Sand Team : The Big Three (Now with changes and import!)

[Curtains]

The Big Three

Hello. I am Curtains. This team has been pretty good. The prototype of this team got to the top 70 on the smogonu server which is pretty good. At one point I got like 10 wins in a row while playing between PO and private friendly matches. Without further fucking around please enjoy a good quality proofread given a fuck about Curtains post.

Previous Importable:

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Tyranitar (M) @ Chople Berry
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 104 SAtk / 148 SDef
Sassy Nature (+SDef, -Spd)
- Crunch
- Ice Beam
- Fire Blast
- Stealth Rock

Thundurus (M) @ Lum Berry
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Nasty Plot
- Focus Blast

Landorus (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Naughty Nature (+Atk, -SDef)
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Stone Edge
- Substitute

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 184 Def / 72 SAtk
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Gyro Ball
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Reflect

Gastrodon (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Scald
- Toxic
- Recover
- Ice Beam

Excadrill (M) @ Air Balloon
Trait: Sand Rush
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Swords Dance
- X-Scissor
- Rock Slide

Improved Importable:

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Tyranitar (M) @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 180 HP / 252 Atk / 76 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Stone Edge
- Crunch
- Pursuit
- Superpower

Thundurus (M) @ Lum Berry
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Nasty Plot
- Focus Blast

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 184 Def / 72 SDef
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Gyro Ball
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]

Landorus (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Smack Down
- Substitute

Gastrodon (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Scald
- Toxic
- Recover
- Earth Power

Excadrill (M) @ Air Balloon
Trait: Sand Rush
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Swords Dance
- Rapid Spin
- Rock Slide

Tyranitar (M) @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 180 HP / 252 Atk / 76 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Stone Edge
- Crunch
- Pursuit
- Superpower

Choice band will help break down Reniculus and Politoed better and help with initiative. Suggested by Eternal. Old analysis hidden.

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Purpose: Tyranitar serves the purpose of getting up setting up sand for the team. It checks Thunderus and lati@s. It also serves as a mini stall breaker with its mixed moveset. Tyranitar also sets up rocks for the team.

Ev’s: The ev’s give Tyranitar enough fire power to deal enough damage to enemies while serving as a weak special wall for weaker special attacks.

Moves: Crunch deals with threats such as lati@s and other psychic pokemon. It is also a good feeler move and all around strong move if I need to damage something. Ice beam catches Gliscor , Dragonite , Landourus and Thundurus and other ice weak pokemon. Fire blast catches Ferrothron, Skarmory and Forretress. Stealth rock is mandatory for a team like this and that’s why its here.

Synergy: Tyranitar’s synergy is more about being a point guard instead of just switching it in to X type move. Without sand this team will have a very hard time defeating the common spam rain team.
Item: Chople Berry allows me to kill Deoxys and deal with Thunderus better.

Opinion: Tyranitar is overused and top 5 for a good reason. It gets the job done. Chople berry is the best item for tyranitar because it suppresses its biggest weakness. Tyranitar is good at defending and sometimes putting big holes in the opposing team. Tyranitar is not the centerpiece of the team but when it does do something it almost certainly means the victory for me.

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 184 Def / 72 SDef
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Gyro Ball
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]

Switched the ev's to special defense to better handle special threats. Exchanged reflect to stealth rock. Previous Analysis in hide tags.

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Propose: Bronzong purpose is to act as a physical wall. It can aid at this by using the move reflect to help the team and help pave its own way to taking down a big physical threat. It can efficiently tank threats like Landourus, Excadrill, Toxicroak, Gliscor and others. This pokemon helps the team pull its own agenda.

Ev’s: The ev’s are geared towards a physical wall. The special attack ev’s are there to give Hidden power ice a little more power.

Moves: The moves are pretty basic. I was actually struggling to find a good 4th move for this pokemon. Hypnosis sounds good in theory. Hypnosis is very situational and it can really be harmful to the team if it misses . Hidden power ice is for killing Gliscor. I believe it 3hko’s it if it protects a lot.

Synergy: Bronzong has amazing synergy with Gastrodon. The only universal issue these two have are strong fighting types. But with reflect I can give Landourus time to come in and start launching earthquakes at them.

Item: leftovers. I need all the bulk I can get.

Opinion: Bronzong was suggested by a irc guy and it was the perfect fit for what I wanted. Bronzong is the glue to this team and it is a great fit.

Thundurus (M) @ Lum Berry
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Nasty Plot
- Focus Blast

Purpose: Thundurus’ purpose is to kill things. Defensively this pokemon is pretty poor so I try to play this guy as offensively as possible trying not to “predict” him in not as often as the others. It is a great check against rain stall as after a single boost you can start counting the kills.

Ev’s: Max speed and special attack lets it outspeed critical foes like specs lati@s and Gengar.

Moves: Thunderbolt, Hidden power ice and focus blast gives it pretty much perfect coverage. Nasty plot along with its ability prankster works well.

Synergy: Like I said before this is an offensive minded pokemon and it does not have an X switch in synergy objective. But as far as objective synergy goes I find it to be a great fit. It is sort of the best of both words.

Item: Lum berry is one of the best items for this. The reason is that it helps beat its # 1 check special defensive Jirachi. Once Jirachi is out of the way I get huge momentum because if something like Tyranitar comes in on me I can afford to miss focus blast and bring in something like Landorus.

Opinion: This thing rarely fails and it brings a lot of pressure to the opposing team.

Landorus (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Smack Down
- Substitute

Smack down suggested by someone. (forgot who it was thanks whomever recommended it) Basically for breaking down rotom and skarm easier. Found it to be a better fit than stone edge since smack down + earthquake 2hko's as well as stone edge but with better accuracy. Previous Analysis is hide tags. Just omit any mentions of stone edge.

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Purpose: Landorus purpose is to create initiative by spamming very powerful earthquakes and stone edges around. Its purpose is also to aid Thundurus by removing special walls. It also serves as a good fighting resist.

Ev’s: The ev’s bring the maximum amount of pain to the table. I go with max attack just to be able to 2hko a lot of things under a sub.

Moves: Substitute Landurus is excellent. With the combined powers of sand force/substitute and the edge quake, hp ice offensive synergy combination I can easily destroy many teams who do not have something like Skarmory or Bronzong. In a good battle this pokemon can take out at least 2 pokemon, most of which give Thunderus problem.

Synergy: Mostly as far as defensive synergy goes it’s basically for dealing with fighting types like Conkledurr and Toxicroak.

Item: Leftovers are used because I don’t need it losing extra hp while using LO.

Opinion: Sand's most underrated and underused sweeper due to the rise in gliscor and its shared 4x ice weakness is far from being dead weight. Under a sub, it will cause tremendous pain to many teams.

Gastrodon (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SAtk / 252 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Scald
- Toxic
- Recover
- Earth Power
Purpose: Gastrodon’s purpose is to be a special wall. Its purpose is to basically absorb all the water attacks / draco meteors and other random special attacks and toxic stall.

Ev’s: The ev’s allow Gastrodon to be a firm check against many special threats. Non sub Lati@s and Thundurus will have a very difficult time breaking through if they do not carry grass knot.

Moves: The moves are pretty straight forward. Scald is for gaining momentum and hopefully burning something. Toxic allows me to park it and start stalling out threats late game. Recover is for instant recovery and ice beam is for dealing with threats like Dragonite and Gliscor more efficiently

Synergy: The synergy of this pokemon is very important to this team. A lot of pokemon can fire off broken ass hydro pumps in the rain. This stops that. In turn I can fire back my own boosted attacks with storm drain. Gastrodon has good synergy with Bronzong. Gastrodon can step right in to fire attacks very easily and create more momentum.

Item: leftovers, nothing more to say about that.

Opinion: This pokemon is cheesy. I can just roll right over Rotom-w who basically can’t even touch me outside of will-o wisp, which really does not hurt because of leftovers and my special attacks.

Excadrill (M) @ Air Balloon
Trait: Sand Rush
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Swords Dance
- Rapid Spin
- Rock Slide

Exchanged x-scissor with rapid spin to help suppress forretress' shenanigans. Previous analysis is hide tags. Omit x-scissor.

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Purpose: Excadrill’s purpose is to sweep, Revenge kill threats, be a utility by creating switches and improving momentum and dealing with certain threats that can cause problems.

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Ev’s: Max attack and speed is the standard.

Synergy: As far as synergy goes the balloon plays a big part in that. It checks Mamoswine if Bronzong somehow dies.

Moves: Standard Excadrill moves give the best possible coverage from its move pool.

Item: Balloon over LO just to have a reliable switch in on ground attacks and to set up on toxic stall Gliscor if need be.

Opinion: This thing is strong and predictable, but ultra-reliable as a revenge killer and pretty nasty if everything on the opponent’s side is weakened. Very conservative play with this thing is key.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Eternal]

Hey Curtains.

Your team is very weak to entry hazards, Toxic Spikes can easily harm your Gastrodon and Tyranitar from being effective. I suggest replacing X-Scissor from Excadrill for Rapid Spin. This will help keep hazards away so you're not so easily weakened by them and invulnerable to sweep efficiently.

Next, I would like to recommend you use CB Tyranitar as your only means of OHKO'ing opposing Reuniclus as well as being able to more efficiently get rid of Ninetales and Politoed. Unfortunately none of your Pokemon comes in safely against Politoed (Gastrodon taking Toxic from it). And your team being very weak to a standard Sunny Day team. Here's the CB Tyranitar set:

Tyranitar @ Choice Band -- Sand Stream
Nature: Adamant - EVs: 180 HP / 252 Atk / 76 Spd
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Superpower
- Stone Edge

And finally, I would like to fix the Bronzong up. Replace Reflect from Bronzong and give it Stealth Rock. Bronzong is one of the best Stealth Rock supporter in the metagame right now having so many easy chances to set them up. Next, Bronzong doesn't need any SpAtk EVs, HP Ice is usually there for opposing Gliscor and Landorus in which it completely stops by 2HKO'ing them. Move those crucial SpAtk EVs to Bronzong's SpDef so it can actually beat Gengar. Gengar is a very big threat to the team.

 

[GreasyPanda]

Wow this is a pretty good team. There is not much to say about is except to put a choice band on T-tar. I would use the set Eternal gave you. It looks pretty good. Except I think you should replace either crunch or pursit for earthquake. Also I would keep x-scisor on exadrill. He is to frail to be a rapid spinner. Well take what suggestions you want and leave the ones you don't. Its up to you. And good luck with the team.

 

[Eternal]

Your team was rated by a couple of people on the live IRC lecture today at#ratemyteam. You can find the log here.

 

[Curtains]

Hey Curtains.

Your team is very weak to entry hazards, Toxic Spikes can easily harm your Gastrodon and Tyranitar from being effective. I suggest replacing X-Scissor from Excadrill for Rapid Spin. This will help keep hazards away so you're not so easily weakened by them and invulnerable to sweep efficiently.

Next, I would like to recommend you use CB Tyranitar as your only means of OHKO'ing opposing Reuniclus as well as being able to more efficiently get rid of Ninetales and Politoed. Unfortunately none of your Pokemon comes in safely against Politoed (Gastrodon taking Toxic from it). And your team being very weak to a standard Sunny Day team. Here's the CB Tyranitar set:

Tyranitar @ Choice Band -- Sand Stream
Nature: Adamant - EVs: 180 HP / 252 Atk / 76 Spd
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Superpower
- Stone Edge

And finally, I would like to fix the Bronzong up. Replace Reflect from Bronzong and give it Stealth Rock. Bronzong is one of the best Stealth Rock supporter in the metagame right now having so many easy chances to set them up. Next, Bronzong doesn't need any SpAtk EVs, HP Ice is usually there for opposing Gliscor and Landorus in which it completely stops by 2HKO'ing them. Move those crucial SpAtk EVs to Bronzong's SpDef so it can actually beat Gengar. Gengar is a very big threat to the team.

Thanks for the advice. I will test out these changes. Im just unsure if after these changes will I have enough for thundurus. My idea for reniculus was to actually just either use tyranitar or pound it really hard with landorus or thundurus until it dies. Gengar never really became a problem dude to chople berry and alot of stuff outspeeding it but I will move those special attack ev's to special defense. Rapid spin also sounds like a good idea. Thanks for the rate.

 

[IronBullet]

Hey,

I support all of Eternal's suggestions, your team really appreciates Rapid Spin support and a CB Tar set will work wonders in breaking down stall teams and Reuniclus. Also, move the 4 HP EVs on the two genies into Defense or Special Defense to hit a Leftovers number. Thundurus isn't too much if a problem for your team with clever switching to get Excadrill in safely.

I'm not sure why you're running a Naughty nature, you don't gain any extra KOs and you are not beating Skarmory or Bronzing anyway. You're much better off with a Naive nature so that you can beat positive natured base 100s, Hydreigon and Haxorus, a very important tier of Pokemon.

I prefer to run Earth Power on Gastrodon to help deal with Toxicroak, Tentacruel and other rain staples. Seeing as Gastrodon is your only Water resist, it is important for it to be able to cover as much of rain as possible. If you feel that Scald is more important for its burn chance then by all means keep it. Now you might have some problems with rain if Gastrodon is poisoned or KOed by a random HP Grass, so it's important to play conservatively with it.

Great team, and good luck!

 

[Curtains]

Thanks everyone , I tried to hit as many changes as possible. Great suggestions. I have updated the op to include the changes. Along with an importable. Also please tell me if I fucked up somewhere up my edit. The tags really threw me off.

 

[undisputed]

You're team looks pretty solid already imo. The only thing I think you should change is earth power > ice beam on gastrodon. Gliscor can't beat gastrodon and dragonite isn't exactly a problem for your team. Only thing it could really set up on is ttars super power but youve still got exca to come in and revenge. Certainly worthwhile imo

 

[Curtains]

You're team looks pretty solid already imo. The only thing I think you should change is earth power > ice beam on gastrodon. Gliscor can't beat gastrodon and dragonite isn't exactly a problem for your team. Only thing it could really set up on is ttars super power but youve still got exca to come in and revenge. Certainly worthwhile imo

Now that I think about it ep seems like a better fit for the team. It can at least hit jellicent neutrally and hit jirachi pretty decently.

 

[GtM]

Why not use a relaxed nature on Bronzong to power up HP Ice and Gyro Ball?

 

[Curtains]

Why not use a relaxed nature on Bronzong to power up HP Ice and Gyro Ball?

Your right It was a typo because i had messed up the team in PO with the new changes. good catch.

 

[ITSU]

Your right It was a typo because i had messed up the team in PO with the new changes. good catch.

You also want to run 2 Speed IVs with this so that you can get 70 BP on the HP Ice.