Hello everyone, this is your boy BRAZILIAN ARMY / MISTER MAGNUS / AHMAD ALFATIH / TRAWKAN, or whatever nickname I’m using when you read this. First, let’s talk a bit about myself (if you don’t want to read this part, you can skip directly to the history section, and if you just want the teams, they’re all at the end, don’t worry). I wanted to make something special for my (uoooww)
12th Smogon anniversary, and the idea came to me late at night after a few drinks (promising myself I wouldn’t drink anymore, considering I’m the last one of my friends still not married LOL). Without further ado, I present to you some stories from Late Nights in
La Matanza, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
TALES OF LA MATANZA The History of ORAS LC Through Abra Builds
I — The Toy The first team is just my new toy, and I should say this is the first non-historical team in this thread (I’m not even sure if this team will be allowed in my LCCL game vs
Tazz — at this point, me,
Envy, Howkings, and Kythr are still discussing it). Since the very beginning of my time here, I’ve always heard the same thing: “You can’t play ORAS without trapping, trapping is broken.” My boy
Dcae even openly campaigned for banning Gothita, which fortunately the council at the time — led by
me, Tazz, and Levi — voted against. The first part of the idea actually comes from an old concept of using Diglett as an offensive initiator, something I basically stole from myself and Envy from back when the Brazilian players were spamming Alolan Diglett as a HO lead with Memento support. The second part of the idea was simple: what if we just removed every single Life Orb Abra check? That’s why there are four trappers on this team. But this wasn’t the first time Abra made me rethink how the tier worked.
II — The Challenge The second team came from a time when
Shrug was drafting me basically every season. Unfortunately, though, our team got eliminated from that year’s LCPL playoffs. After that, one of my old students, Mr.
Goao (in memoria — I don’t even know how long you’ve been banned, but if there’s a chance you read this, I hope you’re doing well), challenged me. I was like, “OK, my team didn’t do great, but I did. Let me show this kid how adult life works.” Then I realized he was bringing Diglett as the Abra stopper on every single team, and I thought, “Bro, I never noticed, but people don’t actually rely on switching into Abra… so what if we just make Abra untrappable?”
Abra Subs → kills Scarf Pawn. Abra trapped by Dig → enter Porygon. Abra trapped by Goth → enter Pawniard
To me, this was one of those amazing forgotten LCPL moments, and some old heads even remembered this game later when Shed Shell Abra became standard during the SS meta. Around that time, I started experimenting more and more with different ways of using Abra. ________________________________________
III — The Numbers The third team was a big anomaly at the time, but I was actually spamming Scarf Abra quite a lot during what I’d call my prime — PSPL with the Portuguese Room team, the very first LC Swiss, maybe some Battle of the Week games, even old POWC for Team South America. At that point in the meta, there was a very, very, VERY big trend of using Smashers, especially Shellder, which made the traditional Abra set pretty unreliable for a lot of offensive builds.
As a mathematical GENIUS, lord of numbers, Harvard PhD, I realized that 27 (Modest Scarf Abra) was higher than 26, which is what Shellder reaches after a Smash. So the solution was simple — just run Scarf Abra and outspeed everything. For today’s meta, when I rebuilt those structures, I added Magic Room, copying the idea from an old
Shing BW LC team. It’s surprisingly fun to use.
But if we’re talking about ORAS LC history, there is one team that you simply cannot skip. ________________________________________
IV — Brazilian Webs Well, you can’t talk about LC in general without at least a full paragraph about this team. This team basically introduced a whole country to the community —
Pablo, Goao, Spl4sh, Max Carvalho, Ren-chon, Disenchanted, LJ Darkrai, just to name a few. This particular group of six mons takes at least 90% of the first chapter of Tales of
ggggd, where I talked about it as one of the best teams in the history of the tier.
What’s really impressive is how this team has stayed basically unfazed for 12 years, from when I first built it after the Missy ban all the way to today’s tournament scene. You can still find replays of people using it in LC Classics, and even recently
LAROXYL brought it again. At one point, we literally banned this team from Brazilian tournaments just for logistical reasons, because otherwise we would have had mirrors all over the bracket. So guys, I present to y’all BRAZILIAN WEBS, the most iconic team in the history of the meta. And even after all those years, this team would still come back when it mattered the most.
V — The Tiebreak This team is also an enormous part of the history of Brazil in this meta. The year was 2023, and a young group of Brazilians challenged the LC world, while their main player was playing for Team Latam (fun fact: their captain, my boy
Always Edgy, didn’t even know I existed). In the first round of playoffs, they brought my team and advanced, and that was when I joined the chat. The squad was insane in terms of creativity, with
West Sasori winning games with the weirdest sets possible, spamming Slowpoke and even Brazilian Double Weather.
The challengers were about to face West, the main favorites of the tournament, and we had no idea what to bring… until
Ampha picked this team from my dump. I tried everything I could to stop it, but he was convinced. Little did I know that this game would push Brazil to a tiebreak, which was completely insane at the time.
That match made the team one of the main stories of the tournament, and from there many people even started considering Brazil one of the favorites for the next LCWC, which they eventually won. So yeah, this team is probably the most iconic LCWC team, and it basically tells the story of Brazil in both World Cups. ________________________________________
Hope you all enjoyed the stories. I still have a few more concepts and builds saved somewhere, just to keep proving that Abra can fit into pretty much any structure (and yes, I will keep arguing it’s S rank — to me the 3rd best mon in the tier after Pawn and Foo). But enough history for now.
Let’s get to the fun part.
THE TEAMS
Team 1 :
https://pokepast.es/f302ebe8a0bfd56e
Team 2 :
https://pokepast.es/fef01948760c7fb2
Team 3 :
https://pokepast.es/6280d08d8404a796
Team 4:
https://pokepast.es/8ccb3bffa643e708
Team 5:
https://pokepast.es/aba235fdc9c10487
The Full Abra Dump with a bunch of extras for most playstyles:
https://pastebin.com/SxnZBrNg
The Dump:
- Ponyta is really good because it spreads burns and is very difficult to beat with fast threats that are not Diglett. It is maybe the best pick at trading with its bulk, speed, and wide movepool but it needs hazard removal to do so (usually Vullaby because it is the best pokemon outside of this role). Both physical attacking sets with Flare Blitz and Flame Charge or Wild Charge and special attacking sets with Fire blast and Hidden Power Grass are dangerous. Ponyta teams often don't need to run fighting types, because they would prefer to slot in more speed and Chinchou to make an effective trap bait game plan. An anti Porygon spread also allows Ponyta teams to have a dominant matchup against Porygon structures because it will not be dependably revenge koed. I consider it top 10-15 in viability.
