My shitty gimmick team(s).
Top half's general strategy was to KO something turn one with final gambit (quick guard preventing fake outs and stuff), then perish song and survive the three turns, twaving lapras if necessary to make sure it was the slowest thing on the field at the end. Sheer cold on lapras was because I didn't know what else to do with that moveslot and since it was fully invested in defenses, any attack would be hitting like a wet noodle anyway. I didn't use it very much at all.
When it worked it was great, but since I had no experience using final gambit, it took me a few battles to learn how to best use it.
Things that shut it down:
1) Focus sashes or otherwise failing to KO something with staraptor. I really wish I put ice shard over sheer cold on lapras to pick off things that survived by a sash, since otherwise I had no way of getting the game down to a 2v2 besides getting lucky with sheer cold.
2) Things that just hit too hard for lapras to survive. It's important to final gambit stuff like mawiles on turn one otherwise they just plough through lapras and KO it too soon.
3) Opposing taunters. Only faced one of these (some guy with a sableye). Managed to hold it off with quick guard for a while but then he KO'd meowstic and then taunted lapras. Luckily he then went full retard on the last turn, giving me the win.
Some videos where it went off successfully:
MTQG-WWWW-WWW9-26HY
2ZDG-WWWW-WWW9-292J
GTJG-WWWW-WWW9-292P
PVCG-WWWW-WWW9-292S
WUMW-WWWW-WWW9-292V
Bottom half was probably more successful overall, and was probably an exercise in awareness for the opponent. I'd lead with zoroark and whimsicott. Here's the thing that people should've noticed though: there was no intimidate (or hyper cutter) message when I sent out the not-mawile. (I know it also has sheer force but who uses that?) I still rused a ton of people with it though.
Tailwind on whimsicott ended up being more useful than I initially anticipated, letting zoroark outspeed stuff like kingdra in rain (which led to a situation where I got a night daze accuracy drop on it, making hydro pump miss 3 times in a row) and also helped mmaw clean up a lot better.
I kinda wished I replaced safeguard on whimsicott with moonblast, dazzling gleam, or helping hand though. I mean I'm sure it prevented a scald burn somewhere along the line but otherwise there were quite a few turns where it just sat there doing nothing.
There were other times though where whimsicott was basically controlling the entire battle. Mawile is a huge status magnet but the threat of an encore led to the opponents not wanting to use any of them. Encoring fake outs, protects, dragon dances, etc was always great, especially when the battle was down to 2v2 and they couldn't switch out, letting me encore+taunt their status moves and forcing them to struggle. Taunting/encoring also made sucker punching everything really easy.
Overall I came in the high 1500s with a score of something like 18-12. I wasn't expecting to do well at all but I had fun and that's what mattered.
Some videos of this team:
A33G-WWWW-WWW9-2933
Z6TG-WWWW-WWW9-2939
WQHG-WWWW-WWW9-293E
