Resource ☆Z Strats: i def need to go with the emma changes

emma · Jan 7, 2022

Introduction

Here I am to not only dump all the teams the Indigo Platoon used in DOU during SCL I, but to also detail our prep process for each of the nine weeks. Hopefully everyone can learn something about how to prepare in DOU tournaments. All teams will be linked in Z Strats' post below since he wanted to farm likes despite doing none of the work.

The forum moderators gave permission for anyone to post SCL team dumps as threads a while back in the Discord, but I wasn't able to complete mine until now because I was busy finishing up my semester. Sorry for the wait. Hope it is still okay to post.

This will take up multiple posts because of the character limit.

Weekly Prep Processes

Week 1 vs. Qwello Lee

Final Team

Team Ideas

:urshifu:

Week 1 of SCL was a brand new metagame, so there were no relevant teams for us to scout. However, what we did do instead was collect his teams from 2020 Invitationals, LTPL, DPL, and OSDT to try to get a read on Qwello Lee's general comfortableness and experience with different archetypes. While we did not expect him to load up anything he was using from months ago, we thought he might try a particular composition he liked since there was no data to go off of from this new metagame.

From his scout and also what Z Strats knew about his playing tendencies in general from teaming together in SSD IV, we were pretty confident he was going to load up some sort of Semiroom. Grandmas Cookin is also a big fan of Semiroom which helped influence our decision. That was his most used playstyle back during Invitationals / LTPL / DPL which had a more similar metagame to what we projected SCL to be like compared to OSDT, and even during that he was seen trying to get both Diancie and Porygon2 to work.

Our core idea was to utilize Amoonguss and Diancie. Sleep is a fundamentally broken mechanic in Pokemon, and since we were both expecting Semiroom, and Qwello usually ran Heavy-Duty Boots on his Fire-type, we thought Amoonguss could really match up well. We also wanted to abuse it before people started running actual Sleep checks again since Rillaboom + Kartana made Amoonguss drop in viability during OSDT. Diancie then provided Trick Room support, and also something we thought would be really strong again after the Kartana ban. The big issue with running Amoonguss Semiroom was getting absolutely obliterated by Psychic Spam, which while wasn't something we expected Qwello to bring at all, we still wanted to be cautious. This is where Celesteela came in. It's one of the best checks to not only Psychic Spam but also Diancie. It also could surprise Volcanion / Incineroar with Power Herb Meteor Beam, which is exactly what it ended up doing.

Our other major idea was Water-type / Ground-type / Incineroar (or Cinderace!) / Amoonguss / Dragon-type / Filler, with my favorite being Urshfiu-R / Zygarde / Incineroar / Amoonguss / Naganadel / Genesect. The idea was that Urshifu-R is quite good at pressuring Diancie and Porygon2, while Dragon Dance Zygarde with Incineroar and Amoonguss support could eventually break down Diancie, even with Trick Room going up at some points. We also theorized with Landorus for the first time here, as its ability to OHKO Diancie was very appealing. Cinderace also made an appearance, as we thought it would potentially synergize very well with Urshifu-R offensively, even being able to OHKO Tapu Fini with Libero Gunk Shot. Unfortunately, posting calculations of it OHKOing Porygon2 and Tapu Fini was as far as we got with the Cinderace experiment.

I also collected quite a few Mock teams for Z Strats to play tests against. These teams included standard Diancie + Porygon2 Semiroom from DPL, a new Diancie Tailroom team I built, a Choice Band Zygarde + Naganadel OSDT Style Offense, some Choice Band Zygarde + Mew Balance, a Dragon Dance Kyurem-B + Calm Mind Tapu Fini Balance, and Spurrific's Week 1 SCL Teams. We mainly focused on testing against the old Semiroom, OSDT Style offense, and Spurrific's Week 1 Semiroom team. Z Strats also played tests with our friends who were using whatever they wanted to, so I feel like we were getting a good balance of playing into Qwello Lee teams and also playing against other SCL players. Mock Teams actually really helped Z Strats know the lines in the game he had to take before even starting the match. For example, we knew Porygon2 was a bit annoying, so we had already established that trading Zygarde for Toxic on Porygon2 was a solid trade for us.

The team we ended up going with was built by Z Strats, with me editing some of the movesets and EV spreads. Dragon Dance Kyurem-B was an excellent secondary win condition in case Amoonguss and Diancie in Trick Room couldn't get it done. Zygarde helped against Fire- and Steel-types, while also specifically being helpful against the expected Diancie. Incineroar became a lot more viable after the Kartana ban, and provided much appreciated Fake Out support in setting Trick Room; this specific Incineroar lives two -1 Choice Band Thousand Arrows from Zygarde, even without Sitrus Berry. We ended up using more Specically Defense Incineroar as time went on, with the fall of Zygarde and the rise of Meteor Beam Celesteela.

Safety Goggles Incineroar was crucial for our core idea of using Amoonguss Semiroom that beat other Semiroom, and we wanted to make sure we didn't get 6-0d by Sleep (which happened to Spurrific a few weeks later). We also ran Toxic on Zygarde for not only Porygon2 but also anything wild such as Calm Mind Cresselia. A big theme of our first few teams was always running Safety Goggles and Toxic somewhere to minimize auto-lose matchups.

Initially, I was not a fan of this team at all! It generally seemed very slow (notably, nothing outspeeds Urshifu-R), and it took a bit to get going against more offensively-oriented structures. I definitely preferred our second idea, but Z Strats was very confident in the team, it went 17-1 in tests, and it was still a solid team regardless so eventually I got on board.

Week 2 vs. Spurrific

Final Team

Team Ideas

:zeraora:

Once again, we had minimal information to work with. I collected all of Spurrific's replays from DWCoP, DLT Playoffs, Spring Seasonal, OSDT, SCL, and Fall Seasonal, with only the last two being anything of relevance. Even then, there was only one SCL game and three Seasonal rounds completed, with the first one having Kartana legal. I didn't even bother making the cute graphic because of this. We instead focused on using what we knew about his playstyle in general, and the main thing is that we expected something fat, similar to what zee mentioned they were expecting when Actuarily played him in Week 1. Personally, I was expecting Calm Mind Tapu Fini since we had just run Amoonguss and his Week 1 team did not respect Urshifu-R at all. Since we had less of an idea of what Spurrific would bring, I didn't make a Mock teams collection, and we instead had Z Strats play solely against other SCL players and their wide variety of teams.

Z Strats came up with Fling Salac Berry Zeraora + Weakness Policy Metagross (was initially Whimsicott over Zeraora), which initially seemed very good. We ended up going through five (saved) versions of it trying so hard to get it to work, including even experimenting with Dragalge, but had to eventually scrap the idea, since Zeraora would too often just become a complete dead slot, and it was especially too passive when paired with Mew which was in our first two versions.

We had spent a lot of time trying to get this to work (up into the day before the game), and when it didn't we needed to pivot with not a lot of time left. I think we spent something like 4 PM to 10:30 PM (with breaks) the day before the game-deciding Zeraora + Metagross wasn't it, going through Psychic Spam and Electric Hail and deciding those weren't it, and then finally editing the Demon Tapu Fini team to Demon Mew and locking in a team. My first message was at 4:09 PM (with Z Strats playing tests and theorizing before I started working) and my last was at 11:46 PM. We (me, Z Strats, Nido-Rus, and TonyFlygon) ended up having 633 lines in the Doubles channel that day.

So after rejecting our first and main idea, we needed some other options since the game was happening the next day. We had Psychic Spam loaded up as one, but Z Strats didn't end up feeling the most confident with the team or the archetype as a whole. I actually really thought it would be a lot better than it turned out to be due to its ability to pressure the common Semiroom. Electric Hail started out as me throwing out Tapu Koko + Regieleki and Hail as separate ideas at 2 AM, and when Z Strats combined them it was actually owning for a bit until I loaded up Diancie + Metagross Semiroom and he forfeited on Turn 8. It was actually an interesting idea despite looking very silly, and we ended up saving it as an option against Mishimono and later stax, both of whom we thought it could match up well against. It then went on to win a DWCoP game to force a three-way tiebreaker, pretty cool.

Z Strats had a Calm Mind + Stored Power + Draining Kiss Tapu Fini team with Heal Bell Diancie and Coaching Zeraora support that umbry made which seemed to match up well against anything fat, so we took the idea to the next level and built around Demon Mew. Initially, we just changed Tapu Fini to Mew as the better central win condition and then Diancie to Urshifu-R to compensate, but then Z Strats reworked the team even more and replaced bad Pokemon Landorus-T with great Pokemon Landorus, as well as swapping out the sometimes too passive Zeraora for Metagross. Overall, we wanted the team to shred fat and also match up well against Volcanion Semiroom, which I think we were able to end up achieving.

At the time, Nails was using a Hail Team that qsns built that he would later use during SCL in tests, and we (me, Z Strats, Nails, umbry, and qsns) all fell in love with Scarf Landorus and really wanted to use it. It was also another reason we had to scrap Zeraora + Metagross since it was too pressured by Scarf Landorus.

Again, we ran Safety Goggles Incineroar to combat Sleep and fit Toxic on Landorus. We also decided on Knock Off Rillaboom to help against Porygon2, and it developed into the last move on most of our Rillabooms. This week, our Incineroar lived a Steam Eruption from Volcanion, since it was a much bigger threat to this team than Zygarde. This also began our love affection with Landorus, which we go on to use for four of the next seven weeks, although with the standard Life Orb set.

Week 3 vs. Mishimono

Final Team

Team Ideas

:kommo-o:

From Seasonals to OSDT to SCL, it was clear Mishimono felt most comfortable with offense after looking at all his replays. Despite bringing Semiroom last week, he didn't look his best so it felt pretty reasonable he was going to fall back to his roots to regain fitting. On Day 0, I mentioned us needing to have a positive matchup against Naganadel / Zygarde / Genesect / Urshifu-R / Rillaboom / Heatran (one of the two teams he dumped from OSDT), which is almost exactly what he brought but with Ribombee over Naganadel (I'm a genius). My Day 0 ideas included Rain / Sun Hyper Offense as well as Fullroom, but was quickly shot down as too fishy in a situation where we did not need to fish.

The next set of ideas was to abuse Mishimono's complete lack of Tapu Fini. Unfortunately, both Regidrago and Clangorous Soul Kommo-o were shot down quickly but the Iron Defense + Body Press variant was actually on the table. This was also the beginning of legendary Magnet Zapdos, which was used to 2HKO +1 Tapu Fini. Hail was also brought up after getting qsns' copy of their Hali Team. Z Strats laughed at the genius changes of Whirlwind Zapdos and Toxic on Landorus, but eventually conceded after a test game and gave us the title of this thread. Our building momentum was then halted by drunk Z Strats trying to run on a treadmill and getting yelled at by his parents.

Throughout the week, Z Strats tested the first Kommo-o team (his), the second Kommo-o team (mine), and the Hail (qsns' with edits by us). On Friday (with the game scheduled for Sunday) Z Strats felt quite confident with the second Kommo-o team and things seemed to be going swiftly -- it even had the legendary umbry approval! But on Saturday testing with 100%GXE, everything went to shit. Mishimono's standard offense teams could apply too much pressure and put Z Strats into uncomfortable positions, especially a Fire-type + something with a pivot move. Naturally, I was locked into some school meetings when this all went down so things went pretty south pretty quickly. My two emergency options were Dragon Dance Dragapult and Hawlucha (never built) to take advantage of no Tapu Fini, but neither of us was confident in any of them.

Z Strats had a fallback Diancie / Naganadel / Rillaboom / Kyurem-B / Metagross / Urshifu-R team that he liked and we decided we'd rather start over with that instead of tweak the Kommo-o team at 10:50 PM the night before the game. The six were something Z Strats had prepped for OSDT so he had practice with it, and we believed if Diancie could set up Trick Room just once the game could be won. Genius me made the amazing suggestion of Volcanion > Metagross because I was scared of Steel-types and Heatran was too weak to Zygarde so we went with the epic Double Water core. Bullzone Volcanion was almost brought, but we settled on Earth Power since it's not a Z Strats + emma Volcanion without Safety Goggles and Earth Power. We went until 2:59 AM finalizing a team and it was clear that SCL was going to single handily destroy my sleep schedule after two weeks in a row of throwing everything away and making a new team the night before.

We ended up testing specific matchups against the two offense teams Mishimono used in OSDT since it was the clear obvious bring. Again, Z Strats tested plenty of times with other players in the pool using whatever they wanted to. I think the balance was really good -- he got experience playing against teams that were likely to be brought as well as just getting in good general practice against some of the best Doubles players overall.

Once again we used Knock Off Rillaboom to combat the surging Porygon2. Safety Goggles made its appearance on our Fire-type for the third straight week since I refused to set Z Strats auto lose to Sleep. Volcanion is Earth Power since we're Safety Goggles (Substitute without Leftovers looked bad) and it's also helpful for playing into the Volcanion mirror. We hadn't realized the power of Modest Fire Blast Naganadel yet so we're still running Timid (which still puts in the work).

Week 4 vs. Paraplegic

Final Team

Team Ideas

:urshifu:

Similar to how we prepped against Mishimono, we felt that Paraplegic teams historically follow a trend -- they generally do not perform well against offensive-based structures. Most of his teams from DPL to DLT to OSDT to Seasonal to Majors to SCL fit into this category. I think our prep against both Mishimono and Paraplegic showed that you can still learn things about a player even if the match you are looking at was played during an outdated metagame.

Furthermore, he had brought Diancie + Tapu Lele + Amoonguss two weeks in a row, which is just completely begging to lose to Psychic Spam. Z Strats and I had both had success using Psychic Spam against him in the past, so we felt like he would have to be prepared for it going in so we initially wanted to look in other directions. Z Strats also mentioned that his last two weeks were "begging to be fucked by a steel mon with goggles/that can ohko diancie” which literally perfectly describes Escavalier (another Pokemon Tony brought against him in the past) but it was quickly hard vetoed.

The first thing I really wanted to try out was the offensive core of Urshifu-R + Landorus, which was something I built already in Week 1. I pasted a team we had prepared against Qwello Lee as an option and Z Strats suggested using Metagross > Kyurem-B. Unfortunately, Z Strats lost with it in his first test game so he decided to be a diva and get rid of it as an option. I also put together a version of Psychic Spam based on an outline Z Strats mentioned earlier, and even though it looked perfect against Paraplegic's scout we still weren't on board yet because it was such as obvious bring. Nido-Rus brought up Tapu Lele + Heatran + Helping Hand Blastoise which Z Strats really liked the synergy of, but it didn't work too well in testing. He also posted a bunch of other skeletons including Zapdos-G and Stakataka but they didn't progress too much.

We then pivoted to wanting to use Porygon2 since it's really good, we hadn't used it yet, and Paraplegic was lacking in Porygon2 checks. Z Strats built the first Porygon2 + Tapu Fini team and liked it, but I never really liked Tapu Fini + Amoonguss and the team was slow overall. We were also afraid of losing to cheese or something else really stupid. We replaced Amoonguss with Rillaboom and then Incineroar with Mew to help both of these issues. Tapu Fini was later replaced with Volcanion because I was afraid of killing Grass-types. Both of these teams were edited to specifically beat cheese (Trick with Choice Specs + Haze Tapu Fini, Toxic Metagross, Roar Mew) since we didn't want to lose anything stupid. Z Strats then pivoted to wanting to use broken Celesteela once again with Roar Volcanion and stax Mew so that became a potential option as well.

Friday night came and Urshifu-R + Landorus, Psychic Spam, Landorus + Porygon2 Balance, Tapu Lele + Heatran + Blastoise, Landorus + Porygon Hazard Stack, Celesteela, and Modest Naganadel + Tapu Lele were all still options. Other than quickly throwing away Urshifu-R + Landorus and Celesteela, we thought all the other options were viable. Z Strats put it well -- we had a lot of good options but nothing that really stood out. We decided to test all the structures one by one against Paraplegic teams until we decided what was best. We played against his SCL Week 2 team, his SCL Week 3 team, a Rillaboom + Tapu Fini + Metagross + Porygon2 team he used in DLT Playoffs, a standard Tapu Lele + Diancie + Amoonguss team, and a Dragon Dance Zygarde six that he submitted as a sample team a bit back.

We started with a new version of Psychic Spam that Z Strats built. He tested against zee, umbry, and me using Paraplegic teams and he felt very confident in the team, and once again we had the umbry blessing. Even though bringing Psychic Spam was so obvious Paraplegic had already lost to it multiple times without changing up his style and it really was the perfect bring into his scout. In the end, he brought Rain and got matchup so props to him for changing it up, but I don't really regret the team choice.

The last thing we had to decide on was using Urshifu-R or Landorus. We really had no idea so we asked Kristyl!

For the fourth straight week, we used a Fire-type with Safety Goggles. We chose to forgo Earth Power on Heatran since we weren't too afraid of the mirror match (Heatran had one total use) and OHKOing Diancie could win us the game on the spot. Focus Blast Landorus was to hit Celesteela and Porygon2. Whirlwind Zapdos and Trick Room Necrozma (without Protect) were both needed for the Semiroom matchup - these two techs made it a much easier matchup.

Once again, we came up with the team the night before the match. We started at 6:49 PM and went until 10:20 PM deciding on a structure and then finalizing our team.

In case anyone is counting, after having our Week 1 team locked down comfortably before the match, we didn't decide on our Week 2 team until 11:46pm the night before after working for six hours, our Week 3 team until 2:59am the night before after working for four hours, and our Week 4 team until 10:20pm the night before after working for three hours.

Week 5 vs. Frania

Final Team

Team Ideas

:urshifu:

After four weeks of SCL, we were finally getting to a point where we could focus more on data from previous weeks rather than trying to learn from DLT 2021 playoffs. Even ignoring his Week 1 use of Chansey + Toxapex + Celesteela, there was enough of a trend in Frania's other three games to go off of. Z Strats noticed almost immediately that every team had at leas two Fake Outs (his SCL Week 4 team had three!), and we both thought that Frania could struggle against Semiroom structures, especially those with Porygon2. He then even went into math mode and explained how we hadn't used Porygon2 in SCL or in tests against Frania, while Frania had only fought one Porygon2 and lost against Nails. All in all, it seemed certain that some sort of Porygon2 structure was the play. While testing, we focused mostly on his SCL Week 3 and SCL Week 4 teams, as well as theoretical six of Landorus + Rillaboom + Incineroar + Urshifu-R + Steel-type + Dragon-type since that completely fit the Frania mold.

Z Starts quickly brought up his Urshifu-R + Tapu Lele + Amoongus + Naganadel + Heatran + Porygon2 team he built for last week, even though while it had Porygon2 it definitely wasn't traditional Semiroom in the slightest. Z Strats also tested games with the Porygon2 + Volcanion Semiroom team built specifically to beat any forms of cheese, but hated how easily it was pressured as well as the general Urshifu-R weakness. Lastly, he thew together a Urshifu-R + Landorus + Porygon2 team together since the last two were the two most broken Pokemon while I had been talking about using Urshifu-R + Landorus all season long. Sadly, he quickly deleted it since it was unviable but I still kept it for historical purposes.

While the second two teams flopped hard, the Porygon2 offense was winning and by Wednesday we had pretty much locked it in. This was the first time since Week 1 we were not scrambling to find a team the night before! Ally Switch on Porygon2 was something I was very excited to try since it was very low risk while the payout was huge -- it might just end up winning us the game (it did not). Even though we were using 3/6 of the same Pokemon as last week, it was a different structure overall and we had switched it up every week so it seemed like a non issue. With the team locked in so early, I came up with my greatest idea all season...

Alas, we did not end up bring it :(

While testing, we noticed a Heatran weaknesses, but Z Strats was not a fan of my suggestion to run Timid Heatran with Safety Goggles and instead wanted to pray to face anything but a Heatran (we would end up facing a Heatran).

It is important to note that this was the first week we did not run Safety Goggles on our Fire-type. The biggest reason was that we wanted Choice Specs Heatran to do massive damage so we would win the game in as few turns as possible (and we were running a very fast paced and strong team in general with Tapu Lele so Amoonguss wasn't the biggest issue) but since we had hard prepared for Sleep the four weeks prior, we also thought Frania bringing Amoonguss against us was unlikely. This was also the first week where we brought the amazing Modest Naganadel with Fire Blast to OHKO Metagross.

Overall, this was one of our lightest weeks of prep (with our lightest week being our only other loss) and it definitely showed. Official team tours can be really tough to maintain motivation throughout, especially when your own team isn't doing the best. After our miscues this week, both Z Strats and I knew we had to step it up for Week 6 and get back on track.

Week 6 vs. YoBuddy

Final Team

Team Ideas

:spectrier:

YoBuddy was 0-2 after subbing in for Memoric so I thought we would see the People's Champ come back to fight Z Strats but I was mistaken. With back to only have minimal replays to work off of from the current metagame (his two SCL games), there was once again no fancy graphic this week. I was definitely not a fan of having minimal resources to prep against each week, but sometimes that's just how it goes.

I had actually already built the Spectrier + Ushifu-R + Togekiss team during Week 5 specifically for Memoric since he had brought one Ghost resistance so far and his teams generally seemed slow and would (in theory) get shredded by Spectrier and Urshifu-R with Togekiss support. However, since we were facing YoBuddy this team structure went from something that could match up well against our opponent to a mostly untested idea.

Based on his SCL, YoBuddy did not match up well into Mew, so we thought Mew + Diancie would be a good core, especially since we had only used the latter once. When building, the biggest issue we faced when building Diancie Semiroom was the Goggles Volcanion matchup. In the past, Semiroom teams could run Porygon2 alongside Diancie to help the matchup, but we were too afraid of being weak to Urshifu-R by bringing both. On the first Diancie + Mew team posted above, we considered changing Mew to Dragapult to help with this matchup but then we wouldn't be able to bring Mew which he wanted to do. Alas!

We also considered going double Water-type again with Urshifu-R over Landorus, but in the end we decided the team structure had too many holes and we wouldn't be able to safely cover everything we were expecting. We also considered Nail's team from Week 2 (built by umbry) as a Diancie Semiroom structure but we would have to abandon the Mew idea which we didn't want to do so we scrapped it. I did end up building a third version of Diancie Semiroom as you can see above that was pretty similar to the first one, but it didn't preform too well. In the end, we just couldn't figure it out and needed to try a new idea.

Z Strats was very busy this week but I was on break from school so the SCL I Indigo Platoon's Doubles OverUsed slot finally became THE EMMA SHOW. Since YoBuddy had a limited sample size and our first few ideas went nowhere, I decided to just try building some I thought was really good and trusting Z Strats to win his game. As you've read before, I thought Urshifu-R + Landorus was an excellent offensive core and wanted to use it in a different way than we did during Week 2. Amoonguss was an easy third, and then I filled out the core in different ways, once with the great Magnet Zapdos and the other with Metagross to help against Diancie.

I lined out all our ideas to Z Strats in hoping to get some progress made, but he was intoxicated and instead advised on using two Landorus on the same team, which is unfortunately illegal. He did send me a cute graphic where he circled the umbry team from SCL Week 2 and the first variation of Urshifu-R + Landorus though. He then left to do his "genius plan" which is not appropriate to describe on a PG-13 Smogon website. While he was off doing whatever, I also built a Diancie + Porygon2 team as an option.

Considering we did nothing Thursday night with drunk Z Strats it was once again the day before the match at 10:57 PM and we had no team picked -- prime Z Strats and emma. The plan was to play games with the two he selected last night, narrow it down to one, and then optimize the sets and hope for the best. First we went with the umbry team only to get smashed, so we moved onto the epic Urshifu-R + Landorus team, which he liked as well as the Diancie + Porygon2 team I asked him to try.

Eventually at around 1:31 AM the night before (classic) we had a finalized version of Urshifu-R + Landorus team that we were ready to bring after playing against other SCL players as well as copies of YoBuddy's last SCL team and other common archetypes. However, when testing against 100%GXE, we realized one dire issue -- the team was helplessly 6-0'd by Nihilego! Thankfully, nobody was bringing Nihilego at all so it was a fine risk to take, but it was the beginning of my Nihilego love (and we even eventually brought it Week 9!)

Once again, we did not put Safety Goggles on our Fire-type. Like last week, we felt we had prepared enough for Sleep so far that others were not likely to bring it against us. We also had three Rock-type weaknesses on this team which explains choosing Heavy-Duty Boots over Sitrus Berry. Landorus is Psychic to help check other Landorus, Zapdos lives Draco Meteor from from Choice Specs Dragapult and Life Orb Naganadel, while Kyurem-B is Sitrus Berry which we thought would be more useful than Chople Berry.

emma · Jan 7, 2022

Week 7 vs. stax

Final Team

Team Ideas

:whimsicott:

stax Replays

SCL
W6 vs. Frania (W): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-587593
W5 vs. Mishimono (L): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-585201
W4 vs. zeefable (W): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-583315
W3 vs. Qwello Lee (L): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-581874
W2 vs. Nails (L): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-580692
W1 vs. Paraplegic (W): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-578804

Testing replays with stax
[redacted]

Finally, we are back to having a non-insignificant amount of data to work with! Even though stax hadn't played in any circuit tours, we had his entire SCL season so far as well as the fourteen (!) testing replays Z Strats had with him. Z Strats also mentioned that stax hates Kyurem-B and would never use it which was true so far but would be broken Week 8.

We also did a self scout of what we had brought so far, and the biggest things that stood out were 0 Tapu Fini, 1 Porygon2, 4 Amoonguss, and 4 Urshifu-R. We were also pretty good at checking Sleep, not as good at checking Hazards. Having our Fire-type be Heavy-Duty Boots instead of Safety Goggles once again was decided early on.

Z Strats immediately asked me about Tailwind + Fake Tears + Gravity Whimiscott (Whimsicott does not learn Gravity) to go along with Landorus, and while it definitely seems a bit silly at first, it preformed really well in tests and we ended up bringing it in Week 8.

I then brought up using Tapu Fini, since stax looked a bit weak to it (only Rillaboom or Tsareena usually to damage it along with two Electrics spread out) and we hadn't used it yet so he was likely to continue his trend of not heavily prepping for it. Incineroar was an easy partner to Intimidate and beat the physical Grass-types, while Kyurem-B rounded out the core well. Celesteela, Zapdos, and Landorus were added to complete the second team built for the week, which would end up being one of the team we actually used.

Z Strats then posted six new ideas, some of which good (the original team I built but with Mew > Zapdos which we would eventually use) and some of which bad (Dusclops). For historical purposes, I did save all of them which you can see above. Tapu Fini + Porygon2 teams look strong bar the Landorus weakness, but stax had 0 Landorus usage so if there was ever a time to cheat it was now. Fullroom and Electric Hail were options to out crack stax's building.

Z Strats was a big fan of the Tapu Fini + Incineroar + Kyurem-B team with Mew after performing well in general tests. I ended up building zero mock teams because I found it impossible for someone as wild as stax. The good news was at least that we felt confident in a team on Wednesday so SCL wouldn't be hijacking my sleep schedule laster on in the week for only the third time all season. He continued winning in tests on Thursday and we locked the team in confidently Friday. The last change we made was Stealth Rock > Psychic on Landorus since he had zero Landorus usage and we had Misty Terrain for Sleep. Stealth Rock helped specifically chip Incineroar trying to check Dragon Dance Kyurem-B as well as Assault Vest Kyurem-B trying to switch into Landorus, which also being great overall. Shoutout umbry for the suggestion.

Overall, this was a great week of prep. We had a lot of ideas early, tests went well, and locked down a team basically on Wednesday. After the Week 5 loss against Frania, we bounced back strong and got to win number 6, which was my goal from the preseason. Of course, I wasn't satisfied yet. After how well things were going so far, I really believed Z Strats could get to 8 wins, including beating Nails (worrywhirl). At this point in time, our team as a whole just won 9-1 against the Arena Spartans and were on a two game win streak, and if we won the last two we could secure playoffs. Things were looking up!

Week 8 vs. Actuarily

Final Team

Team Ideas

:genesect:

Terrors Doubles SCL Replays

Week 1 (Bandit) vs. Spurrific (L): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-578370
Week 2 (Bandit) vs. Memoric (L): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-580883
Week 3 (zeefable) vs. Nails (L): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-581949
Week 4 (zeefable) vs. stax (L): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-583315
Week 5 (Bandit) vs. Paraplegic (W): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-585339
Week 6 (Bandit) vs. Qwello Lee (W): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-586637
Week 7 (zeefable) vs. Frania (L): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8doublesou-588853

Surprise, surprise, we were back to having only four games to work with, with two of them being Rain. He also used no Landorus, Celesteela, or Tapu Fini which was noticeable. This was the first week where I learned how to pull usage stats from a scouting report, so that was kinda cool.

The first thing we had to do was make sure we had a positive Rain matchup. Clearly he was a big fan of the archetype and is not afraid to bring it multiple times. Even though it wasn't the most likely scenario for him to bring Rain yet again, it was something we absolutely could not lose to. Naganadel, Nihilego, Regieleki, and Armaldo all came up as initial ideas, but the one that really stood out was Naganadel, which had a good matchup against both Rain and non-Rain teams.

The first team that Z Strats built had Naganadel to pair with Shift Gear Genesect + Thunderbolt Nihilego which he thought was a nice combo, and while we didn't use it this week we ended up bring a variation against Nails. I tried building some Volcanion + Porygon2 Semiroom with Naganadel to bring, but once again we could not figure out how to successfully build Semiroom to save our lives. The original composition lost hard to Dragon Dance Kyurem-B so we added Diancie, but bringing Diancie + Porygon2 into Urshifu-R sounded like a nightmare. Our inability to utilize good Pokemon such as Diancie, Porygon2, and Volcanion on good structures such as Semiroom was definitely one of our weakest points as a pairing. Z Strats then brought up Tapu Fini + Assault Vest Kyurem-B + Zapdos-G, but Zapdos-G quickly turned out to be not the play and the idea was scrapped. We also had the Whimsicott + Landorus idea from last week as a potential option.

Since the game was on Sunday we had a bit more time and didn't seriously start testing until Friday. In the tests, both Shift Gear Genesect + Thunderbolt Nihilego and Whimiscott + Landorus stuck out to Z Strats as great options. The former even beat Amoonguss + Volcanion Semiroom which in theory should be a tough matchup. Both teams also had positive Rain matchups which was nice.

Eventually Saturday night we decided on the Whimiscott + Landorus of the two. This was definitely my least involved week since I had just started my second term at school as well as a new extracurricular project, both of which took up most of my time. Thankfully, Z Strats was able to come up with two solid teams, get tests in, and all I had to do was fix his terrible EV spreads. Even someone as tryhard-y as me can get overwhelmed from other circumstances and not be able to put 100% effort in, so shoutout Z Strats for really taking over this week and doing a great job.

Week 9 vs. Nails

Final Team

Team Ideas

:heatran:

This marked only the third of nine weeks in SCL where we had significant information about our opponent, alas!

Z Strats had Shift Gear Genesect lined up for Nails ever since Week 6 and we ended up bringing a variation of what we built last week. Nails had brought 0 Heatran and mentioned multiple times how he thought Shift Gear Genesect was not good so it finally looked like a decent option. In the end, the team performed well enough and could have won if not for a good tech by the TMs.

The only other idea we ever considered was Flash Cannon Heatran + Zapdos but that didn't go farther than me building two variation after Z Strats came up with the idea. I was once again really busy -- my schedule was basically 10 AM to 4 PM School and then 4 PM to 7 PM - 12 AM Extracurricular so all my time for SCL wasn't really until past midnight. Similar to last week at least, Z Strats had a good idea early on, tested against other SCL players, and all I had to do was provide some input and fix the EV spreads.

I don't really have much else to say here. We locked on an idea early, put in the test games, and brought something we thought could win. If I had a bit more time we probably could have came up with some more ideas, but even though we only came up with two Z Strats still did his part like last week and carried me once more. I've spent too much time writing this and I'm still heartbroken by our team's Week 9 loss so the this section will be the shortest by far.

Set Dump

Celesteela @ Power Herb
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 164 HP / 252 SpA / 92 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Flash Cannon
- Air Slash
- Meteor Beam
- Protect
Week 1 vs. Qwello Lee
Week 7 vs. stax
Week 8 vs. Actuarily

You know it, you love it. Celesteela went from being UR to Tier 2 due to the Platoon invention (~~mostly~~ all Z Strats) of Meteor Beam. It worked perfectly against Qwello Lee where he wasn't expecting it, and we ended up using it two more times despite the opposition knowing exactly what it was going to do. It went on to have 70% usage in Week 7 and was #11 overall.

Amoonguss @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 240 HP / 80 Def / 188 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Spore
- Rage Powder
- Energy Ball
- Clear Smog
Week 1 vs. Qwello Lee
Week 6 vs. YoBuddy

Pollen Puff is a fake move, and there are some teams were you really want both Energy Ball and Clear Smog to be safe against Safety Goggles Diancie and Calm Mind Tapu Fini. We only used this set on half of our Amoongusses, but it's a viable combination for sure.

Landorus (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Earth Power
- Sludge Bomb
- Psychic
- Protect
Week 6 vs. YoBuddy

This Pokemon is broken and should be banned. Psychic is used as the last move to beat non-Psychic Landorus (which seemed to be most of them besides ours). We actually only used this 1/5 times, but the set is still good. Please ban.

Urshifu-Rapid-Strike @ Life Orb
Ability: Unseen Fist
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 0 SpA
- Surging Strikes
- Close Combat
- Ice Punch
- Protect
Week 2 vs. Spurrific
Week 5 vs. Frania
Week 6 vs. YoBuddy
Week 9 vs. Nails

Being able to switch moves with Urshifu-R is really good and Life Orb should definitely be the default over Choice Band. Unfortunately, Z Strats rejected Mystic Water with Special Defense investment to live Diancie Moonblast because he is a loser.

Mew @ Grassy Seed
Ability: Synchronize
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stored Power
- Calm Mind
- Iron Defense
- Soft-Boiled
Week 2 vs. Spurrific

Demon Mew! It didn't actually win the game like it was supposed to, but it forced enough attention to give Z Strats an upper edge. I believe the Demon set got explored a bit more towards the latter stages of DWCoP with Cresselia and even Metagross.

Zeraora @ Salac Berry
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 0 SpA
- Fake Out
- Plasma Fists
- Taunt
- Fling

+

Metagross @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 48 HP / 252 Atk / 208 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 0 SpA
- Meteor Mash
- Ice Punch
- Stomping Tantrum
- Protect
Test vs. Nails

We never used this, and it might not be good, but it is definitely fun. If you get the lead combination right you can very easily win games right off the bat.

Zapdos @ Magnet
Ability: Static
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Hurricane
- Whirlwind
- Tailwind
Week 4 vs. Paraplegic
Week 6 vs. YoBuddy

Zapdos is a great Tailwind setter, and Magnet Thunderbolt means it actually does damage while Whirlwind means it stops Trick Room which can save games at points. Being able to 2HKO +1 Tapu Fini is great, especially since it can't be intimidated like Zeraora or Rillaboom. It had 50% usage Week 6 after we used it which is kinda cool.

Naganadel @ Life Orb
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Sludge Bomb
- Fire Blast
- Tailwind
Week 3 vs. Mishimono
Week 5 vs. Frania
Week 8 vs. Actuarily
Week 9 vs. Nails

Naganadel is also a great Tailwind setter that beats lots of things. Modest Fire Blast specifically OHKOs Metagross which is very cool.

Whimsicott @ Focus Sash
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 192 Def / 56 SpD / 8 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 SpA
- Fake Tears
- Encore
- Tailwind
- Protect
Week 8 vs. Actuarily

Fake Tears Whimsicott + Landorus is pretty broken as the entire tier absolutely drops, including things such as Porygon2. Definitely not a meme, it probably deserves around Tier 4.

Conclusion

Final Team Dump

We ended up building 54 teams all together. We definitely underutilized Trick Room (2 Diancie, 1 Porygon2, 1 Volcanion) and I would have wished we brought it more if we didn't end up winning 7 games.

Thanks again to Z Strats for being the perfect player to support and thanks to everyone who helped us out either through tests or just throwing around ideas. I'm proud to be a part of the best Doubles record in the highest of competitive settings. We both put hours upon hours of time into this tournament and I'm glad it turned our well. Maybe I'll see everyone again next SCL!

Z Strats · Jan 7, 2022

Team Dump

Week 1 vs. Qwello Lee

Final Team

Team Ideas

Week 2 vs. Spurrific

Final Team

Team Ideas

Week 3 vs. Mishimono

Final Team

Team Ideas

Week 4 vs. Paraplegic

Final Team

Team Ideas

Week 5 vs. Frania

Final Team

Team Ideas

Week 6 vs. YoBuddy

Final Team

Team Ideas

Week 7 vs. stax

Final Team

Team Ideas

Week 8 vs. Actuarily

Final Team

Team Ideas

Week 9 vs. Nails

Final Team

Team Ideas

MajorBowman · Jan 7, 2022

This is definitely the most detailed team dump we've ever seen, thanks to both of you for sharing your teams and thought processes! It's especially cool to see all of this from two people widely considered to be among the better builders in the tier, would love to see more of these kinds of posts from everyone.

Resource ☆Z Strats: i def need to go with the emma changes

emma

emma

Z Strats

Banned deucer.

MajorBowman

wouldst thou like to live fergaliciously?

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