Cryogonal can be a forgettable pokemon to lots of people, but personally I really like this angry robotic looking snowflake. Its unique combination of stats, ability, moves and typing is something that no other pokemon has. Before gen 8 comes to a close, I decided to build a team around cryogonal!
Cryogonal @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Recover
- Knock Off
- Freeze-Dry
When I first saw cryogonal, the first few things I noticed were its levitate ability, high special defense and good speed. It also has a surprisingly good support movepool, with moves like rapid spin, toxic, recover and knock off. I decided to max out its hp and speed, since it needs speed to outspeed pokemon like garchomp and other base hundreds. Its high special defense, as well as levitate and mono-ice typing lets it switch into some neutral hits like slowbro/king, tapu fini and zapdos, as well as garchomp and landorus-therian when predicted correctly, which lets it get a free rapid spin, knock off or recover. It can tank a lot of strong special attacks, such as tanking 2 specs draco meteors from dragapult at full hp. Freeze dry is its stab that also lets it chip the water types mentioned before.
Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Spikes
- Leech Seed
- Gyro Ball
- Power Whip
Spikes ferrothorn works well with cryogonal, which provides rapid spin and knock off support as well. Ferrothorn does what ferrothorn does, it's the fairy, water and grass switch-in that everyone needs. Dual stab lets it hit back fairy types hard and also break a hawlucha substitute, but feel free to run knock off if u want to. There isn't much to say about it, it covers the physical defense side of things while landorus-therian and cryogonal handle the other side.
Landorus-Therian (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic
- Earthquake
- U-turn
With an extreme weakness to fire types like volcarona, blacephalon and heatran, I added everyone's favourite bread-and-butter spdef lando set. Stealth rocks adds to the hazard stacking, and toxic lets u chip down pokemon like zapdos and volcarona. Earthquake is stab, u-turn gives u momentum, blah blah blah, u know the drill. Do know when to use cryogonal or landorus-therian to sponge hits.
Volcanion @ Choice Specs
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 132 HP / 252 SpA / 124 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Steam Eruption
- Earth Power
- Fire Blast
- Sludge Wave
With the spinning and hazards part done, its time to make full use of them. Specs volcanion is a powerhouse that really appreciates spikes racking up damage on bulkier regen pokemon like toxapex and slowking-galar, which is made even stronger with steam eruption's high power and nasty 30% burn chance. Earlier knock off support also helps volcanion break through teams. Earth power and sludge wave are for heatran and tapu fini respectively, and the speed lets it outspeed heatrans, finis and buzzwoles with no speed investment
Tapu Lele @ Twisted Spoon
Ability: Psychic Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psyshock
- Psychic
- Moonblast
- Focus Blast
Tapu lele is another strong special attacker that enjoys with spikes. Since I have two other choiced pokemon on the team, I gave tapu lele a twisted spoon so that it still has strong spammable psychic attacks, but it can also switch its moves a bit. This is further accentuated by spikes, as spikes damage + psychic + focus blast can easily surprise steel types like heatran switching in. It also gives the illusion of choice specs, giving u an advantage in the guessing game. If u want, u can also use thunder to surprise corviknights switching in, which otherwise the team might struggle against due to volcanion's stealth rock weakness.
Zapdos-Galar @ Choice Band
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brave Bird
- Close Combat
- U-turn
- Throat Chop
Galarian-zapdos is our finally wallbreaker, which threatens defog users with defiant and its strong stabs. U-turn hits the slowtwins and switches u out, while throat chop can hit ghost types like aegislash which also opens up lele. Once again, zapdos greatly benefits from spikes chipping down pokemon like toxapex and can turns 3kos into 2kos. The last 3 mons are rather customizable, whether u want to run boots volcanion, or specs lele, or scarf zapdos is all fine and up to u.
The team does have quite a weakness to hawlucha, but as I said earlier the last 3 pokemon can be customized to fit ur needs. It may not be the type of team to bring u to very high on the ladder (well u can try), but I am proud to have made cryogonal work among the powerhouses of gen 8!
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