Another PvP guide! For those who don’t know me, I play PvP a lot, I like inventing new teams and sometimes I win 
Neo and numbers, let’s gooooo.
————-——————————————————-
Net gains and losses with cost.
Everyone is capped at 206 cost and most of the time, you don’t know what’s coming, unless you know the player well or they have strong themes in their team or their actions are very predictable. Obviously knowledge will supersede this tip, but if you ever find yourself in a position where you’re not sure what to kill, target the monster with the highest cost and look for a net gain in cost.
If you do this well, during the end game, you might find that you are both left with a similar number of monsters, but you have around 70 cost and they are around say 40 cost; a few legends and some low cost fillers they threw on the end of the team. This will usually put you in a good place.
You can look for easy cost net gains when team building too. For example musashoid is 7 cost, but it’s likely to kill 10/13/16 cost.
—————————————————————
Number of Sweepers Vs Support
When you think about your team building count the number of sweepers you have (monsters that will get kills). Count the number of kills you think each monster will get during an average game and total it up. (Consider the advantage the sweepers will have with the support mons). If that number is too low - bear in mind that the average player will run 14-15 monsters (with cost filler at the end) then you need to re-think the number of sweepers vs support mons you have and perhaps add more aggression.
For example if I play ‘The Red Dragon’, I generally know I’m going to get at least 3 kills with it. 2 from its roaring entrance defang and 1 from the payback killer revenge. I don’t expect to get tyranical ruling every time so if I do it’s a bonus.
Allow for things to go wrong when you calculate it and make a higher number of kills to aim for.
—————————————————————
Efficiency
I’ve said before in other guides I’ve made, to make deadweight in the enemy team is so important. A monsters effectiveness or place in the tier list is fluid, with its surroundings. For example a Duscy against a an autopoison is very low tier indeed in that environment.
I was talking to a player recently who came to me for advice with team building in this special rule. They had a bronzeshell in the FL with a view to accelerate the rest of the team. This gives a 20% reduction across the board for TU, which is a great boost, but the team has now been reduced by 25% as its only at 75% efficiency, until the shell dies. Stay at 100% efficiency as much as you can.
Avoid monsters which are purely situational. For example a Megalo is great to catch those Fast FLs. But very often it can be deadweight and has no other way to really damage the opponent. It may work most of the time and give a good win rate, but this is a key difference between top 10 and top 1. Top 1 can always attack. Stay at 100% efficiency. Leading nicely to enemy control and locks…
—————————————————————
Number of lock counters
To be the best in a season and achieve #1, your team has to be absolutely air tight when it comes to stun, sleep and token lock. Otherwise you’re not at 100% efficiency. We’ll look at each of them.
For me personally I like to have stun protection every other monster. Mixing up absorbers with stun counters. There are mitigating factors to this where I can break this rule in certain scenarios. For example,
Do I have stun immunes?
Do I have something that can create stun protection like Zhulong? (although it’s risky!)
Do I have something that can clear my own monster to bring in stun protection if needed.
In the FL, so I have protectors that are likely to die first
So ideally you’re not running stun protection every other monster as per the rule, because you use the factors above to make for more aggressive teams.
Also, you don’t really want back to back absorbers either or they will be stunned out together.
——
For sleep and purify, I advise something roughly every 3 mons. (So purify, non purify, non purify, Purify etc). It sounds like a lot, but this doesn’t apply so much at the FL because your first 4 mons are already there and might be covered by something in 5th, 6th or even in the FL itself. This applies after your first purify monster - so mainly for mid games.
Sleep is the biggest problem here, so lava entrance works well. Purify is effective against poison, but not hugely because poison gas is the same TU and Autopoison working on the next mon is usually enough for a double poison eater etc anyway. But poison is not a lock, this tip is for sleep.
Mitigation factors to break this rule are:
Sleep immunes/ insomnia
Whether you are running poison yourself
If you have monsters where it doesn’t matter too much if they sleep, like a Sakura or Auto Protector.
————
For Token lock this I tend to spread this a little more than my purifiers maybe 4 mons apart. Always have a few mons that can kill your own.
The FL is key though. Work a Payback killer towards the FL if you can.
If you want to have fun, don’t worry too much about the above tips. I certainly don’t for most seasons. But if I’m going to push, then I would take them seriously.
—————————————————————
Exhaustion
I’ve been thinking about a concept for a while which I don’t have a name for, but for now I’ll call it exhaustion.
A lot of players put their creativity and most intricate combos in the FL and mons that follow. This is natural because it’s easier to line moves up here. But there comes a point in every game, where the opponents FL has completed its purpose, whether it’s successful or its failed and there is a window of opportunity. For example, let’s say the enemy’s FL is
Suiken
Jaguardian
Joco
Bundam
Quite common FL monsters. After Bundam, The Joco will move and go around 100 TU, Jaguardian will Haze, Suiken Stealth breaks, Bundam attacks. The enemy made 2 kills.
The enemy has now ‘exhausted’ its FL. The next attack is around 85 TU away and there’s a chance to set up for a strat or multiple attacks.
There’s a few things here:
Work out what situation you’ll be in once your FL is exhausted. The 6th or 7th slot is absolutely vital for this. Find a way to come back. For example in my season 45 team, I noticed the spot where my FL would be exhausted from its moves, so I added a Malwing in 6th to regain control.
Try to predict who the enemy will kill first when you are exhausted and plan your team building accordingly.
Manage the enemy’s FL. In season 47 I placed a simple Diamondoid in my FL. For most players, they would use their fancy combos, which pretty much ended up resulting in 2 attacks on a 2 cost monster. Ties in with cost net gains. It was Particularly fun against retribution teams, who retreat with a 16 cost Titan, sacrifice an 8 cost mon, to have bauble and Dolphoone attack a diamond and now the FL is exhausted and I’m good to go.
Sometimes the way to handle a FL is not to completely stop it (which may be impossible) but manipulate and manage it as well as you can.
Use the 6th and 7th slot either to recover from your own team exhaustion or to punish the enemy when they hit theirs.
—————————————————————
The Game Timer
Even high level players are not checking the game timer when they should be. They get out to sleep and have no idea when their mon is going to wake up.
If you see a sleeper or a Wraithhost etc, check the timer and know exactly when it’s going to reach survivor, or your monster should wake up etc. This is simply, but so important.
—————————————————————
They’re my tips! I hope you find them useful. As I said, I often don’t use them because I like to have fun and run random crap. But when I have been playing seriously, they’ve all worked out very successfully for me in the past and they helped me achieve #1 a few times. Take them or leave them, it’s up to you! Feel free to add tips below if you want 
Stop flirting as per usual you shlag.