Erin's BH Player Encyclopedia
Here I list a ton of BH players in alphabetical order to give you my thoughts on them. I'll try to talk about things you might not have already known about the players before, so consider this a scouting report of sorts. Note that not all these players have signed up. Managers are in
green. Make note that players from similar backgrounds (French community, Chinese community, SinnohRemakes2) will likely perform well together.
a loser: loser is good, he's a starter-level player. i think the main issue he has is just being a little inconsistent vs weaker players, i can definitely see up-and-coming people like tttech, onyx, and tea guzzler having good chances vs him. however he can definitely beat everyone in the pool, and in general he's a pretty great team player, fantastic at shaking off tilt and keeping morale high.
A Touch of Crazy: active sr2 user, invented imprisonform zac-c. not sure if you can convince him to come back, though. he was drafted alongside loser for ompl 9 zoomers and went 0-1 losing to yolk. he has a very gen 7-ish playstyle with mons like kartana, registeel, and metronome xern, and would probably thrive with current meta picks like spectrier.
Aethernum: i ran into him a couple times on ladder during last omwc (he was on team europe). his teams look very standard but he's been inactive on ladder for a few months now.
anaconja: anaconja is just an enigma to me despite being my friend. when he's not using other people's teams, he inexplicably builds good ones himself and does fine with them. he's known for being a camo starter and spamming regen. that said, i don't really think his bh teams are very diverse in terms of playstyle, and i would like to see more silly stuff from him. i think really weird ideas and teams make him a much more inspiring player.
astralydia: lydia is more than capable of holding her own against starters. she's been quite active recently and i think her recent
vr post shows a great understanding of the metagame. that said i think she's a bit too rigid in her understanding of the game; i don't think she can really be cteamed but i remember being really inspired by
this game from bhlt and i would like to see lydia incorporate some of these slower, passive ideas into her own teams.
avyrie: avyrie is cool, they're a competent player and are very active. recently i've mostly seen them take other players' teams so i expect them to be a strong tester but maybe less helpful at fixing teams or offering suggestions. still definitely worth drafting even ignoring their proficiencies in other oms.
Ballfire: ballfire has been going for about 5k in mocks which seems about right to me. in bhlt we saw him bringing mostly hyper offense and stall, and he did get a win on onyx onix 7 which is pretty good.
BandedBodyPress: ladder hero who uses a pretty safe bulky balance team. i'm so glad we're getting new boomers in this metagame
beauts: i've seen some neat teams from them in the past (and they're fine at piloting them), but they don't come off as a very flexible builder to me and haven't joined many bh tours. could be wrong on this it's just the impression i get.
Career Ended: if you want to scam the entire draft, career ended is the player most likely to do that for you. he's still a very budding bh player but he's obnoxiously good at finding winning plays and plans, and on top of that he's made some good teams as well. he beat loser in bhlt before losing to quojova. i could absolutely see him starting and doing well if he tryhards this. that said i'm not sure how susceptible he is to cheese.
cityscapes: it's me! in this tournament i'll be expected to build 7 good teams and play 7 good games over 7 weeks. if you want to do your research on how i am in team tours, read the logs in
this post. i may be busy with school and my cs project.
Codename C.A.T.: legendary gen 7 enthusiast. looking at his replays he tends to enjoy specs etern type stuff but can play a little impatient sometimes. he's a ladder player so he won't do silly things. i would recommend him to try out different types of builds (maybe something more offensive would fit his tastes better) and contact managers for tryouts.
damflame 3: france's bh player, known for extravagant alt names. damflame had a rough run in omwc against formidable opposition, losing vs mamp, stresh, and me and beating loser. i don't know if i'd trust them as a starter given the way anaconja exploited their playstyle in bhlt, but as support they look like one of the better options. their teams and plays are generally pretty strong.
Darkrai Retribution: this guy is cool, he doesn't really play in tournaments but he has a solid ladder performance. he hides every game so i hate him. give him a try, you won't be disappointed
Dragonillis: dragonillis often brings wacky offense, but can make balance work as well. i don't know where he gets his teams but i assume he builds some of them himself? not sure. anyway he's a good pilot and if he slots into bh with team support i could see him doing pretty well.
DuGuo: i haven't played against him personally, but duguo made it to r4 in bh open with mostly nihilslave and tea guzzler teams before losing to damflame offense. i think he needs to work on unusually fast or slow games and he'll be set.
Greybaum: a player with some very interesting ideas. check out
this game vs lydia where he brought soak galvanize zekrom with doom desire steela.
hybone: they played mnm for china in omwc and made bhlt playoffs. they brought pretty standard stuff and lost to tttech. i think hybone is absolutely a fine player who can sub in if need be. however, their activity must be called into question: two of their omwc pools matches didn't happen. definitely do your research into that if you plan on drafting them.
idea: idea is easily draftworthy but i haven't seen them in months. wonder where they went
Ilovescaldburns: hispanic's bh player. they haven't really been seen since wc, so you might need to seek them out or contact dorron/nalorium if they aren't on smogon. anyway, for omwc they built a pretty demonic team featuring paraspam + sticky web + sd regigigas months before it became the commonplace set it is today. although the regigigas had drain punch for some reason, the team was pretty alright & interesting but ilovescaldburns showed they have a ways to go in terms of piloting it (most illustrative is
their game vs aesf when they had a pretty good position but lost several mons to etern for no reason).
ItsChew: from what ive seen, chew is a tryhard who uses mostly sevag and ivar stuff. he made bh open semis with a win over lydia which is not bad at all, and has practiced a bit on ladder too. i'd like to see him more involved in the building process and would enjoy seeing him around sinnohremakes.
Ivar57: ivar is a strong builder & player. his omwc performance was impressive considering europe's relative lack of bh support. i think he's slightly overrated and isn't guaranteed to do well without support, but in practice sevag is probably just gonna pick him up in which case he'll be totally fine.
Jqlove: stab player for china in omwc. jqlove is good, they put up a solid performance in bhlt including this
pretty impressive set vs dragonillis before losing to tea guzzler due to not having any ground resists. from my personal experience facing them, they can miss strong ideas sometimes but tend to avoid obvious mistakes and in general have a solid grasp on bh mechanics.
Ka1xo: mostly i see them playing camo bh with a pretty defensive team. not sure how they do in regular bh.
Kabilapok: kabila made bhlt playoffs with what looked like his own teams and lost to nihilslave (who's currently in finals). he has some really creative stuff so i highly recommend getting in touch with him.
KeeganSkymin4444 (Soul Dew Latias): sdl is known for constantly using the same 2 teams for 90% of games. he's honestly a pretty good player and is top 10 on ladder whenever he's active (which is pretty often). i'm not sure how good he is with unfamiliar teams, i would expect him to at least hold his own though, this dude has seen every interaction in bh 10 times over.
leonxu (leon6): china's bh player in omwc. has some really neat ideas and knows game mechanics but can struggle to find a plan to make progress. hasn't been seen since world cup.
Lunatic Hai (Churro): active sr2 user, known for making sample teams since the dawn of time. i don't see him playing a whole lot but he does a fine job adapting the boomer gen 7 playstyle to gen 8. draft him with other boomers probably.
MagearnaTheBoss (Magxys): couldn't find any bh replays of them besides
this funny one. i think it's mostly on them to reach out to managers for tryouts. show them your heat!!!!!
MAMP: mamp! he's known for bringing aggressive stuff and trying to exploit opposing players in any way he can, though not always having every threat covered (see:
vs loser in omwc). that said, i think you can mostly just toss him into the bh slot and he can manage himself, he's very good at shaking off losses and moving forward.
Nihilslave (Asou & Chihiro): few people know this but nihilslave is actually one of the driving forces behind the growing chinese om community w/ players like hybone, jqlove, and duguo. he runs
this channel on bilibili (chinese yt) where he uploads bh content. anyway, he's been pretty strong in ladder tournament with a current finals run, but i've kinda been doubting his recent motivation (see
this post). definitely talk to him beforehand if you plan on drafting him.
Onyx Onix 7: on a good day onyx can build any team and beat any person. on a bad day he will think every flaw in his teams and every person he lost to are conclusive evidence that he is a terrible player who deserves to burn eternally in the pits of natdex bh. onyx has vast potential but keep this in mind when drafting him.
Quantum Tesseract: qt is very strong on ladder and tends to get solid records when playing bh in team tours as well. that said, they'll also be extremely expensive so their bh prowess may not be worth the cost. treasure town talonflames strats are not good.
quojova: quojova isn't perfect but it's very difficult to point to areas where he's weak. he has a very fluid playstyle and tends to be very open-minded in the builder. you can even put him in other slots like how we threw him in aaa in world cup.
Redflix: made bhlt playoffs and lost to tea guzzler in unfortunate circumstances. i think his teams are a bit too passive; in a lot of the games i saw he was just stuck defending for way too long. i think he has the ability to improve at this though.
SlightlyAngryKevin: pretty chill guy who's been learning the meta for quite a while now. he hasn't really played in many tournaments (iirc) and is a bit inexperienced compared to some others but i could see him doing fine as a sub. mostly he brings a stall team that he made.
Stall_2_U_Fall (The Ruby Kitty): ruby kitty is a ladder hero who mainly builds stall, but has a pretty wide assortment of stall builds, some of which are actually incredibly annoying to play against. she's also friends with sevag and ivar iirc, so if you can't find her then you can maybe ask them to get in touch.
Stolen Identity (yolk): one of the most underrated players ever, yolk's debut was on tyrants last year with me, where he went 1-1 losing to stresh and beating crazy. he also provided some invaluable support for me and my teams. the thing with yolk is he tends to have things going on irl, and you'll definitely have to ask him to sign up cause he won't do it himself.
Storm Eagle: active sr2 user. storm eagle has mainly been preoccupying himself with owning gen 7 bh shell smash zoomers (a noble pastime), though he has dabbled in gen 8 a bit. he's pretty active, builds everything, and will support a bh sub slot, but he is NOT confident about his skills so you need to come to his house and force him at gunpoint to sign up.
sugarhigh: sugarhigh has mostly been known for
spammy offense (weather/gambits/dmaw) as of late, but this isn't the only style he can competently play. look at
this game from ompl 7 for example. i think he could be really good paired with another offense builder like onyx onix, damflame 3, or ilovescaldburns.
Tea Guzzler: the rising star of bh. this will be his first big team tour experience, i wouldn't throw him in with no support but i also wouldn't let him rot on the bench. let the man play!!!
TTTech: i've said before that i think tttech has improved a lot since omwc. this is impressive cause it's very easy to just go into game after game with a safe null registeel setup like his, but he seems to be really questioning both his builds and his plays to cut out the bad stuff. i hope to see him continue this trend in ompl.
tzaur: a bh channel regular who hides most of their games. from what little i've seen of them they like using very slow balances and are comfortable being extremely patient before getting opportunities (once i saw them wait like 130 turns to get cb kart in lol). assuming they're interested in signing up, they're pretty active so i could see them being a good asset to the team.
willdbeast: will is very enigmatic. he comes up with insanely creative ideas, but has not played in many tours at all recently. i assume he'll mostly be supporting the bh slot here which is a shame cause i really want to see him play more.
xavgb (stresh): stresh is very good but he's spent most of his time in spl/ost recently like a nerd. he's great at being patient and understanding long term win conditions & progress even when it looks like nothing is going on, and this is evident in his teams.
XxSevagxX: if there's anything sevag is really good at, it's just getting in touch with other bh players to test. if he self-buys, he won't need any support on the team cause his support will just be whichever other starters he isn't playing that week. if he doesn't self-buy, then he'll be consistently working with the starter he gets (though he will need to pick that starter carefully). that said, player-wise i think sevag has been a bit inactive lately and has mostly been screwing around with snorlax. he did win bh open but i feel like in a sense he "needs to get back into things" (not that i doubt his ability to do so).
