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Moutemoute wins by a hair! Thank you all for your submissions, they were great all around and we hope that you'll continue to contribute to the project.
Suicune is pretty customizable and the initial goal was to utilize Sub Toxic Suicune for Research Week. I thought Umbreon would be the perfect partner since it can comfortably since into Latias, the easiest target. Doublade covered the fighting-types that were starting to make me nervous, like Terrakion. It also could run Toxic to cripple bulky Water-types like Slowbro. Gligar was able to beat Infernape and spread more Toxic. Calm Mind Cobalion was an interesting stallbreaker I've been meaning to try. It did a good job of luring Slowbro for the rest of the passive team. Mega Altaria covered Hazard Removal, appreciated Umbreon's ability to stomach Dracos, and just fit in perfectly. After playing more with the team, Sub Toxic Suicune was changed to Roar CM Suicune. It pestered bulkier threats like opposing Suicune and Togekiss more than Toxic.
Good luck, and please remember to submit your cores by Thursday.
Fairium-z Celebi, an underrated Celebi set, has a great match-up against the team. Celebi can set up on mons like suicune or a weakened umbreon, and deal massive damage to the team because fairium-z lures in mons like altaria-mega and umbreon in. Earth power is used to hit coballion and doublade, and giga drain hits suicune. However, Gligar can take a +2 giga drain and cripple Celebi with toxic, leaving it unable to sweep the team. This is where facade altaria-mega comes in, taking a toxic and using it to boost facade to 140 bp. Fire blast is to roast doublade as it switches in, easing up an altaria-mega sweep
Moltres @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Flame Body
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fire Blast
- Hurricane
- Roost
- U-turn
This pair always has great synergy together, with moltres threatening burns on all the steel types that refresh altaria dislikes. Against this team in particular, gligar and umbreon both offer free set up opportunities for altaria, and suicune while being able to phase it out can do little against it in return. I opted for max attack instead of a more bulky spread in order to guarantee the +1 frustration ohko against altaria, and maximise the damage against suicune and cobalion.
Altaria is able to set up on both of the more passive pokemon on the team, and while doublade can swap in on it, moltres then offers a free swap in onto doublade which has to risk burn or simply swap. A +1 frustration from moltres against the given suicune set does,
+1 252+ Atk Pixilate Altaria-Mega Frustration vs. 252 HP / 240 Def Suicune: 211-250 (52.2 - 61.8%) -- 97.7% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
meaning suicune would need to be almost permanently roaring whenever altaria came in to stop it even trying to get a single dragon dance off, putting it entirely on the defensive. It would therefore be pretty easy to just totally waste it's roar pp by switching immediately back in whenever it roar'd, giving it no opportunities to ever set up, making it rely almost entirely on scald burns to actually get free turns. Therefore while this suicune can technically phase altaria, it by no means stops it at all.
Moltres also serves to counter altaria and gligar, and can also act as a soft counter to cobalion, (z-elec is a little scary but it won't ohko unless at +1), while volt switch will deal decent damage it will be forced to swap, or stay in for a calm mind and take large damage from a fire blast, and this damage can be roosted off. It can also nuke suicune / gligar when needed with supersonic skystrike, dealing 64.6 - 75.9% and 72.7 - 85.6% respectively to +0 suicune and gligar.
This core would naturally appreciate hazard removal support and slow u turns from its other 4 teammates, such as a gligar of its own which can do both at once. Tentacruel would also serve as good hazard control, due to also being able to haze the suicune if it ever got multiple calm minds up.
Looking at this team, the matchup against Fairy-types is tough. The only Fairy resist is Doublade which can't stomache strong special attacks. I went with Specs Primarina because the Wish passer here is Umbreon, which as a Dark-type can't 1v1 Primarina. The only thing that can really annoy Primarina and prevent it from breaking, besides Elec Z Cobalion which is a wild and really cool set, is Suicune. I chose Celebi because it to deal with Suicune, especially since it isn't Sleep Talk, and can easily double back into Primarina and knock something out. Celebi is also a decent answer to Cobalion because Cobalion can't hit it super effectively and Z Psychic is going to hurt.
Credit goes to Lycans (gz on 3-0) who used this core today in SPL. It looked really interesting and I saw that it worked here so I thought I should post it.
Cobalion @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Close Combat
- Iron Head
- Taunt
This was what i brought week 3 of SPL vs Edi0n pretty basic Primarina bulky offense with some techs as TW rotom-heat to catch special Dragons as Latias in the switch and Taunt over SD on Coba to avoid my rocks get defogged everytime by Gligar which is more common nowadays
Good luck, and please remember to submit your cores by Thursday.
Durant is able to set up on Choice-locked Krookodile and Celebi and proceed to smash things. Refresh Mega Altaria can remove Aerodactyl or Krookodile as Durant can only take one strong physical hit. Refresh Mega Altaria can do a lot on its own generally, but in this case it’s softening the team for Durant.
Colbur Latias is rather annoying for the team for the amount of potential setup it has, how fast it is, and how it can take Krook offguard. Togekiss complements this potential luring Aero which is the main thing that would stop Lati after Krook had been dealt with. Togekiss has a lot of potential to also be annoying on its own vs this team.
So, team, that really doesn’t like setup kommo-o. It can kill pretty much every member of the team with scizor in the back that can bring it in, and also trap/weaken the things it may not be able to kill. Both of these mons are good. Cake made me do this.
Manectric-Mega @ Manectite
Ability: Lightning Rod
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Volt Switch
- Flamethrower
- Signal Beam
Crawdaunt @ Choice Band
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Crabhammer
- Knock Off
- Superpower
Crawdaunt goes mad ham vs this squad, bar Primarina. That's where MMane comes in. It provides Volt switch support and deals with Primarina, as well as pivoting in pre-mega on Rotom-Heat. Signal Beam snipes Krookodile and Celebi trying to come in on Manectric, though Flamethrower can also hit Celebi.
Bulky offense/balance based around cm reuniclus I made for spl week 2. It focuses on removing/weakening/crippling reun's common answers like scizor, latias, hydreigon, and other steels with the combination of helmet amoonguss, toxic krook, and pursuit aero.