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Hello everyone, Skwovetboi here! Because I have a top 4 placement at El Paso Regionals, I have qualified to vote on this suspect test. Therefore, I am voting to BAN Basculegion from 4v4 Doubles UU Reg F.
is a force to be reckoned with in this format, because it has the ability to OHKO almost every Pokémon in the meta with Tera Water Rain Boosted Choice Band Wave Crash or 200 Base Power Adaptability Last Respects. In my opinion, Basculegion is the reason Rain is as good as it is in the metagame. Basculegion happens to be 's best partner, since whatever Basculegion struggles with, Archaludon can take care of, and vice versa.
Basculegion does not have a direct check in this meta other than the "Crunch Punch" gephicka created at the beginning of the format. Because of this, players were forced to innovate their teams with Pokémon such as and Supreme Overlord just to have a way through this bloodthirsty soul collector.
I do realize if Basculegion is banned, may follow the same script. I will not explain too much about Basculegion-F because this is a post about Basculegion. I will not explain that much about Basculegion because I will allow other players who have qualified to vote in this suspect to share their thoughts on Basculegion.
I would like to thank my friend gephicka for arranging this suspect test and granting me the reqs to vote in this suspect test. I will also thank the other voters in this suspect test because their votes will determine the future of this Regulation.
I hate that guy. Swift Swim with its movepool makes it a terrifying band attacker, and Scarf is good outside of rain too. I'm voting to ban. I automatically qualified for reqs by making top 8 in last year's final playoff tournament, so I am cleared to be able to vote.
That said, I do want to make one thing clear, I don't think Basculegion is the only problem, or arguably even the biggest problem.
An Archaludon, or even rain, ban might be necessary after we get rid of the fish.
Archaludon with Stamina is nothing short of broken, with the best teams running intimidate, screens, or some other way to make it near invincible. Here's a review of each winning Archaludon team in this format. I'll also be noting Basculegion's involvement where relevant, as this suspect is about Basculegion, of course. I just want to highlight that Archaludon is also a threat that we need to get rid of.
Ev_Evan's team:
This one pairs Beat Up Whimsicott with Archaludon and Terrakion to create an offensive threat or an unkillable physical wall. It won thanks to the versatility of being able to go offensive or defensive with Beat Up. And, to no one's surprise, Basculegion was also a nice backup sweeper for that team.
sheepie_sheep's team:
Despite having Basculegion and Archaludon, this team actually doesn't have rain on it, so props to you Sheepie. Still, it's clear that those two are good together, even on an offensive Psyspam team. Basculegion does a good job at eliminating things that Archaludon struggles with, it seems.
My team:
This was a side tournament that added Mega Evolution, but Archaludon's prominence on rain is still clear. I was able to forego Basculegion since my team revolves around a bulky Gardevoir with Trick Room, as well as a Thundurus, for speed control. Landorus-Therian provides Intimidate support, and Tera Fairy allows it to reliably hit Archaludon with U-turn. I used this strategy a lot in the tournament, as a +1 specially bulky Archaludon after Intimidate is ridiculously sturdy.
Coolguy14604's team:
I think this was the team that made everyone want to get rid of Basculegion, and for good reason. Tera Grass Basculegion inside screens with Thunder Wave support from Grimmsnarl is stupid, being a strong banded attacker that can now just tank a hit or two. Or it outspeeds things like Iron Bundle that it could never hope to. Or it hits your ally and your Grass type can't hit it because of paralysis. Not to mention the fact Tera Grass makes it better against the one hard check it has, Brute Bonnet. Archaludon on this team is, frankly, even scarier. I fought this team once and the only time I was able to break it was when for some reason Coolguy decided to switch it into a Garchomp Earthquake. With screens, Sinistcha, and Stamina, you have to brace yourself for a long game. Usual offensive checks like Tera Stellar Iron Valiant or Close Combat Iron Hands can be chunked even if you've burned Tera and have no boosts, and defensive checks aren't that good as it's Tera Grass so it can't be spored, and Archaludon is far from passive.
TL;DR
Ban Basculegion but please save us from Archaludon, Gephicka. Archaludon and Basculegion were tied for being considered banworthy during the tiering survey, so you know what to do, right?
while the line of landorusty is quite divine, it seems team 3 (andres tailroom psyspam) is shown as having one despite actually having a cornerstone - unsure if this was done for a joke (if it was you shouldve extended it to the bottom two! or not have done it at all!) but probably good to fix that
while the line of landorusty is quite divine, it seems team 3 (andres tailroom psyspam) is shown as having one despite actually having a cornerstone - unsure if this was done for a joke (if it was you shouldve extended it to the bottom two! or not have done it at all!) but probably good to fix that
OK, so the tournament has just wrapped up. Here are the top teams.
I'm Foghorn. My team did pretty well, although I would definitely drop Excadrill, it was pretty bad in most of the fights. Tyranitar was my MVP, I bought it to almost every match and came in clutch against Ursaluna-BM which I faced 3 times. Smeargle was also strong too, while I only got to Spore 1 thing the threat of it forced a lot of Protects which allowed me to give something a Decorate boost. I only bought Kommo-o twice but both times it did quite well. 1st time it would've swept clean, but my Smeargle got put to sleep for the full 3 turns and it got Encored into Protect. My opponent made a brave choice to bring Brute Bonnet against a team with 2 Overcoat mons and a Grass type, but it paid off. Enamours did well too. I was both the benefactor of hax and on the receiving end too, so...karma?
Most common Pokemon was Sinistcha with 7 players bringing it. Surprise of the tournament though was the Iron Valiant sets. Both the ones I faced where choice Specs with Expanding Force. And they weren't even Tera Psychic! Ursluna-BM is very scary, I faced 1 Calm Mind version and 2 Life Orb sets. One was min speed for Trick Room, the other was fast.
Overall was great fun, look forward to the one at the end of the month! I'll have a better team next time (hopefully).
Since it's a new tier shift, I've made 3 new set boxes for the format, including some developments within shift 1. This should cover most common sets in the format, and I made sure most if not all Pokemon featured in sample teams were included.
hi so coming here as a regular player and not a council member, articuno should be retested or unbanned.
One of the main reasons Articuno was banned from this format is because of the RNG involved with Blizzard Freeze chances and Snow Cloak. First, I want to focus in on the latter. I think an easy fix to this would be to ban Snow Cloak and other Evasion-related abilities, similar to how Evasion-increasing moves are banned from this format. This would not only make Articuno feel much fairer, but it would also stop shitmons from ruining the format with just a bit of luck.
Now of course removing Freeze from this format wouldn't really be an option so the RNG variance is still there, but removing Snow Cloak does make this Pokemon a lot more manageable. On another note, Articuno can run Sheer Cold to fish for OHKOs but to that I say just ban OHKO moves since they are banned in lots of other formats and are generally deemed uncompetitive by the masses (or just get better icl).
Now, some may deem Articuno to be too powerful for the format, especially since we lost Ogerpon-C and the main Sun setter in this format, Whimsicott last shift. Well, since we lost Landorus-T this shift as well, Iron Hands is far more common, especially to keep threats like Ursaluna-B in check. Iron Hands is able to also keep Articuno in check thanks to its power and bulk with Assault Vest. I'll drop some calcs below but that is certainly a way to play around Articuno just mauling your whole team.
Outside of Snow:
156+ Atk Iron Hands Wild Charge vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Articuno: 162-192 (82.2 - 97.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
156+ Atk Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Articuno: 67-79 (34 - 40.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
156+ Atk Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Tera-Ice Articuno: 134-158 (68 - 80.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Inside of Snow + Articuno offensive calcs:
156+ Atk Iron Hands Wild Charge vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Articuno in Snow: 108-128 (54.8 - 64.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
156+ Atk Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Tera-Ice Articuno in Snow: 90-108 (45.6 - 54.8%) -- 45.31% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Choice Specs Articuno Blizzard vs. 44 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Iron Hands: 61-73 (25.9 - 31%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
252+ SpA Choice Specs Articuno Ice Beam vs. 44 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Iron Hands: 69-82 (29.3 - 34.8%) -- 11.08% chance to 3HKO
While yes these calcs are scary I do think it is worth to at least test Articuno in the current tier (maybe through a suspect tour on limitless / in the UM Room? Not too sure on that yet) thanks to the tools to stop it.
I also forgot to mention we got Entei in the tier which is able to do heavy damage into Articuno. The same goes for probably the best answer to Articuno, Heatran. Heatran does get pinned easily from Ursaluna-B + Articuno, however, so it could still be rather troublesome.
Entei + Heatran calcs (vs Articuno)
252+ Atk Choice Band Entei Sacred Fire vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Tera-Ice Articuno: 246-290 (124.8 - 147.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Entei Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Tera-Ice Articuno: 294-348 (149.2 - 176.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Entei Sacred Fire vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Tera-Ice Articuno in Snow: 164-194 (83.2 - 98.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Entei Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Tera-Ice Articuno in Snow: 198-234 (100.5 - 118.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
156+ SpA Heatran Heat Wave vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Articuno: 102-122 (51.7 - 61.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
156+ SpA Heatran Flash Cannon vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Articuno: 116-140 (58.8 - 71%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
156+ SpA Heatran Magma Storm vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Articuno: 146-174 (74.1 - 88.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
156+ SpA Life Orb Heatran Heat Wave vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Articuno: 133-159 (67.5 - 80.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
156+ SpA Life Orb Heatran Flash Cannon vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Articuno: 151-182 (76.6 - 92.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
156+ SpA Life Orb Heatran Magma Storm vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Articuno: 190-226 (96.4 - 114.7%) -- 81.25% chance to OHKO
There are also some other options that I won't drop calcs for to answer Articuno; some AV Okidogi sets (Tera Water, Gunk Shot does nice damage), AV Archaludon + Rain, Grimmsnarl (while not a direct answer, Spirit Break, Light Screen, and Thunder Wave all make it easier to handle Articuno), Volcarona, Kingambit, and more that I am most certainly missing.
tldr; we have enough answers for Articuno, free the bird + ban snow cloak + ban sand veil while we're at it + throw in the ban on OHKO moves
I have some other stuff I wanna talk about but don't want to take away from my main argument so I'll drop it here:
Probably the most controversial Pokemon in the format right now. I think I've made my case pretty clear in the past but this Pokemon is not too strong for the tier and I think is perfectly fine to keep here. While most argue that its absurd stats + ability warrant it too powerful, I don't believe that to be the case. It was lots of exploitable weaknesses within the tier currently, has poor special bulk / kinda needs Screens and, without Life Orb, does sometimes underwhelming power. It also kinda gets knocked around by a lot of common Pokemon like Low Kick Okidogi, Low Kick Iron Hands, Brute Bonnet with Seed Bomb, Iron Valiant, a lot of strong special attacks, etc. Also, especially right now, everyone is kinda overprepping for it? I'm seeing Bronzong and Corviknight and honestly, unless your team really can't handle Ursaluna-B, they aren't really worth it. Ursaluna-B also stops SD Iron Hands or Okidogi or Heatran from being too powerful and we really could use that right now. DON'T BAN THE BEAR!
I've seen some mixed thoughts on Annihilape in the tier. I just want to say that no, the ape is NOT healthy for this tier and shouldn't be unbanned. The main argument I've seen is that Ursaluna-B can OHKO + take Drain Punch / Close Combat with investment but like... what if they just use AV? Or Friend Guard Maushold? Or Grimmsnarl / other forms of Screens? Or Snarl? It also runs over literally everything else. Keep ape banned.
New tier shifts and that means new quickban slate!
Ursaluna-Bloodmoon
With the arrival of the bloodmoon beast from kitakami into the tier it proved to be immediately controversial, leveraging its great physical bulk and incredibly powerful signature Blood moon to raise the damage ceiling of the tier, however, its suspect special bulk, speed tier, and mediocre defensive typing serve to hold it back, with a 2:4 Ban:DNB Ursaluna Bloodmoon remains legal, but we'll continue to watch it as the metagame develops and take further action is support is shown
Evasion Abilities:
Whilst not broken in a vaccum, the uncompetitive nature of evasion abilities in adding unnecessary variance without any utility outside of that led it to be voted upon, with a 5:1 Ban:DNB, evasion abilities such as Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are now banned
Articuno
Articuno was quickbanned early on in shift 1 due to the absurd level of variance it brings to the game, snow cloak, its incredible bulk under snow and veil, coupled with its ability to freely click sheer cold rewarded gambing for variance and punished counterplay such as Ogerpon-Cornerstone ivy cudgel by simply dodging, but with the ban of evasion abilities and ohko moves, Articuno's two most problematic traits have been stripped of it, leaving it armed only with its blizzard under snow and its bulk, without its uncompetiitve aspects, with a 0:6 Keep banned:unban articuno is back in the tier
Ohko moves:
Much like evasion abilities, while not broken in a vacuum, it simply encourages uncompetitive strategies and has proven controversial in the past, since ohko moves only add variance without giving any utility in return, with a 6:1 Ban:DNB, Ohko moves are now banned
hey y'all! i never ended up actually doing this, so here's a quick builder dump from my circuit playoffs run & a few other various reg f tours
i'd really appreciate it if some of my other circuit playoffs competitors would follow me and thebusinesspiggy in posting their teams— you don't have to be super effortful about it just posting the teams is fine— SeaWolfMikespenguSinnoysheepiemerrypasta
i'm really glad we could get to one entire year of this format, and winning circuit playoffs just feels like the perfect culmination of the year to me. i'd like to give a special thanks to AndruApplethebusinesspiggySinnoy & Nocturne Nugget for all of the help prepping & building, and just generally for being such delighful people to work with on this project
okok ill stop being sappy here's the teams ft. music
UMs USA vs the World
i did a lot of prep for this, because even if we didn't win the event I at least wanted to make sure our 4v4 slots went positive.
vs sheepie
im gonna be honest i don't remember why i loaded this or built it— i think me and sheepie rfn'd and i wanted to try to build broken rain w. broken bulky basc and i won so i guess it works?
ipetbigfoot vs razachu
me and andre had worked on this really early on into the format because it absolutely stuffed rain. rain was definitely the expected load from that slot imo— it's probably what i would give a doubles clicker in this tier— so i just had bigfoot load this since it just cteams rain really hard. (it worked)
(what i loaded) (what i prepped)
i can't lie to you i made some absolute dogshit for this one. the woach glimmora stuff was actually just bad— i won some test games w. it but it was definitely NOT loadable especially not for circuit playoffs. so the idea came to me— the core of specifically iron valiant + thundurus. Val is a really good breaker (probably one of the best in the format) & thundurus just does a really good job at getting rid of a lot of the counterplay you'd actually use into val— for example, rain, iron bundle, volcarona. Lando-T is just a really natural third pick onto that & from there i realized i really wanted a kingambit because pasta is a notorious psyspam merchant. Tera Fire KGB was definitely the MVP of the team— its defensive utility into opposing valiant, volcarona, & heatran is genuinely just so valuable and gives it a lot of defensive utility it wouldn't otherwise have. the matchup i pulled was lowkirk pretty awful but because pasta's valiant was slower & my kingambit was tera fire i was just able to clinch a W.
I really wanted to build around specifically volcarona and okidogi, as at this point i hadn't really used volcarona at all, i wasn't really happy with the volcarona teams that were being used at the time, & i genuinely thought okidogi was really underutilized despite how good a lot of its traits were in the meta. Tera Dark Tera Blast Volcarona i'm genuinely pretty proud of, the combination of a neutral typing into Heatran, a type that hits basculegion, and a type that means you completely fuck over thundurus made it really strong & a lot harder to remove than most other volc sets. neither Okidogi nor volcarona did much in the actual game but either way i felt really good about my prep & the team.
This one was an Andre classic— he was telling me he thought that guy was insanely broken with belly drum, since you damage-trade positively w. basically everything in the format if you can get the drum off successfully. i was a bit skeptical at first, but after a lot of fine-tuning the team ended up coming together really well. The first game is just the perfect drum hands game— the second was just unfortunate because of mike accidentally bringing Toxic Chain Okidogi>Guard Dog & missing a really important Gunk Shot, but it is what it is. I'm not sure i'd ever really perform w. this outside of this one game since if your opponent knows about Drum Hands i feel like it just gets a lot worse. half of the power of drum hands to me was the novelty of it— it had never really been loaded before this game.
but yeah those are just some of the teams i built & loaded for some of our recent tours i hope you enjoyed reading!
At Gephicka's request, I will be posting my teams from the circuit playoffs and from the end of Shift 1. I didn't make it very deep into playoffs, so I'll be including some highlights from before the beginning of February to make this a more complete collection of teams.
GeFF-itour 8 (3rd place) This was already made into a sample team, but it's due a brief explanation given it was quite good overall. The team is built interestingly, with a combination of Specs Iron Valiant and Whimsicott making it look like an HO team, but the other four completing it with a perfectly competent balance mode. The specific choice of Psychic on Iron Valiant was kind of random, as it only really helps against Glimmora and Okidogi. That said, I faced Glimmora during swiss rounds, so I suppose it paid off. In the end, Basculegion got banned, so this team became outdated, but I think it was good.
Regulation F Weekly #4 (1st place)
Another Specs Iron Valiant team, this time leaning harder into the HO aspect. It still features Iron Valiant, Whimsicott, and Life Orb Heatran, but Heatran's faster and Iron Valiant is now wielding Expanding Force. Ogerpon-Cornerstone was added to the team in order to give it a nice Sturdy redirector with pretty decent coverage. Indeedee here uses Expanding Force and Imprison, the latter being used to block Protect and Trick Room from opponents, and possibly preventing opposing Indeedee from attacking. Garchomp is using a Loaded Dice Scale Shot set, which can take over a game after enough speed boosts and can take advantage of the time Ogerpon buys for it to set up a Swords Dance. It's overall a very potent offensive team, which allowed me to win the tournament in the end.
Cairo Regional (5th place) This team is similar to the last, however it revolves more around the setup sweepers getting support from Gothitelle. I made the Gothitelle fast for reasons I can't remember honestly, I think I wanted to beat max speed iron hands to Psyshock it? It was weird. The Iron Valiant, Ogerpon, and Garchomp are practically unchanged from the last, but Iron Bundle uses a Focus Sash Tera Stellar set instead of a Booster Energy set since I was trying to make it do damage. In the end, I like most of the team, but the Volcarona was never used and I wanted to make it a Whimsicott but ran out of time to make that change, sadly.
Playoffs (Top 16, vs. Ev_Evan)
My prep:
My final team:
My original idea was to build a Perish Trap team because I had a sneaking suspicion that Evan would build a super stally team to defeat Psyspam. To be honest, I would've won the matchup if I had used that team, if only because the combination of everything on the team is pretty good into what he loaded. However, in the end I went with just another Psyspam HO. I did use Ability Shield Whimsicott because I had a feeling in my soul that there'd be a Weezing, but there wasn't. Whoops.
Playoffs (Top 8, vs. Gephicka) To be completely honest, this was a perfect matchup call and I should've won, but I made a few mistakes when building and playing. First off, I used Tera on Garchomp in game 2 when I had no reason, but second, my Iron Valiant being slightly slower than max ultimately doomed my run. If you copy this team, please increase the speed. I wanted to improve my mixed attacking stats, so I left it at 180 speed rather than 184. This is fine, you beat Ogerpon, Thundurus, Ninetales and the like. But what you don't beat is other Iron Valiant, so Gephicka's Iron Valiant prevented me from getting the win. Typhlosion, however, was typhlosion, and Garchomp was fairly good as well. That said, I'd also replace Iron Hands with Kilowattrel in hindsight, and use Life Orb Tera Ground Garchomp. Anyway, this was indeed really good prep that I just squandered in a few ways, and it was a fun run even if I didn't make it to top 4.
bam role compendium, dm on discord if i missed anything, decided to keep it limited to mons on the vr slate, though some were left off that i felt didn't really deserve inclusion
is a force to be reckoned with in this format, because it has the ability to OHKO almost every Pokémon in the meta with Tera Water Rain Boosted Choice Band Wave Crash or 200 Base Power Adaptability Last Respects. In my opinion, Basculegion is the reason Rain is as good as it is in the metagame. Basculegion happens to be 
's best partner, since whatever Basculegion struggles with, Archaludon can take care of, and vice versa. 
gephicka created at the beginning of the format. Because of this, players were forced to innovate their teams with Pokémon such as 
and Supreme Overlord 
just to have a way through this bloodthirsty soul collector. 
may follow the same script. I will not explain too much about Basculegion-F because this is a post about Basculegion. I will not explain that much about Basculegion because I will allow other players who have qualified to vote in this suspect to share their thoughts on Basculegion. 
be with y'all
Entei
Cresselia
Arcanine-H
(Uncommon) 
(Uncommon) 
(Uncommon) 
