The Outsiders Challenge

PO alt used when laddering: OK FUCK U
Type of team: HO
Ladder standing: 1000

ok fuck i was at 1331 and then tilt + a dc from the server got me down 100 points so new account~~~~

Po alt - WobbanauterDH
Type of team - balanced
Ladder Standing - 1155

Achieved it so far. I will edit or post a new message later to show my team with some replays and some explanations about it, as well as some thought about that challenge.

I'll try to have better points later and maybe try to reach 1400 with an another team.

Good job McMeghan!! I'm glad someone was able to beat the challenge; it just goes to show that you don't always have to use the most overused Pokemon to win in OU! When you update your post / post again I would love to know how your team worked! And keep laddering, who knows, you could just end up at number 1!

Username: Czechm8Alt
Type of team: Sun
Ladder Standing 1050

Pffft. I only use the top 10 in the 1337 stats. I can try this anyways.
PO username: like 15 of them lol. I guess I'll put in asterat
Type of team: Hail
Ladder Standing: highest account about 1380. Am I supposed to start from lower? Or do I just have to maintain that with a hail team? If I do have to start from lower, where?

No, you need to start with a NEW account or one with a rating under 1000.

Grrrrrrrrrrr I give up on Sun stall, its interesting but at the end of the day I'm down one poke with Ninetales. What really puts Rain/Sand stall in another league is how Politoed and Tyranitar/Hippowdon can contribute something to the team, especially Hippowdon. Politoed is a decent bulky water and has access to some niche moves like Perish Song and Hypnosis (rain taking away steels fire weakness is huge). Tyranitar makes an awesome counter to the Lati's which can give stall trouble and Sand adds to that ever important residual damage. Ninetales? Gets wrecked by SR and is hard to maintain her weather when the opponent doesn't have to fear getting KO'ed by a powerful Sun sweeper. Ninetales takes as much hazard damage with SR as a Tyranitar/Politoed with 3 layers Spikes/ SR+1 Spikes.

*Looking at the top ten Ferrothorn isn't on there but Celebi is? wow voltturn o_o

Therefore I'm going to start anew with a more balanced team:

PO alt used when laddering: DFP
Type of team: balance
Ladder standing: None

Sounds like a plan! Yeah, reading the sun article makes me realize that it specifically states how non-viable sun stall is :d

Anyhow, best of luck on your next team! Balance and stall seem like the ways to go with this sort of challenge, given that the most powerful sweepers are banned.

ThePillsburyDoughBoy said:

Grrrrrrrrrrr I give up on Sun stall, its interesting but at the end of the day I'm down one poke with Ninetales. What really puts Rain/Sand stall in another league is how Politoed and Tyranitar/Hippowdon can contribute something to the team, especially Hippowdon. Politoed is a decent bulky water and has access to some niche moves like Perish Song and Hypnosis (rain taking away steels fire weakness is huge). Tyranitar makes an awesome counter to the Lati's which can give stall trouble and Sand adds to that ever important residual damage. Ninetales? Gets wrecked by SR and is hard to maintain her weather when the opponent doesn't have to fear getting KO'ed by a powerful Sun sweeper. Ninetales takes as much hazard damage with SR as a Tyranitar/Politoed with 3 layers Spikes/ SR+1 Spikes.

Click to expand...

The only things that make sun stall worth using are cresselia and sableye. In the sun, sableye can spinblock against any spinner safely, and cress is almost a full stop to any dragon. I had relative success using an altered version of stunt's team a while back, making dark horse HoF with it. Though ninetales is irrefutably worse than ttar or politoed, it does have an interesting niche for stall. If you have rocks up and w-o-w politoed on the switch (or have spikes up, OR politoed is poisoned from tspikes), rain teams actually struggle immensely to get a foothold against sunstall, since rain is utterly crippled by the sun, but sun stall doesn't rely as heavily on the sun as an offense team does.

Since it seems like dark horse is over, on hold, or whatever, I think I'd like to participate in this. The idea of making a successful team using none of the top 10 is a really interesting concept. I'll post my signup later.

If I just beat the Dark Horse Project and it wasn't counted since it was late (I started at the end of March anyway) do I have to make a new alt? If so, I'll just use the same team I guess...

PO alt used when laddering: Xanderpitz2
Type of team: Baton Pass
Ladder standing: 1000

Are we allowed to have two signups? There are two teams I'd like to try out and it would be less frustrating to drop one if it wasn't working.

Harsha said:

Balance and stall seem like the ways to go with this sort of challenge, given that the most powerful sweepers are banned.

Click to expand...

This. I've been sticking with my original style of hyper offense and I've found it very difficult. I've used 5 sweepers plus a wall and while the sweepers haven't been to weak to succeed (I've always had enough attacking power), I've been hard pressed to find one wall to fill my needs. I've tried Ferrothorn, Donphan, and I'm now using Cradily as Rotom-W was wrecking my team and Storm Drain Cradily seems to be a pretty good counter for it. But still I haven't had much success. I'm thinking I might try Deoxys-D and then if that doesn't work switch to a more balanced playstyle.

On another note, Hydregion works very well in OU and I really haven't seen very much use of him. A special set with LO can really knock through some teams, especially when the opponent thinks hes Specs'd.

Is "Specs'd" the proper term for a Pokemon with Choice Specs? I have no idea.

@ladyalex: on my phone right now so excuse typos, but yes, you may use two alts!

@winter: cradily is p cool, pocket would be proud!

Harsha said:

@winter: cradily is p cool, pocket would be proud!

Click to expand...

Pocket? I don't know who that is lol anyway Cradily works as a good Rotom-W counter but unfortunately doesn't do that much besides have decent bulk UNLESS my opponent is using Sandstorm in which case he's actually really useful to have

Hmm, I sense that cradily is not placed on the right team. Another way to combat rotom-w would be testing out chansey who can provide wish support that can be really helpful for these teams

You're probably right about Cradily being placed on the wrong team; I certainly don't have much experience with him before. Chansey does block Rotom and have Wish but he gets blasted into pieces more miniscule than grains of sand on a beach/desert with REALLY fine sand by Terrakion who is the other bane of my team unless Starmie gets in to stop him. Then again, Cradily gets annihilated by him too. But who doesn't these days?

For now I think I'm going to take this challenge in a new direction. Balance or Sun maybe.

PO alt: Ocean of Hourai
Type of Team: Baton pass
Ladder Standing: 1000

PO alt: Scarlet Gensokyo
Type of Team: Stall
Ladder Standing: 1000

I'll give this a whirl:

PO Alt: Jesus and Pals
Type of Team: Undecided(still mulling over ideas, most likely HO)
Ladder Standing: 1000


EDIT: Decided on HO, with one wall which I used way in back in the beginning of BW, still love it even if its not seen as a wall kinda guy. Sitting at 1200 right now, have a bunch of replays, also play testing some other pokes that I've had ideas with(I use to sit in class with a my journal and write down this stuff as it never failed when I got bored a brilliant Poke idea would come to me).

@Zoap: Cool! I'm glad someone is trying out hyper offense. We'd love to see those replays from your team to check out how you're playing and what Pokemon you're using!

Alt: -TheEnd-
Type of team: Heavy offense (Fatecrasher's team in the picture ;) )
Ladder Standing: 1422

Hi everyone !


I exported it to text, so everyone can see what i'm using :


So, here are some explanations :

I sometimes used Hippowdon in the past, and i knew it would do great in the current metagame, it's a great wall, able to break the offensive momentum of some Hyper Offense. Gliscor is a beast in the current metagame, able to check a truckload of annoying threat like Terrakion, Lucario, ScarfMence, Scizor and some other. I'm playing here a Taunt variant, so my Gliscor isn't a setup bait for hazard user like Skarmory or Forretress.

Talking about Forretress, i needed a Rapid Spinner, especially since the team is so stall oriented. Moreover, it allows me to have a good physical dragon resistance. Moreover, it brings Spikes, which is always useful especially alongside Stealth Rock. Latias was chosen to have a set up mon and a good spdef wall. Roar allows me to rack up damage from Spikes and SR. I needed something to break volturn and take water move and hard spatk hitter like Latias/Alakazam and Gastrodon does this job really well.

But why Scarf Cobalion ? I first had ScarfTran, because i needed something able to Revenge Kill annoying mon like NP Celebi. ScarfTran being banned, i wanted something with a Dragon resistance, a good speed, being able to RK the like of NP Celebi (i don't want to rely to much of Latias because it's pursuitable by Tyra/Scizor). That's why i chosed Cobalio, which has Volt Switch, a really good move alongside hazards.

Hippo + Latias / Gastrodon works well versus Sun and Rain team, while Gliscor cripple Volturn and Sand team.

Here are some replays to show how the team works :

http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-McPollo-vs-gold--06-avril-2012-at-16h11-private1657645822
http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-Ripper-Roo-vs-McPollo--06-avril-2012-at-16h31-private451668480
http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-Taking-A-Shit-vs-McPollo--06-avril-2012-at-16h52-private476865763
http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-XLR8-vs-McPollo--07-avril-2012-at-16h45-private570315180

McMeghan isn't the only one climbing the ladder with this challenge. :p I'm tailing him closely with a rating of 1420.



Surprisingly, this rating wasn't difficult to achieve. I was haxed badly in the beginning, but when the team caught momentum I shot up +120 something points in a matter of 2 hours. I was hovering in the high 1200s before I got to this point today with the team I'm using. Now, you guys might be wondering what exactly it is that I am using. I'll admit I started with offense and switched to stall. Non-weather offense wasn't working past 1350 so I reverted to all out stall. I'd say my team is really similar to what obi created in the 4th generation. All out stall.

Forretress (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Volt Switch
- Gyro Ball
- Toxic Spikes
- Rapid Spin

Blissey (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 Def / 252 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Heal Bell
- Wish
- Softboiled
- Seismic Toss

Jellicent (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Water Absorb
EVs: 248 HP / 80 Def / 136 SDef / 44 Spd
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Shadow Ball
- Recover
- Taunt
- Will-O-Wisp

Deoxys-D @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Impish Nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Spikes
- Taunt
- Recover
- Knock Off

Hippowdon (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Slack Off
- Roar

Mandibuzz (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Overcoat
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SDef
Careful Nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Roost
- Brave Bird
- Whirlwind
- Toxic / Knock off

Both of you guys succeeded at the Outsiders and the DH project at the same time, and your DH pokes are actually rare stuff not shit such as Mienshao and Deoxys-D. Kudos to both!

Btw McMeghan isn't your team terribly weak to CM Reuniclus? Your only answer is Latias's Roar, but when it becomes the last mon it is gg no?

Also Metagross66 i think that you are very weak to wallbreakers such as Sableye and Mew once they get in safely?

Victory

(13:37:13) *** Your rank in Standard OU is 43/51543 [1422 points / 45 battles]!

Beasting in under 50 battles with Fatecrashers' team in the topic (the 6 pokes in the picture)

Props:
Scrafty for being a boss and sweeping 49438 people
Virizion for setting up Calm Minds and sweeping like no tomorrow
Latias for also setting up Calm Minds and winning games easily + tanking hits
Cresselia for being the best dual screener ever
Abomasnow for dying first turn in half the games but still raping when it counted
Tornadus for beasting it up with Bulk Up Acrobatics
Fatecrashers for building the awesome team