Bug Catcher Cup

Approved by Birkal and ArcticBlast

This format was inspired by the one of the most unfortunate of Trainers: the Bug Catcher.

Now you can be in their shoes and battle with Caterpie, Spinarak, and more!

This format only allows NFE Bug pokemon, with some important restrictions. There are some Banned and Limited NFE bug pokemon for balance issues.

So, Durant, Arceus, Pinsir, Heracross etc. are banned because they cannot evolve.
Scizor, Venomoth, Volcarona, etc. are banned because fully evolved.

Also, male Combee is currently under suspicion. Please choose a female Combee.

The Bug Catcher icon on Pokemon Showdown is highly recommended. /avatar 7
Bugsy is /avatar 142
Burgh doesn't have a net. Not even cool.

Species clause, Sleep clause, OHKO clause, Evasion clause, the standard. [Am I missing anything?]

Hidden Power, Substitute, and Stealth Rock are banned.

Flying attacking moves (aerial ace, air slash, etc.) are currently allowed, but suspect.
Substitute is banned.

Please add input!

Banned Pokemon:
Larvesta (Fire, movepool)
Whirlipede (Stats, movepool)
Scyther (Flying, stats)
Dwebble (Rock, movepool)
Anorith (Fossil pokemon bug catchers wouldn't have, Rock)
Yanma (Flying, Ability, movepool)
Swadloon (Stats, movepool, Sewaddle)

Exotic: (Limited) at most 1 per team
Joltik
Karrablast
Pineco
Sewaddle
Shelmet
Skorupi
Surskit

Rare: (Semi Limited) at most 2 per team
Combee
Ledyba
Nincada
Paras
Spinarak
Venipede
Venonat

Drones: (Unlimited) at least 3 per team
Caterpie
Metapod
Weedle
Kakuna
Wurmple
Silcoon
Cascoon
Kricketot
Burmy


Rules are subject to change.

I already have a few friends who want to play and I can try to organize things on a smaller Pokemon Showdown server.

I do not have a mod in the same sense as Pokemon Showdown does for OU.
Please read the rules carefully, and use Custom Game for now.


Please post if interested in playing! This is your chance to conquer with Burmy or Ledyba!

Realistically, Sewaddle is probably one of the stronger options in this format. Good luck!

How exactly is Sewaddle one of the format's stronger Pokemon when it's weak to the STAB of literally every available Pokemon? If anything, Surskit is the best available Pokemon, since it gets STAB Hydro Pump and can easily boost the power of it as well as its own Speed with Rain Dance.

Also, what do you think about banning Stealth Rock and Eviolite and unbanning Trapinch? Those seem pretty reasonable...

Cool metagame, might want to mention that heracross is banned though. Paras looks really good in this meta.

Well, Sewaddle has some pretty strong sets like Air Slash Calm Mind, but for some reason I didn't register that Bug would be super effective vs. him.

For right now, I am letting Eviolite run rampant. I am a bit worried about Flying-type attack moves, and Eviolite definitely eases that up.

Definitely banning Stealth Rock.

Trapinch is not in any Bug Catcher party in-game, has 100 base attack, and has access to Rock moves. Also he's not Bug type.

Gonna be on the pokemon showdown Breakdown server [due to lack of people i guess] to test with a friend
okay moving to shinx server due to not having team preview/choosing different leads


overall conclusions so far:
-Swadloon/Sewaddle with sub/CM/baton pass + either an attacking move or iron defense is pretty strong. Passing to Joltik or Surskit pretty much wins the match. Even without passing, CM/Iron Defense allows Swadloon to be able to outdamage anything, plus it has access to Air Slash. Might have to tweak with balance.
-Rain Surskit is quite strong, probably best sweeper. Almost necessitates being Passed to though due to being fragile.
-Venonat is the best at inducing sleep, due to Compoundeyes Sleep Powder, and being faster than Paras. However, Paras has Dry Skin to work with Surskit or even against it, but can't really wall Surskit due to weakness to Bug
-Joltik is quite strong, but can get walled and eventually outdamaged by CM Swadloon. otherwise, it is a pretty unstoppable sweeper having access to Charge Beam and Agility, and not having a weakness to anything in the tier besides Rock type moves (so far I only know of Venipede Rollout and Pineco Rock Slide). Might have to ban, unfortunately, but right now only suspect.
-Pineco is almost a must I would say, so I am going to try limiting him. Enough Defense to make Aerial Ace from everything do very little damage.
-Venipede has Rollout, which makes him about mid tier IMO. Can't deal with Subs too well.
-Ledyba has STAB on its decent array of Flying type moves, making it an interesting pick, but its stats are quite low. It also has Baton Pass. The Rattled ability might be a great teammate for the Grass/Bug types that encourage Bug attacks to get a Speed boost.
-Nincada has one of the stronger Atk scores and Aerial Ace, making him one of the better physical attackers. While Aerial Ace isn't SE on Joltik, he is immune to Joltik's Charge Beam and Thunderbolt so things aren't too terrible for him.

Status is going to be pretty big. I don't know if there are any heal bells or aromatherapies.
Reflect/Light Screen may be useful, haven't tested. Outside of Joltik and Surskit, and I suppose boosted Swadloon/Sewaddle, nothing does a lot of damage, and even then, Swadloon/Sewaddle aren't that strong by themselves.

So yeah: Swadloon is suspect for ban, Pineco is on limited list. Sewaddle Baton Pass will end up being overpowered, probably.

Alternative plan involves banning Swadloon and banning Baton Pass

Alternative ALTERNATIVE plan which I like the most, is Ban Swadloon, Limit Sewaddle, Limit Surskit. This makes Calm Mind passing not available to Joltik or Surskit, allows Surskit Rain based teams (Paras... and IDK who else), and allows a Sewaddle Pass team to pass to weaker Pokemon (strongest Pass Receiver probably would be Venonat)

It's a fairly nice idea and I'd love to play this, but have you done any testing on how powerful ElectoWeb is? A good number of bugs obtained it, and it seems like a great way to check Surskit(on paper, I tend to enjoy seeing the words 'its super effective', mind you.). Eviolite on Swadloon gives him massive bulk, experience in NU proves this, and he and his first form have access to a move that changes their type to ground(realitively useless move normally but very useful here) and can use Air Slash no problem..... Either you ban Swadloon entirely, or you just ban Baton Pass. The only things that will get Baton Passes are going to just abuse them it seems. IE: Surskit. Surskit's Hyrdo Pump tears through everything that's not named Joltik for a reason, it's powerful. He also has access to the obsucure Ice Beam and Signal Beam, tearing through EVERYTHING in the teir, cept Joltik! Hell, the pond skater could go choice specs on Ice Beam and have no ill side effects. He's got the stats, mid teir for sure.

Paras could be a great support pokemon in this meta. It has access to spore, syntesis and aromatherapy. Dry skin would allow it to counter surskit and grass typing could be good against joltik. Unfortunately its typing also makes it weak to bug, but I'm still looking forward to using him in a defensive way.

The problem with Paras, is the sleep clause... Which forces you to either run with Stun Powder or just forgo that and roll with Agility. In fact, the only reason for any of these bug type's to be running a bug type move at all is to hurt Paras and Swadloon. (Or in Caterpie's case, lack of other moves. :P)

Yeah, this looks really fun and has quite a bit of potential. The prospect of beating the shit out of an opponent with something like CB Kakuna is too hilarious to pass up.

The only issue I really see with this is balance. Caterpie and the rest of the horrible early-game Bug types are still as horrible as ever, and seem almost completely unusable compared to things like Sewaddle, Combee, Venipede, and Surskit: all of which are legal in bulk. This stark contrast in usability limits viable choices to only a handful of Pokemon, making most teams bland and generic. One way I've found to remedy this issue is to separate the Pokemon into 3 "tiers": Common, Rare, and Exotic. Teams would consist of 3 "Common" bugs (Weak Pokemon such as Caterpie, Kakuna, and Kricketot), 2 "Rare" bugs (Above average Pokemon like Venipede, Surskit, Nincada, and Ledyba) and 1 "Exotic" bug (Stronger Pokemon such as Joltik, Karrablast, and Pineco). This would encourage variety in teambuilding, as players can still build teams with goals such as weakening the opponent for a Rare/Exotic bug sweep or completely stalling out the opponent, but with the added bonus of being more balanced and fun to play. Also the mechanic in question has a lot of similarities with actual bug colonies/hives, so it's pretty neat if you're into that too.

Of course, the idea above also takes a considerably more competitive approach to this otherwise uncompetitive (as far as I understand) metagame. Pretty solid overall, I'd consider playing regularly assuming it gets implemented into a server or something.

Cuckoos, that's an utterly brilliant idea if I've ever heard one. Here, I broke it down as suggested.
EXOTIC: Joltik, Pineco, Swadloon, Surskit
RARE: Paras, Shelmet, Combee, Skorupi, Sewaddle, Venipede, Karrablast, Ledyba
DRONES: Caterpie, Metapod, Weedle, Kakuna, Wurmple, Silcoon\Cascoon, Kricktot, Burmy, Venonat, Spinarak, Nincada.
Do tell if you think something is out of place, I tried to balance it out to the current list that shows the greatness of pokes and then, inadvertently, made it E-4 R-8 D-12... Which means that we can have four, completely different bug teams following this set up. Each Exoticpokemon flows good with Rares and the Drones as support.
I put Surskit in Exotic due to his power and movepool, everyone would just run Surskit if it was in one of the lower teirs! Paras with dry skin would be too common and wouldn't let other Drones shine so I also moved it up but into Rare... Ledyba and Combee have flying as a second type so of course they got put in Rare as well. The only Drone that might possibly fit into Rare, is Nincada, but that's just me. Being able to stop Joltik completely looks like one of his only jobs, but I can see him possibly taking the spot of someone else in Rare.

So, how does it look? I'm honestly curious if anyone actually agrees with the changes and if they believe this weird little bug cup can work. I'll do a little asking around a see if I can grab interest into playing this on PS!, but feel free to make any edits that you deem as needed.

I like the ideas! Nincada would be in "rare" because of its Ground typing and decent access to Aerial Ace, Karrablast and Skorupi have incredibly movepools so they will probably be moved up. Sewaddle is moved to 1-of, so it cannot Calm Mind pass to Surskit or Joltik. Venonat is one of the only viable CM pass acceptors. Swadloon is banned.

So, some tentative ideas:
Limited : at most 1 per team
Joltik, Pineco, Surskit, Karrablast, Skorupi, Sewaddle

Semi Limited: at most 2 per team
Paras, Shelmet, Combee, Ledyba, Venipede, Nincada, Venonat

Unlimited:
Caterpie, Metapod, Weedle, Kakuna, Wurmple, Silcoon, Cascoon, Kricketot, Burmy, Spinarak

The problem I see is that the unlimited pokemon might still be too useless lol.

I actually feel that a ban on all flying type moves should happen, it's just too powerful here. :/

Swadloon is certainly too much of a powerhouse. And the ban was needed, but for the Drone(unlimited) pokemon to be more useful, flying type moves should just be... Banned. Everything is weak to a flying type move, everything. I've been playing a few games, and it's just terrible.

outside of boosted air slash, a lot of the flying moves are on really weak pokemon, but like i said it's suspect. hydro pump is the strongest move in the tier by far

I think as a concept, this meta could be cute and fun. The issue I have is that there are only 23 Pokemon available, and among them, the only viable ones are limited to the point where you have to run at least 3 pretty awful mons. This causes the issue of all teams looking incredibly similar to one another which leads to a stale metagame.

On that note, I feel one of the easier ways to remedy this would be through limiting the restrictions. For example, yes, while Sewaddle can be a great Baton Passer or even special sweeper in general, any Pokemon with HP Fire or Aerial Ace can easily demolish it. It could use a drop in my honest opinion.

Of course, I haven't played this, so I don't really know that anything I'm saying is true. This is all just theorymon. It's undoubtedly a really cool (read: cute) idea and something I could get behind. I would just want to see more Pokemon available to use on any team before I would want to make a team.

there is 0 real reason to use something like caterpie or metapod without overbearing restrictions, which is unfortunate.
haven't been playing pokemon too much lately ;; i'll see what comes along

I do have a "more exciting" variation on bug catcher cup i have dubbed "Bug Catcher Cup HD Remix" but the ruleset is pretty terrible
essentially all bugs are allowed but are "balanced" through level restrictions, ie. level 100 caterpies and level 25 volcaronas

I've played a few battles after April 1st, and while at first it's a little difficult to explain how to make a team to new people, teams are much more balanced and fun. Sewaddle is great as a Baton Passer, but is destroyed by Choice Specs Combee's Air Slash. On that note, Combee is extremely fast and carries Air Slash, with a respectable SpA boosted by Choice Specs (as the need for Life Orb is needless as you don't need to switch moves. :P) Combee is dangerous.... This is actually the reason why HP Fire should stay banned and flying moves should be tested and suspected for a ban. However, Metapod/Kakuna are actually wall like with Eviolite and have access to Electro Web, which is nice. I'd like to play some more games and test this all more, and I'd also like to play against people I don't need to explain the entire tier too. :P

nincada assassin said:

Also, male Combee is currently under suspicion. Please choose a female Combee.

Click to expand...

What is the difference between a male and a female Combee apart from the fact that the latter can evolve to Vespiquen?

male combee is not NFE

Which doesn't make much sense, as they're the same pokemon. Last time I checked they both could use evolite, but if THAT was edited, then that would make Female Combee stronger because she can use Evolite... Which she doesn't need in this tier.

Which, I think we could possibly allow Larvesta. We're banning HP Fire because... It's a fire type move.

I think we should only disallow fire type moves(all of them) and flying type moves(all of them).
If we disallow just fire type moves in general, then we could introduce Larvesta as a Exotic bug and further mix up the movepool.
Secondly, if you're banning HP Fire, it'd probably be a good idea to ban HP Flying as well, as you got rid of all bug rock types.

Of course, I'd need someone willing to test some more of this stuff on PS!. :s

This seems really cool, you think i could get in on some of this bug catchin? :D

TeraVoltage said:

This seems really cool, you think i could get in on some of this bug catchin? :D

Click to expand...

Certainly! Just follow along with the team building rules and either ask around in PS! for someone, or just me. B3

I see that this has certain similarities when compared to Fishymons.... Cept we understand what a bug is. :P

The first post should be edited to fit with the changes made so far...

Ok so i will just follow that nifty formula you guys made in another post, 1 exotic, 2 rare and 3 common, Would that be fine?

Yeah, that's the format we're working with at the moment to cause diversity.

Feel free to abuse flying moves, we're testing it! Once you're ready you could challenge me on PS! (same name as here). :s

After playing it a few times, I am a fan of this metagame. My only real concern is Karrablast and how strong it is. I feel personally as a player who has gone against Karrablast numerous times, it should at least be considered for suspect.

What's so bad about Karrablast? I haven't gotten to playing with, or against, all of the bug type's yet...

Venipede, Rollout, destroys.. EVERYTHING once it starts rolling. :P

Yeah in testing, its hard to take down with eviolite, so it pretty much gets a free swords dance. Not to mention its very easy to pass an agility to it. At +2 it 1 hits pretty much the whole teir with aerial ace, so in my opinion it needs to at least be a suspect.