Axe: My comments were for Porii Sames and Haunter. I'm in complete agreement with you on this.
Are you kidding me? In our testing blaze did nothing.
Do you even play against Dialgachomp? Regice techs? You don't build the deck around it, its just supposed to be a tech to deal with some issues Sablelock has, such as Dialga G. Playtesting doesn't ever give you the full benefit of how a tech is supposed to work since you know what the tech is used for and will try to work around it. Thats an imbalanced way of testing.
I don't like autoloss to Dos.
My original build I ran at nationals and spring BR's last year was capable of holding its own against Gyarados every single game. In addition to that, Gyarados is not the play for States as it autolosses to every single notable deck in format. If you run into it, chances are you're hitting bad luck or you're in low tables.
I'm now wondering what is better in general: Regular Sabelock, or Sablelock with Blaziken?
Last season I'd say regular. Now I'd say Chenlock. Blaziken is too important right now.
I'm sorry? I'm saying there is a reason why SableLock is not teched for- because it loses to almost all of the meta anyways. It does have autolosses, too. Just look at the dos matchup.
This is an invalid statement. More than half of the current metagame was relevant at nationals last year. Guess what won at nationals? A few select techs aren't going to change this statistic. If you're bad with Sablelock, then you're going to lose to the entire metagame anyways. Take note that Luxchomp, Gyarados, Dialgachomp, and Cursegar were ALL around last year. Vilegar may be slightly different, but still can't get through Sablelock's early game nightmares.
All of Sablelock's matchups are 50/50 or better. There is a reason that less than 1% play it, you're right. Because its a ballsy play and takes more skill than people realize. Its like playing High Risk/High Reward characters in fighting games. If you know what you're doing, you're going to benefit greatly from it, whereas if you have no clue what you're doing, you're going to be in dead last place. The same can be said for Dialgachomp. People state that "Oh, its simple enough to run I can do it!" then they go 0-X drop.
There is no base to this statement. I understand if you've not played it enough to gauge the results you want, but the fact remains that every deck is still around from last format barring Jumpluff.
I'm still not seeing this autoloss to Gyarados. I've shut down many a Gyarados in my time. I've had some rocky late games when the lock dies out, but I can still keep ahead despite that.
