Metagame Camomons (VR Updates #124 & Deoxys-Speed Freed #125)

[KamenAlliterator]

Oh lord. I haven't spoken here on this forum/site in a hot minute. Let's talk about all the C-tier mons that deserve some attention or at bare minimum get mentioned again.

This fan favorited apple loving drake will be my first cover after a long while. Now, Appletun itself is pretty bulky. It's got decent stats, and many many capabilities that can maintain its HP for long periods of time. The main issue it struggles with (along with the rest of its line), is it's rather abysmal typing, since Grass/Dragon leaves it x4 weak to Ice-type moves and pokémon (amongst its many other type weaknesses) such as Alolan Ninetales and Weavile. Thanks to this wonderful metagame, we can avoid this entirely by using its diverse move pool to its advantage.

is a phenomenal dual typing for it, as it covers all of its former weaknesses with the catch of it now being weak to Ground and Fighting. Defensively, this typing grants neutrality to Fairy, Ice, and Dragon, while also deleting its Flying and Poison weaknesses entirely, making it much easier for Appletun to set up its defenses with Iron Defense and Substitute more freely. That way, setting Leech Seed on opposing Non-Grass-type pokémon will be much easier, and it'll become much more difficult for the opposing pokémon to get it off the field.

Appletun can also become a bulky Weather setter with

or

, setting up Rain for allies that can cover for it, such as any Water-typed Garchomp and Ground/Bug Gliscor.

I'm still testing to see what other uses Appletun can have, but for now it can be use as a potential wall or bulky setter.

 

[KamenAlliterator]

View attachment IMG_2520.webp

On the topic of Dragon-types, I do think Altaria should get a mention too. Quite an odd pick, I was very hesitant to review this bird due to the fact that it has appalling Attack and Special Attack stats, not that great Speed, and rather low HP, making it quite frail and undesirable for battle usage. However, it's saving graces in Cotton Guard, Dragon Dance, along with several Status and Utility moves, make it more resistant in situations that can leave it vulnerable quite quickly, and turning the tide of the game.

While

on its own is a decent typing to have, Altaria doesn't gain any sort of merit from the typing as it can easily be taken advantage of by more prominent Ice-type users like Latios, Porygon-Z, and the dreadful Great Tusk with their Ice-type moves, without a chance to set up.

is a amazing and viable answer to the Ice and Fairy threats it faces, and has many offensive capabilities to threaten and check Steel-typed Garganacl, Grass-typed Rillaboom, and base typing Kingambit.

grants the same attributes while now being able to safely check most of Iron Valiants typings, Ogerpon-H, and Hoopa-U. While

deletes Garchomp, Dragapult, and Galarian Slowking, along with all their other typings.

 

[KamenAlliterator]

I usually avoid covering Pokémon that have lost their viability and become harder to use or fit onto teams like Dedenne. However, Gallade is one of the only rare exceptions that can actually pull it off, thanks to its incredible offensive potential. With its powerful ability Sharpness boosting its already strong STAB moves, Gallade can carve out a significant niche for itself to hopefully see a great rise in usage.

and

are good and balanced typings that can pick off annoying Ground threats in the metagame like Gliscor for example, and preserve its offensive prowess while threating other pokemon for its teammates. These typings also checks numerous offesve threats like Garchomp, Baxcalibur, and Dragapult too as a bonus, making it easy for teammates to set up, since it's normally difficult to do so when the aforementioned threats are on the field.

can offensively set the pace of the match, while also threatening Gengar, Pecharunt, and Hydreigon, who are all Special Attacking powerhouses if left unchecked. Fighting/Dark also allows more offensive play that can overwhelm foes if the Gallade in question is wearing Choice Scarf.

pretty much does the same thing also...? The only exception to this is the fact that it can't punish Annihilape, but CAN punish Garganacl and Non-Psychic Latios, which are both BIG pluses.


Defense wise, Gallade is pretty lacking, and has to rely on its teammates to make up for it, but in this metagame, we can mitigate that slightly by giving Gallade a few typings that can grant it a little bit of leverage against pokemon who can make quick work of it.

is a great typing that can help punish dangerous Fighting and Poison users such as Chien-Pao, Iron Hands, and Clodsire; who normally like stalling games out, therefore having this typing can be very useful, and aid it's Fairy-type teammates like Iron Valiant, Great Tusk, and Gholdengo with cleaning up the mess Gallade leaves behind. Ghost/Fighting as mention before can be considered defensive also.

I'm currently looking into more sets

 

[Samtendo09]

<< B Masquerain:

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[

/

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Are there values that Masquerain have in addition to better type combinations and Quiver Dance? It’s 80 Speed makes it reliant on Quiver Dance, and doesn’t have much valuable utility move except Sticky Webs and Whirlwind.

Still, I can tell this metagame proves or at least theorize that a better defensive or offensive type combination can go a long way even for most “unviable” Pokémon.

 

[Siamato]

<< B Masquerain:

/

[

/

] >>
View attachment 754990
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Are there values that Masquerain have in addition to better type combinations and Quiver Dance? It’s 80 Speed makes it reliant on Quiver Dance, and doesn’t have much valuable utility move except Sticky Webs and Whirlwind.

Still, I can tell this metagame proves or at least theorize that a better defensive or offensive type combination can go a long way even for most “unviable” Pokémon.

Masquerain has been ranked mainly for 2 reasons:

• It's one of the best Sticky Web setter being able to abuse Shadow Ball to get the
  
  type allowing it to immediatly spinblock. Intimidate is also a valuable ability for offensive teams forcing a physical mon to switch out. Stun Spore, Whirlwind and QD can prevent the opponent to mess around with Masquerain in trying to setup something.
• If 80 Speed is definitely not ideal, it still outspeeds Dragapult at +1 which is the fastest mon in the metagame apart from Deoxys-Speed. Though a bit experimental, QD combined to a pretty decent coverage and strong moves allows Masquerain to try sweeping. Intimidate helps again in finding an opportunity to do so. This mon is surprisingly the closest Quiver Dancer from our banned Volcarona lol.

 

[KamenAlliterator]

Masquerain has been ranked mainly for 2 reasons:

• It's one of the best Sticky Web setter being able to abuse Shadow Ball to get the
  
  type allowing it to immediatly spinblock. Intimidate is also a valuable ability for offensive teams forcing a physical mon to switch out. Stun Spore, Whirlwind and QD can prevent the opponent to mess around with Masquerain in trying to setup something.
• If 80 Speed is definitely not ideal, it still outspeeds Dragapult at +1 which is the fastest mon in the metagame apart from Deoxys-Speed. Though a bit experimental, QD combined to a pretty decent coverage and strong moves allows Masquerain to try sweeping. Intimidate helps again in finding an opportunity to do so. This mon is surprisingly the closest Quiver Dancer from our banned Volcarona lol.

I also want to add that Masquerain is great at wearing Phys Attackers down since Intimidate + Webs/Haze make it harder for mons to set up on it, and would rather want it dead or forced out the field, even despite the fact its bad stats making it more difficult for Masquerain to stay in for long.

 

[AintTellingUNothing]

Alr so I'm a little late to this meta... out of curiosity, why is Drednaw banned and Zamazenta not? I've always had a pet peeve with Zamazenta being legal in OU and most OMs, even though it is a box art legendary with insane stats, a free defense boost and little counters besides a couple birds.
I get that Drednaw with shell smash is good, and STAB jaw lock seems strong but I just don't see the reason why it is banned.
Again, this is coming from someone who has no idea what is going on around these parts lol

 

[KamenAlliterator]

Alr so I'm a little late to this meta... out of curiosity, why is Drednaw banned and Zamazenta not? I've always had a pet peeve with Zamazenta being legal in OU and most OMs, even though it is a box art legendary with insane stats, a free defense boost and little counters besides a couple birds.
I get that Drednaw with shell smash is good, and STAB jaw lock seems strong but I just don't see the reason why it is banned.
Again, this is coming from someone who has no idea what is going on around these parts lol

it’s because of Drednaw’s devastating sweeping potential with very little ways to stop it once it gets going.

 

[Siamato]

Alr so I'm a little late to this meta... out of curiosity, why is Drednaw banned and Zamazenta not? I've always had a pet peeve with Zamazenta being legal in OU and most OMs, even though it is a box art legendary with insane stats, a free defense boost and little counters besides a couple birds.
I get that Drednaw with shell smash is good, and STAB jaw lock seems strong but I just don't see the reason why it is banned.
Again, this is coming from someone who has no idea what is going on around these parts lol

Drednaw has been banned quite early on the gen, at a time screens (Light Clay) were still allowed. Indeed, the combination of screens + amazing offensive and defensive types such as

or

paired with Shell Smash were deemed too much while both having different counterplays. Quite "recently" we asked the community about how they felt about reintroducing Drednaw back in the metagame, with Light Clay gone and overall more counterplay than in early SV Camo but, the vote ended up on a statu quo with 2 DNU and 2 Unban. Overall, Drednaw may not be broken anymore but is still seen as an unhealthy element for the metagame that people don't really wish to deal with.

Freeing Zama was a hot topic for months until council decided to give it a chance. Since then, Zamazenta has proved to be balanced in Camo and, in fact, it's not even really good tbh. Every all out attacker sets (Band, 4 atk boots, Howl, LO) have a very hard time dealing with very common defensive mon such as Slowking-G, Garganacl, Great Tusk, Alomomola, Zapdos, Pecharunt, Glimmora, etc depending on coverage. IronPress is not so good either due to the ubiquity of Ghost, Fairy and Poison types. A simple combination of

Slowking-Galar + regular WoW Hex Dragapult is often enough to be very safe against Zama. It does have an unhealthy part in the sense the mon can do pretty much nothing in a bad MU bar acting as speed control while being able to sweep quite easily in a very good one with the perfect set. If Camo gives it more possibilities, it's still nerfed with respect to OU where it can Tera and suddently flips counterplay. The Camomons metagame is also slower than regular OU meaning Zama's ability to block offense is less valuable here.

Hope it helps :)

 

[AintTellingUNothing]

Drednaw has been banned quite early on the gen, at a time screens (Light Clay) was still allowed. Indeed, the combination of screens + amazing offensive and defensive types such as

or

paired with Shell Smash were deemed too much while both having different counterplays. Quite "recently" we asked the community about how they felt about reintroducing Drednaw back in the metagame, with Light Clay gone and overall more counterplay than in early SV Camo but, the vote ended up on a statu quo with 2 DNU and 2 Unban. Overall, Drednaw may not be broken anymore but is still seen as an unhealthy element for the metagame that people don't really wish to deal with.

Freeing Zama was a hot topic for months until council decided to give it a chance. Since then, Zamazenta has proved to be balanced in Camo and, in fact, it's not even really good tbh. Every all out attacker sets (Band, 4 atk boots, Howl, LO) have a very hard time dealing with very common defensive mon such as Slowking-G, Garganacl, Great Tusk, Alomomola, Zapdos, Pecharunt, Glimmora, etc depending on coverage. IronPress is not so good either due to the ubiquity of Ghost, Fairy and Poison types. A simple combination of

Slowking-Galar + regular WoW Hex Dragapult is often enough to be very safe against Zama. It does have an unhealthy part in the sense the mon can do pretty much nothing in a bad MU bar acting as speed control while being able to sweep quite easily in a very good one with the perfect set. If Camo gives it more possibilities, it's still nerfed with respect to OU where it can Tera and suddently flips counterplay. The Camomons metagame is also slower than regular OU meaning Zama's ability to block offense is less valuable here.

Hope it helps :)

Thank you! I'm really excited to play this meta if/when it becomes OMoTM

 

[AintTellingUNothing]

Drednaw has been banned quite early on the gen, at a time screens (Light Clay) was still allowed. Indeed, the combination of screens + amazing offensive and defensive types such as

or

paired with Shell Smash were deemed too much while both having different counterplays. Quite "recently" we asked the community about how they felt about reintroducing Drednaw back in the metagame, with Light Clay gone and overall more counterplay than in early SV Camo but, the vote ended up on a statu quo with 2 DNU and 2 Unban. Overall, Drednaw may not be broken anymore but is still seen as an unhealthy element for the metagame that people don't really wish to deal with.

Freeing Zama was a hot topic for months until council decided to give it a chance. Since then, Zamazenta has proved to be balanced in Camo and, in fact, it's not even really good tbh. Every all out attacker sets (Band, 4 atk boots, Howl, LO) have a very hard time dealing with very common defensive mon such as Slowking-G, Garganacl, Great Tusk, Alomomola, Zapdos, Pecharunt, Glimmora, etc depending on coverage. IronPress is not so good either due to the ubiquity of Ghost, Fairy and Poison types. A simple combination of

Slowking-Galar + regular WoW Hex Dragapult is often enough to be very safe against Zama. It does have an unhealthy part in the sense the mon can do pretty much nothing in a bad MU bar acting as speed control while being able to sweep quite easily in a very good one with the perfect set. If Camo gives it more possibilities, it's still nerfed with respect to OU where it can Tera and suddently flips counterplay. The Camomons metagame is also slower than regular OU meaning Zama's ability to block offense is less valuable here.

Hope it helps :)

Thank you! I'm really excited to play this meta if/when it becomes OMoTM

 

[AintTellingUNothing]

Fun set I made!
Cinccino Heavy Duty Boots
A:Skill Link
EVs- 252 Atk, 252 Speed, 4 Sp.Def
Jolly Nature
-Bullet seed
-Rock blast
-Knock off
-Tidy up
Grass and rock is a great type combo, with rock hitting the ice, fire, bug and flying types that give grass trouble, as well as resisting fire, flying and poison types that hit grass for SE.
On the other end, grass hits pesky water and ground types that rock usually struggles with while canceling out the weaknesses to said types and grass.
Knock off is there for utility and to hit steel types, while Tidy up is just a really, really broken set up move (like, DD+Defog with very little counterplay is insane)

 

[KamenAlliterator]

Fun set I made!
Cinccino Heavy Duty Boots
A:Skill Link
EVs- 252 Atk, 252 Speed, 4 Sp.Def
Jolly Nature
-Bullet seed
-Rock blast
-Knock off
-Tidy up
Grass and rock is a great type combo, with rock hitting the ice, fire, bug and flying types that give grass trouble, as well as resisting fire, flying and poison types that hit grass for SE.
On the other end, grass hits pesky water and ground types that rock usually struggles with while canceling out the weaknesses to said types and grass.
Knock off is there for utility and to hit steel types, while Tidy up is just a really, really broken set up move (like, DD+Defog with very little counterplay is insane)

pairing this with loaded dice would be crazy. I also love how this set can threaten both Garchomp and Dragapult, as well as all their type formes

 

[AintTellingUNothing]

Thx, but it doesn't need loaded dice because it has skill link(the ability form of loaded dice) but if you want more damage Technician+Dice would be better.
Its running HDB so it doesn't worry about webs and t-spikes, and removes them afterwards

 

[SammyCe123]

Camomons is in OMCL!! To celebrate, I've decided to finally put in the effort of posting my team dump from the somewhat recent camomons swiss tournament that was won by a pretty cool guy.
Warning: The tournament, and thus all of these teams, were played in a metagame where Gouging Fire and Palafin were allowed, and Deoxys-Speed was banned. This means that they're technically outdated but I only used Gouging Fire and Palafin once each so the rest of the teams should be fine. Some possible metagame changes have been discussed after the team dump. Still, don't blame me if you use one of these and lose to Deoxys-S.

Round 1 vs Osake Game 1 Game 2
- pretty standard 6, specs pult and rilla have very good matchup spreads and give the team speed and priotiy for the offense matchups as well. Offensive zapdos 1v1s a lot of the metagame and makes really consistent progress every game. Very standard defensive core of Great Tusk, Slowking-G and Ting-Lu, these 3 basically cover everything important in the meta.
- really cool hazard stack balance, this was one of my favourite teams that I had built from the tour. Ghost / normal garganacl might look weird because you get the curse that halfs your own hp, but that's worth it cause you spinblock pretty much every rapid spinner in the metagame which lets you keep up your hazards really easily.
- first of many offense teams of this type, I really liked all of these mons, especially dragon / steel hydreigon, and it's just really fun to blow stuff up with strong but bulky guys, and then wish / healing wish them up with alo to continue the rampage.

Round 2 vs Damflame Game 1 Game 2 Game 3
- same team as the g3 vs Osake, since I didn't get to use it then.
- I basically just wanted to use specs noivern + zapdos since those 2 felt very consistent together. Rest is pretty standard, scarf samurott is there cause it looked fun and I wanted more speed + hazards to help noivern.
- just another standard offense, not really much to say about it.

Round 3 vs anaconja Game 1 Game 2
- I was expecting cheese and I wanted to experiment with some new stuff so lokix + cinderace was a cool idea. Ursaluna is there because big cocaine bear does a lot of damage, which complements lokix not actually being that strong. Alo + latios + hydreigon is just standard stuff, tho it's worth mentioning that it's ground / fire hydreigon w rocks cause I didn't have a ground or a rocker.
- standard hazard stack, I'm pretty sure this was around the time I saw that one CTC dnite sinistcha sd gliscor stack and went "Hey! I can do that in camo!" and so I did.
- I realised that cress was pretty insane in this meta but it competed with the latis a lot, especially latias, which was often preferred for the speed and water typing. But what if you brought both of them? Latias lures the cm check, tricks it, and now cress wins. Woo! Didn't get to use the team tho.

Round 4 vs Siamato Game 1 Game 2
- We agreed to use one ZU mon each on every team (but Siamato didn't keep to that agreement...) Sun was shaping up to be really strong and it had a lot of dominant wins in the tour, so I figured that I wanted to use it myself with Charizard as my ZU mon. Team is outdated but you can probably just run garchomp or slither wing over gouging fire for about the same results, tho neither are obv as broken as it. Was a really fun mu tho, sun vs psyspam isn't something you see every day in camo.
- Glastrier looked like it could have a really solid niche as a bulky sd mon, similar to kingambit, so I went with the same idea as some previous teams and used some physical overload with a bunch of really strong sd guys + alomomola to keep them healthy.
- pretty standard hazard stack, there isn't really anything to say about it. I think that the ZU mon was meant to be avalugg-h, but right before the game I chickened out and ran cyclizar because it's just a much better dark type spinner.

Round 5 vs Ivar57 Game 1 Game 2
- at this point both Ivar and I were 4-0 and locked top cut, so I wanted to experiment with some new stuff, in this case HO. Mew + dengo keep the hazards up, then you have loads of speed to win. Iron moth and iron valiant aren't booster energy cause it's banned.
- Porygon-Z looked like a really fun breaker that was limited by its weakness to rocks and low speed, so I ran it with double removal and pult + scarf meowscarada. Team is basically just a volturn that aims to get P-Z on the field as many times as possible so that it can click buttons.
- Latias and latios are both really good, so why not run both of them on the same team? Same team concept as cresselia + latias; one baits in the cm check and tricks, then the other wins with cm. Rest is just a standard hazard stack.

Round of 16 vs Lepton Game 1 Game 2
- after losing badly to Ivar's dragon / electric dragapult with hazard stack then I wanted to use it myself, but this time with the twist of grass / dark ogerpon with spikes and synth. Pretty cool innovation since the ogerpon really helps shore up the matchup vs opposing hazard stacks if gliscor can't break.
- pretty standard offense, nothing to say really.
- another standard offense, though now with latias instead of alo because I felt like it and trick is nice to have. LO zama is also really cool with rillaboom cause now you care a lot less about the recoil, and having stab wild charge really helps break the water / fairies.

Quarterfinals vs Atha Game 1 Game 2 Game 3
- ironically the first time I had used palafin this tour, the standard sets were water / fighting with choice band or water / steel with sub bu lefties, but they both had flaws so I just said fuck it and ran both of them with cb rilla and idbp zama to overwhelm the water / fairy. Instead I hit an insane grassy terrain HO with steel trapper probopass which traps my zama like wtf??? God palafin almost clutches but it was not enough. If you want to replace palafin, your best bet is probably the next best flavor sd fighting type cause you want to wear down the water / fairies that would otherwise check zamazenta. Maybe SD Urshifu-R?
- I basically just wanted to have fun and all of these mons looked funny together despite normally being 5 dragon types, which does make it look like a strange team. Welcome to camomons, where you can do stuff like this and get away with it anyway.
- stall looked cool vs the cheeses that atha often ran and this looked like a solid enough stall build. Thank god for sleep talk calling body press after I had missclicked.

Semifinals vs Ghostlike Game 1 Game 2
- I wanted to have a lot of speed and priority vs ghostlike, and arcanine looked fun with stab adamant cb extreme speeds. Rest is pretty standard, though also slightly off-beat, offense.
- Ditto looked cool, Hydrapple looked cool, I ended up with a slightly weird balance with hydrapple + zapdos for the balance mus and ditto + pult for the offense mus.
- a standard bo build because you have to bring something consistent and comfortable to a g3. No great tusk is weird tho, should definetly have it cause this loses to spikes otherwise.

Finals vs Osake Game 1 Game 2
- I actually got really busy and lazy with building this week, but double specs sounded fun. Corvi is a reliable fogger, garg is a reliable rocker, slowking-g is mr reliable himself, and zama looks pretty. I didn't hit a gholdengo but if I did then I would have auto lost so yeah... not a great team.
- basically just the ghostlike g3 team but with great tusk > latias and a couple other misc changes. As I said I was really lazy so the team looked strong enough and I kind of just rolled with it.
- all of the most game-in and game-out consistent mons in the meta thrown together in on team, pretty much just comfort that I knew would get at least a very playable matchup vs everything.


Phew, there went my Saturday morning / early afternoon. I'm really excited for OMCL, and having camo be there is gonna be a great experience. If you want to play camo, either for fun or as prep for OMCL, I highly recommend you to join the Camomons Discord, you can just ping @SV Camo and maybe somebody is available to play... (it will be less dead when people join and want to test, trust me!!)

I'm also really excited to see how the post ban/unban metagame shapes up to look like, I do still expect a lot of standard cores like tusk / lu / gking to stay in popularity, but deoxys-s might entirely shake up the meta with hazard lead or lo np now that it has an actually viable typing and stabs. It could be seen as being both a great addition to offense, but also one of the best mons to have against offense, so who knows how the meta will adapt. I don't think that the departure of gouging fire and palafin will cause a massive change, though it does mean that slowking-g and alomomola are less mandatory now. Maybe that leads to more diversity in bulky builds and more mons / typing combinations to be explored. Palafin being gone and alomomola being less mandatory could lead to zamazenta / samurott-h / urshifu (singe and rapid) / mienshao getting more playability, and sun has to experiment with some new ideas to replace gouging fire (though slither wing will realistically always be the replacement for cb gouging fire, I do wonder who will be run in place of dd gfire)

I really, really hope you enjoy camomons and are willing to try it out. It might look similar to gen 9 OU without tera, (because in a sense it is) but there's truly a ton of innovation to be had and there's so many cool and unique mons and type combos that distinguishes it from any other meta I've played.