I’ve seen a few rumblings about how open team sheets are going to stifle creativity in team building and lead to a hyper centralized meta. Since you can’t surprise anyone, there’s no reason not to use the safe standard mons anymore. But I disagree, and I don’t really think it’s that simple.
For those unfamiliar with my past, I had (have?) somewhat of a reputation as a quirky teambuilder. I’m responsible for the Sunny Day Ludicolo that Toler won 2012 worlds with and got a distribution. I was the reason a Gallade won 2014 Jr Nats. I myself have cut major events with physical Blastoise, Houndoom, Cofagrigus, Beartic, Scyther, Guzzlord, Seismitoad, Walrein, and once with a full Ultra Beast team. So I believe I’m qualified to weigh in on creative choices in team building.
The element of surprise cuts both ways, and that’s why removing part of it frees you up to take bigger risks. The “safe standard” pokémon get that reputation because they are somewhat surprise resistant. Sometimes a niche mon will be really good against common things, unless those common things have surprise items like scarves or resist berries. If those items become even remotely high usage, it becomes too risky to run the niche counter and people revert back to a more common mon that merely doesn’t auto-lose to surprise items. But if you remove the threat of a suprise auto-loss, you can branch out your team options pretty far. Because even if they have the perfect item to counter your counter, you can gameplan around it without taking a game 1 loss finding out.
Beyond just team construction, there’s also a lot of psychology that goes into playing with non-standard pokémon. If your opponent is unfamiliar with your <0.1% usage mon, they tend to make erratic moves and become as unpredictable to you as your surprise sets are to them. It’s not always ideal. Early in tournaments you have to guess if your opponent even knows what you could potentially have. Later in tournaments you have to guess if your opponent already knows exactly what you have because you may have played their friends earlier. In both cases it discourages you from making strong reads because you don’t know what information your opponent is operating with. Playing under those conditions is tough, and so using a more “standard” team is often more comfortable for most players. Not necessarily better, but more comfortable since your opponents will play a little more predictably. Open team sheets means no longer having to guess what your opponent knows, so you can run the wackier stuff and still make reasonably comfortable reads and predictions.
I guess overall I’m cautiously optimistic that open team sheets lead to a much wider metagame where everyone leans into their own unique playstyles. Running so called “gimmick” mons has never really been about trying to surprise people for me, it’s been about using what I think gives me the best chance to win. I know for me personally, building has felt more free than it has in years. I’m just a little disappointed Battle Stadium won’t function as an effective practice tool.