I made it
and w/l record for good measure: ou 2025 92 2131 ± 80 (provisional) 27 4 0
I started out with just stoutland but my teambuilding had me end up with two other dark horses as i went along.
Hippowdon @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 244 Def / 12 SDef
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Slack Off
- Roar
Hippowdon has been really impressive for me so far in this OU metagame, ive used hippowdon, and know just how bulky it is. Hippowdon served as the physical wall of my team and also as my extra sand setter (i took a lot of inspiration from Euthanasia). Hippowdon was also my main switch in to scizor due to its ability to take multiple hits and recover them all off in the end. Stealth Rock is essential to any team, and with hippowdon on my side, i was free to run rocks on it and run a much more effective tyranitar set, a choice band. Hippo also hits very hard for a defensive pokemon, and it was more than capable of taking 40% or so off of a switch in in one go. Roar was essential to my success, i mean, i could revenge kill most of the special sweepers with stoutland, but a few of the physical sweepers can take a return and just knock it out, it also helped rack up entry hazard damage :3. Between hippo and ttar, i really dont think i ever lost the weather war tbh, lol. Overall, hippowdon should be more solidly OU, its great bulk and ability to phaze/set rocks as well as recover its hp ensures that sand will stay up during the majority of the match. A great choice for any sand team.
All Esca Must Die (Stoutland) @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Rush
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Return
- Superpower
- Wild Charge
- Fire Fang (would have used crunch but lol TLC, it actually came in handy vs gene and scizor)
The pokemon i originally intended to build around, i chose to use stoutland due to a combination of lol TLC and the fact that i thought the combination of good bulk, usable attack, and sand rush would really help out a sand offense team. I was correct, stoutland was an absolute beast when i played him correctly, in sand rush, it hits 518 speed, more than enough to revenge kill pretty much the entire tier. Add on the choice band and a strong STAB attack, and stoutland is more deadly than the average scarfed pokemon. There were times where i could wear down the opponents return resist, and then just plow through the opponent's team without a problem thanks to the residual damage from SR+sandstorm over the course of the match. the main problem i had with stoutland during my ladder run is that he was pretty much dead weight if sand wasnt up, i mean i had two sand setters so that usually didnt happen, but if my opponent got rain up and sent in a faster pokemon, stoutland was forced out. the other flaw was that while 100 attack is good, it isnt haxorus level power, so stoutland usually needed a little bit of residual damage to perform its late game sweep. Other than those two minor setbacks, im pretty sure stoutland has potential in OU, and it would probably be a good addition to any sand offense team you have.
Celebi @ Leftovers
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 176 HP / 152 SAtk / 180 Spd
Modest Nature
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- U-turn
- Recover
while i was building my team, i was kind of at a loss as to what to make my last pokemon, i figured out that despite the fact that i was carrying a Lati@s, it wasnt enough to stop incoming rain/volt switches on its own. So i added celebi to help out with this problem. I tried a few sets and eventually ended up using navi, and i can surely say im very happy with the results. Thanks to a combination of its good bulk, natural cure, and scald resist, celebi could easily come in on all the bulky waters i faced (and ferro/forry too, lol). From there, i could either fire off a leaf storm and devastate whatever came in, or i could predict a switch to something like heatran and u-turn to an appropriate counter. Celebi functioned as the "glue" of my team, taking out pokemon that would threaten my team otherwise. ESPECIALLY POLITOED, celebi was a big part of beating down the many rain teams that i faced on the ladder, and grabbed me some momentum every time they sent in Politoed thanks to its ability to use leaf storm to force it out, and then get me a free switch with u-turn. Celebi was also my main stop to breloom, and played a big role in luring in the bug/steels for a KO with hp fire. With Recover, celebi could easily perform all of these roles in one match if you played correctly! Ive heard some people say that celebi sucks in this metagame, and i would beg to differ, it was really good for me when i used it, and i dont think any pokemon could possibly fit my team better.
How did you choose your Dark Horse Pokemon for this project? What lead you to choose the Pokemon you did? Did you have regrets or were you happy with your selection?
I already talked about this in my comments about the individual pokemon but ill TL;DR it here.
for stoutland i mainly did it because of this
jokes aside, i mainly chose stoutland because i honestly think he deserves more love in OU, hes a very good revenge killer and late game cleaner in sand, and its a very unconventional, but effective option on offensive sand teams. I used him a lot during BW1 and with the addition of superpower to his movepool in BW2 he only got better! so thats how i decided to use stoutland.
The other two came from things that i needed while building my team, i needed a sand setter and bulky stealth rock setter in the form of hippowdon, and i needed a "glue" pokemon and water/electric/fighting resist in the form of celebi, i also thought celebi would help me against rain teams if i played correctly.
How did you go about building a team for your Dark Horse Pokemon? Which kinds of teammates did you consider? What factors contributed to the team you created?
Well, i was using stoutland, so i knew that i would pretty much have to run a sand team, this led me to run a tyranitar on my team, but after hearing about the deadly strategy of u-turning out of ttar and going to dugtrio to win the weather war, i decided that i would need hippodown to both take u-turns and be a backup weather setter, it also freed up ttar to use a different set, such as choice band. I was mainly inspired to add an extra sand setter by Euthanasia, which my team is very similar to. then i added celebi for reasons i explained above, and also added a wallbreaking core of latios and terrakion, terrakion for a genesect check, and latios mainly as a filler to help out with things such as keldeo.
Do you think it is more difficult or less difficult to ladder with a Dark Horse Pokemon? Why? Does the element of surprise play a factor in your battles? Is it easier to fight with a "highly used"" team or with Pokemon that are less common?
i dont know if it affected the difficulty of ladder, but i do know that laddering with dark horse pokemon makes laddering in OU more fun, and the only reason i ever play OU is to try and get away from my main tier, RU, and use some silly gimmicks for fun. Stoutland is fun and TLC approved, so i was like hey why not.
(For Hall of Fame members only) How did you reach the Hall of Fame? Was it easy or difficult? Did having a Dark Horse Pokemon on your team benefit you? What advice would you give to those laddering with Dark Horse Pokemon?
reaching the hall of fame wasnt two difficult for me either this time or the last time when i used virizion, im not sure if having a dark horse pokemon made it easier for me to ladder competitively, but it helped me not get bored of using a cookie cutter team on the way up. The advice i would give to other people using dark horse pokemon is to just...... have fun, thats all there is to it for me, i play pokemon to have fun, and im usually at the top of my game when im having fun, whenever i want to achieve a goal, i try to make it as fun as possible =).
im going to see if i can get a higher ranking later, stoutland is pretty fun to use :3.
EDIT:
DECAY GAVE ME PLATINUM GG