Intro
Disclaimer: This is my first post on Smogon and the RMT Forums, if I have breached any codes or even ettiquette, please let me know and I'll edit the original post. This is meant to be my first foray into this community as a newbie so please let me know what to change.
Hello! And welcome to both my first RMT, and my first post on the Smogon Forums. I’m making this rmt to tell a story of sorts, about my delve into exploring the beauty that is competitive pokemon. This will be quite a long post, so do bear with me, forgive me unfamiliarity with the scene, and thank you to those that read, offer feedback, and the opponents who have welcomed me into this community with great games! If you don’t care about the ‘story’ part of this team, skip the wall of texts below and get to the good stuff. I took a break for about a week for holiday prep stuff now, but I would say that I have been playing Pokemon seriously for a grand total of two weeks. So I am a complete and utter amateur, and this team was what had started me on my journey to learn this game.Disclaimer: This is my first post on Smogon and the RMT Forums, if I have breached any codes or even ettiquette, please let me know and I'll edit the original post. This is meant to be my first foray into this community as a newbie so please let me know what to change.
This team was created and played in the dynamax meta, but as you’ll see, it only stands to gain from the banning. When discussing the various mons and how to play out this team, I’ll be referring to dynamax several times as it was a fundamental part of the game during its creation, and drives a lot of the decisions.
This team helped me reach the 1700s around the time suspect test was happening. And, when I discovered the ‘challenge’ of reaching voting reqs, I decided to give it a try. And regretfully ...fell -literally- just short.
A little about me first. I dabbled with PS a few times in the past, during both gen 5 and 7, but never with any degree of seriousness, perhaps playing a whopping 50 or so games each generation. But with the release of Sword and Shield, and an availability of time, I was determined to see how deeply I could delve into the world of battling. I’m coming in with very little experience With that in mind, when it came to teambuilding, I had a few core goals.
- Learn the game
- Learn to teambuild
So with those two goals in mind, I started with the simplest concept imaginable. I wanted to make a team that could have game in any matchup, against every threat. No team is perfect, that’s something we learn quickly. But I wanted to achieve a balance ...heh ...that would afford me the flexibility to adapt my play and the utilization of each mon to make a game out of anything.
In a MTG podcast ran by Cedric Phillips, he was brewing decks for a tournament, and showed one to a friend of his, a prominent player and streamer by the name of Michael Jacob. What Michael asked him was an important question.
“Where do you get your free wins?”
While laddering, when playing dozens of games, in a long tournament, the concept of having achievable circumstances and win conditions that give you the opportunity to skew results in your favor is important. However.You’re not getting free wins with this team. There is no setup sweeper, no dynamax abuser. The defensive mons aren’t true walls that can indefinitely stall out an opponent. Pokemon at its core, is a game of inches, of the summation of micro and macro decisions gradually tipping the game in your favor. This team thrives on those edges. Many of its matches are won with a single mon left at 30 hp (Usually Hydreigon), and it was #allaccording to plan.
There is also no ditto. No ‘Bail you out’ button. During the Dynamax era, this meant that I had to play aggressively to prevent my opponents from achieving sweep conditions. My most often use of dynamax was on the same turn my opponent did to prevent their sweep from starting. A really common play pattern would be against an opposing gyarados, where I’d hard swap to clef on the DD, and -immediately- dynamax lightning, as clef can live the +1 hit and OHKO back.
In exchange for the flexibility to adapt your role in the matchup, to answer any threat presented, we give up this ‘free win’ equity. But remember. The goal of this team wasn’t to win. It was to -learn-. My philosophy was to focus on learning, to -become- a good pokemon player, and if I did that, well, hopefully winning would come as a result of that. I’ve rambled on long enough, so without further ado, let’s get to it. Note.
Being entirely new to competitive Pokemon, I know VERY little about ev spreads, so several of these are taken at the suggestion of others, and the friends I’ve made while laddering. And likely the place I need to most input and suggestion.
The Team
Easy Import
Clefable @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 192 HP / 252 SpA / 64 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Moonlight
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
In this team, every mon has its role. They are fundamental for the team to function as a unit. If I had to choose an mvp however? It would be this beast. What really needs to be said about LO clef? Very few things profitably switch into this, and it makes prediction a nightmare for the opponent. Getting clef freely onto the battlefield is one of the core parts of this team as you’ll see later. Baiting out mons that allow it to switch in and start clicking buttons. One thing on prediction when facing down clefable. You put so much pressure on the opponent. If you are throwing thunderbolts at a toxapex, and show the willingness to flamethrower in expectation of an excadrill switch, they are the one under pressure for this war of prediction. If they guess right, and excadrill eats a thunderbolt, or pex a flamethrower, oh well. They gain a bit of momentum but nothing you cannot recoup from. If they guess wrong? Their drill dies for free.
Leveraging a position where clefable can profitably put this pressure on your opponent is one of the pillars of this team. We’re not especially fast, we’re not especially bulky top to bottom. We have to play this game of inches, and clef is a mon that turns those inches into moonblast sized dents.
During the Dynamax era, clef was probably my most often maxd mon, either to break or to survive a hit from ops Dynamax, such as the gyarados example. Clefable is vital to this team, and be very careful with it. When playing against Ferrothorn, be wary of swapping Clef into a gyroball, try and scout or burn it first. There’s no reason to take that unnecessary risk.
The speed is to beat uninvested coriknight, as while clef already does disgusting things to the bird, outspeeding it makes some niche sets more manageable, and also means that clef can swap into Corv without ironhead and win the 1v1 even eating a brave bird on the swap. Clef is the middle...blob in our offensive trio which we’ll get to later. While it punches holes through the majority of the metagame, the other two members will strike more surgically. But first, the defensive backbone.
Corviknight @ Leftovers
Ability: Mirror Armor
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD / 4 Spe
Careful Nature
- Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Defog
- Roost
You know the bird, you love or hate the bird, but there's no denying its potency. This good boi puts in the most honest work for this team. Corv is a blanket check and wall that swaps into something like ⅔ of the tier without a care in the world. We opt for a specially defensive set with mirror armor and uturn for a few reasons. The first reason for mirror armour is quite simply, mystical fire. Simply by having this ability, Corv suddenly checks hatterene, as even if they predict the swap and fire you on the switch, they won’t be able to OHKO afterwards with the spa drop. It also allows you to indefinitely wall things like Specs Pult Shadow balls.
I’ve experimented with the last moveslot quite a bit, and ultimately decided that U-Turn is what benefits the team most. While the added coverage of iron head, body press, or the utility of something like taunt is nice, the momentum dropped from swapping in a corv with little offensive presence is important to recuperate. A slow u-turn is incredibly useful to this team, as it allows corv to sponge a hit or scout a swap, and bring in one of our breakers.
Something else that Corv does is laugh in the face of Sub Dragons. I can’t count how many times corv has 1v1’d a sub DD dragapult just by spamming bravebird fearlessly....heh…
This team as I’ll constantly allude to, involves many decisions and evaluations of relative value, allocating resources, and often it means that mons can fill roles such as this you didn’t expect them to fill. A tanky corv just throwing bravebirds at something squishy trying to set-up is a -very- potent strategy in some cases.
During the Dynamax meta, corv is probably the mon my opponents dynamax the most -against- to try and break through it. They would often fail, or end up in a very negative trade in the long term. Trading their max and offensive momentum even if they secure the KO, in exchange for Corv’s life is a trade I was -very- happy with in a wide variety of circumstances.
Seismitoad @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Stealth Rock
- Protect
- Toxic
**Role Compression** What’s that? You need a water immunity, a ground type, rocks, a fatty that can stall and buy turns, and a status to cripple opposing mons all in one? Is there any question why seismitoad sees such a high usage? With the importance of water immunity straining team building, seismitoad is quite simply the solution that allows you the most freedom in other spots of your team. It scouts and stalls with protect, it laughs in the face of rotoms, invites in Ferrothorn to sit there and do nothing while this team preys on it. This fat lovable blue blob makes this team possible. Using any other water immunity, ground type, rocker, would leave a hole in the team that makes the house of cards collapse. Be wary of opposing hatterens. If you need to judge for yourself how likely they are to swap. One of the mons later is comfortable swapping into hat, but there’s no reason to expose your toad to a toxic or rock bounce, or to try and read the swap and expose the other mon. When in doubt, play safe and scald, you can make up for the slight loss in turn equity.
A common play pattern with toad will be to swap it into a dracovish, or a rotom form. At this point there are a few options. If the draco went for crunch you can live two hits, but can’t tank it indefinitely. A few other members can eat a crunch but you need to decide how valuable their hp is. And even if they went for a rend and are swapping, you need to decide what they’re likely to go to. Seismotoad is a great switch in to common threats, but its also very easy to lose momentum and turn equity of you toxic a steel type or whatnot. Thankfully, that momentum can mostly be recouped, but it’s something you always have to keep in mind when constructing a gameplan. How are you going to utilize the opportunity to pivot toad provided?
Hydreigon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Dark Pulse
- Fire Blast
- U-turn
Remember how I said this team gets no free wins? Well fire blasting a darmanitan lead is pretty damn close. Hydreigon is great. I especially love the nasty plot draco set. But it’s not what this team needs. We are slow as all heck and we need something that can be immediately threatening to shift momentum back in our favor. We scare Pult, We Scare Darm, we scare Fossils. Hydreigon is the cleaner, and often a lot of games turn into a game of cat and mouse between Hydreigon and a key threat. After the opposing team’s win conditions have been picked apart, and all that's left is something that is trying to avoid hydreigon, the game can turn into a trade of sacs back and forth, but if you play to that endgame, you’ll always win ...as long as draco doesn’t miss….
One key point on accuracy. You need to accept the losses that happen because of them. While I was doing the suspect test. I had 4. 4 games, where the first turn involved hydreigon missing fireblast and dying to darm. You accept that. If you play 100 games and win 85 of them because of fireblast and lose 15...guess what you’re not -unlucky- to lose those 15 games. It’s the tradeoff for the raw power you make. Pokemon isn’t about a single game. Something BKC said in his recent video about dynamax, is that greatness, being a great player isn't about the short-term, about spiking or winning a single game. It’s about consistency, and this is a theory that's held true for countless years in sports and competition. Accept the ‘unlucky’ missed, its the risk you take and don’t get salty.
Back to Hydreigon. Fireblast for darm and ferro obviously, draco for raw power and the ability to body the other dragons. Dark pulse for ghosts and spammability, and uturn for chip and momentum, its a very standard but very effective scarf set. Something important is knowing how and when to take accuracy risks. Calc often so you know when you dont need to risk a fireblast and can just dark pulse. Once they know its scarfed this set is -very- likely to promote swaps, so be ready to uturn liberally. Also. This set gets laughed at by faeries. But luckily….
Aegislash @ Choice Band
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 40 HP / 252 Atk / 216 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Iron Head
- Shadow Sneak
- Psycho Cut
Say hello to fairy killer, fat killer, and revenge killer. The speed is there to beat Adamant Craw, as well as all the slow fat faeries. Everyone is familiar with the Hydreigon Aegislash cores, but paired with clefable, these choice sets handle the extremes of the meta’s spectrum, while clefable handles...basically everything else.
This thing is a glass canon, and a momentum sink, but also game-winning. Games are often decided on your aegislash usage, and its ability to remove mons that clef and hydreigon struggle with.
A very common playpattern, was to swap Aegi into a faerie (Not togekiss but more on this mon later), eating a firemove but that didn’t matter. Don’t even bother dynamaxing just hit that ironhead button. If they don’t Dyna, they will die. If they Dyna and aren’t heavily defense invested. They will still die. If they are? Guess what, Aegislash is faster and they will still be in the red. They’ll kill your aegislash but their faerie is crippled and fodder for the rest of the team, and they used their dynamax.
Banded Shadowsneak meanwhile, is frankly disgusting. Anything offensive that doesn’t resist it takes like half their health. Dragapult without suckerpunch is fodder. Opposing Aegislash rip this set apart as they can live a shadow sneak with a king's shield drop and kill you back. I’ll reiterate, this aegislash is a cannon made of paper. It can tank a good amount of hits on the swap that it resists, but unless you’re spamming shadow sneak to pick off weakened mons, you’re probably utilizing this to kill something and sack or swap, or to scare out something you can’t deal with otherwise.
Most people opt for head smashed in the last slot. I opted for psycho cut. The reason for this is pex. Clefable does dirty, dirty things to physdef pex, but its still the only thing that can really threaten it. And there is already a huge burden on clefable to do the heavy lifting for this team. I found the option to threaten pex more valuable than access to rock smash for this team alone, and thus opted to run it.
Games are won and lost on how you use Aegislash. It is the most polarizing member of this team. It can save you from situations no others can. It is the only thing able to even remotely touch snorlax. If you are surgical with your use, good with predictions, and this might mean conditioning your opponent at times, such as with the pex scenario above, this thing will punch holes. Don’t expect it to live a hit in sword stance though….It was almost ohkod by a poltegeist’s sucker punch. A polteigeist’s sucker punch.
Now, we have a ‘defensivekinda’ core of Corv/Clef/Toad, an offensive one of Scarf Hydreigon, Bandslash and clef. And now the question is what ties it together.
This last slot has been in fluctuation between 4 mons. Cinderace, Ditto, and Rotom Wash all made appearances. Cinderace offers more offensive presence and momentum, a swap into opposing LO clefables, and the frankly busted move in court change, that removes a bit of defog pressure from Corv.
Ditto is...well ditto. It’s a safetynet, revenge killer, and hilarious switchin to trick rotoms while you sit there and play chicken.
Rotom Wash, scarf and leftovers both, are good, and at one point I was running a scarf version that outspeeds Max investment HDB Cinderace (A huge problem for this team). But ultimately I decided on the boy…
Rotom-Heat @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 200 Def / 56 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Will-O-Wisp
- Volt Switch
- Overheat
- Nasty Plot
In the Dynamax meta, Nasty Plot was an option to allow a rigged sort of dynasweep from rotom. It also lets it...I’m not sure how to describe this. Scout in a way without committing to a volt-switch, or a meaningless will-o-wisp. I mentioned a game of inches, and there is a small amount of equity in your pivot ‘setting up’ for a turn, to see how the opponent responds. Even if all it yields is a bit more damage from your next volt switch. That and the added dyna-opportunity allowed me to favor nasty plot, but in a post Dynaban I would run something else. Shadowball is an option to hit the various ghosts, toad etc. Thunderwave for threats you would rather slow than burn, Thunderbolt for more damage, discharge for a balance.
Rotom freely swaps into Darm without fear, and is another answer to corviknight, and eats any hit from LO Clefable. This team, as I’ve said many times, wins on inches, and a flexible pivot such as rotom is crucial in those victories. Burning a key threat, or even a ferrothorn to make your clef safer. Eating hits from Togekiss and Cinderace. Using HDB, we have no recovery with this set so its hp is a resource that needs to be utilized wisely. At team preview, assess rotoms role, how important it is to accomplish what task, and don’t recklessly throw it away until that job is done. That applies to every member of this team, but especially rotom, Aegislash, and Hydreigon, as their hp is a resource that’s nonrecoverable.
How to play this team
Analyze. Decide the relative value of each pokemon against the opponent. This team is above all else, meant to give you the tools to ‘break’ opposing teams and their win conditions. You need to decide what those are, and how to achieve that. And that’s the point. This team was made to made me learn pokemon, to be better at pokemon.
Your Slash/Hydreigon/Rotom have no forms of recovery, they can switch in a finite amount of time depending on the gamestate. The goal of this team is to safely get in breakers and shatter the opponent's momentum. How are you going to accomplish that? Is there only one mon that threatens Hydreigon? Who beats it, how, how do you lure it onto the field to wear it down. What is your opponents gameplan, how are they seeking to win, how do you prevent that?
There is no ‘easy’ answer with this team.
Threats
While this team was made to be able to answer anything the meta can throw at you. And I can confidently say that’s true as long as you evaluate the match up properly, there are a few key threats that are particularly troublesome to deal with.The Team
Easy Import
Clefable @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 192 HP / 252 SpA / 64 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Moonlight
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
In this team, every mon has its role. They are fundamental for the team to function as a unit. If I had to choose an mvp however? It would be this beast. What really needs to be said about LO clef? Very few things profitably switch into this, and it makes prediction a nightmare for the opponent. Getting clef freely onto the battlefield is one of the core parts of this team as you’ll see later. Baiting out mons that allow it to switch in and start clicking buttons. One thing on prediction when facing down clefable. You put so much pressure on the opponent. If you are throwing thunderbolts at a toxapex, and show the willingness to flamethrower in expectation of an excadrill switch, they are the one under pressure for this war of prediction. If they guess right, and excadrill eats a thunderbolt, or pex a flamethrower, oh well. They gain a bit of momentum but nothing you cannot recoup from. If they guess wrong? Their drill dies for free.
Leveraging a position where clefable can profitably put this pressure on your opponent is one of the pillars of this team. We’re not especially fast, we’re not especially bulky top to bottom. We have to play this game of inches, and clef is a mon that turns those inches into moonblast sized dents.
During the Dynamax era, clef was probably my most often maxd mon, either to break or to survive a hit from ops Dynamax, such as the gyarados example. Clefable is vital to this team, and be very careful with it. When playing against Ferrothorn, be wary of swapping Clef into a gyroball, try and scout or burn it first. There’s no reason to take that unnecessary risk.
The speed is to beat uninvested coriknight, as while clef already does disgusting things to the bird, outspeeding it makes some niche sets more manageable, and also means that clef can swap into Corv without ironhead and win the 1v1 even eating a brave bird on the swap. Clef is the middle...blob in our offensive trio which we’ll get to later. While it punches holes through the majority of the metagame, the other two members will strike more surgically. But first, the defensive backbone.
Corviknight @ Leftovers
Ability: Mirror Armor
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD / 4 Spe
Careful Nature
- Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Defog
- Roost
You know the bird, you love or hate the bird, but there's no denying its potency. This good boi puts in the most honest work for this team. Corv is a blanket check and wall that swaps into something like ⅔ of the tier without a care in the world. We opt for a specially defensive set with mirror armor and uturn for a few reasons. The first reason for mirror armour is quite simply, mystical fire. Simply by having this ability, Corv suddenly checks hatterene, as even if they predict the swap and fire you on the switch, they won’t be able to OHKO afterwards with the spa drop. It also allows you to indefinitely wall things like Specs Pult Shadow balls.
I’ve experimented with the last moveslot quite a bit, and ultimately decided that U-Turn is what benefits the team most. While the added coverage of iron head, body press, or the utility of something like taunt is nice, the momentum dropped from swapping in a corv with little offensive presence is important to recuperate. A slow u-turn is incredibly useful to this team, as it allows corv to sponge a hit or scout a swap, and bring in one of our breakers.
Something else that Corv does is laugh in the face of Sub Dragons. I can’t count how many times corv has 1v1’d a sub DD dragapult just by spamming bravebird fearlessly....heh…
This team as I’ll constantly allude to, involves many decisions and evaluations of relative value, allocating resources, and often it means that mons can fill roles such as this you didn’t expect them to fill. A tanky corv just throwing bravebirds at something squishy trying to set-up is a -very- potent strategy in some cases.
During the Dynamax meta, corv is probably the mon my opponents dynamax the most -against- to try and break through it. They would often fail, or end up in a very negative trade in the long term. Trading their max and offensive momentum even if they secure the KO, in exchange for Corv’s life is a trade I was -very- happy with in a wide variety of circumstances.
Seismitoad @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Stealth Rock
- Protect
- Toxic
**Role Compression** What’s that? You need a water immunity, a ground type, rocks, a fatty that can stall and buy turns, and a status to cripple opposing mons all in one? Is there any question why seismitoad sees such a high usage? With the importance of water immunity straining team building, seismitoad is quite simply the solution that allows you the most freedom in other spots of your team. It scouts and stalls with protect, it laughs in the face of rotoms, invites in Ferrothorn to sit there and do nothing while this team preys on it. This fat lovable blue blob makes this team possible. Using any other water immunity, ground type, rocker, would leave a hole in the team that makes the house of cards collapse. Be wary of opposing hatterens. If you need to judge for yourself how likely they are to swap. One of the mons later is comfortable swapping into hat, but there’s no reason to expose your toad to a toxic or rock bounce, or to try and read the swap and expose the other mon. When in doubt, play safe and scald, you can make up for the slight loss in turn equity.
A common play pattern with toad will be to swap it into a dracovish, or a rotom form. At this point there are a few options. If the draco went for crunch you can live two hits, but can’t tank it indefinitely. A few other members can eat a crunch but you need to decide how valuable their hp is. And even if they went for a rend and are swapping, you need to decide what they’re likely to go to. Seismotoad is a great switch in to common threats, but its also very easy to lose momentum and turn equity of you toxic a steel type or whatnot. Thankfully, that momentum can mostly be recouped, but it’s something you always have to keep in mind when constructing a gameplan. How are you going to utilize the opportunity to pivot toad provided?
Hydreigon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Dark Pulse
- Fire Blast
- U-turn
Remember how I said this team gets no free wins? Well fire blasting a darmanitan lead is pretty damn close. Hydreigon is great. I especially love the nasty plot draco set. But it’s not what this team needs. We are slow as all heck and we need something that can be immediately threatening to shift momentum back in our favor. We scare Pult, We Scare Darm, we scare Fossils. Hydreigon is the cleaner, and often a lot of games turn into a game of cat and mouse between Hydreigon and a key threat. After the opposing team’s win conditions have been picked apart, and all that's left is something that is trying to avoid hydreigon, the game can turn into a trade of sacs back and forth, but if you play to that endgame, you’ll always win ...as long as draco doesn’t miss….
One key point on accuracy. You need to accept the losses that happen because of them. While I was doing the suspect test. I had 4. 4 games, where the first turn involved hydreigon missing fireblast and dying to darm. You accept that. If you play 100 games and win 85 of them because of fireblast and lose 15...guess what you’re not -unlucky- to lose those 15 games. It’s the tradeoff for the raw power you make. Pokemon isn’t about a single game. Something BKC said in his recent video about dynamax, is that greatness, being a great player isn't about the short-term, about spiking or winning a single game. It’s about consistency, and this is a theory that's held true for countless years in sports and competition. Accept the ‘unlucky’ missed, its the risk you take and don’t get salty.
Back to Hydreigon. Fireblast for darm and ferro obviously, draco for raw power and the ability to body the other dragons. Dark pulse for ghosts and spammability, and uturn for chip and momentum, its a very standard but very effective scarf set. Something important is knowing how and when to take accuracy risks. Calc often so you know when you dont need to risk a fireblast and can just dark pulse. Once they know its scarfed this set is -very- likely to promote swaps, so be ready to uturn liberally. Also. This set gets laughed at by faeries. But luckily….
Aegislash @ Choice Band
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 40 HP / 252 Atk / 216 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Iron Head
- Shadow Sneak
- Psycho Cut
Say hello to fairy killer, fat killer, and revenge killer. The speed is there to beat Adamant Craw, as well as all the slow fat faeries. Everyone is familiar with the Hydreigon Aegislash cores, but paired with clefable, these choice sets handle the extremes of the meta’s spectrum, while clefable handles...basically everything else.
This thing is a glass canon, and a momentum sink, but also game-winning. Games are often decided on your aegislash usage, and its ability to remove mons that clef and hydreigon struggle with.
A very common playpattern, was to swap Aegi into a faerie (Not togekiss but more on this mon later), eating a firemove but that didn’t matter. Don’t even bother dynamaxing just hit that ironhead button. If they don’t Dyna, they will die. If they Dyna and aren’t heavily defense invested. They will still die. If they are? Guess what, Aegislash is faster and they will still be in the red. They’ll kill your aegislash but their faerie is crippled and fodder for the rest of the team, and they used their dynamax.
Banded Shadowsneak meanwhile, is frankly disgusting. Anything offensive that doesn’t resist it takes like half their health. Dragapult without suckerpunch is fodder. Opposing Aegislash rip this set apart as they can live a shadow sneak with a king's shield drop and kill you back. I’ll reiterate, this aegislash is a cannon made of paper. It can tank a good amount of hits on the swap that it resists, but unless you’re spamming shadow sneak to pick off weakened mons, you’re probably utilizing this to kill something and sack or swap, or to scare out something you can’t deal with otherwise.
Most people opt for head smashed in the last slot. I opted for psycho cut. The reason for this is pex. Clefable does dirty, dirty things to physdef pex, but its still the only thing that can really threaten it. And there is already a huge burden on clefable to do the heavy lifting for this team. I found the option to threaten pex more valuable than access to rock smash for this team alone, and thus opted to run it.
Games are won and lost on how you use Aegislash. It is the most polarizing member of this team. It can save you from situations no others can. It is the only thing able to even remotely touch snorlax. If you are surgical with your use, good with predictions, and this might mean conditioning your opponent at times, such as with the pex scenario above, this thing will punch holes. Don’t expect it to live a hit in sword stance though….It was almost ohkod by a poltegeist’s sucker punch. A polteigeist’s sucker punch.
Now, we have a ‘defensivekinda’ core of Corv/Clef/Toad, an offensive one of Scarf Hydreigon, Bandslash and clef. And now the question is what ties it together.
This last slot has been in fluctuation between 4 mons. Cinderace, Ditto, and Rotom Wash all made appearances. Cinderace offers more offensive presence and momentum, a swap into opposing LO clefables, and the frankly busted move in court change, that removes a bit of defog pressure from Corv.
Ditto is...well ditto. It’s a safetynet, revenge killer, and hilarious switchin to trick rotoms while you sit there and play chicken.
Rotom Wash, scarf and leftovers both, are good, and at one point I was running a scarf version that outspeeds Max investment HDB Cinderace (A huge problem for this team). But ultimately I decided on the boy…
Rotom-Heat @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 200 Def / 56 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Will-O-Wisp
- Volt Switch
- Overheat
- Nasty Plot
In the Dynamax meta, Nasty Plot was an option to allow a rigged sort of dynasweep from rotom. It also lets it...I’m not sure how to describe this. Scout in a way without committing to a volt-switch, or a meaningless will-o-wisp. I mentioned a game of inches, and there is a small amount of equity in your pivot ‘setting up’ for a turn, to see how the opponent responds. Even if all it yields is a bit more damage from your next volt switch. That and the added dyna-opportunity allowed me to favor nasty plot, but in a post Dynaban I would run something else. Shadowball is an option to hit the various ghosts, toad etc. Thunderwave for threats you would rather slow than burn, Thunderbolt for more damage, discharge for a balance.
Rotom freely swaps into Darm without fear, and is another answer to corviknight, and eats any hit from LO Clefable. This team, as I’ve said many times, wins on inches, and a flexible pivot such as rotom is crucial in those victories. Burning a key threat, or even a ferrothorn to make your clef safer. Eating hits from Togekiss and Cinderace. Using HDB, we have no recovery with this set so its hp is a resource that needs to be utilized wisely. At team preview, assess rotoms role, how important it is to accomplish what task, and don’t recklessly throw it away until that job is done. That applies to every member of this team, but especially rotom, Aegislash, and Hydreigon, as their hp is a resource that’s nonrecoverable.
How to play this team
Analyze. Decide the relative value of each pokemon against the opponent. This team is above all else, meant to give you the tools to ‘break’ opposing teams and their win conditions. You need to decide what those are, and how to achieve that. And that’s the point. This team was made to made me learn pokemon, to be better at pokemon.
Your Slash/Hydreigon/Rotom have no forms of recovery, they can switch in a finite amount of time depending on the gamestate. The goal of this team is to safely get in breakers and shatter the opponent's momentum. How are you going to accomplish that? Is there only one mon that threatens Hydreigon? Who beats it, how, how do you lure it onto the field to wear it down. What is your opponents gameplan, how are they seeking to win, how do you prevent that?
There is no ‘easy’ answer with this team.
Threats
Togekiss. While less threatening post Dynamax ban, it was frankly rather terrifying. Aegislash can’t handle it, as it would die to a boosted firemove. If you somehow got lucky on a uturn with them swapping Kiss into hydreigon you could do it. Rotom resists most sets bar psychic, but still gets massively chunked. Your option was honestly to go clef hard most of the time, trade dynamaxes, leaving you both in the red, and stalling out dynaturns before you could revenge kill it with shadow sneak. Here is a replay of a game that was worst case scenario.
This replay had everything, and while it was using the wash variant, it’s still a great one.
-Fireblast Miss
-Amazing Flinches
-A togekiss with weakness policy catching me off guard and running rampant.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1029567801
I’ll link it again later in replay section but I thought this was an amazing game.
Cinderace. Cinderace is a problem. It freely swaps into clef, and while toad and rotom can take its hits, they still get chipped and u-turned on. Hydreigon can kill it with draco meteor if its weakened, but this mon is a massive headache to wear-down for this team, and it usually involves a combination of chip from eating clefable moonblasts, as well as..well beating its team. Its hard for this team to ‘directly’ answer cinderace, as it is with many, but what you can do is minimize the damage it causes while breaking the opponents team.
Toxtricity. Time to guess....Toad still take a hefty chunk from boomburst, Slash takes a massive hit from overdrive. Scouting when its choiced is important. If its shift gear...well most of your mons can live a hit and chip it down. Similar to a lot of the threats to this team, your goal is to pile on chip dmg and minimize the inevitable hole its going to punch.
Obstagoon. Nothing really wants to swap into this thing. Hydreigon can hurt it bad, and it can be chipped with uturns, but knock off is really annoying against this (And most teams). Immunity to shadow sneak means im very reliant on hydreigon coming in to clean it, and letting it be worn down by its own burns.
Spdf Pex. Walls the entire team bar aegislash, and can somewhat stalemate with clef...sort of? You can't 2HKO with thunderbolt, but they also don't want to sit there and risk a para, or stall out of recovers. But clef is vital to this team so a mon that only it can deal with would be an issue if it is taxed elsewhere. This is why the psycho cut on Aegislash, as it gives you another answer to spdf pex. Just pray to avoid scald burns...
Setup Sweepers. Dynamax abusers are gone, but this team needed to play VERY aggressively to avoid getting swept. It’s still very easy to lose to a Hawlucha or a dragon dance mon if you get too complacent. Shadowsneak helps quite a bit in that regard, as well as the myriad of status effects you can inflict, and with clever swaps and stacking you can weather the storm, but you don’t have very many ‘safety valves’ for something getting out of hand.
Stall. We don’t have a sub NP Hydreigon that can run wild after their hazer is gone. Cleff is your god here, be very careful with it. Aegislash is likely going to need to surprised kill a pex as they’ll never expose it to clef, so you need to psycho cut on a prediction swap. Don’t show it too early, if you bring in on a sylv or clef, just go for the ironhead if they’re greedy and think you can live, if they swap to pex, they’ll be conditioned to do it next time. Try and get pex chipped with clef so it has to jump out and regenerate to 70 or so. Beating Stall with this team is about assessing the point where you can exploit weakness, and make the house of cards start crumbling down.
Replays
The aforementioned nightmare game with a Kiss getting out of hand:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1029567801
Playing from behind and clef hard-carrying. Really showing off the synergy between Clef/Corv/Slash/Dragon
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1029502758
One of my first games learning this team, and the inexperience shows, sets were unrefined, but wanted to highlight this game as this person helped me work on the sets and improve the team quite a bit.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1028059280
Another game where my unfamiliarity shows. I very clearly thought that clef could live a ninetales fire blast in the sun. I was wrong and punished and now needed to play from a disadvantageous spot. I get fortunate with a miss later on aegislash, but even as offensively ev’d as it is, it would have lived that hit.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1028052093
Conclusion
I know this has been a long read. Forgive my inexperience and rambling, but I wanted to share the story of how I’ve fallen in love with this game. Thanks to those that read through it all, thanks to those who skipped to the sets, and thanks to those that saw the wall of text and said ‘hell nah’ anyways. Great community, great game, looking forward to being a part of it.
Edit Log
-Added Toxtricity, the Goon, and Spdf Pex to threats. Thought I had them there but didn't copy from original doc draft.
-Thank you-
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