins to my team outside of golurk. Golurk might just go off and beat my whole team though who knows.

Korgoth vs LoneWolf

Korgoth, who took out Siixu’s mono fighting team last week, returns to take on Lonewolf’s mono normal squad. Just as last week, this looks like another great week for gallade to go off with it’s coverage and stab. Mantine body presses are also likely to deal significant damage to lonewolf’s squad, while also walling many of lonewolf’s mons. In that vein however, lonewolf has only a single resitance to deal with, on the relatively weak mawile. I also think that Korgoth may have a hard time getting through lonewolf’s mons if gallade goes down early. I believe in mono normal’s ability to find an answer to gallade, so I’m going with 2–0 Lonewolf, but I think this match could easily go either way.

bsvhsvj vs Glitchtastic

After playing around with it in testing last week, I’m a big fan of bsv’s team. It has excellent bulk mixed with a few very fast mons and priority to help break through frail attackers and weakened fast pokemon. I’m less sold of Glitch’s team, although thwackey grassy glides definitely slap. I think there are enough powerful tools on the side of bsv to take out Glitch’s team while stomaching most attacks he makes. I’m favoring 2–0 bsv

DerpyDots vs Matieu

In a suprising turn of events, Matieu, famous for loving his boost mons, is up against Derpydot’s team full of boosters. There are a lot of pokemon here that will be looking to set up, including necrozma, comfey, and toxicroak on one side and bellossum or bisharp on the other. I feel like this matchup will come down to which of these players can make the opening for their pokemon to get set up and sweep the other’s squad. I don’t feel like either one of them has an unstoppable sweeper without multiple turns of setup, so this feels like a 1–1 that could easily be a sweep on either side

killazoid vs skynumber5

Killazoid’s team is another one that I think is very strong, and I’m not sure what skynumber5’s team can do to stop these mons from running his squad over. Mamoswine can smash almost the entire team with it’s stab moves, and sky doesn’t have any great answers to getting sat on by mamo. The other pokemon on killazoid’s team are also all great for their roles, and they look very hard for sky’s team to deal with. I am pretty confident saying 2–0 killazoid for this one which basically guarantees sky the win.

Burrahobbit vs DoomCow33

Both of these players surprised me last week by taking their matches 2–0, especially Doomcow, who managed a 2–0 against the very strong looking style team. And just as vaporeon carried last week, this is another week where it looks like the water fox with unstable genetics will need to carry, because there are a lot of fire weaknesses on Doomcow’s team. Both centiscorch and vaporeon will be the crucial pokemon in this matchup, and if Burra can find a way to take them out she can cruise to another 2–0. And I believe in mono teams. 2–0 Burrahobbit.

SPACEDUDE360000 vs Style

After a very surprising 0–2 result from Style, he comes up against head admin Spacedude, who clutched out a win against Sultann’s team to go 1–1. I still think Style’s team is very strong, especially with how dangerous lycanroc-d and sharpedo are. Sharpedo in particular looks like it’s going to have a pretty free game this week once its checks are weakened. I think Style’s team will be able to eat up spacedude’s squad, barring some very clever moves with eiscue or ttar. 2–0 Style

Sultann vs Toth

Both of these teams have a solid fire-water-grass tricore, the main difference being that Sultann’s is strong and fast while Toth’s is more defensive. If toth can take out the two grass types on Sultann’s team, it feels like there is nothing to stop gastrodon walling and killing every other pokemon on Sultann’s team. And with tools like incineroar and dragalage, this is looking very favorable for Toth’s lineup. I think Sultann’s team will struggle against breaking Toth’s tricore, leaving me to favor 2–0 Toth.

bloodninja vs FatSloth

In predicting any Fatsloth match, the question always seems to come down to, no the pokemon, but how much effort fatsloth puts into the match. When he’s trying very hard, Fatsloth is able to beat teams with very good matchups against him, and he tends to think through every turn almost to excess. When he doesn’t try, or if he feels like the matchup is unwinnable, then he’s going to lose. I think Fatsloth’s team is very strong, but ultimately it depends on him putting forth the effort to prepare for each matchup and take his time with deciding the best play. Matchup-wise, this looks pretty even. Neither team has a mon that stands out as impossible to deal with, so I think this one will go either way. Bloodninja is a pretty new player, so they might struggle a bit with the execution against a tryhard fatsloth. Don’t make me regret this again. 2–0 Fatsloth

Apeshift vs Holoホロ

Bug squad returns to take on Holo, who previously played the mono normal team. And this one looks very good for the bugs. Somehow, none of Holo’s mons has access to a stab move that is super effective against bug types or stealth rocks, two aspects that are very common and dangerous for the bugs to deal with. This looks like one of bug squad’s best matchups in the entire league, as it manages to avoid all the typical dangerous that come with being a mono bug type team. Without any obvious threats, and with a number of weaknesses and problems that his team has to bug types in general, this looks really hard for Holo. 2–0 Apeshift

Siixu vs FJFJFJJ

For the second week in a row, FJ has to take on another monotype team. Unlike my team last week though, this one looks much better for FJ, as poison type mons can be very hard for fighting types to get through. And I think that will be the story of this match, with siixu struggling to break through the poison type mons that are slowly wearing his team down. Outside of lucario, it almost feels like weezing-g is basically uncontested and able to take out the entire mono-fighting squad on its own. If lucario falls, I’m not sure how siixu can break through weezing-g, and FJ has a very good answer to lucario with salazzle. This looks very poison favored, and is a second really hard matchup for siixu in a row. 2–0 FJ

Tiramisu vs aponzeus

Often when I look at these matches, I tend to look and, often to the detriment of my predictions, fixate, on a single pokemon that has a favorable matchup or few answers. This matchup, that pokemon is bronzong. I don’t see a way for the ice team to stop bronzong from just sitting back and pressing gyro ball 8–10 times until all the snow monsters stop moving. If aponzeus can find an answer to bronzong that doesn’t take out his entire team, I think he can win this matchup, but I just don’t see it clearly. Maybe one of the fossil abominations can do it. 2–0 Tiramisu

dogical vs Tyrannosaurus X

The last matchup for this week, and the only one for which neither of these players have actually played with their teams yet. Ultimately, I don’t really know how good either of these teams are, as I don’t even have 1 week’s worth of data to go off of. On paper, it looks difficult for logical to answer a shell smash barbaracle beating up his squad after some chip damage. Overall, TX has a number of pokemon that look strong enough to answer logical’s powerful attackers and weaken them enough to let barbaracle sweep. I’m excited to see this match though and finally get to see these two squads in action. 2–0 TX

Someone else make some predictions and some power rankings. Fill up that content channel. Even if it’s just matchup memes.