I was a bit sleep deprived and bored one night and decided I wanted to give some of the less commonly seen mons a try in OU. What mostly started as a silly attempt to use some cool mons slowly developed into this fairly decent sunny day team shown below.
The Team:
His Holy Thickness (Snorlax) @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Earthquake
- Fire Blast
- Lovely Kiss
- Self-Destruct
Flare-Eon (Umbreon) @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Pursuit
- Growth
- Hidden Power [Dark]
- Baton Pass
Budget Entei (Arcanine) @ Scope Lens
Ability: No Ability
IVs: 6 HP / 24 Atk / 24 Def
- Fire Blast
- Extreme Speed
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Sunny Day
Triple Dog (Entei) @ Scope Lens
Ability: No Ability
IVs: 6 HP / 24 Atk / 24 Def
- Fire Blast
- Solar Beam
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Sunny Day
Spicy Tendies (Moltres) @ Charcoal
Ability: No Ability
- Fire Blast
- Sunny Day
- Sleep Talk
- Rest
Potion Charmander (Charizard) @ Quick Claw
Ability: No Ability
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Belly Drum
Now I know that a lot of these choices might seem odd at first glance, but hear me out.
The Mons & Move Pools:
Snorlax - I know that a lot of people tend to completely dismiss any Lax set that doesn't have a standard normal stab option, but keep in mind that this Lax set is not trying to do what your typical Snorlax would do. Lax exists on this team as a bait lead in order to lure in certain mons that would threaten the team. It just so happens that many of the pokemon that typically check Lax are the same pokemon that check this team. Just keep in mind that this Lax isn't meant to stay around long and exists as a way of facilitating the remainder of the mons while also disguising the team.
Fireblast - Isn't meant to KO steels necessarily, just keep them out. FB avoids leaving Forrey on low HP where it might boom or push to get out spikes before going down.
Earthquake - Allows Lax to perform its primary roll of softening up the typical Firelax checks.
Lovely Kiss - Allows Lax to even further cripple the opposing team and provides a safe hedge option before committing to boom. May also encourage certain mons to switch out so that Lax has a chance at getting a better target (e.g. Cloyster eats lovely kiss and then they switch to their own Lax or Tyranitar).
Self-Destruct - Allows Lax to break through annoying walls for your team and go for a queen trade with the opposing Lax. Also gives Lax an option to trade with a Flyer like Zap, Dragonite, or Moltres. While these are not always the preferred target, this team will generally appreciate their absence. Also allows Lax to blow up on a Suicune that has been lured in by the unusual set.
Umbreon - Umbreon serves three important roles: 1. The primary role it serves is to provide pursuit support for Starmie that doesn't require sun in order to be safe and is thus less prediction reliant. Sunny day teams absolutely need Starmie gone in order to do their thing, so this role is of utmost importance. 2. Umbreon provides the team with some much appreciated growth-pass support, making it's already threatening teammates even more threatening. 3. Umbreon provides the team with a fairly universal safe fallback point if a clunky threat comes in. Umbreon can either slow-dry-pass out immediately to a more threatening team mate or growth up to challenge the threat or allow another teammate to do so. Umbreon is also pretty solid for taking on Gengar and can wall non-BP variants of Espeon which would otherwise serve as a huge threat to the team.
Pursuit - Explained Above
Growth - Explained Above
Hidden Power [Dark] - While this does allow Umbreon to be slightly threatening on its own, the primary purpose it to make it harder for Starmie to PP stall Umbreon with recover (while growth can overcome this, too many gives free turns for Starmie to sneak out) and also prevents substitute Starmie from being able to reliably Sub, then recover, then switch out at full health.
Baton Pass - Explained Above
Arcanine - As the nickname suggests, Arcanine mostly exists as a budget Entei. That being said, it does have some niche advantages, both in move pool and in terms of stats. Arcanine is only about 7/8ths as bulky and, unfortunately, misses out on having the opportunity to speed ties Zap and out-speed Jynx. That being said, having 10 higher base special attack is nice on a sunny day team, and while solar beam would likely be preferred, extreme speed can come in extremely handy in certain scenarios.
Fire Blast - Obvious
Extreme Speed - Allows Arcanine to clean up faster mons that are on low health, most importantly being those with recover (such as Starmie), that may otherwise try to switch in on Arcanine and heal up at low HP. Extreme speed also has some additional utility in allowing Arcanine to dish out a bit more damage before going down when paralyzed and can possibly shut down a faster sweeper on low HP.
Hidden Power [Fighting] - Breaks through T-Tar and allows a chance to break through Blissey and chip other rock types if need be
Sunny Day - Obvious
Entei & Moltres - I'll spare some time here since these are just the standard sunny day core. Moltres is the main payoff for using sunny day, while Entei is just pretty good in sun and is bulky and fast enough to help facilitate other team mates.
Charizard - A bit of an unusual pick for sunny day, but well worth it. While Charizard does somewhat benefit from sunny day's offensive potential, allowing it to score certain OHKOs that would otherwise be just out of reach, the primary benefit Charizard gets from sun is its DEFENSIVE potential. Charizard typically wants faster or bulky-threats crippled or taken out before it can come in and sweep. It just so happens that this team already passively supports Charizard by taking out faster threats like Gengar and Starmie and will either overwhelm, chip, or force rest on certain other walls and speedy mons like Lax, Kou, Zap, Jolteon, etc. In cases where Kou, Zap, and Jolt can't be forced to rest or are running sleep talk, sun will cut HP water's damage in half and lower thunder's accuracy to a measly 50%. This is especially damning for Zap, who will only have about a 6% chance (0.766(QC)*0.5(ST)*0.333(RT)*0.5(AC)) to KO Zard in Sun while asleep after the speed tie and quick claw (which I'll discuss below). Charizard brings additional utility to the team by providing a more surefire option for breaking through Blissey and will often use it as setup fodder in order to go for a sweep once the opposing team has been crippled.
The Item Choices:
Snorlax & Umbreon: Leftovers - Pretty standard, but is mostly being used in order to mimic a standard Lax. Miracle berry could be used to help out against sleep leads, but as if losing leftovers doesn't suck enough on its own, it will also likely tip off your opponent that something is up. Since Umbreon is a bulky mon and a defensive pivot, it obviously appreciates leftovers more than most teammates. Leftovers pretty much makes Starmie's surf irrelevant in sun, and so is generally crucial for the role.
Arcanine & Entei: Scope Lens - This isn't so much being added for the purpose of extra damage as it is for wall-breaking and threat-avoidance potential. With how fast these mons are, they can generally outspeed most of the threats that will switch in on them, but will often have to take at least one heavy hit just to KO a threat like T-Tar. Additionally, Blissey can typically afford to come in at full health and absorb a fireblast and then begin toxic stalling these mons with softboiled. Finally, Starmie will sometimes be able to come in and soak up a fireblast and will be at a safe range to out-speed and go for recover. In all of these cases, all it takes is one crit to turn these fairly safe plays on their head, blowing through a crucial threat in the process (either outright, or with follow-up via solarbeam or extremespeed for Starmie or HP fighting for Blissey). While this team doesn't absolutely depend on these crits, it definitely appreciates them. This obviously also allows you to dish out more damage on average and KO other mons that thought they had a safe opportunity to switch in or go for rest on the following turn. Given that this is a hyper-offense team, I think these choices are warranted, especially on fairly fast mons such as these ones. Charcoal may provide more consistent damage, but loses out on much of the wall-breaking potential, while leftovers tends to be less useful on hyper-offense, as offense becomes the primary form of defense and these mons generally tend to win or lose very quickly.
Moltres: Charcoal - Again, just the standard sunny day Moltres option. Charcoal allows Moltres to become even more threatening in sun and can allow it to nab crucial KOs that may have otherwise been just out of range.
Charizard: Quick Claw - Charizard is obviously meant to be a late-game bomb or mid-game wallbreaker, but without para support, it can not be absolutely guaranteed it's safety if certain checks are not yet taken out. While this team generally seeks to do that, it sometimes just isn't on the table to wait. With sun up, thunder is only a coin flip on Charizard to begin with while surf will almost never be able to break 50% without a crit. Quick claw edges the odds of survival even more in Charizard's favour, especially against rested sleep-talk mons like Raikou. Even an awake Raikou will have poor odds in sun, having only a 38.3% chance to out-speed and then land a thunder. Quick claw even gives Charizard a small chance of blowing past a full health Starmie that the team failed to soften up or deal with outright. While you don't typically want to over-rely on quick claw, it will sometimes just hand you a game that you had no business winning and will even just increase your odds of successfully sweeping even on "safe" attempts against fast rest-talk mons. Again, these mons typically don't get much benefit from coming in repeatedly and slowly gaining back health with leftovers. While leftovers may provide Zard the chance to avoid certain uncommon ranges, QC will make those ranges completely irrelevant about 1/4th of the time and will allow you to dodge clear cut KOs in desperate situations in a way that lefties will not.
Opposing Team Threats and Walls:
Primary:
Rock Types: Tyranitar, Rhydon, Golem (threats)
Water Types: Starmie and Suicune (Walls) and Vaporeon (Wall & Threat)
Special Walls: Blissey (Wall) and Snorlax (Wall & Threat)
Electrics: Raikou, Zapdos, Jolteon (Less threatening w/ Thunder and HP water in Sun, but still scary and much more of an issue if using T-Bolt)
Gengar: Outspeeds team, immune or resistant to certain attacking options, has boom and an accurate T-Bolt, typically runs sleep or D-Punch
Uncommon:
Fire Types: In general - moderate walling and threat ability
Rock-Stab Aerodactyl: Outspeeds and resists entire team and provides enormous threat
Electrode: Outspeeds entire team and has electric-stab, boom, status, and/or screens
Dragon Types: Kingra and Dragonite resists most of the teams options and are typically quite threatening in return
This team has a pretty good shot at either luring in, pursuiting, or simply blowing past most of these threats under sun or via belly-drum Zard. While some of the uncommon threats can cause significant trouble for this team, it will really depend on the set they are running and, at the end of the day, this is a gimmicky hyper-offense team and attempting to account for every extremely uncommon threat and wall is likely not worth the cost. The biggest semi-common threat that remains largely unchecked is Vaporeon, who can resist FB with its water typing and huge special walling prowess and then either immediately threaten or fairly safely boost up and go for the sweep. While this team's odds aren't great against Vaporeon, it isn't completely helpless either. If Vape can be made to sleep, Zard has a chance of making a smart switch in and then either KOing or significantly weakening Vape after a BD (though this still depends on luck). Somewhat more reliably, Umbreon can temporarily wall Vape, being especially unthreatened in Sun, and can then pass a +1 boost to Entei for Solarbeam or +2-3 boost to Moltres in order to either break through Vapeoreon in sun or force it to rest. These odds aren't great, but it's still decent for a gimmicky hyper-offense team, which typically have a tendency to be more dependent on matchup fishing than more balanced teams.
Alternative Team Option:
This is going to sound crazy, but I think Rapidash deserves an honourable mention for this type of team. Rapidash provides a few vital pieces of utility, those being: 1. Provides a mid-game sleep option in the form of hypnosis, which can be used to slow or completely shut down threats that your team can't handle. 2. Not only does it not get out-sped by Zapdos, but it actually manages to edge it out with it's 105 base speed. Why is this useful? Well, it allows you to get up sunny day BEFORE the thunder roll, thus lowering it's accuracy to 50% instead of 70% and guarantees sun for your team even if Rapidash goes down. This can be useful when combined with an Umbreon pivot from Moltres so that you can slow pass in to it.
There is obviously a lot of cost to making this change, however, which is why I opted for Arcanine instead. While Rapidash's offensive stats are SORT OF good enough, it is severely lacking in the bulk department and can provide free ins for Starmie and a few other mons. In games where Snorlax sleeps something and it stays slept, Rapidash will feel lackluster, especially if the opposing team is running Raikou over Zapdos. Also, while Arcanine can edge out a bit more utility when it is para'd by virtue of extremespeed and a bit of extra bulk, Rapidash is made almost completely useless if it gets paralyzed. It's worth noting that neither Rapidash nor Arcananine can survive two hits from a Zapdos thunder anyway, so Rapidash will generally have more survivability in this matchup by virtue of sun anyway and will be able to outspeed Zapdos when it is low.
Wrap-Up
At the end of the day, this team should be used first and foremost because it is fun. This team does do an amazing job of demolishing most stall teams, practically forcing a 6 vs 4 right off the hop due to the common dependence on Forrey and Skarmory. With the unusual Lax set exploiting the typical Lax counter-play options and Umbreon bringing pursuit for Starmie and Missy, opposing stall players can very quickly find themselves in what is effectively a 5 v 3 or 5 v 2 matchup against a team with extreme offensive synergy. While this team plays best against stall, it can typically still hold its own against offense by removing their one advantage-- that being their generally more balanced defensive potential-- and then capitalizing by out-offensing them. At the end of the day though, faster teams that you can not keep on the backfoot or which you get unlucky with with thunder or fireblast rolls will still be this team's undoing. Like I said at the start: play this team if you want to have some fun and want a bit of variety with the mons that you get to use, but also accept that playing hyper-offense puts you at luck's mercy, both in terms of match-up and accuracy/ crit rolls. Either way, I hope a few of you will enjoy this team.
The Team:
His Holy Thickness (Snorlax) @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Earthquake
- Fire Blast
- Lovely Kiss
- Self-Destruct
Flare-Eon (Umbreon) @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Pursuit
- Growth
- Hidden Power [Dark]
- Baton Pass
Budget Entei (Arcanine) @ Scope Lens
Ability: No Ability
IVs: 6 HP / 24 Atk / 24 Def
- Fire Blast
- Extreme Speed
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Sunny Day
Triple Dog (Entei) @ Scope Lens
Ability: No Ability
IVs: 6 HP / 24 Atk / 24 Def
- Fire Blast
- Solar Beam
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Sunny Day
Spicy Tendies (Moltres) @ Charcoal
Ability: No Ability
- Fire Blast
- Sunny Day
- Sleep Talk
- Rest
Potion Charmander (Charizard) @ Quick Claw
Ability: No Ability
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Belly Drum
Now I know that a lot of these choices might seem odd at first glance, but hear me out.
The Mons & Move Pools:
Snorlax - I know that a lot of people tend to completely dismiss any Lax set that doesn't have a standard normal stab option, but keep in mind that this Lax set is not trying to do what your typical Snorlax would do. Lax exists on this team as a bait lead in order to lure in certain mons that would threaten the team. It just so happens that many of the pokemon that typically check Lax are the same pokemon that check this team. Just keep in mind that this Lax isn't meant to stay around long and exists as a way of facilitating the remainder of the mons while also disguising the team.
Fireblast - Isn't meant to KO steels necessarily, just keep them out. FB avoids leaving Forrey on low HP where it might boom or push to get out spikes before going down.
Earthquake - Allows Lax to perform its primary roll of softening up the typical Firelax checks.
Lovely Kiss - Allows Lax to even further cripple the opposing team and provides a safe hedge option before committing to boom. May also encourage certain mons to switch out so that Lax has a chance at getting a better target (e.g. Cloyster eats lovely kiss and then they switch to their own Lax or Tyranitar).
Self-Destruct - Allows Lax to break through annoying walls for your team and go for a queen trade with the opposing Lax. Also gives Lax an option to trade with a Flyer like Zap, Dragonite, or Moltres. While these are not always the preferred target, this team will generally appreciate their absence. Also allows Lax to blow up on a Suicune that has been lured in by the unusual set.
Umbreon - Umbreon serves three important roles: 1. The primary role it serves is to provide pursuit support for Starmie that doesn't require sun in order to be safe and is thus less prediction reliant. Sunny day teams absolutely need Starmie gone in order to do their thing, so this role is of utmost importance. 2. Umbreon provides the team with some much appreciated growth-pass support, making it's already threatening teammates even more threatening. 3. Umbreon provides the team with a fairly universal safe fallback point if a clunky threat comes in. Umbreon can either slow-dry-pass out immediately to a more threatening team mate or growth up to challenge the threat or allow another teammate to do so. Umbreon is also pretty solid for taking on Gengar and can wall non-BP variants of Espeon which would otherwise serve as a huge threat to the team.
Pursuit - Explained Above
Growth - Explained Above
Hidden Power [Dark] - While this does allow Umbreon to be slightly threatening on its own, the primary purpose it to make it harder for Starmie to PP stall Umbreon with recover (while growth can overcome this, too many gives free turns for Starmie to sneak out) and also prevents substitute Starmie from being able to reliably Sub, then recover, then switch out at full health.
Baton Pass - Explained Above
Arcanine - As the nickname suggests, Arcanine mostly exists as a budget Entei. That being said, it does have some niche advantages, both in move pool and in terms of stats. Arcanine is only about 7/8ths as bulky and, unfortunately, misses out on having the opportunity to speed ties Zap and out-speed Jynx. That being said, having 10 higher base special attack is nice on a sunny day team, and while solar beam would likely be preferred, extreme speed can come in extremely handy in certain scenarios.
Fire Blast - Obvious
Extreme Speed - Allows Arcanine to clean up faster mons that are on low health, most importantly being those with recover (such as Starmie), that may otherwise try to switch in on Arcanine and heal up at low HP. Extreme speed also has some additional utility in allowing Arcanine to dish out a bit more damage before going down when paralyzed and can possibly shut down a faster sweeper on low HP.
Hidden Power [Fighting] - Breaks through T-Tar and allows a chance to break through Blissey and chip other rock types if need be
Sunny Day - Obvious
Entei & Moltres - I'll spare some time here since these are just the standard sunny day core. Moltres is the main payoff for using sunny day, while Entei is just pretty good in sun and is bulky and fast enough to help facilitate other team mates.
Charizard - A bit of an unusual pick for sunny day, but well worth it. While Charizard does somewhat benefit from sunny day's offensive potential, allowing it to score certain OHKOs that would otherwise be just out of reach, the primary benefit Charizard gets from sun is its DEFENSIVE potential. Charizard typically wants faster or bulky-threats crippled or taken out before it can come in and sweep. It just so happens that this team already passively supports Charizard by taking out faster threats like Gengar and Starmie and will either overwhelm, chip, or force rest on certain other walls and speedy mons like Lax, Kou, Zap, Jolteon, etc. In cases where Kou, Zap, and Jolt can't be forced to rest or are running sleep talk, sun will cut HP water's damage in half and lower thunder's accuracy to a measly 50%. This is especially damning for Zap, who will only have about a 6% chance (0.766(QC)*0.5(ST)*0.333(RT)*0.5(AC)) to KO Zard in Sun while asleep after the speed tie and quick claw (which I'll discuss below). Charizard brings additional utility to the team by providing a more surefire option for breaking through Blissey and will often use it as setup fodder in order to go for a sweep once the opposing team has been crippled.
The Item Choices:
Snorlax & Umbreon: Leftovers - Pretty standard, but is mostly being used in order to mimic a standard Lax. Miracle berry could be used to help out against sleep leads, but as if losing leftovers doesn't suck enough on its own, it will also likely tip off your opponent that something is up. Since Umbreon is a bulky mon and a defensive pivot, it obviously appreciates leftovers more than most teammates. Leftovers pretty much makes Starmie's surf irrelevant in sun, and so is generally crucial for the role.
Arcanine & Entei: Scope Lens - This isn't so much being added for the purpose of extra damage as it is for wall-breaking and threat-avoidance potential. With how fast these mons are, they can generally outspeed most of the threats that will switch in on them, but will often have to take at least one heavy hit just to KO a threat like T-Tar. Additionally, Blissey can typically afford to come in at full health and absorb a fireblast and then begin toxic stalling these mons with softboiled. Finally, Starmie will sometimes be able to come in and soak up a fireblast and will be at a safe range to out-speed and go for recover. In all of these cases, all it takes is one crit to turn these fairly safe plays on their head, blowing through a crucial threat in the process (either outright, or with follow-up via solarbeam or extremespeed for Starmie or HP fighting for Blissey). While this team doesn't absolutely depend on these crits, it definitely appreciates them. This obviously also allows you to dish out more damage on average and KO other mons that thought they had a safe opportunity to switch in or go for rest on the following turn. Given that this is a hyper-offense team, I think these choices are warranted, especially on fairly fast mons such as these ones. Charcoal may provide more consistent damage, but loses out on much of the wall-breaking potential, while leftovers tends to be less useful on hyper-offense, as offense becomes the primary form of defense and these mons generally tend to win or lose very quickly.
Moltres: Charcoal - Again, just the standard sunny day Moltres option. Charcoal allows Moltres to become even more threatening in sun and can allow it to nab crucial KOs that may have otherwise been just out of range.
Charizard: Quick Claw - Charizard is obviously meant to be a late-game bomb or mid-game wallbreaker, but without para support, it can not be absolutely guaranteed it's safety if certain checks are not yet taken out. While this team generally seeks to do that, it sometimes just isn't on the table to wait. With sun up, thunder is only a coin flip on Charizard to begin with while surf will almost never be able to break 50% without a crit. Quick claw edges the odds of survival even more in Charizard's favour, especially against rested sleep-talk mons like Raikou. Even an awake Raikou will have poor odds in sun, having only a 38.3% chance to out-speed and then land a thunder. Quick claw even gives Charizard a small chance of blowing past a full health Starmie that the team failed to soften up or deal with outright. While you don't typically want to over-rely on quick claw, it will sometimes just hand you a game that you had no business winning and will even just increase your odds of successfully sweeping even on "safe" attempts against fast rest-talk mons. Again, these mons typically don't get much benefit from coming in repeatedly and slowly gaining back health with leftovers. While leftovers may provide Zard the chance to avoid certain uncommon ranges, QC will make those ranges completely irrelevant about 1/4th of the time and will allow you to dodge clear cut KOs in desperate situations in a way that lefties will not.
Opposing Team Threats and Walls:
Primary:
Rock Types: Tyranitar, Rhydon, Golem (threats)
Water Types: Starmie and Suicune (Walls) and Vaporeon (Wall & Threat)
Special Walls: Blissey (Wall) and Snorlax (Wall & Threat)
Electrics: Raikou, Zapdos, Jolteon (Less threatening w/ Thunder and HP water in Sun, but still scary and much more of an issue if using T-Bolt)
Gengar: Outspeeds team, immune or resistant to certain attacking options, has boom and an accurate T-Bolt, typically runs sleep or D-Punch
Uncommon:
Fire Types: In general - moderate walling and threat ability
Rock-Stab Aerodactyl: Outspeeds and resists entire team and provides enormous threat
Electrode: Outspeeds entire team and has electric-stab, boom, status, and/or screens
Dragon Types: Kingra and Dragonite resists most of the teams options and are typically quite threatening in return
This team has a pretty good shot at either luring in, pursuiting, or simply blowing past most of these threats under sun or via belly-drum Zard. While some of the uncommon threats can cause significant trouble for this team, it will really depend on the set they are running and, at the end of the day, this is a gimmicky hyper-offense team and attempting to account for every extremely uncommon threat and wall is likely not worth the cost. The biggest semi-common threat that remains largely unchecked is Vaporeon, who can resist FB with its water typing and huge special walling prowess and then either immediately threaten or fairly safely boost up and go for the sweep. While this team's odds aren't great against Vaporeon, it isn't completely helpless either. If Vape can be made to sleep, Zard has a chance of making a smart switch in and then either KOing or significantly weakening Vape after a BD (though this still depends on luck). Somewhat more reliably, Umbreon can temporarily wall Vape, being especially unthreatened in Sun, and can then pass a +1 boost to Entei for Solarbeam or +2-3 boost to Moltres in order to either break through Vapeoreon in sun or force it to rest. These odds aren't great, but it's still decent for a gimmicky hyper-offense team, which typically have a tendency to be more dependent on matchup fishing than more balanced teams.
Alternative Team Option:
This is going to sound crazy, but I think Rapidash deserves an honourable mention for this type of team. Rapidash provides a few vital pieces of utility, those being: 1. Provides a mid-game sleep option in the form of hypnosis, which can be used to slow or completely shut down threats that your team can't handle. 2. Not only does it not get out-sped by Zapdos, but it actually manages to edge it out with it's 105 base speed. Why is this useful? Well, it allows you to get up sunny day BEFORE the thunder roll, thus lowering it's accuracy to 50% instead of 70% and guarantees sun for your team even if Rapidash goes down. This can be useful when combined with an Umbreon pivot from Moltres so that you can slow pass in to it.
There is obviously a lot of cost to making this change, however, which is why I opted for Arcanine instead. While Rapidash's offensive stats are SORT OF good enough, it is severely lacking in the bulk department and can provide free ins for Starmie and a few other mons. In games where Snorlax sleeps something and it stays slept, Rapidash will feel lackluster, especially if the opposing team is running Raikou over Zapdos. Also, while Arcanine can edge out a bit more utility when it is para'd by virtue of extremespeed and a bit of extra bulk, Rapidash is made almost completely useless if it gets paralyzed. It's worth noting that neither Rapidash nor Arcananine can survive two hits from a Zapdos thunder anyway, so Rapidash will generally have more survivability in this matchup by virtue of sun anyway and will be able to outspeed Zapdos when it is low.
Wrap-Up
At the end of the day, this team should be used first and foremost because it is fun. This team does do an amazing job of demolishing most stall teams, practically forcing a 6 vs 4 right off the hop due to the common dependence on Forrey and Skarmory. With the unusual Lax set exploiting the typical Lax counter-play options and Umbreon bringing pursuit for Starmie and Missy, opposing stall players can very quickly find themselves in what is effectively a 5 v 3 or 5 v 2 matchup against a team with extreme offensive synergy. While this team plays best against stall, it can typically still hold its own against offense by removing their one advantage-- that being their generally more balanced defensive potential-- and then capitalizing by out-offensing them. At the end of the day though, faster teams that you can not keep on the backfoot or which you get unlucky with with thunder or fireblast rolls will still be this team's undoing. Like I said at the start: play this team if you want to have some fun and want a bit of variety with the mons that you get to use, but also accept that playing hyper-offense puts you at luck's mercy, both in terms of match-up and accuracy/ crit rolls. Either way, I hope a few of you will enjoy this team.
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