XY OU Fundamental Interactions - An Offensive Team

[Stathakis]

(pictured: electromagnetic interaction from quantumdiaries.org, thanks)
(format ripped from CrashinBoomBang because it's very pretty, thanks and also thanks for improving the RMT forum with your own team)
(XY icons from Layell and the rest of the art staff, as always your work is awesome, thanks)​

(sprites ripped from pkparaiso.com, thanks)

​

Hey all, five years and two Pokémon generations have passed since my last RMT but I am back again with another one. I will keep the introductions brief, but basically this is one of the teams I have used in recent tournaments since about February or so. I am posting this team mainly because, among other users, I am dissatisfied with the dearth of tournament teams in the RMT forum, and as someone who was very involved in the RMT forum years ago when it was one of the bastions of competitive Pokémon theory, I think if more tournament players posted their teams here, this forum could become relevant again. As a brief brag, this team has served me very well in tournament play, facing quite a few top players and receiving, as of now, only one loss, to CrashinBoomBang (see the team he used here and the replay of the match here) in a very intense game that basically came down to a last turn 50/50 after a turn 1 flinch stopped me from setting up sticky web, a deterrent to two of the most dangerous Pokémon on his team. I used this team extensively in OST 10 where it provided me with at least one win each round until quarterfinals where I did not use it. Since there are 5 or 6 replays of the team in use, and since the metagame has shifted heavily towards Sand rush offense, bird spam, and the incredibly bulky and powerful mega mawile and assault vest azumarill, all of which give this team problems, I doubt I will be using it again, except perhaps in random frontier games if I am bored and feel like mixing it up. Seems like the perfect time to retire this team.

As an aside, I'm going to pre-emptively reject this team from the RMT archive, since it seems every RMT that has a good ladder or tounament run gets nominated. This team is pretty niche, had little to no impact on the metagame, and is not the type of thing I'd want to see in the archive which is supposed to chronicle the evolution of the metagame. Instead, I envision an RMT forum in the not-too-far future where tournament teams are posted regularly and only those that were truly metagame-defining are nominated and archived, rather than the quality being so bad that every half-decent team is nominated. Archive CBB's team; everyone uses it and it actually shaped the metagame.

Team Design Process​

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The team started out fundamentally as an anti-stall team, because I felt some of my opponents in OST 10 were going to bring stall to the tournament, so I wanted to counterpick them. Furthermore, I wanted to punish my opponents for bringing stall to tournaments, because seriously who wants to play for 2 hours+ per game with 300 turns where more than half the turns are 50/50 guesses? I have better things to do FFS. With that in mind, I chose the core of calm mind landorus + specs keldeo + a pursuiter. At the time, latios was the common defogger and running earthquake, so I chose assault vest bisharp with max hp and enough bulk investment to survive draco meteor + earthquake after stealth rock. incidentally the same EVs allow you to not be 2hkod by hidden power fire or ohkod by hidden power fighting, which is cool.

From there I realized that if the strongest levitating threat of the time is pursuit-bait, then the rest of the threats are all grounded and if I could get them to be slower than all my high-firepower pokemon, I would be all the more threatening. Sticky web was the obvious choice, given that I already had a bisharp on the team that could punish and destroy defoggers. Shuckle was chosen because every other sticky web user is ass and if not for him, the web wouldn't even be worth using. I chose encore+infestation as the moves other than the obvious sticky web and stealth rock to turn the tables on pokemon trying to set up on shuckle, and use them as set up bait for my own pokemon.

At this point I needed to decide my mega pokemon. I knew I wanted one that could hit really hard to keep the anti-bulk theme, so the options were basically medicham, pinsir, one of the charizards, gardevoir, or mawile. Since nobody on the team really cared about stealth rock and I wanted my hazards to stay up, I steered away from the zards and pinsir as defog hinders the rest of my team but stealth rock hinders them. Mawile was too slow even after sticky web, and between medicham and gardevoir, gardevoir has the added bonus of being able to tank a hit from the genies and KO back (after rocks anyway), a huge boon since they are not affected by sticky web.

For my last slot I was out of ideas, just wanted a really strong and bulky attacker in the 100ish speed tier that could take advantage of sticky web. Kyurem-black has a stat total of like 700 so I figured I would chuck him on the team and call it a day. He has the added bonus of being absurdly hard for the conventional walls to beat, a veritable monster to stall once chansey is down, and his most common check keldeo no longer checks him in sticky web, while his other main check latios is nicely pursuited.

Somewhere down the line people started using gyarados-mega, scizor-mega, bird spam, and sand rush offense, and all were massive threats to the team once they set up. Without any boosts they were easy to handle but getting even one meant it was curtains. As such, I replaced the two pokemon they could set up on, bisharp and kyurem-black, with other choices. If EV'd properly, aegislash could do almost as good of a job pursuiting as bisharp, koing switching latis after SR and one turn of recoil. I replaced kyurem-black with thundurus, a check to bird spam that could also provide either a last ditch thunder wave or another defiant user to beat defogs. With these concessions I became a bit less evil to stall but still maintained a healthy team advantage against stall teams while not outright losing to the things mentioned above.

Team In Depth

Shuckle @ Mental Herb
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Encore / Toxic
- Infestation
- Sticky Web
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Shuckle is generally the team's lead, unless I am facing something that can specifically beat him, in which case I will lead with the least important member of the team (which I deduce based on our matchup at team preview) and try to get a good lead matchup for shuckle, so that he can more easily get his hazards down. If I do lead with shuckle, I will generally assess which hazard is more important and lay that one first. If I don't need sticky web, I sometimes just don't set it at all. The team is fast enough with the genies and keldeo, and bulky enough with gardevoir (on the special side) and aegislash that I don't explicitly need sticky web, so if the opponent doesn't have one of: garchomp, greninja, manectric, keldeo, heatran (if it looks like scarftran from team preview), excadrill (if it looks like scarf drill from team preview, this team was most used during the time when scarf drill was the most popular set), deoxys-speed (rip), or some other strange fast grounded pokemon, I don't set it at all. Against teams that do have those pokemon, putting down sticky web turns them into liabilities that are slower than most of my team and also suffer OHKOs from many pokemon on my team, allowing me to go effectively a pseudo 6-4 or 6-3 at the very beginning of the match if we are counting useful pokemon on each team. To make these pokemon useful, my opponent has to defog, and often the battle between the defogger and the defog stopper will decide who wins the game (i.e. if I can stop them from defogging, or force them to take a kill in exchange for the defog, I can win, but if they get it for free they win). Against teams without these pokemon, depending on the shuckle lead matchup, I may not have the luxury of a free turn for sticky web, so I do not set it. If the sticky web isn't doing wonders for the team matchup, it is better to conserve chuckle for a sacrifice later and get an infestation+encore off to ensure that one of my pokemon enters the field safely and with a free turn. Having the early game momentum and a nice death fodder for later in the game is often much better than a near-useless sticky web. I have chosen infestation over other options (namely toxic and knock off) because infestation traps pokemon, and I can often use infestation on an incoming pokemon, then encore its set up move or weak attack. From there I gain the freedom to 1. set all my hazards and get a free switchin or 2. set some hazards, get a free switchin, and get a free attack while they are stuck in encore. If the opponent is not setting up something too dangerous, I safely go for option 1, but if they are getting dragon dances with their charizard or something I will instead go for the safer option 2 and kill whatever is setting up with one of the many high-firepower pokemon on the team. That being said, the moveset of infestation+toxic deserves mention since it allows me to almost guarantee one KO and hazards after shuckle goes down. In addition, if the defogger comes in on an infestation after hazards go up, I can toxic it as it defogs and then spam the hazard of my choice, guaranteeing that after the defogger dies I get at least one hazard up. This is a really strong combo but in high-risk tournament play the safer and more predictable encore won out, based mostly on personal preference. Encore+toxic is decent but the moves do not combo into each other quite as nicely as encore+infestation or toxic+infestation, so I would not choose this combination over the other two, which are in my opinion equally powerful. The EVs are pumped into physical defense because I cannot stop specs keldeo or landorus from 2hkoing outside sandstorm, but with physical defense I can better take attacks from non-CB azumarill, lead mamoswine, lead tyranitar, landorus-therian, unboosted excadrill, and most popular leads. Against lead loom I have a tough matchup but I basically decide whether breaking his sash is more important than hazards, and if there is no obviously useless pokemon in the team matchup I let shuckle take the sleep. If there is a less useful pokemon on the team I lead with that one and hit breloom, allowing it to take the breloom hit or spore then going to aegislash, and generally switch to shuckle after that.

Landorus (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Earth Power
- Psychic
- Focus Blast
- Calm Mind
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Calm mind landorus is often the pokemon I go to in the early game right after shuckle has done his thing. Against stall, going to calm mind landorus in the early game forces their opponent to go to chansey and allow me to 2hko it with focus blast in order to get a toxic off. If they do not toxic first turn it is possible to get 2 calm minds against the chansey and force it to take 75%+ from +2 focus blast before switching out, if not outright koing it. This is generally what I opt for if the second focus blast misses while I am trying to 2hko the chansey. The reason I am using calm mind instead of the more popular knock off for breaking stall is because 1. I pursuit the latis and 2. knock off allows me to beat stall that relies on chansey to wall landorus, but against teams with, for instance, chansey + sdef gliscor they can just go to the gliscor and preserve the chansey for the rest of my team. Calm mind, on the other hand, forces a stall-playing opponent to either watch their pokemon get OHKOd or go to chansey and allow me to take her life in exchange for toxic damage on landorus. This way, I have a much higher chance of actually killing the chansey than with knock off, which the opponent will try to play around with sdef gliscor or something else. Against more offensive teams, if sticky web is up there are many teams whose only answer to landorus is revenging it with HP ice thundurus. These teams have a very hard time answering calm mind landorus because HP ice does not ohko after one calm mind boost, often forcing them to get me to low health with hp ice and then revenge with sucker punch or aqua jet, but then the opponent has likely already lost his thundurus and perhaps taken heavy damage on one more pokemon, and they have the switch disadvantage as I can bring in anything on their revenge killer. For those reasons, I opt for calm mind over the other options. Against teams that carry aegislash I often have to play more conservatively with landorus, and my gameplan may be to force the opponent into a 1v1 situation where their last mon is aegislash and mine is landorus. In situations where aegislash has just killed one of my pokemon, I often go to landorus as shadow ball + shadow sneak fails to ko at +1 if my opponent stays in as I CM (though they often don't since good players will try to preserve their aegislash against this team), and if they switch as I do it they are often much more deeply screwed. Sometimes I condition my opponent to stay in with their aegislash by revealing the calm mind earlier in the game, making them fear setup later and go for shadow ball, allowing me to get the earth power kill on a very threatening pokemon. It is worth noting that after stealth rock and leftovers, physically defensive zapdos and mandibuzz are usually ko'd by +1 psychic and focus blast, respectively, allowing me to maintain my hazards if they try to switch in on landorus in the early game. Even so, I will usually try to guess whether they are physically or specially defensive based on the team before I choose an attack, because while going for the calm mind on the switch ensures the OHKO on physical defensive variants, it does not KO variants with lots of sdef investment after SR+ leftovers, requiring me to catch them with an attack on the switch and 2hko them instead. Pokemon like garchomp and keldeo hate being slower than landorus, so I try to use that to my advantage if I see them in team preview.

Thundurus (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 56 Atk / 200 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Knock Off
- Superpower / Focus Blast / Hidden Power Flying
- Thunder Wave
​

The second genie. This slot is probably the most up-for-grabs slot of the team, and thundurus is a necessary evil, checking bird spam teams and setup sweepers and being a good pokemon in general vs offense. The chosen set and EVs have a very high chance of koing latios after stealth rock and a small chance before. With stealth rock and one round of life orb recoil, even latias with slight bulk investment dies to knock off from the given EVs. Max speed is necessary to tie other thundurus because games come down to thundurus speed ties all the time. I change this set often, sometimes going entirely physical with defiant to take advantage of defoggers, other times going entirely special with the standard 3 Atks+thunder wave, but I think this one gives me the most mileage, because it still mutilates chansey and bulky grass types with knock off while retaining the ever-important prankster thunder wave that stops me from being swept by random dragon dance or scarf pokemon. I have considered dropping the Atk evs to 4 and going with hidden power flying, in order to nail bulky grass types, but having a move that can smash excadrill is more useful. Deciding between superpower and focus blast is really a coinflip as both moves accomplish the same thing, more or less. To the people rating this team, I am looking for your input the most on this slot, as I am having trouble settling on one thing. Since he is the only pokemon on the team weak to stealth rock, if there are no pokemon on my opponent's team that I want to paralyze, I try to be aggressive with thundurus in the early game before they get stealth rock up if possible. If they get stealth rock up too early, then I preserve thundurus for the late game, only letting him take damage if I must, since his thunder wave is often the difference between successfully blowing a team to bits and getting swept by something in between my strong attacks. If necessary, thundurus is also a great tool to pressure the opponent into bringing in aegislash to lose a lot of health in exchange for a shadow ball kill. It's usually not a problem because if the opponent can't switch aegislash into gardevoir they are probably going to lose more than 1 pokemon. Checking birdspam is really important and his main job, so in matchups with lots of birds, I jealously guard thundurus's hp, making sure he is outside the kill range of brave bird or quick attack from talonflame and pinsir. Not much else to say about him; as I said before thundurus is mostly just a countermeasure to other things while also maintaining a strong offensive presence.

Gardevoir (F) @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Psyshock / Future Sight
- Focus Blast
- Hyper Voice
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Ah, the mega mistress of mayhem. Mega Gardevoir is one of the harder-hitting megas, bursting through teams with pixilate-boosted hyper voices on par with pinsir's return. The only common specially bulky pokemon really are the latis and aegislash. The latter is hopefully weakened by the rest of my team, while the former is destroyed by hyper voice anyway. The future sight slash may look strange, but it has very interesting uses. The standard set I use is calm mind + psyshock, allowing gardevoir to run away with the game if given a free turn, since most of the standard threats not slown down by sticky web cannot com KO a +1 sdef gardevoir. On the other hand, future sight allows gardevoir to set up a sort of checkmate situation against teams that rely on bulky venusaur to switch into keldeo, where I use future sight then switch to keldeo, at which point against bulky teams a pokemon is guaranteed to die, since the incoming venusaur or amoonguss gets demolished by future sight, and anything on the team that can take a future sight is ko'd by keldeo's moves. Against stall teams that think they are safe against keldeo by using chansey + venusaur-mega, this combination can be set up multiple times per match, allowing keldeo to just pick off enemy pokemon one at a time. Future sight is also a wonderful suicide move against aegislash if gardevoir is at low health, because I can sacrifice gardevoir while using future sight, and then the aegislash is forced to use king's shield to revert to shield form lest he take 60-70% (or get OHKO'd if gardevoir was at +1), giving my next sweeper or shuckle a free turn of set-up. If future sight is picked over psyshock, calm mind is generally less useful in my opinion, and the best moves are will-o-wisp or healing wish. I have trouble deciding between the two, as they both have niche uses, but am leaning healing wish since most members of my team can be checked by bulky mons like bisharp or aegislash once, but are a nightmare to face twice. Will-o-Wisp's main targets are bisharp and aegislash, so if I'm expecting my opponent to bring one of those I will counterpick with will-o-wisp (On the ladder, the best set to use is will-o-wisp / psyshock because of the abundance of bisharp there, and bisharp's ability to take advantage of sticky web otherwise, but future sight is hard to use against players when you don't know if they're good or not i.e. outside tournament so psyshock is a better overall pick). As a general pick, gardevoir is useful on this team because all of the common threats faster than the 100 speed tier that are unaffected by sticky web are specially based, which means that most of the common things that stop my other pokemon lose against gardevoir 1v1. This opens up plays like sacrificing someone (shuckle if possible) to said fast flying pokemon (generally thundurus, latios, or landorus) and then bringing in gardevoir, forcing my opponent into a situation where their options are to lose their most valuable pokemon against my team in exchange for weakening gardevoir or to switch and have something take a massive attack (usually hyper voice unless I am trying to nail a resist on the switch).

Aegislash @ Air Balloon
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 160 HP / 76 Atk / 252 SpA / 20 Spe
Quiet Nature
- Shadow Sneak
- Pursuit
- Shadow Ball
- King's Shield
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I can't remember what I was trying to speed creep with these EVs, but it's nice to win the shadow ball speed war against most other mixed aegislash, and I think I beat minimum speed versions of a few walls with this spread. More importantly, aegislash is the glue pokemon if this team has one, and he performs many of the housekeeping duties that allow my other pokemon to hit the opponent as hard as possible. Priority #1 is pursuiting latis. Aegislash does a good job of it, arguably better than bisharp, since though he is not guaranteed to kill them (though with the given EVs they will die after SR and a round of life orb damage i.e. the attack they use on aegislash as he switches in). Luckily for me, the popularity of pursuit aegislash was dying down to make way for sub-toxic slash just as this team was being created, so getting the pursuit has almost always been fairly easy, as nobody wants to leave in their lati that is so useful against keldeo and landorus, risking its life to shadow ball. With the latis dead or crippled, landorus and keldeo really come alive, having very few pokemon that can safely switch in. Aegislash also serves as this team's rapid spin blocker, allowing me to keep my hazards up against spinners, which are much more dangerous than defoggers, since rapid spin removes infestation and hence also takes away shuckle's ability to stall defoggers to death while spamming a hazard. Fortunately, the only popular spinner is sand rush excadrill, and if I stall their tyranitar for a decent amount of damage and some sand turns with infestation shuckle, then often I can make sure their excadrill only threatens to spin once. Against such teams I will sometimes lay only one hazard with shuckle while preserving his hp and let the excadrill spin against some other foe as I kill it, easing the burden on aegislash and allowing shuckle to come in again. Fundamentally I have to play around the sandexca teams and aegislash allows me to do that. If my opponent doesn't have a latios or excadrill on their team, aegislash becomes useful as a win condition, where I just sac for damage to get down to a 1v1 situation where I have full hp aegislash against something of theirs at full hp, and aegislash wins most of those matchups due to how absurd king's shield is. He is also very useful against teams with thundurus if I can switch him in safely, because then the opponent must either sacrifice their fastest pokemon under sticky web or take a big shadow ball on the switch with something. This set leaves me very open to bisharp, so if my opponent has a bisharp I am hard-pressed to decide between setting sticky web and dealing with bisharp. Luckily aegislash has great bulk and typing, which lend themselves greatly to double switching with aegislash in the middle, allowing me to force my opponent into situations where their bisharp is up against my keldeo. If I have used aegislash as a pivot in this manner, he becomes a decently good fodder pokemon later in the match after firing a shadow ball or two, allowing me to get another switchin. Shadow sneak is the only priority this team carries other than thunder wave, so I am sometimes forced into situations where I need to preserve him to beat lategame CB dragonite or CB entei, but this is rare, and aegislash himself is usually not the win condition, so usually I fodder him before anyone else. That being said, he is brilliant at what he does and is certainly an irreplaceable member. If he gets banned, bisharp will not be able to do the job as well because 1. it is too easy for physically bulky pokemon to set up on him whereas aegislash has shadow ball to nail them 2. bisharp cannot block spins.

Keldeo @ Choice Specs
Ability: Justified
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Scald
- Secret Sword
- Icy Wind
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Keldeo is the hardest-hitting member of the team with hydro pump and is very important in all matchups, probably taking the role of MVP. Against stall, it is the best pokemon to use in the midgame to spam scalds once chansey is weakened, because one scald burn on the typical non-chansey keldeo counters (alomomola, amoonguss, slowbro, mega venusaur) makes them severely less able to counter him the next time he comes in and uses secret sword or hydro pump. With his resistance to stealth rock, keldeo can come in and out several times per game if necessary, making scald-spamming an easy and powerful way to break stall teams, even if they have other answers to keldeo than chansey (see this game, where my opponent carries chansey, slowbro, and amoonguss but is still broken down, albeit with the help of one critical hit to speed things up). Against non-stall matchups, keldeo performs almost the same role, spamming scalds until the counters are burned. With sticky web up, greninja, scarf gothitelle, and mega manectric cannot revenge kill, and keldeo resists all the common priority attacks, so if my opponent relies on sacrificing something to revenge kill keldeo he is in deep trouble. Dragonite and the latis are an issue, but again aegislash is a great switchin to both and after they have taken pursuit and stealth rock, they are either dead or incapable of switching back into keldeo. The fact that keldeo's checks can only check him once due to either stealth rock weakness, possibility of a scald burn, and pursuit weakness while keldeo resists stealth rock and hence can come in many times is what this team is built around. A common theme of this theme is that my opponent might have one or two pokemon that cause me problems but lose 1v1 against one of my hard-hitting pokemon, and my way of dealing with that is forcing my opponent into a situation where that 1v1 situation arises and my opponent must either lose the most important member of his team to cripple my guy, or find another pokemon to take big damage as he switches out, saving his pokemon. This is also true for keldeo against teams with bisharp, where forcing my opponent into 1v1s between keldeo and bisharp is my key to success, and if I can do it more than once I probably win but if I cannot I probably lose. He also plays this role against teams with landorus if I reveal my lack of hidden power ice on thundurus, though opponents are usually more willing to sacrifice their landorus because they see that I have thundurus, mega gardevoir, and keldeo, all of which generally beat non-sludge wave lando 1v1. Secret sword doesn't see as much use on this team because it is better to hit my opponent's bulky pokemon on their weaker special defense stat, but it has niche uses against teams with rotom-w, though in my experience rotom-w usually tries to switch in on landorus, who sets up a calm mind and survives hydro pump comfortably at +1 sdef, and then ko's even the bulkiest rotom variants. Secret sword is most often used in tandem with future sight, because aside from aegislash there are very few pokemon that resist both attacks, and hitting an opponent's special defense with future sight while hitting their physical defense with secret sword guarantees a KO against everything not named cresselia. icy wind is rarely used if ever, and is only useful for slowing down and 2hkoing latis on the switch, though again, it is much safer to just pivot to aegislash and trap them.

Overall Theme
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I am going to keep this brief since I covered most of the goals of the team in the team members' descriptions. The point of this team, aside from being a powerful counterpick to the stall that permeates tournament play, is to abuse a few fundamental interactions between team members. Sticky web + keldeo + gardevoir is one, future sight + keldeo is another, pursuit + keldeo + landorus is a third, double genie wearing down each other's counters is a fourth, and encore/infestation + setup sweepers (landorus and possibly gardevoir depending on the set) is a fifth Furthermore, each pokemon hits really hard on the overall less bulky special defense side of bulky teams, meaning that once the assault vest user has been broken by the collective team's effort, the rest of the pokemon have little trouble bowling over a weakened opponent. Each of these interactions serves to make these pokemon, which were already top metagame threats, even more powerful. By completely neutering the common revenge killers with sticky web, I am able to forego speed for power (choosing, for example, mega gardevoir over manectric, calm mind landorus over rock polish, and specs keldeo over scarf) and really have it both ways, giving me the firepower to take down stall and the matchup-specific speed to take down offense. I realize a lot of my choices look pretty aidsy and silly but I promise it works well when it's all put together.

Threats
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Gonna keep this one brief too because again I talked about the threats and how I deal with them in the team members, so I'll only list the ones that give me a good amount of trouble / require me to play around them a lot. I might think of more later that I forgot; I'm mostly just tired of thinking about this team right now.

Bisharp - It forces me to either not use sticky web or take it out before I do. The best way to deal with bisharp is to, if he and latios are not on the same team, get chip damage on it in passing, primarily with aegislash who is generally sacrificed at some point, and goad my opponent into sacrificing it, then using sticky web later. If my opponent has bisharp without the usual threats that I use sticky web to beat, the matchup is much easier and I just play without the web. Still hard to switch into, but does not outright beat anyone other than aegislash one on one.

Talonflame - teams with talonflame are usually really anal about having a way to clear hazards so that is always annoying, and talonflame can beat many pokemon on my team. otherwise, he himself isn't a huge threat but the team surrounding him almost never gives me an easy matchup since it's usually bird spam + hazard removal

Excadrill - scarf and other mold breaker variants are no problem, but the sand rush ones are a bit of a pain, forcing me to play very carefully with aegislash. Depending on his teammates, this can be a manageable matchup or a really tough one.

Charizard-Y - he is never seen anymore but he is a threat and very difficult to switch into. if I keep rocks up it's not a huge deal to just force him out once with thundurus after sacrificing something but like talonflame teams with charizard-y are usually very anal about keeping hazards off the field. it requires a bit of careful play and the speed tie against gardevoir is infuriating.

Rain - oddly I can do decently well against rain teams by leaving gardevoir un-mega'd and tracing their swift swim. against kingdra i can mega evolve while fighting it and retain my swift-swim boosted speed while koing with hyper voice, and against kabutops i do even better by staying unevolved and koing with focus blast and if he switches I can pull the same trick later. never had trouble with rain oddly, which is rare for offensive teams such as this one

Shoutouts

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I only have one person to shout out, because this man has taken me to new levels of pokemon ability with his sage advice. he is the powerful and brilliant pokemon master r willy. I would share his wisdom here but it is a secret of which nobody, myself included, is worth of knowing

r willy is love
r willy is life

Replays
because everyone has to stroke his own dick once in a while / gotta show how the team works / + many unsaved games i think the official tournament record is 9-1 or something but here are notable ones

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vs sapienta
vs CBB
vs HSA
vs HSA
vs Marth
vs gr8astard

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[aim]

Hey Stathakis cool team! Honestly it looks really solid especially with pursuit Aegislash when Latias comes in to defog and you can save Shuckle and knock out Lati...well you obviously know how it is done lol. Honestly I have just one or two potential changes. First off, though lifeorb Superpower + knock off makes it more of a threat, I do suggest running three attack leftovers + Thunder Wave on Thundurus. The leftovers ensure at least some survivability vs Flying spam teams and I don't really think Knock Off + the attack evs are needed to knock out the Lati twins as you have Aegislash to take care of it with Pursuit + Stealth Rock damage and with leftovers Thunder Wave + Hp Ice (as you have Gardevoir, Aegislash, and CM Landorus to pressure Venusaur) that leaves room for a third attack which I believe Focus Blast would be best as that allows you to deal with a weakened/offensive Tyraninar as well as Excadrill, preventing the potential spin from the later, assuming you hit lol. My last suggestion would be running Taunt on Mega Gardevoir over Calm Mind. Taunt allows you to prevent the defog from opposing Mew/Gliscor/Skarmory who can only defog on Gardevoir as Sp Def Mew and Gliscor both live the Hyper Voice and Skarmory can take 1 Focus Blast. This also gives you a mon paired up with Calm Mind Landorus that really annoys stall. I like the idea of Future Sight + Keldeo so i'm definitely not knocking it. I'd honestly just test with the potential change of Taunt over CM and see how it works.

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Thundurus (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Thunder Wave

Gardevoir @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Taunt
- Psyshock/Future Sight
- Hyper Voice
- Focus Blast

That's all i've got. Once again it is a pretty solid team! Hope I helped. :]

 

[Jirachee]

Nice team Stathakis.

I'm going to echo aim here; I really do think you need HP Ice on Thundurus. Your team looks a little prone to Landorus because it's immune to Sticky Web and you don't really have a safe switch in for it, it is very likely to use Psychic as first move because your two likely switch ins, Thundurus and Landorus, take big damage from it, so you can't risk the Balloon on Aegislash. Not only that, but the recently popular SpDef Gliscor looks pretty annoying for your team to face and HP Ice gives you something else to 2 shot it.

Not much else to say, because of how this team is built, it's pretty hard to fix issues without making the team objectively worse.

 

[craing ;_;]

hi there! Looks like you put a lot of thought on this team, but figured you would appreciate a second opinion. First off, i would recommend an ev spread of: EVs: 248 HP / 64 Def / 196 SpD Bold for shuckle as you are able to take sp atks better, more specifically not getting 2hkod by landorus' earth power, rotom-w's hydro pump, mega-gardevoir's hyper voice, and 3hkod by aegislash's shadow ball. It still is not 2hkod by mega-pinsir, bandtalon, scarf landorus-t's stone edge, and uninvested aegi's iron head so that's good :0. Even with max defense its still 2hkod by azumarill and excadrill so i dont see the point in it ~_~.Taunt over calm mind on gardevoir is definitely something you should consider as it still has stall-breaking aspects to it while having the utility to prevent stray defogs or stealth rocks(which would give thundurus an easier time against bird spam). Speaking of thundurus, I think the set you currently have with knock off+superpower is just fine. Being able to eliminate lati's to prevent defog would be ideal because if you already set up your hazards, depending on the match up, keeping said hazards would be key in winning the battle. While knock off with thundy and pursuit with aegi may seem redundant, if a lati is in on landorus or keldeo, you can just go to aegi and pursuit them so there's that. Missing hp ice does suck, but the things you hit with hp ice are most likely not going to stay in on a thundurus regardless lol and keldeo already pressures enough with thundy luring lati and pursuit. Superpower and focus blast are debateable, but I would go superpower because they hit the same things, has perfect accuracy, and you already have 2 other users of focus miss so lets not decrease your chances of winning :x, but maybe that's just me. Regardless, I haven't seen much notable sticky web teams so far in xy, especially in the tournament scene, so good job and kudos to you n_n.

 

[chimpact]

If you decide to put taunt on gardevoir like previous users have suggested, I think you should give landorus substitute over CM. between keldeo and taunt gard you handle stall really well, so calm mind is not as necesary. With the addition of substitute you can dodge sucker punch from bisharps and it can minimize prediction against offensive teams. if your opponent decides to sack a pokemon to landorus to try to revenge it, they're in a very dangerous position if you substitute.

 

[Stathakis]

Hey friends, thanks for the feedback!


re: leftovers thundurus, given that latios can outspeed and get the defog on most of my team, going to pursuit slash is pretty much my default answer. knock off is more of an insurance that while nice is definitely not as nice as the extra survivability and the ability to hit landorus. I think it is easier for this team to play around the latis than it is to play around landorus, so perhaps the extra insurance against lando is better than against the latis as Jirachee points out. if not for lando specifically I think knock off would be better. a fighting move is mandatory because it's best to have no possible opportunities for excadrill to switch in, so i'm between knock off and hp ice.

re: taunt on gardevoir, I am only worried about the fact that most teams that carry defogging mew, gliscor, and skarmory are pretty much just stall teams as balance and offense have pretty much unanimously (or at least this is how it feels) switched to sand-exca spinning or defog latis for their hazard control duties. with that in mind, using calm mind as they defog is generally just as devastating to these teams as taunting their defog, since no threats on stall can switch into a +1 gardevoir without being 2hko'd, and if those are their sdef pokemon they are not going to be able to fight the rest of the team after taking a +1 hyper voice. for that reason, I'd much rather set up as they defog and kill 1-2 pokemon which is worth more than my stealth rocks, since I don't usually need/want sticky web against these teams anyway.

however, an idea that I do think has a ton of merit is taunt future sight garde + sub lando, since taunt garde is extremely hard for a stall team to switch into in general (I would say not as hard as a +1 CM garde after it has set up but definitely harder than the CM garde on turn 1), since future sight+ keldeo is already a nightmare for stall, with taunt shutting down chanseys that try to switch in as well as the other common sdef pokemon on stall teams (i.e. gliscor, mew, maybe zapdos) then sub lando gives me a really strong pokemon against balance and offense. This is an idea that I think makes the team a perhaps less strong counterpick vs. stall but a much stronger one in general. so, thanks for that aim and chimpact I will definitely test it out and I am optimistic about the results!



re: that new shuckle spread looks nice! I kind of threw the EVs in defense not willy nilly but just figuring that the bulk of the metagame is physically based, so if I am trying to conserve shuckle for later, it is easier to pivot him through physical attacks without splitting the defenses, allowing me to just take them well. however, not getting 2hkod by landorus and especially by rotom sounds amazing so I will probably just default to that spread as it looks vastly superior to the one I have. thanks ben gay !

 

[Stathakis]

gonna go ahead and bump this since the suggestions I got were really good and I am hoping to get a few more? if Aegi gets banned I will probably need to find some other way to beat sandexca and this team will shift towards luring/killing exca then setting hazards with shuckle, which could be a very threatening game plan. and of course in such a metagame the biggest threat to this team is gone so I am optimistic about using it successfully again!


edit: RIP