The Release of MUD v2.3
Introduction to MUD
Hello! My name is Blake Mullins and I am a VGC competitor as well as a grassroots contributor and moderator for the Indy VGC Discord. I’ve been sporadically active as a VGC competitor online across the 3DS era and in-person during the post-COVID era, but I have only recently gotten my first day 2 at a TPCi-sanctioned major event. That being said, you most likely haven’t heard of me beyond Limitless tournaments, mutuals and Twitter interactions! Many long-time VGC players will tell you the same thing - chasing success in this game isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. It’s been quite the long journey, but I’ve been having the time of my life. Hear me out - I think I’ve got something very valuable to share with our beloved community!
I created MUD with the intention to provide VGC competitors with a graphically-pleasing pre-constructed team building document that takes care of the initial prep work to let players get straight to taking notes and prepping matchups, all wrapped with care in the wealth of resources that our community has created in recent years. I am hopeful that this document will translate across player-based factors such as skill-level, experience and group-size as well as game-centric factors such as Generations, Regulations and other rulesets.
You might be wondering - why Google Docs over a website or other platform? I wanted to make sure that individuals and building groups alike could take this resource and make it their own, share it with convenience, and potentially link with other Google resources in the future. Feel free to modify this document as you see fit to best suit your needs!
Now that we’ve captured the ethos and Pagos pathos of MUD, let’s get into what I believe makes MUD tick…
Setting up MUD
First thing’s first… Make a Copy! Being that MUD is hosted on Google Docs, you’ll need to make a copy of the base template before you can edit it to your liking. Name it something cute, or make a note of what event this Team is coming with you to.
Let’s start editing. Direct your attention to the left-hand side of the document where you’ll find the Document tabs. Surprise, surprise - we’re starting with the Overview!
Here is where you’re going to want to save your team’s Pokepaste export! I frequently like to save my most recent version alongside my previous iteration so I can flip back and forth to see how things are going, what has changed, etc. Two should be plenty, but if you need more, just keep adding them.
Last thing for your edits in the Overview - you’re going to want to modify the Dropdown menu for your team! The template contains placeholders for Maushold, Annihilape, Archaludon, etc. but you might have more imagination than that. By editing this Dropdown, you’re going to notice that your team has been set up across the rest of the Document tabs to be edited using this same Dropdown! If for whatever reason you need additional Dropdowns, the Overview explains the process, as well. For extra spice, edit the colors to match each Pokemon.
Included Resources
Before moving on to the next section, take a moment to check out the Additional and Community Resources we have compiled for your convenience! If you would like to be included in our resources, please let me know and I will review your request and add you to this list!
Core MUD Features
Let’s go ahead and pivot to the Team Overview tab. This is where you’ll find a place to justify your 6 to yourself, explain to your friends why that spicy Orthworm pick is the perfect Sneasler counter, and how its Speed base stat of 65 is perfect for countering minimum-investment Incineroar pre-Tera! … uh, anyways…
If I haven’t mentioned it yet, MUD is perfect for team building groups to take notes on team composition, team roles, and to highlight effective stat benchmarks that are pivotal to certain matchups in the meta right now. While this document can be used by you and you alone, you are also able to share this resource with friends and even fill out sections together! Again, this is one of the major benefits of utilizing the Google Docs platform - shareability!
The Relevant Cores section is where you’re really able to start splashing the canvas with your team’s gameplan. If you have cores of 4 - colloquially, “Modes” - that you like to bring into certain matchups, this is your chance to select those 4 from the Dropdown created previously, then note the matchups these modes are used for in the Use Case(s) column. Having this column formatted with bullet points allows you to explore these ideas further and not simply select matchups you already have noted down. On one line, you could note, “Counter to HO comps,” and then proceed that with the line, “Against Sneasler and DD-M leads.” It’s up to you how you’d like to organize these notes, but MUD allows you to easily visualize the pieces that are your best jabs into the meta’s matchups!
Next, let’s dive into the meat and potatoes of MUD - Meta Matchups!
You can easily navigate the various Meta Matchups using the Document tabs on the left-hand side. Selecting the 3-stacked dots to the right of the heading and navigating to “Show Outline” will let you see each matchup and navigate quickly to them.
You’ll notice that each Matchup is named, given a “Team Captain” or identifier Mon, then is featured alongside 6 of the most common pieces for the archetype. The Team Captain of each archetype is not featured in the 6 Common Partners, both for obvious reasons and one potentially less obvious reason. This allows you to plan for the most common composition with a flex option, as players often find success in adjusting 1 or 2 team members from a composition to break from the norm. In the case of “Current Balance,” Primarina is trending downwards for high-ELO versions of this composition, and Dondozo is taking its place. Thus, Dondozo is placed as the 6th Mon in the Common Partners section of this Matchup.
The Relevant Pastes section lets you identify common versions of the Archetype that have done well, or perhaps different versions of the teams that you’d like to explicitly practice against. Again - MUD functions well as a teambuilding group tool for planning matchups! Storing versions of teams with EV spreads (noted in the third column as “OTS”) allows you to easily set up sparring matches versus these archetypes with your partners.
MUD aims to maintain a finger on the pulse of the meta - the provided Relevant Pastes are curated for the current state of the meta and will be updated with each iteration of the resource!
Further down on the Matchup page, you’ll find a section to populate your Plans, Brings and Reasonings for each mode you’ll be bringing to the matchup! This is fairly self explanatory. You’ll likely want to pull from and update the Relevant Cores section from the Team Overview tab as you establish cores brought to each match, but these two sections don’t necessarily have to match. For the sake of easy information sharing, however, it is very easy to copy/paste that info from one section to another in the future of editing this document.
Lastly, we have the Actions and Relevant Calculations section of the matchup. This is the section where you’re going to be labbing the matchups, gathering offensive and defensive calcs and contributing observed Speed stats into the Speed tiers section. I have linked Nerd of Now’s Damage Calculator in each of these sections for ease of access! Feel free to use your own preferred calculator as you wish - this document is meant to be tweaked to your liking, afterall!
So… what is the proper method for using this section of MUD?
There are several different ways to approach building out your plan into each matchup, but the order in which you tackle each one is up to you. Leading up to Louisville Regionals planning with this resource, I had already picked my 6 and had a general idea of how to play into each matchup. I started by selecting what I thought were my Mons for Plan A and Plan B into each known matchup. I entered a few cursory notes into the Notes section, then typed my own Speed stats into the Speed Tiers sections of each matchup, opting to put my Mons in Bold for easy reference. Once I had done this for each Matchup that I was familiar with, I started collecting Damage Calculations for offensive swings into the 7 Mons listed for the matchup (Offensive), then tested their offensive swings into my 6 (Defensive). Once I had all of this information available to me, I was able to type out the lines for each one into my Notes section and adapt my Plan A and Plan B to best use the information I found. From there? Test, rinse and repeat!
With the primary matchup tab out of the way, we also have the Off-Meta, Dated and Custom Matchup sections to take a look at. For the sake of brevity, these sections are identical to the above Meta Matchups, but feature more dated teams from earlier in the meta. Most of these cores have either been innovated upon to feature stronger, more consistent cores, or are simply not in popular rotation. That being said, it might be helpful to prep these matchups, as well.
If you happen to discover any other Matchups not approached in the Meta or Off-Meta Matchup sections, feel free to customize your copy of MUD in the Custom Matchups section!
You’ll find more information on how to create a graphically appealing experience for your Custom Matchups below, as well as in the full resource!
Last but not least, I’ve compiled a Single Threat Chart to highlight each individual piece in the meta! While a majority of your work on this document is likely to be in the Meta Matchups section, it’s still important to acknowledge all of the pieces in the meta, where that is in the occasional review, or if you’d like to have a plan for each potential piece.
I’ve gotten the best experience with the Single Threat Chart when prepping for the 1st GC. This is the place to write dubious strategies that you’ve encountered on Bo1 CTS ladder and share it with your teambuilding group. They say that writing information improves retention, so even remembering to put things down that you encounter will be helpful to you in the longrun!
The Threat Level column is where you might start when prepping this resource, as you might not feel the need to create a plan for every Pokemon, but you might discover something you should consider again or even a teammate that you may consider adding to your team comp. Leading up to the GC, I spent a little bit of time each day filling in the Single Threat Chart and looking into what sort of crazy techs each Pokemon could use. This helped me recall Mons that learn Explosion, which did help me once during my GC run.
Final Thoughts
… and that’s it! Hopefully you find this resource to be helpful in your teambuilding and matchup planning endeavors! If you have any questions, requests or the like, please contact me via Twitter at https://x.com/swiggvgc! I’ve put many hours of work into this resource and I’d gladly do it again for our community.
Thanks again to the lovely folks at Devon Corp Press - I look forward to providing updates to MUD in the future via this website as well as my Twitter, so stay tuned for more as the regulation continues to evolve!
Disclaimer: The opinions/stories expressed in the blog post are those of the author's and not necessarily reflective of the platform or its affiliates.