I got into talking about Pokemon with Twitter friends, and brought up my old run at the Eevee Friendly tournament. Which was still the most fun I had with competitive stuff. But I can’t find the old posts I made about the matches. I know I had updates at the end of each day, talking about the interesting strategies that I saw, and how things went. They’re just gone. Only the post about the results of the tournament remain. I can’t find anything, and I’m really upset. Were they just deleted, or did I just tag poorly? I may never know.
Sorry for taking so damn long to get more of these Eevee Friendly Battles, streaming really takes away from the time you can spend working on battle videos. Regardless this is my 2nd battle from the Eevee Friendly and it really shows how just making one stupid mistake can really burn you. In the world of pokemon it is never worth it to get greedy.
I totally forgot to check the results of the Eevee Friendly. 76th place out of like, what 5000 people? Oh wait, there's the number. 10,126 people. And I got top 100. I'm feeling pretty hype. I am the 1%. It's me.
However, I would like to know how they handle ties. For instance, I am one of four people with 1728 points, but one of the others is a rank above me, and the other two are a rank below me. So I'm a little curious how that happened; I imagined we'd all be tied. Ah well, NUMBER SEVENTY-SIX, WOO!
Also I want to talk the Pokemon themselves. So let's do it.
Flareon was ranked the best. Which is hype. Guts Flareon was used most commonly, but not as universally as I thought. Additionally, I am stunned to see that Adamant was preferred over Jolly! I thought I'd be the only one!
Modest and Pixellate were most common on Sylveon. Which makes sense. I saw a LOT of Last Resort Sylveon. Yet here's the odd thing. Modest was most common nature. Wat?
Hey Smogon! Looks like your predictions were full of bullshit! Espeon not only was highly used, but was second most effective out of everyone! Almost universally Magic Bounce, with Dual Screens being the preferred strategy. Though there were very few Sunny Day users. Which is interesting. Because I met like 15 of them.
Every Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Umbreon did the same things. Jolteon attacks with a bunch of things, Vaporeon and Umbreon wall and toss Toxic places. So that's expected.
I am FASCINATED by Glaceon. Modest was most common, offense was big (a lot of Frost Breath, to my enjoyment), but the main item was Assault Vest. Not Scarf, not leftovers, not Brightpowder to boost the evade rate in hail. Assault Vest. That is neat.
SPEAKING OF ASSAULT VEST! It is time for the great unveiling! My Leafeon is the best. Assault Vest, max attack investment with Adamant nature. Just enough speed EVs to outpace max Jolly Flareon and the rest in HP. The best thing was Dig. Oh hey Flareon, that's pretty scary how you poisoned yourself for ultimate power. Dig into forever, they can't touch you until after you hit them, unless they switch. This got a lot of unexpected traps, where Jolteon was one of their others, and Espeon was another. Nothing would hurt Leafeon, and regardless of what was swapped in, it would hurt. Heck, even Jolteon wouldn't hurt her enough thanks to Assault Vest. It wasn't Swords Dance/Chlorophyll levels of effective, but it worked spectacularly.
Lastly, Eevee. Eevee is a champ. Last Resort, Adamant, Eviolite, Adaptability. That's a lot of power, now that I think of it. Eevee, you magnificent, adorable beast.
(I know I know, not many, was having a LOT of problems getting more than one match in at a time since I'd always get errors when I tried to 'continue battling' after a match x_x and most of the matches I did have took like 20 minutes lol)
Still, I'm super happy with how my team performed; my one loss was extremely close. I definitely cannot complain. I'm a little sad that some of my team members for this will likely be retired now, though, since they were built specifically for all-eevee matches :c
Team details and strategy
Lapis (Vaporeon) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 252 HP / 252 spcA / 4 SpcD
Modest Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Acid Armor
- Protect
Lapis led the pack and could usually get at least one or two acid armors in to prepare it for Flareon and Leafeon. Most players wouldn't switch Flareon in (even though it could easily 2hko even a fully invested defensive vaporeon) so I could get the defensive boosts up. Protect allowed me to stall or receive a wish recovery, when possible. Max special attack actually allowed me to be an unexpected offensive threat when needed; in fact, Lapis felled both a Leafeon and a Jolteon at one point or another on it's own, with 2hkos from surf while surviving their attacks against her (she survived a jolteon's thunder--TWICE --with wish support from obsidian-- how bamf is that?). I should have given her leftovers in hind sight--I chose to give Sylveon the leftovers instead, but never used him in the competition.
Obsidian (Umbreon) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Synchronize
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpcD
Impish Nature
- Snarl
- Wish
- Toxic
- Sunny Day
Built for Defense as I feared most players would hone in on the eevolutions weaker physical defense. Snarl came in handy for taking the edge off special attackers and allowing Obsidian to tank even more effectively (and thanks to the mechanics of rotation battles, helped to support the rest of my team as well). Snarl was actually a last minute decision, and it really paid off in the end. Overall, Obsidian was my main support, setting up sunny day for my offensive eevees when a good opportunity came up, and also helping out with wish recovery.
Redstone (Flareon) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Guts
EVs: 252 Attack / 252 Speed / 4 HP
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Facade
My main offensive threat; Flash fire would have been more appropriate with scarf, but didn't have time to re-breed. Could outrun everything except jolteon, chlorophyll Leafeon in sunlight, and max speed espeon (most of my opponents were not invested in speed with their faster eevees, I found, so I actually got surprise KOs where I probably should not have). Had one battle where my opponent toxic'd my flareon and I proceeded to clean house, but otherwise guts did not come in handy (though Flare Blitz still took out some pretty serious chunks, if it didn't OHKO regardless)
Emerald (Leafeon) @ Choice Band
Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 252 Attack / 252 Speed / 4 HP
Adamant Nature
- Leaf Blade
- X-Scissor
My reserve offensive threat, and probably MVP in terms of kills. Even KO'd two flareons throughout the competition with leaf blade, despite the type disadvantage. Would often sweep, especially if I managed to get a sunny day up, which doubled his speed and allowed him to outpace anything we'd come up against.
Right here is my first battle from the Eevee Friendly, unfortunately I was not able to play as many games as I wanted to because of some connection issues. With that said I still did very well on Day 1 with a record of 8Wins 2Loss. In this battle you'll see what I consider to be the "core" of my team: Sylveon, Flareon, Espeon, and Umbreon.
