It's not that you're wrong its just that every earlier record went lum (idk exactly how much testing and teambuilding was involved in each) so the decision to go occa is significant because its probably the most meaningful difference to this vs other TR records.
Ah yes I see, that's surely where I diverge the most as I didn't really look deep at other teams when I started with doubles. I just studied the "ideal strategy" of Bronzong + LV1 bait and focused on that route, slowly building the team that suited best for me in a full heuristic process. For example, before Swinub (back when my team wasn’t even Bronzong/Camerupt/Octillery yet) I did in fact try a couple other baits for a good chunk of time; Duskull, Rattata, Starly, Smeargle, Ghastly and LV2 Togekiss worked really good and each got its own nice perks, but for me the goofy brown pig is what worked best out of them all. I’ll seize the opportunity to better talk about Swinub, perhaps making an addendum to my original post for clarity, because apparently some stuff I consider obvious actually isn’t.
I never found LV2 Togekiss lead much appealing and, in my opinion, EQ immunity is the only real trait it has more than Swinub. Togekiss has many interesting moves (Reflect, Light Screen, T-Wave, Trick, Encore, Safeguard, Heal Bell, Lucky Chant, Tailwind…), but very few that I truly judge
relevant in the context of TR doubles. As "relevant move", I mean a move that you can use even if you go out of the Protect/TR/Endeavor golden standard and/or can often change the outcome of a battle. In my opinion Foresight and Follow Me can be relevant moves, the others listed above aren't. Foresight can be fantastic to land Explosion on Dusknoir and against Double Team spammers but other than this being fairly rare to happen, Swinub has Odor Sleuth anyways. Follow Me is useful to redirect moves but it pretty much guarantees Togekiss to be dead on turn 1 (kinda defeating the very purpose of the Endeavor exploit) and for all the time I played Swinub I never felt needing it (ty for making me aware part of it comes from the wacky AI shenanigan you mentioned about him attracting more moves because of its typing). There’s also Extreme Speed, a solid +2 priority that can steal kills sometimes, but again it doesn’t happen so commonly to be considered
truly relevant; just like Swinub's Ice Shard of course, which anyway does the same as +1 and also hits ghost types.
Speaking of ghost types; believe me or not but Ghastly with Protect, Pain Split, Sucker Punch and Destiny Bond has worked even better than Togekiss for me, and I mean a lot. With Destiny cheese and EQ/Explosion immunity was really chill to play. Same with Duskull, I also tried it a little bit and found them pretty much on the same level, with Leer occasionally being super nice to make Bronzong dish out more damage. Unfortunately Pain Split only halvens the oppo’s HP instead of reducing it to a sneeze, taking out most of Bronzong’s KO potential.
Smeargle is actually interesting tho and was extremely useful because of his universal movepool and I seriously considered playing him instead of Swinub. Spore, Foresight /Odor Sleuth/ Miracle Eye, Fake Out and Bullet Punch/Ice Shard are all fantastic moves and make Smeargle the best bait leader along with Swinub for me. He’s the only one that really is better than Swinub in terms of utility, and just because of how damn broken Spore is in gen 4. Now THAT is a super relevant move that can actually change the outcome of a battle and turn off entire threats. So why didn’t I pick Smeargle? Because Swinub is more durable and consistent.
The reason why I chose the pig over other baits is its typing. Ice-Ground means it can’t be damaged by weather (Hail/Sandstorm and the more common and annoying Snow Warning/Sand Stream) so its Focus Sash is always on. This simplifies a lot of matchups and makes a huge difference for me. I find really strange you didn't mention it even once, glad to know I’m not the only one who misses obvious stuff out of distraction! /s
If you run a bait vulnerable to weather (let’s take Togekiss as example since it’s the most popular) and your opponent leads Tyranitar, Hippowdon or Abomasnow (and by experience I can tell they are
very common) you're in a tricky spot cause without Sash your bait is basically on a constant deadline. If you switch bait on turn 1, the switch-in will probably take both opponent moves, maybe get serious damage (>Eruption), status and even not survive. It would be a forced switch, you make the battle longer and lose turns for TR. Your best bet is to Protect on turn 1 as usual, so that TR most probably is set and half the job is done as always with the exception of Focus Sash being offline. Then on turn 2 if you leave it on field the bait will die after taking out a single oppo, while usually it lasts more and takes out *at least* two. If you switch turn 2, when your bait enters the field again it would be on the same exact 1-turn deadline. Also since weather damage takes out your Sash turn 1 even if you Protect your bait wouldn’t be safe from a single priority move.
It’s not the worst situation imaginable of course, but it’s very annoying and can lead to many further complications (my previous streak of 281 ended similarly, imagine the absolute terror in my eyes when Swinub got QC-hax killed on turn 2 and I saw the oppo have two bulky water types and a Bronzong I couldn’t damage). In some rare cases you’re almost,
almost playing a 3v4 from the start.
Cleffa with Magic Guard acts even better than Swinub in theory cause other than ignoring weather it’s immune to poison and burn damage too (taking a little more hax out of the equation) but other than the sweet Aromatherapy it has a much less interesting movepool. For example Wish can be really good in singles but too slow to be effective in doubles, and Cleffa has no access to priorities.
I think this is a bit different playstyle than, for example, Togekiss that you expect to die very soon with Follow Me to grant the TR success or sooner because of weather damage. With Swinub I trade utility for durability, favoring my bait’s longevity in order to maximizes its efficiency. This allows to take out as many opponents as possible: my most common outcome if there are no dangerous threats or crazy hax is simply winning after reducing the battle to a 3v1.
So basically Swinub allows me to completely forget about weather and avoid going out of my way, keeping the gameplay simple and straightforward and having less stuff to worry about. I can’t stress enough how much important this is. I do my best to keep the gameplay as simple as possible cause all these battles take a
huge amount of time and mental effort. Technically sometimes you ARE allowed to make mistakes (and obv I did) but actually not at all cause you never know which mistake can be your last. There aren’t many battles where you don’t get potential threats or hax from the start and can go full autopilot for the entire fight, so it’s really difficult (at least for me) to keep the focus and not mess up for so long. In fact I only play when I’ve got time, I’m fully focused and not too much in a single session otherwise I get too easily distracted. Just like Ockham's razor the more streamlined a battle is, the less bullshit happens, the easier is to read the situation and, of course, win.
The second reason why I chose Swinub is consistency.
We know all lead baits have several traits in common: they’re as weak as possible (level 1-2), hold a Focus Sash and know Protect and Endeavor/Pain Split. Therefore, the key differences between them are their "innate features" like typing, moves and abilities that give them unique plays and/or better synergy with Bronzong. There’s a catch tho: in the grand scheme of things, most of these quirks don’t matter. You said it yourself: if both oppos on turn 1 target the bait and TR gets in, ">99%" of battles are already won and this is with a solid team and ANY bait leader. We care about the bait’s innate features to better handle that bad "<1%". But if you think about it, by no surprise harmful weather is WAY MORE COMMON than any other "1%" specific threat.
Yes, it’s cool to drop a free Explosion or EQ if the bait is immune to it, but how many times does it decide if it’s a win or a loss? After all, your LV1 bait has Protect to survive and if you can’t use it that turn your bait would die anyway.
A priority is always nice to have, but how many times is it
really used to kill an oppo in a TR double battle and decide an outcome? How many times do you actually
need to use Future Sight/Odor Sleuth to win? These ones aren’t rhetorical questions, I counted them. In more than 800 TR battles I used Ice Shard to kill an opponent a grand total of seven times and Odor Sleuth to hit evasion spammers/ghosts with Explosion three times (I don’t remember if any of those were absolutely crucial for the win but still). Instead, I’d be really surprised to go a full round without seeing Rockzilla, the hippopotamus and the christmas tree at least once or twice.
Then my question is: do I prepare better for a threat that appears perhaps once every one hundred battles, or turn off a threat that appears every few battles? The answer should be obvious. I don’t give a shit if my Togekiss saves Bronzong’s metal ass with Follow Me once in a blue moon, if that means becoming heavy as a brick whenever you see Abe, Tyr or Hippo. To put it simple, Swinub makes the team less ready to fight the “1% threat”, but much more ready for the “10% threat”(((ofc random numbers just to make the point))). Took Togekiss as example but the reasoning still applies to basically all other baits, the only other one I’d play instead is Smeargle and again just for the movepoool cause Spore is doing the heavy lifting here.
Given these considerations, now it should be much clearer that I didn't pick Swinub just for fun at all. I don't know if my reasoning is right, wrong or whatever, but looks like it works.
I repeat once again that all this stuff is a mix of objective facts and personal perception. As I said these are thoughts that I matured with internet knowledge, time and experiences and made me build my team as it is for now. Now that you make me notice you’re right, I DID undersell how easy is to lose even with a lead bait when stuff goes wrong (status, crits, double team, bad matchup, OHKO etc.). Ofc I didn't on purpose, tbh I didn't even think it was that relevant to mention since, just like the status danger thing, I took it for granted. Battle Tower and TR strategy has been known (even if in different shapes) for like what, 15 years? I expected everyone interested to already know it thoroughly, probably even better than me especially in this dedicated forum, but you’re right I should have made it clear from the start.
Btw I finished a new multi battle streak taking many notes, writing down all teams used and saved a couple battle videos. Next time I’ll try to not neglect any details and make my report complete right away!
Happy new year, lads
