I don't really feel up to rebuttaling everything here but I just feel like you ignored half of what I said for the sake of making a point... like I understand you feel that the 3 mons you listed aren't enough but you kinda just ignored the other 10 mins I listed?? Obviously none of them are hard counters, neither are the "big 3" but it's strange to just disregard them.
I'm interested in the fact that most of the replays you listed showed teams that actually -don't- rely on Quagsire or Scream Tail. For example, in the last replay you linked, an Iron Hands build that even has what's essentially the perfect set for the matchup (Tera Ghost vs Tera Ghost Wo-Chien) and even faces the rare non-Encore Tinkaton (the only mon in the team that it can even set up on safely) still loses thanks to some effective in-game workarounds. And just skimming through the masters thread shows a similar trend; the mons that check hands are common bc they check hands, sure, but they also check other very relevant mons and would be strong choices regardless.
You're not forced into using 2-3 mons. See, for example, this game, where pif ensures pdt's Iron Hands makes minimal progress through hazard pressure and good play, or this one where it gets owned by udongirl's Tinkaton, or this one where psyterrain destroys it, or here where it loses to Tsareena, or here where it trades with a ttar and accomplishes nothing else, or here where another offense squad owns it, etc. There a few more games I didn't grab bc r realistically nobody is watching all of these anyway, but the point is that people have been finding their way around Iron Hands in game, despite these replays not involving any dedicated counters.
My message didn't come through accurately in my last post so I'm sorry for that. When I was saying that lazy building is frustrating me, I was largely referring to the "cookie cutter cores" that aim to just defensively beat everything and slap on an offensive mon to win faster. I mentioned the tinka talon gastro tsar code because that was the most common / popular one, not because I specifically meant that one. I mean even now you have people running their old teams that used that core, slapping on a quag > gastro and complaining that it's not good enough vs the hands... Idk. That's frustrating to me because I know there's a lot more room for fun in this tier. In fact, even in my own replays (the ones you chose not to link), I tried to use stuff that I felt was fun and/or creative, and those teams don't at all struggle with Iron Hands. I've laddered enough with both to say that with confidence.
Like I said before, still not disagreeing that it's possibly overly restricting or an unhealthy builder presence. Just disagreeing with the idea that you can only beat it with a miniscule number of mons. Plenty of games have shown otherwise. Offensively checking it isn't easy but it's clearly pretty doable. I'll probably lean ban anyway in the end solely off the potential of the lure sets but we'll see.
I'm interested in the fact that most of the replays you listed showed teams that actually -don't- rely on Quagsire or Scream Tail. For example, in the last replay you linked, an Iron Hands build that even has what's essentially the perfect set for the matchup (Tera Ghost vs Tera Ghost Wo-Chien) and even faces the rare non-Encore Tinkaton (the only mon in the team that it can even set up on safely) still loses thanks to some effective in-game workarounds. And just skimming through the masters thread shows a similar trend; the mons that check hands are common bc they check hands, sure, but they also check other very relevant mons and would be strong choices regardless.
You're not forced into using 2-3 mons. See, for example, this game, where pif ensures pdt's Iron Hands makes minimal progress through hazard pressure and good play, or this one where it gets owned by udongirl's Tinkaton, or this one where psyterrain destroys it, or here where it loses to Tsareena, or here where it trades with a ttar and accomplishes nothing else, or here where another offense squad owns it, etc. There a few more games I didn't grab bc r realistically nobody is watching all of these anyway, but the point is that people have been finding their way around Iron Hands in game, despite these replays not involving any dedicated counters.
My message didn't come through accurately in my last post so I'm sorry for that. When I was saying that lazy building is frustrating me, I was largely referring to the "cookie cutter cores" that aim to just defensively beat everything and slap on an offensive mon to win faster. I mentioned the tinka talon gastro tsar code because that was the most common / popular one, not because I specifically meant that one. I mean even now you have people running their old teams that used that core, slapping on a quag > gastro and complaining that it's not good enough vs the hands... Idk. That's frustrating to me because I know there's a lot more room for fun in this tier. In fact, even in my own replays (the ones you chose not to link), I tried to use stuff that I felt was fun and/or creative, and those teams don't at all struggle with Iron Hands. I've laddered enough with both to say that with confidence.
Like I said before, still not disagreeing that it's possibly overly restricting or an unhealthy builder presence. Just disagreeing with the idea that you can only beat it with a miniscule number of mons. Plenty of games have shown otherwise. Offensively checking it isn't easy but it's clearly pretty doable. I'll probably lean ban anyway in the end solely off the potential of the lure sets but we'll see.