i question this teams showing to getting on the samples because while ransei (and apparently some other random person) topped ladder with the team this year, i cannot recall this happening within the last few months. additionally, when asking ransei for replays i only recieved 3 and all were from october. from playing against the team, and using it myself a little bit recently i do not think it is all that great. like diamancie, the stall mu (and to an extent the balance mu) is abysmal. there is only one breaker, an evoboost mmx who gets goobed by every steel and mbro to make matters worse, and like diamancie once this mmx dies to innnards (or stag but with it being set up i guess this isn't a guarantee) what the fuck are you supposed to do. you can say "well ash gren beats prank mlix and mbro" but with it being an ash gren it is extremely likely the guy gets walled by a teamate, pivoted on and forced out/killed by priority, or it fails to ohko something and dies. i have seen people say ash gren is forced to keep the pika/ash gren theme to attract new players but tbh i don't think there is a good replacement here anyways. arceus requires a lot of hazard support to function and the hazard setter on this team is mold breaker rocks mmx who loses to like every offense lead ever so yeah. i also have doubts in this team's mu into offense. pikachu needs to encounter a mon that isn't hard improofed and have tailwind up to function. the main way to get tailwind up is by sacking mlix but the thing is if your opponent is competant and knows killing mlix is going to lead to a pikachu sweep, they just won't kill the mlix. also in the event that pikachu has managed to get infront of some non hard improofed guy with tailwind up it still has to worry about sashes, priority and innards. ransei has never gave a counter arguement on the priority issue but he has for the other 2. first of all ransei claims the team is "very anti sash". as i have already mentioned this mmx is not a good hazard setter into offense being goobed by all common offense leads whether it be faster no guards, fakespeed or scarf pbond mgar. the only other ways this team breaks sash are u-turn maud which is only true if it has health and is against special attackers, and there's also icicle spear mmx but it isn't breaking sashes for pikachu in a way any other move wouldn't. the other counter arguement which was adressing the innards problem was "if you use innards on pikachu you cannot use it on the evoboost mmx who is a very threating mon". my problem with this is that this is assuming innards has to be thrown at pikachu and also evoboost mmx is only paticularly threatening into offense if it sets up. as mentioned i don't really build or play offense much myself but i doubt they will have zero ways to deal with it. also double innards would goob.
Fun fact: After the HP MMX is eaten alive by Innards, Air Balloon Muk-A quite literally walls every single Mon remaining. Quite literally, there is nothing you can do. You just lose. Sure, you can argue that Air Balloon Muk-A is rare, but the fact that a sample team gets completely dumpstered by a WG mon that you will sometimes see is an extremely bad sign. The MMX will more or less always die to Innards, because it is the only thing on the team that is in any way threatening. With the MMX gone, the only way to apply offensive pressure is Pikachu, who is frankly dogshit into everything that isn't already bad offence teams that Chansey would also be able to beat, and Ash Gren, who most of the time is hitting with non-Stab Photon as the main damaging move. Unless you are fighting a bad offensive team that has a Mon with more or less no Improofing, Pikachu is a Chansey that is made of wet toilet paper and dead dreams. Random priority kills it, which Chansey can consume and ask for seconds of. Without Tailwind, which as Yourself said more or less requires Steelix to die, the Pikachu is gonna have to 50-50 the speed tie, and unlike Chansey who can generally face-tank whatever move if they lose the speed tie, Pikachu gets clobbered if they lose the speed tie. This is all assuming they don't just switch into a WG mon that walls, or they have a Plate to Improof. I'm gonna be honest, if this team was submitted right now as a sample submission by a random person that wasn't a room owner, I am pretty sure it would be rejected. Also, matchups into different teamstyles:
STALL: After MMX dies to the mandatory Innards, you just lose because every stall team is gonna have some way to deal with the flaccid damage of Greninja, and Pikachu will be chipped down to nothing. Almost Auto lose.
SEMI STALL (Slaking stuff I guess): Slaking Speed tie. I don't know jack shit about Semi Stall, honestly it might not even be real. The only thing I know about it is that Harvest Slaking was the main breaker. Even vs a Mon like Slaking, which theoretically should be great Pikachu food, Pikachu struggles. Steelix is gonna have a hard time getting Tailwind and getting Pikachu in before the Slaking ever gets a Sub up, and if God forbid the Slaking gets a Sub up, what the fuck do you even do. The only chance you have is the HP MMX pulling a miracle, but even then they probably have Innards, and MMX is sacrificed. Almost Auto lose unless you somehow get Pikachu in on the Slaking when it has no Sub but does have buffs, win the speed tie, and have the MMX get sacked to Innards.
BALANCE: There is a theme here, that the MMX is the only mon that actually gets stuff done on this team. The opponent might not have Innards, but they will certainly have Improofs, so Pikachu is worthless because unlike Chansey, Pikachu cannot slug it out long term. Of course, if they have Innards, you probably just lose when the MMX dies, but if they don't, they can STag trap the MMX, PBond kill the MMX, wall it with Steelix or something to burn Evoboosts PP, ex. Somehow, even into Balance, which even I admit is probably not that good, you still have a losing matchup. How.
OFFENCE: Not as many hard Improofs, but in exchange they almost always have Innards. Same old story, MMX dies to Innards, the Ash Gren doesn't do enough, Pikachu drops to more or less any priority, especially after the shell smash that it needs to actually kill everything. You auto lose to double Innards, but at this point that is just kinda expected. This might be the only real case that Pikachu might be better then Chansey, but even then it only really matters if the team is already weak to Impostor. Overall, poor matchup.
HYPER OFFENCE: Too much power for MAud + Steelix to stand up, the Impostor checks are generally priority or sashes, which Pikachu loses to. Innards still kills the MMX. I kinda forgot to mention it, but the team really wants rocks up to chip sashes, but the rock mon is a MMX that has very little offensive pressure, gets chipped down extremely easily, and is kinda a momentum sink. Mold Breaker only really matters VS Stall and HO in this context, and you already auto lose to stall so it doesn't even matter. Vs HO, they are just gonna PBond the MMX, or Magic Guard Defog, or just kill the Pikachu via Priority instead. HO doesn't seem as bad for this team as some matchups, but it still isn't good.
Theming does not justify a team being bad, and still standing among actually good teams (Other then Diamancie I guess)
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