GSC Modern

[kakuna]

approved by arcticblast

GSC Modern

Preview:
For those of you that have become frustrated out of your minds by the 5th generation overused metagame, look no further! This metagame utilizes the amazing 5th generation mechanics and moves, while not dealing with the Unova pokemon. This tier only features the original two generations, the good ones!

Basics:
This is B2W2 overused with only the first 251 pokemon. All items, abilities, moves, clauses, and banlists are identical to that of B2W2 overused. This means that you can use a drizzle politoed, but you cannot use a swift swim kingdra on the same team. If a in the 251 evolves into a pokemon not in the original 251, the pokemon is not allowed. (Gligar is allowed, gliscor is not).

Initial Banlist:
Mewtwo
Lugia
Ho-Oh
Venusaur (no heatran, latias, or anything else to stop him. Victreebel is still available but it is just less broken in general)

Where?
Joim's Lab (thanks Joim!)
PM kakuna on #othermetas

Metagame
Scizor + Raikou Core

...

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@ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 Def
Modest Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]

I originally discovered this core when I was trying to build a good team around sub calm mind raikou. Raikou is really good in this metagame because water types are pretty ubiquitous and he can take advantage of them for set up by scaring them out with thunderbolt. The only true counters to Sub calm mind Raikou are steelix, chansey, quagsire, SpD tyranitar, and blissey. Bulky celebi can perish song and take hidden powers that are not powered by many boosts, and dugtrio can trap it as well. Steelix is the thing that can handle it if raikou has toxic spikes support. Outside of choice banded scizor, this is another excellent way to support raikou. Tentacruel and forretress can get rid of all the annoying hazards and set up hazards to support raikou and scizor. As stated above, steelix is the best counter and while steelix might seem like a joke, he is not. Steelix is a lot like skarmory except it is more bulky and has good STAB and power. And an electric immunity is huge. Anyways, calm mind raikouw is a major threat in GSC modern, almost as big as it was in GSC. The EVs are admittedly a little strange but running max speed is totally unnecessary- in fact only running speed to beat base 100s in substantial. Base 100s include typhlosion and tentacruel. This is why raikou can run a modest nature and kill stuff easier. A bulkier spread to take things like Dugtrio EQ or not have subs broken by celebi giga drain or whatever could be used, but I like power.

@ Choice Band
Trait: Technician
EVs: 252 Atk / 248 HP / 4 SDef / 4 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- U-turn
- Superpower
- Pursuit
Scizor holds a niche in this metagame as one of the big bad choice band users- others include heracross, tyranitar, and dragonite and are all likely to remain top threats. He is also one of few (5 iirc) fully evolved steel types. Bullet punch is good just like in B2W2 OU and hits lots of things hard. Above I listed counters to SubCM raikou. Blissey and chansey are disposed of with a superpower or can be scared out and U-turn can be used. Want to send in your skarmory, gyarados, or tentacruel? Think again. If celebi is being used to beat raikou scizor can U-turn or pursuit depending on the situation. Scizor can also hit lanturn for good damage, although a lot of lanturn will run water absorb for rain teams. If tyranitar is being used scizor can pick which weapon to kill with. The only things scizor really struggles with are quagsire and steelix. Steelix is hit hard by superpower, but can take advantage of defense drops with STAB earthquake. Quagsire can recover all day. Additionally anybody that runs fire moves on blissey will pass scizor. This is why politoed is a great teammate for these guys. He can scald and toxic the above, respectively. Politoed makes raikou use thunder without fear of missing and allows scizor to switch in on non STAB fire attacks, like celebi HP fire.

One Strange Rule: In order to differentiate this tier some, all illegal DW abilities are now released. This allows for sheer force feraligatr, volt absorb raikou, flash fire typhlosion and others.

Sleep: When this gets its own actual tier gen2 sleep mechanics are going to be implemented.

Replays:
Kakuna vs. Lavos Spawn
Lavos Spawn vs. Arcticblast
Kakuna vs. TailsTheeFox

[Lavos Spawn]

this looks awesome and i really want to play it, if anyone's down for a game or two vm me. gsc is the best gen by far in my opinion and i'm interested to see how it plays out with 5th gen mechanics. one thing i will mention is that stall looks really appealing in this gen, since you've still got your standard skarmbliss core plus defensive monsters like cune, forry, and raikou, but much less big offensive threats such as terrakion and keldeo.

question, are all items allowed, or only those that were available in gsc?

[Hemp Man]

If Swift Swim + Drizzle is unbanned than Kingdra has a huge niche over Dragonite.

Rain Team still have Tentacruel, Vaperon, Gyarados, Starmie, etc.

Sand doesn't really have any abusers but they got Omaster/Kabutops I suppose.

[Arcticblast]

Yes Lavos Spawn, all items legal in BW2 OU are allowed. (Not that you'd be able to use DeepSeaTooth anyway...)

One Pokemon that looks really interesting is Water Absorb Suicune. With a defensive spread, it can check both Feraligatr and Kingdra while either boosting with Calm Mind or supporting its team with status.

[Jorgen]

I already have a gimmick BW OU GSC team :)

Snorlax/Zapdos/Ttar/Skarm/Nidoking/Starmie

Even makes sense as an actual GSC team! RestTalk Curselax has swept more teams than you would've thought it could.

I feel that Drizzle + SS should be out, though. Kingdra would have no weak.

[Arcticblast]

Drizzle + SS is banned.

[Hemp Man]

By the way, Hurricane is also learnt by Pidgeot, too bad he isn't really viable.

Flash Fire Thyplosion/Flareon may have to be the new Flash Fire Heatran LOL.

Tyranitar would be a huge threat due to the lack of Fighting types (Htimons, Machamp, Poliwrath, Primeape, and Heracross are the only ones I think) compared to BW2.

Venusaur seems like a beast in the Sun due to lack of a Fire/Grass/Poison resist. Even Politoed and Tyranitar, who can rob Venusaur of his speed, will have trouble switching in due to fear of Giga Drain.

[Lavos Spawn]

played one with arcticblast

and one with kakuna which he's going to post. fun games but man i gotta say rain stall kinda dominates if you make a decent one. i don't think mine was even all that good, definitely had some flaws but it still was pretty unbreakable...

raw paste of me vs kakuna is here

[Mr.E]

Originally Posted by Fat Lavos Spawn

gsc is the best gen by far in my opinion and i'm interested to see how it plays out with 5th gen mechanics.

Well it doesn't play like GSC, that's for sure.

[Lavos Spawn]

damn right it doesn't. after a couple more games i've realized that this meta is kinda just cbnite + cbtar offense vs rain stall. boring, but hey, i gave it a chance.

[Frog]

Well wouldn't sun be the most powerful weather? Venusaur must be excellent and forretress will have more set up opportunities with the frequency of skarmory. Offense vs. Stall is what you get when you use stall,but I think there is more offense to be uncovered.

[TailsTheeFox]

The only viable way to put up sun would be to use the mighty kitsune, but this is swarmed with powerful water types. In a war of setting up weather, the toad or Tyranitar win ove Ninetales unless you're very adept at switching and predicting. Dry Skin Paresect could work out here with all of the water being splashed about, but another problem is that there's only three dragons, and only one is viable! Drizzle + SS should stay banned, but maybe Drizzle should just be flat out banned. It's too OP at the moment and it turns this this into less of a focus on GSC and more on weather(as the OU pokemon that get Sandstream, Drizzle, and Drought are in the first two gens.). Ttar is great still in 5th gen, all you've done is take away his major threats and due to this, you're really forced to use Rain, or TailGlow+Spore+Aura Sphere Smeargle to defeat Ttar effectively.

[kakuna]

I'm going to go ahead and share an offensive core with you guys.

@ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 Def
Modest Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]

I originally discovered this core when I was trying to build a good team around sub calm mind raikou. Raikou is really good in this metagame because water types are pretty ubiquitous and he can take advantage of them for set up by scaring them out with thunderbolt. The only true counters to Sub calm mind Raikou are steelix, chansey, quagsire, SpD tyranitar, and blissey. Bulky celebi can perish song and take hidden powers that are not powered by many boosts, and dugtrio can trap it as well. Steelix is the thing that can handle it if raikou has toxic spikes support. Outside of choice banded scizor, this is another excellent way to support raikou. Tentacruel and forretress can get rid of all the annoying hazards and set up hazards to support raikou and scizor. As stated above, steelix is the best counter and while steelix might seem like a joke, he is not. Steelix is a lot like skarmory except it is more bulky and has good STAB and power. And an electric immunity is huge. Anyways, calm mind raikouw is a major threat in GSC modern, almost as big as it was in GSC. The EVs are admittedly a little strange but running max speed is totally unnecessary- in fact only running speed to beat base 100s in substantial. Base 100s include typhlosion and tentacruel. This is why raikou can run a modest nature and kill stuff easier. A bulkier spread to take things like Dugtrio EQ or not have subs broken by celebi giga drain or whatever could be used, but I like power.

@ Choice Band
Trait: Technician
EVs: 252 Atk / 248 HP / 4 SDef / 4 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- U-turn
- Superpower
- Pursuit
Scizor holds a niche in this metagame as one of the big bad choice band users- others include heracross, tyranitar, and dragonite and are all likely to remain top threats. He is also one of few (5 iirc) fully evolved steel types. Bullet punch is good just like in B2W2 OU and hits lots of things hard. Above I listed counters to SubCM raikou. Blissey and chansey are disposed of with a superpower or can be scared out and U-turn can be used. Want to send in your skarmory, gyarados, or tentacruel? Think again. If celebi is being used to beat raikou scizor can U-turn or pursuit depending on the situation. Scizor can also hit lanturn for good damage, although a lot of lanturn will run water absorb for rain teams. If tyranitar is being used scizor can pick which weapon to kill with. The only things scizor really struggles with are quagsire and steelix. Steelix is hit hard by superpower, but can take advantage of defense drops with STAB earthquake. Quagsire can recover all day. Additionally anybody that runs fire moves on blissey will pass scizor. This is why politoed is a great teammate for these guys. He can scald and toxic the above, respectively. Politoed makes raikou use thunder without fear of missing and allows scizor to switch in on non STAB fire attacks, like celebi HP fire.

In terms of full teams to run this on I have been experimenting with rain balance- politoed/tentacruel/raikou/steelix/dragonite/scizor. The team is pretty self explanatory and while I haven't had many oppurtunities to actually play it seems solid.


Also guys this is an example of what fits in the "metagame" part of the OP. Posts like this are great to help expand our knowledge and understanding of this metagame.

[Geodude6]

Here is a team that I made. I made it with this meta in mind but it performs very well in normal OU, although it does have problems with Terrakion.

@ Leftovers
Trait: Drought
EVs: 252 SDef / 40 HP / 216 SAtk
Calm Nature
- Sunny Day
- Fire Blast
- SolarBeam
- Will-O-Wisp

Obligatory weather starter. Sunny Day lets me beat Politoed or at least get off a free SolarBeam. This set tends to have problems with Fire-types and Dragonite.

@ Black Sludge
Trait: Chlorophyll
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 Atk
Mild Nature
- Growth
- Giga Drain
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]

VERY powerful in the sun. Growth raises his offensive stats to godlike levels when combined with Chlorophyll. Hidden Power was originally Fire-type but I changed it because I started to have problems with dragons and opposing Grass-types in the rain.

@ Life Orb
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Close Combat
- Wild Charge
- ExtremeSpeed

Standard sun offense Arcanine. I'm sure you've all seen this a million times and require no explanation.

@ Choice Band
Trait: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Outrage
- ExtremeSpeed
- Earthquake
- Fire Punch

@ Choice Band
Trait: Unnerve
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Crunch
- Pursuit
- Stone Edge
- Fire Punch

CBnite + CBtar makes for a very powerful offensive core, immense pressure on the opponent. Again, standard.

@ Leftovers
Trait: Sturdy
EVs: 4 Def / 252 HP / 252 SDef
Calm Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic Spikes
- Volt Switch

...and here we come to the LVP. Forretress is... not so great. I only keep him around because he is the only thing that both has Rapid Spin and resists Dragon. He is not very threatening offensively or special defensively, even with maximum SpD investment. I really need to make him better, and suggestions would be helpful.

[Organization Member XIV]

This is a really fun idea, we could probably even do this for ADV. I would suggest RBY, but that would be too restricting. ADV Modern, what do people think?

[Geodude6]

I think it's a great idea.

[kakuna]

While it would be fun to make this for gen4/3 I would like to hold off on that until there are actually people playing this tier, it is too early to change it around. I almost did change it earlier, but i decided to keep it like this for a while before splintering.

[Dcae]

Just saw this, it looks really interesting. Once I get around to building a team, i'll try to play a few. I see Specs Typhlosion looking really fun.

[kakuna]

Bumping this to announce venusaur's ban and because it was nominated for OMotM.