Reviewing teams from week 1, likely won't do this all season tho:
Fakes
Magnezone on Alakazam teams is not completely novel but is still quite rare. It synergises well by trapping and removing Skarmory + Scizor in particular, which frees up the HP Fire slot on your Psychic-types, whilst also acting as a sturdy Ice resist to deter Cloyster and Choice Band Mamoswine. Magnezone is also a good enabler of Leech Seed + Protect Ferrothorn here, which is seeing a bit of a resurgence. Choice Scarf Tyranitar is an interesting choice here also, this would normally open up weaknesses to Volcarona + Alakazam but Fakes' smartly adopts a specially defensive Landorus-T to patch that hole, surprisingly tanking a Thundurus-T Hidden Power [Ice] in his game this week! Without Chople Tyranitar, this 6 is a touch weak to Reuniclus, so presumably the unrevealed slots on Alakazam and Latios were selected to patch this up.
Elodin
This is an interesting-looking rain team from elodin, seemingly based around the idea of specially defensive U-turn Jirachi as a pivot for some OP Rain breakers - Specs Tornadus and Band Kyurem-B. The two together sounds really smart, as Specs Tornadus-T baits and weakens Steels including Skarmory, Bronzong, and Excadrill, which then can't stand in the way of CB Kyu-B. Should Rotom-W want to swap into Tornadus, its also given an immense Volt Switch vs Will-o-Wisp vs Hydro Pump headache with both Thundurus-T and Kyurem-B waiting in the back. This is reminiscent of a similar approach we've seen before with Tornadus + Garchomp. Elodin's team appears to lack a Scarfer here, but this is patched up by Tailwind Tornadus to support a Kyurem-B countersweep in the late-game. This team's undoing comes down to its lack of immediate speed control + lack of Dark resist, which is hard punished by Fakes' Scarf Tyranitar. elodin is also unlucky to load into Lefties Leech Seed + Protect Ferrothorn - for the past couple of years, many Ferrothorn have been dropping Leftovers in favour of Lum, Rawst, and Chople on offensive teams, and elodin's CB Kyurem-B + Thundurus-T + Starmie would have matched up incredibly strongly into one of these variations. Unfortunately, Leech Ferrothorn is a huge roadblock to elodin's breakers as well as punishing the U-turn Jirachi in the early game.
SoulWind
This kind of Sand has been around since 2011 and continues to be strong even today - built around the offensive synergy between Excadrill and Terrakion as sand powerhouses, supported by a Ground-Flying partner (e.g. more offensive Smack Down Landorus-T, or supportive Gliscor) and rounded out with a sturdy Water (Rotom-W, Slowbro, Slowking, even Keldeo) and Grass-type (Celebi, Amoonguss, Breloom, Tangrowth). The natural synergy between these Pokemon is really strong and there are probably over 100 distinct, viable teams within this mould. The problem these teams often face is- where do you fit speed control? Excadrill is often the obvious choice but gives up on its defensive utility + ability to repeatedly spin. Many teams in this archetype therefore choose to dodge the question altogether and fit no Scarfer at all, for example the Keldeo + Terrakion SubPass team, or ABR's similar Mamoswine Keldeo Amoonguss sand, which rely on denying set-up, smart positioning, and priority instead. It appears, though, that SoulWind went old school and used Choice Scarf Terrakion, previously the best Scarfer in the tier but now barely used at all. The Excadrill set is left unrevealed but I have to assume its Swords Dance to help break Gliscor, Landorus-T, Slowbro, Reuniclus. SoulWind also uses another long unseen set in Taunt Gliscor, which would help keep some of the bulky Waters, Psychics, and Grounds weakened for lategame Terrakion, and also reduce the reliance on Excadrill in the hazard game by preventing Spikes in the first instance and also keeping Skarmory + Jellicent from healing. Rocky Helmet Skarmory has the potential to be frustrating here without Knock Off Gliscor (I assume the set was Protect/Taunt/SR/EQ) but otherwise this is a really strong 6 from SoulWind.
Dark Eeveon
Just like SoulWind's old-school Terrakion sand, Eeveon brought an old-school Volt-turn offense with Dragonite + Keldeo, the kind of weatherless teams we also saw in early BW2. Eeveon is often seen running Jirachi + Scizor pairings and this is a return to his comfort zone. The broad idea looks clear - lead Garchomp putting pressure on physically defensive walls like Skarmory, Landorus-T, Hippowdon, and Slowbro to help support DDnite, with Scizor and Rotom-W in the back forming a pivoting pair. However, I think Eeveon may have cooked a little too hard here, as I have heard on the grapevine that this team may have lacked Stealth Rock? Whilst this sometimes works out for him (see: his Cloyster Conkeldurr offense which does viably run no rocks!) a Volt-turn without hazards, and without your own hazard control, sounds like a recipe for disaster as you simply lose ground while pivoting. That said, Eeveon does load into a pretty terrible match-up here against SoulWind's double Regen core, which hard shuts down all his options, so not sure it would have made that much difference.
Nalorium
Not too sure what to make of this one - it looks like its supporting ScarfChomp with Protect + Toxic Keldeo to weaken defensive waters, Wisp Rotom-W for Ferrothorn, and HP Fire Latios to bait Steels, I'm guessing its also SD Drill otherwise the fat Sand MU is quite bad? Double waters to protect vs Mamo Cloy when you have ScarfChomp is also smart. But Nalorium is on the backfoot pretty early in this one which makes working out the intentions of the team kinda hard. Psyshock Latios is a cool tech that should probably see more usage, so its nice to see it here. Stealth Rock Tyranitar is something that is widely disliked but I do think it has applications (and I'm guessing the ScarfChomp has rocks also) but this game does reveal its limitations. Tyranitar vs Rain needs to stay healthy and it rarely wants to be clicking rocks with the free turns it has. Nalorium does eventually find a chance to rock on turn 25 but takes a Scald burn in the process, which puts him really far behind. Thats another issue with some of these Sand offenses too - Scald. Nalorium doesn't really have anything that wants to swap into Scald on his team, and he gets disproportionally punished for this, with 3 burns out of 4 Scalds. Maybe ChestoRest Rotom-W would have been a nice solution to this? I think the team is interesting, hard to say much without seeing the other sets.
Sensei Axew
Another Jirachi Rain, like elodin, but this time Scarf Jirachi which is really quite weird for Rain. The classic issue for a lot of these Tentacruel-style Rain teams is Alakazam + Latios, so Scarf Rachi to easily swap + gain momentum is a smart idea. This works especially well as this is a known 6 that is assumed to use Scarf Politoed + SubCM Jirachi, which was used in SPL finals a few years ago. The concept appears to be using Thundurus-T to force Latios in, then hard into Jirachi to U-turn and gain momentum, eventually pressuring Latios to the point where Thundurus-T can Agility and sweep, and this works pretty well here. I'm guessing the breaker on this would still be a Specs or CM Latios which is a great U-turn recipient + weakens Tyranitar, with U-turn also helping get Tentacruel in for easier Rapid Spins. Axew also uses Leech Seed Ferrothorn here, the second use of it this week.
dice
Pretty route 1 approach from dice - Spikes with Psychics is broken, let's just use all the abusers with a hyper offensive lead Skarmory. Offensive Jirachi is a good choice of 6th, mainly because it beats Scizor, Cloyster handily but also you have to scout all its stupid coverage moves with SR and Spike up, so it forces tons of damage even if you don't have the perfect moveset. Jellicent also continues to prove it can run a bunch of different items on these HO teams - from Balloon, to Sitrus, to Wacan, to Eject Button, and now Red Card. Red Card is a cool option to break a set-up sweeper one-time, making up for the obvious defensive redundancy of triple Psychics, along with forcing out spinners and spreading more hazard damage. Whilst this team is fun I think its maybe dialed into the concept a little bit too much with 4 Psychics total, it feels like the approach would be just as potent with only 3 of them. There's also a variance issue here - Alakazam and Reuniclus Focus Blast, Jirachi Thunder, Jellicent Red Card... its no surprise considering the teams brought by Rewer and dice that luck played a sizeable role in the outcome.
Rewer
Rewer is a boomer and this is giving off big boomer energy, with things like offensive Jirachi, LO Terrakion, Scarf Lando-T, and likely a Rocks Tyranitar, this team has stepped straight out of pre-Excadrill BW2. I think this team is decent, it kinda has tools for everything if piloted well + keeping up the momentum with lots of pivots and two mixed sweepers in Rachi/Terrak constantly forcing the opponent to swap out. As I alluded to in the dice team however, this is highly reliant on some low accuracy moves (Rotom-W Hydro/Wisp, Latios Meteor, Jirachi Thunder out of Rain, Terrakion Stone Edge) which, along with the lack of safe Scald switch, makes it look like it would run into consistency issues? We see that in this game, where an inability to hit Stone Edge and Thunder and failure to Iron head flinch grants Skarmory SR and Spike and a KO on Terrakion. Its an unlucky sequence of events in the opening stages that puts Rewer on the back foot, but its arguably also why some of these sets died off. Never felt like Rewer or dice had a huge amount of agency in who won this game considering the dice rolls loaded in every turn.
Jisoo
Hail teams always look a bit weird and this one is no different. Hail + TSpike is a combination of residual damage that is so far left field that people generally aren't thinking about it in the teambuilder, and loading into Keldeo Sand without spin is kinda as good as you can hope for, so this is a great bring by Jisoo. Reuniclus with Tspike puts Tyranitar under immense pressure, and also puts a timer on some of the mons that team doesn't have amazing outs vs - at one point Keldeo looked super dangerous here but simply doesn't get enough turns on the field to win out. An underrated hidden aspect of this team is also the way it beats Excadrill - Body Slam Jirachi is an excellent lure for spin drill and if it gets the paralysis off then Reuniclus can handily break past it. Since we lost Secret Power Skarmory, this is a combination of Pokemon that people have tried to make work but found hard to build, so well done for finding an ok Jirachi + Reuniclus six. This team is always going to run into the typical hail issues - Volcarona and Heatran are assholes for sure - but if watashi's scout was low on offensive fires then this is a pretty smart bring.
watashi
An adapted version of Crucify's LO Alakazam team from week 1 of last SPL. Normal PsySpam 5 + Leftovers Keldeo as additional speed control / ice resist / burn spreader / HO counterstyle mon. I think this used to run Shadow Ball Alakazam, but the swap to Signal Beam with the high Celebi usage in Classic is a smart swap. I generally like this one a ton but it is a bit on the softer side vs Reuniclus, let alone with TSpike so credit to Watashi for making this close, as Scarf Scizor Reun Hail looked mega dire. A bit like Fakes' team this week, this drops Chople Tyranitar to use Custap and makes up the resulting weaknesses using specially defensive Landorus-T, a set we should continue to see more of.
trends:
- 6 Jirachi in 10 teams - For a few years Jirachi has had unsuspectingly high SPL usage, no change here but 60% usage off the bat is pretty crazy.
- Specially defensive Landorus-T
- Generally, very offensive first week. No appearance of any of the major trends from Classic / Invitational i.e. Celebi, Clefable, Hippowdon.
Blissey is a great special sponge, but people have been resistant to it historically. We now see it picking up in usage in conjunction with anti-Spikes measures. It is now 5-0 after a big 3-0 this past week. Not a big shock here from me. It pairs nicely with Skarmory and Leftovers can allow it to function on Sand or Hail, both of which have been used with it. 
, which makes a lot of sense as Keldeo Sand took over last year at times.
Less HOs as they do not hold their weight into some of the bulkier stuff we see taking over. Curious to see if some of these styles get reinvented or if they continue to fade after popping off for the last two years.
