Other Metagames Last Stand of Dead Men (Gen 8 Balanced Hackmons Bulky Offense)

[Riotgamer2502]

I’ve wanted to make a Skulduggery Pleasant based RMT for a while, and when I made this Balanced Hackmons team and started doing quite well with it, I decided to make it into an RMT based off of my favourite book series.

This is my first ever serious Balanced Hackmons team I have ever made myself, getting into the meta again after quitting the meta for a while. I used a sample team to get a taster of the current meta. After a couple days of testing, I eventually came up with this team.

I decided to start with a good defensive core and work from there.

Tanith Low (Doublade) @ Eviolite
Ability: Ice Scales
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Spectral Thief
- Anchor Shot
- Shore Up
- King's Shield

Doublade has massive bulk thanks to its big defense stat, eviolite, and ice scales reducing damage from special attacks. It can self improof with Anchor Shot, Spectral Thief can help against sweepers, Shore Up helps keep Doublade healthy and King’s Shield helps scout and is also useful for lowering the damage your imposter and other Pokémon do to you. Doublade is named after Tanith Low because it is a pair of swords, Tanith’s favourite weapon to wield.

Next I needed a strong Fur Coat Pokémon that has defensive synergy with Doublade

Skulduggery (Ho-Oh) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- V-create
- Shore Up
- Stealth Rock
- Will-O-Wisp

Ho-Oh is very specially bulky, but it’s physical defence stat let’s it down a bit. However with Fur Coat, it’s stats become solid across the board. Heavy-Duty Boots means that it doesn't take 50% on entry when rocks are up. V-Create takes away the passivity Fur Coat users tend to suffer from. Will-O-Wisp cripples physical attackers even further, Stealth Rock helps the team sweep and Shore Up keeps it healthy. Named after Skulduggery because his specialties in the series at the moment are the elements of Air and Fire.

Since Ho-Oh can’t self improof with the set it’s got, I needed something to pressure it out and I also needed a strong breaker.


Dexter Vex (Urshifu-Rapid-Strike) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Strong Jaw
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fishious Rend
- Close Combat
- Jaw Lock
- Glacial Lance


Fishious Rend + Strong Jaw + Choice Scarf can sweep teams after Fur Coat or other walls to this mon are gone, and Fishious Rend as well it’s other coverage can help break walls. Jaw Lock traps Giratina and dishes out massive damage to it. Close Combat is amazing fighting STAB. Glacial Lance is a good coverage move that can slap a lot of the meta and fits well on this set. Named after Dexter Vex because of Dexter’s physical prowess in a fight.

Next I wanted a special mon that could compliment Urshifu and had a little more bulk and survivability.


Valkyrie Cain (Xerneas) @ Pixie Plate
Ability: Pixilate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Boomburst
- Earth Power
- Strength Sap

Pixilate Xern has good bulk and lots of power. With Pixilate + Pixie Plate Boomburst has massive power taking out a lot of walls, Extreme Speed can take out weakened targets and check Urshifu. Fairy and Ground is great coverage hitting most of the meta except steel flying types which aren’t very common in Balanced Hackmons. Strength Sap cripples physical mons and keeps Xern healthy. Named after Valkyrie because of its raw power and endurance and the fact that Xerneas is probably the biggest force for good in the Pokemon lore just as Valkyrie is.

I needed something to take out Eternatus, as it is the main wall to our team so far.

Ghastly Bespoke (Groudon) @ Choice Band
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Glacial Lance
- Thousand Arrows
- U-turn
- Heal Bell

Doing massive damage to most of the walls in the meta, Groudon is by far the best check to Eternatus in my opinion. It can also provide an improof to Ho-Oh and Doublade. Thousand Arrows does massive damage due to Band + Adaptability, OHKOing lots of walls with super effective and neutral bulky offense mons. Glacial Lance is a powerhouse of a coverage move and U-turn is a pivot move. Heal Bell is useful for healing the team after scaring the opponent out. Named after Ghastly Bespoke because of the scar-like lines running down it.

Next I wanted a prankster, preferably something that can be improofed by Xern and/or Groudon.

China Sorrows (Zygarde-Complete) @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Core Enforcer
- Haze
- Destiny Bond
- Shore Up

Zygarde-C has massive bulk and is probably the best prankster in this gen. Safety Google’s stops offensive pranksters and makes zygarde a spore swap in. Core Enforcer shuts down abilities which is massively helpful. P-Haze shuts down setup sweepers and Destiny Bond can take down problematic mons, and Shore Up keeps it healthy. Named after China because of how difficult it is to take out and the power behind it.

Link to the team:https://pokepast.es/3acb1122f85f46fd
Hope you enjoyed this RMT!

 

[cityscapes]

hey, sorry for the delay, meant to rate this team earlier but i’ve been busy. there are some cool ideas here: scarf urshifu-r as a cleaner supplemented by the fairy + ground core is neat, and the defensive core avoids falling into the typical trap of running physical wall + special wall (fc doublade + scales hooh for example) and auto losing to mixed attackers such as palkia. that said, i did notice a few issues which i’ll try to explain/fix here.

basic fixes

• ghosts can’t be trapped; anchor is still ok on doublade but you might need a stronger imposter proofing setup (though wisp hooh is pretty decent)
• scarf jaw lock traps you and locks you into 1 move which will get you killed immediately, it also does not trap gira
• tough claws on urshifu is worth considering cause you just go cc rend wicked blow axel and have a bunch of pretty strong attacks, though the boost is slightly weaker than strong jaw
• maybe consider toxic>heal bell on don? the purpose is to beat prank/fc giratina so that urshifu can clean later
• spikes or body press might do more than king’s shield on doublade, against offensive teams you can just sacrifice it and let the rest of your team benefit from spikes/weakened regigigas

structural issues

doublade is well-supported on this team, but there are weaknesses it has that feel almost inherent to it (even in different metas like gen 7). i think scales on doublade isn’t workable: though it performs admirably against etern’s dragon energy and xern’s boomburst, it’s very slow and is forced to play reactively pretty often, which can spell trouble against anything that you can’t simply wall out. for example, ph regigigas carrying glacial lance and anything to hit doublade spells big trouble for the team, and rain teams practically insta-win due to water spout + rend being uncontested save for xern’s espeed.

both of these threats are pretty uncommon and by themselves they don’t make the team bad, the greater argument here is that the team is not that good at creating counterplay due to its passive structure and can often be at the mercy of random ladder sets. using the pokepaste version of the team (defog teleport ho-oh) what happens if an unrevealed kyurem-b comes in on your hooh? the issue is that you have no real “safe” moves: bolt strike or rend are issues, even just glance is an issue, shift gear/sd/drum are issues. the best play here is going to either xern or urshifu, but if something happens to them then the position is horrible—you’re in the same spot as before, but with 1 less good mon on your team. (wisp sr runs into a similar issue with spikes just killing all your guys, wisp defog and you have no mobility or counter-initiative)

i used the kyurem-b example because it’s pretty easy to explain, but it goes deeper than just individual mons. a big one is status: when i used magic bounce i would always get annoyed that i’d never be able to get it in consistently on hazards, and even if you ran say poison heal on xern i can see there being a similar issue—status is very hard to call out, let alone consistently stop, when it’s on pokemon more capable than regieleki. poison and paralysis can just shred the team unless groudon is immensely threatening, sleep goes crazy if they sleep the right guy.

the offensive initiative is acceptable but just not explosive enough to justify defense that is passive, immobile, and brittle. by this i mean when i use some fc/scales mon that gets nothing done, mostly it’s to imposter proof insane pokemon like setup zekrom, band kart, very dangerous nasty plot users, and the like. your guys are good but not winning the game instantly. the team is good at surviving the start of the game, but later on it can really start to crumble unless you’re really able to get something with xern + don, which won’t happen against very good teams.

so where is all this going?

1. you can change up the defensive core to include generally better pokemon including giratina, zamazenta-c, and desolate land hooh alongside your xern/don/urshifu setup to get what i like to call “closed games”. players like sevag, stresh, and idea use this strategy to great success so i would recommend checking em out.
2. alternatively, you can bring in the aforementioned insane dangerous pokemon and imposter-proof them with zyg/hooh/doublade. this takes a lot of creativity and you can almost certainly do better than my suggestions, but for example you could have like specs adapt spectrier, qd pixilate xern, fighting move/glance on like moldy shift gear kyub, secret sword triage, and adapt v-create reshiram as ideas. go wild

hope this was helpful, find me in the om discord if you have any questions, find me overly pretentious, or wanna play games

 

[Riotgamer2502]

Thx a lot for this I’m definitely going to try and rebuild this team, tho I already have a ladder team I’m pretty happy with. I’m certainly going to use your suggestions. Thanks again, this was very helpful.

 

[Riotgamer2502]

I’m having trouble finding the players you mentioned, could you link to the teams you were referencing?

 

[cityscapes]

I’m having trouble finding the players you mentioned, could you link to the teams you were referencing?

sure! ompl 9 just ended, you can view all the replays here. note that stresh's smogon name is xavgb and sevag is XxSevagxX.

stresh posted his teams here, sevag and idea haven't posted theirs yet but you can keep an eye on the thread (or just ask them).

idea played only 2 games in ompl but he got 4th in seasonal and is generally a strong player. you can see his latest seasonal sets here and here. these aren't the best examples cause he lost both but you can probably ask him for better replays if you want.