Project National Dex Secret Santa 2022

[BlackKnight_Gawain]

Yes or no my dude


https://pokepast.es/6d0018ec97c3e5e0




merry holidays of your choice! this is a fun team i built around your request of brambleghast, which was certainly unique and gave me a lot of thought as to what might fly. i chose to go with physical brambleghast because that seems more fun and less predictable than spikes spin, and then added straightforward stuff that I thought are fun nat gen toys like z-moves, megas and Diancie, plus some new toys like chien-pao and nacl. team isn't as playtested as I'd like since I was away for a few days, but I think it's fun and workable even before you give it a few tweaks to suit you

 

[CoolTrainerGary]

Zygarde is Bae♡ - Happy holidays!

https://pokepast.es/9f2800375eab6518

Built the team around 3 attacks + spikes meowscarada. Defiant Zapdos-Galar is used to take advantage of defoggers and tera blast ice nets surprise KOs on some of the tiers most common defoggers like Zapdos & Gliscor. Encore Skeledirge causes problems for seyup sweepers like shift gear + CM magearna. It is also the team's check to chien, SD chomp, DD Bax/Dragonite/Pult - you need to tera water dirge early game if your opponent has any of these threats. Late game sweep with SubDD pult once dark types have been sufficiently worn down by spikes and chip damage.

I used the team to get recs for the suspect test. It does well on low/mid ladder (up to 1600ish), but most teams have answers on high ladder.

 

[CEO_of_Piss]

dewfew

Happy whatever you celebrate, you wanted a team with tapu koko + espathra, here's what I ended up with.



Tapu koko, lopunny, and tornadus together are really good at generating momentum. Koko runs natures madness and tbolt for it's attacks, while something like dazzling gleam or grass knot can hit certain switch ins harder, madness hits literally everything for decent damage. Koko also uses electrium, once ground types are gone, it becomes really easy to click the terrain boosted z move. Tornadus is here for the ground immunity and hazard control, running heat wave to hit gholdengo. It also is tera ground, for games where we need the electric immunity.

Iron hands is the wallbreaker here, the pivots will give it plenty of opportunities to come in. This thing works super well with koko in general, the damage free life orb boost from terrain is just a bonus. SpDef Heatran is here for magearna and volcarona, and also to set rocks.

Finally, espathra. As I assume you were expecting, it's using electric seed for the defense and extra boost stored power. Because this means it misses out on leftovers recovery, I gave it protect over substitute. Tera fairy for defensive typing and to increase damage of dazzling gleam, to hit dark types. This is the team's late game wincon. pivot and wear things down with koko/lopunny/tornadus, bring in iron hands to wallbreak, and eventually clean up with espathra.

Also here is a bonus team I made but didn't test a ton

 

[ArSd]

Akarui~Kurayami u requested kilowattrel+reg gyara so I build this team https://pokepast.es/e153d85cf1ea8c1d
Flynium Kilo can break early game so that gyara hopefully wins later on. Healing Wish and Aromatherapy can help w that and the rest is j the defensive backbone. Happy holidays!

 

[dewfew]

dewfew

Happy whatever you celebrate, you wanted a team with tapu koko + espathra, here's what I ended up with.



Tapu koko, lopunny, and tornadus together are really good at generating momentum. Koko runs natures madness and tbolt for it's attacks, while something like dazzling gleam or grass knot can hit certain switch ins harder, madness hits literally everything for decent damage. Koko also uses electrium, once ground types are gone, it becomes really easy to click the terrain boosted z move. Tornadus is here for the ground immunity and hazard control, running heat wave to hit gholdengo. It also is tera ground, for games where we need the electric immunity.

Iron hands is the wallbreaker here, the pivots will give it plenty of opportunities to come in. This thing works super well with koko in general, the damage free life orb boost from terrain is just a bonus. SpDef Heatran is here for magearna and volcarona, and also to set rocks.

Finally, espathra. As I assume you were expecting, it's using electric seed for the defense and extra boost stored power. Because this means it misses out on leftovers recovery, I gave it protect over substitute. Tera fairy for defensive typing and to increase damage of dazzling gleam, to hit dark types. This is the team's late game wincon. pivot and wear things down with koko/lopunny/tornadus, bring in iron hands to wallbreak, and eventually clean up with espathra.

Also here is a bonus team I made but didn't test a ton

Happy holidays to you too! I really like both teams versions you posted, also I haven’t used Iron Hands yet so that’ll be fun.

CEO_of_Piss, you asked for an Alomomola + Ferrothorn team so here it is! I didn’t want to build stall, so I built this cool balance team instead.



Alom and ferro blanket check pretty much the entire tier. Spdef ferro can counter a lot of threats like washtom, eleki, greninja, whatever. Alom mostly counters rain (not floatzel), knock is super good utility vs a bunch of stuff. Make sure to wishpass often to your other mons because they don’t really have the best recovery.

Rotom is speed control and a great way to cripple annoying mons like other Ferrothorns that would wall diancie. You can replace Defog with Will O Wisp, both work pretty well but I like having double removal. Be warned that rotom is kinda weak because it has no spatk investment so don’t expect it to pull off any miracles

Diancie and Gholdengo are the main offensive mons. I really love Diancie’s speed tier as it hits so many threats atm, and defensive plot gholdengo uses common tanks as setup fodder for free KO’s. Psyshock on diancie is to hit stuff like Clodsire and pex but earth power also works well to hit other gholdengo and opposing steels.

Finally Great Tusk is utility/offense hybrid mon. It provides a lot of damage against otherwise annoying mons like steels, ttar, etc that diancie can’t do much to. You can replace item for Booster Energy if the team needs more power but imo HDB is nice so that you can get consistent spikes removal.

The most important part of the team is not to sac mons, or the sac as little as possible until lategame because alom can basically give full heals to everyone. Spike stacking and smart predictions will wear down opposing checks, allowing Diancie to go through and clean. That’s it! Hope you enjoy!! :)

 

[pulsar512b]

https://pokepast.es/c091c73a88037091

Happy holidays Phyn! This is the mabosstiff team you requested. The general idea is to spike stack and break with Chien-Pao and Mabosstiff overloading the typical checks. Mabosstiff was pretty hard to make work due to low speed and meh defensive stats, but it can definitely do some work with pivoting from various members. Tera Grass slowking is a surprisingly good option to check regieleki on this sort of voltturn structure imo

 

[MachJacob]

For Takatk, a team starring Dragapult and Kingambit: https://pokepast.es/4164ecf11b1413e6

I started with Dragon Dance Ghostium Z Dragapult, and decided that SD probably wasn't needed on Kingambit, so I gave it an Assault Vest. After giving some of its best NatDex options in Knock Off and Pursuit, I gave it enough speed to beat primarily uninvested Tyranitar, but it also beats Clefable. Rest go into Atk and then HP. Afterwards I added Great Tusk as a fighting type to hit the darks and normals the core struggled with. A defensive Zapdos do Zapdos things, and Magearna to deal with threats like Chien-Pao. The last spot was hard, but I settled on Stored Power Mega Latias for some more special bulk, another ground resist, and a lategame threat. Aura Sphere can be replaced with Refresh or Reflect Type if you're confident that the rest of the team can out-muscle dark types.

The team does have a weakness to offensive fairies, but they do fear Magearna. Tera types aren't something I thought too hard about, but Kingambit is fairy for the resist to fighting, however there are other options to alleviate the team's fairy weakness, like steel or poison.

Hope you enjoy, and happy holidays!

 

[Zygarde is Bae♡]

https://pokepast.es/01cd17c5f5224ab8

Merry Christmas Cool Trainer Gary!
I haven't the slightest clue how to ping your name, but here you go. The core I was given was Krook + Corviknight for NDOU!
So, at first I had... No idea what to do here, but Krook has an.. Interesting niche? It's the only ground/dark with pursuit, which is pretty cool. Both typings are very valuable. My thought process was Scarf Krook can (mostly) pursuit trap Gholdengo so Corv can actually defog for once.
I went with Tera Fighting CC because it seemed fun and can hit fat steels harder than EQ, but Tera Water Aqua Tail for Landorus could be worth mentioning as well.
I absolutely refuse to run anything less than Max Defense Corviknight with Chien Pao running around.
So first, I slapped on Mega Diancie because Krook + Corv can beat most fat steels pretty reliably, aside from like... Magearna, I suppose, and it gives the team a fairy/a rocker.
The team had no dragon and needed more speed control, so I slapped on a fun Dragapult set in Z Hex WillOMiss, it benefits from the free uturns corv provides and Z Hex is fun because it's just as powerful as like. Z Shadow Ball.
Slapped on Kingambit for a breaker and another dark spammer, benefitting from Dragapult wearing down shit like Ting Lu as well.
Kinda needed a water resist and a scizor/heatran check, so I went with Rotom-Wash for more momentum and reliably willoing fat ferro and shit for Dragapult.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays my dude.

 

[yonmd]

Yes or no my dude


https://pokepast.es/6d0018ec97c3e5e0




merry holidays of your choice! this is a fun team i built around your request of brambleghast, which was certainly unique and gave me a lot of thought as to what might fly. i chose to go with physical brambleghast because that seems more fun and less predictable than spikes spin, and then added straightforward stuff that I thought are fun nat gen toys like z-moves, megas and Diancie, plus some new toys like chien-pao and nacl. team isn't as playtested as I'd like since I was away for a few days, but I think it's fun and workable even before you give it a few tweaks to suit you

Thank you!

https://pokepast.es/b8401daa3fc9f078

Merry Christmas! You asked for an ndou sun team with mega zard y and venusaur, so here it is. It isn't the most creative team and I'm not the best builder but I'd say it came out pretty well, and I was able to get to 1600 with it pretty easily. Also no one expects scarfed heatran lol. Have fun!

 

[Akarui~Kurayami]

Merry Christmas to all and especially to ArSd, here is the team with the corresponding Core. I am not an expert in creating teams, but I hope you like it.

https://pokepast.es/418cf70f7d50976e

The team was created with the main idea of using mega venusaur and z fairy magearna, at first glance it looks like a conventional Bulky offensive implementing some mons of the 9th generation, great tusk and thing lu fulfilling roles of hazzard setters and removers, a double steel to control fairies and dragons, both with access to paint split regeneration and leed seeds both being possible entries to rival chien pao and be somewhat aggressive and forceful, When attacking we have a chien pao banded with throat chop to keep at bay hyper voice users and attacks like torch Song, this also has stab fight to break the steel cores more effectively and priority move to control users who tend to boost speed and switch into revenger killer in certain situations

 

[Tanaka's Show]

I hope all of you had a merry merry christmas! Especially to bosskick2512 who gave me the (dis)pleasure of making a team with a Minun + Swanna Core! This was a very unique yet fun challenge so thank you for this :) I also made three teams for sadly not posting this on Christmas Day. I wasn't able to do much testing due to time constraints, but in theory these teams had some fun and creative strategies!


https://pokepast.es/35b73bfa2047abe7

A twist on the standard rain, with Minun being more or less a standard electric type with Switcheroo and Grass Knot to help disrupt common defensive answers like Clodsire/Gastro, and Z-Mirror Move giving swanna a Psuedo-SD while being able to nuke pokemon like Tangrowth or Amoonguss. The rest of the team is pretty standard, with Pert + Barra being a great water spam core, Peli providing the rain, and Ferro giving T-Wave Support for Minun's & Swanna's meh speed tiers.


https://pokepast.es/455349dd96824972

A volt turn team with Specs Minun making a return paired with Defensive Swanna. Minun's main job is to lure would be annoyances for Eleki such as Clod/Gastro/Blissey and Switcheroo it's Specs away or sniping 4x Ice weak mons with HP ice. (Grass Knot can be used to threaten Gastro more immediately however.) Defensive Swanna + Phys Def Mage can make for a budget Torngearna core, while Weavile is there not only to threaten grounds, but knock off Boots and Pursuit trap gholdengo so Swanna can defog freely. Mlop is slotted in as a great spikes abuser and Dual Priority helps keep a lot of offensive mons in check, however U-Turn can be used instead to keep up the Volt-Turn.


https://pokepast.es/ca799753195bd80f

Lastly, I wanted a team that focused more on these two mons' unique properties and Hex. Minun can spread paras with Nuzzle and lure ground types with Toxic. Entrainment is a very interesting tech that can help remove a slew of abilities, namely Purifying Salt and Magic Guard. This forces would be nuisances such as Garg, and Clef to take toxic damage which helps immensely in taking them down. Pult is here as the best Hex abuser due to it's ability to force switches and its great speed tier. WoW is used over T-Wave to hit Water Absorb Clod, and weaken dark types like Tyranitar, Gambit, and Weav. Swanna serves as the ground answer and defogger all while spreading scald burns. Urshifu-Rapid-Strike is a great abuser of Para thanks to offensive pokemon being slowed down or crippling its defensive answers, Annihilape can take advantage of both toxic and burns by denying toxic-afflicted foes the ability to heal with taunt, and burn letting it set up rage fist boosts much easier. Lastly, Heatran is here to threaten Toxapex, set up rocks, and not immediately fold to Lele which would otherwise run through this team.

Once again, thank you to bosskick2512 and hidingflames for this challenge :) Hope you all had a great holiday!

Edit: Fixed Shifu's and Heatran's Tera in the third team

 

[jawsome274]

I hope all of you had a merry merry christmas! Especially to bosskick2512 who gave me the (dis)pleasure of making a team with a Minun + Swanna Core! This was a very unique yet fun challenge so thank you for this :) I also made three teams for sadly not posting this on Christmas Day. I wasn't able to do much testing due to time constraints, but in theory these teams had some fun and creative strategies!


https://pokepast.es/35b73bfa2047abe7

A twist on the standard rain, with Minun being more or less a standard electric type with Switcheroo and Grass Knot to help disrupt common defensive answers like Clodsire/Gastro, and Z-Mirror Move giving swanna a Psuedo-SD while being able to nuke pokemon like Tangrowth or Amoonguss. The rest of the team is pretty standard, with Pert + Barra being a great water spam core, Peli providing the rain, and Ferro giving T-Wave Support for Minun's & Swanna's meh speed tiers.


https://pokepast.es/455349dd96824972

A volt turn team with Specs Minun making a return paired with Defensive Swanna. Minun's main job is to lure would be annoyances for Eleki such as Clod/Gastro/Blissey and Switcheroo it's Specs away or sniping 4x Ice weak mons with HP ice. (Grass Knot can be used to threaten Gastro more immediately however.) Defensive Swanna + Phys Def Mage can make for a budget Torngearna core, while Weavile is there not only to threaten grounds, but knock off Boots and Pursuit trap gholdengo so Swanna can defog freely. Mlop is slotted in as a great spikes abuser and Dual Priority helps keep a lot of offensive mons in check, however U-Turn can be used instead to keep up the Volt-Turn.


https://pokepast.es/ca799753195bd80f

Lastly, I wanted a team that focused more on these two mons' unique properties and Hex. Minun can spread paras with Nuzzle and lure ground types with Toxic. Entrainment is a very interesting tech that can help remove a slew of abilities, namely Purifying Salt and Magic Guard. This forces would be nuisances such as Garg, and Clef to take toxic damage which helps immensely in taking them down. Pult is here as the best Hex abuser due to it's ability to force switches and its great speed tier. WoW is used over T-Wave to hit Water Absorb Clod, and weaken dark types like Tyranitar, Gambit, and Weav. Swanna serves as the ground answer and defogger all while spreading scald burns. Urshifu-Rapid-Strike is a great abuser of Para thanks to offensive pokemon being slowed down or crippling its defensive answers, Annihilape can take advantage of both toxic and burns by denying toxic-afflicted foes the ability to heal with taunt, and burn letting it set up rage fist boosts much easier. Lastly, Heatran is here to threaten Toxapex, set up rocks, and not immediately fold to Lele which would otherwise run through this team.

Once again, thank you to bosskick2512 and hidingflames for this challenge :) Hope you all had a great holiday!

Edit: Fixed Shifu's and Heatran's Tera in the third team

Not the serious ferro

 

[Aetherun]

Hi Dahness, here's your Gumshoos team !

I'll be honest, I didn't find any better context for Gumshoos to unleash its full potential than in a Trick Room team.

It's a very slow mon with a more-than-correct 110 ATK base stat, combined with Strong Jaw and everything it needs to exploit this ability, including an Hyper Fang STAB being a 120 BP move thanks to it, and the Fire / Ice / Thunder Fang trio.

You could also use Pursuit with or without the Stakeout ability, but I think Hyper Fang is already an appreciated all-rounding move that will hurt hard on pretty much everything that doesn't resist it.
A Choice Band can also be used over Life Orb to get some surprising OHKOs, notably Bulky Volcarona, but I don't know if it would add much since I didn't spend much time doing calcs about that.



Besides that the team is pretty classic and straightforward, with Porygon2 and Cresselia forming a great defensive core along with being two Trick Room setters, Hatterene being a third Trick Room setter while applpying good offensive pressure and a correct security with Hazards since there is no way to remove them in the team, and Marowak-A + Mawile-M as an interesting offensive core.

I thought Mawile-M could be a good addition to a Trick Room team even if I've never seen it in one, but you could replace it with pretty much anything you'd like to see at this point ; I think Melmetal could be the most interesting one, but Glastrier, Camerupt-M and Conkeldurr could be notable mons to try for fun.



I'm not really a Trick Room player nor a fan of this kind of team, but I tried building something that could make Gumshoos work above all else.
I'm not really satisfied about the fact that the team ended up being pretty classic, but I did my best with what I know about Trick Room teams considering I've never played nor build some.


Merry christmas !

 

[Codename C.A.T]

happy (late) holidays wooloo supremacy !

honestly, this team isn't too great. there are two options i tossed around for the steel slot here: heart swap magearna or thunder wave ferrothorn. if i went heart swap magearna, i kinda just instalost to rain. however, if i went thunder wave ferrothorn, then double dance mage was a nightmare to face. i decided to go ferrothorn, as beating rain is slightly better. one of the main standouts here is iron hand's synergy with tornadus-t and koko, as torn can break through the walls hands cant reliably(mainly lando and chomp) without wasting tera, and hands beats the blobs and pex that annoy torn-t quite well. specs koko is also broken as fuck, and i use broken as a synonym for "yeah its pretty good". a more defensive tran spread could be better here, but im not too sure.

 

[Tanaka's Show]

Not the serious ferro

Oops, will fix that ^^

 

[Taka]

https://pokepast.es/0b8a69029ffe667b


completely forgot I actually had to post this here, but happy holidays MachJacob. For the Dragapult-Lele team we start with a core of Banded Tera Ghost Pult and Specs Lele, which work well in tandem to break down each others checks, such as Heatran, Ferrothorn, and Melmetal. To help deal with Blissey, Ferrothorn, Melmetal, and Tapu Fini and to act as a check to a plethora of special attackers, Heatran is on the team. Landorus acts as a volt immunity as well as a rocker and slow pivot to bring in Lele and Pult. Tapu Koko acts as an additional pivot, a way to pressure opposing Landorus-Therian, and a switch in to opposing bulky waters like Dondozo, Toxapex, and Tapu Fini. Finally, Corviknight acts as a Melmetal switch in as well as a Defogger for the team.

 

[myself12]

Hi Tack, happy holidays!

https://pokepast.es/f91a2392373a060b

For the emolga team, I decided to build a webs ho. I added ribombee as the setter. 3a howl zama, dd mega gyarados, power herb celesteela, and qd volc are standard HO pokemon.

 

[Deciduii]

Happy Holidays, WolfishOne!

https://pokepast.es/6b46924ec8b29dfb

The Magnezone in the core is a standard wallbreaker/pivot set which is also useful for trapping steel types such as Ferrothorn, Corviknight and Heatran, OHKOing the first two and dealing severe damage to non-specially defensive forms of the latter.

The Rotom-W basically exists as a defogger and pivot to help switch in the frail attackers in the team.

The Landorus-T is a physical wallbreaker and stealth rock setter, because I wanted to do both.

The Dragapult and Magearna sweep everything.

This isn’t an amazing team, but I’ve had some success testing it on ladder. I hope you enjoy.

 

[Darwa]

Happy Holidays, Chemical_Jackfruit

https://pokepast.es/246c4178e85a3018

For the Hippo + Garg core I decided to run somewhat of a bulky offence. Rocky helm Corv helps the team switch into Melmetal punish u-turns. Rillaboom lets Garg be even more bulky that it already is and gives Volcanion recovery. Mega-Lop is there primarily for speed control but you also have double priority on the team just in case. Tera ground Volcanion is what this team usually ends up using as it's tera but tera flying garg gets rid of any emergency weaknesses, although you'd usually want to keep rock for the spdef boost as you iron defense up.

 

[wooloo supremacy]

I’m so sorry, I completely forgot I had to paste the team here Codename C.A.T

https://pokepast.es/1dd655b066b47c62

I made the Scizor sd, as with cc it can provide some nasty endgame sweeps. Combined with fs from Glowking, it is basically unwallable. I believe the speed evs speedcreep Lando, and allow you to either set up or roost on it easier.

Rotom is our main answer to Heatran, and Volcanion, as well as mega diancie

Torn is our kart and rilla switch in, as well as our hazard removal. Combined with Glowking it forms a nasty regen core.


Glowking is our main spdef wall; it can take hits easily, and enable Scizor to kill something with the use of future sight.

Umbreon is our cleric; it can wish pass and heal statuses from our team, as well as being our ghost switch in.

Lando was added as we needed a ground type, a physical tank, and rocks. It can deal with physical attackers relatively well, and pivot into other mons.
I’m so sorry for sending this late, but I wish you and your family happy holidays.

 

[Chilli Dewd]

Okay, I now I'm late cuz I forgot to paste it here and instead I send it to hindingflames, i'll take all the blame, so here it is. This is my Secret Santa team request from Pokemonrainer, and it was a team based on SD Cinderace, so here, hope u enjoy it.

https://pokepast.es/8f0743decf2f4a3f

I test it out for a bit myself, and it's pretty decent, I havent played Cinderace a lot myself, But I can tell he is pretty straightfoward to use, and I think HO suites him best. So here is how the team works, U try and lead with Glimmora and settup hazards, easy, if succesful, just Memento and bring your big thread, if not, you still have ways out of it, Gholdengo is excellent for this team, as not only it prevents Rapid Spin(and Mortal Spin from Glimmora) but also Defog, thanks to Good as Gold. Air Ballin also helps with thr Grounds expecting Dengo from preventing their spinning like Great Tusk and Iron Threads. Serperior fits in nicely here, as if things went south with Dengo, you can just punish their defog attempts by getting a +1 evasion thanks to Contraty(Nobody wants that). Combined with SubGlare, and the opponet would be put in a bad position pretty quickly(Not to mention the Leaf Storm snowballing). Cinderace, the main star of the team, is one of 4 sweepers, and your Z user of the team, due to the nerfing to Libero being locked into Normal once it used SD(or switches out) Having a Normalium Z boosted Double-Edge can be quite devasting in the right scenario, Pyro Ball is a must have, and Sucker Punch lets it handle Ghost types, mainly Pult, as it would also be faster with priority, do beware, Sucker Punch can be played around. The last 2 is the Dragon Duo of Cyclizar+ Dragonite. Cyclizar is good for its utility, Shed Tail being a solid move to have here, giving free Subs to bring sweepers safely, and if Sub remains, allowing for Setups. Uturn is good for mometum gaining, as well as let em heal thanks to Regenerator, after using Shed Tail, Knock off and Rapid Spin for even more utility. Also quick note, I maxed out it HP so it can give decently High Hp subs, making them harder to break. And finally, Dragonite, one of the biggest beneficiaries of Cyclizar. Thanks to Multiscale, he can tank hits extremely well, and with Cyclizar's subs, allowing for great setup, garanteed 1 Dragon Dance minimum, 2 and even 3 at times if played well. Another great thing with Dragonite is that he benefits from Tera Normal, boosting Espeed while removung those pesky weaknesses, namely Ice. Earthquake for big damage on Steel and Rock Types, and Tpunch for the Flying/Steels that can get in the way, another option is Roost so that I can get iys Multiscale back, do I think Tpunch is a bit better for those scenarios. Overall, I'm happy with this team I build, I really hope Pokemonrainer enjoys this team. Happy Hanuka to all!(I don't celebrate Hanuka, just wanted to say something other then Merry Chrismas.)

Also, here is a replay I found:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-1753686215

Again, truly sorry for not sending it this late. I'll do my best so it won't happen again.

 

[hidin]

And that is it for Secret Santa! I thank you all for participating this year, and I hope you do so next year! It was glad to host this project, now see y'all! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
If you didn't post your teams here, be sure to DM the person you made it for!

 

[sealoo]

Merry Christmas Sulo


https://pokepast.es/9ed87ae5fb015aad

I was in the lab listening to some holly jolly Christmas jams when I cooked up this masterful joint ‍‍