Micromanagement - VGC12 Evasion Abuse Team

Without the Evasion Clause governing VGC matches, I at first thought it would make the tier unplayable. To my relief, I never saw anyone using an Evasion move of any kind. This left me to wonder, however, why not? At +6, your opponent has a 66% chance of missing 100% accurate moves, and with Minimize cutting that down to 3 turns of setup and having a super-bulky abuser in the form of Chansey, I figured I'd try my hand at making a team based around the strategy. Of course, my biggest workaround needed was for the timer, as just sitting there can't win you a VGC match. By surrounding Chansey with fast, powerful attackers, Blissey can easily become untouchable while her teammates destroy the threats looking to KO her before she can set up. This team has been very successful so far, with the crowning moment being winning Smogon's first VGC tournament last year, even though I had a very tough bracket filled with big names. With it becoming less of a surprise, I thought I'd post it here, to show that Evasion abuse is really good and can easily turn the match in your favor.

At a Glance:​

Garchomp and Tornadus are up front to fool my opponent into thinking I'm leading with them. Scarf Chomp is very fast, outspeeding, quite obviously, slower Scarfers such as Abomasnow, while also outspeeding Modest max Speed Ludicolo in the rain, dealing about 90% with a well-aimed Outrage. Outspeeding Abomasnow is important, as Blizzard always hits under Hail, ignoring Chansey's Evasion BS, and has a chance to freeze, making Chansey a sitting duck. Dragon Claw OHKOes Latios without locking me into an inaccurate Outrage, and Earthquake is an excellent spread move that I have two immunities to spam it with. Chansey is also immune to it 33% of the time, so that helps too.


Fighting-types are public enemy #1, so Tornadus is part 1 of my anti-Fighting duo. Only Fighting/Steel-types can possibly resist both Psychic and Flying, and Tornadus is my go-to guy for taking out Hitmontop, who has Sucker Punch to hurt Latios. Intimidate hurts, though, so it only KOes TechniTop in one hit, but it does deal almost 98% to IntimiTop. It also outspeeds and OHKOes Gengar, the only Pokemon in the game immune to Seismic Toss and Toxic. Tailwind is a filler move that works whenever the opposing team is a Tailwind or weather team, but otherwise is pretty unnecessary. Brick Break hurts Rock- and Steel- types that resist Flying, especially Tyranitar and Excadrill. Protect is a doubles staple move, so it goes there to stall out Trick Room and stuff.

Amoonguss (M) @ Mental Herb
Trait: Effect Spore
EVs: 252 HP / 124 Def / 132 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Rage Powder
- Protect
- Spore
- Giga Drain​

Amoonguss resists fighting and draws Fighting-type moves in, making it an excellent partner for Chansey. If I'm using Amoonguss without Chansey, say, with Latios instead, it also draws in Sucker Punch and lesser Ice-type moves to help Latios survive and deal a ton of damage. Having access to a 100% accurate sleep move helps too. I make sure these two are separated in the Team Preview, so that way a smart opponent wouldn't notice the pair together and say "Hmm, I wonder what that Chansey and Amoonguss are doing together..." The Mental Herb is important as it allows Amoonguss to absorb 2 Taunts so that Chansey can get up 2 Minimizes before being possibly Taunted. Giga Drain allows Amoonguss to do a little bit of damage if it is Taunted or if it has nothing left to put asleep. Amoonguss is rarely used on this team, simply because I like to lead Chansey + offensive Pokemon more often to prevent Trick Room or something from being set up.

Latios (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Dragon Pulse
- Psyshock
- Surf
- Protect​

Latios packs a lot of power, an immunity to Earthquake, and a Psychic-type move to break down Hitmontop and Machamp with. These three traits easily solidify its spot on the team. Dragon Pulse is an excellent STAB move, and since Latios is the fastest Dragon-type in the game, it ouspeeds every single other non-Scarfed Dragon-type and can OHKO pretty much all of them, except for ones wielding an Haban Berry. Psyshock is the other half of my anti-Fighting-type duo, and it hits Pokemon like Terrakion for super effective damage. Surf is mainly filler, hitting Steel-types for neutral damage, and is my only weapon against Tyranitar. It also provides decent spread coverage, which when combined with Earthquake makes for potent coverage.

Terrakion @ Chople Berry
Trait: Justified
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Close Combat
- Rock Slide
- Quick Attack
- Protect​

Terrakion is my insurance against enemy Fighting-types if something goes wrong or I don't use one of Latios or Tornadus. Close Combat is its obvious STAB move, and with the absence of any opposing Chople Berries, OHKOes everything weak to it pretty much. Rock Slide is a good spread move that also gets STAB, and it helps in taking out Thundurus, who wields a never-missing Thunder in the rain to strike Chansey with. Quick Attack finishes off heavily damaged threats, especially those that use a Focus Sash. Terrakion is also my best answer to opposing Chansey, rare as they are.

Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Def / 252 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Minimize
- Toxic
- Seismic Toss
- Softboiled
​

Here she is, the big boss herself, the ragequit machine, the untouchable bulky wall, the 1-4 to 1-0 clutch monster. Eviolite Chansey is a full stop to Surf-spamming rain teams, taking a pittance from it, while dodging it a large percentage of the time, as well as for special attacks in general. It also doesn't fall very easily to physical attacks either, unless of course they are Fighting-type moves. Minimize drops enemy moves' accuracies to 60% after a single turn, putting 100% accurate moves at Hypnosis-like accuracy. After three turns of Minimize (which are very easy to acquire), moves have a jaw-droppingly low accuracy of at most 33%, which is only a slight bit above the regular accuracy of OHKO moves. Seismic Toss does a solid 25-30% to most Pokemon, while Toxic allows me to damage Ghost-types besides Gengar. Softboiled helps keep Chansey healthy when opponents are lucky enough to hit, and also helps me in the case of a time out with each team having one Pokemon left. With softboiled, I'll most likely always have more HP than the opponent. In order for Chansey to work, Fighting-types, especially Machamp, need to be eliminated. Besides that, Chansey doesn't really mind anything besides a Blizzard freeze or getting hit with Toxic somehow.

Conclusion:​

The VGC tournament is my only site-wide tournament win so far, but I'm hoping to win more, especially with the next one coming up in a few months. That said, this team is far from perfect, and there are a few things, such as Amoonguss's place on the team, that I want to get help with to iron out. I thought Evasion would be broken in VGC, and as I figured out, most of the time it is, and I think that it deserves a little more usage, especially on the simulator where timing out can't happen. With that, I leave you guys to rate, hate, steal, and most importantly, ragequit!

There isn't that much Evasion hax here. Chansey, obviously yes, but Garchomp is semi-situation for Evasion. If you aren't seeming to like Amoonguss, you could replace with Moody Smeargle and hope for an evasion raise

Why are evasion moves not common? I think it's because the opponent can just blow up your partners while you're turtling, and then once it's down to two (or more) of theirs attacking one of yours, the odds are much less in your favor. It only really works with Chansey because of her insane bulk which can let her take a couple of (un)lucky hits in a row.

On Latios, I would recommend Draco Meteor over Dragon Pulse. You already have pretty good coverage with his other attacks, and it's always good to have a nuke button handy when you really need something to die right now. I'd also suggest HP Ground over Surf - it hits Tyranitar and Scizor about as hard, hits Metagross harder, and nothing on your team except Amoonguss and Chansey can really take a Surf.

One other thing you seem to be neglecting is Ghost-types with Substitute, who also completely wall Chansey - in particular, I've seen several Sub Jellicents. You mention Terrakion as insurance against Fighting-types, but I'm not sure exactly how it does that, so maybe replace it with a Dark-type attacker.

micro :3

This is a pretty solid team overall, but I've discussed Evasion usage with several people; the general consensus is that due to the time limit, evasion was limited to a simulator enviroment and could not work against an opponent at an actual VGC.

The team itself is pretty standard, but it gets the job done. Congrats on winning the tournament!

One of the main reasons for the lack of Evasion abuse in VGC is the 15 minute game timer. If you fall behind early you are unlikely to be able to regain the lead by hp percentage with one evasion abuser as your last before the timer expires, especially once the opponent realized your strategy and stalls the one minute turn timer each time. That said, there was no total timer for the VGC 2012 tournament, and Hawkstar made a brilliant observation in abusing Evasion and the lack of timer to claim the tournament. We now have the timer on Smogon's PO server though, and will hopefully be able to use it for the official Smogon VGC Tournament when it starts up next month to more accurately simulate real VGC battles.

Yep. I'm taking a different team to Indianapolis, and I realized that I needed to once Smogon's new timer system came out and I epic failed with this team. Though, for a simulator team, I've not built anything as successful as this since.

running psych up on latios would dramatically improve your evasion theme as a whole as it can come in late game after chansey has set up and copy +6 evasion, i would have it take surfs place

I'd run Taunt on Tornadus, seeing as how your main star Chansey is huge Taunt bait itself.