Bullshit in ORAS PH Tours
ORAS PH tour game so far seem to imply that the tournament meta is dominated by bulky offense involving 1-2 Mold Breakers and Tauntspam, as well as a sprinkle of stall and Dual MMX. I think this overall picture is actually highly inaccurate in the context of our current tournament playerbase, consisting of a few players who know the format intimately and others who, either due to lack of familiarity or in-game precision, wouldn't have very good chances against the former players. People should be cheesing/hard matchup fishing/taking advantage of opposing tendencies, or even hoping for the best, significantly more than currently appears to be the case.
The reasons are threefold. First, very few structures deal with a large majority of the available cheese. The only teams that get anywhere near that threshold are Dual MMX (crams as many consistent tools as possible) and STAG stall (packs Magic Bounce, Poison Heal, Whirlwind WGs, Shadow Tag, potentially Imposter, all for different types of QuickPass strategies, coverage spam, and most offbeat Mold Breaker users). Other structures do not check as large a selection of the potential cheese available, or are themselves matchup-fishes (have essentially losing matchups against a non-negligible strategy or element, like Perish Song Shadow Tag). Second, even Dual MMX and stall struggle vs. some matchup fishes, with the former really having to get lucky vs. Mold Breaker Rayquaza spam and the latter losing to Shadow Tag cheese. Third, cheese options do not actually require as large a player skill disparity to be worthwhile as most people seem to think – these are genuinely more successful strategies than loading a regular team into a significantly better opponent.
Metagross-Mega @ Leftovers
Ability: Mold Breaker
EVs: 248 HP / 84 SpD / 176 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Sheer Cold
- Imprison
- Substitute
- Encore
Take this set, for example. Mold Breaker OHKO has zero defensive counterplay (besides fast Substitute setters if you count that), meaning all Mold Breaker OHKO requires for optimization purposes is a user that can realistically click Sheer Cold as many times as possible, and ideally prevent opposing Substitute uses. It's about a 50-50 on whether 2 Sheer Cold uses against a non-Substitute foe nets a KO, making the odds of KOs consequential enough to flip the matchup in your favor remarkably close to 50%, as long as the rest of your team is mostly self-sufficient. Pretty good for a strategy with no actual counterplay. You can also run teammates with Lunar Dance to increase the OHKO moves you can fire. The downside is that your teammates are rather restrictive, – if you go for a Shadow Tag user for Huge Power Gyarados, 2 WGs, some kind of revenging, and either Imposter or Magic Bounce, there's not much reason to use Mold OHKO over your stereotypical slower balance. However, Mold OHKO doesn't require an additional setup turn so if you aren't confident you can outplay it's a legitimate option in tours.
Mewtwo-Mega-X @ Leppa Berry
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 22 Def
- Belly Drum
- Extreme Speed
- Ice Shard / Shadow Sneak / Dark Void
- Struggle
Matchup fish that can randomly rip holes in the opposing team if they don't get every turn right. The set is simple, Struggle bypasses Wonder Guard so you get two chances to KO an opposing WG switch-in after getting to +6 via Belly Drum. If you run Ice Shard MMX doubles as a Rayquaza check, while Shadow Sneak hits faster WG Psychics and Aegislash. You kinda do need to SubPass to this before the opponent does, but that is practical with tools like CancerPass (Prankster Dark Void/Sub/Coil/Baton Pass), Trick/Taunt SubPass Beedrill, No Guard SubPass, etc. Non-MMX attackers have a harder time vs. Imposter in theory, but perhaps that is not so important when SubPass is critical to this set's success anyway. Built
this during OMCL (can you tell vs. who?) but we didn't end up bringing it.
Pokemon @ Leftovers
Ability: Shadow Tag
EVs: 252 HP / X Def / some speed benchmark
+Def or +Spe Nature
- Encore
- Substitute
- Acupressure / Quiver Dance / Shell Smash
- Baton Pass
A somewhat more familiar matchup fish to anyone who laddered ORAS/USUM/SS PH when one of those metas was ladderable. Basically, either you catch a Shed Shell-less non-Shadow Tag non-Ghost foe lacking, lock them into a move, and pass Substitute and game-changing boosts to a teammate, or you don't and play 5v6 or worse. This tactic is much more customizable than the above two due to the range of Pokemon that could plausibly pull it off, and it doesn't help that the current metagame is relatively favorable to it due to a concerningly high proportion of the playerbase running Pokemon vulnerable to STAG trapping. Compared to Certified Good Set Lefties Low Kick/Encore/Spikes/Perish Song PhysDef STAG MMX your utility throughout the game is relinquished for greater reward when you do manage to trap a vulnerable Pokemon. You can also force Shed Shell removal vs. many teams with a No Guard Trick user. Maybe other strats like Klutz + AV into Heal Pulse Shadow Tag could also work?
Spam teams are underrated in the tour scene. It is simply impossible to prepare for bullshit sets while accounting for surprise factor, without resorting to winning mindgames in-game. Anything with a decently high Attack stat can feign Huge Power coverage moves, inherently forcing a dual MMX-like dynamic in-game, while also being easier to use than that archetype and less constrained by prerequisites for maximal consistency, since that's not what you're going for here. If anyone played that one guy running 6 Dark Void/Shell Smash or Quiver Dance/Oblivion Wing Mold Breaker Mega Rayquaza on the 1600s ORAS PH ladder, you know what I'm talking about. Along with Mold Breaker OHKO this is the biggest Fuck You to skill expression in tours because of how easy it actually is to pilot spam teams passably well and the degree to which they inherently force mindgames in-game. While I don't actually think spam would be used very often even in an "optimal" setting, especially because it demands rather high in-game precision which kind of defeats the point, it's nevertheless something to fear just before loading up a tour game.
Pokemon @ Leftovers / Black Sludge
Ability: Wonder Guard
EVs: 252 Spe
Timid / Jolly Nature
- Taunt
- Spikes / Disruption
- Disruption / Substitute
- Attack / Baton Pass
Unlike the other sets I listed, these are actually currently quite common. However, I don't actually think they're very consistent at all, struggling to account for every possible Magic Bounce user. Despite that there is relatively little counterplay aside from not letting these Pokemon get hazards up, primarily through Magic Bounce, since most attacks will get ignored by Wonder Guard and the ones that don't are either telegraphed (Mold Breaker), inconsistent in their own right, or are easy to scout for. Once hazards are up, the Taunt user will typically PP stall opposing attacks, and either it or its teammates can neutralize what may offensively threaten it. While I do consider Tauntspam a matchup fish, N's demonstrated in OMCL that it is not strictly a method for less precise players to eke out wins with a lopsided matchup in their favor (though imo most opposing teams generally looked questionable anyway).
Fast Taunt users and Prankster SubPass (Dark Void/Coil/Substitute/Baton Pass) considerably exacerbate the matchup issues of the ORAS PH tournament meta, at least in my eyes – Magic Bounce users themselves are exploitable by being either a) passive (i.e. not a Ghost Curse user, and therefore helpless or demanding specific counterplay into Imposter, Mold Breaker users hard switching in, or opposing SubPass users in general) or b) Ghost-type (vulnerable to faster Huge Power Pursuit). Without Magic Bounce, you're either running an overwhelmingly offensive team, likely a variant of something I have already mentioned earlier in this post, or you're hoping you don't run into Tauntspam. Though unrelated, Shadow Tag/Arena Trap also indirectly produce this effect. Toxic Orb users are so much better than Sleep-vulnerable mons at defensively checking Mold Breaker users (at least with good type matchup), but they are either Giratina, which Mold Breakers are necessarily well-equipped to handle already, or non-Ghost-types, meaning with viable sets they are defenseless against opposing Shadow Tag/Arena Trap users coming in at a good time (which, with how good defensive pivots are, is entirely practical). This produces a dilemma where non-Ghost Poison Heal users' effectiveness hinges on whether the opponent as a Shadow Tag/Arena Trap check or not – without innate trapping in the picture, in stereotypical balance mirrors the Poison Heal user will usually have the obvious upper hand to the point where only ridiculous throwing can realistically alter the game outcome. In other words, exacerbation of the matchup problem. The effect of all this is that "scout maintenance" is just as important as actual building or playing ability, as that is the only other way you can manage the odds of running into an unwinnable matchup.
You can even mix and match to create your own brand of cancer, tailored to your opponent! The 2 Primal Groudon play the role of coverage fishers (but, of course, including elements of Dual MMX in addition to random button-clicking), Arceus is a Taunt + disruptor (also bypasses Magic Bounce), and Rayquaza/Cobalion are surprise No Guards that, while not mentioned, also induce unhealthy mindgames when hazards are set on the opposing side. I played suboptimally in this game but it's not reasonable to expect one to play perfect with the ambiguities involved on any given turn. It's also worth noting that this is just one of a bajillion variations of inconsistent, but targeted teams that can throw any playing skill disparities out of the window. Especially with decreased usage of elements that preserve a shred of meta stability, particularly Prankster Giratina, I think not only that matchup fishing is very underutilitized as a strategy to maximize individual success in the current ORAS PH tournament scene, but that less experienced players should be doing so a significant portion of the time, and the optimal tournament player should only really be winning 70-75% of games or so. In other words, much lower than currently appears to be the "success ceiling" of tour players. While I don't think anything resembling what's detailed in this post will materialize anytime soon because of building also being a skill, but with increased metagame exploration and team availability this scenario is one facet of what I predict to be the end state of the ORAS PH tournament metagame. 
Giratina ......................... Prankster, Poison Heal, Magic Bounce
Rayquaza-Mega ........... Mold Breaker, Gale Wings, Aerilate, Shadow Tag
Mewtwo-Mega-X .......... Huge Power, Shadow Tag, Wonder Guard, Mold Breaker
Gyarados-Mega ............ Huge Power, Poison Heal
Groudon-Primal ............ Mold Breaker, Shadow Tag, Huge Power, Wonder Guard
Chansey ........................ Imposter
Blissey ........................... Imposter, Wonder Guard
Diancie-Mega ............... Pixilate, Mold Breaker
Slaking ......................... Shadow Tag, Huge Power, Wonder Guard
Kyogre-Primal .............. Wonder Guard, Mold Breaker, Magic Bounce, Poison Heal
Ferrothorn .................... Wonder Guard, Magic Bounce
Aegislash ..................... Magic Bounce, Prankster
Gengar-Mega ............... Wonder Guard, Mold Breaker, No Guard
Arceus .......................... Wonder Guard, Mold Breaker, No Guard, Shadow Tag
Beedrill-Mega ............... Wonder Guard, No Guard
Regigias ........................ Shadow Tag, Huge Power
Xerneas ......................... Wonder Guard, Mold Breaker
Audino-Mega ................. Wonder Guard
Deoxys-Attack ............. Wonder Guard, No Guard
Deoxys-Speed ............. No Guard, Wonder Guard
Latios-Mega ................. Mold Breaker, Protean
Ludicolo ........................ Wonder Guard
Manectric-Mega ........... Wonder Guard
Sableye-Mega ............... Wonder Guard
Yveltal ........................... Poison Heal, Magic Bounce, Huge Power
Dialga ........................... Mold Breaker, Magic Bounce
Gyarados ...................... Wonder Guard, Magic Bounce, Prankster, No Guard
Metagross-Mega ........... Prankster
Mewtwo-Mega-Y ........... Shadow Tag, No Guard, Mold Breaker, Protean, Wonder Guard
Registeel ....................... Magic Bounce, Prankster
Swampert-Mega ........... Wonder Guard
Aerodactyl-Mega .......... Shadow Tag
Escavalier ..................... Wonder Guard
Meloeta ........................ Wonder Guard
Scizor-Mega ................. Wonder Guard
Talonflame .................... Wonder Guard
Thundurus .................... Wonder Guard
Tyranitar-Mega .............. Mold Breaker, Huge Power, Poison Heal
Zekrom ........................... Mold Breaker
Abomasnow-Mega ........ Refrigerate
Cresselia ......................... Wonder Guard
Garchomp-Mega ........... Mold Breaker
Gardevoir-Mega ............ Wonder Guard
Ho-Oh ............................. Magic Guard
Kyurem-Black ................. Refrigerate, Mold Breaker
Kyurem-White ................ Mold Breaker 
Lugia ................................ Shadow Tag
Lucario-Mega ................. Wonder Guard
Giratina Origin
