I need help understanding how "Forme Clause" works. This is PS's definition:
- Prevents teams from having more than one Pokémon of the same forme
Zamazenta-Crowned and regular Zamazenta with Rusted Shield. Both are instantly Zamazenta-Crowned at the start of the battle, but not Team Preview. But Showdown currently rejects this as a violation of Forme Clause.
Some discussion in the OM Discord yesterday led to some questions about the Forme Clause. The Forme Clause was implemented in BH to prevent the ability to use "species spam" tactics in the teambuilder by using multiples of threats like Zacian-C, DGZ, and so on, but to allow players to use different formes of Pokemon on their team that have different stats/typing. See below for examples.
Currently in BH, Zacian-C is banned. By this, I mean you aren't allowed to choose Zacian-C in the teambuilder and give it any item or ability. At the time of this ban, the council decided to follow a precedent set in previous generations that allows players to "bypass" bans by using in-game mechanics involving transformations of mons (example being Groudon @ Red Orb to bypass the Primal Groudon ban). Based on my experience playing Sword on the switch, I knew that Zacian holding the Rusted Sword in your party will not turn into Zacian-C until you enter battle. Using this knowledge, we decided to allow Zacian-C to be accessed in battle to bypass the ban via Zacian @ Rusted Sword in the teambuilder. No matter what ability Zacian has prior to entering battle, it will enter as Zacian-C with Intrepid Sword as its ability.
Things start to get confusing once you consider this with the Forme Clause. As you mentioned, you can't have Zamazenta-C and Zamazenta @ Rusted Shield in your team as both of these are considered as Zamazenta-C, which violates the Forme Clause. This leads me to believe that the validator found in teambuilder assesses whether or not the team is legal by checking the team as it will appear at the start of the battle. This would mean that Zamazenta @ Rusted Shield = Zamazenta-C and would also mean that Zacian @ Rusted Sword = Zacian-C.
Currently, the teambuilder allows Zacian @ Rusted Sword and Zacian holding any other item to be on the same team. This makes sense because Zacian and Zacian-C are different formes with varying typing, stats, and competitive use. But this makes me question if Zacian @ Rusted Sword should be allowed in BH, since according to the teambuilder validator it is the equivalent of a banned Pokemon. There seem to be contradictions in the validator that allow Zacian @ Rusted Sword unless there is some specific coding to allow this. Otherwise, it would have to mean that Zacian @ Rusted Sword is seen as Zacian and shouldn't be allowed on a team with another Zacian not holding Rusted Sword, and this doesn't match up with the Zamazenta example.
I got this by putting Zacian-Crowned @ Any Item and Zacian @ Rusted Sword together in the teambuilder. Something just isn't adding up here, but I'm not sure what it is. But for now it looks like Zacian @ Rusted Sword = Zacian-C and Zacian-C is banned. This appears to be different from what we originally thought when comparing this to previous examples like Groudon @ Red Orb to get Primal Groudon and Gengar @ Gengarite to obtain a banned ability in Shadow Tag. So, what should be done here?