Markus Stadter’s 1st Place DreamHack Leipzig Report

Markus Stadter│2017.1.21

Japanese(日本語)	English(英語)

Hello this is @13Yoshi37 again and today I would like to present the team that I used to win the 2017 Dreamhack Leipzig Regional Championship. I am very happy and proud of this accomplishment and my team definitely played a very big part in my success at Leipzig.

2017 Dreamhack Pokemon Champion!!

How the team was built

squad of the weekend and easily the best team I used since worlds.

At first I was not really sure about what to use in the tournament. My friends Wolfe @WolfeyGlick, Alex (@PokeAlex_), Till (@Dark_Psiana) and Toby (@TobySxE) worked together on a team Wolfe came up with that didn’t fit my playstyle and even though I thought it was very strong, I wanted to find something that does not implement Trick Room in the main strategy. Especially for Regionals, I thought that with a slower team you could run into some weird stuff you did not anticipate and therefore lose in very weird ways, whereas with a fast and offensive team you can always come up with plans to outspeed and outdamage them.

They encouraged me to try teams with the core of Arcanine/Tapu Lele and I thought that Celesteela and Garchomp were great additions for that. I tried a few different sets on the core Pokemon of this team, for example bulky and slow Assault Vest Garchomp, Autotomize or Flame Charge Celesteela with Psychic Seed and many more. But in the end nothing of that felt super strong and I was stuck without a clear plan until the day before the tournament.

I had also tested the core of Kartana, Tapu Fini and Arcanine for a bit and I thought that it was pretty good. However I was afraid that most players at the tournament would be prepared for this core since it was so strong and common. In testing it still felt super strong and so I talked to Billa (@BillaVGC) about his success with the core at a tournament one week before. He finished in the Top8 there and told me that he wanted to use the core again.

We both didn’t have much time to work together on the team and so in the end I made my own changes and brought in new ideas. When I left for the tournament I had slow Choice Scarf Tapu Lele in the slot where I ended up using Mandibuzz and my Tapu Fini was Choice Specs, because I had talked to a bunch of people that suggested that Choice Specs was a better set than Calm Mind. I the end, though, I decided to change that and it ended up working perfectly. I asked Nails (@NailsOU) about his thoughts on Misty Seed Mandibuzz + Calm Mind Tapu Fini at this point in the format since he got Top4 at a Regional in the US with it two weeks before. He said that he thought it was still solid so that gave me the confidence to change the main core of the team again.

In the end, I had no practice games whatsoever with the version I decided to use. I thought that was still fine though since I knew why I made those changes and I knew what to do in certain matchups.

Team Details

Tapu Fini @ Leftovers
Ability: Misty Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 12 Def / 188 SpA / 4 SpD / 52 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
– Calm Mind
– Muddy Water
– Moonblast
– Protect

Tapu Fini is a very interesting Pokemon. At first it seemed like everyone agreed that it was the worst of the four Tapus, but now everyone praises it. I think the main reason why people thought it was the worst is the fact that it is the only Tapu that causes a terrain which does not give any boosts. So everyone assumed at the beginning that Tapu Koko would always have ist Electric Terrain up and used it for all damage calculations and then it is very strong.

However since almost everyone uses at least one Tapu, more often than not the opponent will have a way to switch in for example a Tapu Bulu or Tapu Lele to change the terrain and thus weakening the power of Tapu Koko. The same thing also applies to the other Tapus as well! However Tapu Fini has a very balanced typing with good neutral coverage and is not dependant on Misty Terrain to be up.

With either Calm Mind or Choice Specs it can increase ist damage output without the need of a terrain and thanks to the good typing and defensive stats it can take a lot of different attacks. As I mentioned before, I was testing Choice Specs Tapu Fini for the longest time. The beautiful thing about Choice Specs is that even against neutral targets you just do so much damage to both opponents with Muddy Water.

If you manage to get into a position where they cannot stop you from attacking two or three times with Muddy Water you will most likely just win the game right there. However there are some ways of stoping that and Tapu Fini is really hindered by being locked into one attack since there are quite a few Pokemon that can take Muddy Water, but don’t like to take a boosted Moonblast, such like Garchomp…

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