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it all begins 2 weeks ago, the evil RU council released a new suspect, and the target, was oricorio, HO's only zapdos galar switch-in
i could deny it all i wanted i knew the fate of corio was already set in stone, it would be banned, and Zapdos Galar will bird bravely all over HO
in my panic i went digging though the lower tier trash to find a brave bird resist that doesn't suck but mon after mon after mon, all failed
toxtricity? trash, drednaw? trash, cloyster? trash, Iron thorns? trash, minior? raikou?? TRASH.
it seemed like all hope was lost, but then, i saw it, a treasure among trash a radiating beacon of hope, a competent bulky sweeper that eats brave bird
(team also proved it's worth by letting me do a run for voting requirements with 28 wins for 4 losses, which is very good)
it's a classic lead, nothing new to say about it since the last RMT, tldr you taunt things that wanna place rocks, then if the rocks placer is taunted or the opp is not a rocks placer you place your own, then you do some endeavor shenanigans, and somewhere in between you get a kill against someone not knowing their steel or mamoswine gets one shot by close combat, good stuff
the team's icon, while 100 base SpA on paper sounds kinda mediocre, fairy ground is incredibly powerful coverage that hits a lot of mons super effectively, in fact it hits 20 out of the 46 mons in RU super effectively with just moonblast and earth power, add to that all the frail mons who are not living a neutral hit at +1 and all the ones that are just meteor beam fodder and you get an insanely threatening mon in spite of it's seemingly average SpA, while you still stuggle to one shot most steels, we will down the line add mons that force damage on them and abuse them being weakened, tera water is chosen for the water and steel resist along with the ground neutrality, letting you beat sat up mence, bisharp, goodra-hisui etc, diancie really works best in the mid to late game, once it's checks are worn down or when it can easily trade tera for 2 or 3 kills like here, however building with diancie does come with some restrictions: you need things forcing damage on steels and a slow mon that works both in and out of trick room, or else your own trick room will mess up your other mons.
to solve the trick room issue i chose crawdaunt, specifically sash craw, why? because we will add solid hazard support later and sash lets you use knock off and crabhammer more often because you don't have to worry about dying, it's also great for the HO mirror as an anti-lead that can beat leads before they get to anything other than placing rocks letting you with a full HP sash craw ready to bonk any sweeper that might come in (like here except people don't commonly do the same mistake of setting up on craw 4 times in a row), which puts you in an early lead at the cost of hazards on your field, it also adds consistency: we will not be running bisharp nor mimikyu so having a sash mon with powerful damage is a neat consistency tool, finally, the reason for running crawdaunt over rhyperior or bisharp as the slow mon to go with diancie is simply that in HO, you want each of your mons to be able to setup on different threats, and there is a huge overlap with diance, bish and rhyperior, all wanting to setup on strong physical hits like Zapdos Galar's brave bird, Maushold or even mimikyu and revenge kill already sat up threats like Gyarados and Salamence, by having 2 mons sharing targets you're self sabotaging both mons' ability to setup. i also hesitated between running swords dance or close combat for other crawdaunt and bisharp but since both are equally niche you can kinda use whatever and finally, knock off is cool for rocky helmets for maushold
classic armarouge, nothing much to say about it, we run endure wp because it's good, practical and ladder does not know how to beat it, it comes in on things like jirachi, weezing galar etc which is very cool for Maushold while also forcing huge damage on goodra hisui which diancie loves, tera can be whatever, i put tfairy for sucker punch when not at full but we have fast encore, crawdaunt and tera water diancie, the bisharp matchup is already fine
aah yes, resto chesto gyarados my beloved, also a classic set so not much to write home about, we're running tera ground quake instead of tera flying tera blast because there's not a lot of grass types, we overwhelm chesnaught and because diancie really likes tera, tera steel or tera flying tera blast also work well so it's up to personal preferences, overall just a powerful sweeper here to abuse the hazard control
the aformentionned hazard control helping greatly crawdaunt, armarouge and gyarados, it really likes crawdaunt knocking helmets and armarouge coming freely on weezing galar while also itself being able to cripple steels heavily which diancie loves, overall just a good mon that does everything, it supports the team greatly, is greatly supported by the team, does progress, sweeps, revenge kills, what's not to love
Conclusion:
thank you for reading all those big paragraphs, it was a lot of fun to write and if you have any questions, advices, even ideas for future HOs i could make a RMT about or anything else PLEASE ASK i NEED excuses to talk about SV RU HO, on that note, have a good day
