OU: Finchinator vs Rexus
Prepmaster Finchinator has been living and dying by matchup. Against Sacri', he seemed to give up immediately in the face of a matchup disadvantage; he played fast and loose and his timer never even showed past turn 1. He's now up against Rexus, who's been well-equipped with teams from the Italian building cabal for this entire tournament. It'll be near-impossible for Finch to cater his prep towards him, so he's already losing the mental battle before the match has even begun. Rexus's last few endgames have been called into question, and while I think a few turns could've been optimized better, I don't think he's made any egregious blunders or anything. It'll be even enough if both players bring their best, but if any one thing rattles Finch, be it matchup, play, or tech, Rexus is just going to wrest control of the match and ride it to a win. And I think that'll happen more likely than not.
OU: Raiza vs BK
Highlight match. BK looked impeccable up until an unfortunate encounter with the matchup monkey last week. Like Finch, he also appeared to tilt a bit, not even trying for a Power Whip miss on Clefable. Raiza has looked less invincible when it comes to matchups but has been outplaying greater deficits throughout the course of this tournament, several of those under high time pressure to boot. As he's coming off a win to BK's visibly frustrating loss, I have to favor him here.
OU: BIHI vs John W
Clash of styles here. BIHI uses all the Pokemon I like; John W uses all the Pokemon that I don't. It's a luxury to not have to use Mandibuzz or Corviknight; to willingly use both in 2020 is obscene. That said, BIHI has been slightly more miss than hit with his experimentation, so I have to go with John's consistency here. Given what he's shown so far, though, I have high hopes for BIHI to step it up in these weeks leading up to playoffs.
OU: Tace vs ramboss
Quality/play aside, ramboss has brought the ugliest looking teams for two of his last three matches. His last week's team was much prettier, so that's a good sign. If he brings anything like his W1/W2/W7 builds, he'll be in good shape. If it's something like W4/W6, count me out. Tace has been grabbing teams from here and there, and he's been picking the good ones, so I trust his taste more at the moment. However, to predict the Finchinators to avoid losing to a Tricking-led team seems pretty ridiculous, so I'm trusting ramboss's building coinflip to come up heads this week.
OU: talah vs Vaboh
From what I've seen, talah's had some good building highlights this tour; however, I don't necessarily get to see or know the low points. I've had qualms with some of the Rattlers' builds, and for all I know, he's played some role in their creation. That said, it's historically been his play that's come under fire, and his debut game wasn't extended enough to quell those doubts. Vaboh has been playing fine, but I haven't been won over by his builds; last week, he deviated from more standard stuff and brought a strange triple-Dark team that was a little too Kyurem-weak for my taste. I give talah an edge here on the basis of building, but it's on him to prove he can play at the level Vaboh's shown thus far.
OU: lax vs Tamahome
Last week, tama brought a team with SDef Clef as the sole Urshifu counter and justly faced an Urshifu. I don't know who was responsible for this, so I'm going to blame The Magician, because that's always fun to do. lax brought a team I liked much more, but the Trick Mew flipped a good matchup on its head. He turned it on at the end, but it was too late by then; I think he could've played a bit more sharply at the start. Despite the outcome of the match and the remarks at the end, I'm willing to bet lax will avoid slipping into perma-tilt due to how he played out the endgame. Having said that, tama's looked solid outside of glaring team issues, so I'm going to favor him slightly if he bring something more reasonable this week. Big if.
OU: Samqian vs Star
If you're wondering where Void went during Week 5, he was actually beachside with elodin, and he has a Star fish to prove it. The Serpents' R1 pick has not had the most engaging matches in the past three weeks, but his most recent spin on HO is my favorite out of all used in this tour so far; all the sweepers he used are among the most consistent in the current meta compared to things like Volcarona and Toxtricity that others have brought. After a couple of matchup weeks, Sam finally got to play the game against ZDen with an impeccable team choice, if I do say so myself. He introduced some stylistic changes of his own while preserving the key components, namely the attackless Chansey, which I think would've scared off some people. Last week, though, he fell into the do-nothing team trap and got routed by a defensive team with actual breaking options. Based on past weeks from both of these players, I feel like this is going to come down to matchup again, and Star is trending more upwards as of last week.
OU: Kebab mlml vs watashi
There has been too much meddling with perfection from the Rattlers...last week was the second time they replaced the Mantine with a Corviknight on the Kommo-Aegi-Zera team. The first time was against The Magician and his Volcaronas and Keldeos; this second time was against ramboss and his coalition of setup sweepers. In both cases could a Mantine have saved these matchups. That specific team aside, Kebab's teams have been too passive for my taste. FLCL rebounded from his losing streak last week; you'll have a tough time convincing me that his last team wasn't built Week 1 of this tournament, but he's made it work. I prefer his teams and his chances here.
OU: ima vs dice
dice tried to bring the matchup monkey vs. someone with more Cobalion/G-Weezings in his builder than some of the UU playerbase. He'll have to step it up or get talah to stop sabotaging him. ima, on the other hand, has been cruising for these past few weeks. His techs have been hitting, his plays have been unrestrained, and you can tell he's in his comfort zone. The only danger here would be running into a renewed dice, now liberated from playoffs pressure, but he might very well just take the opportunity to go camping again.
OU: Sacri' vs High Impulse
After boring even himself with Sand Team #6332, Smogon's most prolific Corviknight-leader, The Sac, decided to take the opposite approach and break out everything from Specs Toxtricity to Rillaboom + Chandelure. Now, he can lose to Kyurem in style. High Impulse is coming off a loss to the notorious JYT, and I think he kind of clicked too fast in that one. If he's still invested in this tour, he'll make this one close, but I have to favor Sacri', who is slowly making a name for himself as this community's premier defensive player with his indelible ability to reduce even the most offensive of matchups to a drawn-out stall war.
OU: Regnite vs Void
After his first OU game, I honestly thought Void was going to continuously roll up with HO over and over again; turns out he was just delaying it for a week. I'm once again not convinced this game is getting done, though. Regnite has looked decent; I think he could've played a bit more proactively vs. Raiza, but his showings have not been bad at all.
OU: robjr vs Eeveeto
After I unfairly misattributed The Magician as his builder, rob rolled up with an actual Gama team and won off the back of the matchup-fish moth. Since then, he's kind of been out-offensed with a bit of bad luck. I'm looking for the return of CB Rhyp rob, even if it means using Keldeo again. Eeveeto, on the other hand, has been living and dying by his techs, and for the past two weeks, it's mostly been dying. And now that his team is all-but-out, we'll probably be seeing more of them, oh boy. Favoring robjr here unless Eeveeto brings a certain Pokemon.
OU: Bobby Dagen vs Leo
Leo has looked fine, but I must root for my Lindworms teammate.
OU: xray vs Santu
xray's looked way more in-tune with the metagame these days, while last we saw of SantOU was him seeing Fire move Tyranitar and closing his browser.
OU: LittleBigPlanet2 vs soulgazer
soulgazer was pretty good in post-Home meta, but he'll have no time to ramp up here. LBP2 has looked good even in his loss.
OU: Gefährlicher Random vs qsns
Can the dangerous Doubles player spoiler ability come into effect before Week 9? We'll find out.