I started the team off with the core of magnezone + excadrill which I wanted to try out for a longer time now (as magnezone can remove one of steelium excadrill`s must common counters in form of celesteela) and added hippowdon in order to use excadrill to its fullest potential. I chose a jolly nature on exca because I wanted to outspeed heatran and espacially hoopa-u outside of the sand , espacially with the latter asserting pressure while testing. magnezone is equipped with a timid nature to outrun mawile and bisharp, who both pose potential threats to the team and trapping them best case. Hippowdon is ev´d to take on choice band tyranitar`s crunch aswell as mega-lopunny`s high jump kick while also withstanding life orb gengar`s shadow ball and choice specs tapu koko`s hidden power ice or dazzling gleam after rocks without getting 2hkoed. it runs this specific moveset for the reason of phazing pokemon like gyarados (though one should be careful not to stall out too many sandsturm turns) and more importantly to pressure the likes of tangrowth (which is a little nuisance to the main core and when used with the right team), landorus-t, tornadus-t which recently got a lot more attention and thereby usage(the same applies to mega latios), zapdos and rotom (though less common, another menace for excadrill in its attempt to sweep) and smooth rocks facilitates excadrill`s job via giving it the time to sweep a team late game. Speaking of sweeping, slashing SD in favor of rapid spin is an option, as it helps mega alt pre mega and spikes can be annoying, plus the latter can serve as an alternative win con but I generally prefer Swords Dance due to Excadrill beeing the main win con and the most likely to sweep (alt is more a way of dealing with remaining threats for the team but appreciates the possibility of sweeping, if the chance is given and to better pressure mew within the scope of its defensive capabilities) because altaria lacks the needed offensive presence and is to slow to do the job optimally. I added amoonguss, jirachi and altaria-mega as necassary pivots which cover many remaining weaknesses, like keldeo, tapu lele, alakazam, mawile-mega, partly hawlucha, mega charizard x/y, greninja, kyurem-b (it is still scary), victini, latios(mega), tapu bulu, kartana(!), heatran, mega gyarados, tornadus and magearna plus providing momentum and allowing me to pivot into the nearly never seen marowak in theory(mega altaria), as well as surviving a hit from medicham (mega altaria) and other sleeper threats like crawdaunt, dragonite (mega altaria) and blacephalon (mega altaria), as long as it is not specs blacephalon. I already shortly went over the reasoning for altaria`s moveset, jirachi is the standard pivot set carrying rocks in order to allow hippowdown not to be to passive and profiting from magnezones trapping abilities versus skarmory and celesteela and gives aforementioned momentum and can give excadrill a second chance for sweeping, if needed. The amoonguss set is a little bit more tricky because I required a mawile switch in and plus +2 knock off would just kill it otherwise I decided to run something more unconventional, meaning no item on amoonguss. optionally you can change the spread to full on physically defensive, which can also be usefull vs swamperts. the chosen spread is designed to take 2 specs dark pulses from greninja prior to swapping into its ash from, to give the team an secondary greninja option or an option versus greninja if altaria is not mega evolved. furthermore, the move choices are quite flexable, with stun spore, toxic, protect and stomping tantrum and foul play in it`s arsenal and the noteworthy sludge bomb, which is, the only move it has to break a substitute from a regular gyarados, for instance. I would recommend sticking with spore and hidden power fire though, as they help to mitigate the weakness versus scizor, if they are capable to remove magnezone plus it gives it mandatory coverage versus mawile, which it also needs spore for, to 1v1 it.(as only the combination of spore and hidden power fire in tandem allows amoonguss to 1v1 it with putting it to sleep and continuosly clicking hidden power fire versus it after chip). Keep in mind that you should change its nature to a relaxed nature, if you want to forego hidden power fire in favor of stomping tantrum. The team struggles a bit versus the aforementioned threats in form of mega-medicham and mega-mawile for example and espacially versus mamoswine. It is also noteworthy that it needs to be played aggressive sometimes, as many players will try to outpivot excadrill or rather the sandturns it has
