Metagame Camomons

[RodentTamer]

I haven't played Camo since the last time it was live, what is the meta atm?

Give me some ideas otherwise I am gonna default to my old favourite Scald / Belch [insert berry] Slowking!

Gargancl, Dragapult, Latios, Ting-Lu, Alomomola, Iron Valiant, Kingambit, and Hydreigon. Lots of typing for them that I can dive into if you’d like.

 

[EchoGaia]

Ive peaked top 1 recently and wanted to share my team if you'd like to try it:

Zamazenta @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Dauntless Shield
EVs: 168 HP / 84 Atk / 176 Def / 80 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Defense
- Body Press
- Iron Head
- Imprison

IronPress Zama adding the steel typing to its already good fighting typing. That allows it to use STAB Iron Head to deal with Fairy and Ghost types. Imprison is a nice tool that allows it to win the mirror matches with other ironpress users like Garganacl thanks to Covert Cloak blocking the effect of Salt Cure. You can run Leftovers if you want but i really like Covert Cloak's ability to really turn the tables on Garganacl. If you run Leftovers, Substitute is an option over Imprison but then Garg might still overwhelm you if it has a typing that resist Body Press. The 80 speed investment + Jolly Nature allows Zamazenta to outspeed everything up to non booster energy Iron Valiant, and the entire unboosted metagame with Sticky Web up, including Scarf Iron Moth and Iron Valiant. 84 Atk allows it to 2HKO Fairy/Ghost Latios with Iron Head at worst, rest is poured into HP and Defense to maximize both physical bulk and Body Press damage output.

Samurott-Hisui @ Focus Sash
Ability: Sharpness
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Sacred Sword
- Ceaseless Edge
- Swords Dance
- Sucker Punch

H Samurott lead. Fighting/Dark is a very good offensive typing and it can still pressure Fairies thanks to Swords Dance. STAB on Sacred Sword hits like a truck and beats most ironpress users provided they arent a Ghost type. and Ceaseless is Ceasless. Sucker Punch is there to revenge kill faster threats if need be, or to finish opposing leads.




Porygon-Z @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Nasty Plot
- Agility

Oh god how broken Porygon Z is in this. Depending on what you are facing, either go for Nasty Plot or Agility. It doesnt need to setup but if you manage to do so, it becomes unstoppable. Electric/Ice typing with Adaptability gives Porygon Z excellent wallbreaking tools to even dismantle the sturdiest cores and gives it an immunity to Thunder Wave. Heavy Duty Boots is the item of choice as it gives Porygon Z an edge over opposing Sticky Web teams, as they usually lack counters to this monster while giving it more longevity as it avoids entry hazard damage.





Masquerain @ Focus Sash
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Hydro Pump
- Sticky Web
- Quiver Dance

This is the second lead of the team. Usually i start with it, but sometimes samu is a better one. Water/Ghost typing Masquerain gives it the ability to get up Sticky Web while blocking Rapid Spin, it's i think the only one that can do that while still being decent. It also packs Quiver Dance to pose a legitimate threat to the opposing team after Sticky Web have been setup. Shadow Ball nails the phletora of Ghost types in the tier while Hydro Pump is Masquerain strongest STAB move at its disposal. Trust me this thing is a real threat. Water/Ghost also gives it an edge in a one on one situation with one of the most popular rapid spinners in Great Tusk. With Intimidate, it can prevent some physical threats from taking advantage of the turn it setup webs, and its Hydro is strong enough to OHKO Great Tusk unboosted if it kept its Ground typing, and 2HKO it if it didnt.

Ceruledge @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brick Break
- Shadow Sneak
- Swords Dance
- Bitter Blade

Many people underestimate Ceruledge on Sticky Web teams with Flash Fire. Ghost/Fighting is self explanatory, and Bitter Blade is there to hit Normal/Ghost Pokemon with a decent attack when boosted. Flash Fire gives an additional immunity to Ceruledge being Fire, but most importantly, an immunity to Will-o-wisp. Brick Break is prefered over Close Combat for its ability to break screens, which sticky web teams kind of struggle against, while also keeping Ceruledge defenses.

Latias (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 232 Def / 24 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draining Kiss
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind
- Substitute

The real demon of the team. Trust me, Fairy Electric Latias may have competition with Cresselia, but the more immediate power and Speed and access to Draining Kiss for recovery letting it not needing the use of Recover gives it an edge. This thing can end most games alone and is one of the most deadliest bulky sweepers ive ever seen. The new typing gives it key resistances to Fighting, Dragon, Bug and a neutrality to Steel, making Scizor unable to revenge kill it, and use Zamazenta as fodder. Electric also gives it a Thunder Wave immunity, which is always appreciated, and STAB on Thunderbolt, which has good type coverage alongside Draining Kiss. The Spread maximises physical bulk while also avoiding a 2HKO from Latios's Surf after Calm Mind. It also makes so that Cresselia's Moonblast never breaks the Substitute at equal boosts.

Most notable threats to the team:

Cinderace: While by itself Cinderace can be handled by some team members, its ability to use Court Change can be troublesome especially if it runs Heavy Duty Boots. Gunk Shot variants can beat Latias and Pyro Ball variants can beat Zama if played recklessly, so be careful. The most effective way is to pressure it with the leads and put it in a position where it cant beat Zama one on one.

Rain sweepers: While Rain isnt that common in the current metagame and can be handled by good plays and predictions, it is still a playstyle that poses a threat to Sticky Web teams, especially given the lack of Water resistances in this team. Latias no longer resists Water and while she can take some of the rain sweepers hits, she can be sometimes overwhelmed due to its lack of Water resistance. Most of the time, my advice is to quickly use Porygon Z to threaten them after you got webs up, as with them it can outspeed even rain sweepers after an Agility, and most of the rain teams cant handle its assaults. Then you use Samurott or Ceruledge to finish them with priority moves. It is also wise to keep Masquerain in the back if you managed to keep some health on it, as intimidate can slow down physical rain threats a bit.

Mirror Setup with Latias or Cresselia: While you can defintely beat them with good pressure, most of the time against those you will end up in a mirror setup situation using Latias. While she can beat them, she might ran out of pp after that and be useless, so be careful not to resort to her too early to deal with those Pokemon.

My thoughts on the metagame:

Pokemon that cause problems: Currently, there's no real Pokemon that is overpowered but maybe i'll say that Latias or Zamazenta can be troublesome. With a good typing those can get out of hand quickly, and kind of force checks into many teams to handle them.

Weather stones: Weather is always good in Camomons and with extanded weather stones available, it's even better to the point of some being broken. Torkoal can use Fighting to alleviate its weakness to Stealth Rock while giving it STAB on Body Press while Pelipper learns Ground type moves to turn its quadruple weakness to Electric into an immunity. Not to mention a lot of Pokemon can now benefit from the weathers like Goodra running Water, or stuff like Latios running Water as well, but also stuff like Venusaur can run Sunny Day to give them a fire type and thus STAB on Weather Ball. They might be too good to keep, who knows.

 

[Dorsia]

Hello there! I wanna talk about which is one of my top mon at the moment, it's just super good to pressure defensive cores from my experience.

The Monster

Hydreigon @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Fire Blast / Flash Cannon
- Earth Power
- Nasty Plot

I'm using Nasty Plot + 3 attacks, either Dragon/Fire or Dragon/Steel, including Earth Power to hit effectively most of variants (Dark/Poison, Water/Poison...) and other stuff without losing SpA with Draco Meteor. Even Water/Fairy can't switch in safely if you set up, unless there are AV.

The main issue this mon has is its speed tier: it's more than fine against slower things but there are faster mons that can come in and pressure you as well. So I was thinking using some Sticky Web to prevent that, but there might be this (bad) set as well :

Give Belch a chance

Hydreigon (F) @ Salac Berry
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Belch
- Earth Power / Endure
- Nasty Plot

Here you have a cheap version of . Have fun using it but don't expect too much, at least Hydreigon learns Endure to make it work somehow.

 

[RodentTamer]

Hello there! I wanna talk about which is one of my top mon at the moment, it's just super good to pressure defensive cores from my experience.

The Monster

Hydreigon @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Fire Blast / Flash Cannon
- Earth Power
- Nasty Plot

I'm using Nasty Plot + 3 attacks, either Dragon/Fire or Dragon/Steel, including Earth Power to hit effectively most of variants (Dark/Poison, Water/Poison...) and other stuff without losing SpA with Draco Meteor. Even Water/Fairy can't switch in safely if you set up, unless there are AV.

The main issue this mon has is its speed tier: it's more than fine against slower things but there are faster mons that can come in and pressure you as well. So I was thinking using some Sticky Web to prevent that, but there might be this (bad) set as well :

Give Belch a chance

Hydreigon (F) @ Salac Berry
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Belch
- Earth Power / Endure
- Nasty Plot

Here you have a cheap version of . Have fun using it but don't expect too much, at least Hydreigon learns Endure to make it work somehow.

You can always scarf the Hydreigon to outpace some of the threats in this tier, sure it leaves it choice locked, but the STAB makes up for it and can break a lot of things resist or not. Either way, these sets are REALLY good.

 

[PrincessGardevoir]

The few games I've been playing have all featured me setting up Shell Smash Dark-Tera Strong Jaw Drednaw and sort of just clicking Crunch? Poison Jab kills the Fairies that resist Dark, and you have a fourth move slot that certainly exists. Superpower hits opposing Darks and EQ hits Steel/Fighting mons.

you should definitely not listen to 2022 PG and unban drednaw thank you

To be more on point, is a very, very funny mon.

Flying/Electric

Regieleki @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Transistor
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 156 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 96 Spe
Naive Nature
- Acrobatics
- Thunderbolt / Thunder Cage
- Volt Switch
- Rapid Spin

Flying/Electric, No Item

Regieleki
Ability: Transistor
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 160 Atk / 252 SpA / 96 Spe
Naive Nature
IVs: 30 HP
- Acrobatics
- Thunderbolt / Thunder Cage
- Volt Switch
- Rapid Spin

Eleki's got so much speed it can afford to drop a significant amount of speed in favor of HP (or Atk if you're running no item), Acrobatics is an alright neutral hit into a lot of mons but it's mainly to give entry on random Ground type moves to either click spin or Acrobatics via ground immunity. I personally like Thunder Cage, because getting free chip on an incoming Glowking that inevitably is coming in is nice. Speed is to beat Deo-S by 2 points (any lower and you'd speed tie) and HP on the Sitrus set to have a multiple of 4, so you pop Sitrus after 2 rounds of stealth rock.

I've seen a handful of Electric/Normal Regielekis with STAB on Espeed and Explosion, and I've seen one running Electric/Rock with Ancient Power, but Flying feels pretty good. Shame you die to Chlorophyll/Sand Rush/Swift Swim mons, but hey, can't win them all.

Good? No. Fun? Yes.

 

[RodentTamer]

Mew’s colorful movepool helps it GREATLY in this format, also, in tandem with its decent stats, it can safely play defensively or offensively depending on the typing it chooses to use, or the team it’s put on, and it can fit on QUITE a few.

is a good way to scare off the Poison-type users of the OM, such as Garchomp, Iron Boulder, and Galarian Slowking. This typing also threatens Fighting-type users such as Gargancl and Body Press Archaludon too since this typing of Mew would normally carry Fire coverage to combat Steel-type users like Hydreigon also. Pure

makes Mew a phenomenal spin blocker that can punish the Rapid Spin user with its coverage to have the opponent constantly switching in answers at the cost of getting chipped, which works great with Magic Bouncd Hatterene if played correctly and carefully.

On the physically offensive side,

and

, in tandem with Swords Dance, are great typings to counter bulky Pokemon like Ting-Lu, Alomomola, and Water-typed variants of Kantonian Slowking, as well as STAB spamming wallbreakers like Fairy-typed Latias and all meta Typings of Iron Valiant too.

is a good check and bait for Fairy-typed Great Tusk variants, as Mew can withstand STAB Play Rough, and can check Tusk back with Iron Head after a Swords Dance.

Currently testing more valid typings for it to have

 

[Dorsia]

View attachment 785301

Mew’s colorful movepool helps it GREATLY in this format, also, in tandem with its decent stats, it can safely play defensively or offensively depending on the typing it chooses to use, or the team it’s put on, and it can fit on QUITE a few.

View attachment 785302View attachment 785303 is a good way to scare off the Poison-type users of the OM, such as Garchomp, Iron Boulder, and Galarian Slowking. This typing also threatens Fighting-type users such as Gargancl and Body Press Archaludon too since this typing of Mew would normally carry Fire coverage to combat Steel-type users like Hydreigon also. Pure View attachment 785360 makes Mew a phenomenal spin blocker that can punish the Rapid Spin user with its coverage to have the opponent constantly switching in answers at the cost of getting chipped, which works great with Magic Bouncd Hatterene if played correctly and carefully.

On the physically offensive side, View attachment 785356View attachment 785357 and View attachment 785358View attachment 785359, in tandem with Swords Dance, are great typings to counter bulky Pokemon like Ting-Lu, Alomomola, and Water-typed variants of Kantonian Slowking, as well as STAB spamming wallbreakers like Fairy-typed Latias and all meta Typings of Iron Valiant too. View attachment 785363View attachment 785364 is a good check and bait for Fairy-typed Great Tusk variants, as Mew can withstand STAB Play Rough, and can check Tusk back with Iron Head after a Swords Dance.

Currently testing more valid typings for it to have

Psychic/Fairy is fine to me.
I'm not sure if pure Ghost typing is that good, but since Mew have access to several Fairy moves, why not Ghost/Fairy?

If I were to go for a Steel/Flying SD user, I'd run with Bullet Punch and Dual Wingbeat. This typing is also very good when you have access to Defog - something that Mew cannot do this gen for some reason - especially in a meta where hazard stacking is easy when you have good spin blockers (Normal/Ghost or ).
Sure, Mew is faster and bulkier with a more complete movepool, but Technician can really make a good difference so give it a try as well.

Fighting/Electric is unfortunately blocked by Ground/Fairy Great Tusk, one of the most popular thing here...

Dragon/Fire is one of my favourite dual typing this gen, even if Water/Fairy is quite common, you just need a third move to cover that.

I haven't played Mew that much this gen, but here the set:

Mew under rain

Mew @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Synchronize
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder
- Hurricane
- Volt Switch
- Nasty Plot

 

[RodentTamer]

Psychic/Fairy is fine to me.
I'm not sure if pure Ghost typing is that good, but since Mew have access to several Fairy moves, why not Ghost/Fairy?

If I were to go for a Steel/Flying SD user, I'd run with Bullet Punch and Dual Wingbeat. This typing is also very good when you have access to Defog - something that Mew cannot do this gen for some reason - especially in a meta where hazard stacking is easy when you have good spin blockers (Normal/Ghost or ).
Sure, Mew is faster and bulkier with a more complete movepool, but Technician can really make a good difference so give it a try as well.

Fighting/Electric is unfortunately blocked by Ground/Fairy Great Tusk, one of the most popular thing here...

Dragon/Fire is one of my favourite dual typing this gen, even if Water/Fairy is quite common, you just need a third move to cover that.

I haven't played Mew that much this gen, but here the set:

Mew under rain

Mew @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Synchronize
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder
- Hurricane
- Volt Switch
- Nasty Plot

this is set looks really good, but you have to be wary of Tusk too. Also to clarify again, i’m testing typings, as most of them require good teammates, but other than that, Dragon/Fire was honestly the most successful of the typings so far, so i’ve expanding on that a little.

 

[Najeiw]

Hi, I topped ladder today so I wanted to share the team I used:

Team

Scizor @ Choice Band
Ability: Technician
Tera Type: Bug
EVs: 44 HP / 252 Atk / 212 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Dual Wingbeat
- Knock Off
- U-turn

Great Tusk @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Def / 176 Spe
Impish Nature
- Headlong Rush
- Play Rough
- Rapid Spin
- Stealth Rock

Slowking-Galar @ Black Sludge
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Toxic
- Foul Play
- Chilly Reception
- Slack Off

Latios (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Recover

Iron Crown @ Assault Vest
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 88 HP / 252 SpA / 168 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 20 Atk
- Tachyon Cutter
- Volt Switch
- Future Sight
- Psychic Noise

Alomomola @ Leftovers
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Def / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Flip Turn
- Shadow Ball
- Scald
- Wish

I'm posting for the first time and on mobile so sorry if there are formatting issues.

The team is a pretty self-explanatory volt-turn balance. The two regen mons make pivoting pretty easy, but I think a big strength is that even the less bulky mons have a lot of defensive utility, especially latios.

These are the reasons for speed evs:
- Scizor: base 50s (bullet punch goes before kingambit's sucker punch and it lets you click wingbeat in front of ursaluna)
- Great tusk: outspeeds meowscarada at +1 (I haven't encountered many of them so it could maybe be lowered to cinderace's speed)
- Iron crown: faster than max speed great tusk

Speaking of iron crown, this thing can check and threaten a lot of mons, seriously. Steel electric is a surprisingly good defensive type combination. I'm baffled I haven't seen almost anyone else using it in ladder. Maybe people do use it and I just haven't encountered it but pretty underrated mon from my experience.

Moves:
The team has just tusk to hit steel super effectively so I've considered using close combat with scizor and focus blast with crown (replacing u-turn and future sight since I haven't clicked those a lot). But even without fighting coverage I have never faced a steel type that I had no way of dealing with. Some were tough but feasible.

Shadow ball in mola is useless but I think it really benefits from ghost typing.

Main threats:
Latias with thunderbolt, draining kiss, calm mind and substitute.
Some ogerpon versions are tough and I needed to risk some latios speed ties.
Specs walking wake in sun is tough to switch into (same as most teams probably) so the priority is going to slowking on torkoal and getting the chilly.
Garganacl can't be immediately pressured offensively, most times I had to take the chip on scizor to knock, then reenter again to bullet punch or wingbeat depending on typing.

So that's all. This metagame was extremely fun, I didn't feel like there was anything super broken unlike other monthly featured formats. Thanks for reading.

 

[Smallsmallrose]

The November Camomons Survey has come to a close! thank you all for your contributions to the meta! We had a lot of responses this time around, and a lot of data to work with!

Player info

Most of you appear to have come from the ladder and some are even just starting Camo, which was a welcome surprise, and I definitely saw more than just the same few Camo Discord lurkers that have been following the Camo tournament scene. New players are always welcome!

Is the metagame competitive/enjoyable?

While most of you actually believe Camo to be an enjoyable, competitive metagame, I've gotten surprisingly mixed responses on how diverse it's considered to be, I'd love to hear more thoughts from players with differing views on this. And whether there's anything we can do to keep the metagame fresh or if it even needs to be diversified more than it is.

Council Action

None of you feel particularly strongly on the balance of the elements the council mentioned on the survey, most of you being indecisive on their place in the meta, the only unifying sentiment being that players didn't seem too crazy about a retest for the banned elements, so we moved on to a deeper council discussion on whether the existing elements should be suspected at all and/or who we should go for first. We eventually decided on suspecting Porygon-Z, of which the suspect test is currently live!

Why suspect Porygon-Z?
There is a few reasons for this. The simplest one is that of the elements currently existing, it had the most calls for council action and the least players saying it's completely balanced. However, Its not by a crazy amount, or is it? You see, a lot of responses came in late, and while most of the pokemon stayed at the same ratio of council action vs no action, Porygon-Z skewed the most. It was consistently staying between 30-40% call for council action for most of the survey, easily blowing the other pokemon out of the water and only fell in line near the end of the survey's lifespan. It also got the most mentions in text responses. It definitely felt like the pokemon with the biggest target on it's back by the playerbase, and thus we decided it was the choice for a suspect.

Previous Porygon-Z results

These were the results we had in front of us when we were deciding on a suspect, and it seemed like the prominent front runner for council action. That said, a lot more people came in seeming unsure if this was the case, so we encourage you to play with Porygon-Z and make your own decisions in the suspect test.

Final Notes:
Between the tabs about how enjoyable/competitive the meta is, as well as almost doubling the turnout of the April Camomons Survey, we're very happy with the increasing development of the meta! We love the amount of people getting involved with Camomons, and we at the council are going to try our best to keep Camomons in the player's minds. We hope you have fun with the suspect test and enjoy the rest of the Camomons ladder in general!

 

[PrincessGardevoir]

Sharing a trio of goobers I've been using to reasonably good results, and apologies to all of the ladder players who've had to put up with this.


These 3 solve most problems. (I run SpDef and , with phys def .) All 3 form a really irritating pair of passive damage, healing, and the ability to not care about anything your opponent is running outside of with STAB EQ. Terapagos in general is an incredible utility mon that I rarely ever click Rapid Spin with because of how great HDB are in a meta of Sticky Web and Spikes. Garg was the only Pokemon on the poll I 100% voted to ban for just how difficult it is to stop it from making progress, even if you know what it's going to do after you see its type, you've still got problems. Alo is infuriating to deal with, and I got so fed up with trying to counter + players that I decided to become an Alomomola user and begin to stall them out.

I've tried a few fourth team members.
Initially, for a way to spread Toxic even better, but Glimmora resulted in the team getting 6-0'd repeatedly by Steel/Flying .
Standard works as a better answer, but +2 Wingbeat still hurts like hell, Will-o never put in as much work as I hoped it would, and there's a LOT of mons that try to kill Volcanion. I went with max Speed max HP for a bit, just to get the jump on fast Scizors when running HDB, clicking Flamethrower or Will-o... Well, I mostly used Volcanion before switching to Alomomola, but even when running Alo+Volc it was just fine.
I've settled on Electric/Flying for Stealth Rock, Thunder Wave, and a very solid matchup against Scizors while providing an out against SD/NP and Ironpress mons via Thunder Wave and Air Slash flinches, which also benefits immensely from Wish support. Max Def Cobalion also takes the heat off Alomomola, because both of my other tanks run SpDef investment.
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Technician (Steel/Flying) Scizor Dual Wingbeat (2 hits) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def (Electric/Flying) Cobalion: 168-200 (43.5 - 51.8%) -- 1.8% chance to 2HKO
+2 252 Atk Haxorus Outrage vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Cobalion: 259-306 (67 - 79.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252 Def Zamazenta Body Press vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def (Electric/Flying) Cobalion: 90-106 (23.3 - 27.4%) -- 71.1% chance to 4HKO

It's not perfect, as stated Haxorus sort of shreds all 3 of these guys apart with a good typing, Knock Off makes hazards a huge problem, and Substitute mons also can prove a problem if Terapagos can't break their subs with EP or Pulse, but a Roar backline support can remedy the latter issue, and Haxorus doesn't like eating multiple residual damages and hates getting burned by Scald, and Spin on Terapagos is there solely for when my entire team's Knocked and HDB aren't live.


...Also, shoutout to Water/Poison for solving so many problems like IDBP or slow Webs teams where it can SD turn 1.

I'd actually revise my enjoyment rating on the poll-- I rated Camo a 5 or 6, if memory serves, but it just seems like I didn't figure out what would be fun this time around.

Some replays, I guess, none particularly serious

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9camomons-2484435382
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9camomons-2484563029
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9camomons-2484690975
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9camomons-2484602722-rsikmunq67ohrsyb9rn15mjrokcvu5fpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9camomons-2485279430-3gcabkp43mo5eqkhbr5e1hm4uoern25pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9camomons-2485292435-cfd1jvjfoiot7f5cdykxwh3ctar48hxpw

unban drednaw you cowards

 

[EchoGaia]

Urshifu defintely cant sd vs Masquerain, as it gets only +1 Attack first which isnt enough to OHKO it with Surging Strikes and gets 2HKoed by Shadow Ball in return. You lost one of your breakers in exchange for webs to not go up i guess, but looking at your team webs arent even good against you in the first place, and the masquerain user will gladly 2HKO your main breaker instead of getting them up. Ribombee outspeeds it and OHKOes with STAB Psychic, which it usually runs, or can cripple it for good with Stun Spore. Galvantula can OHKO it with Thunder before Urshifu even has a chance to attack as well. So tell me what web setter it can setup on???

 

[PrincessGardevoir]

Urshifu defintely cant sd vs Masquerain, as it gets only +1 Attack first which isnt enough to OHKO it with Surging Strikes and gets 2HKoed by Shadow Ball in return. You lost one of your breakers in exchange for webs to not go up i guess, but looking at your team webs arent even good against you in the first place, and the masquerain user will gladly 2HKO your main breaker instead of getting them up. Ribombee outspeeds it and OHKOes with STAB Psychic, which it usually runs, or can cripple it for good with Stun Spore. Galvantula can OHKO it with Thunder before Urshifu even has a chance to attack as well. So tell me what web setter it can setup on???

I've pretty consistently gotten a SD off on Araq, and while I don't SD on Ribombee, its usual Psychic Noise isn't a guaranteed OHKO. (albeit I've since swapped off using Urshifu-R at all, because when it isn't Araquanid Urshifu can't, and it wasn't doing enough vs sun.)

 

[Dorsia]

Hello everyone, just some sets I was thinking of:

H-Decidueye

(M) @ Spell Tag
Ability: Scrappy
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Triple Arrows
- Shadow Claw
- Shadow Sneak
- Swords Dance

Ghost/Fighting with Scrappy means you have the perfect coverage; Triple Arrows is a stupid move, yet I wish this mon had Poltergeist though. Anyway this set will allow you to hit any Ghost/Normal things such as .

G-Weezing

@ Black Sludge
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Gyro Ball
- Toxic
- Defog
- Protect
Poison/Steel + Levitate is really fine, especially when you have access to Defog, leaving you with a single weakness to Fire and plenty of resistances. The main issue is that you must run Gyro Ball for that, with a minimum speed of 112, but anyway the point is to chip down the opponent with Toxic/Protect.

Cinccino

@ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Technician
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Triple Axel
- Bullet Seed
- Tidy Up
- U-turn / Knock Off
In a metagame where you can stack your hazards quite easily, Rapid Spin can be limited. So what about using Tidy Up? Defensively, Ice/Grass typing is awful, but somehow viable offensively, hitting most of bulky Water types, and notably the famous Ground/Fairy + Water/Fairy core (but beware of Rocky Helmet ofc). Once the field is cleaned, you can just pivot and come back later if needed.

Have fun while the ladder is still up! See you around!

 

[PrincessGardevoir]

Well, with the Camo suspect about to end and my (failed) path to reqs, figured I'd properly share the team I've been using.




Team's built around spreading passive damage and Thunder Wave, slowly chipping the opposing team until 's in a good position to clean up, or getting in against something that the team can't handle and reverse sweeping.

is the primary win condition, hinging on the rest of the team's ability to spread status and passive damage to get the opponent in KO range, or to limit counterplay. Fight/Steel is the only Zama I'd rely on, as Dark means you accept dying to Fairy . HDB is an acceptable alternative for Webs and very Spikes-heavy teams, but I've found it to be not as important as passive recovery. Covert Cloak is also a very good option solely for the Garg and Water/Fairy Alo matchups, but primary is effective if you know the opponent either lacks a Ghost or their Ghost is frail, such as Normal/Ghost forms of or .

and as I said a few days ago is a very evil core of constantly spreading passive damage with Alomomola patching up for Garg's limited Recover uses and Terapagos's lack of innate recovery. Rapid Spin is useful on this team, as with the addition of , hazards now can actually chip some of the important members of the team.

Speaking of which, solves this team's problem of weather teams and powerful setup. Mostly. Sun , , and , as well as boosted REALLY don't want to eat their own attacks, especially for the former and latter if they have accrued boosts and have already taken chip damage, or are needed to check Zamazenta late-game.

Lastly, is a Swiss army knife of utility for the team: Stealth Rock to free a moveslot for Protect on Garganacl to stall weather turns, accrue Salt Cure chip, and passively heal with Leftovers; Thunder Wave to make opposing Scarfers lose to Ditto and opposing Zamazenta to lose to this team's; a pretty fine check to Scizor; and a flying type to deal with a pretty frequent problem for this team in Ground/Fighting . This slot's pretty malleable, though; can spread Toxic Spikes, serves as another Regenerator and can reset weather with Chilly Reception, can turn off setup attempts, and more.




This team isn't foolproof, all it takes is one mon that I don't expect and the team falls apart; Water/Ground Nasty Plot is the biggest issue, but others like Covert Cloak... anything can turn this team's win condition into a forfeit, can turn of Alo's Regenerator, and while the Sun matchup is winnable, options like Banded or Venusaur if Ditto is dead will automatically win the game. It's still a fun team to pilot, and Ditto+Alo can win most Regen wars if you play it right.

Good laddering folks, as this month comes to an end!

 

[Giagantic]

Porygon-Z will remain unbanned in Camomons!

Suspect Post in thread 'SV Camomons Suspect Test: Porygon-Z'

Dec 3, 2025

Suspect Voting is Over!

• Porygon-Z - Ban (3/10 = 30.00%)
• Porygon-Z - Do Not Ban (7/10 = 70.00%)

Thus Porygon-Z will remain unbanned!

• Giagantic

• 
• 
• 

 

[Smallsmallrose]

Twas the night of Christmas, everyone's mind was in a scatter. Smallsmallrose was still thinking about the November Camo Ladder. While everyone was opening presents and spreading holiday cheer, Rosey was staring firmly at the Camo usage stats right here. Rosey debated how far down the stats to dive, and decided she wanted to talk about the Camo ladder's top 35.

Great Tusk retaining its spot at number 1 usage was an easy concept to understand. Its incredible type combinations, it's flexibility, and utility all made it the most splashable pokemon in Camo land.

The blue boy of the Latis stands proudly tall as Camo's number 2. It's resistances, speed, offense, coverage, set variety and spikes immunity had us all saying "Dragapult who?"

Gen 9 did so much to make this more than just a simple stalling fish. Flip turn and it's varied type options give it the tools to sustain all kinds of teams with a massive wish.

Scizor at number 4 was the most shocking surprise. Though I suppose many players like a steel that flies. With it's technician bullet punch and a wingbeat that matches the power of Brave Bird, still having THIS much attention before now was completely absurd.

A well known staple as Gking only at number 5 seems completely silly. This is before you remember that it's Johto cousin also pivots with chilly. If the two kings shared a usage slot, any pokemon above it would begin to fear it's top spot.

The ladder and it's own suspect impressively displayed the threat of Porygon-Z. Despite blasting through everything, it avoided the ban because it had a flaw or 3. Despite these flaws it still stood near the top of the usage tower, then again its hard to dispute such raw power.

Hydra still makes top 10 despite the Latis checking and competing with many of it's sets. Though with it's rocks, nasty plot, and high power moves, it's still one of your best bets.

Garganacl went from lowkey in Camo's early lifespan to one of the most notorious in the tier. As a iron presser with it's ability and salt cure to make the ghosts that check iron press run in fear. The

sets are impressive as well. The only pokemon able to put it's own body press counterpart and many spinners through absolute hell.

I'm still of the belief that this is one of the best offensive mons Camo has to offer. It's high speed, endless type combinations and many utility or boosting moves give it a deceptive amount of options in it's coffer.

Once a king of Camo, now sitting at the end of the table most elite. Though not levitating over spikes and a weaker, more telegraphed boots set make this no surprising feat.

Ladder loves spamming immunity abilities, so this thing's usage was always going to be overly flattering. Though it's ability to set up swords dance and be immune to will-o-wisp makes this one actually good at sending teams scattering.

A blindingly fast Ironpress set is what Zamazenta has to it's name. Though it can only crunch ghosts, it's tough to answer and still won many a game.

Latias is a fine addition to many teams. Being a fast yet bulky

wincon, its even better than it's 13 on usage seems. It has stolen many games from under the player's noses, with all the questions about how to handle bulky setup it poses.

The anchor of any offense, there's nothing scarier than a Kingambit endgame. A few varied types and it's item choice means the check is not always the same.

The most interesting pokemon is Deoxys-Speed. Nasty Plot, eject pack, specs, hazard lead. This is one of the most versatile pokemon we've freed.

One of the last genuinely good immunity ability abusers finally rears it's head. Hard to remove a

immune to water, that also uses it's 130 spatk to fill many switches with dread.

Glimmora remains among Camo's upper crust. More than just a gimmicky HO lead here, it can shed it's base type for a defensive one you can trust.

Hatterene recently has really come into it's own. many teams now use it to bounce hazards freely, it's better than previous usage stats and VR rankings have shown.

Still within the top 20 is the dependable breaker Haxorus. With powerful moves and mold breaker, any teams looking to check it with unaware or immunity abilities start to look sus.

The other gen 8 Camo lynchpin barely makes the top 20 or so. Though not as dominant as it used to be, it's always something you have to have an answer for in tow.

Not the terror it was prior to booster ban. Iron Moth still has a lot going for it with it's power and type variety, I myself am a fan.

through the gouging fire ban, sun remains an absurdly dominant style. It makes me wonder if the council will have to look at it again in a while.

Gholdengo sits there and watches as Garganacl does all the spinblocking. The fact that this is simply ok is kind of a little shocking. I suppose the spinners are good at making it stay in it's lane. It also doesn't help that

mons can wall it if it drops Make it Rain.

The other mon that made regular tier spikes so controversial is now up to bat. Despite it's inability to abuse it's famous base typing, it's remained in use because it's still really fat.

Webs on the ladder was a pretty common plan of action. Despite many good users, Ribombee was the most used by a surprising fraction.

Hey Almost Any Ability, come get your man. While still quite a good pokemon,

makes abusing stab boomburst a difficult plan.

ANOTHER hard sun mon makes it into the top 30?! At this point, Camo is doing the other weathers quite dirty! Being able to shed it's rock weakness is quite a useful tool, and when its not weak to water either it can really turn rain and its banders into the fool.

I can only remember this pokemon as Siamato's baby, but making it into top 30 usage is actually quite good, maybe. Even a nerfed libero still has a lot of impact, and Court Change still gives it some solid utility in fact.

Seeing a pokemon as fantastic as Ting-Lu so far from it's VR neighbors is a little jarring. But it still makes it into the top 30 with all the special attackers and setup sweepers it's barring.

Capping off the top 30 is the mighty Hoopa-Unbound. Normally just a powerful breaker, assault vest has seen use and is a neat little trick it found.

Early in gen 9 camo, this was an undisputed top 2 of a meta most stable. Now after 2 DLCs of powercreep, it simply remains a decent option on the table.

Abusing sharpness in camo gives this a couple new tricks, while still using the same ceaseless edge to give the opponent many pricks. Its not a pick with a whole lot of new uniqueness or flash, is my guess why this has only made a moderate splash.

No matter how many flash fire Heatrans I bonk with mold breaker, it still made it into the top camo usage like a big faker. To people's credit I saw less of the steel/bug that I consider quite buns, but rather an interesting steel/grass with solar beam to completely stop walking wake and start blasting in a mirror between suns.

Hard to deduce it's role at first, the stellar turtle has now become a common face. Many good defensive types, toxic, and rapid spin, it's now truly found it's place.

Who better to end off the list of Camo ladder top 35, than Latias' partner in making us wonder if Calm Mind should stay alive. Bulky setup in camo is a tale as old as time. We can only hope that unlike gen 8, Cresselia stays in line.

Rosey looked over the top 35 Camo mons, happy with the ladder and how it went. It took her so long to make this post because she was so spent. Still, she loved this meta and all the people who played. And she loved always seeing the new sets and teams that were displayed. Camo was fun, and November promised a future quite bright. So Merry Camo Christmas to you all, and to all a good night.

 

[Mossy Sandwich]

Teamdump from OMCL (although just teams I think were genuinely good)+some VR noms and metagame discussion.

Finals (Vs Siamato)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9camomons-896866
Rather standard Grassy Terrain offense, but with Swords Dance Cinderace which is a cook I'm pretty happy with. I was trying this set out on BO/Balance on the side as well with Boots instead of Life Orb, but didn't feel particularly strongly about it. LO itself is super nice as it can confirm ranges on stuff you definitely would expect to survive.
+2 252 Atk Life Orb Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Great Tusk: 372-438 (100.2 - 118%) -- guaranteed OHKO
SD Cinderace also has some versatility in its move choices. I think Fire/Fighting and Fire/Poison are both good types, but Fire/Fighting probably wants Gunk Shot cause being Alomomola fodder is not great. Fire/Poison is free to choose between Sucker Punch for Ghosts (Particularly Dragapult) and utility and Zen Headbutt to hit Water/Poison types which are somewhat common. Anyway it's a particularly dangerous breaker imo, especially if your opponent has some bulky Grass or Steel types that you can setup on (it's particularly good into Weezing-G with its Burn immunity), but even if you can't get an SD, you can also just click attacking moves and make progress. Despite running into Water/Poison Garchomp and having few setup opportunities in the game, it did quite well, although I couldn't manage to get the rest of my team to do much so it didn't quite work out. The rest of this team is mostly standard GTerrain, although I'm fairly disappointed with Iron Crown. I was aware it'd be somewhat poor if I ran into a bulky Dark, but I just couldn't find anything else that felt consistent enough over it, HO options are kinda limited and inconsistent I find which is what stopped me from running it outside of this one game.

Semi-Finals TB (Vs jb291)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9camomons-895382
Pretty standard BO featuring my favorite Camomons Pokémon, Hatterene. The concept was to bait in Fairies or Poisons, often stuff like Alomomola and Glowking, with Mienshao to enable PZ to break, although since Shao just died in that game I didn't get to show that off too well lol. The rest of the team is fairly defensively-oriented although none of the mons are passive and Latias serves as a win condition. I also like how Taunt Landorus worked out, that move's good.

Semi-Finals (Vs jb291)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9camomons-894486
Not too much to say about this team, it's another standard BO. Has some amount of hazard stacking with minor spinblocking, has some status spreading with Hex, but mostly I just brought mons like Volcanion and Zapdos that can be particularly annoying to deal with.

Week 6 (Vs eeriespell)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9camomons-892380
This team is cute, Dark/Fighting Shifu threatens basically everything but Fairy-types which gets covered by Jirachi's Doom Desire. AV Rachi can be a bit awkward and I'm not a fan of having to keep AV mons alive through Wish, but it does work to an extent on this team. Fire/Poison Cinderace is there to threaten Fairy-types if Doom Desire isn't up, Shifu can just U-Turn into the incoming Hatterene or something and Cinderace can deal with it, I also really like it as a Fairy Latias answer since that mon can be a major issue. I close it out with Scizor for item removal and a semi-win condition with SD+BP and Glimmora for hazard control and some backup answer to Grounds and Waters.

Week 4 (Vs ExguardiaN)

(Updated)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9camomons-889516
I'm pretty disappointed with how this team performed since I do think it was a good build, but I figured out Cinderace would be a good slot very late in the week and didn't have time to test it out before my game. Once I did, I figured out I didn't need Hydreigon and slotted in a Ghost for some important duties like helping with Garganacl and Noivern. This is a fairly defensive team that uses CM Necrozma and NP Hydrapple to apply a lot of pressure and over a long time, with Cinderace as a backup offensive mon and a check to things like Latias. Necrozma's pretty absurd, it tanks moves like Ogerpon-Hearthflame Ivy Cudgel without breaking a sweat and just kills Fairy variants, similar case for Tusk (although Headlong Rush hurts). I've also seen it 1v1 mons like Water/Electric Latios just by outlasting it despite not being able to deal much damage. I will say this team has a pretty rough time coming back from rough matchups since you don't have hazard stacking or anything else to pressure everything, so if they have something to wall Apple, some way to deal with Necrozma and a good Cinderace switch-in, there may not be too much you can do bar para fishing with Nuzzle.

Week 2 (Vs avarice)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9camomons-886004
The concept here was Garganacl with hazard support from Garchomp and Hatterene to spinblock and deter hazards from your side. Since Garg forces a lot of switch and racks up chip damage with Salt Cure, it obviously pairs well with hazard stack. The final product ended up being a bit Fire-weak, stuff like Cinderace and especially Volcanion can just walk all over it, but it's pretty fun to play with and what I did most of my laddering with in November.


Now for... I guess I'll just do VR noms to talk about interesting mons.

B+ --> A+
Yes, this is a huge jump. Either I'm delusional or this mon is like top 5 or close to it. Mostly talking about bulky Grass-type sets here, but I will bring up other sets if they come up.
Hatterene (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 76 SpA / 52 Spe
Bold Nature
- Giga Drain
- Dazzling Gleam/Shadow Ball
- Nuzzle
- Pain Split
Bulky Grass-types are super super nice to answer Great Tusk who's definitely top 2 as well as to deal with miscellaneous Water and Electric types, stuff like Latios and Dragapult come to mind, but those are just the more relevant ones. Grass/Ghost can spinblock as well as stalemate Garganacl by keeping up its health with Pain Split while Grass/Fairy can answer Dragons a bit easier and deal with basically all Rillaboom sets. There are a couple other decent mons that can run Grass/Fairy or Grass/Ghost properly, but Hatt sets itself apart with its utility moves and, most importantly, Magic Bounce. Nuzzle is super annoying for anything switching in, even something like Poison/Dark Hoopa-U is just worse after taking a Paralysis and there's not really much most mons can do. Meanwhile, Pain Split, especially paired with Giga Drain, is a surprisingly consistent way to keep up your health and you can also take a chunk of HP off mons like Ting-Lu in the process which is nice. Finally, Magic Bounce is super useful since it can bounce back hazards which allows Hatterene to act as a semi-reliable hazard control, you just make a laughing stock out of the otherwise super annoying Normal/Ghost Rocks Garg, it also blocks stuff like Toxic, Will-o-Wisp or Thunder Wave and forces their users to be careful throwing them out and it helps in a bunch of other niches situations. In any case, both Grass/Fairy and Grass/Ghost are hugely useful for a number of teams and the main competition for those defensively are like... Glimmora for Grass/Fairy who is decent, but lacks in longevity (and also has a decently different role) and mayyybe Reuniclus for Grass/Ghost? It should spinblock well and dunk on Garg which are both nice traits. In any case, Hatterene is the most splashable bulky Grass-type. More minor, but still relevant, Hatterene is also pretty useful on offensive teams by running either Eject Button for momentum while denying hazards or by running a type that works well for Calm Mind, I've often seen Fire/Grass or Fire/Fairy for example.

A- --> A
A- --> A
Grouping these two together since the reason is the same: Fire-types are good, especially when they're not slowed down much by Water-type Glowking and Alomomola. I think these two make Fire work better than something like Hydreigon does, each in their own way. Volcanion, thanks to Water Absorb, is super annoying to force off the field and can just straight up 1v1 most Water-types and Cinderace has a ton of Speed, Gunk Shot to threaten Alomomola (and deal with Fairy Latias in the process which I value highly) and a fast and strong U-Turn to make dealing with walls somewhat painless. Ace even has some extra utility like Wisp and Court Change if it wants to use those. Volcanion is more capable of breaking down teams by itself, Cinderace is more of a team player, but at the end of the day, these two both take advantage of the fact that most teams usually don't have that many good Fire answer, with like 1 Water-type that they can usually manage quite well and maybe an offensive Dragon-type that might act as a speed bump. As a whole, I think they're pretty valuable for a good few teams.

A+ --> A-
I don't like this mon much, it just feels like a kinda meh offensive threat. Physical sets feel a bit too reliant on Close Combat as its other options are particularly weak so if you run into a Fighting-resist that takes your other coverage moves (something like Zapdos for example), it's probably losing that 1v1. Special sets have to deal with optimized types like Poison/Dark that they just struggle with as a whole. Iron Valiant is also pretty reasonable to revenge kill, most teams are gonna have something faster than it since, if you're not carrying Deo-S/Dragapult/Zamazenta/Cinderace, you need a Scarfer, but at least it tends to resist Sucker Punch ig. I don't think it's awful, but A+ feels very high for how much it can flop imo.

S- --> A+
This is kinda just a case of interpretation, but imo S tier should be reserved for meta defining mons and I think Great Tusk and Glowking fit that role; they are mons you should always be thinking about as you will face them and use them again and again. S- mons should also be on the cusp of that idea, but idt Dragapult, Garganacl or Ting-Lu quite make it. They're perfectly good, I just consider them less than I would an S- tier mon. Latios is relevant enough to stay there imo, but you could argue for it dropping and another of the 3 staying tbh, they're pretty interchangeable.


Oh hey I'm out of discussion topics. Well besides one thing.
I hate this fish.
Anyway cya next post, if that happens.

 

[RodentTamer]

I haven't played Camo since the last time it was live, what is the meta atm?

Give me some ideas otherwise I am gonna default to my old favourite Scald / Belch [insert berry] Slowking!

There’s quite a few teams I can give you that can help you out. Quite a lot of offensive and defensive playstyles to choose from.

 

[RodentTamer]

BEHOLD. peak.

https://pokepast.es/2a17ee0c4ef2e4ea


HO team that I made for those who like playing aggressively.

Latios and Deoxys-S are the wallbreakers of this team. They work in tandem with each other to help punish the checks of their physical breaking teammates Garchomp and Cinderace, as

Galarian Slwoking is pretty prominent in this OM, and can be annoying for both of them in the long run if left unchecked. Latios annd Deoxys-S also bully any

typed Hydreigon, Regidrago, and Garchomp variants as well, making matchups against them slightly better so that spam isn’t that big of a worry. Garchomp and Cinderace aren’t usually that well together, especially on HO, but with their given typings, they synergize quite well and threaten a multitude of foes at +2 such as

Blissey,

Dragapult (really annoying spammer), and

typed Necrozma variants. Scizor and Kingambit act as the cleaners. Their typings are KEY for picking off weakened foes and dismantling

typed threats that come in.

Further testing and research are being conducted so i can get info on what’s to make of it.

 

[Smallsmallrose]

SAMPLE TEAMS HAVE BEEN UPDATED!

With the Camo No-Johns underway and the OMPL on the horizon, we've been at work slowly updating our resources. We are still accepting sample submissions, but we wanted to post a samples update as soon as we could! Thank you to those who put together samples for us!

 

[Siamato]

A lot of time has passed since the last Camo tour and since this meta had a ladder so... to those wondering wtf is happening there, welcome to:
Not anymore bro, you're just that LATE and LAZY lmao. Yes, I originally planned to post this BEFORE OMCL to help people playing camo but ended up messing with too many other things while being lazy af... but hey, better late than never?! However, since I wrote most of the post before OMCL, I will try to take into account recent meta development having occured during the tournament with some visible edits when needed.

Siamato's pre OMCL pre OMPL meta review​

I. How's the meta?

Camomons's meta doesn't look like any meta you may know ; even though we can always find similarities with some. The power level is overall one of the lowest you can find due to several things:

Terastallization has been banned at the beginning of the gen due to how oppressive the interaction between camo and tera was. Tera being a well known element promoting and enabling an offensive meta, the power level dropped.
Later in the generation, HO teams based on screens were deemed too much for the meta and banning elements that were already borderline without screens didn't really solve the issue. This is why Light Clay has been banned to nerf, again, hyper offense teams.
Last but not least, Booster Energy has been banned. If this ban is still a topic of discussion within the community, especially since Gouging Fire's ban, the idea was to preserve valuable mon like Iron Valiant, Iron Moth, Iron Boulder and Great Tusk while nerfing them by removing the difficulty to revenge kill them after the QD/Proto Speed boost. This was another blow for offense and HO.

As you see, Camomons's council did quite an agressive tiering against offense/HO in order to promote bulky offense and balance. Did it work?

Well, it did but... the meta didn't really settle for balance or BO as the most viable playstyles cuz another appeared to be somehow dominant: bulky balanced.

Historically, Camomons's meta was very diversified but bulkier teams have always been quite strong by abusing a few things:

- Hazards setter are better in Camo. This was the case with Mew before its ban last gen and with Coalossal, a well known improved mon in Camo. This generation is no expection and is, in fact, the one with the greatest number of Spikers.
- Removing hazards is hard in Camo. If traditionnal metas have to rely on Pecha or Ghold to prevent spinning, you can almost design a Ghost-type mon at will in Camo to ensure your oppo won't be able to remove them easily at all.
- Because hazards are so strong, Heavy-Duty Boots became THE item to run and Levitate mon are heavily promoted.

All those specificities led the metagame towards hazard stacking teams and a rather slow dynamic of progress (also cuz a few Regen mons are so good but we will come back to this later).

So what about now? Well, hazards stacking teams are still very good and perhaps the dominant playstyle but, there's still freedom to run other things and have success with! For instance, weather teams are still extremely threatening even though they respectively lost Palafin and Gouging Fire recently. HO and offense teams are welcoming Deoxys-S again meaning balance and hazards stack teams can't only rely on using Dragapult (WoW boots set) to deal with physical fast threat anymore. Those offensive teams are less scared of hazards not switching much and are extensively tested at the time. Finally, even balanced teams improved with the removal of some constrain in the builder (hi Palafin and Gouging).


II. Hazards management

Following the previous section where we explained how strong and dominant are hazards in Camomons, it's now time to learn how to deal with them and win the so-called hazard war.

Heavy-Duty Boots

The most simple answer is running boots everywhere unless your mon has Levitate or Magic Guard as Ability. This comes from a simple observation: Rapid Spinners (and hazard removal overall) suck. I mean, you can always run hazards removal but you need to be aware that it won't be easy to remove them and sometimes just impossible depending on your matchup.
Let's focus on the options we have to understand better:

Rapid/mortal Spin?

Great Tusk is prob the most consistent spinner in Camomons, especially the

offensive variant cuz it manages to put pressure on common anti-spinner even though it's often not enough if you don't have other tools in your toolbox.

Terapagos is prob the second best rapid spinner cuz it deals special damages while most anti-spinner are physically defensive oriented to be sure to wall Great Tusk. If the anti-spinner is weak to Toxic, you will be able to force it out and take your chance to remove hazards. CM set are a nice option for offense to remove hazards while having a mon able to take a hit from almost anything which is very valuable.

Cyclizar is a decent rapid spinner only if you put Knock Off as STAB to deal non-zero damage to anti-spinner. What's interesting about it on paper is that it gets multiple opportunities to remove hazards thanks to Regen allowing to come back a few times. In practise? Well, doesn't work like that. Because Cyclizar has to run AV to be more than "somehow okay spinner", it makes it weak to hazards unlike Tusk or Terapagos whom can run boots. Cyclizar is an "opportunist" spinner but is a weakness against hazards by itself if that makes sense. A team with Cyclizar absolutely require other tools against hazards.

Special mention to Mortal Spin from Glimmora than can be an option for offensive teams cuz it's able to exert pressure on

types thanks to STAB Earth Power. You can basically replicate

Tusk with this mon though slower and much frailer but abusing Mortal Spin instead of Rapid one.

Everything else is either very bad at spinning either just bad as a mon. Special mention to Excadrill able to threat anti-spinner thanks to SD and working well in sand teams, Avalugg-H with STAB Strong Jaw boosted Crunch threatening quite a lot anti-spinners but only viable in stall, somehow and to Coalossal which is not going to spin against anti-spinner but that can fit spin easily on his moveset!

Defog..? Uh

Mandibuzz is prob the best Defogger? The mon itself is not very good but it has some great tools to play with with Knock, Toxic, U-Turn and Roost making it viable enough to be considered an option against hazards. The issue with Defog being still removing your own hazards which sucks...

Didn't get the chance to see this much but considering how it managed to find itself a solid place in OU, perhaps it can find its way in Camo as well? Ngas Defog allows for unblockable Defog and Levitate variant are immune to Spikes making it quite reliable. I can def see this mon being better than Mandi but the fact is, almost nobody played it so far...

No removing for you! Welcome in the hazards stalling game!

Speaking of anti-spinner, who are they?

Mainly

types because it's not too difficult to get the Normal type thanks to a recovery move and then running a Ghost move.

Pecharunt Garganacl are the best among them. Great physical bulk and somehow okay special bulk making them quite consistent against most spinner. Garganacl also benefits a lot from the status immunity.

Then, we can find mons like Deoxys-Defense or Skeledirge that are less good as anti-spinner but that can fit depending on what you need.

Gholdengo is ofc in this anti-removal game with GaG preventing Defog but the mon isn't very good by itself in Camo due to it's mid bulk meaning Tusk, Terapagos or even Cyclizar can pressure it.

And last but not least, other Ghost mon such as

Cresselia or any

variant of Latias. Those are not the bulkiest ones (but Cresselia) but they are immune to Spikes themselves meaning they can still fullfil their role even though their boots have been removed and hazards are up on your side.

HO often can't afford to run any of those, though Pecha, Ghold, and HW Latias/Cress may be considered so, any

can do the job, even if it means anti-spinning once.

Sending them back!

Hatterene is the only viable bouncer of the metagame that can possibly prevent Spikes from going up... However, this is very MU reliant. Basically Hatterene isn't able to cover the very wide range of available Spikers so you'll have to make choices even though you should always be sure to beat Ting-Lu, most common Spiker. Hatterene can allow to run a team "slightly weak" to hazards (2-3 mons without boots/levi) but you can't just expect a team fully weak to hazards to work just cuz you brought Hatterene.

Cinderace is a great option for wasting your oppo turns putting layers of Spikes or just making them think twice before trying to do so. If Cinderace doesn't mean hazards won't be up your side, it's somehow a guarantee it's going to be a fair hazards war ; even though you didn't bring Spikes yourself. Indeed, abusing your opponent Spikes is good for both wasting their turns but also cuz it gives you freedom to run something else than a Spiker.

What Knock Off does in a section dedicated to hazards management?

The previous sections demonstrated that hazards counterplay does exist in Camo but has many issues meaning only boots can really keep you safe... But well... You know... Boots can be removed!
So here we are, at the quintessence of hazards war! It's not really about who is going to remove hazards, it's about how you will make them work even though your opponent was ready to face them by stacking Levitate or boots! The answer is item removal.
What's able to make a difference between 2 hazards stack teams is which one will be able to remove more boots than the other. This can be achieved by running multiple Knock Off (or Trick/Switcheroo). I'll even go as far as saying running hazards without item removal might be a waste of time considering how ready people usually are about facing them.

So... how to prevent your opponent from removing all your boots and letting you die on hazards?

Inherent resist to hazards

Any well built hazard stack team knows they should really avoid losing their boots, especially when they chose to go without any removal at all. To achieve this, we go for one (or sometimes 2) mon inherently resilient to hazards and able to absorb Knock Off.

The first option we already talked a bit about is to go with a Levitate mon, not requiring boots to still be fine into hazards.

Another way to achieve this goal is to design a type inherently resilient to hazards:

,

and

. Those 3 types are immune to Spikes while taking "only" neutral damage against rocks making them great at absorbing Knock Off.

And finally, special mention to Magic Guard () perfectly dealing with hazards and even more!

I decided I don't give a shit about hazards.

Well... Risky life choice but... fair. Hazards go crazy only and only if you keep switching back and forth, accumulating damages. However, if you don't switch much, the cost will be lower. That's the idea of HO and offense-like teams (including weathers), kill before being killed! Exerting offensive pressure is then a tool to deal with hazards, both reducing their impact over the game but also by preventing your opponent to find opportunities to put them!


III. Regen slowpivot, a must-have in balanced-like playstyles

Pick your Regen pivot!

One may have noticed that, at the very top of Camo, stands Slowking-Galar, the very best Regen slowpivot you may find. Slowking-Galar is just that amazing being able to run many good typings, threatening poison with Sludge Bomb, underspeeding any other "slowpivot", checking special threats like nothing else and last but not least, controlling weather thanks to Chilly Reception making it the worst nightmare of weather teams.

Since Palafin got banned, Slowking-Galar isn't anymore a prisoner of

or

to check it meaning you can basically custom it as you wish!

Have you ever dreamed of Tapu Fini with both Regenerator and a pivoting move? Dream no more! Straight from heaven or hell depending on how you look at it, Alomomola reached another dimension as defensive pivot by how large is the range of things it can check abusing Play Rough to gain the

type.

This is without forgetting that Alomomola is still the WISH FISH it's used to be, making it a central element of many teams featuring things like AV Hoopa-U, Ting-Lu, Hydreigon, Garchomp, Terapagos, Mew, etc rising their viability by simply existing.

Finally, Palafin's removal no longer "trap" Alomomola in the excellent but classic

typing. Indeed, it's now able to run other typings and roles such as

RegenVest, able to check pretty much every common special attackers, making it great in offense/BO. One may also try

variant to use it as anti-spinner.

Last "slow"pivot you may encounter in Camo, the lizard! This one is not so slow but still slow enough to underspeed special threats such as PZ, Hydreigon, Lati@s, Dragapult, etc. If the bulk is still very mid even with the mandatory AV, this mon is doing an okay job checking most special threats still. What really makes Cyclizar interesting with respect to those 2 we mentionned above is the fact it can run 2 amazing utility moves while pivoting: Knock Off and Rapid Spin. Abusing the

combining Steel's bunch of resists, STAB Knock Off threatening some anti-spinner, U-Turn and Rapid Spin, the role compression Cyclizar gives is just amazing!

Special mention to that is most of the time outclassed by Slowking-Galar, not being able to use Sludge Bomb or Toxic but, that still has a niche thanks to Scald.

One can think "only" 3-4 Regen pivot aren't much to pick from but, keep in mind being able to change types basically makes it a different mon!

What's about combining 2 of them?

Well, that's perfectly viable and everybody who played SS AAA knows how annoying Regecore can be! Here are some examples:

+

+

+

+

Other Regecores exist but with non-pivoting mons such as Hydrapple or Reuniclus. Those 2 are usually better in bulkier teams.


IV. Offensive threats overview (with common checks)

If Camomons is often seen as a bulkier metagame than OU, the power level remains quite high with insane offensive combination or much better STAB. To help you somehow understanding how to deal with those, I'll pick at most 3 typings that are most of the time good to check them.

The classics

While being mostly used as offensive spinner, Great Tusk can be a pain in the ass to check. Indeed,

is just insane defensively especially when he can rely on a 120 BP STAB Ground move. Some variant runs Bulk Up and, with a speed boost from Rapid Spin, this can go out of control quickly.

Possible checks:

/

/

and Levitate mons | Avoid weakness to Ground, Fairy (and Dark sometimes).​

Solid mon at the top of the VRs last gen. Tbh, I feel like this mon fell off and being fast isn't enough to justify being S-like rank anymore. Specs sets are scary due to their large coverage but suffer from hazards a lot which is not ideal for a mon that is more of an offensive pivot/rk than a breaker. HDB sets gives some nice utility with WoW/TW but can't really rk things anymore being too weak. This is particularly true with Gking around, absorbing WoW and TW very well while denying any progress Pult could make. Band is very rare due to Steel just existing but if you can get rid of them, perhaps it can work (there are still Fairy to deal with though...).

Possible checks:

/

/

| Avoid weakness to Dragon, Elec, Water or Ghost (Fire too but rare as STAB) and go with high special bulk.​

Among the biggest winners in Camo, Latios definitely stands high. With a wide and amazing movepool, it's able to run so many deadly combination. LO sets are the most threatening using usually 3 moves for maximum coverage + Recover. This set is very flexible cuz it acts as breaker, decent speed control but also gives some non-negligible defensive utility! You can also find Specs pivot benefiting from Levitate to come as much as possible, even with Spikes around. Finally Scarf is prob the fastest speed control of the metagame while being viable.

Possible checks:

/

/

| Avoid weakness to Dragon, Elec, Water, Ice, Psychic and go with high special bulk.​

​

Back in the metagame again, this mon took Pult's spot at the non Scarf fastest viable mon in a flash. If it often acts as hazards lead, it remains a threat with mixed sets and NP ones. Indeed, Psycho Boost is often super-effective on Gking while Superpower can weaken Ting-Lu quickly. NP 3 Atk sets should be more explored cuz the coverage is wide enough to break though most things.

Possible checks:

/

| Avoid weakness to Psychic, Fighting, Ice, Elec (Grass too but not so common).​

Can almost litteraly run any combination lol. However, physical ones will often run CC for big STAB + coverage STAB + coverage + SD/Encore while special ones will often run Moonblast for big STAB + coverage STAB + CM + Encore/coverage/something else. Even if having such variance is great, what makes Valiant very good is its speed tier, above Lati@s, Ogerpon, Lycanroc-Dusk, Iron Moth or Azelf.

Possible checks:

/

| Pray you get the right MU and have offensive counterplay.​

Also S-rank last gen, Rillaboom fell off a little due to Grassy Glide nerf but also losing Superpower. Still, it remains a fantastic threat you should absolutely not forget! Band works still very well at breaking, removing items and pivoting even though it become worst at rking things. SD LO didn't lose too much with the Grassy Glide nerf but miss Superpower. Finally, other sets popped up like boots, AV or even Scarf. Terrain Extender has also seen uses in Gterrain-based teams. Not one of the most versatile things but still does his job very well!

Possible checks:

/

/

| Careful about random Ground or Fighting variant and have good physical bulk to take Band Wood Hammer.​

This mon fell off hard when Lati@s became playable but still has a niche over them thanks to Ground, Fire and Steel coverage. Scariest sets are NP 3 Atk but you can also manage to be scary enough with NP 2 atk + rocks if you can't afford to put them somewhere else. Speed tier is still decent, outspeed Urshifu, PZ, Great Tusk, Ghold, etc.

Possible checks:

/

| Avoid weakness to Dragon, Water, Steel and Ground and go with high special bulk.​

Less of a threat in Camo than in OU cuz the meta is less offensive, you should still certainly not forget Kingambit in the builder! Has basically 2 viable types (including the vanilla one) but hey, who needs more when it's already good with what it has?

Possible checks:

/

/

| Avoid weakness to Dark, Steel and Poison (be careful to Low Kick coverage).​

Like Gambit, the dog is worse in Camo even though he has more typings to try. IronPress is very inconsistent due to the large amount of Ghost one may find here. Still a scary set you should take into account when building at risk of getting outright 6/0ed. Howl sets have seen some success from time to time with either Rest or LO but they're often very reliant on MU too. Finally, don't run Band 4 Atk all out attacker, this one not breaking anything at all most of the time so it only acts as a fast rker that is not even pivoting, not worth imo.

Possible checks:

/

/

| Solid Fighting resist (or immu) + a way to threat it out​

​

Oh lord. This mon is just a beast. No brain, just power. This is just the result of 135 Spa + Adaptability + boltbeam coverage. Thanks god this mon is not so fast and running Specs often makes it weak to rocks. Boots double dance might be very scary to face but should not be able to setup both due to Light Clay being banned. Choice Scarf did exist but I don't think it's particularly good. You can also remove Ice Beam to go for Shadow Ball or whatever then removing your weakness to rock and having overall a much easier time coming. If you're a madman, you can run Blizzard supported by Gking's Chilly Reception. A nightmare for bulky teams.

Possible checks:

/

| Avoid weakness to Elec, Ice (and Ghost) while having very high SpD. You can run a Regen to scout then go on the Ice resist or Elec immunity against choice locked ones.​

The demons

Those are mons that will outright 6/0 you if you dare forgetting them in the builder.

Able to run insane defensive typings while being quite fast, the offensive counterplay against this mon is quite narrow and very reliant on the variant you're facing. Calm Mind allows it to become quickly unkillable on the special side while give it enough power after one or two boost to start being scary. I put there too cuz it's Latias with less typings but much more physical bulk and less reliable recovery.

Possible checks: see "BONUS"​

Wow, Garganacl being S-like rank when it can remove its garbage Rock type, who would have noticed?! Is the anti-spinner rocker

set is often not able to win by itself, lacking recovery or taking too much time to break, that's not the case of demon IronPress

! With full invest in SpD, this mon is very hard to break on the special side while Iron Defense pretty much remove physical counterplay after a single boost. Salt Cure will take care of Ghost-type especially considering their Ghost move doesn't hit you.

Possible checks:

/

/

+ any type | Covert Cloak!!​

Keep in mind!

Those are less common threats but that you somehow need to keep in mind cuz they can get out of control given the right conditions.

Bulky teams nightmare when running SD sets, this mon is able to beat some Calm Minder by virtue of being stronger faster thanks to STAB Facade and SD. Knock Off is good at making progress against fat stuff long term. You may also find other set with more defensive utility like

.

Hawlucha benefits from some interesting combinations making counterplay vary from a set to another. Benefiting from Rillaboom being great, Hawlucha came back at full force recently in HO/Offense as cleaner/breaker/speed control with the Grassy Seed while also acting as setup control with Encore sometimes. Special mention to doing someone the same but having Knock Off and Gunk Shot.

Being able to remove the garbage

type defensively made Hoopa-U finally perfectly viable as AV Breaker abusing his amazing coverage backed up by insane offensive stats. Can easily blow holes through defensive cores while handling special hits quite well making it a great checks to stuff like Lati@s, Hydreigon, Specs Pult, Zapdos, etc. Paired with Alomomola, it can benefit a lot from the Wish passing.

This guy fell off a bit since Palafin finally took the ban hammer and Lati@s are as popular as ever. Still a solid mon on bulky balanced teams providing both defensive utility, breaking potential and staying power. NP paired with Water, Grass, Ground or Dragon move is indeed great as breaking other bulky stuff.

If the other bear has been banned, this one is still around and is expert at messing with defensive stuff! Abusing a wide movepool, Ursaluna can run many typings giving it more defensive utility while keeping power by virtue of STAB fired by Guts + 140 Atk. Speaking of Guts, you don't necessarily require Flame Orb to abuse it. Bulky variant with lefto (with or without Resttalk) can perfectly work using Guts as a deterrent for trying to status it.

Dual Wingbeat + Bullet Punch + STAB + Technician + Band/LO. All I need to tell you to make you understand. Some bulky variant can work with the wish fish but they are limited by Scizor's bulk.


V. State of the art of defensive stuff

Well, now that we talked about offensive stuff, time to look at the shields we have to answer them! This will be quick however cuz we already talked about some of them previously. I'm listing them below:



You can be almost sure at 100% that you will encounter one or two of Gking, Mola and Garganacl in any balanced/bulky structure. I'd go as far as saying a defensive core without them if unviable ; especially considering how easy it is to design Gking to answer what you want to.

I will not talk about "having defensive utlity" mons but not really walls too. Here is a list of them:



You may find those mons almost everywhere ; though they are often better on slighlty more offensive team, trading staying power of fat walls for power of bulky offensive mons.

Anyway, here we go with the fatest walls, those you will find in balanced and bulkier structure.

THE big and fat wall. Even without recovery, this mon does check so many things, especially when granted the

type giving it so many resists! Ruination is an excellent tool making it not passive at all. Whirlwind is just so good into bulky setup making it an excellent setup control. And last but not least, you can either run SR or Spikes making it an excellent hazards setter. Amazing mon providing so much even though it can't heal or pivot. I still have to mention that, recently, it fell off a bit, having issues against Cinderace and Hatt to put hazards, while being a hazard weakness by itself.

This little peach is cool as it can run typing making it neutral to almost everything, taking physical hits by virtue of its immense defense stat. You can however choose to put some EVs in SpD and use it to scare things like Latias out thanks to Toxic/Malignant Chain (unless it's the Sub variant and you can cry then!!). Speaking of Malignant Chain, don't run the move on non-Poison variant as, not managing to Poison after 2 attempts, could often result in losing a game (while not making much damage without the STAB anw).

And... nothing else LOL. Well, as you just noticed, most of the defensive stuff in Camo is either a Regen mon either a demon. We can still mention things ranked in B+ such as Clefable, Clodsire, Deoxys-Defense, Mandibuzz, Empoleon, Skarmory or Weezing-Galar.


VI. Weathering with you - Makoto Shinkai

If people keep experimenting with offensive playstyles as their place is difficult to define within the current meta (let's recall both Light Clay and Booster Energy) are banned, a type of offensive playstyle managed to emerge: weather.

Sun - Sous les sunlights des tropiques - Gilbert Montagné

When saying weather emerged as a playstyle, that's not completely right. The one which really emerged is sun. It's nothing new that sun has been better than rain the whole generation, in almost every metas, by virtue of paradox mons and their Protosynthesis ability.

Sun setters

Longtime sun setter, Torkoal is pretty decent at doing the job. It provides defensive utility to the team while not being so passive (STAB Body Press, Lava Plume/WoW, Sludge Bomb). It also has the super valuable Rapid Spin ; though not being a great spinner generally speaking. It works in "bulky offensive" suns.

The rising star. Ninetales proved to be quite an amazing sun setter thanks to a decent speed allowing it to abuse 2 powerful moves for more offensive teams: Encore and Healing Wish. Encore allows Ninetales to prevent losing to bulky setup or to abuse a passive move to enter a threat, thus generating momentum. Healing Wish means you can heal an almost dead breaker to keep making a rampage (Slither Wing with STAB Flare Blitz for instance). Those 2 moves made Ninetales the premier sun setter as we often wanna go with a more offensive sun than a balanced one.

Sun abusers

Him again. Tusk is not the best sun abuser but still a very solid pick cuz it's a great mon already that you make even stronger lol. One can go with regular offensive spinner Tusk (sometimes with AV cuz we don't value boots as much as we're used to) or with setup Tusk abusing Protosynthesis speed. Nothing more to say, just Tusk being Tusk.

If this mon isn't able to shine as it used to in OU due to camo Tusk hard countering its base (and perhaps best) type, that's no longer true in sun. Indeed, thanks to sun, Raging Bolt now has coverage (Weather Ball and/or Solar Beam) allowing to delete Tusk completely. It's an amazing mon for sun considering it takes advantage from Water types.

Just regular Wake doing stuff. We however have to mention that Wake does struggle more in Camo than in OU. Indeed, Gking, Alomomola or Latias can be difficult to break without Specs proto Spa but, in that case, his speed is below the 110 threshold meaning a lot of things are going to outspeed it like Lati@s, Lycan or Hearthflame, mons that are rare (or banned lol) in OU. Still a threat by virtue of Hydro Steam spam. Running the Fire type often isn't worth it considering it will struggle a lot with hazards.

252+ Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Slither Wing Flare Blitz vs. 8 HP / 252 Def Alomomola in Sun: 294-347 (62.1 - 73.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO. Do I have anything else to say about it? Well, yeah, Choice Band is near impossible to wall without Fire immunity but, it's very slow to you can rely on offensive counterplay. Choice Scarf is much faster but still does outstanding damages , although it cannot 2HKO big fish anymore. Probably the biggest sun wallbreaker.

The Flash Fire gang. Both offer a solid Fire immunity for sun, which is extremely valuable in more balanced sun (especially Heatran), while taking advantage of Water types thanks to Solar Beam or Solar Blade. Heatran can also take advantage of Gking by trapping it with Magma Storm and taunting it to prevent it to click Chilly Reception, thus getting rid of the sun remover.

Chlorophyll mons are ofc at the party, providing great speed to handle offensive teams. if Venusaur is by far the most common, as

with Weather Ball coverage, is going pretty hard in the current meta, one may find less common Chlorophyll mons with Lilligant-Hisui running its vanilla type (much better in camo) or Shiftry for the Fire STAB (without running Sunny Day lol).

Other things exist but are less common, we can mention Fire move abusers, or and defensive mons for more balanced sun,,,, etc.

Sun is a devastating archetype you have to take into account or else you could quickly lose. How to?

Sun counterplay

() might not be the best counterplay to sun but, realistically, any Gking resisting Fire is an excellent sun counterplay by virtue of being able to remove sun by simply pivoting around, forcing your opponent to put the sun setter again at the cost of giving away momentum.

Almost always

/x, Alomomola is able to withstand sun boosted moves from either Slither Wing or Walking Wake and stall sun out with Protect. Careful though, sun teams often try to exploit Mola considering it's a very common and annoying mon for them.

is simply amazing to wall Fire or Water (Hydro Steam) moves. They aren't so many users but Latios comes to mind as viable, especially thanks to recovery. Stall can think to Dondozo. BO / offense can rely on defensive Garchomp.

Fire immunity: If none of them are particularly viable, things like Ceruledge, Armarouge or Heatran can be a nice counterplay. Careful though, you will need Air Balloon if you run the Steel type otherwise Slither deletes you with Earthquake which is not ideal lol.

Diversify counterplay: Don't ever think you're safe cuz you have a

Glowking! A simple defensive mon won't be able to stop sun ; especially due to how diversified are sun threats (Wake, Raging Bolt, Tusk, Slither, Venusaur, Cinderace, Heatran, etc). You need to layer the counterplay, with either multiple resists / defensive answers or with a combination of both offensive and defensive counterplay.

Priorities: Sun, as an offense archetype, relies on killing before being killed, without a real defensive backbone (although you may encounter slightly bulkier sun too sometimes). Thus, things like Rillaboom, Kingambit or Arcanine-Hisui can work pretty well to out offense sun breakers. You will need chip though cuz sun sweepers/breakers often have a decent bulk.

Rain - It's raining men - The Weather Girls

Not as scary as sun, rain still has a solid niche in the metagame.

Rain setters:

As always, the premier rain setter. Pelipper does offer some defensive utility (even though you may have to run bad moves for that), while being able to pivot out. Pivoting really is what makes Pelipper a great setter, able to bring safely your threats.

Well, this one isn't able to pivot but can still help you get out of trouble thanks to move like Hypnosis (high reward high risk) or Encore. Can run the Ground type that may be valuable for rain too.

Rain abusers:

Yup, this mon is still free in Camomons. Just imagine having a 130 base power STAB increasing your spa by 1 each time you click it, that's what Archaludon is about. However, do not make the mistake to go with

without having coverage (Flash Cannon) to hit the most common Great Tusk or you'll be very disappointed when they'll freely come on Electro Shot. You can also run Steel type with AV to have some defensive utility vs things like PZ, Latios, etc.

Swift Swimers. One of them (at least) is mandatory for rain, especially considering Archaludon lacks speed and will never be able to win by itself de facto. Barraskewda is the most common Swift Swimer with massive Flip Turn and good coverage with either Close Combat (raw damage) or Poison Jab (target Alomomola). Basculegion is slower but has Wave Crash for bigger damage than Liquidation and Psychic Fang coverage for stuff like Gking. Kingdra hits less hard but is able to go mixed thanks to Dragon or Flying coverage. Overqwil has SD to pierce its way through bulky things while being decently fast. Finally, Beartic is another mon able to setup with SD but with a much wider coverage and a great bulk. However and, unfortunately, you have to run Jolly with near max speed if you want to outspeed mons like Pult at +2, making it a "quite slow" Swift Swimer.

Those mons are either abusing strong rain boosted Water moves (Hydro Pump, Surf, Surging Strikes, etc) and/or are abusing rain accurate moves like Hurricane (Walking Wake, Iron Jugulis, Tornadus) and/or Thunder (Latios, Dragapult, etc) to provide more offensive coverage to your rain team.

On the defensive side, both

and

types are benefiting from rain counteracting the Fire weakness while offering great resists. Here a non-exhaustive list of things you may see / consider:

:

:

What else?

Ironically, one of the greatest threat for rain are Water mons cuz, rain teams often forget a "real" Water resist considering they have enough Water mons to handle Water attacks. However, this might not be the case when things like Dragapult, Latios or Latias fires boosted Water move. For start, you may look for a Water immunity. Volcanion is just the best one, abusing rain itself with insanely powerful Steam Eruption while preventing opposing Water mons to just click the Water move.

are often great partners for Water mons, resisting both Elec and Grass. However, the "Dragon" mon is often Archaludon, dissipating the urge to have one.

Super weird and bad idea but those 2 are Rapid Spinner + pivot abusing Rain Dish... Does that make them good? Prob not... But feel free to try and lmk!

Rain counterplay

First, let's make it clear right now: rain is less of threat with respect to sun. That being said, here how to deal with it:

() and

mons

"Wait, what? Are you telling us rain counterplay is the same as sun counterplay?!!" Yes sir. How lucky we are! Those things both help handling sun and rain at the same time! We all love role compression!

Something to prevent Archaludon from going crazy. Well, yeah, checking Water boosted moves and this thing it's a bit different lol. Defensive counterplay does exist ; although it's not so easy.

SpD Ground types such as: ​

​

variant of Gking (resisting Elec).​

​

with the

should be able to cover pretty much every Archaludon set by beating them 1v1 thanks to CM.​

​

At the very least, you will need offensive counterplay to prevent it from sweeping. This is quite easy in Camo considering Archa cannot tera to prevent something like, idk, GREAT TUSK, from revenge killing it. So yeah, finding a rker isn't difficult tbh.

Water immunity:

Priorities: see Sun above.

Overall, just like it is in OU, weather (sun) is a crucial playstyle in Camomons that you should be aware of. If it can struggle a little more due to Gking reign over the meta, it tries to compensate with more threats (Slither, Heatran, etc). Rain, while less threatening and more limited, also is part of the meta thanks to a titan banned in OU, Archaludon.


VII. Other playstyles

I won't be super long on this one but I still want to give you an idea of what's possible, although not particularly good / very difficult to play, to play.

Grassy Surge offense

Based on Rillaboom, those teams mostly rely on abusing the Grassy Seed, either with mon like Hawlucha with Unburden, either with bulky setup like Latias, Enamorus-T, Iron Crown, etc.

Psychic Surge offense

Based on Indeedee, thoses teams rely on abusing both the Psychic Seed with mon like Hawlucha and super boosted Expanding Force with mons like Deoxys-Speed, Iron Valiant, Espeon, Mew, etc.

Electric Surge offense

Based on Pincurchin, thoses teams rely on abusing both the Electric Seed with mon like Hawlucha and Quark Drive paradox mons such as Iron Moth, Iron Valiant, Iron Leaves, Iron Treads, etc. You may also try Raging Bolt with insane Rising Voltage or super fast Raichu-Alola with Surge Surfer.

Snow team

Abusing either Ninetales-Alola (immediate setter) or Slowking-Galar (has to click Chilly Reception), snow is an archetype relying on abusing both super busted Blizzard from PZ and Slush Rush mons such as Beartic, Sandslash-Alola or Cetitan. You may also encounter Ice type mon abusing the def boost to setup, like Great Tusk, Latias, Mew or Terapagos. You can exploit Weather Ball coverage with mons like Zapdos, Raging Bolt, etc.

Sand team

Relying on either Tyranitar (more offensive) or Hippowdon (more balanced), sand teams are mainly abusing Sand Rush mons like Excadrill, Lycanroc or Houndstone. They are less offensive cuz there are less abusers, often taking the shape of a standard bulky offense but with Ttar + Sand Rush.

Stall

Ofc, stall does exist. They often rely on 4/5 boots + 1/2 mons inherently resisting hazards and able to take knock off for their teammates. They abuse mons like Toxapex, Skarmory, Clodsire, etc that can handle setup while putting hazards. They also run super fat stuff like Blissey, Avalugg, Dondozo, Hydrapple, etc with the only purpose to take hits and prevent the opponent from breaking.

I'm just mentionning screens (Light Clay banned) and Sticky HO as I feel those playstyles are either very difficult to play (screens without Light Clay) or very inneffective (sticky into levi and full boots).

BONUS. "You didn't talk about Calm Mind yet, what happened to you Siamato?! You changed.."

I know my readers would have been disappointed if I didn't talk about CM (and bulky setup overall) so here we go!

Here the list of viable Calm Minders (B+ and above):

List

Not so many tbh especially with respect to what we have experienced in the past. However, you surely have recognized few of them deemed troublesome last generation such as Lati@s and Reuniclus. So... what keeps them in leash this time?

BIG TING-LU
​

Have you ever heard about big TING-LU??! This mon is by iself one of the biggest nerf to bulky setup that ever existed. Due its amazing special bulk, Ting-Lu is always able to take a hit from bulky CMers and phaze them with Whirlwind while being also able to threat them with Ruination (and STAB Heavy Slam sometimes). This is one of the reason (but certainly not the last) explaining why Ting-Lu is so amazing in Camomons.

However, Ting-Lu all alone is not sufficient to guarantee you won't lose to bulky setup and especially CMers (especially long run).

Here are some other things preventing you to outright lose to them:

• with Toxic. In gen9, most CMers can't protect themselves from Toxic by running a poison move (often due to Toxic's removal from their movepool).
• Slow pivot ( into Encore () or strong physical attacker ()
• Salt Cure.exe () but be beware of Covert Cloak + not enough against lefto + recovery
• Setup 1v1 ()
• Sheer power with decent special bulk ()
• Unaware stuff even though most aren't very good ()
• Single shot Trick choice lock item () or Sticky Bards ()

Overall, I felt like CM was fine this whole generation, although Latias can be quite frustrating sometimes as counterplay may vary from a set to another (I hate Sub Latias).


Conclusion

Noooo, I'm tired of writing this post!! Please, just let me rest in peace already, it's been more than 6 months Happy ladding time and good luck to those trying to get a spot in OMPL to play Camo!

~Siamato

 

[SammyCe123]

Hey all! Making this post just for the sake of visibility and transparency on the situation regarding type preview in Camomons, where the types of every Pokemon are revealed on team preview. For those unaware, we ran the Camomons Type Preview No-Johns Tournement in order to get a feel for how type preview impacted Camomons. The council then debated whether or not type preview should be implemented into Camomons come OMPL, weighing various pros and cons. On one hand, it mitigated the amount of in-game cheese that people could get away with, allowing for players to avoid losing to a potentially suboptimal set that got the right match up. It could also be argued to make Camomons more accessible, since it lowers the skill gap between those who know common typings and those who do not. On the other hand, it severely limits creativity in new types that aren't seen as often, can be seen as unnecessary and detract from an enjoyable aspect of the game, and it reveals too much information about the opponent's team since it also essentially reveales two moves on every Pokemon. In the end, the cons outweighed the pros. Thus, we have decided to not implement type preview into Camomons! Also, stay tuned for some amazing quality of life news soon!

 

[Smallsmallrose]

VRS HAVE BEEN UPDATED!
We meant to get this out way sooner, like we had the actual changes ready for OMPL. But actually making the updated post was difficult when you do it at 3 am and somehow lose the whole thing. So I apologize for this. Anyway while I'm here, I'm gonna go over some of the big VR changes and some new faces I think have big potential.

The elephant in the room:
- The previous ruler of Camo has been kicked off their throne. This by no means means it's bad now, its still a top 3 mon in the meta, we just no longer think its as good or you're gonna see it quite as commonly on typical team structures as Who is the new undisputed king. While it has plenty of niches, Tusk's viability is always going to be a little bit tied to the value of Rapid Spin, while Glowking being a status resilient slow-pivot with regen that can stomach more than half the unboosted (and some boosted singleton hits in the whole meta is pretty unequivocally going to have value regardless of how prominent the hazard war currently is.

Notable rising stars of the VR:
This is really good and some of the council even proposed it for a 2 sub-rank rise. Remember how I just said spin isn't nearly as valuable as it used to be? Say hello to the court change machine. Its also really potent offensively, the Fire/Poison one tearing the common Water/Fairy Alomomola to shreds. Any teams you see where the wish fish is mono water either REALLY value the 4th move, or are keeping exactly this mon in mind.
The suspect taught us that this thing wasn't broken, but is it still good? 100%. An absolute breaking menace thats been taking advantage of the shifts in the hazard meta while still probably being the most consistent one-size-fits-all breaker in a metagame as bulky as Camo. You NEED to have a gameplan for PZ in the builder, or you're going to get blown away.
Mossy Sandwich's baby, this thing has shown a lot of potential in the tournament scene. Can use so many good defensive camo typings to their full potential and deny hazards like nothing else, structures with this and Cinderace have risen up (even to sample status) as they make spin or defog almost an afterthought for how effortlessly they can turn the hazard game on their opponents.
An all-star of the previous Camo ladder that was seeing top 6 usage. And its easy to see why. Its perfect as an offensive steel/flying type. Cranking up Dual Wingbeat to Brave Bird levels of power while using it's classic bullet punch, and boy are there pokemon aplenty to set up on. So many prominent grasses, ground/fairy being a top tier type both offensively and defensively. Doesn't mind sucking up a Draco Meteor if it means it gets to immediately Swords Dance. Purely defensive Steel/Flying has always had a lot of competition with it's rocks resilient rivals in ground/flying and fight/flying due to some teams valuing their specific resistances more. But Scizor isn't trying to run the type purely defensively, which has allowed it to shine.
Always struggled to find its footing in gen 9 Camo as many of its favored types like ground/fire have plenty of other excellent users with better abilities. Base type steel/fire is already niche and also has some other prominent users and types that go out of their way to abuse flash fire like steel/bug are super gimmicky. But its now found its footing on a very specific teamstyle. Steel/Grass is an incredible offensive sun abuser that also defends you against opposing sun styles. Its flash fire and its resistance to opposing solar beams, draco meteors, hydro steams, and thunderbolts make it excellent at stopping sun vs sun from being a complete trade-fest. "Sun mirror mon" may seem as niche as niche gets until you remember that sun has always existed as a top tier playstyle in gen 9 with more tournament results than you can count and the mastermind behind some high profile bans like gouging fire and Chi-Yu. And even if there's no opposing Torkoal or Ninetales on the other side of the board, it still has some really good resistances and can launch off big damage even against weatherless styles. Some even use taunt and magma storm to flush out Glowking trying to swap in and chilly reception away to get rid of the sun.
has seen some usage, ground/flying is good and base type of fire/flying is one of the better defensive fires in a meta where defensive fire is relatively rare, just be careful of losing your boots.
Psyspam has been tested far more seriously since freeing Deo-S, give it a try!

 

[Dorsia]

Electric/Fairy is one of my favourite set this gen.
Moonblast+TBolt has super coverage on most of things, and it has some tools such as Knock Off, Encore, Destiny Bond...
I wish we had another Electric Surge setter...Pincurchin I despise you!