Canada is out of wcop now so I figured I'd share the ideas behind what I built to keep this thread alive. shoutouts
Frito for all the tests during the run. Click sprites for pastes, moves and teras just no evs.
Game 1 vs skyiew (W):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ubers-848670?p2
Since in my pool I already knew 2 of the players quite well I didn't do too heavy scouting, and more relied on vibes on what I'd face from most people and just built some solid teams I believed could win. This one's a bit strange especially with the lunala set, but the goal behind that was to help vs the normal ttar stalls and stuff with etern + lunala breaking them down. Skyiew loaded a deo-s HO which I would end up facing the same 6 twice in pools, being able to win vs it both times. This was a very close game that swayed a bit in my fortune with a fire blast dodge, but the way I went about counterplay ended up being relatively the same regardless. Blitz with korai to kill the etern which was the biggest threat, then tera fire as necessary and try to chip the physical attackers with groudon. I ended up realizing I couldn't win with scarf korai unless I got max layers so I sacked groudon to do so, and after some recover stalling in the arc war I ended up with koraidon low kicking the last 2 down. Team itself aside from the lunala is fairly standard, ho-oh sp.def for normal eterns but I just got blasted by an mbeam this game anyway. I expected it to either be life orb or just sludge bomb even if it was mbeam because the threat of etern was high so I thought it would want to guarantee the mbeam hits ho-oh. In hindsight I shoulda just gone lunala first if I was gonna do this anyway, its usefulness was limited in the game overall unless I was healthy and could take one hit later on but that wasn't super helpful even then bc it didn't ohko anything. slight misstep but the groudon koraidon core ended up clutching.
The team composition itself is fairly standard, though, with just korai fairyceus etern ho-oh being a super common core of 4 mons and me just choosing to round it out however I wanted. Since the mons to close it out weren't scarf that's why I made the koraidon the scarfer, with no prio no scarf I probably just get folded by deo teams like this. Groudon was smth I hadn't used so I kinda just wanted to try it one game this wcop ngl, so I built around that and figured the natural last was the spinblocker. Already kinda explained the strange lunala set above but it just seemed funny and did work in stall tests when combined with the rest of the team. Rocker fairyceus so don doesn't have to do both hazards and tera dark ho-oh for cheese stored power stuff, fairly normal.
Game 2 vs eoward (W):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ubers-848883?p2
Eoward was the only player in my pool I didn't know much about, so I was unsure what I was gonna face. Given that I mainly just wanted to run something good into stall and HO then back myself in a normal bulky offense vs balance/ bulky offense game to use the tools the team provides well enough if that's the kind of game it ends up being. I did end up facing a balance type team with some very unique picks, being defensive dialga and corviknight. In the game the fairyceus ends up revealing cm taunt so I'm really bad into it with my main answer being a terapagos, so I have to pivot my plan quickly. I go kyogre to try and force a recover to get kyurem in safely, and I get full para'd once but then crit the second attempt to force the recover all the same, just maybe with a bit more damage from crit > 2 opulses. Kyurem tera fire dd's to live the judgment then does it again since I expected a sack. I try sub fishing on kyogre since the game kinda ends if I dodge but it doesn't happen, so the game continues and dialgas tera takes out kyurem. Kyurem did its job tho forcing out the fairyceus, forcing tera, and getting a kill. From there I just pivot around a bit until kyogre gets in again, and he opts to sack fairyceus to it rather than dialga which was a relief since fairyceus still seemed like a massive threat. Koraidon reveals sub iron head and almost makes something happen by critting my fairyceus but I end up pulling it back, and win with a dodge in the korai war then scale shot. I should still be fine even without dodge because I can roar with pagos and the second I get fairyceus in it'll win since it's idef and can beat the corv + korai.
This team itself is probably the least standard, but it doesn't go too far off something normal. It's good to not be super predictable in a stage like this so I wanted this team to be unique and still cover everything I wanted. My main thing was just building around terapagos to cover for any unpredictability from an opponent I knew less about, and kyurem-b was just something I also wanted to use. The next 4 fit in naturally and are just a good core of a team, with korai fairyceus kyogre lando-t being one of the most common cores on bulky offense / balance and I was able to more safely run scarf kyogre with pagos which freed up sd korai breaker. Since lando rocked that meant pagos could starstorm and also that fairyceus could do whatever it wanted, and it can realistically be any cm set here I just felt like using idef and had I lost the korai war at the end it actually woulda ended up being the safest one bc it could def boost on corv so way more luck would be needed to win with the iron head koraidon.
Game 3 vs entro (W):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ubers-850114
My game vs entro was the last of my pool, and it was a really big one at the time since Canada was 14-13 and the qualification for playoffs was going 16-14, so we just had to win 2/3 of the next to make tiebreak, and 3/3 to go straight to playoffs. We ended up finishing the season 15-15 so our last 2 games didn't go as well but I still won this game and it was a good one. Going into this I did the same thing as always really, just try to make sure my mu's into offense and stall are playable then see what I can do in the actual game. I specified no scarfer in the paste because I was unsure if I planned on switching that before my game, and I even did the same vs skyiew but luckily I did commit to changing it from sd to scarf koraidon after losing an HO test game which saved me the actual game. With ekiller and zacian I felt like I'd be okay though. I end up facing the same deo HO that skyiew loaded, just with new sets. The game starts normally, with deo twaving kyogre and it dropping to opulse since it isn't sash, which saving no hazards going up was huge for me. Korai comes in and I just wanna ice beam it in case he assumes I'm choiced, but he switches groudceus and still takes a lot from a few ice beams. Eventually I give up on fishing for not being para'd that many times and force zacian in with ekiller, which lets lando rocks for free and also take it out. He's kinda forced to cc ekiller in this position since if I'm eq or just tera fire and sd recover more the game could end right there. Kyogre luckily lives a groundceus dd eq with the bulk it has, but the bulk up koraidon gets to come in and really threatens the game. The only way out was to pivot around with lando then sack it with 2 turns of sun left, so that when I go into tera fairy koraidon I can CC twice and the drain punch + flame charge won't kill because sun is down and he also won't heal enough back, while I just do enough. If he bulked up again I lost, but also that woulda risked me being dice scale and staying + getting lucky with a bunch of hits to take it out while I can still threaten tera to block drain so the same play of flame charge again was chosen. From there I got to just hit things, made a slight mistake going ndm on his ndm instead of zacian since I thought I couldn't lose but if it was the 1/100 offensive dd + moonlight with sunsteel eq I coulda lost, when zacian was faster and just won. Not a likely scenario at all it's just something to keep in mind for future scenarios to be more careful. NDM cleans from there though.
This team is more flimsy than the others defensively, since the arceus is offensive rather than a defensive fairyceus. To make up for that the korai was tera fairy to try and win the mirror which is what ended up coming in handy, and I had a fairy in zacian-c + another tera fairy just in case, and kyogre to change weather. I mainly just wanted to use ekiller once vs someone and figured it would work into entro since I probably know his teams the best and I assumed he would probably expect something more similar to the first 2 teams I used since this game was played last so there's more info. CM ghost ogre and the standard ndm were there to hopefully cover any stall since entro had stalled earlier in qualifiers, and zacian was dark crunch one because it's just a good set and beats stuff like lunala and ghostceus but also in case he was cm idef ndm since he used that vs me in upl so I just wanted to be sure for the specific player matchup.
