Hello, Smogon!
This is my first post on this forum. I actually registered for this forum precisely because I want to try out the battle subway. I have only Pokemon from Black to select right now, and my starter was Tepig. I have beaten the game's story, so I have access to most of the items and TMs available outside of battle points. I am up for doing some breeding for moves and natures inasmuch as possible with a single Generation V game, and EV training; but, I honestly do not have the patience to shoot for perfect IVs. With these limitations in mind, could you fine folks suggest me a team to work towards building that would let me do well in the battle subway? I ask, despite having read through several pages of this thread, because most of the teams I've seen in this thread feature Pokemon from previous generations and/or moves that are (to my knowledge) only obtainable through breeding across generations.
I had a nice long post all put together and lost it, so now the short and sweet version. Unless you are abusing prankser or trick, speed tends to be king in the subway. I've found that fast, hard hitting teams tend to be the easiest to have reasonable success with.
First, check the first page of
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102593 for record setting subway teams. Search for names of Black accessible pokes, and you'll get a sense of some good movesets. Some will rely on moves that you lack access to, but others won't, and the teams listed there have all achieved success. Be wary of pokemon with odd looking EVs, as this usually means they were EVed to beat very specific threats, and geared to the specific (often perfect) IVs of the poke in question. Using those same spreads on a poke with bad IVs will often fail to achieve similar results.
For a short list of some of my ideas, and sticking with just Pokemon Black accessable pokemon and moves, there are:
Adamant Choice Scarf Darmanitan. With Flare Blitz, this hits ridiculously hard, and can sometimes sweep entire teams. Its got a nice set of other moves available, but Flare Blitz is the backbone
Timid Life Orb/Expert Belt/Choice Specs Starmie (Catch Staryu on route 13). Outruns most everything without a scarf, and has exceptional coverage with surf, psychic, ice beam, and thunderbolt.
Jolly Terrakion. Fast and hard hitting as either an all out attacker or a swords dance set up sweeper. Pity that the two good attacking rock moves (Stone Edge and Rock Slide) have imperfect accuracy, though.
If you have dream world access, you can catch Gastly in the Spooky Manor. Timid focus sash Gengar with shadow ball/thunderbolt/destiny bond/focus blast OR energy ball is one of my favorite leads in the Subway and can take out two opposing pokes a remarkably high fraction of the time.
Ferrothorn is not fast, but its defenses and typing make it extremely strong in the Subway as well.
There's a bunch of other good options out there, but this should get you started. Just looking a those, I'm pretty sure that Gengar/Starmie/Darmanitan could give you a pretty decent streak even with mediocre IVs. Since you are going to breed for nature anyway, I'll note that getting one perfect stat with a power item won't add much time to your breeding process. Since speed is ridiculously important in the subway, I'd thus strongly advise at least breeding for perfect speed while you are breeding for correct natures.
