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Black & White Battle Subway Records
- Thread starter Peterko
- Start date
Reporting by far my highest streak: 407 wins. It’s an improvement of this one where I got 213 wins, the major difference being Scrafty replacing Hitmontop: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/black-white-battle-subway-records.102593/post-10400512
If I lose by stupidity I always have a hard time to let it go, as I feel I have failed the team and it could go farer. I lost the 213-Hitmontop-streak to stupidity. I tried again, but with some changes:
Firstly, I RNGd a perfect Suicune with HP Grass (now way better stats: 183, x, 136, 139, 156, 123, compared to the first Suicune: 183, x, 132, 109, 148, 102). I then also tried a bunch of different sets. Scald and Tailwind were mandatory. I played around with different combinations of Ice Beam, HP Grass, Rest, Calm Mind and Snarl. Without Ice Beam I did not even get to 100 again in 3 or 4 attempts. Depending on which moves I had, I struggled with defensively boosting stuff, Water immune stuff, evasion raising stuff, Minimize Blissey (Missey), and also especically CM + Rest enemies. There seemed to be no answer to all of this within a 4-move Suicune, and eventually I acknowledged that I need Ice Beam, and that HP Grass also is needed. Had I another moveslot available I definitely would choose Rest. Then I never had to worry about Missey again. This and much other stuff can just be PP stalled, and Rest came into play nicely with the Lum that Suicune already has. With the room I had on the other team members I tried my best to improve the matchup against Missey and other defensively boosting stuff such as Cofagrigus or Musharna. I wanted to give Hitmontop Taunt but it cannot learn it (Scrafty could), so I went for Toxic, and on Latios I changed Grass Knot for Psyshock, because of Blissey, and also because Suicune now covered Grass. Toxic worked way better than I thought. You usually can afford a miss against slowly boosting stuff, and whenever I saw a CM Cofagrigus for instance I just Toxiced it and leant back. Now I finally understand Toxic on Josh Cs Arcanine in his battle tree streak.
The team felt more solid, but I lost on battle 181 before reaching the former record, despite the way better Suicune. Looking at the threatlist: Psychics, Ghosts, defensive boosters, evasion boosters, Blissey, … Scrafty would be so good against all of these, I just did not use one because I had no way of getting one with Intimidate. Or so I thought, eventually I got one, thanks to Charliezard7! I played it with FO, Drain Punch, Crunch, Taunt and Eject Button. It hardly got KOs on its own, I really missed Tops power. And idk if it was only because it had one priority move less than Top, but Eject Button eventually more felt like a burden than an asset. I lost at around 100 I think. Then I replaced Eject Button with Fighting Gem, tried again, and found myself climbing higher and higher, 407 wins first try, more than I ever dared to hope. Scrafty is so f good! Fighting Gem changes everyhting.
And the Psyshock on Latios which in the first place I chose to improve the Blissey matchup, also came in handy against the new fighting weakness from Scrafty.
Firstly, I RNGd a perfect Suicune with HP Grass (now way better stats: 183, x, 136, 139, 156, 123, compared to the first Suicune: 183, x, 132, 109, 148, 102). I then also tried a bunch of different sets. Scald and Tailwind were mandatory. I played around with different combinations of Ice Beam, HP Grass, Rest, Calm Mind and Snarl. Without Ice Beam I did not even get to 100 again in 3 or 4 attempts. Depending on which moves I had, I struggled with defensively boosting stuff, Water immune stuff, evasion raising stuff, Minimize Blissey (Missey), and also especically CM + Rest enemies. There seemed to be no answer to all of this within a 4-move Suicune, and eventually I acknowledged that I need Ice Beam, and that HP Grass also is needed. Had I another moveslot available I definitely would choose Rest. Then I never had to worry about Missey again. This and much other stuff can just be PP stalled, and Rest came into play nicely with the Lum that Suicune already has. With the room I had on the other team members I tried my best to improve the matchup against Missey and other defensively boosting stuff such as Cofagrigus or Musharna. I wanted to give Hitmontop Taunt but it cannot learn it (Scrafty could), so I went for Toxic, and on Latios I changed Grass Knot for Psyshock, because of Blissey, and also because Suicune now covered Grass. Toxic worked way better than I thought. You usually can afford a miss against slowly boosting stuff, and whenever I saw a CM Cofagrigus for instance I just Toxiced it and leant back. Now I finally understand Toxic on Josh Cs Arcanine in his battle tree streak.
The team felt more solid, but I lost on battle 181 before reaching the former record, despite the way better Suicune. Looking at the threatlist: Psychics, Ghosts, defensive boosters, evasion boosters, Blissey, … Scrafty would be so good against all of these, I just did not use one because I had no way of getting one with Intimidate. Or so I thought, eventually I got one, thanks to Charliezard7! I played it with FO, Drain Punch, Crunch, Taunt and Eject Button. It hardly got KOs on its own, I really missed Tops power. And idk if it was only because it had one priority move less than Top, but Eject Button eventually more felt like a burden than an asset. I lost at around 100 I think. Then I replaced Eject Button with Fighting Gem, tried again, and found myself climbing higher and higher, 407 wins first try, more than I ever dared to hope. Scrafty is so f good! Fighting Gem changes everyhting.
And the Psyshock on Latios which in the first place I chose to improve the Blissey matchup, also came in handy against the new fighting weakness from Scrafty.
Suicune Lum Berry
Modest
60 HP / 4Def / 140 SAtk / 164 SDef / 140 Spd
-Tailwind
-Scald
-Ice beam
-HP Grass
Scrafty @Fighting Gem
Adamant
76 HP / 252 Atk / 180 Spd
Intimidate
-Fake Out
-Drain Punch
-Crunch
-Taunt
Typhlosion fire Gem
Modest
4 HP / 4 Def / 248 SAtk / 252 Spd
-Eruption
-Flamethrower
-HP Ground (EQ)
-Protect
Latios @LO
Timid
4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
-Dragon Pulse
-Psyshock
-Thunderbolt
-Protect
Speeds: Cune 123, Scrafty 101, Typhlosion 152, Latios 178
Modest
60 HP / 4Def / 140 SAtk / 164 SDef / 140 Spd
-Tailwind
-Scald
-Ice beam
-HP Grass
Scrafty @Fighting Gem
Adamant
76 HP / 252 Atk / 180 Spd
Intimidate
-Fake Out
-Drain Punch
-Crunch
-Taunt
Typhlosion fire Gem
Modest
4 HP / 4 Def / 248 SAtk / 252 Spd
-Eruption
-Flamethrower
-HP Ground (EQ)
-Protect
Latios @LO
Timid
4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
-Dragon Pulse
-Psyshock
-Thunderbolt
-Protect
Speeds: Cune 123, Scrafty 101, Typhlosion 152, Latios 178
It works very similar to the first team. However as expected the Psychics matchup completely turned around, as did the Ghost matchup. I grew really fond of Taunt, it never really crossed my way before, but it is so so good and convenient to have. Shutting down long-term threats is crucial, and it always is a joy to hit the no-damaging-moves mons with it. I never played a team that is so good at preventing TR. I am not sure if it ever went off, aside from a backrow mon setting it up when the battle was over anyways (and battle 209 below due to my lack of knowledge about Taunt). I remember one battle with Slowbro and Dusknoir leading, both going for TR and cancelling it out both in the first and in the second turns, where I leaft both purposely alive and just when Suicune could KO Slowbro I taunted the Dusknoir. That felt cold-blooded. Anyways, TR are merely TR-attempts with Scrafty.
A thing which as in the previous team is quite crucial is to know when to set Tailwind. If possible (e.g. if there is no chance that something dies on either side until the end of the next turn) it should be delayed, otherwise it may run out to an unfavorable time.
In general, Suicune and Scrafty are so strong, there are many battles that are won just by these two. Btw having 2 activating abilities often tells something about enemy sets. For Suicune and Scrafty with 123 and 101 speed, you can distinguish between Suicune123 and Suicune4, Tyranitar14 and 23, Gyarados23 and 14 and a few more, and also the White Herb mons – in total quite a lot.
A thing which as in the previous team is quite crucial is to know when to set Tailwind. If possible (e.g. if there is no chance that something dies on either side until the end of the next turn) it should be delayed, otherwise it may run out to an unfavorable time.
In general, Suicune and Scrafty are so strong, there are many battles that are won just by these two. Btw having 2 activating abilities often tells something about enemy sets. For Suicune and Scrafty with 123 and 101 speed, you can distinguish between Suicune123 and Suicune4, Tyranitar14 and 23, Gyarados23 and 14 and a few more, and also the White Herb mons – in total quite a lot.
- Bulky Waters, especially Suicune, Vaporeon, Milotic. Cannot do much against my leads, but even more so against the backrow.
- Calm minding stuff, especially with Rest/Leftovers, and especially Waters. Volcarona sometimes is a bit scary somtimes for similar reasons.
- Evasion, especially Missey. I am always nervous when a trainer can have it. Once, I had Scrafty switched out, Missey comes in, I immediately switch Scrafty in, and hit Taunt afterwards, but the one Minimize it got brought me to the brink of losing. Psyshock on Latios of course helps. Eruption Heatran with its Toxic immunity often crosses my mind in such instances. While being crucially slower than Typhlosion and being actually KOed by more stuff than Typhlosion (16% vs 11% of the subway) it obviously has something going for it, not the least also Earthpower. But having Heatran would provide the option of beating Blissey by wasting all its mud-bombs (Taunt and Pressure helping) and then stalling it dead in the end with Heatran.
- Tyranitar: Backrow struggles against it.
- Gyarados, can be annoying. Just preserve Latios and Thunderbolt it at the given time, and maybe Taunt it.
- Lucario, Gallade: Rather Annoying than threatening. When Fake Outing into Steadfast they outspeed Scrafty afterwards despite Tailwind, so better just Fake Out the other mon and let Scrafty die for instance to Aurasphere.
Zapdos + Landorus, Tornadus, Regirock
Fake Out Zapdos, by damage it is not Zapdos2, Landorus Earthpower into Scrafty, Tailwind.
Decide to kill Landorus instead of doubling on Zapdos which may detect. So Ice Beam Landorus, Sash, Crunch finishes. Zapdos Thunderbolt, Scrafty 2HP, Regirock in.
Icebeam into Zapdos, Drain Punch into Regirock, 45%. Zapdos Volt Switch kills Scrafty, Tornadus in. Regirock EQ, Suicune 80%. Typhlosion in.
Eruption + Ice Beam kills Tornadus, Regirock in the red, Stone Edge kills Typhlosion. Oops, I brought it into Custap range… Tailwind peters out. Latios in, Zapdos in.
I protect Latios from Custap and go for Scald. But Regirock goes for EQ and Zapdos finishes Cune.
I somehow see Zapdos as the bigger threat for no reason and attack it – it detects! I barely survive Regirocks Explosion. Then I can finish Zapdos, but that was quite a misplay. I was not that wary so early in the streak.
Fake Out Zapdos, by damage it is not Zapdos2, Landorus Earthpower into Scrafty, Tailwind.
Decide to kill Landorus instead of doubling on Zapdos which may detect. So Ice Beam Landorus, Sash, Crunch finishes. Zapdos Thunderbolt, Scrafty 2HP, Regirock in.
Icebeam into Zapdos, Drain Punch into Regirock, 45%. Zapdos Volt Switch kills Scrafty, Tornadus in. Regirock EQ, Suicune 80%. Typhlosion in.
Eruption + Ice Beam kills Tornadus, Regirock in the red, Stone Edge kills Typhlosion. Oops, I brought it into Custap range… Tailwind peters out. Latios in, Zapdos in.
I protect Latios from Custap and go for Scald. But Regirock goes for EQ and Zapdos finishes Cune.
I somehow see Zapdos as the bigger threat for no reason and attack it – it detects! I barely survive Regirocks Explosion. Then I can finish Zapdos, but that was quite a misplay. I was not that wary so early in the streak.
Latias + Cresse, Landorus, Thundurus
Fake Out into Latias because a crit may kill Suicune, Tailwind, Cresse Sub. I double on Latias to take it out and Cresse went for TR. I thought I could not prevent that but now researched that Taunt hits through Sub – that would have made this battle a breeze.
In comes Landorus. I go for Crunch and Icebeam on it. It is the scarf-set and gets off an EQ before it is taken out. Cresse Toxic into Scrafty. In comes Thundurus.
This is problematic because some sets can OHKO Suicune (114HP), some the leftovers of Scrafty (72HP) and some both. Tailwind is still up, so Thundurus will go before mine, but only for this turn. I really want to safe Scrafty. I switch it out for Typhlosion and Suicune for Latios. Thundurus is Thundurus3 and goes for Sky Drop in the Scrafty/Typhlosion slot and Cresse goes for Psychic in the switched in Latios. Tailwind peters out.
Sky Drop is a bit annoying because without Tailwind I would go first in TR, but now I cannot move at all with Typhlosion in this turn. Cresse goes for Psychic in Typhlosion which is still in the air lol. Latios gets a Bright Powder miss on Cresse. Typhlosion at 90HP.
Cresse Psychic into Typhlosion, 42HP, Typhlosion Gem Flamethrower with Blaze OHKOs Thundurus. Latios Dragon Pulse destroys Cresses Sub. TR finally out, and I am glad that I defeated Thundurus by now. I clean up the Cresse.
Fake Out into Latias because a crit may kill Suicune, Tailwind, Cresse Sub. I double on Latias to take it out and Cresse went for TR. I thought I could not prevent that but now researched that Taunt hits through Sub – that would have made this battle a breeze.
In comes Landorus. I go for Crunch and Icebeam on it. It is the scarf-set and gets off an EQ before it is taken out. Cresse Toxic into Scrafty. In comes Thundurus.
This is problematic because some sets can OHKO Suicune (114HP), some the leftovers of Scrafty (72HP) and some both. Tailwind is still up, so Thundurus will go before mine, but only for this turn. I really want to safe Scrafty. I switch it out for Typhlosion and Suicune for Latios. Thundurus is Thundurus3 and goes for Sky Drop in the Scrafty/Typhlosion slot and Cresse goes for Psychic in the switched in Latios. Tailwind peters out.
Sky Drop is a bit annoying because without Tailwind I would go first in TR, but now I cannot move at all with Typhlosion in this turn. Cresse goes for Psychic in Typhlosion which is still in the air lol. Latios gets a Bright Powder miss on Cresse. Typhlosion at 90HP.
Cresse Psychic into Typhlosion, 42HP, Typhlosion Gem Flamethrower with Blaze OHKOs Thundurus. Latios Dragon Pulse destroys Cresses Sub. TR finally out, and I am glad that I defeated Thundurus by now. I clean up the Cresse.
Gallade4 + Vaporeon4, Porygon-Z4, Gliscor4
Gallade and Vaporeon are troublesome, because if I Fake Out Gallade, Steadfast activates and it will outspeed Scrafty next turn even with Tailwind. And Vaporeon needs multiple hits.
Turn 1: Fake Out Vaporeon, Gallade CC in Scrafty, guaranteed survival, 6HP, Tailwind.
Turn 2: Scientist Shan also has the terrible Minimize-Blissey, so I really would like to save Scrafty… I switch it out for Latios. CC and Ice Beam kill Latios, should have seen that coming. Suicune HP Grass into Vaporeon, like idk 58%. Typhlosion in.
Turn 3: Typhlosion Protect, Suicune HP into Vaporeon, Gallade CC into Cune, Vaporeon Surf, Cune at 96 HP.
Turn 4: Typhlosion Eruption Kos both. Tailwind peters out.
Turn 5: In come Porygon-Z 4 and Gliscor 4, which is bad as both outspeed my whole team now. Try to go for Tailwind but Acrobatics and Thunderbolt take it out first. Eruption does decent damage, Porygon-Zs Sitrus activates. Scrafty in.
Turn 6: Fake Out on Gliscor, Thunderbolt takes out Scrafty, Eruption finishes both.
In turn 3 I maybe should have went for Eruption. It would have killed Gallade due to CC drops, and with HP Grass had a high/guaranteed chance to kill Vaporeon. But I was too uncertain… And this then led to Tailwind petering out against the unknown backline, which of course can and almost led to disaster. I thought about saving the Fire Gem as HP Ground would have knocked Gallade out and HP Grass Vaporeon. But I feared an Ally Switch and Vaporeon surviving HP Ground and retaliating. Anyways, the enemy backrow came in. I was quite certain that Porygon-Z will go for Thunderbolt into Cune, which is 50/50 KO, and further that Gliscor will go for Acrobatics. I tried to figure out every possible damage scenario, which are quite a few, because of the variable damage of Eruption and then there is also Blaze. I correctly chose Eruption despite two faster mons. Even then it was no safe win, but I figured the AI is stupid and will try to KO Scrafty, which is what happened.
Gallade and Vaporeon are troublesome, because if I Fake Out Gallade, Steadfast activates and it will outspeed Scrafty next turn even with Tailwind. And Vaporeon needs multiple hits.
Turn 1: Fake Out Vaporeon, Gallade CC in Scrafty, guaranteed survival, 6HP, Tailwind.
Turn 2: Scientist Shan also has the terrible Minimize-Blissey, so I really would like to save Scrafty… I switch it out for Latios. CC and Ice Beam kill Latios, should have seen that coming. Suicune HP Grass into Vaporeon, like idk 58%. Typhlosion in.
Turn 3: Typhlosion Protect, Suicune HP into Vaporeon, Gallade CC into Cune, Vaporeon Surf, Cune at 96 HP.
Turn 4: Typhlosion Eruption Kos both. Tailwind peters out.
Turn 5: In come Porygon-Z 4 and Gliscor 4, which is bad as both outspeed my whole team now. Try to go for Tailwind but Acrobatics and Thunderbolt take it out first. Eruption does decent damage, Porygon-Zs Sitrus activates. Scrafty in.
Turn 6: Fake Out on Gliscor, Thunderbolt takes out Scrafty, Eruption finishes both.
In turn 3 I maybe should have went for Eruption. It would have killed Gallade due to CC drops, and with HP Grass had a high/guaranteed chance to kill Vaporeon. But I was too uncertain… And this then led to Tailwind petering out against the unknown backline, which of course can and almost led to disaster. I thought about saving the Fire Gem as HP Ground would have knocked Gallade out and HP Grass Vaporeon. But I feared an Ally Switch and Vaporeon surviving HP Ground and retaliating. Anyways, the enemy backrow came in. I was quite certain that Porygon-Z will go for Thunderbolt into Cune, which is 50/50 KO, and further that Gliscor will go for Acrobatics. I tried to figure out every possible damage scenario, which are quite a few, because of the variable damage of Eruption and then there is also Blaze. I correctly chose Eruption despite two faster mons. Even then it was no safe win, but I figured the AI is stupid and will try to KO Scrafty, which is what happened.
Entei, Cresselia, Suicune, Raikou
Turn 1: From ability activations I know it is Entei 1 or 3. Entei misses Stone Edge, Suicune Tailwind, Cresse Icy Wind, Scrafty hits Taunt on Cresse.
Turn 2: I Scald the Entei. Entei because of Icy Wind outspeeds Scrafty and hits a Stone Edge crit to bring Suicune to 60HP (spoiler: It will live another 9 turns), Scraftys Drain Punch knocks out Entei. Cresse Icy Wind, which now cancels out Tailwind. In comes enemy Suicune and from here the rollercoaster really starts.
Turn 3: I double into Suicune – and Suicune protects, uff. Cresse another Icy Wind, Suicune at 50HP, Scrafty at 126HP.
Turn 4: Enemy Suicune CM, help. Cresse Icy Wind, Suicune avoids. Cune HP Grass into enemy Cune, Scrafty Drain Punch. Enemy Cune at about 60%. Leftovers revealing Suicune3. Tailwind peters out.
Turn 5: Cresse Helping Hand, but Suicune goes for another protect and I once again double into it.
Turn 6: Cresse Helping Hand, enemy Cune Blizzard, my Cune avoids, but Scrafty goes down to a mid roll crit. At least I got a crit in return with HP Grass on enemy Cune. After leftovers it has about 20%. I see my chance and bring Typhlosion in as Eruption would KO.
Turn 7: Guess what – Cune protects! Cresse swaggers Typhlosion, Cune Tailwind.
Turn 8: Now again I am in a really bad spot. I want to shake off the confusion, but don’t want to risk to switch Latios into a potential Blizzard. So I tried an Eruption but I hit myself. Cresse Safeguard, Enemy Cune surfs, KOs Typhlosion, Cune at 28HP, Cresse at 40%. My Cune HP Grass into enemy Cune, in the low red. Latios in.
Turn 9: Guess what – Cune Protects! Latios‘ Thunderbolt would have finished. Cresse Icy Wind, Cune at 28HP. My Cune Scald into Cresse, has like 20% left.
Turn 10: Latios now finally finishes this terrible Suicune. Cresse Icy Wind, Cune at 18HP, Latios at 91HP. Tailwind peters out. Raikou comes in (Air balloon), heart sinks. If it is Raikou4 I still have a chance.
Turn 11+: Cresse HH, Volt Switch on Cune which now after a Stone Edge crit, a +1 Surf and 5 Icy Winds goes down. I don’t get a Psyshock crit and Raikou survives. It has a guaranteed KO with Shadow Ball now. I protect once and briefly calculate the chance to stall out 15 Shadow Balls with Protect. I Protect only once and get taken out afterwards…
This was the second battle after having a break and starting again. Battle 407 also was tense, also against a CMing Suicune. No smooth start getting into battling again.
I misevaluated the threats and chances. Probably I had won had I just at one point landed a Crunch on the recovery-lacking Cresse such that when Typhlosion enters Cresse goes down to Eruption. That now in hindsight would have been the obvious solution and there were plenty of occasions. I guess switching out Typhlosion in turn 8 also may have saved the day. Cune had a save KO on it, so I could have assumed Surf over Blizzard. And well, even more obvious probably would have been to use Taunt on enemy Cune. Firing 6 attacks in total into a protecting Cune of course is bad, 2 of which would have been KOs. I directed a ridiculous total of 11 attacks in the Suicune slot. I really wanted to get rid of it because of its Leftovers recovery. I was aware that bulky waters, CM and recovery may be problematic, especially in combination. Cune having also Protect and legendary stats, and hitting my backrow with spread - I guess tough encounters were predestined at some point.
If this every 2 turn protecting is a reliable pattern then next time it will be easier. However there is no next time. I don’t think I ever will get such a high record again and I don’t want to try.
Turn 1: From ability activations I know it is Entei 1 or 3. Entei misses Stone Edge, Suicune Tailwind, Cresse Icy Wind, Scrafty hits Taunt on Cresse.
Turn 2: I Scald the Entei. Entei because of Icy Wind outspeeds Scrafty and hits a Stone Edge crit to bring Suicune to 60HP (spoiler: It will live another 9 turns), Scraftys Drain Punch knocks out Entei. Cresse Icy Wind, which now cancels out Tailwind. In comes enemy Suicune and from here the rollercoaster really starts.
Turn 3: I double into Suicune – and Suicune protects, uff. Cresse another Icy Wind, Suicune at 50HP, Scrafty at 126HP.
Turn 4: Enemy Suicune CM, help. Cresse Icy Wind, Suicune avoids. Cune HP Grass into enemy Cune, Scrafty Drain Punch. Enemy Cune at about 60%. Leftovers revealing Suicune3. Tailwind peters out.
Turn 5: Cresse Helping Hand, but Suicune goes for another protect and I once again double into it.
Turn 6: Cresse Helping Hand, enemy Cune Blizzard, my Cune avoids, but Scrafty goes down to a mid roll crit. At least I got a crit in return with HP Grass on enemy Cune. After leftovers it has about 20%. I see my chance and bring Typhlosion in as Eruption would KO.
Turn 7: Guess what – Cune protects! Cresse swaggers Typhlosion, Cune Tailwind.
Turn 8: Now again I am in a really bad spot. I want to shake off the confusion, but don’t want to risk to switch Latios into a potential Blizzard. So I tried an Eruption but I hit myself. Cresse Safeguard, Enemy Cune surfs, KOs Typhlosion, Cune at 28HP, Cresse at 40%. My Cune HP Grass into enemy Cune, in the low red. Latios in.
Turn 9: Guess what – Cune Protects! Latios‘ Thunderbolt would have finished. Cresse Icy Wind, Cune at 28HP. My Cune Scald into Cresse, has like 20% left.
Turn 10: Latios now finally finishes this terrible Suicune. Cresse Icy Wind, Cune at 18HP, Latios at 91HP. Tailwind peters out. Raikou comes in (Air balloon), heart sinks. If it is Raikou4 I still have a chance.
Turn 11+: Cresse HH, Volt Switch on Cune which now after a Stone Edge crit, a +1 Surf and 5 Icy Winds goes down. I don’t get a Psyshock crit and Raikou survives. It has a guaranteed KO with Shadow Ball now. I protect once and briefly calculate the chance to stall out 15 Shadow Balls with Protect. I Protect only once and get taken out afterwards…
This was the second battle after having a break and starting again. Battle 407 also was tense, also against a CMing Suicune. No smooth start getting into battling again.
I misevaluated the threats and chances. Probably I had won had I just at one point landed a Crunch on the recovery-lacking Cresse such that when Typhlosion enters Cresse goes down to Eruption. That now in hindsight would have been the obvious solution and there were plenty of occasions. I guess switching out Typhlosion in turn 8 also may have saved the day. Cune had a save KO on it, so I could have assumed Surf over Blizzard. And well, even more obvious probably would have been to use Taunt on enemy Cune. Firing 6 attacks in total into a protecting Cune of course is bad, 2 of which would have been KOs. I directed a ridiculous total of 11 attacks in the Suicune slot. I really wanted to get rid of it because of its Leftovers recovery. I was aware that bulky waters, CM and recovery may be problematic, especially in combination. Cune having also Protect and legendary stats, and hitting my backrow with spread - I guess tough encounters were predestined at some point.
If this every 2 turn protecting is a reliable pattern then next time it will be easier. However there is no next time. I don’t think I ever will get such a high record again and I don’t want to try.
- After I passed battle 200 I rebred a Typhlosion, this time a perfect one and with HP Ground. Not sure if it ever mattered. After battle 406 I did not want to continue with my imperfect Latios (20/x/23/5/25/31) as I encountered more battles where it may have mattered. The luck however did not last long when I resumed the streak, as I won exactly one battle with his perfect Latios lol. Anyways, great thanks to Charliezard7 who kindly traded me this Latios, and who by trading me a Scrafty made this streak possible in the first place!
- A Ferrothorn started the battle with 6 consecutive Protects lol
- An Articuno started it with 3 consecutive Mind Readers lol
- I felt like there are hardly Quick Claws in the subway anymore. Probably they just did matter less because the team is so bulky. Compared to my paper-thin Hail-team where I was hyperaware of QC I barely noticed it with this team.
- Who would have thought that Typhlosion is best outside of a sun-team? It OHKOs a wrecking 46% of the subway, that is with a spread move. I mentioned it on the other post already, but Typhlosion is a huge carrier of the team. Maybe within the team despite being in the back it has the most blood on its hands, idk. Probably it would be a good fit for every second Tailwind team actually, despite maybe being a bit random/boring.
- Suicune does not have the optimal nature for this spread. If it was calm instead of modest I could put 3 more points into SAtk for instance.
- Looking in the tree on Eisenherz‘ Tapu Fini + Incineroar team I see similar synergies at least from the leads. However I doubt that without Tailwind in the lead my team would have climbed so high.
- Shoutout to Coeur who played similar Suicune/Scrafty combos and incredible creative teams in general!
- At this very moment I randomly got the enlightment of why once a Golurk failed when using Fling – must be because of Klutz.
Submitted later
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(warning: the teambuilding process in this post is unfortunately 100% real--proceed with caution)
So I wanted to play Subway Doubles as well, after my singles debut a few months ago, with the goal of getting at least to Starf Berry. Unfortunately, no Maison team to backport or even really adapt this time around, so I'd have to come up with something from scratch. My first thought was to go on easy mode and grab a rain team, this time leading with Kingdra for a very poor attempt at creativity points; however, having just finished a massive Ludicolo rain streak in BDSP, on second thought I preferred running literally anything else, and I guess my pride did not allow me to phone it in like that either, so instead I turned to a shelved BDSP idea partly based on a failed Maison idea.
I'll keep it as concise as possible, but the tl;dr was that I had considered giving Weavile + Latios a go there, for one of the more obvious "Fake Out user + strong and fast attacker with good coverage on each other's checks" pairing; then, "I suck at teambuilding" so the logical next step for BDSP in particular is counterteaming Barry + Palmer as base, since you see them once every 7 battles. From my runs with Ludicolo rain I knew that Gastrodon matches up really well into him overall and especially would be a clean fit into some lines versus a few enemies that Weavile + Latios would hate facing, namely their Empoleon and Milotic. For the fourth Pokemon, I instead turned to an alternative take of my Maison teams, namely Mega Kangaskhan / Latios / Sylveon / Bisharp, where I had considered Heatran + Azumarill as a different backline that would theoretically cover the leads better from a defensive pov. While I'd shelved that one after a couple dozen battles made it painfully clear that it was not good enough at stopping Heatran from getting overwhelmed by enemy Water-types, a certain different Water-type would of course provide much better help there, and a good offensive Fire-type was always gonna be an intuitive synergistic partner to cover Gastrodon's only weakness. The fact that Heatran was on my list of Pokemon I'd finally wanted to use was the icing on the cake. Unfortunately, this ended up never seeing the light of day as such (for now? idk?), because I was not exactly the only person to cook up "Weavile / Latios / Gastrodon / Fire-type" here, with the goats justintrickroom and Eisenherz both independently coming up with their own variants of this lineup, where justin's take in particular seemed like a more natural fit into the momentum maelstrom that is BDSP Doubles. Still, from an overall synergy and gameplan angle it was probably gonna be functional enough to not just shelve out of the gate, so with me needing a team here one way or another it would do as a starting point just fine. Pasting the full team below because it's worth sharing, but full set descriptions will have to wait until later in this post.
I enjoyed playing the team a lot, but in terms of performance it was very, uh, "it works, until it doesn't". Gastrodon did a good job shielding Heatran from Water-type attacks, but there was a weird anti-synergy where Gastrodon's weaker defensive presence meant it would actually draw more attacks, rendering Protect + Icy Wind plays tricky and getting the AI to gang up on it without the ability to hold them off via Protect, as well as strong Earthquake users in general being awkward to hold off. There was also the thing that, while these four had answers to most individual Pokemon, they were not really put together with unpredictable board states or Subway specialty Trainers in mind and were prone to floundering in certain not-at-all-uncommon practical situations. You know how it goes; while Heatran does shred pretty much everything Ice Workers can bring, that only goes so far in practice when you don't want to switch it into Blizzard if it can at all be helped and as a result the enemy gets to use your own Latios as a meatshield while Weavile is hardly good at offensive pressure into these Trainers either, and when Tyranitar not only is just as terrifying to Weavile + Latios as common sense would dictate but also features prominently on Earthquake-stacking Sand Workers and Hikers, then Gastrodon becomes much more of a paper answer than it would seem as well. Even something like Empoleon joins the ranks of enemies that give Weavile + Latios hell where Gastrodon as a dedicated answer just does not hold up well in practice at all. The actual results it put up still weren't exactly bad though; out of four runs, two were lost to unfamiliarity with Subway AI and/or nasty misplays, but the attempts that I did get to ride out all the way to the legit end made it to 158 and 181. Now, there's an optimistic and a pessimistic way to interpret those numbers; of course they're close enough to 203 for Starf Berry to definitely be in the cards, but on the other hand every team has a ceiling. Given that the 158 took a number of narrow escapes to get there in the first place and the 181 ended up getting more or less obliterated by a lineup of Vanilluxe4/Walrein4/Quagsire3/Swampert4 where Weavile's lack of power to assist Latios in breaking through threatening neutral targets really showed and Heatran was mostly helpless into the backline, on top of Walrein also actually hitting its OHKO moves to render Heatran's ability to buy space for teammates mostly moot, I was getting genuine worries that even if I had not reached it yet the ceiling was probably not gonna be that much higher, and that, while not overtly crazy, continuing to shoot for Starf with this team essentially meant committing to probably at least a handful more runs with a team I was fully aware was suboptimal when it mattered most--even with natural levels of "fun", not exactly something conducive to not wearing out its welcome before long. Which led to the following message on Discord.
This is where a history lesson is once again in order, since the Hitmonlee / Latios lead pairing this would leave me with is one that was championed hard earlier by the one and only Peterko, actually giving him his Subway PB with a 390 score after he'd already put up a then-second-place 600+ record in gen 4 with it as well. While of course it was gonna make for a good reassurance that I was gonna give myself an easier time getting to 203+, at the same time I also hoped I would not need to actually go there, given that even for a modest enough goal like Starf it was important to me that I'd be able to put up a non-copycat contribution here and that there was no point in e.g. avoiding R Inanimate rain if I was just gonna use another long-proven build anyways. Still, "there's only so many ideas going around and self-nerfing creativity entirely for the sake of being different is not a good thing"; in the end I felt that with the different backline (let alone one like Heatran + Gastrodon that was both intuitive and wholly unexplored at the same time) and my slightly different take on the exact LeeTios sets there was still gonna be enough to contribute here, and of course the fact that I wanted to reach Starf at all without making this needlessly frustrating for myself was not something to gloss over either. And from the lens of the leaderboard as a competition, what better way of making this a worthwhile contribution than showing that Hitmonlee + Latios had more in the tank than Peterko's 390 all along? Posting a streak of 452 wins in Super Doubles, which I don't even feel is this team's ceiling either, but I'll take this for now at least.
Hitmonlee not only ended up being a unilateral upgrade over Weavile in terms of its partnership with Latios but also caused a ripple effect fixing certain other more subtle issues with the team. Let's get into it.
Hitmonlee @ Focus Sash
Ability: Limber
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Nature: Adamant
IVs: 31/31/31/17/31/31
- Fake Out
- Close Combat
- Sucker Punch
- Protect
Latios @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Nature: Timid
IVs: 31/17/31/31/31/31
- Dragon Pulse
- Psyshock
- Surf
- Protect
Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 4 HP / 248 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Nature: Modest
IVs: 31/17/30/30/31/31
- Flamethrower
- Earth Power
- Substitute
- Protect
Gastrodon @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Storm Drain
EVs: 164 HP / 108 Def / 220 SpA / 16 SpD
Nature: Quiet
IVs: 31/14/31/31/31/4 (raw Speed stat: 41)
- Scald
- Earth Power
- Clear Smog
- Icy Wind
A threatlist at this time is definitely gonna have me overlooking a bunch of things when I only have about 600 battles worth of experience with the Hitmonlee variant in particular, but the following should at least be a good starting point:
The loss is, uh, kind of hard to explain, but let's get into it.
#453: vs. Pokemon Breeder Eoin
I won't be providing a turn-by-turn recap here, but basically a Gardevoir4 + Togekiss4 lead is tricky, since Sucker Punch is usually not a KO on Gardevoir and Togekiss is obviously disruptive plus thanks to Sitrus cannot be 2HKOed by any combination of moves even with Fake Out chip. I map out the first couple turns so that I trade Hitmonlee for taking down Gardevoir entirely plus leaving Togekiss in KO range for whatever, after which I sent out Heatran to pick off Togekiss and Latios attacks into the followup Leafeon's Detect. Lastmon Bouffalant is where things spiral, since it's a brutally strong and bulky Pokemon with Earthquake as a coverage move, but I should be able to chip and/or Life Orb stall it once Leafeon is also down; unfortunately Leafeon takes out Latios with a Quick Claw proc, while Bouffalant uses Earthquake to break the Substitute I set up to grab momentum as a midground play should Bouffalant go after Latios, so suddenly things are extremely dire; at least I get to dodge another Quick Claw proc and manage to secure the unavoidable Heatran trade while it takes out Leafeon, and the Scald burn on Bouffalant actually makes for a glimmer of hope, but unfortunately it manages to override the Attack drop with a crit to pull the battle away from me for good.
Overall, this was basically a case of tricky lead matchup, nasty backups for my backline, coupled with some normally benign misplays:
- Not preserving Hitmonlee where I could realistically have Protected into Psychic + Air Slash; I was paranoid of Togekiss using Thunder Wave to suddenly make the next turn nasty and was content with leaving it an assured... dead egg flying?, even though Air Slash certainly was the expected move.
- Mishandling Leafeon; on the fatal Quick Claw proc, both a double target and a Protect on Latios while targeting it with Flamethrower would have assuredly taken it out while leaving Bouffalant standing alone, allowing me to either Life Orb stall it with Heatran's Substitute (if it went after Latios) or simply overpower it. This realistically would have been a Heatran sack though, and I guess I was subconsciously paranoid of a double Detect here to render that one moot. Certainly the less likely outcome compared to the Quick Claw proc though.
I'm not trying to make excuses, but I do think it's worth mentioning that the backups (not just Leafeon but also Bouffalant; even something like Rhyperior would have simply turbodied to Gastrodon on the final turns in Bouffalant's place) were as nasty as they come here and the hax procs would have had to happen as specifically as they did. What I mean by benign misplays is, it did take this specific lategame cocktail for them to actually be punished, and almost all the time they're of the kind that simply blows over and you just recognise as a future finetuning learning experience and move on. It's why this loss feels so weird, because even with losing Hitmonlee I never once felt like I didn't have momentum on my side or the matchup was even particularly threatening until the Quick Claw proc happened; I suppose it makes for reassurance that a better streak is in the cards at some point, but for now it'll just have to be a Subway school of hard knocks moment.
That is that, and I should also provide some other battle videos.
#45: vs. Veteran Colombo
An early battle with the Weavile variant showing off exactly what Substitute Heatran is capable of, specifically defeating a set-up Suicune3 one-on-one despite not even being PP Upped yet as of this battle. Full disclosure, this did need a little bit of luck, namely the double Protect on the final Surf, as well as the Flamethrower burn of course but I think with PP Ups I would have been the one to force Suicune into Struggle instead? Still ridiculous of course though, and at least it got me the Never Give Up medal...
#182: vs. Fisherman Fird
The loss of the Weavile version's PB, which I might as well provide when I'm posting anyways. I had been doing okay on close calls up to this point, but this was absolute slaughter; Vanilluxe4 is difficult for Weavile + Latios when Psyshock is not a 2HKO thanks to Sitrus Berry, and when Walrein4 also ends up actually hitting its OHKO moves there is really no way to stop a dual Water / Ground backline from bulldozing Heatran. This battle did do a good job of selling me on Hitmonlee over Weavile, because of course Heatran's vulnerability to this backline was a known issue, but the main reason it had to face it like this in the first place was because the opening rounds were pretty reflective of Weavile's lack of supplementary offensive presence if Latios can't provide it; Hitmonlee would have simply one-shot (or almost one-shot) Walrein turn 1 and Vanilluxe turn 2 while Latios clicked Protect on Vanilluxe's Ice Beam, at which point even with Heatran's uselessness here the rest of the battle would have been a formality.
#301: vs. Psychic Khaan
Originally saved as a generic milestone battle, but it also provides a decent showcase of the team dipping into its regular toolkit to handle Trick Room, so like sure why not. Spiritomb and Reuniclus are both slightly tricky thanks to Sucker Punch and Trick, but Reuniclus dies to Fake Out + two Dragon Pulses, and with Sucker Punch's damage output versus 100% Latios I was comfortable enough taking the gamble, and things worked out as planned there while Hitmonlee got a turn 2 switch to Heatran, a hard Spiritomb counter to turn that one into a dud slot. Then, followup Slowbro is my cue to set up Sub and bring in Gastrodon to turn the telegraphed Trick Room against them, and it's mostly just clicking from that point. Forgive the Icy Wind misclick btw...
#365: vs. Pilot Chand
Pilot battle that got tricky thanks to immediate hax where Icy Wind increases my range of fallback options a lot. Basically my planned opening two turns were KOing unknown Staraptor set with Fake Out + Dragon Pulse and taking out possible Hurrrnadus with Psyshock + Sucker Punch, but an old crit Dark Pulse from Tornadus3 takes Latios out of the running. Thanks to Hitmonlee's bait capabilities and Gastrodon's Icy Wind giving both Hitmonlee and Heatran free extra hits via speed advantage the battle never becomes truly dangerous afterwards though.
I already alluded to this earlier, but the main reason why Hitmonlee made a good replacement for Weavile despite certainly losing out on a handful of matchups that ended up turning into decent-to-notable threats was because it managed to deal much more proactively with a range of Latios checks that I otherwise would have had to rely on the backline for. It's kind of counterintuitive to me that a one-on-one replacement could do so well while losing out only on specific Weavile targets and not really at all on overall team synergy, but I suppose it makes sense when you look at it through a lens that the "main" team is the Latios / Heatran / Gastrodon board and that the second lead exists to grease their skids but has limited attempts at synergy with them otherwise. Latios / Heatran has great defensive synergy and coverage on each other's checks and can even take advantage of Latios baiting for free Substitutes, Heatran / Gastrodon has the coverage on each other's checks etc, and Latios / Gastrodon has the whole Surf supercharge mode; however, Weavile / Heatran and Weavile / Gastrodon did not really do any of that other than just attacking together, meaning that Hitmonlee / Heatran and Hitmonlee / Gastrodon didn't really have to try and improve anything over that either (though they still did--see Heatran actually covering Hitmonlee's weaknesses properly). Both Weavile / Latios and Hitmonlee / Latios existed to have a Fake Out user create space for Latios while handling some of its checks, and Hitmonlee and Weavile both do an okay job in that area in their own way.
To truly understand what makes Hitmonlee better from a teamwide synergy angle, we need to look at the Heatran / Gastrodon backline again, with the newfound understanding that these two, while not doing a bad job helping each other out, are prone to losing a lot of momentum versus the wrong enemies and as a result need to not actually be on the field at the same time if it can be helped and the battle is not in the bag yet, not to mention the fact that there are limits to their hard switching in abilities thanks to Heatran's vulnerability to added effects and Gastrodon's squishiness, especially in the face of old crits. This is again where Hitmonlee comes in; while Weavile manages to deal with a range of enemies that threaten Latios offensively, Hitmonlee actually breaks through the enemies that handle it defensively, meaning it can stay on the field and contribute much better and, more importantly, postpone the moment where Heatran / Gastrodon need to take to the field together. "I'm not worried about Steel-types with Weavile + Latios when my backline shreds those", I mean sure but when practice has taught you that you don't actually want your entire backline on the field then that puts a pretty major asterisk on that. It's funny how this ended up indirectly fixing Heatran's vulnerability to Earthquake spam; you simply do get to face a lot less of those head-on if Hitmonlee kills or helps Latios kill them first, at which point just making sure Heatran has a Sub up before backups come in when it does have to come in directly is indeed pretty much enough. Cool stuff.
I also can't avoid talking about this team without saying a few words about Peterko's team as well, as the earlier "definitive" version of the Hitmonlee + Latios backline that put up a very good score in its own right. As much as I would like to make a more direct comparison between our two teams, I think they simply provide wildly different takes from a similar starting point, where Heatran + Gastrodon attempts to support LeeTios in a defensive way while Hydreigon + Metagross takes on an offensive angle here. More specifically, in a way, his team reminds me of KangaLati, and more specifically the pseudo-"type spam" aspect that I identified while playing around with them, in the sense that e.g. losing Latios often wasn't a huge deal at all when Sylveon could simply jump in and continue the Dragon carnage without any trouble. This is the main way in which the dual Dragon-types make sense to me, when Hydreigon's presence makes Latios much more expendable when it goes down early due to a wallbreaking trade or hax and the team's overall functionality is not very impacted, and Metagross can swap in mostly seamlessly for Ice-type killing duties if anything happens to Hitmonlee. The increased Ice Worker weakness does stand, without Substitute Heatran or Scald Gastrodon's extra defensive coverage, but I'm not at all saying anything there Peterko hasn't said as is of course. It even validates Mach Punch on Hitmonlee in ways beyond our "dinosaur teams hadn't discovered Protect properly yet" vibes, since yea without Heatran or Icy Wind and with a Choice-locked (read: incapable of Protect baiting) Latios it's extremely appreciated if you have a way to remove it that won't entail an outright sack of substantial hax risk. I'll avoid discussing it too much further because I'm not sure if it's an entirely respectful thing to do, but yea needless to say it's super interesting to see how there's such wildly different backlines possible by taking a different approach on the same lead and how both have been capable of putting up competitive records on the same board. I still think looking for the singular best team is stupid and am much more interested in contributing to a very diverse board showing lots of different teams and styles, and if indeed I managed to contribute something novel enough despite starting off from the same frontline as one of the best teams from the current gen, then that means a lot to me.
Still, that doesn't really change anything about how this team is literally "BDSP team based off failed Maison backline shoehorned into Subway with a singular Pokemon changed for something else with 0 changes to the rest of the team to account for potential ripple effects"; and when jury is still out on whether my "sucks at teambuilding" allegations are actually true or just self-inflicted imposter syndrome brain worms, you can argue whether this team is genuinely four Pokemon with deep toolkits that synergise well together or just a lucky strike of trial and error building, and in terms of proper teambuilding skills it might just be a case of Katrielle Layton-like "miraculous instinct" at best, lol. It's not really a way of looking at this conducive to good vibes, anyway, and I don't think I need it either, since this one might be up there for the most fun team I've ever used period. WeavGarde has always been my go-to answer to that question, but I think this one is a similar case of four Pokemon with deep and fun toolkits where no two battles are the same and the point is to explore said toolkits as deeply as possible to win against huge ranges of enemies, except this one is even more rewarding because it does not even have the "Fake Out + spread move" stock play (unless Surf counts but for this team that one is much more of a niche tool to open up even more options!). And, well, as least in terms of relative power levels this team is probably also genuinely better. WeavGarde has done really well in the Maison (still the best performing team not using any of Greninja, Mega Kangaskhan, or FEAR!) but as good and fun to use as it is it still has a definite set of enemies that force its back to the wall and force you to either give other enemies space while playing around them or just lose, which I have not identified here to that level. This is also the reason why I mentioned earlier that 452 is good "for now", since especially with the nature of the loss I can't shake the feeling that this team can still do better than it has put up so far.
This is also only the third run with this team so far, after two prior losses in the 90s to a hard Biker counterteam and a horrendous brainfart around Conkeldurr3, and as we all know it's standard procedure in Subway to do at least over half a dozen runs with the same team to brute force some luck to compete with the higher variance inherent to this place compared to later facilities. This has not felt wise to me so far though, since I played right through burnout to get to this number as is, not to mention "Starf in Subway Doubles" was one of my two true in-game achievement-related remaining facility goals, and calling it good after reaching 203+ was always the plan with how turbo unfun it is to lose in the 90s while playing through burnout and "time" being the factor that it always is. Once I reach my final goal I absolutely have some other teams in already cleared modes that I plan to pick up or revisit though, and this one is pretty high on this list. Don't take that as an actual commitment, just, in terms of Fun(tm), this would very much be one of the safer teams to dive back into whenever it's time for that. Really happily surprised with how much I've been enjoying this facility after the shaky relationship with Unova that I've had all my life.
See you around!
So I wanted to play Subway Doubles as well, after my singles debut a few months ago, with the goal of getting at least to Starf Berry. Unfortunately, no Maison team to backport or even really adapt this time around, so I'd have to come up with something from scratch. My first thought was to go on easy mode and grab a rain team, this time leading with Kingdra for a very poor attempt at creativity points; however, having just finished a massive Ludicolo rain streak in BDSP, on second thought I preferred running literally anything else, and I guess my pride did not allow me to phone it in like that either, so instead I turned to a shelved BDSP idea partly based on a failed Maison idea.
I'll keep it as concise as possible, but the tl;dr was that I had considered giving Weavile + Latios a go there, for one of the more obvious "Fake Out user + strong and fast attacker with good coverage on each other's checks" pairing; then, "I suck at teambuilding" so the logical next step for BDSP in particular is counterteaming Barry + Palmer as base, since you see them once every 7 battles. From my runs with Ludicolo rain I knew that Gastrodon matches up really well into him overall and especially would be a clean fit into some lines versus a few enemies that Weavile + Latios would hate facing, namely their Empoleon and Milotic. For the fourth Pokemon, I instead turned to an alternative take of my Maison teams, namely Mega Kangaskhan / Latios / Sylveon / Bisharp, where I had considered Heatran + Azumarill as a different backline that would theoretically cover the leads better from a defensive pov. While I'd shelved that one after a couple dozen battles made it painfully clear that it was not good enough at stopping Heatran from getting overwhelmed by enemy Water-types, a certain different Water-type would of course provide much better help there, and a good offensive Fire-type was always gonna be an intuitive synergistic partner to cover Gastrodon's only weakness. The fact that Heatran was on my list of Pokemon I'd finally wanted to use was the icing on the cake. Unfortunately, this ended up never seeing the light of day as such (for now? idk?), because I was not exactly the only person to cook up "Weavile / Latios / Gastrodon / Fire-type" here, with the goats justintrickroom and Eisenherz both independently coming up with their own variants of this lineup, where justin's take in particular seemed like a more natural fit into the momentum maelstrom that is BDSP Doubles. Still, from an overall synergy and gameplan angle it was probably gonna be functional enough to not just shelve out of the gate, so with me needing a team here one way or another it would do as a starting point just fine. Pasting the full team below because it's worth sharing, but full set descriptions will have to wait until later in this post.
Weavile @ Focus Sash
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Nature: Jolly
IVs: 31/31/31/15/31/31
- Fake Out
- Ice Punch
- Night Slash
- Protect
Latios @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Nature: Timid
IVs: 31/17/31/31/31/31
- Dragon Pulse
- Psyshock
- Surf
- Protect
Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 4 HP / 248 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Nature: Modest
IVs: 31/17/30/30/31/31
- Flamethrower
- Earth Power
- Substitute
- Protect
Gastrodon @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Storm Drain
EVs: 164 HP / 108 Def / 220 SpA / 16 SpD
Nature: Quiet
IVs: 31/14/31/31/31/4 (raw Speed stat: 41)
- Scald
- Earth Power
- Clear Smog
- Icy Wind
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Nature: Jolly
IVs: 31/31/31/15/31/31
- Fake Out
- Ice Punch
- Night Slash
- Protect
Latios @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Nature: Timid
IVs: 31/17/31/31/31/31
- Dragon Pulse
- Psyshock
- Surf
- Protect
Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 4 HP / 248 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Nature: Modest
IVs: 31/17/30/30/31/31
- Flamethrower
- Earth Power
- Substitute
- Protect
Gastrodon @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Storm Drain
EVs: 164 HP / 108 Def / 220 SpA / 16 SpD
Nature: Quiet
IVs: 31/14/31/31/31/4 (raw Speed stat: 41)
- Scald
- Earth Power
- Clear Smog
- Icy Wind
This is where a history lesson is once again in order, since the Hitmonlee / Latios lead pairing this would leave me with is one that was championed hard earlier by the one and only Peterko, actually giving him his Subway PB with a 390 score after he'd already put up a then-second-place 600+ record in gen 4 with it as well. While of course it was gonna make for a good reassurance that I was gonna give myself an easier time getting to 203+, at the same time I also hoped I would not need to actually go there, given that even for a modest enough goal like Starf it was important to me that I'd be able to put up a non-copycat contribution here and that there was no point in e.g. avoiding R Inanimate rain if I was just gonna use another long-proven build anyways. Still, "there's only so many ideas going around and self-nerfing creativity entirely for the sake of being different is not a good thing"; in the end I felt that with the different backline (let alone one like Heatran + Gastrodon that was both intuitive and wholly unexplored at the same time) and my slightly different take on the exact LeeTios sets there was still gonna be enough to contribute here, and of course the fact that I wanted to reach Starf at all without making this needlessly frustrating for myself was not something to gloss over either. And from the lens of the leaderboard as a competition, what better way of making this a worthwhile contribution than showing that Hitmonlee + Latios had more in the tank than Peterko's 390 all along? Posting a streak of 452 wins in Super Doubles, which I don't even feel is this team's ceiling either, but I'll take this for now at least.
Hitmonlee not only ended up being a unilateral upgrade over Weavile in terms of its partnership with Latios but also caused a ripple effect fixing certain other more subtle issues with the team. Let's get into it.
Hitmonlee @ Focus Sash
Ability: Limber
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Nature: Adamant
IVs: 31/31/31/17/31/31
- Fake Out
- Close Combat
- Sucker Punch
- Protect
Out of all the Fake Out users I've used, it's almost scary how optimised Hitmonlee is as a damage output-focused one. Hitmonlee's obvious niche over Weavile and in fact just about every other non-Mega Kangaskhan Fake Out user is the raw power of base 126 Attack Adamant Close Combat, but in the Subway in particular this niche's stock rises even further thanks to the existence of certain notorious Trainer classes, namely Ice Workers and Sand Workers, which the keen observer will note Latios hates in particular as well. Tyranitar in particular is such an obnoxious one that singlehandedly turns Latios's Sand Worker matchup from pretty favourable into a nightmare, but when it sees Hitmonlee it's just gone, except maybe the Sash set depending on what Latios has to do that turn but that one is not going after Latios anyways. Excadrill is the main other one making that matchup yucky but that one disappears when Hitmonlee is on the field--barring Sand Rush of course, or when set 3 dodges Close Combat and sets up its own sand after, that was fun, but you get it. Ice Workers similar deal, when the very vast majority of the Ice Worker roster is indeed simply outsped and OHKOed (the only exception of Close Combat targets that comes to mind right now is it being a roll on Walrein4 but still hey); while hax will always happen versus these and hail or sand removing Focus Sash is obnoxious and I am not at all implying that you can just chuck a Hitmonlee on your team and have them solved for good, there's no denying that even on that front if nothing else they certainly have a lot less room to pull their bs. Other appreciated Close Combat targets include notorious bulky Normal-types like Porygon2 and Snorlax, the aforementioned Empoleon, as well as the one Fighting-type that Latios actually hates not shreds in Scrafty.
And that is just one move, since Sucker Punch is another extremely important thing that makes Hitmonlee the support it is to the point that it probably still just wouldn't function without it. It's a one-stop shop for addressing Hitmonlee's main issues, namely its only above average Speed plus Close Combat's inability to deal with Psychics or Ghosts, where for the latter uhhh it's not a one-on-one replacement for Weavile's Night Slash but comes close. It misses several KOs on notable targets that Night Slash does get like Starmie and Gardevoir, but others like Espeon, Gengar, Jynx, and (set 3) Mismagius are still sufficient, and a bunch of misses are still guaranteed with Fake Out chip. It's of course still no Night Slash, and (due to Trick being prioritised over KOs) Alakazam in particular is actually a little tricky now, but this is the very group of enemies you'd really want Weavile over Hitmonlee for and for the most part you don't lose out on too much. The loss of Speed on the main STAB move(s) is actually much more significant than losing out on those STAB moves outright, but at the very least for picking things off Sucker Punch is sufficient; even without STAB it's almost as strong as a Technician-boosted regular priority move would be, after all, and positive-natured base 126 Attack goes further to putting almost Scizor Bullet Punch-level power behind it.
But yea that is the offensive side on Hitmonlee, where having two good damage sources on my frontline makes for enough of a niche over Weavile as is, but it provides so much more in tandem with Latios in particular, since counterintuitively it fills a defensive role as well just like Weavile can. The key here is of course Protect + Focus Sash, which allows Hitmonlee to very easily bait attacks and buy Latios free turns at 1 HP, but Hitmonlee's deplorable natural physical bulk enhances this niche even further, since the AI even reads OHKOs on run-of-the-mill medium-strong neutral physical STAB moves like Arcanine's Flare Blitz. As a result, Hitmonlee can pull this same trick even on lead a lot of the time, which gives Latios easy room for chip damage for a double KO on turn 2 and lets you face the backline with a fresh Hitmonlee that otherwise would be knocked down to Sash or even taken out entirely. While using a zero IV physical bulk Hitmonlee would realistically be overcooking things (no calcs handy off the top of my head but it can still dodge 2HKOs from like weak non-STAB Earthquakes, and of course it's functionally playing without Sash in sand or hail matchups, which are objectively top of the list where you would like it to use Close Combat multiple times), its physical bulk is genuinely more of a feature than a bug in practice and contributes to its hyperoptimisation feeling for gen 1 standards. Hitmonlee's baiting capabilities in tandem with Sucker Punch are strong to the point that it has performed well even in Trick Room matchups, not even simply surviving the battle but even doing so without switching out while contributing significantly on its own. Peterko ran Mach Punch in the final slot, from what I understand because "Weavile", which given that one is a legit issue for this lead pairing I don't think is a bad reason, but it's really hard to put into words how much Protect enhances Hitmonlee's bait capabilities, increases the depth of this team's toolkit, and streamlines a vast majority of matchups (though I hope I gave it an honest shot!) to the point that I don't think an enemy that ultimately can still be played around fine would be reason for me to give it up. It should be mentioned that I have not actually found any posts by him considering Protect at all as opposed to, say, Helping Hand (and Reversal... which yea let's leave it at lends credibility to the notion that Protect indeed was not on his mind at all), so odds are that this is just a case in point of that hypothesis a lot of us have of dinosaur teams like this one in general just not really taking Protect seriously as a default option before gen 6-ish.
Limber is worth a final mention, since being able to hit Static users with Fake Out or Close Combat with complete peace of mind is just as valuable as it sounds, but of course it makes for great counterplay to Thunder Wave as well especially in tandem with Heatran's Substitute. Sometimes I wish the AI was actually aware of it in advance, since it would give me a safe turn 1 switch to Heatran for a free followup Sub, but oh well it's a great help one way or another.
And that is just one move, since Sucker Punch is another extremely important thing that makes Hitmonlee the support it is to the point that it probably still just wouldn't function without it. It's a one-stop shop for addressing Hitmonlee's main issues, namely its only above average Speed plus Close Combat's inability to deal with Psychics or Ghosts, where for the latter uhhh it's not a one-on-one replacement for Weavile's Night Slash but comes close. It misses several KOs on notable targets that Night Slash does get like Starmie and Gardevoir, but others like Espeon, Gengar, Jynx, and (set 3) Mismagius are still sufficient, and a bunch of misses are still guaranteed with Fake Out chip. It's of course still no Night Slash, and (due to Trick being prioritised over KOs) Alakazam in particular is actually a little tricky now, but this is the very group of enemies you'd really want Weavile over Hitmonlee for and for the most part you don't lose out on too much. The loss of Speed on the main STAB move(s) is actually much more significant than losing out on those STAB moves outright, but at the very least for picking things off Sucker Punch is sufficient; even without STAB it's almost as strong as a Technician-boosted regular priority move would be, after all, and positive-natured base 126 Attack goes further to putting almost Scizor Bullet Punch-level power behind it.
But yea that is the offensive side on Hitmonlee, where having two good damage sources on my frontline makes for enough of a niche over Weavile as is, but it provides so much more in tandem with Latios in particular, since counterintuitively it fills a defensive role as well just like Weavile can. The key here is of course Protect + Focus Sash, which allows Hitmonlee to very easily bait attacks and buy Latios free turns at 1 HP, but Hitmonlee's deplorable natural physical bulk enhances this niche even further, since the AI even reads OHKOs on run-of-the-mill medium-strong neutral physical STAB moves like Arcanine's Flare Blitz. As a result, Hitmonlee can pull this same trick even on lead a lot of the time, which gives Latios easy room for chip damage for a double KO on turn 2 and lets you face the backline with a fresh Hitmonlee that otherwise would be knocked down to Sash or even taken out entirely. While using a zero IV physical bulk Hitmonlee would realistically be overcooking things (no calcs handy off the top of my head but it can still dodge 2HKOs from like weak non-STAB Earthquakes, and of course it's functionally playing without Sash in sand or hail matchups, which are objectively top of the list where you would like it to use Close Combat multiple times), its physical bulk is genuinely more of a feature than a bug in practice and contributes to its hyperoptimisation feeling for gen 1 standards. Hitmonlee's baiting capabilities in tandem with Sucker Punch are strong to the point that it has performed well even in Trick Room matchups, not even simply surviving the battle but even doing so without switching out while contributing significantly on its own. Peterko ran Mach Punch in the final slot, from what I understand because "Weavile", which given that one is a legit issue for this lead pairing I don't think is a bad reason, but it's really hard to put into words how much Protect enhances Hitmonlee's bait capabilities, increases the depth of this team's toolkit, and streamlines a vast majority of matchups (though I hope I gave it an honest shot!) to the point that I don't think an enemy that ultimately can still be played around fine would be reason for me to give it up. It should be mentioned that I have not actually found any posts by him considering Protect at all as opposed to, say, Helping Hand (and Reversal... which yea let's leave it at lends credibility to the notion that Protect indeed was not on his mind at all), so odds are that this is just a case in point of that hypothesis a lot of us have of dinosaur teams like this one in general just not really taking Protect seriously as a default option before gen 6-ish.
Limber is worth a final mention, since being able to hit Static users with Fake Out or Close Combat with complete peace of mind is just as valuable as it sounds, but of course it makes for great counterplay to Thunder Wave as well especially in tandem with Heatran's Substitute. Sometimes I wish the AI was actually aware of it in advance, since it would give me a safe turn 1 switch to Heatran for a free followup Sub, but oh well it's a great help one way or another.
Latios @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Nature: Timid
IVs: 31/17/31/31/31/31
- Dragon Pulse
- Psyshock
- Surf
- Protect
Three of these moves I'd like to believe are wholly standard on a Life Orb Latios; if Psyshock versus Psychic needs any "words", then as usual you can consider Psyshock a coverage move of sorts, since from a sheer power lens there is genuinely no point to Psychic when you already have the equally strong Dragon Pulse, with Dragon's neutral coverage, and for the most part Psyshock covers super effective targets just the same; so, when Psyshock and Psychic are more or less interchangeable in terms of preferred type matchups it just makes sense to go with the option that also makes special walls a bit easier to handle, especially with this team having three special attackers as is. The third move is maybe a more interesting case; while you also have the option here of other coverage moves like Thunderbolt and Grass Knot, I feel like those are usually best left for any major holes that identify themselves in theory or practice, and in terms of boosting the team's overall synergy the main two options I'd consider are Tailwind and Surf. Latios is obviously a great Tailwind setter and it did a good job in this role on KangaLati by flipping Veteran Speed tiers in Kangaskhan's favour or just setting up Sylveon for a safe wallbreaking romp, but it felt like a bit more of a waste here; the main beneficiary would have been Heatran (keep in mind that this decision was made when Weavile was still on the team as well), which when all is said and done still plays a defensive role rather than a wallbreaking one, and for any sort of in the moment momentum swings Icy Wind felt like it could be sufficient. Surf on the other hand was made a very tempting option thanks to the pairing with Gastrodon, adding a Gastrodon supercharge mode as yet another option to this team's toolkit. In practice, it didn't stop there either, and its ability to land chip on both enemies paired extremely well with Hitmonlee's bait qualities as well; you know how it goes, when both opposing Pokemon are not in KO range and can't really hurt Latios, just click Protect + Surf and finish them both next turn. Not to mention that thanks to common stat distributions a lot of the time the special coverage on enemy Rock-types etc is a lot more practical anyways than having Hitmonlee handle them. Harlequins leading with say Rhyperior or Steelix + bulky Trick Room setter or whatever would just eat Surf + Gastrodon switch, which generally was a fantastic position for me to be in.
While Life Orb feels like the intuitive Latios to me, it is apparently much less common than Choice Specs (or Gem) here, which I guess I can understand from the awkward interaction between the recoil and its more than decent natural special bulk, but I have not felt it was a problem here with Hitmonlee's support and the backline's great defensive coverage, at which point the extra positioning flexibility thanks to Protect is extremely valuable. Blocking the extremely telegraphed Fling from Iron Ball users is still the funniest thing ever and makes me appreciate that Flung items do not work like Gems here. One final thing worth highlighting is the special attack unnerf; while you can always find blessed calcs if you go out of your way to look for them ofc the extra 5 Base Power that Dragon Pulse gets back compared to the Maison means e.g. Leafeon and Manectric are guaranteed neutral KOs now and odds of one-shotting Tangrowth have improved from Hydro Pump after Double Team to Rock Slide, which can make for some very handy peace of mind.
While Life Orb feels like the intuitive Latios to me, it is apparently much less common than Choice Specs (or Gem) here, which I guess I can understand from the awkward interaction between the recoil and its more than decent natural special bulk, but I have not felt it was a problem here with Hitmonlee's support and the backline's great defensive coverage, at which point the extra positioning flexibility thanks to Protect is extremely valuable. Blocking the extremely telegraphed Fling from Iron Ball users is still the funniest thing ever and makes me appreciate that Flung items do not work like Gems here. One final thing worth highlighting is the special attack unnerf; while you can always find blessed calcs if you go out of your way to look for them ofc the extra 5 Base Power that Dragon Pulse gets back compared to the Maison means e.g. Leafeon and Manectric are guaranteed neutral KOs now and odds of one-shotting Tangrowth have improved from Hydro Pump after Double Team to Rock Slide, which can make for some very handy peace of mind.
Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 4 HP / 248 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Nature: Modest
IVs: 31/17/30/30/31/31
- Flamethrower
- Earth Power
- Substitute
- Protect
First off, don't mind the IVs; when I RNGed this one last year in anticipation of maybe using it on KangaLati I got an HP Grass spread just in case so I would not regret skipping out on it later if I ended up ever needing that move on hypothetical other teams, but I had no concrete plans on actually using it so I am indeed not actually using it on here. What I am using is the same set that Eisenherz used on his 1k run, for a few reasons, all of which relating to Substitute of course. The main one is, while of course I'm aware that Heatran is an awesome defensive piece and had it underlined red on my used mons wishlist, it also comes with sketchy Speed and three common and nasty weaknesses, which was a cocktail that I could see making for a lot of momentum loss when I can't afford it but can be mitigated well by a preemptive Substitute, which in turn of course is easy to get up in the numerous board states where Heatran does have a defensive typing advantage. Tailwind would have been another option of handling this, but I already alluded in the Latios blurb to why that felt awkward here, and the nail in the coffin was the fact that on the Weavile variant of the team I had no good enough coverage on Walrein4; as much as I normally think a couple tools for smacking it off the screen are "good enough" prep here, when I didn't even have that the hard check was pretty much mandatory.
Between its most (and honestly only) consistent Fire-type move, its go-to coverage move, and Protect the rest of the moves should be common sense, but the EV spread might at least warrant some affirmation, since tl;dr yes synergy with Substitute does indeed warrant max Speed here, with an absolute ton of status users being in the tiers between minimum and maximum Speed Heatran as well as of course a number of threats that you don't want to underspeed period. From the Substitute lens, you have annoyances like Tentacruel4 that can use Protect to mess with allies' attempts at removing it where its additional role of a poor man's Protect may make Substitute the optimal click, and of course picking off the likes of Excadrill before they can do anything comes in more than handy. Especially with Gastrodon's nonexistent Speed any extra points on Heatran are pretty much worth their weight in gold in situations where the frontline has gone down entirely, and when dudes like Emboar and Mienshao are in range for max Speed and can pretty much fire at will otherwise there's really no reason to skimp out on any points here. The (very fair) counterpoint is that, well, having no bulk investment on what's still a defensive piece is contradictory and potentially counterproductive, but while I have no calcs or anything on hand, in practice yes no worries at all Heatran more than gets by on sheer base stats and defensive typing, to the point that you really just don't even realise this is a 0 bulk Heatran.
In practice, this set has been incredible; for the most part its gets by on its defensive presence and just does not die from chip before it's killed everything else, and Substitute enhances those capabilities a lot by of course providing cushioning in more awkward situations, since the one downside of Heatran is that, for its awesome resistances, its weaknesses are actually some kinda painful ones. "Proactive momentum management" is the name of the game here, where it's extremely encouraged to pilot things so that the Sub goes up /before/ a potentially threatening enemy hits the field; think uh let's say a Battle Girl leading with Klinklang + Ferrothorn, where Klinklang gets destroyed by Hitmonlee and Heatran blasts Ferrothorn off the field, but if we take out Klinklang turn 1 while switching to Heatran a Fighting-type backup might come in before Heatran can remove Ferrothorn while we also have a Hitmonlee that probably has its Sash broken in some form. So instead turn 1 becomes Fake Out on Klinklang to keep it frozen in place while Heatran gets a safe switch, then turn 2 Hitmonlee clicks Protect while baiting things so Heatran can set up its Sub, and then finally turn 3 we take our double KO; by far the optimal position to be in with Heatran having safely Subbed up before a scary HJK user comes in, and Hitmonlee being around as potential bait never hurts either. Playing through Trick Room is a similar case, where if Heatran can Sub on a weak setter like Dusknoir4 we're pretty set for making it through cleanly, since we have the option of simply Sub/Protect cycling through the Trick Room turns while ideally lays the hurt on the enemies. It's unfortunate that it's not a great PP stalling tool except in certain edge cases; Heatran not having Pressure or Poison Heal means it's hard to deplete even 15 PP moves like Surf and sometimes even 10 PP moves depending on prior chip and/or AI using the wrong move on Protect turns before wearing itself down entirely, and of course it simply does not work at all if there's still multiple enemies standing--good luck outstalling dual Earthquake users if one of them just breaks the Sub for the other! Nevertheless it's still a powerful option to have up one's sleeve versus certain slow, bulky attackers, where hard checking Walrein4 is the most obvious practical application. It's also unfortunate that switching into attacks can be tricky since freeze or paralysis can proc before you get the shield up, but oh well not really the point overall either; just a fantastic tool of making sure Heatran can keep performing in more questionable matchups as well.
Between its most (and honestly only) consistent Fire-type move, its go-to coverage move, and Protect the rest of the moves should be common sense, but the EV spread might at least warrant some affirmation, since tl;dr yes synergy with Substitute does indeed warrant max Speed here, with an absolute ton of status users being in the tiers between minimum and maximum Speed Heatran as well as of course a number of threats that you don't want to underspeed period. From the Substitute lens, you have annoyances like Tentacruel4 that can use Protect to mess with allies' attempts at removing it where its additional role of a poor man's Protect may make Substitute the optimal click, and of course picking off the likes of Excadrill before they can do anything comes in more than handy. Especially with Gastrodon's nonexistent Speed any extra points on Heatran are pretty much worth their weight in gold in situations where the frontline has gone down entirely, and when dudes like Emboar and Mienshao are in range for max Speed and can pretty much fire at will otherwise there's really no reason to skimp out on any points here. The (very fair) counterpoint is that, well, having no bulk investment on what's still a defensive piece is contradictory and potentially counterproductive, but while I have no calcs or anything on hand, in practice yes no worries at all Heatran more than gets by on sheer base stats and defensive typing, to the point that you really just don't even realise this is a 0 bulk Heatran.
In practice, this set has been incredible; for the most part its gets by on its defensive presence and just does not die from chip before it's killed everything else, and Substitute enhances those capabilities a lot by of course providing cushioning in more awkward situations, since the one downside of Heatran is that, for its awesome resistances, its weaknesses are actually some kinda painful ones. "Proactive momentum management" is the name of the game here, where it's extremely encouraged to pilot things so that the Sub goes up /before/ a potentially threatening enemy hits the field; think uh let's say a Battle Girl leading with Klinklang + Ferrothorn, where Klinklang gets destroyed by Hitmonlee and Heatran blasts Ferrothorn off the field, but if we take out Klinklang turn 1 while switching to Heatran a Fighting-type backup might come in before Heatran can remove Ferrothorn while we also have a Hitmonlee that probably has its Sash broken in some form. So instead turn 1 becomes Fake Out on Klinklang to keep it frozen in place while Heatran gets a safe switch, then turn 2 Hitmonlee clicks Protect while baiting things so Heatran can set up its Sub, and then finally turn 3 we take our double KO; by far the optimal position to be in with Heatran having safely Subbed up before a scary HJK user comes in, and Hitmonlee being around as potential bait never hurts either. Playing through Trick Room is a similar case, where if Heatran can Sub on a weak setter like Dusknoir4 we're pretty set for making it through cleanly, since we have the option of simply Sub/Protect cycling through the Trick Room turns while ideally lays the hurt on the enemies. It's unfortunate that it's not a great PP stalling tool except in certain edge cases; Heatran not having Pressure or Poison Heal means it's hard to deplete even 15 PP moves like Surf and sometimes even 10 PP moves depending on prior chip and/or AI using the wrong move on Protect turns before wearing itself down entirely, and of course it simply does not work at all if there's still multiple enemies standing--good luck outstalling dual Earthquake users if one of them just breaks the Sub for the other! Nevertheless it's still a powerful option to have up one's sleeve versus certain slow, bulky attackers, where hard checking Walrein4 is the most obvious practical application. It's also unfortunate that switching into attacks can be tricky since freeze or paralysis can proc before you get the shield up, but oh well not really the point overall either; just a fantastic tool of making sure Heatran can keep performing in more questionable matchups as well.
Gastrodon @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Storm Drain
EVs: 164 HP / 108 Def / 220 SpA / 16 SpD
Nature: Quiet
IVs: 31/14/31/31/31/4 (raw Speed stat: 41)
- Scald
- Earth Power
- Clear Smog
- Icy Wind
A top 2 favourite gluemon, and at long last I am submitting a streak where this one takes the spotlight entirely over Scizor. Unlike in the Maison, I can't run Assault Vest on it here, but Sitrus Berry works just as well for the most part, doing a good attempt at trading the 50% special bulk increase for a 25% boost against both physical and special attacks, given the AI's massive struggles OHKOing Gastrodon without Grass-type attacks or, like, Choice Band Outrage or Specs Draco Meteor. Storm Drain is the name of the game as always, shielding Heatran from non-Surf Water attacks (and Hitmonlee from STAB Waterfalls and Aqua Jets tbh lol) and making Gastrodon a setup sweeper when paired with Latios's Surf.
Scald and Earth Power are as obvious as ever, and I believe Clear Smog and Icy Wind are the two optimal moves in the final two slots. Gastrodon is pretty great at providing team support for the most part, and especially when you turbodie into Grass-types regardless type coverage is the wrong thing to focus on (imo) alongside a STAB combo as generally potent as Water / Ground; so, Clear Smog and Icy Wind it is. Clear Smog is a pretty much full-on no-brainer inclusion on Gastrodon for me atp, providing a massive security blanket against notorious dipsticks like Zapdos, Volcarona, Cresselia, and Blissey, and not being entirely reliant on Storm Drain for keeping Gyarados under control is also a good idea.
Icy Wind is like slightly more contentious, but for this team at least in theory the synergy with Latios and (especially) Heatran's Substitute should be clear. In practice plays with Substitute in particular ended up being slightly shakier than I expected; the way I'm used to playing it with e.g. Mega Gardevoir is simply Protect on threatening foe's attack such as Gengar's Shadow Ball or Sludge Bomb while safely slowing it down, profit, but since Heatran is one of the very few Pokemon with an actually even more commanding defensive presence than Gastrodon, a lot of the time most of what I accomplished with this was just letting the enemy lay into Gastrodon while Heatran could just as well have Subbed or attacked them directly that very turn. It got to the point where I ended up reconsidering Protect, which of course is still a valid option here one way or another, since Gastrodon getting chipped down quicker meant it would actually perform the better bait role than Heatran when hitting low health, and the awkwardness in question meant I was not getting a lot of room to make effective Icy Wind plays in the first place. With Hitmonlee on the team, Icy Wind became the clearly superior option though and was essential in pulling through in certain close-ish battles; it's kind of hard to explain and I'll go into it more later, but tl;dr a lot of the failed Icy Wind plays happened in board states where Heatran + Gastrodon is genuinely not a great lineup to have in the field in the first place, which Hitmonlee's power was good for preventing more proactively, meaning this time I could save Heatran / Gastrodon boards for when they were actually optimal, with Gastrodon's full toolkit at that and with much better success keeping Gastrodon out of situations where it would get chipped quickly enough for Protect to actually become a sensible option. Plus Hitmonlee being another obvious situational Icy Wind beneficiary doesn't exactly hurt either. With Weavile out of the picture, I even ended up needing the coverage on Dragonite once or twice, lol.
EV-wise, this is (still) turskain's spread from the Assault Vest set ten years ago, which holds up alright here by providing a mostly even bulk split while maximising offensive presence and I could not put together anything better anyways. Since Gastrodon doubles as this team's main Trick Room check, making the Speed stat as low as possible IV- and naturewise makes sense, but I've long run 4 Speed IVs over 0, for an effective Speed stat of 41, since (Swagger of course) Escavalier4 was an absolute nightmare for Weavile / Mega Gardevoir / Gastrodon / Scizor and it lost out on little to nothing of significance under Trick Room otherwise. Escavalier is slightly less of an issue on this specific team for... self-explanatory reasons, but of course it's more than likely this won't be my only Gastrodon team in this facility, and I really do think it's the best all-around Speed benchmark. I will say that I wondered if I should just be using a regular Modest Gastrodon when I was still on the Weavile variant of this team, because underspeeding certain Earthquake users like Rhyperior made a bunch of battles trickier than they should have been, but once again that was symptomatic of me running a suboptimal frontline; here too adding Hitmonlee took a bunch of pressure off Gastrodon and allowed it to better focus on the game states where it excels, and outrunning dudes like Slowbro under TR was as valuable as ever. As a bonus, from what I can tell the Subway AI has pretty high standards in terms of speed advantage stakes before it clicks Trick Room, which in practice means that if Gastrodon gets on the field before Trick Room is up, it's probably staying off for good; the AI does not seem keen to make Gastrodon faster than even just one of its Pokemon, which of course is something it would pretty much always make happen.
Scald and Earth Power are as obvious as ever, and I believe Clear Smog and Icy Wind are the two optimal moves in the final two slots. Gastrodon is pretty great at providing team support for the most part, and especially when you turbodie into Grass-types regardless type coverage is the wrong thing to focus on (imo) alongside a STAB combo as generally potent as Water / Ground; so, Clear Smog and Icy Wind it is. Clear Smog is a pretty much full-on no-brainer inclusion on Gastrodon for me atp, providing a massive security blanket against notorious dipsticks like Zapdos, Volcarona, Cresselia, and Blissey, and not being entirely reliant on Storm Drain for keeping Gyarados under control is also a good idea.
Icy Wind is like slightly more contentious, but for this team at least in theory the synergy with Latios and (especially) Heatran's Substitute should be clear. In practice plays with Substitute in particular ended up being slightly shakier than I expected; the way I'm used to playing it with e.g. Mega Gardevoir is simply Protect on threatening foe's attack such as Gengar's Shadow Ball or Sludge Bomb while safely slowing it down, profit, but since Heatran is one of the very few Pokemon with an actually even more commanding defensive presence than Gastrodon, a lot of the time most of what I accomplished with this was just letting the enemy lay into Gastrodon while Heatran could just as well have Subbed or attacked them directly that very turn. It got to the point where I ended up reconsidering Protect, which of course is still a valid option here one way or another, since Gastrodon getting chipped down quicker meant it would actually perform the better bait role than Heatran when hitting low health, and the awkwardness in question meant I was not getting a lot of room to make effective Icy Wind plays in the first place. With Hitmonlee on the team, Icy Wind became the clearly superior option though and was essential in pulling through in certain close-ish battles; it's kind of hard to explain and I'll go into it more later, but tl;dr a lot of the failed Icy Wind plays happened in board states where Heatran + Gastrodon is genuinely not a great lineup to have in the field in the first place, which Hitmonlee's power was good for preventing more proactively, meaning this time I could save Heatran / Gastrodon boards for when they were actually optimal, with Gastrodon's full toolkit at that and with much better success keeping Gastrodon out of situations where it would get chipped quickly enough for Protect to actually become a sensible option. Plus Hitmonlee being another obvious situational Icy Wind beneficiary doesn't exactly hurt either. With Weavile out of the picture, I even ended up needing the coverage on Dragonite once or twice, lol.
EV-wise, this is (still) turskain's spread from the Assault Vest set ten years ago, which holds up alright here by providing a mostly even bulk split while maximising offensive presence and I could not put together anything better anyways. Since Gastrodon doubles as this team's main Trick Room check, making the Speed stat as low as possible IV- and naturewise makes sense, but I've long run 4 Speed IVs over 0, for an effective Speed stat of 41, since (Swagger of course) Escavalier4 was an absolute nightmare for Weavile / Mega Gardevoir / Gastrodon / Scizor and it lost out on little to nothing of significance under Trick Room otherwise. Escavalier is slightly less of an issue on this specific team for... self-explanatory reasons, but of course it's more than likely this won't be my only Gastrodon team in this facility, and I really do think it's the best all-around Speed benchmark. I will say that I wondered if I should just be using a regular Modest Gastrodon when I was still on the Weavile variant of this team, because underspeeding certain Earthquake users like Rhyperior made a bunch of battles trickier than they should have been, but once again that was symptomatic of me running a suboptimal frontline; here too adding Hitmonlee took a bunch of pressure off Gastrodon and allowed it to better focus on the game states where it excels, and outrunning dudes like Slowbro under TR was as valuable as ever. As a bonus, from what I can tell the Subway AI has pretty high standards in terms of speed advantage stakes before it clicks Trick Room, which in practice means that if Gastrodon gets on the field before Trick Room is up, it's probably staying off for good; the AI does not seem keen to make Gastrodon faster than even just one of its Pokemon, which of course is something it would pretty much always make happen.
A threatlist at this time is definitely gonna have me overlooking a bunch of things when I only have about 600 battles worth of experience with the Hitmonlee variant in particular, but the following should at least be a good starting point:
Weavile is painful between a faster Fake Out, Focus Sash, massive Speed, and the just about guaranteed OHKO on Latios as well as 80% minimum damage on Hitmonlee for whatever that's worth and is the main thing where I can agree to live and let live on Peterko's choice for Mach Punch. Ways of dealing with it are situational depending on its allies, but tools include (double) Protect, a Heatran switch, and a Close Combat + Sucker Punch KO, and (if it comes out later) Icy Wind; Heatran in particular does a great job holding the team together here if it doesn't get frozen while covering for Latios, and even Fake Out + Dragon Pulse could work since it does not seem to use Fake Out a lot in practice, though of course unless it's fully ruled out that can be kind of a high-risk gamble. Thankfully it's not all that common here I guess.
Opposing Latios and Latias are probably the biggest targets where dropping Weavile is actually a downgrade, as fast Psychics that don't fall to Fake Out + Sucker Punch and also the only Dragons other than certain Garchomp sets that Latios doesn't simply outspeed and snipe. On lead they can be handled cleanly by Fake Out + Dragon Pulse, but that necessitates a benign-enough partner as well, and when they come in as backups it doesn't work at all anymore for obvious reasons. To make matters worse you also can't reliably predict who they're gonna gun after between Hitmonlee and Latios. The upside is that Heatran is a good defensive answer to them overall and they're much easier to handle when you can actually predict their attacks, but yea overall these are in "figure out a way to play around them" category more often than I'd like and you really don't want to see both of them at the same time either. Worse come to worst there also the "75% of the time, it works every time" Speed tie gamble, but thankfully I have not had to do that just yet.
On the topic of enemies where I'm missing Weavile, Alakazam is not the hugest threat overall but it does become annoying when the AI's hyperprioritisation of Trick means I can't Sucker Punch it. Now, it doesn't seem reliable in who it targets either, and the good thing is that if it gives its Specs to Latios that's really not the worst downgrade ever for me, but stealing Hitmonlee's Sash is much worse when it's just gonna one-shot Hitmonlee after and I can't even take the consolation of one-shotting it anymore for having to lock into Sucker Punch--and I also can't get ahead of things with Fake Out because lol Inner Focus. While the preferred way of handling it once again assumes a benign ally, ideally I just click Protect on Hitmonlee while Latios hits it with Dragon Pulse, where if it does hit Latios with Trick it gets Sucker Punched next turn, and if it went after Hitmonlee instead I still can't Sucker Punch it but at least there's no harm in it stealing Sash anymore. In practice it also just switches out the turn after for "locked into non-damaging move" reasons, so that also mitigates it as a threat all but entirely; I wonder sometimes if I should actually open with double Protect so it gets locked into Trick no matter who it targets, but I don't know if the switch is actually guaranteed and it would be considerably more annoying if it waits on switching, so doing it just on Hitmonlee seems optimal from a risk management pov when Choice Specs Latios really is not that bad of course.
Yanmega also deserves a big mention; Bug / Flying is a remarkably tricky STAB combo to handle for these leads overall of course, but Speed Boost flipping momentum around if I can't remove it right away makes this one much more painful than anything else that can hit both of Hitmonlee and Latios super effectively. Thankfully odds of an outright Dragon Pulse OHKO are good enough that it's worth rolling those dice when the other enemy also demands turn 1 attention, and even if the Rock Slide-level odds of missing the KO do kick in I realistically have Sucker Punch to finish the job anyways; however, with both Bug Buzz and Air Slash only being like 80% assured OHKOs Detect is not actually fully ruled out, so if it clicks that one (or its ally otherwise forces all of my attention) and is Speed Boost I'm actually in for a world of pain, especially with Hitmonlee not really being able to damage it much at all. At least Heatran is a very hard counter if no excessive bs or troublesome partner.
Bikers are probably the single most threatening Trainer class in this facility as is, and for those reading along so far that should come as no surprise with unknown Weavile or Yanmega sets being part of their roster as well, lol. They're also a big one where I feel the loss of Weavile sometimes though, with any set Dragon-types being such a major part of their roster otherwise; while Latios handles just about all of them fine individually of course it's not hard for it to get overwhelmed if they stack a bunch of them, which is a common situation. At least the fact that they also have all Tyranitar sets on their rosters (seriously just drop the pretense and make them boss Trainers at this point) validates Hitmonlee's presence but yea lol...
Blizzard always deserves a mention when leading with Latios; like discussed before it's for the most mitigated pretty well by Hitmonlee's presence to just outspeed and OHKO them with Close Combat (or Sucker Punch in Jynx's case), but that does not work for everything, when there are also non-STAB (read: not weak to Fighting) users or those that just outspeed Hitmonlee. I'm not sure if there's a whole lot to say about the likes of Suicune that does not simply amount to handling them like most bulky Waters, but for faster users the ones worth highlighting are Articuno and Froslass. Articuno is handled by Fake Out and two Psyshocks (or just Close Combat + Psyshock if you've managed to confirm it as slower via Item Clause or whatever) but can additionally be obnoxious via Protect; I've had certain very close battles involving Articuno because of how scared I was of double targeting it, but by now I've accepted that for better or worse its use of it is not consistent enough to warrant the risk of leaving it alone. Froslass also forces a lot of immediate focus and gets a lot of glare points for Speed tying Latios, where the "best" way of dealing with it is simply hitting Sucker Punch twice while Latios clicks Protect turn 1, but of course that also depends on benign allies, and I've also had to do things like switch Latios out for Gastrodon turn 1 and abuse Froslass's tendencies of just spamming Destiny Bond when at 1HP when Latios is off the field. To make things more annoying, while Hitmonlee at least has a guaranteed KO on any Glaceon set that actually runs Blizzard, Brightpowder and Quick Claw are certainly things that exist, and while of course you need to play with some anticipation for those on turn 1 (helps that Glaceon commonly being paired with other Ice move users at least makes that choice easy), that's not always something you can afford effectively. At the very least Gastrodon and Heatran with Sub active (more case in point for running Speed on it here...) are functionally immune to Blizzard, so you're still hardly a single hax proc away from losing or anything.
No sense in digging up very specific examples here other than maybe Leafeon with its Quick Claw or any Grass-types that otherwise outspeed Heatran, but Earthquake and late-game Grass-types are worth highlighting as threats for the backline specifically, for several very obvious reasons. Earthquake AI in Subway in particular is worth a dissertation of its own, where it won't like using it if it hits its ally but 4x weak Heatran is probably still enough bait that it's still not worth outright counting on, while it will use it almost pathologically if its ally actually is immune, and Gastrodon is not bulky to the point it can just shrug off repeated STAB ones. It makes for a funny dynamic where you need to log Gyarados a lot higher on the threat radar when it's brought by Pilots specifically, since it has no real reason not to spam Earthquake there and will probably actually do so as well with the way Subway AI works, rather than just let itself be walled forever by Gastrodon, and there were also interesting misplays like that one time Pinsir4 showed up as a backliner so I was forced to make a defensive switch into the "obvious" X-Scissor and ended up switching Heatran headfirst into Earthquake because I spaced on Pinsir's ally that idr being technically a Flying-type. At least Latios was now going to wall Pinsir for good I suppose. As for Grass-types, no words to be said about their matchup into Gastrodon without making this beyond condescending, except that they are guilty of almost every situation where I do miss having Protect on it. The main takeaway from these enemies actually is that, despite obvious offensive typing synergy, it's actually wise to avoid a Heatran + Gastrodon board state if there's any unknown variables in play; of course there are still enough situations where it's fine, like if Heatran has gotten its preemptive Substitute up, if you're engineering a late-game 2v1 state into certain Water-types, or if Heatran can Sub/Protect cycle through Trick Room while Gastrodon is laying the hurt on the enemy, but overall they're both too slow to be entirely reliable blanket responses to each other's checks and can unravel extremely quickly if the wrong enemy comes in to swing momentum back at the wrong time.
Miscellaneous hax is kind of a cop-out entry lol but worth mentioning, since Hitmonlee + Latios are only so equipped at dealing with it and it can swing back certain otherwise-covered matchups extremely hard; think the aforementioned example of a Brightpowder miss into Glaceon4 on just that very battle where Latios couldn't afford to click Protect, and of course also Quick Claw being obnoxious into two heavily offensive leads. Heatran and Gastrodon are both a lot more resilient to it, especially with Substitute, but like I've mentioned before you really don't want to go into unknown backlines with those two out, and I also had several battles get sketchy or even outright lost thanks to back-to-back Rock Slide flinches on Gastrodon--you know, one of those types it's partly tasked with handling. At least those were with the Weavile variant, and it makes sense Hitmonlee would make the AI a lot less happy to spam it at least...
Opposing Latios and Latias are probably the biggest targets where dropping Weavile is actually a downgrade, as fast Psychics that don't fall to Fake Out + Sucker Punch and also the only Dragons other than certain Garchomp sets that Latios doesn't simply outspeed and snipe. On lead they can be handled cleanly by Fake Out + Dragon Pulse, but that necessitates a benign-enough partner as well, and when they come in as backups it doesn't work at all anymore for obvious reasons. To make matters worse you also can't reliably predict who they're gonna gun after between Hitmonlee and Latios. The upside is that Heatran is a good defensive answer to them overall and they're much easier to handle when you can actually predict their attacks, but yea overall these are in "figure out a way to play around them" category more often than I'd like and you really don't want to see both of them at the same time either. Worse come to worst there also the "75% of the time, it works every time" Speed tie gamble, but thankfully I have not had to do that just yet.
On the topic of enemies where I'm missing Weavile, Alakazam is not the hugest threat overall but it does become annoying when the AI's hyperprioritisation of Trick means I can't Sucker Punch it. Now, it doesn't seem reliable in who it targets either, and the good thing is that if it gives its Specs to Latios that's really not the worst downgrade ever for me, but stealing Hitmonlee's Sash is much worse when it's just gonna one-shot Hitmonlee after and I can't even take the consolation of one-shotting it anymore for having to lock into Sucker Punch--and I also can't get ahead of things with Fake Out because lol Inner Focus. While the preferred way of handling it once again assumes a benign ally, ideally I just click Protect on Hitmonlee while Latios hits it with Dragon Pulse, where if it does hit Latios with Trick it gets Sucker Punched next turn, and if it went after Hitmonlee instead I still can't Sucker Punch it but at least there's no harm in it stealing Sash anymore. In practice it also just switches out the turn after for "locked into non-damaging move" reasons, so that also mitigates it as a threat all but entirely; I wonder sometimes if I should actually open with double Protect so it gets locked into Trick no matter who it targets, but I don't know if the switch is actually guaranteed and it would be considerably more annoying if it waits on switching, so doing it just on Hitmonlee seems optimal from a risk management pov when Choice Specs Latios really is not that bad of course.
Yanmega also deserves a big mention; Bug / Flying is a remarkably tricky STAB combo to handle for these leads overall of course, but Speed Boost flipping momentum around if I can't remove it right away makes this one much more painful than anything else that can hit both of Hitmonlee and Latios super effectively. Thankfully odds of an outright Dragon Pulse OHKO are good enough that it's worth rolling those dice when the other enemy also demands turn 1 attention, and even if the Rock Slide-level odds of missing the KO do kick in I realistically have Sucker Punch to finish the job anyways; however, with both Bug Buzz and Air Slash only being like 80% assured OHKOs Detect is not actually fully ruled out, so if it clicks that one (or its ally otherwise forces all of my attention) and is Speed Boost I'm actually in for a world of pain, especially with Hitmonlee not really being able to damage it much at all. At least Heatran is a very hard counter if no excessive bs or troublesome partner.
Bikers are probably the single most threatening Trainer class in this facility as is, and for those reading along so far that should come as no surprise with unknown Weavile or Yanmega sets being part of their roster as well, lol. They're also a big one where I feel the loss of Weavile sometimes though, with any set Dragon-types being such a major part of their roster otherwise; while Latios handles just about all of them fine individually of course it's not hard for it to get overwhelmed if they stack a bunch of them, which is a common situation. At least the fact that they also have all Tyranitar sets on their rosters (seriously just drop the pretense and make them boss Trainers at this point) validates Hitmonlee's presence but yea lol...
Blizzard always deserves a mention when leading with Latios; like discussed before it's for the most mitigated pretty well by Hitmonlee's presence to just outspeed and OHKO them with Close Combat (or Sucker Punch in Jynx's case), but that does not work for everything, when there are also non-STAB (read: not weak to Fighting) users or those that just outspeed Hitmonlee. I'm not sure if there's a whole lot to say about the likes of Suicune that does not simply amount to handling them like most bulky Waters, but for faster users the ones worth highlighting are Articuno and Froslass. Articuno is handled by Fake Out and two Psyshocks (or just Close Combat + Psyshock if you've managed to confirm it as slower via Item Clause or whatever) but can additionally be obnoxious via Protect; I've had certain very close battles involving Articuno because of how scared I was of double targeting it, but by now I've accepted that for better or worse its use of it is not consistent enough to warrant the risk of leaving it alone. Froslass also forces a lot of immediate focus and gets a lot of glare points for Speed tying Latios, where the "best" way of dealing with it is simply hitting Sucker Punch twice while Latios clicks Protect turn 1, but of course that also depends on benign allies, and I've also had to do things like switch Latios out for Gastrodon turn 1 and abuse Froslass's tendencies of just spamming Destiny Bond when at 1HP when Latios is off the field. To make things more annoying, while Hitmonlee at least has a guaranteed KO on any Glaceon set that actually runs Blizzard, Brightpowder and Quick Claw are certainly things that exist, and while of course you need to play with some anticipation for those on turn 1 (helps that Glaceon commonly being paired with other Ice move users at least makes that choice easy), that's not always something you can afford effectively. At the very least Gastrodon and Heatran with Sub active (more case in point for running Speed on it here...) are functionally immune to Blizzard, so you're still hardly a single hax proc away from losing or anything.
No sense in digging up very specific examples here other than maybe Leafeon with its Quick Claw or any Grass-types that otherwise outspeed Heatran, but Earthquake and late-game Grass-types are worth highlighting as threats for the backline specifically, for several very obvious reasons. Earthquake AI in Subway in particular is worth a dissertation of its own, where it won't like using it if it hits its ally but 4x weak Heatran is probably still enough bait that it's still not worth outright counting on, while it will use it almost pathologically if its ally actually is immune, and Gastrodon is not bulky to the point it can just shrug off repeated STAB ones. It makes for a funny dynamic where you need to log Gyarados a lot higher on the threat radar when it's brought by Pilots specifically, since it has no real reason not to spam Earthquake there and will probably actually do so as well with the way Subway AI works, rather than just let itself be walled forever by Gastrodon, and there were also interesting misplays like that one time Pinsir4 showed up as a backliner so I was forced to make a defensive switch into the "obvious" X-Scissor and ended up switching Heatran headfirst into Earthquake because I spaced on Pinsir's ally that idr being technically a Flying-type. At least Latios was now going to wall Pinsir for good I suppose. As for Grass-types, no words to be said about their matchup into Gastrodon without making this beyond condescending, except that they are guilty of almost every situation where I do miss having Protect on it. The main takeaway from these enemies actually is that, despite obvious offensive typing synergy, it's actually wise to avoid a Heatran + Gastrodon board state if there's any unknown variables in play; of course there are still enough situations where it's fine, like if Heatran has gotten its preemptive Substitute up, if you're engineering a late-game 2v1 state into certain Water-types, or if Heatran can Sub/Protect cycle through Trick Room while Gastrodon is laying the hurt on the enemy, but overall they're both too slow to be entirely reliable blanket responses to each other's checks and can unravel extremely quickly if the wrong enemy comes in to swing momentum back at the wrong time.
Miscellaneous hax is kind of a cop-out entry lol but worth mentioning, since Hitmonlee + Latios are only so equipped at dealing with it and it can swing back certain otherwise-covered matchups extremely hard; think the aforementioned example of a Brightpowder miss into Glaceon4 on just that very battle where Latios couldn't afford to click Protect, and of course also Quick Claw being obnoxious into two heavily offensive leads. Heatran and Gastrodon are both a lot more resilient to it, especially with Substitute, but like I've mentioned before you really don't want to go into unknown backlines with those two out, and I also had several battles get sketchy or even outright lost thanks to back-to-back Rock Slide flinches on Gastrodon--you know, one of those types it's partly tasked with handling. At least those were with the Weavile variant, and it makes sense Hitmonlee would make the AI a lot less happy to spam it at least...
The loss is, uh, kind of hard to explain, but let's get into it.
#453: vs. Pokemon Breeder Eoin
I won't be providing a turn-by-turn recap here, but basically a Gardevoir4 + Togekiss4 lead is tricky, since Sucker Punch is usually not a KO on Gardevoir and Togekiss is obviously disruptive plus thanks to Sitrus cannot be 2HKOed by any combination of moves even with Fake Out chip. I map out the first couple turns so that I trade Hitmonlee for taking down Gardevoir entirely plus leaving Togekiss in KO range for whatever, after which I sent out Heatran to pick off Togekiss and Latios attacks into the followup Leafeon's Detect. Lastmon Bouffalant is where things spiral, since it's a brutally strong and bulky Pokemon with Earthquake as a coverage move, but I should be able to chip and/or Life Orb stall it once Leafeon is also down; unfortunately Leafeon takes out Latios with a Quick Claw proc, while Bouffalant uses Earthquake to break the Substitute I set up to grab momentum as a midground play should Bouffalant go after Latios, so suddenly things are extremely dire; at least I get to dodge another Quick Claw proc and manage to secure the unavoidable Heatran trade while it takes out Leafeon, and the Scald burn on Bouffalant actually makes for a glimmer of hope, but unfortunately it manages to override the Attack drop with a crit to pull the battle away from me for good.
Overall, this was basically a case of tricky lead matchup, nasty backups for my backline, coupled with some normally benign misplays:
- Not preserving Hitmonlee where I could realistically have Protected into Psychic + Air Slash; I was paranoid of Togekiss using Thunder Wave to suddenly make the next turn nasty and was content with leaving it an assured... dead egg flying?, even though Air Slash certainly was the expected move.
- Mishandling Leafeon; on the fatal Quick Claw proc, both a double target and a Protect on Latios while targeting it with Flamethrower would have assuredly taken it out while leaving Bouffalant standing alone, allowing me to either Life Orb stall it with Heatran's Substitute (if it went after Latios) or simply overpower it. This realistically would have been a Heatran sack though, and I guess I was subconsciously paranoid of a double Detect here to render that one moot. Certainly the less likely outcome compared to the Quick Claw proc though.
I'm not trying to make excuses, but I do think it's worth mentioning that the backups (not just Leafeon but also Bouffalant; even something like Rhyperior would have simply turbodied to Gastrodon on the final turns in Bouffalant's place) were as nasty as they come here and the hax procs would have had to happen as specifically as they did. What I mean by benign misplays is, it did take this specific lategame cocktail for them to actually be punished, and almost all the time they're of the kind that simply blows over and you just recognise as a future finetuning learning experience and move on. It's why this loss feels so weird, because even with losing Hitmonlee I never once felt like I didn't have momentum on my side or the matchup was even particularly threatening until the Quick Claw proc happened; I suppose it makes for reassurance that a better streak is in the cards at some point, but for now it'll just have to be a Subway school of hard knocks moment.
That is that, and I should also provide some other battle videos.
#45: vs. Veteran Colombo
An early battle with the Weavile variant showing off exactly what Substitute Heatran is capable of, specifically defeating a set-up Suicune3 one-on-one despite not even being PP Upped yet as of this battle. Full disclosure, this did need a little bit of luck, namely the double Protect on the final Surf, as well as the Flamethrower burn of course but I think with PP Ups I would have been the one to force Suicune into Struggle instead? Still ridiculous of course though, and at least it got me the Never Give Up medal...
#182: vs. Fisherman Fird
The loss of the Weavile version's PB, which I might as well provide when I'm posting anyways. I had been doing okay on close calls up to this point, but this was absolute slaughter; Vanilluxe4 is difficult for Weavile + Latios when Psyshock is not a 2HKO thanks to Sitrus Berry, and when Walrein4 also ends up actually hitting its OHKO moves there is really no way to stop a dual Water / Ground backline from bulldozing Heatran. This battle did do a good job of selling me on Hitmonlee over Weavile, because of course Heatran's vulnerability to this backline was a known issue, but the main reason it had to face it like this in the first place was because the opening rounds were pretty reflective of Weavile's lack of supplementary offensive presence if Latios can't provide it; Hitmonlee would have simply one-shot (or almost one-shot) Walrein turn 1 and Vanilluxe turn 2 while Latios clicked Protect on Vanilluxe's Ice Beam, at which point even with Heatran's uselessness here the rest of the battle would have been a formality.
#301: vs. Psychic Khaan
Originally saved as a generic milestone battle, but it also provides a decent showcase of the team dipping into its regular toolkit to handle Trick Room, so like sure why not. Spiritomb and Reuniclus are both slightly tricky thanks to Sucker Punch and Trick, but Reuniclus dies to Fake Out + two Dragon Pulses, and with Sucker Punch's damage output versus 100% Latios I was comfortable enough taking the gamble, and things worked out as planned there while Hitmonlee got a turn 2 switch to Heatran, a hard Spiritomb counter to turn that one into a dud slot. Then, followup Slowbro is my cue to set up Sub and bring in Gastrodon to turn the telegraphed Trick Room against them, and it's mostly just clicking from that point. Forgive the Icy Wind misclick btw...
#365: vs. Pilot Chand
Pilot battle that got tricky thanks to immediate hax where Icy Wind increases my range of fallback options a lot. Basically my planned opening two turns were KOing unknown Staraptor set with Fake Out + Dragon Pulse and taking out possible Hurrrnadus with Psyshock + Sucker Punch, but an old crit Dark Pulse from Tornadus3 takes Latios out of the running. Thanks to Hitmonlee's bait capabilities and Gastrodon's Icy Wind giving both Hitmonlee and Heatran free extra hits via speed advantage the battle never becomes truly dangerous afterwards though.
I already alluded to this earlier, but the main reason why Hitmonlee made a good replacement for Weavile despite certainly losing out on a handful of matchups that ended up turning into decent-to-notable threats was because it managed to deal much more proactively with a range of Latios checks that I otherwise would have had to rely on the backline for. It's kind of counterintuitive to me that a one-on-one replacement could do so well while losing out only on specific Weavile targets and not really at all on overall team synergy, but I suppose it makes sense when you look at it through a lens that the "main" team is the Latios / Heatran / Gastrodon board and that the second lead exists to grease their skids but has limited attempts at synergy with them otherwise. Latios / Heatran has great defensive synergy and coverage on each other's checks and can even take advantage of Latios baiting for free Substitutes, Heatran / Gastrodon has the coverage on each other's checks etc, and Latios / Gastrodon has the whole Surf supercharge mode; however, Weavile / Heatran and Weavile / Gastrodon did not really do any of that other than just attacking together, meaning that Hitmonlee / Heatran and Hitmonlee / Gastrodon didn't really have to try and improve anything over that either (though they still did--see Heatran actually covering Hitmonlee's weaknesses properly). Both Weavile / Latios and Hitmonlee / Latios existed to have a Fake Out user create space for Latios while handling some of its checks, and Hitmonlee and Weavile both do an okay job in that area in their own way.
To truly understand what makes Hitmonlee better from a teamwide synergy angle, we need to look at the Heatran / Gastrodon backline again, with the newfound understanding that these two, while not doing a bad job helping each other out, are prone to losing a lot of momentum versus the wrong enemies and as a result need to not actually be on the field at the same time if it can be helped and the battle is not in the bag yet, not to mention the fact that there are limits to their hard switching in abilities thanks to Heatran's vulnerability to added effects and Gastrodon's squishiness, especially in the face of old crits. This is again where Hitmonlee comes in; while Weavile manages to deal with a range of enemies that threaten Latios offensively, Hitmonlee actually breaks through the enemies that handle it defensively, meaning it can stay on the field and contribute much better and, more importantly, postpone the moment where Heatran / Gastrodon need to take to the field together. "I'm not worried about Steel-types with Weavile + Latios when my backline shreds those", I mean sure but when practice has taught you that you don't actually want your entire backline on the field then that puts a pretty major asterisk on that. It's funny how this ended up indirectly fixing Heatran's vulnerability to Earthquake spam; you simply do get to face a lot less of those head-on if Hitmonlee kills or helps Latios kill them first, at which point just making sure Heatran has a Sub up before backups come in when it does have to come in directly is indeed pretty much enough. Cool stuff.
I also can't avoid talking about this team without saying a few words about Peterko's team as well, as the earlier "definitive" version of the Hitmonlee + Latios backline that put up a very good score in its own right. As much as I would like to make a more direct comparison between our two teams, I think they simply provide wildly different takes from a similar starting point, where Heatran + Gastrodon attempts to support LeeTios in a defensive way while Hydreigon + Metagross takes on an offensive angle here. More specifically, in a way, his team reminds me of KangaLati, and more specifically the pseudo-"type spam" aspect that I identified while playing around with them, in the sense that e.g. losing Latios often wasn't a huge deal at all when Sylveon could simply jump in and continue the Dragon carnage without any trouble. This is the main way in which the dual Dragon-types make sense to me, when Hydreigon's presence makes Latios much more expendable when it goes down early due to a wallbreaking trade or hax and the team's overall functionality is not very impacted, and Metagross can swap in mostly seamlessly for Ice-type killing duties if anything happens to Hitmonlee. The increased Ice Worker weakness does stand, without Substitute Heatran or Scald Gastrodon's extra defensive coverage, but I'm not at all saying anything there Peterko hasn't said as is of course. It even validates Mach Punch on Hitmonlee in ways beyond our "dinosaur teams hadn't discovered Protect properly yet" vibes, since yea without Heatran or Icy Wind and with a Choice-locked (read: incapable of Protect baiting) Latios it's extremely appreciated if you have a way to remove it that won't entail an outright sack of substantial hax risk. I'll avoid discussing it too much further because I'm not sure if it's an entirely respectful thing to do, but yea needless to say it's super interesting to see how there's such wildly different backlines possible by taking a different approach on the same lead and how both have been capable of putting up competitive records on the same board. I still think looking for the singular best team is stupid and am much more interested in contributing to a very diverse board showing lots of different teams and styles, and if indeed I managed to contribute something novel enough despite starting off from the same frontline as one of the best teams from the current gen, then that means a lot to me.
Still, that doesn't really change anything about how this team is literally "BDSP team based off failed Maison backline shoehorned into Subway with a singular Pokemon changed for something else with 0 changes to the rest of the team to account for potential ripple effects"; and when jury is still out on whether my "sucks at teambuilding" allegations are actually true or just self-inflicted imposter syndrome brain worms, you can argue whether this team is genuinely four Pokemon with deep toolkits that synergise well together or just a lucky strike of trial and error building, and in terms of proper teambuilding skills it might just be a case of Katrielle Layton-like "miraculous instinct" at best, lol. It's not really a way of looking at this conducive to good vibes, anyway, and I don't think I need it either, since this one might be up there for the most fun team I've ever used period. WeavGarde has always been my go-to answer to that question, but I think this one is a similar case of four Pokemon with deep and fun toolkits where no two battles are the same and the point is to explore said toolkits as deeply as possible to win against huge ranges of enemies, except this one is even more rewarding because it does not even have the "Fake Out + spread move" stock play (unless Surf counts but for this team that one is much more of a niche tool to open up even more options!). And, well, as least in terms of relative power levels this team is probably also genuinely better. WeavGarde has done really well in the Maison (still the best performing team not using any of Greninja, Mega Kangaskhan, or FEAR!) but as good and fun to use as it is it still has a definite set of enemies that force its back to the wall and force you to either give other enemies space while playing around them or just lose, which I have not identified here to that level. This is also the reason why I mentioned earlier that 452 is good "for now", since especially with the nature of the loss I can't shake the feeling that this team can still do better than it has put up so far.
This is also only the third run with this team so far, after two prior losses in the 90s to a hard Biker counterteam and a horrendous brainfart around Conkeldurr3, and as we all know it's standard procedure in Subway to do at least over half a dozen runs with the same team to brute force some luck to compete with the higher variance inherent to this place compared to later facilities. This has not felt wise to me so far though, since I played right through burnout to get to this number as is, not to mention "Starf in Subway Doubles" was one of my two true in-game achievement-related remaining facility goals, and calling it good after reaching 203+ was always the plan with how turbo unfun it is to lose in the 90s while playing through burnout and "time" being the factor that it always is. Once I reach my final goal I absolutely have some other teams in already cleared modes that I plan to pick up or revisit though, and this one is pretty high on this list. Don't take that as an actual commitment, just, in terms of Fun(tm), this would very much be one of the safer teams to dive back into whenever it's time for that. Really happily surprised with how much I've been enjoying this facility after the shaky relationship with Unova that I've had all my life.
See you around!