This is my first RMT that I’ve ever made, so hopefully it’s a decent read.
This team is by far the most successful team I’ve made for any metagame at all. Although it’s arguably the ‘easiest’ of the ladders to get #1 on, I still think it’s at least a good achievement to top the Little Cup ladder. This could also be considered a fluke team, as I hadn’t made a legitimate little cup team before this one (I don’t count my trick room team prior to this as legitimate because it absolutely sucked).
The theory that I used to make this team was that in an incredibly offensive metagame like little cup, the ability to dish out as much damage as possible and find a way to squeeze any extra kills in is what makes the difference. If you lose a poke but revenge kill theirs, then there isn’t any loss usually. Combine that concept with immunities, as resistances aren’t always good enough for some of the really hard hitters (Machop, Mankey, Eevee), and you can hopefully get to 6 kills before the opponent.
THE TEAM
ttelgi (Diglett) (M) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Arena Trap
EVs: 36 HP/236 Atk/236 Spd
Jolly nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Sucker Punch
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Rock Slide
My lead, and one of the best pokes in little cup. It has max speed, decent attack, STAB Earthquake, and of course arena trap. Earthquake kills a huge amount of the metagame, and most of the pokes that don’t die to it are flyers who get hit hard by rock slide. Sucker Punch because priority is absolutely huge in little cup, and protecting the sash is very useful. Stealth Rock if I get a free turn/want to make them burn a sucker punch, but I don’t use it very frequently. Here’s what it does against some common leads:
Lead Threats
Meowth – A pain, because it might hypnosis and it might fake out. Fortunately hypnosis has the 55% accuracy going against it, so I can sucker punch. If they fake out, both sashes are broken and he’s koed next turn. If they hypnosis, sucker punch fails and I have about a 50/50 shot of being slept. If I go to sleep and haven’t played the person before, I’ll switch to Totodile, who can set up a swords dance and then spam priority. If I’m not slept then I spam Earthquake until I fall asleep.
Snover –My best shot is to rock slide, it gets a 2hko and the flinch chance, but with hail blizzard is a guaranteed ohko. I can then revenge it with houndour/eevee (not gastly, as I don’t want to be pursuit bait for munchlax and lose my ghost. Also snover might be running ice shard, which hits hard through gastly’s defenses) so I’ll take the likely chance of losing my lead to break his sash.
Machop – Dynamicpunch knocks duggy down to sash level, then bullet punch ohkoes. Ice punch does the same thing, as does payback, so I can’t switch gastly into it. EQ hits for between 50% and 70% and there is no safe switch in to machop in little cup (slowpoke gets paybacked), so as with snover, I sac my lead and then revenge it. Not a great start to the battle.
Shroomish – Uncommon but effective, I can’t kill it and it spores me, so I sac diglett to sleep clause while rock sliding and hoping for hax (it’s a 3hko I think, so I have a 3.24% chance of 2 straight flinches after accuracy).
Other grass types: Generally a sleep lead, diglett isn’t huge for the team defensively outside of a sasher to stop a sweep, so I sacrifice it to sleep and go from there.
Bronzor – Gyro ball 3hkoes diglett I think, but rock slide does 12% to it. I switch out to dour or gastly to fire blast or dark pulse (if it’s raining) or trick it respectively, depending on whether or not I think it’s running Earthquake.
Voltorb – Almost always a rain dancer, so it has damp rock. Speed tie, if I win it’s ohkoed with EQ, if I lose they get rain dance up, and die to EQ. win-win situation.
Almost all other leads: Outside of those I haven’t found a lead that could beat Diggy. It has a lot of power, and since most pokes are setting up an entry hazard or attacking, diglett uses its speed to earthquake/sucker punch a ton of stuff (fake out leads get reverse).
Diglett generally gets a kill a battle, frequently kills their switch-in too because of its speed, and is probably the best revenge killer possible due to arena trap.
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elidoto (Totodile) (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 236 Atk/4 Def/236 Spd
Jolly nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Aqua Jet
- Return
- Waterfall
- Swords Dance
Totodile is priority spammer #1. It can take a hit and set up a sd, then hit hard with aqua jet. It’s well known that water is a good defensive typing, and that offers dile a lot of opportunities to set up. Return gives great coverage with aqua jet, and [ice punch is there for gligar as I have no other ice type attacks on my team] (replaced with waterfall, smogon doesn't have the awesome strikethrough font) waterfall is there to hit anyone below 14 speed for almost a guaranteed ko.
+2 Waterfall vs Max hp Max def Impish Bronzor (my standard for lc defenses) - 88.0% - 108.0%
+2 Waterfall vs Max hp Max def Impish Lickitung (better defenses than bronzor but worse typing) – 85.7% - 100.0% - only a 20% chance to survive if I have sr up
+2 Waterfall vs min hp min def jolly arceus - 107.1% - 128.6% - So when arceus becomes little cup legal I’ll have a counter.
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ruodnuo (Houndour) (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 36 Atk/240 Spd/200 SAtk
Hasty nature (+Spd, -Def)
- Sucker Punch
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Dark Pulse
Houndour is my fire type and one of the most used lc pokes for good reason. It packs STAB sucker punch, which with minor ev investment hits pretty hard. Fire Blast is the main attack on the set, and dark pulse is a secondary STAB that I use when I know I outspeed and want a 100% accuracy move. It’s also there because the flinch chance is nice for bonus hax. I chose hidden power fighting over the standard grass/electric so it could counter other houndours, and dark/fighting coverage might as well be the perfect ghost/fighting coverage.
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eeve (Eevee) (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 236 Atk/36 Def/236 Spd
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Return
- Quick Attack
- Bite
- Baton Pass
My late game cleaner generally, but it’s a great revenge killer any time. Adaptability essentially gives quick attack a base power of 80, and return a base power of 204. Choiced normal attacks draw out ghosts who are pursuit bait for munchlax, and rocks and steels who are easily dispatched with aqua jet. Bite is for when I feel like killing the ghost that I know will switch in, but it’s always weaker than return so there’s not much else it can do. Baton pass is for scouting, I think I’m going to replace this though, because a turn in Little Cup is absolutely huge, and I generally use return for scouting as it hits everything really hard barring gastly. I just don’t know what to replace baton pass with, as its movepool sucks. Iron tail could work, but the 75 base accuracy is hardly worth it. Comments welcome here.
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xalhcnu (Munchlax) (M) @ Oran Berry
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 236 Atk/36 Def/236 Spd
Careful nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Pursuit
- Curse
- Body Slam
- Earthquake
The counter to nearly all special attackers and a number of physical attackers. It kills ghosts, and can set up curses, giving it huge defense in both sides. Body slam is the main attack, EQ for coverage and revenging stuff like omanyte and kabuto, pursuit for ghost trapping. Having the ability to guarantee a kill on the other team’s ghost is huge. Curselax is also an awesome trick room counter, which is deadly in Little Cup (as are field effects in general).
Outspeeding Lickitung, Wynaut, Bronzor, Paras and Duskull is nice, and I think that winning those and tying with 10 speed pokes is more useful than increasing its bulk. I know it’s unorthodox, especially on a curser. But… I don’t know, it works. It’s high enough speed to tie or win against stuff before a curse, and to underspeed a bunch of stuff in trick room after a curse. In all honesty, I think it was a typo on the original set, but I like the way it turned out.
It also outspeeds max speed rock polish gligar after body slam paralyzes it, and 2hkoes with Body slam unless it’s an Oran berry version. Earthquake doesn’t ohko without a SD. However, Totodile is a much better revenger, as waterfall + aqua jet koes gligar more easily.
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yltsa (Gastly) (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 36 HP/40 Def/200 Spd/200 SAtk
Modest nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Shadow Ball
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Trick
- Destiny Bond
My main revenge killer and resist to normal and fighting, every team pretty much needs a ghost. This is an unusual set, differing from the normal shadow ball, sludge bomb, hp fighting, hypnosis set. This set’s main selling point is the ability to kill munchlax. As it switches in, you trick your scarf and get its oran berry. HP fighting is a 3hko, and pursuit does ~50% damage, which along with the oran berry you stole allows for a simple ko, or at least an easy revenge.
This set also completely walls priority spamming croagunks, as when they get tricked a scarf they have to choose an attack. Sucker punch has to have an attack in order to hit, and fake out and vacuum wave can’t hit ghosts. If they happen to use ice punch I send in Totodile to set up, and I haven’t seen a croagunk with any other attacks that can hit gastly yet.
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TEAM BUILDING
This is the second team I’ve made for little cup (the first was a trick room team I made as a gimmick to learn about the metagame). I probably played 20 games or so with the trick room team, and my formula for this team was basically take the pokes that were the most effective against my team, and smash them onto one team. Also, I didn’t think it would actually turn out well and I was basically testing ideas out (for my theory above). Here’s an in-depth look at how I chose my team.
Diglett – It has max speed, and is the only of the 3 20 speed pokes to learn stealth rock. I went “Great, I have a lead.” I stuck rock/ground moves for coverage and sucker punch is the priority it gets.
Eevee – Swept me with quick attack on my first team. If a pokemon could do that, then I wanted him on my team.
Gastly – Choice gastly has great speed and attack power. I stole the set from smogon, and realized it was totally munchlax weak, and I wasn’t using sludge bomb much, and hypnosis missed 1 time too many, along with status being weird on a non-lead choicer. I decided to test trickscarfing out, and it works great. Destiny bond was an idea for something I needed to revenge kill but I wasn’t going to hit it hard enough, endgame utility, etc. Trick and destiny bond let me use gastly as a priority spamming toxicroak counter, as it’s immune to fake out and vacuum wave, and sucker punch requires an attack to hit, so I can trick a scarf onto it, and it can’t touch me.
Houndour – I’ve always loved flash fire/volt absorb/water absorb, and in the all out offensive little cup metagame, being able to turn one of your opponent’s attacks into a boost is huge. It has great offensive typing, and 17 speed is pretty great. Plus, the all important priority in little cup made it too good to pass up. I started out with hidden power grass, but then realized I didn’t have a counter for other houndours, as the best I could do was spam dark pulses. I chose hidden power fighting because of one guy’s team that 3 or 4 games in a row, it came down to my houndour and cyndaquil vs his snorunt and houndour. I could fire blast the snorunt, but I had no answer to the houndour, and as I didn’t want to flash fire it, I played it safe and dark pulsed, and he won all of them. HP fighting gave me a super effective shot on both of his pokes and won me the next battle, and that’s when I discovered that it worked out great.
Cyndaquil – One of the 2 slots on the team that’s been juggled around. It was a scarf cyndaquil with eruption, fire blast, hp ice, and will o’ wisp. I put it on as a revenge killer, but eruption lost so much power from stealth rock and, to be honest, its movepool sucks, so I went looking for something else to revenge kill with.
Totodile – I wanted a water type to stand up against rain dance, and I wanted a strong priority user. Kabuto is better at some things, but the dual rock typing hurts it, as it loses the water resistance and gives it EQ and Fighting weaknesses, which I’m already weak enough to.
Aron – Standard Rock Polish set. It didn’t get enough opportunities to switch in and set up, and priority kills it. I put it on the original team and didn’t like it much.
Machop – I tried out a scarfchop in this spot, but with him there, the team was incredibly gastly weak, and had trouble taking out ghosts in general. I switched it to life orb subchop, and while durability wasn’t the issue, as are most life orb subbers, it lacked power, and I was still ghost weak.
Munchlax – I wanted a pursuit user, but most of them were too frail. Curselax fit the bill perfectly, because it totally eliminated my ghost weakness and gave me a switch in to almost all special attacks, the only thing that I’ve seen kill it is mantyke’s hydro pump in the rain.
10 bonus points for you if you've read through the entire thing so far. Sorry, I know it's tl;dr =/ Post "Little Cup Rules" in your reply if you read this.
Threat List
Because little cup is such a fast paced game, and my team especially involves sacrificing a ton of pokes, I’m going to include my response to the threat, and what I would do if that pokemon is dead.
ABRA Munchy can switch in and Pursuit trap/Body Slam ohko. Houndour could come in on psychic and proceed to sucker punch it, but switching in on anything else would suck.
AIPOM A lead, diglett outspeeds and sucker punches on the fake out, and koes with quake.
ARON Switch in Toto and aqua jet. Since I won’t have toto around lategame if that’s when it shows up, I’m in trouble. If it switches in on dour, I can hp fighting, munchy can EQ, but if it comes in on choice locked return or shadow ball I’m screwed. I can only hope they’re running adamant which puts them at 12 speed so gastly can outspeed and hp fighting. A big problem lategame.
BRONZOR Switch in Houndour, Dark Pulse until I know they don’t have a flash fire poke. Dark Pulse does ~50%, a 3hko through oran. If Houndour’s dead, or if Bronzor koes houndour with EQ, send in Totodile, it ohkoes after a swords dance and gets the opportunity to set up. If it switches into a return from Eevee it gets 3hkoed through oran, so it gets 1 attack to fire off against Eevee.
BUIZEL Munchlax can take a shot and ko with body slam, but it dies to waterfall. Eevee can revenge with quick attack if it’s at full hp. Diglett can trap and ohko (I think) with sucker punch.
CARVAHNA If it’s sashed, hopefully I had stealth rock put up. If I don’t have SR and diglett’s sash intact then I let Totodile tank it and kill with return/AJ. Speedy, hard hitting physical waters do well against my team, yet I hardly ever lose to rain dance. Idk why.
CHIMCHAR A lead. I sucker punch. If he fake outs then his sash is broken. If he stealth rocks then I can 2hko through sash and outspeed him. A non-lead char would be aqua jetted, or quick attacked by Eevee.
CHINCHOU Munchlax can take special hits and ohko with EQ. If diglett’s sash is intact it can kill with EQ, or if the chou isn’t scarfed (or if it’s locked on tbolt, which is most likely from killing Totodile). Say they’re both dead, Eevee would quick attack or gastly would shadow ball, depending on the situation.
CROAGUNK Switch to gastly on the inevitable Fake Out/Vacuum Wave/Sucker Punch and trick a scarf onto it/steal its orb. Worst case scenario I get dark pulsed and it has a scarf, which still stops it from doing anything significant. If gastly has no scarf to trick or is dead, I’d probably use munchlax, b/c it can take a life orb unboosted vacuum wave.
DIGLETT Can’t switch out to a counter b/c of Arena Trap. If it’s a lead I make sure I come out ahead of theirs (attacking > sr), and if not, all my pokes can beat it/leave it with 1 hp.
DRATINI Hopefully stop it from setting up by hitting it hard with whatever I have in. If it gets a dd, then I revenge kill with priority or Gastly. Draco/Outrage/Espeed/DD is pretty much guaranteed a kill.
DUSKULL Switch Houndour into the wisp or any ghost attack and ohko with dark pulse. Without houndour… uhh… hope they’re running a stall team as they’re the only ones that use Duskull, Eevee is poisoned by tox spikes, and bites for a ohko. If it’s a trick room team, switch to munchy and start spamming curse.
ELEKID Priority at it with whatever’s out barring munchlax. If munchlax is out, go to gastly on the cross chop and shadow ball/trick it, depending on whether they have a stunky/munchlax on their team. If I get it locked on an electric move and have a living diglett, he can set up sr and have a field day with the immunity. If elekid koes gastly with tbolt on the switch, spam priority ‘til he’s dead. Totodile can revenge kill with aqua jet if he’s at half HP.
GASTLY Most are prepared for munchlax nowadays, but it’s still my first switch in, as it takes special attacks well. If Munchy is dead, probably houndour for the ghost resistance. Subnosis Gastly is a pain.
GLIGAR Swords Dance versions are outsped and killed by gastly/priority. Rock Polish versions can be revenged by Totodile, but are hell to take down without him. Sandhax sets are Totodile/Gastly’s department, as they hit with priority/outspeed it.
HIPPOPOTAS A lead, I EQ it to near death and revenge it.
HOUNDOUR My dour is my first switch in, hp fighting ohkoes. If dour is dead, go to Munchy or Toto.
KABUTO Go to Toto to aqua jet it, then revenge kill with diglett. If toto is dead… Full hp Munchlax can take a waterfall when it isn’t raining and OHKO with Earthquake. In the rain without Totodile… don’t talk about suck things, they aren’t fun =( . Against a Rain Dance team I keep Toto out of battle to stop kabuto.
Leadbuto is earthquaked and then it’s prediction warfare. If they attacked, they might set up rocks or aqua jet. Sucker punch finishes off kabuto if they AJ and earthquake if I think they’ll go for free rocks.
KOFFING Take the wisp with houndour and Fire blast/dark pulse it to oblivion. If dour is dead, probably give it a free scarf from Gastly.
MACHOP Screw Machop, he wrecks my team. Gastly does like 80% with shadow ball and promptly dies to payback. Revenge it with Totodile. Without gastly against a Dynamicpunch scarfchop, it’s gg most likely, all I can do is priority spam.
MANKEY Has no priority so it’s fairly easy to revenge kill. Not fun to take down though. See Machop but about 40% less problem.
MANTYKE Can’t kill munchlax, and priority goes a long way to taking it down with weak physical defense. Without lax, sac a poke and Eevee quick attacks.
In the rain, a hydro pump does ohko lax, so I have to priority spam and lose a couple pokes.
MEOWTH A lead, detailed above.
MUNCHLAX Eevee ohkoes with Return, Gastly tricks incoming Laxes.
OMANYTE Even in the rain, Gastly outspeeds it. Shaadow ball or hp fighting depending on my mood, both ohko. If gastly is down, Munchy takes special attacks and hits hard with Earthquake, but gets hit pretty hard.
PARAS Frail and slow, so I can generally kill it. If not, sac something to sleep clause and go from there. Munchlax is the only poke it outspeeds.
PORYGON Tough to handle. Ideally I get a free switch to gastly on the tri attack, trick it, then I get free setup based on what it chooses. However, generally I end up throwing priority at it until it’s dead. Munchy can counter but I like to save it for other threats, as it gets left at ~20% health from 2 tri attacks.
SNOVER Houdour – Dark pulse kills a sub (accuracy, and keeping hp secret), fire blast/hp fighting for the ko. Next best thing is gastly’s hp fighting, better for scarfed snovers. I rock slide lead snovers, but they do ohko through sash with blizzard + hail.
STARYU Munchlax takes special attacks and ohkoes with body slam. Gastly ohkoes with shadow ball and Eevee ohkoes with Quick Attack I think.
STUNKY Only comes out to kill Gastly, revenge it with diglett. If diglett’s gone, EQ with Munchy.
TAILLOW Has trouble switching in, priority wrecks it. Probably use Toto for this stint of priority spammery, its Quick Attack does a lot to Eevee.
TOTDILE Don’t let it set up a swords dance. If it does, Eevee outspeeds it and comes at least close to ohkoing with QA. If it’s dead I’m in trouble.
VOLTORB A lead. See above.
WYNAUT Diglett arena traps it (funny when it’s encored onto stealth rock, as Wynaut can’t do anything except tickle, and neither can escape), Toto waterfalls it, Houndour dark pulses, Eevee is locked into a move that will at least 2hko it, munchlax 2hkoes with body slam if It’s lucky, Gastly Shadow Balls it.
That’s my threat list, I hope you liked my team and give a bunch of rates/comments.
