Rare Article: 3 Alternative Metagames

Are you sick and tired of Rotom-W and Terrakion? Does Scizor make you yawn? Do you want something a little different in competitive play? Then why are you wasting your time with OU? There are many other metagames to explore, maybe even some you haven't heard of. Here are three interesting, lesser known metagames.

Chapter One: Clear Skies, Or: It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's nothing, because it's clear skies. 

The 5th gen OU metagame is one that is heavily weather based. Tyranitar and Politoed are consistently in the top ten in the usage statistics, with Ninetales usually being in the top 25. The clear skies tier is a tier for those who are sick of all those "weather" shenanigans. Constantly double-switching to regain weather dominance? Yuck. Clear Skies plays much more like the metagames of the past (without, of course, Tyranitar,) where momentum is gained not by field conditions, but by effective switches and well-executed revenge kills. In general, most of the same Pokémon are allowed in Clear Skies as in standard OU, but some places allow Garchomp (now that he can't abuse Sand Veil) and Manaphy (now that it doesn't have rain to boost it.) This tier made quite a buzz when it was first released, but since then I haven't seen that many people play it, but, then again, if we wanted to talk about popular tiers, I wouldn't be writing this article.

Chapter Two: PU, Or: SUNKERN SWEEP

The PU tier is a ridiculous one. Most organizations will split the tiers up thusly, ordered from "best" to "worst" in terms of the Pokémon within: Ubers, Overused, Underused, (sometimes Rarely/Little Used is added in here), and Never Used. But what if you want to use Pokémon that are even more never used than the ones that are used in the never used tier? Then the PU tier is for you. (No one really seems to be sure what it stands for, for some reason. Pathetically underused? Pachirisu's U-boat?) The PU tier is often described as "the NU of NU," and it contains Pokémon that get less than one percent usage in NU. That means that these Pokémon are on less than one in one hundred teams in the tier that is filled with low-rent Pokémon. It's really fun, though, to see a Vespiquen sweep, or to see Swalot stall like a boss. I mean, seriously, how amazing is it that we can have a tier where choice specs Exploud is a big threat? For a list of what Pokémon are allowed in this tier (along with all the other tiers) in this Smogon post: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3464495

Chapter Three: Little Bug Cup, Or: The Only Place That Dwebble is Banned

This is one that is close to my heart, probably because it was inspired by this very website (see episode 49 of It's Super Effective). The idea behind the Little Bug Cup is to create a tier where all the Pokémon must be Bug-type, at their first evolutionary stage, and be level 15. Not all Pokémon that fit that description are allowed, but you can see a full list here: http://pokemonbugcup.wordpress.com/pokemon-list/ Additionally, the moves Hidden Power (because of HP fire being able to hit nearly every member of the tier for super effective), Stealth Rock (because it does 1/4 to nearly every member of the tier) are banned, along with OHKO moves and moves that deal set damage amounts, i.e. Seismic Toss, Dragon Rage, etc. With all the nitty gritty rules aside, this tier is super cool. I mean, where else would you use a Combee? or a Wurmple? Nowhere, that's where. I should mention, also, that you can use that same link I posted above to reach a fantastic website created by fans of this show that is dedicated to Bug Cup.

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Well, I hope I satisfied your hipsterish need to play something that no one else does. See you next time.