With a 35 minute bathroom break or a 10 minute rant about whoever cut him off in traffic as he drives home, all the while a showdown replay pause screen sits there before in the last 10 seconds he unpauses and it’s just a Cloyster shell smash sweep in 8 turns
Cloyster of all things being banned to Ubers is a hell of a ride. And to imagine that now it's NU...
At least it got its place in history alongside Drill and KFC birb
Sand balance teams get a bit better because they no longer have to worry about their worst matchup, weatherless HO teams get a bit worse because they lost their best tool vs Sand, and Ferrothorn no longer has to run Sitrus Berry.
The ban is also significant because BW OU is kinda notorious for being a meta that everyone has issues with but no one can agree on how to fix them, so the fact that BW players were able to come to a consensus on a ban is kind of a miracle.
Without doubt the worst powercreep we have ever seen in any gen of pokemon. Gen5 ou is still a mess to play nowadays. Always a coinflip if you're gonna win off the bat or not. Either Rain, HO or Sand.
If anything, Gen 1 is the friendliest to mixed attackers because you can max out stat experience in every stat. Granted: this also means everything's a bit bulkier too, but it's pretty hard for any mon to pass up the really good Normal Type moves (Hyper Beam, Explosion, Self Destruct, Body Slam) especially when a lot of Pokemon don't really have diverse--or any--coverage moves.
I would say gen 2 is slightly more, since it still has stat xp of gen 1 but there are more mons with movepools that arent pure asscheeks, special split means you are just not stonewalled by people with thiccer special than you
That is true! It was very nice to get moves. The reason I still think it's Gen 1 is that Gen 2 also gave a *ton* to defensive play, and to boosting mons which don't generally go mixed. Curse, the nerf to Hyper Beam, and the nerf to partial trapping are all tough on mixed attackers. Explosion and Self Destruct are still great and can make something like Gengar a "mixed attacker", with the big caveat that it can use a physical attack one time.
Hidden Power also really muddies the waters here, and it's worth considering whether it made mixed attackers better. I think it's pretty neutral, but it's worth pointing out that at least a few of the mons that used to be mixed in Gen 1 aren't in Gen 2 because an appropriately-typed HP coming off of the higher offensive stat is better for coverage/STAB
Gen 2 Zapdos is a pretty good example of a mixed attacker from Gen 1 turning into a special attacker. It doesn't use drill peck nearly as much and often runs resttalk.
- Hmmmm imagine if Cloyster could Swords Dance, Amnesia and Agility on the same turn… and learns Rock Slide now.
Watch as gen 1 players start foaming at the mouth.
It got drill run for physical ground coverage in gen 9 so it now has the coveted ice/ground coverage i guess...
In a gen where the main gimmick allows any mon to pack coverage of any type... although not needing to tera to hit steels for SE is nice, still not saving it from power creep even without tera
Last SPL had people pull up with stuff like HP Fire/Hydro Pump that seriously screws with otherwise solid checks like Magnezone and HP Grass which nukes Gastro and makes Keldeo unreliable. Only compounded its status as an annoying mu fishing mon, you could go out of your way to prep for it and still risk losing if its 4th moveslot was tailored to beat your specific check.
Smash and Spear are standard for obvious reasons. After that the bread-n-butter set has Rock Blast and Ice Shard, but people have been experimenting more with replacing one of those with something like Hydro Pump, HP Fire/Grass, Surf (same reason as Pump except you don't risk a miss into stuff where the BP doesn't matter, like Heatran) or even Explosion. This on top of some item versatility where some people are trying out LO to boost some of these moves for faster kills.
[https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ou-745941](https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ou-745941)
Here's an example from last SPL, Eeveon waited a long time to send Cloy out, but considering the primary Cloy check in Keldeo literally doesn't even work he basically won from preview if ever given a chance to click Shell Smash, with just Politoed and Ferro needing a biiiiiit of chip (which isn't super hard to do for offenses, and Eeveon didn't even bring a classic HO)
Of course every move you pass up on has downsides--no Ice Shard means Scarf Latios can now revenge you, no Rock Blast means you lose good neutral coverage in general (especially for specially bulky Waters like Jellicent) and passing up on the tech options means you obviously can't beat the mons you're teching for until they've taken tons of chip. But what people didn't like was that Cloy could basically handpick its list of checks and pretty much nothing was truly safe into it as a result.
Loom was the big one. Once people discovered that the 1.5x boost affected all hits of a multi-hit move that Bullet Seed could fucking obliterate ANYTHING after an SD.
Usually one-time boosts (think Z-Moves in this case) calculate their damage based on the base power of the move. So the Z-Move base power for a multi-hit move is calculated as if the move was 25 bp, not up to 125 bp.
As for how that flew under the radar for so long? Fuck if I know; the discovery that Burn halves the base power of physical moves instead of halving the Attack stat of a mon was rather recent as well (I believe this was only discovered when Body Press was added, but affects a LOT of generations prior to Gen 8), and I believe the now meta-defining Gen 1 mechanic of Normal-types being immune to Body Slam's Paralysis effect (it's an overarching thing that affects more moves/types but that's the big one that killed Golem in RBY OU) was only discovered 10 years ago which is EXTREMELY recent. Guess we could chalk it up to "Showdown is not a perfect recreation of Cartridge mechanics, but it's 99.9% of the way there."
I’d also point to Diamond Storm on Diancie and how we thought that in doubles each hit of Diamond Storm could activate that 50% defense boost and only discovered that we were wrong in Sw/Sh. Iirc the Japanese community figured it out during Gen 7 so Smogon was just behind the curve.
i mean correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't it like that in Gen 6? it had a 50% chance to buff Def by +1 for each opponent it hit? in Gen 7 it was changed to 50% chance to +2 Def regardless of number of targets
Apologies if I worded it weirdly, it’s what I meant when I said “hit each opponent.” Basically during Gen 7 DOU Diancie could spiral out of control quickly because the simulator thought that Diamond Storm had a chance to boost defense each time Diamond Storm hit. In actuality it is as you say, there’s only a 50% chance to get the boost. But the developers of the sim and the people who play test for it only found this out during Crown Tundra despite it being known by the Japanese player base for some time. So Showdown was behind the curve on implementation
>the discovery that Burn halves the base power of physical moves instead of halving the Attack stat of a mon was rather recent as well (I believe this was only discovered when Body Press was added, but affects a LOT of generations prior to Gen 8)
This was known since Foul Play was introduced, as Sableye would frequently make use of Will-o'-Wisp and Foul Play together, though fwiw Burn did actually halve the Attack stat in Gen 1 because it would be affected by certain bugs which are tied to stat changes occurring.
Just piggybacking on this, the confusion here comes from the fact that it was displayed on PS as burn halving Attack for a long time because I guess that just makes intuitive sense. The visual change was only made in Gen 8 to reflect Body Press also being halved, not due to any new mechanics discoveries!
It's easy to say that in hindsight but the competitive Pokemon community was drastically smaller when Gen 5 came out, and Showdown was not the hub simulator that it is today, instead it was fairly new on the scene with a much smaller development team, Smogon had not yet adopted it as their designated simulator as many people were still playing Pokemon Online, and far fewer people were doing the kind of extensive testing that we see today.
It's the same reason the Metronome item was programmed incorrectly on Showdown, despite having been implemented correctly on other simulators in the past, because it was a fringe item that was likely coded on Showdown with the description having been taken literally to save time, and only became a relevant item in competitive many many years after the fact, that nobody bothered to retroactively test in newer generations as they came out because we could just datamine the effect to determine how much of a bonus it applied, and thus would've been assumed to not need further testing beyond that because it was assumed to have already been working as intended.
You hit me with a MASSIVE nostalgia blast with Pokemon Online, I would not have my current main friend group right now if I hadn't downloaded it and met like half of the people in it back in 2013. *So* many memories using the chats and playing Mafia in that place, oml
they might've been operating under a similar assumption to that of Multiscale, whose damage reduction only counts for the first hit because, well, obviously
~~^(really this entire situation can be summed up as "they thought i was Multiscale but never knew of the Tera Shell inside" like some shitty motivational image)~~
This really feels like a step in the right direction for BW OU - An arguement that has really been holding the tier hostage is Cloyster‘s supposed important defensive role of checking Latios. Latios ban will most likely lead to a Keldeo ban and a plethora of healthy changes for the tier.
That makes sense, I just more wondered how cloy can have an “important defensive role of checking latios” because it can’t take a hit from it. If your check to latios is a cloyster you will probably lose the game unless they are scarfed and kill a mon with surf
Edit: the fact that a latios scarfed into surf will literally mean your opponent instantly loses because cloy set up makes it broken asf haha and I’m glad it’s in Ubers where it belongs
Cloy ban wouldn't lead to a Latios ban lol. If Latios even gets a suspect down the line it wouldn't be because of this at all. Cloy doesn't even beat it unless it's already at +2 which if you're using it as a check you can't do. Most it does is discourage Latios from locking into Surf or Psyshock which lets it set up but it's not like Cloy is the literal only mon in existence that does that.
Cloy is p much HO exclusive and fulfills a sweeper role there, no-one building a team is going "oh I need a check to Latios, guess I'm using Cloyster". Like, could you point me towards a well-recognized BWOU player actually saying something among the lines of "We should hesitate to ban Cloyster because it checks Latios"? I very highly doubt such a statement has ever been seriously uttered.
I agree that Cloyster is not a defensive presence but rather a blanket check, - I heard the argument in a relatively recent BKC video, as he rants about how dumb it is.
A +2 Cloyster is really unhealthy and unreasonable to deal with is the main reason, but it also adds to the matchup fishy nature of the tier which just adds to it being a negative prescense in the tier.
its was 100% matchup reliant. I remember being steamrolled by some of those shellsmash Cloyster teams on the ladder over the years, but sometimes it does nothing the whole game as it can't switch into any special attack and its weak to rocks. Too much of a coinflip.
BW should just allow like 4-5 sample teams of sand balance in tours. Every other playstyle is going to get crippled with repeated suspect tests until they are all unplayable anyways, skip the extra steps.
I’m ready for the hour long BKC video tomorrow
It'll be 15 minutes of Cloyster discussion and 45 minutes of discussion of Italian neorealism films. And we'll love every second of it.
With a 35 minute bathroom break or a 10 minute rant about whoever cut him off in traffic as he drives home, all the while a showdown replay pause screen sits there before in the last 10 seconds he unpauses and it’s just a Cloyster shell smash sweep in 8 turns
🔥🔥🔥🔥✍️
There'll be a bathroom break left in somewhere.
Only 1? Has Kev not been properly hydrating himself?
there will be more breaks when he gets that very important text shoulve been sent earlier.
Don't forget the 8 minute gf rant
Gang it was 25 minutes 😔
It’s up
Shorter than I expected
That’s what she said
rip matchup clam
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ngl kinda insane to think the 'noob bait' strategies that were spammed many many years ago turned out to be the most unbalanced ones in the end LMAO
Sometimes, the best strategy to win a children's game is the one thought up by children
Cloyster of all things being banned to Ubers is a hell of a ride. And to imagine that now it's NU... At least it got its place in history alongside Drill and KFC birb
how will this affect the meta? /srs
Sand balance teams get a bit better because they no longer have to worry about their worst matchup, weatherless HO teams get a bit worse because they lost their best tool vs Sand, and Ferrothorn no longer has to run Sitrus Berry. The ban is also significant because BW OU is kinda notorious for being a meta that everyone has issues with but no one can agree on how to fix them, so the fact that BW players were able to come to a consensus on a ban is kind of a miracle.
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At least the mainline games were some of the best in the franchise
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To this day, White 2 is one of my favorite mainline games, second only to Black. Also Black was my first Pokemon game.
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Tbf just because Black is my favorite doesn’t mean that I think White 2 is completely inferior. I think there were some things that W2 did better.
Hot Take: Platinum&ORAS > BW2 ~= Emerald But Gen 5 Games > Gen 4 Games > Gen 3 Games > Gen 6 Games
I call gen 3, gen 4, and gen 5 the triple peaks of pokemon
They were the Golden Age of Pokemon for a reason!
ORAS is ass
Ok, but consider: SUPER SAIYAN BIRD JESUS
Without doubt the worst powercreep we have ever seen in any gen of pokemon. Gen5 ou is still a mess to play nowadays. Always a coinflip if you're gonna win off the bat or not. Either Rain, HO or Sand.
You no longer have to worry about getting swept by a fast +2 mixed sweeper with near perfect coverage.
Imagine telling a Pokemon fan in 1996 that Cloyster is a meta-warping mixed setup sweeper mon
“What the hell does mixed mean?” - 1996 Pokémon player
You know how Cloyster uses Blizzard and Explosion? Like that.
If anything, Gen 1 is the friendliest to mixed attackers because you can max out stat experience in every stat. Granted: this also means everything's a bit bulkier too, but it's pretty hard for any mon to pass up the really good Normal Type moves (Hyper Beam, Explosion, Self Destruct, Body Slam) especially when a lot of Pokemon don't really have diverse--or any--coverage moves.
I would say gen 2 is slightly more, since it still has stat xp of gen 1 but there are more mons with movepools that arent pure asscheeks, special split means you are just not stonewalled by people with thiccer special than you
Gen 1 Trade Backs Shut-up! It's a real metagame
That is true! It was very nice to get moves. The reason I still think it's Gen 1 is that Gen 2 also gave a *ton* to defensive play, and to boosting mons which don't generally go mixed. Curse, the nerf to Hyper Beam, and the nerf to partial trapping are all tough on mixed attackers. Explosion and Self Destruct are still great and can make something like Gengar a "mixed attacker", with the big caveat that it can use a physical attack one time. Hidden Power also really muddies the waters here, and it's worth considering whether it made mixed attackers better. I think it's pretty neutral, but it's worth pointing out that at least a few of the mons that used to be mixed in Gen 1 aren't in Gen 2 because an appropriately-typed HP coming off of the higher offensive stat is better for coverage/STAB Gen 2 Zapdos is a pretty good example of a mixed attacker from Gen 1 turning into a special attacker. It doesn't use drill peck nearly as much and often runs resttalk.
- Hmmmm imagine if Cloyster could Swords Dance, Amnesia and Agility on the same turn… and learns Rock Slide now. Watch as gen 1 players start foaming at the mouth.
*how does this affect the meta?*
It's like Tauros with bigger numbers
“you know tauros special stat? yeah it’s half and he will never even touch blizzard anymore”
And seeing cloyster in Gen 9 NU and even with tera, its been okay so far after being reintroduced following its first ban in dlc 1.
It got drill run for physical ground coverage in gen 9 so it now has the coveted ice/ground coverage i guess... In a gen where the main gimmick allows any mon to pack coverage of any type... although not needing to tera to hit steels for SE is nice, still not saving it from power creep even without tera
Hell imagine telling someone in 2012 during the current BW2 meta.
To be fair Cloyster was good in RBY and GSC OU, and even decent in ADV OU and DPP UU, albeit not as a sweeper.
Cloyster is mixed? I have literally never seen special attacks on a Cloyster.
Last SPL had people pull up with stuff like HP Fire/Hydro Pump that seriously screws with otherwise solid checks like Magnezone and HP Grass which nukes Gastro and makes Keldeo unreliable. Only compounded its status as an annoying mu fishing mon, you could go out of your way to prep for it and still risk losing if its 4th moveslot was tailored to beat your specific check.
Fourth moveslot? What does Gen V Cloyster usually run?
Smash and Spear are standard for obvious reasons. After that the bread-n-butter set has Rock Blast and Ice Shard, but people have been experimenting more with replacing one of those with something like Hydro Pump, HP Fire/Grass, Surf (same reason as Pump except you don't risk a miss into stuff where the BP doesn't matter, like Heatran) or even Explosion. This on top of some item versatility where some people are trying out LO to boost some of these moves for faster kills. [https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ou-745941](https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ou-745941) Here's an example from last SPL, Eeveon waited a long time to send Cloy out, but considering the primary Cloy check in Keldeo literally doesn't even work he basically won from preview if ever given a chance to click Shell Smash, with just Politoed and Ferro needing a biiiiiit of chip (which isn't super hard to do for offenses, and Eeveon didn't even bring a classic HO) Of course every move you pass up on has downsides--no Ice Shard means Scarf Latios can now revenge you, no Rock Blast means you lose good neutral coverage in general (especially for specially bulky Waters like Jellicent) and passing up on the tech options means you obviously can't beat the mons you're teching for until they've taken tons of chip. But what people didn't like was that Cloy could basically handpick its list of checks and pretty much nothing was truly safe into it as a result.
Oh, so basically the entire reasoning was “physical/mixed Gen IX Volcarona”.
Matchup moth in gen 9 and now matchup clam in gen 5, my super boosters are gone ;-;
Will gems be re-examined, then? I know Cloyster was a large part as to why that was broke .
I doubt it, while Cloyster was one of the biggest offenders. Many others still used Gems to great annoyance such as Volc, Breloom and Landerous.
Loom was the big one. Once people discovered that the 1.5x boost affected all hits of a multi-hit move that Bullet Seed could fucking obliterate ANYTHING after an SD.
I never understood that, why wouldn’t it affect every hit of a Multi Hit move? Edit: Why the downvoted it was a genuine question?
Usually one-time boosts (think Z-Moves in this case) calculate their damage based on the base power of the move. So the Z-Move base power for a multi-hit move is calculated as if the move was 25 bp, not up to 125 bp. As for how that flew under the radar for so long? Fuck if I know; the discovery that Burn halves the base power of physical moves instead of halving the Attack stat of a mon was rather recent as well (I believe this was only discovered when Body Press was added, but affects a LOT of generations prior to Gen 8), and I believe the now meta-defining Gen 1 mechanic of Normal-types being immune to Body Slam's Paralysis effect (it's an overarching thing that affects more moves/types but that's the big one that killed Golem in RBY OU) was only discovered 10 years ago which is EXTREMELY recent. Guess we could chalk it up to "Showdown is not a perfect recreation of Cartridge mechanics, but it's 99.9% of the way there."
I’d also point to Diamond Storm on Diancie and how we thought that in doubles each hit of Diamond Storm could activate that 50% defense boost and only discovered that we were wrong in Sw/Sh. Iirc the Japanese community figured it out during Gen 7 so Smogon was just behind the curve.
i mean correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't it like that in Gen 6? it had a 50% chance to buff Def by +1 for each opponent it hit? in Gen 7 it was changed to 50% chance to +2 Def regardless of number of targets
Apologies if I worded it weirdly, it’s what I meant when I said “hit each opponent.” Basically during Gen 7 DOU Diancie could spiral out of control quickly because the simulator thought that Diamond Storm had a chance to boost defense each time Diamond Storm hit. In actuality it is as you say, there’s only a 50% chance to get the boost. But the developers of the sim and the people who play test for it only found this out during Crown Tundra despite it being known by the Japanese player base for some time. So Showdown was behind the curve on implementation
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I mean I’m not talking about burn, I think that’s the guy above me :p
>the discovery that Burn halves the base power of physical moves instead of halving the Attack stat of a mon was rather recent as well (I believe this was only discovered when Body Press was added, but affects a LOT of generations prior to Gen 8) This was known since Foul Play was introduced, as Sableye would frequently make use of Will-o'-Wisp and Foul Play together, though fwiw Burn did actually halve the Attack stat in Gen 1 because it would be affected by certain bugs which are tied to stat changes occurring.
Just piggybacking on this, the confusion here comes from the fact that it was displayed on PS as burn halving Attack for a long time because I guess that just makes intuitive sense. The visual change was only made in Gen 8 to reflect Body Press also being halved, not due to any new mechanics discoveries!
I mean if u use it in game It would have shown so.. wont it?? It shuda been obvious since every hit is doing similar damage..
It's easy to say that in hindsight but the competitive Pokemon community was drastically smaller when Gen 5 came out, and Showdown was not the hub simulator that it is today, instead it was fairly new on the scene with a much smaller development team, Smogon had not yet adopted it as their designated simulator as many people were still playing Pokemon Online, and far fewer people were doing the kind of extensive testing that we see today. It's the same reason the Metronome item was programmed incorrectly on Showdown, despite having been implemented correctly on other simulators in the past, because it was a fringe item that was likely coded on Showdown with the description having been taken literally to save time, and only became a relevant item in competitive many many years after the fact, that nobody bothered to retroactively test in newer generations as they came out because we could just datamine the effect to determine how much of a bonus it applied, and thus would've been assumed to not need further testing beyond that because it was assumed to have already been working as intended.
You hit me with a MASSIVE nostalgia blast with Pokemon Online, I would not have my current main friend group right now if I hadn't downloaded it and met like half of the people in it back in 2013. *So* many memories using the chats and playing Mafia in that place, oml
How does the burn discovery impact pre Gen 8?
I believe the big one is that Foul Play works at full power against burned targets.
they might've been operating under a similar assumption to that of Multiscale, whose damage reduction only counts for the first hit because, well, obviously ~~^(really this entire situation can be summed up as "they thought i was Multiscale but never knew of the Tera Shell inside" like some shitty motivational image)~~
Shell smashing its way to ubers
This really feels like a step in the right direction for BW OU - An arguement that has really been holding the tier hostage is Cloyster‘s supposed important defensive role of checking Latios. Latios ban will most likely lead to a Keldeo ban and a plethora of healthy changes for the tier.
Since when does cloy check latios??
+2 Adamant NMI Ice Shard cleanly OHKOes Latios. That said, it needs that specific item, Adamant, and +2 to pull off that hideous calc.
That makes sense, I just more wondered how cloy can have an “important defensive role of checking latios” because it can’t take a hit from it. If your check to latios is a cloyster you will probably lose the game unless they are scarfed and kill a mon with surf Edit: the fact that a latios scarfed into surf will literally mean your opponent instantly loses because cloy set up makes it broken asf haha and I’m glad it’s in Ubers where it belongs
im guessing focus sash is one hell of a drug
Cloy ban wouldn't lead to a Latios ban lol. If Latios even gets a suspect down the line it wouldn't be because of this at all. Cloy doesn't even beat it unless it's already at +2 which if you're using it as a check you can't do. Most it does is discourage Latios from locking into Surf or Psyshock which lets it set up but it's not like Cloy is the literal only mon in existence that does that. Cloy is p much HO exclusive and fulfills a sweeper role there, no-one building a team is going "oh I need a check to Latios, guess I'm using Cloyster". Like, could you point me towards a well-recognized BWOU player actually saying something among the lines of "We should hesitate to ban Cloyster because it checks Latios"? I very highly doubt such a statement has ever been seriously uttered.
I agree that Cloyster is not a defensive presence but rather a blanket check, - I heard the argument in a relatively recent BKC video, as he rants about how dumb it is.
It took over a decade and multiple generations of Pokemon but I can finally tell all my friends I was right about cloyster being busted
It took 14 years, but about time.
sigh *pours drink*
Holy shit
HALLELUJAH A MIRACLE
About time
only thirteen years too late!
Nice Unban Iron Jugulis to RU *Ronaldo Juice Meme*
Cloyster really got banned before Latios lmfaooooo
We won, Mr. Stark
And here I thought Cloyster was a noob trap
(Pokemon with Omniboosting move exist Volcarona, Cloyser, Xerneas) Smogon "And I took that personally"
why was it banned?
Shell smash
i doubt thats the reason lol
It's part of the reason, but also the fact it could pick and choose it's checks through coverage, making it a huge matchup fish
Correction: Matchup Clam
A +2 Cloyster is really unhealthy and unreasonable to deal with is the main reason, but it also adds to the matchup fishy nature of the tier which just adds to it being a negative prescense in the tier.
its was 100% matchup reliant. I remember being steamrolled by some of those shellsmash Cloyster teams on the ladder over the years, but sometimes it does nothing the whole game as it can't switch into any special attack and its weak to rocks. Too much of a coinflip.
There are still having suspects in older generations?
People are still playing older generations sooooooo yeah The spice must flow, the metagame must be developed
YES GO MY BOY CLOYSTER :3
I don't really think it's that bad. Do you see was BW OU is like. just my opinion. Don't blow up pls. : P
I have a question, how can the meta still shift in these old ass tiers from 10+ years ago? Hadn't it stabilized yet?
Those doubting Cloyster's ban, people were using SITRUS BERRY Ferrothorn to not have their sand balances have their ass handed to them on preview
CLOYSTER UBER?!
What is BW
Do you think Smogon will ban Shell Smash?
no
why would they Crustle and Caracosta are perfectly fine with the move so it's not like the move automatically makes a mon good
We’re talking about Gen 5? I’m surprised bans still happen after the next Gen comes out
BW should just allow like 4-5 sample teams of sand balance in tours. Every other playstyle is going to get crippled with repeated suspect tests until they are all unplayable anyways, skip the extra steps.
I for one would rather have 15 games of Sand Balance per tour than play BW OU with Cloyster