Project PU Secret Santa 2025 Edition

[Bouff]

hi big tony 2014 merry extremely belated holidays! apologies for the delay on this one (importable in the picasso piece below)



the request for your secret santa was tera ghost sash endeavor scovillain ho; i've very rarely built ho in general, let alone sun, so this was a pretty fun experiment to work with even though ladder decided to flip me off multiple times. my theory to build witrh this set, aside from the typical ho standard of stacking wincons together and smacking what's in front of you until you eventually win, was that this scovillain would manage to endeavor on things like goodra, tauros, and arcanine. afterwards, beyond its own offensive capabilities and potential to clean, it can set up a venu end game.

bombirdier is here to be the standard lead guy, setting up rocks and sun. you can potentially have sash to guarantee both, but bird is a bulky guy and i feel like against some teams you may end up managing to get both without needing the sash anyway. obviously an option though, i just think with one sash guy you don't really want another. obviously, venusaur is the other Sunny Guy. i originally had growth on this, but if scovillain pans out then you won't end up needing it anyway. uxie you would think fulfills the role bombirdier has...but i opted to go against that and have it try to break shit; tera blast fire seemed fun for busting through aloslash as well as some tera steel guys. the reason it isnt a sun setter here is because i don't think it's all that amazing at preventing hazards from the opposing side, and hazards are really obnoxious to deal with for ho as always. rhydon is rhydon. not a whole lot more to be said about him, tera flying is because i like the idea of avoiding eq damage. finally, we have t he weird ass kingdra set. you could very realistically just do agility focus energy but i think this set can be a lot of fun, especially if you manage to weaken milotic. granted when i actually saw this used it was during the frosmoth meta, and i believe it had flip turn, but iron head is a haxing guy and its ok to be lucky!

again sorry for the delay. i hope this team can uhhhhh fulfill some enjoyment for you LOL i know its very wacky but i figured wacky is good here. ty everyone for participating as well this year!

 

[Bloshh]

Merry xmas Lambovino !! You asked for a Regice + Espeon team which is funny cause ik part of the reason why you wanted to use Regice is bc you cooked me on tests with it. I was happy to see I would be building for you.

The regice set you asked for was Rest 3 attacks with Focus Blast to snipe Alolaslash and Clear Body to block parting shot from bombirdier:

rest set

Regice @ Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 208 HP / 252 SpA / 48 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Focus Blast
- Rest

In your request you said you prefered to use this set but that it could be changed if smth better was found and tbh when building with it I felt most of the times the team I was building would just be better with Snorlax or Goodra on Regice's place. Still I wanted to build smth with that specific set and ended up building this semistall.



Swapped the tera fighting for tera ghost cause I thought onw of the biggest things you could achieve with regice was spinblocking tatsugiri. This way with both tera ghost hqwilfish and regice + palossand on the team you can spinblock both tatsugiri and alolaslash which can lead to easy wins by just spikestacking.

When messing in the builder with Regice I found another set that I really liked and that paired really well with espeon.

twave set

Regice @ Expert Belt
Ability: Clear Body
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 120 HP / 252 SpA / 136 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Focus Blast
- Thunder Wave

With its natural bulk Regice is able to click twave on a lot stuff like Salazzle, Ambipom, Tatsu, etc and the coverages feel really strong in the tier.
Ebelt makes it a threat able of doing stuff like 0hkoing mudsdale or 2hkoing Milo with tbolt. Speed is for outspeeding Alolaslash which dies to Focus Blast. On testing I was surprised on how much players stayed in with alolaslash and how well Regice was punishing these structures.
I decided to fit it on a team with Twave Espeon and make some sort of Paraspam with other cool mons and it turned out pretty well!



The team is a little bit atypical but its been getting easy wins in ladder and it worked in tests vs good players. Most importantly I found it quite fun to play. The team should be used quite agressively and in some MUs you will find yourself sacking the Espeon to keep hazards away. Anyway most of the times banded tauros fire, sub goodra and (unironically) regice can find ways to overwhelm most of the defensive cores in the tier. Parting shot on bombirdier makes some MUs vs rocks/spikes setters that could pressure espeon much better (eg: vs lead havalugg you just parting into espeon and gale isnt threatening anymore, same with hqwilfish kinda). I decided to go groundless on this bc I was having trouble fitting one while not making the team weak to other stuff. It kinda worked here with amoongus being able to check pawmot and eject button blocking vswitch allowing goodra to get free subs. This also worked greatly vs bruxish/floatzel/milos spamming flip turn.

Team is pretty fun overall and I hope you can give it a try and have fun with it too.
Hope you have been enjoying your xmas and your well deserved puwc trophy and happy new year!!

 

[crow crumbs]

Happy holidays mclagno

You requested a team around a duo of resttalk users Tauros-Paldea-Blaze and Orthworm.

https://pokepast.es/fbbff67a55d95c9c


To be honest I found having two mons with the same idpress wincon role to be a perplexing order (to the point I felt like I had to ask to host to verify sob). I think I ended up with a pretty self-explanatory balance. Uxie was an obvious choice for hazards and a generally synergistic pivot. I decided to opt for twave over more standard options since trading an uxie tera for a para on zoroark is very worth it for the game plan of this team. I really wanted to fit spikes on on toedscruel but having sludge felt important to be slightly less passive vs florges and rotom-heat (could maybe drop grass stab + run curse over id on worm to have an easier time progressing vs palo? seemed too shaky of a call to justify changing the request w/ my lack of pu experience t_t). I tried finding a game or two but unfortunately pu ladder is not very alive on New Years Eve.

Hope you enjoy :D

 

[milliongatejumpguy]

Greetings mr. Sergio. I am, indeed, your not-quite-secret santa for the year.
You requested a Quiver Dance Venomoth team with no further prompt. I didn't want to take the path of building terrain because what's even there to build in terrain. So, instead, I chose the path of trying to build balance using a somewhat bulky Venomoth as a win condition. The EVs ensure you outspeed Salazzle after a Quiver Dance, and then we greed everything else in HP.


Venomoth (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Tinted Lens
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 152 HP / 248 SpA / 108 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Bug Buzz
- Giga Drain
- Quiver Dance
- Sludge Wave

The latest iteration of the team goes as follows:

As per described, the concept of the team is to have Quiver Dance Venomoth be an endgame win condition. Thus, we need the remaining 5 mons to form a solid defensive core that whittles down the opponent's defenses until the Moth is in position to sweep. However, the cool thing about win conditions is that you can also click buttons with them in the middle game if their bulk allows you to. Sometimes, just a +0 tinted lens bug buzz is enough pressure to prevent the enemy from spinning, setting hazards or whatever else they might be thinking of.

: Rocker, knock off user and much-appreciated dark type to mitigate the team's abysmal weaknesses to psychic attacks. One could drop pivoting for sucker punch without great loss, but I appreciate the extra pivoting and parting shot does provide our bulkyn't moth with more setup opportunities, even in the middlegame.
: We run base Qwilfish for the ability to pivot and fighting-type resistance, because Moth should never be switching into an attack. It also has decent longevity with pain split and provides spikes to match Bomb's rocks.
: Hazard removal so we can defog the rocks and three layers of spikes we set two turns ago xd. In a more serious note, this is primarily insurance for the webs matchup. The original team wasn't quite as boots-spam oriented as the current variant, so maybe you could in fact drop Decid for something with a better defensive profile if the webs matchup isn't as bad as I'm imagining. For the time being, you are probably clicking triple arrows, u-turn and roost 99% of the time.
: Pretty much mandatory scarfer to keep the likes of Bruxish and Typhlosion at bay. I figure the rest of the team puts enough pressure on the likes of Palossand and Golurk, so we don't need Ice Punch that badly and the additional pivoting from volt switch is always nice when available.
: The last slot of the team and one I still haven't solved, to be honest. During tests, I figured the team puts way too little pressure on Cramorant for a hazard stack build, considering unboosted Venomoth's damage output is very sad. This provides the team with pressure against Cramorant, as well as a much welcome fire resistance.
: Featured mon and win condition. Dual STABs is almost mandatory, with sludge wave to at least force a tera from Florges and bug buzz so one of our STABs hits steels. The third move could be air slash or some flavor of tera blast but I prefer giga drain to give the moth some extra longevity and also force a tera from Milotic. Our own tera is very customizable: dragon lets you set up on Eruption/Fire Blasts, grass gives you a third STAB in giga drain, steel is just a very good defensive tera for setup sweepers in general and prevents Ambipom from chipping you down with multiple fake-outs.

I do apologize for the atypical theorymonning. Normally, I would test these a lot more extensively but I came up with this variation last minute, the deadline is approaching, ladder is dead except for mr. Mufinbot and I won't be able to focus on mons for the following couple days so this is as much as I can do.

---------------------------------------------------------
Since I wasn't super satisfied with the result, I decided to build an offense team as well. A little before I came up with the Rotom-Heat for the other team, in fact.



: Suicide lead, sets spikes, clicks toxic, ideally prevents the enemy from getting their own hazards up, though you can't do that if the opponent leads Froslass.
: Suicide lead #2, hazard insurance if Qwilfish fails to do its job. Memento Tatsugiri is just a fun HO enabler in general but I might be having too much fun with these leads.
: The moth. Kee berry is the standard item for quiver dancers outside of terrain but leftovers would also be fine here.
: Standard Bonnet set, except maybe Thief is a little less standard.
: Eject pack gives momentum in the early game, while nasty plot provides wallbreaking power in the late game. This Venomoth/Bonnet/Delphox core is actually kinda interesting, since the things that check one of these threats tend to allow entry to one of the other two.
: We round off the team with Bravisui, which is a pretty good source of immediate power and just a strong HO tool in PU in general. Maybe Delphox + Bravisui is a little overkill?

This team actually feels pretty decent from tests but I haven't had the opportunity to play against stronger players so I can't say that with 100% confidence. Well, that and the Froslass situation. There are probably things that can be improved here as well.

----------------------------------------------------------
And finally, here are a few old variants to complete the package:

: First draft for the balance variant of the team. Original idea was to have a solid physically defensive core and just kinda wing the special bulk as the match goes. It works to an extent but it's very unreliable, and Havalugg + Muds almost demand you to tera turn 1 to avoid severe losses to Bruxish.
: Attempted to build veil boots spam here. There might be something in here after tweaking a few sets but for the time being, I can't see it.


I am indeed rapid-firing teams in hope that one sticks because I'm not super confident in any of them, but hopefully I'm just being too harsh on myself and at least one of these catches your eye. I might add more replays and/or tinker with these builds some more if this thread is still open by next week. For the time being, merry Latemas and happy holidays!

 

[sky]

happy new year DripLegend!! You wanted mega mind which was.. a choice.. but I have delivered!

https://pokepast.es/8033a682e02a92af
Sub seed felt too inferior (and shaymin exists) so I went with Weakness Policy route. It is still.. calyrex.. so veil is here to hopefully help stomach something. The tera fire is to catch a flip turn potentially and have WP activate— also bug resist since you’ll probably die instead of activating policy a fair amount of the time. I believe in 2026 you will win with Hariyama. Really scary under veil and makes up for the lack of Spikes support. Bomb is just a good lead for here with SR and can be saved for mid game vs Bonnet teams. Lazzle felt best last to not think about veno > caly as much and the Tera Ground catching a volt switch is quite nice for this 6. Enjoy!

 

[giove97]

Happy Holidays MZ ! Sorry for the delay, you wanted a 5-6 Pokemon mixsed attacker
https://pokepast.es/5d827e985b4f065c
I thought of a snow team to exploit the various mixsed attacker

 

[xcx]

Happy new year giove97! You requested a team with Delphox, which was a pretty straightforward request so I'm giving you two extra teams I already had in my builder. I completely forgot about this until two days ago to be honest and life was in the way, so I figured I might as well wait for tier shifts

https://pokepast.es/e62451ecd962f44e
I came up with this very simple 6. Delphox and CB Zoro have great synergy, as Zoro is able to nuke typical Delphox answers like Snorlax, or chip down others like Milotic and spdef Bombirdier. I opted for Flamethrower > Fire Blast as I'm a firm believer in accuracy being more important than power (I would rather always do 40% than 0%), but you can always make it Fire Blast. Mudsdale + Milotic + Snowslash is a standard defensive core. It's not the sturdiest one ever, but I felt like this was more than good enough as the main core is able to offensively pressure a lot, which made more passive options like Palossand redundant imo. Lastly, I opted for scarf Rotom-Mow for more speed control and the ability to trick potential nuisances

https://pokepast.es/0eadbd239fa3cdfc
Semi-stall I guess? Pretty fun team, you can sit on most of the tier with this 6 while keeping some sort of offensive pressure with Bombirdier. The Delphox set is pretty odd but I really wanted to try it out because I was tired of using Arcanine, and it's half decent! Not much else to say about this one tbh, I just edited a DugZa team until it devolved into this

https://pokepast.es/60469d160d2324d3
Original version had Espeon > Cramorant, but this is still good enough. I built this for PUWC, as Specs Delphox looked really fun, and I came up with this rockless 6. I think it works here, as you want hazards off at all times and don't care enough to set your own rocks up usually. I used future sight in the game but I've since decided it's useless and would recommend Psyshock for CM Florges. It was also used by DripLegend for circuit, but I think he used SubCM Delphox. If you go with this set, I'd recommend using a different item on Amoonguss as you don't get too much value out of ebutton without a strong breaker

If you have any questions, feel free to dm me! Happy Holidays!