I'll start us off...
Kouno Reverse Card
Teambuilding process:
The first 5 mons on this team are a quite standard slow balance core. It has 4 of the most situationally powerful (and sometimes unfair) mons in the tier and the mandatory Claydol to glue things together and provide removal. On first sight, it appears incredibly powerful; Skarm BoldRachi Boldcune is a very hard to break physical core and Blissey + Claydol/Rachi/Cune for special/mixed walling.
The problems only to start to appear when you consider what the last should be. The most glaring flaws are the lack of speed, overall passivity, weakness to setup (particularly CMers with electric coverage which threaten both phazers), and weakness to Gengar. So, as usually is the case with these sort of builds in the current meta, the choice appears to be between Aerodactyl and Dugtrio.
The Aerodactyl version is viable if a bit uninspiring. Mostly because while Aero technically checks the boxes you want, it isn't especially well supported or synergistic here. (Incidentally, if you did want to run that 6, I recently built
a version with WishCMRachi and SubTect Pressure Aero which I quite like as I feel they gel better with the rest of the team's gameplan)
The Dugtrio version I feel has bigger problems. This ends up being v5 (or sui5) defrachi which is generally an extremely passive build. If you keep BoldCune + MonoBliss you end up terribly Gar weak (and still pretty CM weak). If you go to Milo + CMBliss instead, you patch the Gar weakness quite a bit at the cost of being even more passive and vulnerable to getting 6-0'd by all sorts of stuff, especially SubCM users and Restlax+Mag.
One quick note on Jolteon - I don't think any experienced builder would consider it here. While it provides speed control and can abuse spikes in some cases, it is hapless vs CM users. But what if you could replace it with something similar that *could* revenge CMers...
With that lengthy preamble, we now arrive to the star of the show:
Code:
Kouno reverse card (Raikou) @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 8 Def / 248 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Crunch
- Roar
- Psych Up
I have tried to build with this goofy looking set several times before, but this team is by far my favorite fit for it so far. Rather than the CM Sweeper Raikou or the rare Suicide Lead Raikou, this one usually plays much more like a Jolteon's hit and run style with better stats but worse speed. More on the speed situation a bit later, but it's likely not nearly as big of a drawback as you are thinking right now. The big upside however, is the potential to completely flip a game from a certain loss to a very likely win by Psych Uping a heavily CM'd mon (gaining its spdef boosts to live its attacks), then roaring it out and proceeding to sweep. I'll attach a few replays below that will hopefully convince you. There is also a lot of bluff value in using Raikou in this way. Many teams have to react immediately in a fairly predictable way to Raikou to not risk getting swept by a SubCM version. Jolteon or Zapdos simply don't pose the same threat of ending the game on the spot.
Now let's discuss the combination of this Raikou with the 5 described above. Of the 5's weaknesses, Raikou (mostly) solves the speed issue. BoldRachi + SkarmDol can handle Aero, Bliss Dol (Kou) can handle Jolt. The main speed control is needed for mons between 300 and 350 (base 100s, +1 ada ddtar, gengar, defmie, slow dug etc). The only remaining question mark is enemy Dugtrio. But Dugtrio is better on paper vs this team than in practice. Technically it can trap any of Raikou, Jirachi, or Blissey, but it often struggles to actually kill Rachi/Bliss. Slower dugs that are either adamant or bulky will either avoid coming in on Raikou or get heavily chipped. Meanwhile, the combination of 3 roar users and spikes and two mons that Dug often really wants to try to trade with usually end up taking it out of commission at best with a 1 for 1. If it looks like the sort of team that would have a 372 dug (i.e. enemy v5), I'd recommend leaving Raikou in the back and waiting for them to trade dug for rachi or bliss. Raikou also helps a decent amount with the overall passivity. It adds an additional progress maker to the team (at least vs opponents without a blob) and one that is unusually effective at countering the setup mons that abuse passive squads. Finally, Raikou is a great Gengar switch, especially with Aroma support. It can also scout a Zapdos t1 / early game to avoid getting blissey dug trapped. This in turn allows a fairly comfortable Skarm lead which is ideal for a defensive leaning spikes team, if they can get away with it.
The rest of the team's sets are pretty standard but a few quick notes on possible adjustments and other versions:
* Suicune is bold roar to help with Snorlax and DDers. I really wanted to make sleep talk and especially calm max spdef sleep talk work as that set is especially good at bringing in enemy cmers and baiting them to set up fully, but on this particular team I found bold roar was the best.
* Dol could be Psychic or Shadow Ball. Shadow Ball Rest is decently supported here with Aroma and pretty good fighter checks and Psychic is likely 0-6 to enemy Missy stall. But in the vast majority of matchups Psychic is likely better.
* I also tried a version with Sableye over DefRachi which had its advantages. It resembles a team by ABR that had Milo > Cune and CMBliss CMRaikou. I found it a bit too weak to physical threats though.
A few replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2536025885-vqx65r9dcqj3kj4p5fpm37mhx2cjbpmpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2534406919-o1eijtv40i0ghi2qs7oot5irsadxrcrpw?p2 (different paste but same Raikou set)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2534926972-22diov0f3sf6xni8pj8qyuy7km8bngbpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2534914793-skua3pkb09j0e1wm5uw1n94gbywcxtdpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2534906579-k8ue1eiuhh7jh1grdbpoc5plualkd2ipw
