Hey all, Redless here. I'm locked in vapicuno's basement. He's given me a computer to type from but he only lets me use it to post teams on this forum. Please please come rescue me. The house is located in Singapore, I'm not sure of the address but I'm yelling as loud as I can so once you make it to the country just walk around until you hear yelling (it's a pretty small country). Now onto the team.
The Six
https://pokepast.es/098b1f9a0c1d9e76
I built this thing for my semi's match against Jr for Mushi League playoffs last season. I noticed he was running a lot of squads that didn't like taking ice moves so the initial idea was to stack ice moves and try to blow him up. This snowballed (ha!) into a team based on removing opposing tars and resetting weather so that subcune can run amok. Even though it has pivots for almost every threat, the team is really offensive and doesn't have a lot of longevity, but what it does have is the ability to fish for stupid stuff happening (ice beam freeze, full para, miss, many turn sleep, etc.) so using the team comes down to trying to create as many fishing opportunities as you can before you inevitably run out of HP. You also have a lot of lesser-known sets which can trip opponents up who aren't prepared for them. I chose to make it into an RMT because it's a pretty weird team with lots of members that I didn't really know how to use when I first built the squad, and because I'm pretty proud of it (even though Fruhdazi suggested the six). Let's dive in to the team and how it functions.
In Detail
Neon Romance (Jynx) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Oblivious
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ice Beam
- Mean Look
- Lovely Kiss
- Perish Song
Jynx matches up well against many common leads such as Zapdos, slow Mence, Skarmory, and Cune. Random off-brand leads get rekt by lovely kiss most of the time too. Best of all is Jynx's unerring ability to lure the guys I want to dug trap: Tyranitar and Blissey. If you are in on Blissey you can proceed to mean look and sleep it and then perish song, and most Blisseys aren't capable of killing Jynx before the perish song finishes them. Most important is the lines you play vs tar: if you're up against tar lead you want to whack it with ice beam straight away to guarantee that dug can revenge it after it kills Jynx. If they dd you can proceed to perish song to ensure that it doesn't sweep you if it decides to dd again (most tars will actually kill Jynx after the first dd allowing you to revenge with dug).
Metagross is the obvious lead that trashes Jynx, but you luckily have an extremely high payoff Metagross switchin in the form of Zard. You also have several auxilary Metagross switchins if opponents try to play their Meta conservatively or if they hard read the Zard with rock slide.
I considered Zapdos instead, but I like Jynx's ability to cook Celebi who is used as a special wall sometimes, and who we don't really need to weaken on this team. Of course, I also like the inherent "cheating" that comes with sleep.
Unbuyable Girl (Regice) @ Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 104 Atk / 152 SpA
Quiet Nature
- Explosion
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Thunder Wave
One component of my general team-building philosophy is that you want all your team members to be playing at similar "speeds". What that means is that their ratio of (ability to get in) to (payoff upon getting in) is about the same. If you have an entire team with low (ability to get in), like the rest of this team, the last thing you want is to add a defensive member who lets a bunch of stuff in for free that makes it even costlier for the other teammates to get in. So who's the best special wall at not letting stuff in? Blissey lets in everyone, Zapdos lets in everyone when it's sleeping, Snorlax lets in Skarm (I don't have any spikes control on here), Jirachi is Dugable... I could go on. The answer is Regice, who also loves to stack ice moves with Jynx and Cune, and loves the weather clearing that the rest of the team can provide. In return for an actual offensive presence, Regice has almost no sustain so it can't live forever, but that's not a big deal on this team because it already plays at such a fast pace.
Skybound Color (Charizard) (F) @ Petaya Berry
Ability: Blaze
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
IVs: 30 HP
- Fire Blast
- Focus Punch
- Sunny Day
- Substitute
Everything so far on the team invites Metagross in more or less for free. How can I switch into Metagross in return and maintain offensive momentum? This Charizard works like a charm. Sunny day is the weather-clearing move of choice for the team, and can be used to set up on waters as after a sunny day, zard lives water moves. Furthermore, after blaze, sun, and petaya, fire blast becomes extremely hard to switch into since it often 2hkos blissey and swampert, always 2hkos mence, and almost ohkos aerodactyl, allowing zard to checkmate many teams lategame (85% of the time).
Focus punch lets Zard clock tars that I didn't successfully lure before, especially since they love to come in on zard to disrupt sun. I can also 1v1 chipped Blissey by hitting strong fire blasts until they can have to recover and then finishing them with punch. The fact that Zard is the weather clear as well as the best way to lure Bliss+Tar outside of Jynx makes it the most important member of this team. It's also the fastest (besides lame Dug), and the only good switchin to a lot of stuff, so it's really doing a lot at once, and if you play the team be sure not to spread it too thin.
The 30 HP IV allows zard to hit 296 HP which means that it gets a petaya activation off at 1/4 HP. While this also means that zard only has 3 substitutes from full, it also means that it only needs 3 subs to grab petaya, while still dying in the exact same amount of turns to sand. This isn't a big optimization in either way, but let me know if I've missed something with the HP IV here.
Insperable Sins (Dugtrio) (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Arena Trap
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Substitute
- Rock Slide
- Hidden Power [Flying]
This is a weird set so let me explain. Subsitute is there to ensure that you can trap arbitrary perish song'd guys without taking that much damage. I then had to pick between dropping hp bug and dropping aerial ace, and I chose to drop hp bug. The reason is this: HP bug is mostly good because it can revenge chipped Celebi, but this entire team is basically already built towards owning Celebi as hard as possible. That's actually one of the biggest strengths of this team: every team member (besides this dug I guess) 1v1's Celebi so against Cele builds you're already going to be a big step ahead. Because of this, I decided to drop hp bug and at that point it made sense to swap to HP flying in order to hit a bit harder than aerial ace.
Perfect Avenue (Suicune) @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 240 SpA / 16 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ice Beam
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Surf
Here it is... the big one. I love subcune's ability to surprise idiots who want to status me, boom me, or hit me with a weaksauce attack. You can also slaughter mence (who often revenges dug) and zap/cele switchins with IB, which many opponents aren't prepared for. In many more offensive matchups I just use it to trade up and kill a zap or a celebi or something, as well as provide cushion vs dd sweepers, which it's very good at stopping. Of course, the big thing you can do with subcune is set up on Blissey. Some teams are just screwed as Blissey comes in on the CM and you sub on their toxic. What a great feeling. Just a completely different set of counters than "traditional" cune and for those who aren't prepared for it, it can steal games.
Monumental No-No (Metagross) @ Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 168 HP / 252 Atk / 88 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Agility
- Earthquake
- Explosion
It was explained to me that this team needed more defensive backbone and needed a win condition vs fast teams. Metagross does both of these well. Since it's physical lefties meta without back mag, I need a way to exploit Skarmory but luckily I have Zard to do that. You can sweep through Aeros, boom on a key member (with their water gone, it's a lot harder to switch into the special attackers on this team), and set up very skewed situations in the lategame. Also the main Snorlax check on the team which is a godsend cause if you haven't noticed this team is very Snorlax weak. I think if a Snorlax came in early game and chipped meta that's one of the worst things that could happen.
Thoughts on EVs
Regice's EVs let in hit a bit harder with boom, specifically enabling a Dug followup on "most snorlax" under sand (vapicuno's words, which he gave me along with my last tray of gruel). However, I'm not bringing my own sand so maybe I should put 188 EVs into attack to make up the difference? Or 160 EVs to enable a mash OHKO? Does this make ice too specially weak? Cune's EVs let it outspeed wak with no boosts. And ofc Metagross is EV'd to beat Aero and Jolt post-agility.
Past Ideas
This is not the first version of this team. I tweeked the EVs on Cune to allow it to check Marowak better since I needed to use it on ladder but Timmys love to bloody my nose with jaskwak builds (ban jask please). I tweeked the spread on Zard too. The naive nature lets it take less from meteor mash while still hitting hard with punch. Finally, I experimented with Liechi Dugtrio in order to sweep lategame more effectively and prevent it from being setup bait if it subs, but the ability to kill tar instantly without having to faff around and get lefties as you sub up on it is the most important thing Dug can do for this team, so I wound up switching back to CB in the end.
Selected Matchups
Jolt spikes: Terrible matchup. This team has no way to handle spikes and it hates fast (in the sense that they don't need to set up) and fast (high speed stat) sweepers, which this archetype brings a lot of. The physicals that joltspikes commonly packs are exactly the ones that Regice doesn't like, too.
Mag Stall: This matchup comes down to how effectively cune can be deployed. Cune wrecks almost every member of this archetype extremely hard, setting up on both Celebi and Milotic while often getting them to burn a turn statusing its sub. The important thing is to scout who they have brought with them who might be able to handle cune: Skarmory or Snorlax come to mind. Then just dispatch those threats (or kill your whole team besides Cune, if you're up against Skarm), lure Milo with Zard, and allow Cune to run over their defensive core.
Physical offense (boom spam, mag, other): They tend to be slower which means that Jynx, Zard, and sometimes Cune can put them in messy situations. If they have a special pivot it's usually Zapdos which Regice loves, and they don't have many good Regice or Zard switchins usually. Remember you can trap meta with Dug.
Big five: Cune runs them over once you've removed sand, and Zard can threaten extremely hard before it's revealed. Zard and Meta can lategame the team once Pert is gone. Try to make them trade off their pieces and then exploit whatever weakness they've exposed.
Hyper offense (no spikes): everyone on this team can do immediate damage and several can live a hit so if you conserve your Aero checks then this is usually a matchup you win.
Random other balances: They often have spinners and trappers and whatnot that bounce off this team like candy. So it's a winning matchup most often.
Other matchups? Problematic Pokemon? Stuff I've missed? I'm interested in your take!
Your Contribution
I'm very interested in critique of this team. I have played a lot with it and I think it's pretty close to perfect which is why any info I can get that would bring it even closer to perfect would be extra valuable. I am learning this metagame very quickly right now so any insights/thoughts you can give about the structures present here and how they interact with the meta as a whole are also valuable.
Please play this team, but don't change the nicknames!
(edits: fixed typos incl. wrong nature on cune as pointed out by fruhdazi).
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