Australian Weather Rings the Victreebels

Hi! I'm Level 51, a VGC player hailing from the sunny island of Singapore. I'm here today to talk about a very silly team I created called Australian Weather, which, in its simplest form, aims to surprise opponents with Victreebel's rather, well, surprising damage output. However, unlike most powerhouses of the ORAS era, Victreebel's damage output comes not from a sky-high base stat—its Special Attack is "just" 100, which is pretty medicore by today's standards—but from the coverage options which this team provides it with through Weather Ball.

Although Victreebel is very much a best-of-one oriented set (and, to be completely honest, Pokémon in general), I tried to build a team which could also play well in best-of-three. This worked, though honestly not in the way I planned—instead of the team being solid enough to carry me through extended sets, the team won these sets by manipulating my opponents' expectations of the team's sets and therefore its playstyle, very often letting me catch them off-guard with a move they might not have expected even across multiple games.

Teambuilding Process

This team actually began its existence sometime in June with Victreebel operating under just the sun. I was testing out ideas for the Singapore Regionals, and I noticed Terence Dray's (Ty Flowsion) UK Nationals report where he ran Victreebel, so I decided to build around that.

Glasgow Weather.

Unfortunately, I remember pretty much nothing about this team, other than the fact that it didn't work wonderfully and I shelved it. Fast forward to later on in the year, when I was trying to build a team with Charizard Y. One thing I really dislike about Charizard Y teams are that you're often stuck with lots of Pokémon which are complete bait for Substitute Heatran, like Charizard Y, Venusaur, Cresselia, and so forth. In the aforementioned report, the writer mentions, alongside Victreebel, the possibility of dropping a Weather Ball in the Rain when describing his offensive coverage. Since I wasn't quite prepared to actually run Politoed, I used Rain Dance Thundurus instead:

Glasgow Weather Reincarnated.

This team wasn't great either. I hardly got to pull off the Rain Weather Ball thing since I had to get Sun up for the Chlorophyll boost first, spending a turn and probably forcing Victreebel to Protect, then bring Thundurus in and then use Rain Dance, which was highly inefficient and impractical. Giving up any hope of making this into a serious team, I replaced Thundurus with Politoed.

London Weather.

At this point, I had a pretty big problem with Kangaskhan (mommy issues, per se?), and I felt that slow-moving Conkeldurr didn't really fit in with the fairly fast-moving nature of the rest of the team, so I replaced it with slow-moving Aegislash, which at least patched up the Kangaskhan issue even if it didn't do much to fix the slow-moving part. Don't ask, it seemed to make sense at the time...

Australian Weather.

And there we have it! The extremely silly team that won me a PC. In the following paragraphs, I'll be describing exactly what happened en route to winning this PC so that you can see exactly how silly the team is.

Australian Weather

Charizard (F) @ Charizardite Y***CharYsma
Ability: Blaze
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 12 Def / 56 SpA / 188 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 30 SpA / 30 SpD
- Flamethrower
- Hidden Power [Ground]
- Tailwind
- Protect

Brought to 11/11 games (100%)

When I originally decided that I wanted to run Victreebel, the only sensible course of action was to pair it with a Charizard. I started off with a fairly standard Heat Wave / Solar Beam / Overheat set, but when I revived the team four months later it somehow morphed into this monstrosity.

This is a pretty weird Charizard set, yeah. I'll talk about the most normal thing first: the EVs were modified from my bulky spread from earlier in the year, which was in turn modified from Zog's spread from the end of 2014. That's right, stop calling it "Level 51's Charizard spread"; it's not. It's Zog's spread. I'm a fraud.

Now that that startling revelation is done with, I departed from the standard Heat Wave / Solar Beam / Overheat set for a few reasons. With a Victreebel on the team, I thought that Solar Beam would be pretty redundant, so I replaced it with Hidden Power Ground to damage Heatran in case it wasn't convenient to set up for a Rain Weather Ball. Next, I wanted to be able to guarantee the KO on (most) (not specially defensive) Aegislash without lowering my Special Attack or risking the 10% miss, so I replaced Heat Wave and Overheat with Flamethrower, essentially giving me No-Miss Charizard™.

Originally I ran Will-o-Wisp on the last slot; in conjunction with enough Speed EVs to outrun errant (neutral) Kangaskhan before they Mega Evolved, I managed to put some nice burns into opposing Kangaskhan. I then realised that not only was I Protecting against Kangaskhan on the first turn to avoid their Fake Outs anyway, I was also turning into a monster, setting fire to mother and child alike. Ignoring the fact that Charizard is technically already in the Monster egg group, I put Will-o-Wisp aside for a while to consider other options. I soon realised that my team didn't have many ways to deal with the infamous Dewgong Perish Trap team, so I brought my Landorus-Therian to rehab to wean it from its Choice Scarf addiction, changing it to an Assault Vest set to give me the flexibility to Earthquake opposing Mega Gengar while maintaining the ability to U-turn out of tough situations.

EV Spread Specifics

• Outruns neutral base 90s
• 252 Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 12 Def Mega Charizard Y: 153-182 (82.7 - 98.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Victreebel (F) @ Life Orb***Sara Senya
Ability: Chlorophyll
Level: 50
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Leaf Storm
- Weather Ball
- Encore
- Protect

Brought to 10/11 games (90.9%)

Victreebel was the Pokémon this team was built around, and unlike most of my silly Australian-style endeavours, it actually pulled its weight so I didn't enter every match 6-5 down. Weather Ball is the move this team is built around, and I really enjoyed using it during the tournament not just to see people's reactions (or lack thereof) when they lose their Aegislash or Heatran or Amoonguss to an oversized pitcher plant, but also for the animation, which reminds me of those gumball machines that featured not at all in my childhood. It's alright though, I don't even like gumballs.

The moveset here is pretty self-explanatory, so I won't say too much about it. Leaf Storm and Weather Ball together put FWG coverage onto a single Pokémon, which is actually really cool. Encore was also generally hilarious, since no one seems to realise that Victreebel even gets the move, allowing me to lock opponents into Fake Out, Substitute, Protect, resisted hits, and so forth.

Those familiar with pitcher plants should realise the brilliance that went into this name, but once again I must admit my thievery. Unfortunately, this breathtaking conception once again belongs to Zog, who by now must be sick of me stealing everything from his EV spreads to his in-game name (which is what this is). If you're reading this, Zog—though I don't see why you would be—sorry!

EV Spread Specifics

• 252+ SpA Life Orb Victreebel Weather Ball (100 BP Fire) vs. 252 HP / 100 SpD Amoonguss in Sun: 221-260 (100 - 117.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
• 252+ SpA Life Orb Victreebel Weather Ball (100 BP Water) vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Heatran in Rain: 198-234 (118.5 - 140.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Politoed (F) @ Sitrus Berry***Poliamorous
Ability: Drizzle
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 172 Def / 84 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Icy Wind
- Encore
- Perish Song

Brought to 2/11 games (18.2%)

Yes, I admit it, I stole OmegaDonut's Politoed nickname as well. I'm a hardened nickname thief, and I don't regret it one bit (sorry). Politoed pulled out a lot of clutch plays in practice, and I don't regret adding it to the team one bit. On the ladder, I saw an Entei or Heatran something like every other battle, but on the day itself, I met just two Fire-types which required me to bring Politoed (Yoko's Infernape and Kenny's Heatran), and as such it was by far the Pokémon I brought to the least games. While they both ate a Rain-boosted Weather Ball at some point, I guess dropping the blue magic is a one-off play that's more suited for best-of-one play, and I never brought it into play in either of my rematches against Yoko and Kenny—in fact, even bringing out the Weather Ball play against Kenny in Swiss was somewhat of an overextension which took my Victreebel out of play and let him get Trick Room up, costing me the game.

Interestingly enough, I feel like the threat of blue magic was enough to mess with opponents' plays when I got around to rematching them; for example, although my top cut match against Yoko started the same way our Swiss match did, I shot a Leaf Storm at her Porygon-Z instead of going for the Rain Weather Ball onto her Infernape. She switched out her Infernape that turn, giving me a huge advantage.

Besides the mind games Politoed's mere presence brought about, I also thought it had the capacity to be an interesting force in battle. Perish Song, notably, gave me an alternate endgame win condition if I was facing down some Pokémon the team couldn't touch, such as Ferrothorn, which walls the entire team after my Charizard goes down. Icy Wind also provided some form of speed control, ensuring that I didn't have to rely so much on Chlorophyll to keep Victreebel moving fast, as well as bumping up my team's effective Speed tiers in general. Finally, Encore capitalised on the various forms of Speeed control my team contains, and works on the general idea that a speedy Encore is always amazing.

As I'm writing this section I realise that extreme Sun and Rain pretty much epitomises Singapore weather, so perhaps I should have named the team that. Oh well.

EV Spread Specifics

• 252 SpA Life Orb Thundurus Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 84+ SpD Politoed: 164-195 (83.2 - 98.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Sitrus Berry recovery

Aegislash (F) @ Weakness Policy***ae(gyz)lash
Ability: Stance Change
Level: 50
EVs: 236 HP / 196 SpA / 76 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Shadow Ball
- Sacred Sword
- Wide Guard
- King's Shield

Brought to 5/11 games (45.5%)

Aegislash, the Pokémon called after my own namesake! Somehow, Kangaskhan ends up being an issue on pretty much all of my teams, even when I dedicate an entire slot to it like Sableye or Terrakion or something, kind of like how I fail Economics after spending like two weeks studying for it. In the end, I gave up trying to do that, and figured that I'd just have to play around it (also kind of like how I gave up trying to study Economics; would not recommend this course of action).

Since I was running a Weakness Policy on Aegislash anyway, I figured I could afford to run a more defensive Aegislash, so I opted for the specially defensive build you see here and never looked back. This spread is so much bulkier than a straight 252/252 Quiet spread, and I really enjoyed being able to take decently powerful neutral hits in Blade Forme, which eased the King's Shield / attack predictions somewhat. The extra bulk also come in very handy multiple times throughout the tournament, letting Aegislash get an extra one or two attacks off, which is very significant—especially if it's at +2.

By now, you may have noticed that this Aegislash runs Sacred Sword, a move long forgotten and left behind in the dust of VGC '14. During playtesting, I noticed that I wasn't using Flash Cannon all that much, since I used it pretty much exclusively for Sylveon, and even then when I wanted to target one down, there was always a better move to make which usually involved Wide Guard or King's Shield. I decided to switch Flash Cannon to Sacred Sword to deal better damage to Kangaskhan—in fact, after a Weakness Policy boost, which is pretty easy to pull off when Kangaskhan throws a Sucker Punch at Aegislash, Sacred Sword can OHKO less bulky variants of Mega Kangaskhan even uninvested. I guess running Sacred Sword would be like me studying Economics but only when I'm free or something. Then again, this metaphor has gone on way too far.

Another interesting feature of this set is that revealing Shadow Ball and Sacred Sword before revealing Wide Guard can make opponents assume that it runs 3 attacks (with Flash Cannon) and King's Shield. While not originally intended as part of the way the team plays, this choice would allow me to catch opponents off-guard with Wide Guard in the following turns or following games, giving me a little trick to employ in best-of-three sets. Interestingly enough, this actually came in really handy in both my Top 8 and Finals matches.

EV Spread Specifics

• 252+ Atk Life Orb Bisharp Sucker Punch vs. 236 HP / 0 Def Aegislash-Shield: 135-164 (81.8 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
• 252+ SpA Mega Charizard Y Heat Wave vs. 236 HP / 76+ SpD Aegislash-Shield in Sun: 138-164 (83.6 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
• +2 0 Atk Aegislash-Blade Sacred Sword vs. 92 HP / 0 Def Mega Kangaskhan: 192-228 (100 - 118.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Landorus-Therian @ Assault Vest***SKILL
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 124 HP / 148 Atk / 20 Def / 4 SpD / 212 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- U-turn
- Superpower

Brought to 8/11 games (72.7%)

As mentioned earlier, my Landorus-Therian was originally all geared up for winter with a stylish Choice Scarf to complement the winter colours. Unfortunately, it soon realised that winter does not actually exist in Singapore, which is why it now has to hold on to a significantly less stylish Assault Vest.

Style aside, being able to actually change moves on Landorus-Therian was an amazing feeling. Too often I'm about to click Rock Slide, when it strikes me that then I'll be stuck using a spread, non-STAB, 75 BP move until I switch out. At this point I'll either run out of time and have the game make me Earthquake into my conveniently placed Steel-type partner, or realise that no one actually uses Skill Rock Slide for its damage output anyway, if you get what I mean. Anyway, Landorus was pretty much here to chew gum and Intimidate things, and it ran out of gum on the way to the tournament, so I bought it some more. Aren't I a nice trainer.

Landorus-Therian is literally pivotal for this team, since that's what it's doing a lot. When it's not switching in for the sole purpose of Intimidating opposing Pokémon, though, Landorus can actually function as an excellent physical attacker for the team since it's been freed from the tyranny of the blue scarf! As a side note, since every paragraph I write seems to have one by necessity: apparently, no one actually runs U-turn on non-choiced Landorus-Therian, but since the whole reason I switched to Assault Vest in the first place was to better my Perish Trap matchup, I figured I'd better leave it on. And that was how this (not) amazing set was born!

EV Spread Specifics

• Outruns Timid max speed Gengar at -1 under Tailwind
• +1 252+ Atk Life Orb Bisharp Sucker Punch vs. 124 HP / 20 Def Landorus-T: 152-179 (84.4 - 99.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
• 252 SpA Mega Charizard Y Overheat vs. 124 HP / 4 SpD Assault Vest Landorus-T in Sun: 153-181 (85 - 100.5%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO

Bisharp (M) @ Focus Sash***Bayoknight
Ability: Defiant
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Assurance
- Sucker Punch
- Iron Head
- Protect

Brought to 8/11 games (72.7%)

I'd like to begin by apologising for Bisharp's nickname, which was something that I thought was pretty funny at the time but turned out not to be. Just like my entire team, Bisharp's nickname is completely outclassed by better alternatives such as Open♥Surgery, Wife Her, or some obscure joke about Australian electronic dance music. At least it's better than the ubiquitous variants on the chess theme that you see all over the ladder as well as in your worst nightmares.

That said, Bisharp was originally added as an Aegislash counter, which is a pretty funny concept if you consider the fact that this team already has Charizard Y, Sun Weather Ball Victreebel, specially defensive Aegislash, and Assault Vest Landorus-T. I can't help it; I've had so many traumatic experiences sitting on the wrong side of Aegislash's cold, unfeeling Steel as I call every Wide Guard / King's Shield / attack decision wrong.

Looking at the set, Assurance is the only odd move out, which seems downright silly at first, since it doesn't OHKO Aegislash without the boost from prior damage, which misses the point of being a 1-on-1 counter to Aegislash. However, the team on the whole is rather weak to Trick Room teams, since Pokémon like Charizard and Victreebel can't take hits from most Trick Room attackers very well, while members like Politoed and Aegislash without an activated Weakness Policy don't do much in return. Therefore, I wanted to be able to OHKO most Trick Room setters from turn 1, before they had a chance to get Trick Room up. Assurance was the best way I had to do this, if opponents relied on just their setters' natural bulk to get Trick Room up. For those of you shouting at me now about Bisharp speed tying with my own Victreebel outside of the sun: first, you're shouting at a computer screen. Get over it, man. Second, I did consider lowering Bisharp's Speed EVs to 244, which would have let it get the Assurance boost next to Victreebel whether in or out of sun. However, I never got around to changing it because I was too lazy to go to the Pokemon Showdown teambuilder and tweak the EVs. There, now you can shout at me. Be sure to wipe the spittle off your screen after you're done.

EV Spread Specifics

• Bisharp is cute.

Team Synergies and Lead Combinations

Unlike many teams I've seen win tournaments this season, my team can't claim to select any four and lead any two based solely on the opposing team composition. Or rather, I could do this, but I tended to have a fixed set of optimal lead combinations which I chose from going into a battle. From there, I had a bit more flexibility in selecting the two members I brought in the back depending on what I thought would support my main damage-dealers well.

Perhaps the most obvious lead pairing, extremely boring but also extremely effective at getting Victreebel into its element. The most obvious way to play this is to double Protect on turn 1 while Mega Evolving Charizard, which not only gives me the Chlorophyll boost on Victreebel but also allows Victreebel to give the opponents an Encore, which is especially applicable if they opened with a Protect or Fake Out. The fun part about Encore is that if the opponent predicts my double Protect and goes for a Substitute or something, I can lock them into that as well, turning my opponents' momentum against them.

Alternatively, if my opponent opened with two Pokémon both either slower than Victreebel or which posed no threat to it, sometimes directly attacking was the play to go for. Victreebel's sheer damage output often caught opponents off-guard, unlike other inferior Chlorophyll users like Venusaur which catches no one at all off-guard because it's usually too busy holding a Venusaurite to boost its damage output with a sensible item like a Life Orb.

This was an extremely safe lead which I brought when I wasn't confident of Victreebel's potential damage output or its ability to get a meaningful Encore off. It was with a lead like this where I was really grateful for the Speed investment I had put into Charizard, since it gave Charizard more of an offensive presence on the field. Combined with Landorus-Therian's similarly speedy build, this lead allowed me to pursue the simple course of putting damage onto opposing Pokémon quickly. This let me chipping away at opponents so that Victreebel or Bisharp could come in later and clean up with a Chlorophyll boost or Sucker Punch's priority respectively, but—perhaps more importantly—it also gave me the option of an anti-cheese lead to shut down a lot of dumb strategies which I expected to play both on the ladder and perhaps in the earlier rounds of the PC (as you'll see later, the teams I faced at the PC were surprisingly legitimate).

I don't know about you, but I'm seeing a trend here which may or may not explain Charizard's 100% usage in the PC. This lead was my preferred lead against SemiRoom teams, which often didn't have a dedicated support slot to help Trick Room get started; if they did, it was usually Amoonguss, which I managed to deter from even entering the field with the threat of a roasting from Charizard. Otherwise, a Flamethrower + Assurance onto the Trick Room setter easily removes them from the field. This was especially important to me because I wanted Bisharp to function as a stop to Trick Room, which was not always possible with Knock Off either because of the difference in power (120 is significantly higher than 97.5), or because I would end up using Knock Off after a prior attack had caused the target to consume its Sitrus Berry, dealing even less damage and giving me no hope of stopping Trick Room from going up.

The Tournament

And so, after working on the team on-and-off for about six months in total, I went into my 3rd PC of the 2016 season without any other good team in mind. Since I figured Worlds was something out of my grasp for now, I decided to bring this team and have a little fun with it. I spent a little bit of time hyping up Australian Weather online with a few of my friends, and proceeded to attend the tournament, expecting to miss cut at x-2 or x-3 as usual.

I'd talk a bit more about the tournament in general, but that would make this report really pretty long, and I wouldn't want to write a 10,000-word report on a simple PC team. What I will say is that although a 33-man PC doesn't seem like a huge deal, the PC coincided with the Anime Festival Asia here in Singapore, meaning that pretty much everyone who still showed up for the tournament was a pretty serious player.

Finally, before I launch into recounting the battles, I'd like to apologise in advance for everything that I've forgotten or left out. I never actually take notes at tournaments, since that has proven to not help me tremendously well in the past, making it somewhat of a waste of paper for me. Thus, everything in this report is based off my memory and the battle videos that I have access to.

Round 1: Xavier Chua (finished 2-3, 23rd in Swiss)

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I decided to go straight for my Sun mode, since Victreebel can take on Venusaur pretty much one-on-one. I bring Bisharp in the back to grab a Defiant boost from the possible Hitmontop and to priority the heck of his team, and Landorus-Therian in case his Charizard proves too much for the rest of my team to handle. The game goes fairly smoothly as I manage to identify his Scarf Mamoswine early on, and a Heat Wave miss on my Victreebel simplifies matters as I win 4-0.

In a plot twist, however, I later found out that Xavier was not quite the random I had written him off to be! A little bit of digging online found that Xavier had qualified for numerous Worlds in the past, even reaching the top 16 in Worlds 2012!... in the Trading Card Game. Still an impressive feat, though; hope you show up more in the future, Xavier!

Overall record: 1-0

Round 2: Yoko Taguma (finished 4-1, 6th in Swiss; top 4 overall)

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The team looked a little weird, but I figured Victreebel could put a lot of damage into the team if it went unchecked, so the Sun lead just happened again; I bring Landorus-T in the back for sliding Rocks everywhere and also Politoed to give myself an alternate win condition through Perish Song. I lead Charizard and Victreebel into her Infernape and Porygon-Z, and double Protect on turn 1 to get the Sun up as she spits a Flare Blitz and a Hyper Beam into my Protects.

This is where a horrible, nasty idea crosses my mind. I switch out Charizard for Politoed and drop some BLUE MAGIC onto Yoko's Infernape as her Porygon-Z fails to OHKO Politoed with a Hyper Beam. Some switching and manoeuvring ensues, but I manage to chip Salamence into the range of Victreebel's Weather Ball and KO Porygon-Z with a Superpower while it recharges. Finally, Yoko's Lapras fails to reveal Ice Shard, sealing up the game for me.

Overall record: 2-0

Round 3: Gavin Thio (finished 4-1, 3rd in Swiss; top 8 overall)

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Some confusion ensues this round as Soon pronounces my opponent's name as 'guh-vin', causing me to ask people if they were named 'guh-vin'. Eventually, I find that my opponent's name is actually pronounced in the standard way, and get this battle underway.

Gavin's team is absolutely terrifying, especially the possibility of a Talonflame / Smeargle lead, and I realise that my win condition against such a lead is to hope that his Smeargle's Dark Void misses. I'm so confused and overwhelmed by the possible leads that I end up falling back on my usual Sun lead, with Bisharp and Landorus-Therian in the back. Thankfully, Gavin doesn't actually bring Talonflame at all throughout the match, and he doesn't even lead Smeargle, which is great news for me as I faces down a Kangaskhan / Milotic lead from Gavin. The game goes pretty much perfectly—I Encore Kangaskhan into Sucker Punch while setting up a Tailwind with Charizard, and switch Bisharp in on Milotic's Icy Wind, bringing me to +2 while (thanks to the Tailwind) not rendering me slower than Kangaskhan.

Puzzlingly, on the next turn Gavin opts to use Icy Wind once again while I KO his Kangaskhan with Sucker Punch, bringing Bisharp to +4 Attack. He brings in Landorus-Therian to replace Kangaskhan, and—even more confusingly—conveys his surprise that +5 Bisharp's Sucker Punch KOs Landorus. His last Pokémon turns out to be Smeargle, so I opt to target down Milotic, which was pretty much his last source of damage. Indeed, Smeargle does nothing much but put both my Pokémon to sleep and Transform into my switched-in Landorus-Therian, bringing my Bisharp to +6 for perhaps the first time in my Pokémon career as I wake from the Dark Void and nab the 4-0 with complete Assurance. Thankfully for Gavin, he must have played better than that the rest of the day to cut at 4-1.

Overall record: 3-0

Round 4: Kenny Lee (finished 4-1, 4th in Swiss; 2nd overall)

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At this point I'm starting to think that I can maybe cut my first PC of the season, since I "just" have to win one of my next two matches to ensure cut. This makes me feel weirdly confident about this team... until I see that I next have to battle Kenny on stream. Kenny is one of those people who no one in Singapore really wants to battle, since he's been extremely consistent in PCs he's attended since the circuit opened here, even if he hasn't done particularly well at Nationals or Worlds.

I'm somewhat encouraged as I look at Kenny's team—Suicune is an easy target for Victreebel, as are Heatran, Amoonguss and Landorus-Therian if I can get the correct weathers up at the right times. I know his Kangaskhan runs Fake Out, so there's potential for some surprise Encore plays here as well. I decide to open with my Sun lead for the fourth time in four battles, and in the back I bring Politoed for blue magic (and also Perish Song, since his team looks really bulky) and Bisharp for Sucker Punch in case his Suicune gets a Tailwind up or something.

He leads Cresselia / Kangaskhan, and only here do I remember something about his Cresselia having Trick Room. I decide to eschew the double Protect and go straight for a Flamethrower and Encore into the Kangaskhan slot. Happily, he goes for the Fake Out onto Charizard, letting me lock Kangaskhan into Fake Out as Trick Room goes up. Considering my options for the next turn, I realise that Kenny is probably going to switch his Kangaskhan into Heatran, since what else would you bring in against Sun? At this point, I go full tunnel vision on my plays, and decide to go for the Rain Weather Ball on the predicted Heatran switch-in. While it works—much to the delight of the audience—I lose my Victreebel in the process, losing me a ton of momentum as a couple of turns later, my Bisharp and Politoed are staring down a Kangaskhan and Amoonguss under Trick Room. After the promising start, the battle quickly spirals out of control, and I lose it outright 0-2.

After the match, Kenny remarks on how scary it is to get hit by a Rain Weather Ball, and in the exchange that follows, I happen to mention that my Charizard has Hidden Power Ground to deal with Heatran as well. Some time after I let this piece of information go, I realised that with Kenny at 4-0 and me at 3-1, there was a pretty good chance I would have to play him again in the top cut, and that I probably shouldn't have told him that. But what's said is said, and this piece of information actually came into play in our finals match.

Overall record: 3-1

Round 5: Reuven Tan (finished 3-2, 8th in Swiss; Top 4 overall)

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Reuven's team is actually pretty scary, especially if (as I thought at the time) you're up against it in a cut-or-go-home(-or-spectate-if-you-don't-want-to-be-perceived-as-antisocial) match. I decide that my Sun lead won't be too great here, since double Protecting on Turn 1 to get the Chlorophyll boost for Victreebel would make me an easy target for Encore shenanigans, while not Protecting would let Volcarona outrun me and go for the KO on Victreebel. I decided in the end to go for the relatively safe lead of Charizard / Landorus-Therian, which would let me go for a Tailwind to outrun Volcarona at +1.

I choke straight from the get-go, hitting my forehead Gavin Michaels-style when I use Earthquake instead of Rock Slide while Reuven opts not to Protect Volcarona and not to Fake Out Landorus-Therian, instead stopping my Tailwind while I bring both Volcarona and Liepard down to about 60%. However, this is counterbalanced as Reuven's play the next turn, as he assumes the Choice Scarf on Landorus-Therian and Protects his Volcarona, Foul Plays my Landorus also for about 60%, and falls to an Earthquake while I get a Tailwind up. He sends in his Azumarill, hoping to finish off Landorus. However, unboosted Azumarill's Aqua Jet in the Sun is fairly weak, and he only manages to bring me down to the red while I go for the Earthquake + Flamethrower. A critical hit with Flamethrower onto Azumarill knocks it out, simplifying the game massively as I remove his Swagger-less Thundurus easily to nab a conclusive 4-0 in my last round of Swiss.

Overall record: 4-1, 2nd in Swiss

As it turns out, I was actually the 4-1 with the highest resistance, sitting at a pretty decent 68.00%, so even if I had lost the last round, I would still have cut as the 7th seed. However, it's just as well that I did win the last round, since this puts me up against a team which I'm really happy to face:

Top 8: Melvin Keh (finished 3-2, 7th in Swiss; Top 8 overall)

During Swiss round 3, Melvin went on stream, and I commented to a friend that my team pretty much hard counters his. With Rotom-Wash, Landorus-Therian and Terrakion to Leaf Storm, Aegislash and Amoonguss to Weather Ball, and Kangaskhan to lock into either Fake Out or Protect with Encore, I figured I would have a pretty good time this match. My goal here was to clean up the first game as fast as possible, so that I still had some tricks unrevealed for the second game.

Game 1

+ /

This game goes pretty much just as planned, as I lead with my Sun mode into his Kangaskhan / Rotom-Wash. After double Protecting to get the Sun up, I reveal the Encore early and lock Melvin's Kangaskhan into Fake Out; the next turn, his Rotom-Wash uses Protect, and I manage to lock him into that too as he switches in his Terrakion to take Kangaskhan's place. However, he Protects his Terrakion while switching Kangaskhan in, forcing me to bring Victreebel out of play for fear of a Fake Out.

Since I am facing up against a Terrakion and a Kangaskhan, I bring in Aegislash at this point. I get a Sacred Sword off on Melvin's Terrakion, removing it from the game, and at this point, nothing left on his team can really stand up to a Bisharp + Charizard offensive, especially as it turns out that his Kangaskhan is slower than my Bisharp.

After Game 1, Melvin realises that he forgot to take notes on my Aegislash. He recalls seeing Flash Cannon, which is odd since I don't even run it, but I'm not about to correct him. I feel bad about this for quite a while afterwards, but he seemed alright with it after I apologised to him after the match for being kind of a turd.

Game 2

+ /

This game is a lot less straightforward. I figure he's going to bring Terrakion + Kangaskhan, since that was the combination that gave me trouble in Game 1, but for some reason my brain doesn't make the connection to an Aegislash lead, instead figuring that I can Encore something with Victreebel. oops.

I do get the Sun up again as usual, but I opt not to Encore Kangaskhan's Fake Out, instead going for the Leaf Storm into Terrakion, bringing it down to its Focus Sash. Here, I avoid a Rock Slide from Terrakion, leaving me outside of Sucker Punch range, but Melvin makes a neat prediction on the next turn, removing Victreebel with a Return from Kangaskhan.

After a lot of Protect-and-pray "predictions" on my end, Terrakion goes down to a Sucker Punch, being replaced by Rotom-Wash. From here, I can safely bring back Charizard to remove Melvin's slow Kangaskhan, which is replaced by Landorus-Therian, and a timely reveal of Wide Guard (perhaps aided by Melvin's preconceptions about my Aegislash set) lets Charizard avoid a Rocky fate as I roast his Landorus-Therian. Specially defensive Aegislash saves the day as it takes a Hydro Pump from Rotom-Wash to return the favour with a Shadow Ball, netting me this match.

Top 4: Yoko Taguma

While I have managed to progress to the Top 4, Yoko's team is actually really scary for me, especially since I don't think I'll be able to repeat the Rain Weather Ball play, which is a shame, since that was one of my most reliable ways of dealing with Infernape. I think this speaks volumes about this team's Infernape matchup.

Game 1

+ /

In the interlude between Top 8 and Top 4, I was tipped off by Gavin that Yoko's Infernape doesn't run Feint, since he Transformed into it with his Smeargle in their Top 8 match. Therefore, I feel a lot more confident opening the match with a double Protect, getting the Sun up as Yoko repeats her Swiss moves, shooting a Flare Blitz and Hyper Beam into my Protects. Since I didn't even bring Politoed this match, the best I can do is to Leaf Storm into Porygon-Z and get a Tailwind up. This works marvellously; Porygon-Z goes down and I get some tasty speed control on the field.

I double Protect again, hoping that Yoko will go for a Fake Out which I can Encore. She does, and the threat of Encore forces her Infernape off the field again, letting me get some free chip damage onto both Salamence and her Lapras switchin. Although Yoko does manage to stall out my Tailwind eventually, I pivot around my Aegislash in the back to get Charizard in the correct position for a second Tailwind, which I'm confident has sealed up the game for me... until Yoko's Lapras reveals Perish Song. Thankfully, a helpful burn on her Lapras means I don't have to rely on Rock Slide hitting both opponents to win the game within the three-turn limit.

Game 2

+ /

As is (unsurprisingly) the trend with all my top cut matches, Game 2 goes much less smoothly than Game 1. Between matches, I notice that her leading with Infernape / Salamence would put a lot of pressure on my typical Sun lead, so I switch it up and go for a Landorus / Charizard lead, with Victreebel in the back alongside Bisharp, since priority is always useful and Aegislash did nothing last game except get OHKOd by a Sun-boosted Flare Blitz.

She leads as I expected, but an early double target into my Landorus-Therian knocks it out and puts my team under a lot of stress, while Charizard Protecting that turn means that I got nothing done at all. Matters get worse the next turn, as Salamence's Double-Edge gets a critical hit onto my Charizard, knocking it out before I can remove Yoko's Infernape with Hidden Power Ground. Infernape's Close Combat brings Bisharp down to its Focus Sash, and as I switch in Victreebel I'm mentally preparing for Game 3.

However, I notice a way out—Yoko's Salamence and Infernape are within KO range of either a Sucker Punch or a Weather Ball, especially since Infernape's defenses have been lowered. Yoko switches her Infernape into Lapras, which is promptly KOd by a Leaf Storm, and the next turn, I double Protect on her Infernape's Fake Out. For some reason, Yoko stays in with both her Pokémon, allowing her Infernape to be locked into Fake Out and her Salamence to finally be KOd by Sucker Punch after a lot of Protecting. She reveals that her last Pokémon is her Choice Scarf Porygon-Z, sealing up the game for me as I remove it with a Leaf Storm + Sucker Punch while Yoko's Infernape sits harmlessly on the field and is later removed easily.

A lot went on in that battle, and I'm aware that my description of it probably seems extremely jumbled to most readers, but I guess that's what happens when you try to compress 9 turns of thought process into 3 paragraphs, so I've uploaded the Battle Video of this game, which you can peruse in your free time: RYKG-WWWW-WW36-N98W. Sorry about that.

Finals: Kenny Lee

Game 1

+ /

Game 2

+ /

Thanks to the efforts of Zong Ying and his amazing stream setup, you can watch both games and the post-match interview right here, so I'd just like to recount a few turns that I thought were kind of important.

Game 1, Team Preview
Since Rain Weather Ball didn't go so well in my Swiss match, I decided to leave Politoed on the bench. I also figured that I would really like to stop Trick Room from going up, so I lead with my Aegislash and Landorus-Therian to deter Cresselia from staying in.

Game 1, Turn 4
Welp, I have done something like zero damage and I'm in a pretty bad position. I realise that by revealing Shadow Ball and Sacred Sword, Kenny probably assumes that I'm not running Wide Guard, giving Charizard an opportunity to remove Kangaskhan under protection from Wide Guard.

Game 1, Turn 5
I don't actually mind if I don't get the King's Shield this turn, I just want to get Aegislash into Shield Forme so that even if Landorus hits me with the Earthquake or Knock Off, all it'll do is activate my Weakness Policy.

Game 1, Turn 6
I was fairly sure that Kenny would go for a Trick Room + Rock Slide play. I'm not sure exactly why I thought that. Something something Amoonguss. I kind of cried inside when Charizard went down.

Game 1, Turn 7
Does Kenny's Amoonguss even run Rage Powder? I thought it did, but up until now I still don't know. rip. I win anyway, I guess!

Game 2, Team Preview
At this point I'm fairly confident Kenny won't try going for the Trick Room mode any more, since it sure didn't work for him last game, so I bring my favourite Sun lead, plus Landorus-Therian for general Intimdate and Rock Slide utility and Aegislash, just in case he does try to go for Trick Room with Cresselia.

Game 2, Turn 1
I don't double Protect because I'm confident Kenny will go for the Fake Out + Tailwind play, so I decide to go for a win-win scenario: either Kangaskhan Fakes Out Victreebel and I get my Tailwind up to match his, or Kangaskhan Fakes Out Charizard and I get a Leaf Storm into Suicune, which will almost definitely net me the KO if it hits. Unfortunately Kenny outplays me, and I lose my Victreebel, though I do get a Tailwind up.

Game 2, Turn 2
I overestimate the damage output of my Landorus here, but I get bailed out by a timely critical hit on Kangaskhan which I'm fairly sure was necessary. I'd also like to mention that I found it pretty funny that the commentators assumed I had Solar Beam all along, and mentioned it every single turn.

Game 2, Turn 3
I actually didn't know that Kenny's Amoonguss doesn't run Protect until the commentators mentioned it. But I had locked in my moves by then, I swear! :x

Game 2, Turn 6
I was about to go for the King's Shield + Tailwind when I realised I had used Wide Guard last turn. I just had to pray that Scald didn't knock out Aegislash, but as it turns out, me randomly choosing specially defensive Aegislash during the teambuilding process saves me from having to endure a Game 3 as I take the win.

As the lovely commentators Matthew and Wai Yin mentioned multiple times throughout the match and interview, Kenny didn't bring Heatran. Interestingly enough, at the start of the match, during Team Preview, I saw him note down that my Charizard ran Hidden Power Ground, which is perhaps what scared him away from bringing his Heatran to the match, which would have given me a lot more trouble than, say, Amoonguss. In the end, maybe it was my conversational slip-up that won me this tournament! We'll never know.

Conclusion

I won! That was pretty unexpected. I'm still not really going to take this season all that seriously—even if I do somehow qualify for Worlds I'll be too busy with preparing for a major exam to participate—but it's nice to know I can still win things now and then! More than anything, this tournament was a pretty neat boost for my morale. Plus, I got a free plushie! Can't complain about that.

• My (unnamed) Smogon friends for coming down literally just to watch me play! Seriously guys you should play sometime ugh
• Luke (Dog-For-Dinner) for trying in vain to persuade me to use a real team. Well, "real" as far as Australian teams go.
• Ian (raikoo) for supplying all the Pokémon for the team with just a few days' notice. Couldn't have done it without you, quite literally!
• Zong Ying (tanzying) for laughing at my team during the Team Check and then finally admitting it wasn't that bad.
• Matthew (Spiritshipper) for putting up with me talking nonsense throughout the interview. Sorry for rolling my eyes as well as the mental dice.
• Aaron (Cybertron) for agreeing to feature this team on his Road to Ranked series! I look forward to being accused of stealing "Cybertron Sun".
• And you, the reader, for staying with me through over 8000 words and many walls of text, most of which was written with half of my brain across many midnights! Sorry about that. Hope it wasn't absolutely terrible.

Sceptile Series Premier Challenge Teams

Hello and a warm welcome to everyone reading this article. On this page, the members of AusTerrain have posted all of the teams we've used for PCs in the Sceptile Series across different parts of Australia and Singapore. All PCs in Australia use a Best of 3 format, whereas in Singapore they use a Best of 1 format, and as such all of these teams were designed for use within the respective rulesets. 

Nihal Noor - @UchihaX96 

Sunday, November 8th 2015 - Morwell VIC PC

Top 4 : 4-2 Swiss, 14 CP

This team is focused around Timid Gardevoir and overwhelming opponents with fast Hyper Voice. Landorus and Thundurus are a great supporting cast, and physically defensive Amoonguss really helps Gardevoir get its attacks off. The Thundurus here is Timid with Life Orb and aside from its attacking moves, it has Protect and Swagger. AV Lando and Timid Sub ShucaTran provide some good defensive synergy with Amoonguss. Gardevoir also has Encore in it’s 3rd moveslot, and this allows it to win against Pokémon like Aegislash or Heatran if executed at the right time. The 6th Pokémon slot is really a filler slot, and I considered using Kangaskhan or Scarf Tyranitar, but I had Belly Drum Azumarill here. Though I didn’t use Azumarill even once during the tournament, the team preview pressure it provided was invaluable.

The team can be found in text format here.

Saturday, November 21st 2015 - Werribee VIC PC

Top 4 : 6-0 Swiss, 24 CP

This team falls under the standard “Japan Sand” archetype with Mixed Mence, Life Orb Excadrill and Choice Scarf Tyranitar. An interesting thing to note is that I chose to use “Billaslash”, i.e, Substitute + Wide Guard on Aegislash with Leftovers. I think this helps the team considerably, but you do have to be mindful of damaging or knocking out Kangaskhan since you can’t hit it with Aegislash. Rotom-Wash is the cookie cutter Sitrus Berry variant that speed creeps Bisharp while the Amoonguss is physically defensive. Tyranitar having Assurance was great, as some teams in Swiss were just run over by a combination of Tyranitar + Excadrill. I don’t think this team is that great right now, especially since it struggles against TR CHALK even if it does have an Amoonguss. Thundurus with proper support also shuts down this team save for the Excadrill, but it was a comfort pick for this PC since I didn’t know what else I wanted to run.

I've left the full team in a pastebin.

Sunday, November 22nd 2015 - Morwell VIC PC #2

1st Place : 4-1 Swiss, 30 CP

This team is rather queer at first glance, but it's been getting popular all around the world. I only dropped one set with it the entire day, and it was definitely a great meta call for this PC. I had to play Ty (@Sarkastik) in the finals, and he had nothing to stop Tauros, so it just ran him over. Tauros is god~

One thing to note about this team is that it is very heavily matchup dependent. It can run over a lot of unprepared teams, but some matchups are incredibly tough to beat. Sand is one such matchup, and it was a daring call to use this here in Melbourne in a sand filled meta.  

Credit goes to Shun (Follow him on Twitter here -  @ShinonVGC or @Jimon_Togekiss - English and Japanese accounts respectively) as the original creator of this team, and any information regarding the team can be found on Shun’s personal blog here.
Zach Droegkamp (Follow him on Twitter here - @Braverius) also did pretty well with this team in a few PCs that he went to, and his blog has more information about some of the move choices and EV spreads used. You can find this information on his blog here. 

Saturday, November 28th 2015 - Box Hill VIC PC

Top 16 : 4-2 Swiss, 18 CP

How to not Top Cut an event :

• Miss a Sheer Cold on the deciding turn in Game 3 of Round 6 where the winner makes cut and the loser wallows in his own misery.

Yes that happened and no I don't regret it. It would have been the funniest thing had I actually landed the Sheer Cold with Smeargle.

This is the same team that Jiwa used at the PCs he went to, and a little more information about the team is available below!

Matthew Jiwa - @JiwaVGC

Saturday, November 21st 2015 - Werribee VIC PC

 Top 16 : 4-2 Swiss, 18 CP

Saturday, November 28th 2015 - Box Hill VIC PC

 Top 8 : 5-1 Swiss, 21 CP

I originally began testing this team after watching Zyihk (@MatthewBockman) play a few games with it on PS!. I won't go into too much depth, as there might still be plans for this team in the future. I felt that this team thrived even more in a best of 3 setting, as unexpected Lum Berries and moves such as Magic Coat could be discovered and worked around. Porygon2 and Landorus-T were the supporting cast, with the former providing an excellent option against the ever prevalent CHALK-T and sand-archetypes, both of which proved to be popular throughout this series of PCs.

The combination of Ice Beam, HP Ground and Toxic were able to deal were able to deal well with common Pokémon such as Amoonguss, Cresselia, Salamence, Heatran, Aegislash. Even Landorus-T requires an uncommon amount of investment to survive an Analytic boosted Ice Beam when carrying Assault Vest.

After playing over cautiously in the first PC and failing to make cut, the team managed to go 10-0 (5-0 in sets) in the swiss rounds of the second PC, throwing the final round to Ty to ensure we would both cut comfortably. Unfortunately the run ended there, as I lost to one of my swiss opponents in Top 8, losing the lead match-up in both games to his combination of LieLoom and scarfed Landorus-T.

As mentioned, I won't be posting the full team, but you can find something much better here instead.

Ty Power - @SarkastikVGC

Saturday, November 21st 2015 - Werribee VIC PC

Top 16 : 4-2 Swiss, 18 CP

 

Really standard CHALK team that I used as a comfort pick because I hadn't played much in the months leading up to this event. Notable sets include Choice Band Landorus, Sludge Bomb Amoonguss and Kee Berry Cresselia. The team worked well but some bad luck stopped me from progressing further. Not a whole lot else to say <3

The spreads of the team can be found here.

Sunday, November 22nd 2015 - Morwell VIC PC #2

2nd Place : 3-2 Swiss, 20 CP

  

This team was based on SamVGC's (Follow him on Twitter - @SamVGC) Houston Regionals team which can be found on his blog here. After talking with him about the team a bit, I decided to change Landorus to Scrafty because I thought that doubling up on coverage was a bit unnecessary when the team already has limited damage options. Scrafty provided Fake Out for the Rain+Pert mode, and I decided on Ice Punch as well to help deal with opposing Landorus + Mence more convincingly (as I lacked Hidden Power Ice on Thundurus). I chose this team because of the prevalence of Sand + Mence teams in the previous PC, as well as having used it quite a lot in the past. I also think that any team with weather and a speed boosting ability is strong in the Australian metagame, as you can punish less-experienced players by overwhelming them with speed and damage-boosted attacks. The team worked really well on the day, but Nihal (UchihaX96) was using Smeargle + Tauros in the finals and I didn't get the rolls i needed to win. GGs

My version of this team can be found here.

Saturday, November 28th 2015 - Box Hill VIC PC

 Top 4 : 5-1 Swiss, 24 CP 

This team is something that I'm still messing around with. I was given the 6 mons by Luke (@Dawg) the night before the event and they worked phenomenally well, giving me convincing wins against every standard archetype that I faced. I'm going to avoid posting a pastebin for this team until I'm done with it, as I'm probably going to use it/variants of it for the foreseeable future. 

Dawg is love.

Dawg is life.

To make up for the disappointment, you can find a cute picture of a puppy here.

Layne Hall - @LejnLejn

Saturday, November 28th 2015 - Box Hill VIC PC

 1st Place : 5-1 Swiss, 30 CP

 

This team revolves around sweeping with a garden variety Power-Up Punch Kangaskhan. A physical bulky Amoonguss, max speed Shuca Heatran, and bulky Assault Vest Landorus-T are among the jaded but powerful supporting cast. The Heatran hits a Substitute number, Amoonguss lives Mega-Metagross Zen Headbutt 15/16 times, and Landorus-T outspeeds neutral base 100 Pokémon. I used a fast and Modest bulky Thundurus to assist against max speed Landorus-T with Choice Band or Assault Vest (both which fair well against my own Landorus and Heatran), as well as in Thundurus mirrors. I used Taunt over Swagger to guarantee shutting down Amoonguss for either of my mega Pokémon to set up, or to ensure that Aegislash is put into a bad position. Kangaskhan and friends were the primary cast of the team during swiss and in my first top cut match.

Cresselia and Azumarill are often seen in the last slot of a team like this, but between the two I was not pleased with the matchups I would have against sand, Calm Mind Cresselia or Amoonguss with only the ability to choose one. With that, I chose a Pokémon that could attempt to find the best middleground for these matchups, a Pokémon that hits Tyranitar and Amoonguss for STAB super effective damage and can take on CM Cresselias with its own CM rendition, Slowbro. Before the event, I accepted that Slowbro was going to be the mega Pokémon I would bring to a number of important matchups, primarily several CHALK variants and sand. Thankfully, Slowbro was able to do its job and Calm Mind its way to victory over @Bargens' CHALK-T team in Round 3 of swiss, and was my chosen mega in the final against @RoeyVGC’s sand.

The spreads of the team can be found here.

Mitch Kendrick - @MitchVGC

Sunday, November 29th 2015 - Burwood NSW PC

Top 16 : 4-2 Swiss, 18 CP

This team was largely inspired by Scar's (Follow him on Twitter - @Scar3020) team, and I also used this team to Top Cut the Boston Open I decided to go with more standard moves than some of the crazy things Scar was running. I was strongly considering Knock Off instead of Play Rough on Azumarill, but I am glad I stuck with Play Rough as there were no situations on the day where I would have preferred the former. Landorus is largely useless on this team, it is only for getting surprise KOs on Salamence and other Landorus with HP Ice. I also tested Scarfed Landorus but found it to be equally underused. My favourite Pokémon on this team is easily Infernape as it causes so much havoc at the start of the game, and is capable of knocking itself out with Flare Blitz giving me a free switch into something else.
I was eliminated from Top Cut contention straight away by sleeping in and missing round 1 of the event. In round 2 I happened to play against Jackson, a player who had made top cut at Sydney Regionals this year, who happened to be running a rain team which this team struggles against, leaving me at 0-2. Another Pokémon this team can struggle with is Maranga Berry Milotic, thankfully the two Milotic i ran into on the day were running other items. The Gardevoir and Infernape lead combination did a lot of work in the remaining rounds, allowing me to win out against my remaining opponents. Definitely my favourite combination of the season.

The spreads of this team can be found here.

More information on Scar's original team can be found at his blog here.

There is also another version that has been interpreted in English by Daniel Pol (Follow him at @ChironVGC). This version can be found on Daniel's blog here.

Guan Yang Ze - @levelfiftyone

Saturday, September 12th 2015 - Singapore PC #1

Top 16 : 4-2 Swiss, 18 CP

At this point in time I felt most comfortable with teams involving a simple, one-step setup. I thought the easiest way to go around this was to set up Tailwind and hit as hard as possible, so I set about trying to find a good Tailwind setter. I enjoyed Crobat's Inner Focus, but it fell way too easily to opposing firepower, so I switched over to Eviolite Golbat, which was still fast enough to get stuff done while taking some really big hits. I choked away my first game in the PC by failing to Taunt a Cresselia to stop Trick Room, and I lost my second game when I couldn't stop a Belly Drum Azumarill from jetting through my entire team, but I managed to recover and had some fun wins to end 4-2, netting a little bit of CP.

The EV spreads have been omitted, but the team can be found in text format here.

Saturday, October 17th 2015 - Singapore PC #3

19th Place : 3-3 Swiss, 0 CP

I was struggling to find a team I was comfortable with for this PC when I remembered the SemiRoom team which I almost brought to Nationals, and then deeply regretted not bringing. Unfortunately, my cookies had somehow been cleared, causing me to lose the exact team. Porygon2 was trending about this time, so I decided to give it a try, and piled on some strong attackers for both my fast mode and my Trick Room mode. However, while the team was really solid in practice, I didn't do too well at the PC, eventually bubbling out of any CP by getting somewhat unlucky on stream (Luke said he "would have flipped the table" if he was me).

The spreads for this team, aside from the EVs can be found here.

Saturday, November 28th 2015 - Singapore PC #6

1st Place: 4-1 Swiss, 30 CP

This team, originally conceived as a joke, finally helped me break my streak of choking out of PCs. While I'd like to talk a bit more about my team, I'll leave the finer details to a later date when I release my full team report.

Thanks for reading everyone! If you have any questions about teams or EV spreads, send us some PMs and we'll be happy to answer.  We'll be posting more about all of the teams we use this season so keep an eye out either on the blog or our respective twitters to stay up-to-date. Shoutout to all the pear <3

AusTerrain is Serperior

Hello! My name is Bailey although I usually go by Bargens on Nuggetbridge or BargensVGC on Twitter . I've been really looking forward to the post worlds season because I always take something really stupid to the grassroots tournaments. Last year I took Metapod but unfortunately had to drop at 2-1, and I wanted redemption this year. I was talking to Luke Curtale (Dawg) when he mentioned that he'd been using Secret Power Kang and Grassy Terrain Serperior to abuse sleep, so he sent me a pastebin and I played around with it until I was comfortable with it, and took it to a PokeMelbourne grassroots tournament.

The Team

Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite ***2For1Deal

Ability: Scrappy

EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe

Jolly Nature

- Secret Power

- Fake Out

- Low Kick

- Sucker Punch

Brought to 10/10 games

Part 1 of AusTerrain. Jolly Nature with Fake Out helps Serperior get off a Leaf Storm or a Grassy Terrain. Low Kick was chosen over Power-Up Punch as personal preference, as I preferred to pick up the OHKO on Heatran as its the only CHALK Pokemon who can tank a Leaf Storm at +2 with a Metronome boost with relative ease. Secret Power without Grassy Terrain can also Paralyse, so that's fun to use on Landorus switch ins.

Serperior @ Metronome ***AUSTERRAIN

Ability: Contrary

EVs: 100 HP / 156 SpA / 252 Spe

Timid Nature

- Leaf Storm

- Grassy Terrain

- Protect

- Hidden Power [Rock]

Brought to 5/10 games

Serperior was interesting to use to say the least. Maximum speed and Timid Nature outspeeds Terrakion and Infernape and speed ties with Timid Thundurus, so Serperior outsped majority of the metagame. The SAtk EVs guarantee and OHKO on 4 HP Charizard-Y as well as Volcarona at +2, and the HP allows Serperior to survive Modest Heatran Heat Wave. Metronome was an item Sarkastik originally suggested, and let's Serperior spam Leaf Storm without having to make any major predictions, which came into effect against Aegislash switch ins first turn in practice, as well as increasing the chance of OHKOing 4 HP Kangaskhan at +2. Looking back on this I probably would have changed Hidden Power Rock to Ground for Heatran, but it did win me a few games so I can't complain.

Heatran @ Leftovers ***HardLasagne★

Ability: Flash Fire

EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe

Timid Nature

- Substitute

- Heat Wave

- Earth Power

- Protect

Brought to 5/10 games

SubLefties Heatran is my spirit Pokemon. It's been the fire type I've used on every single team this season, and I haven't regretted it. With Serperior setting up to +2/+4 I forced most Kangaskhan and non Scarf Landorus to switch, meaning that Thundurus, Aegislash and Heatran were very common switch ins, and these Pokemon don't appreciate playing a Heatran behind a Substitute. Worked really well with Grassy Terrain too, as Scarf/AV Landorus couldn't pick up the OHKO with Earthquake.

Thundurus @ Sitrus Berry ***♪SWAGTRAIN♪

Ability: Prankster

EVs: 244 HP / 60 Def / 36 SpA / 140 SpD / 28 Spe

Modest Nature

- Thunder Wave

- Swagger

- Thunderbolt

- Hidden Power [Ice]

Brought to 5/10 games

My answer to Australian crap as well as general Kangaskhan synergy. Swagger was chosen over Taunt because it pretty much does the same thing, just with a lower chance of working. It stops the status as well as stopping attacks too, so it's a pretty good move. The Modest Nature was chosen as I've used offensive Thundurus all year and still wanted a relatively strong damage output.

But it didn't matter.

I just clicked Swagger.

Cresselia @ Rocky Helmet ***Sailormoon

Ability: Levitate

EVs: 220 HP / 156 Def / 12 SpA / 108 SpD / 12 Spe

Bold Nature

- Calm Mind

- Ice Beam

- Moonlight

- Psychic

Brought to 6/10 games

I really don't have much to say about Cresselia. EV spread survives attacks from... Well... Everything. 12 Speed EVs was probably a mistake, and going with the 140 Speed Dawg suggested to outspeed Bisharp probably would have worked better, as this Cresselia speed tied with 4 Speed Rotom-W and that was terrible. Ice Beam over Icy Wind because of the consist damage output, although Icy Wind probably would have been better for the team overall. This thing sets up whilst people get scared of Serperior and Kangaskhan. Then it just kinda wins...

Landorus-Therian @ Choice Band ***★LandRUs★

Ability: Intimidate

EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe

Jolly Nature

- Earthquake

- Rock Slide

- U-turn

- Knock Off

Brought to 9/10 games

Bandorus was by far the best Landorus to have on this team. I tried both Scarf and Assault Vest but found that the damage output didn't really help too much, and with AV I was usually only using one move at a time. This team also had a crippling weakness to Aegislash if I didn't have Heatran or if Swagger didn't pull through. Landorus also helped against bad players, as I often just locked Earthquake and used Thunderbolt with Thundurus to clean up the game. U-Turn was chosen as one of the fillers because I have an addiction to U-Turn on Landorus. Superpower probably would have been better over Knock Off for the consist damage output, as there was a lot of times where I needed damage onto a Rotom that had used its Sitrus Berry, but Knock Off still had a couple uses. EVs spread is nothing special, as surviving Bisharp Sucker Punch really didn't see, necessary to me and I wanted to outspeed Kangaskhan on the turn it Mega Evolved.

Tournament Run

Round 1 Vs James Farrugia

My Team:

Opponents Team: +

We were up on screen for this Round, so right off the bat we had Muk Vs AusTerrain, a Dawg favourite. Too bad he didn't bring Muk. Serperior Leaf Stormed a Gothitelle switch in and managed to put it in range of another Leaf Storm with a Metronome boost, so and after that I managed to EQ through his whole Trick Room team without too much hassle.

1-0

Round 2 Vs Christopher Egan

My Team:

Opponents Team: +

I led Kangaskhan and Landorus into Latias and Gardevoir and got scared of a Scarf Ice Beam, so I switched in Heatran and used Fake Out on Gardevoir. Turns out it was a really bulky mega Latias and this threw me quite a bit. Heatran didn't do too much except sit there fishing for burns, which I managed to pull on Rotom-W. After Kangaskhan Low Kicked Tyranitar I sealed the game up with Landorus and Heatran as he was relying on Draco Meteor to break the Sub. I set up Grassy Terrain here too but Kangaskhan got Crit KO'd by Draco Meteor after I failed to put Latias to sleep.

2-0

Round 3 Vs Sam Benson

My Team:

Opponents Team:

+

I played this game awfully. I called the Landorus switch in many times as well as the Aegislash switch in, but just didn't act accordingly. He played relatively well and Scarf Landorus with U-Turn really posed as a problem, but I managed to Grassy Terrain and put his Entei to sleep. Ultimately this game was saved by a timely Secret Power Critical Hit to seal up the game.

3-0

Round 4 Vs Nihal Noor (UchihaX96)

My Team:

Opponents Team: +

Not gonna lie, I got outplayed pretty badly here. I played too obviously and fell victim to Ice Punch Kangaskhan in the early stages of the game, losing my intimidate. I managed to pick up the KO on his Thundurus along the way somewhere, and do reasonable chip damage to his Kangaskhan before him bringing it to a 3v1. Thankfully he somewhat ignored Cresselia, so +3 Cresselia was able to 3v1 Landorus, Kangaskhan and Heatran and I won the game, much to the salt of Nihal as he screamed "Timer, judges, timer!"

4-0

Round 5 Vs Jonathan Hoare

My Team:

Opponents Team: (Lvl 1) + ???

First turn I called the Level 1 Smeargle Protect and went for Scrappy Fake Out and Leaf Storm onto Cofagrigus. He couldn't Trick Room and I won the game in the next couple turns.

5-0

Round 6 Vs Chris G (TheBatman)

My Team:

Opponents Team: +

This game was very messy on my end. He switched in Rotom-W when Landorus locked EQ. I miscalculated my damage onto Amoonguss thinking Banded EQ + Psychic would get the KO. I let Cresselia get burned, and I didn't deal with the Rotom-W which was by far the biggest threat. It just wasn't a well played set by me. I remember Swaggering around quite a bit here but it having next to no effect, and I learned that my Cresselia actually speed tied with his Rotom. It came down to him having to hit a Hydro Pump on Cresselia, through Swagger, and also win the speed tie to win the game, and Cresselia won the speed tie won the game from there. Not happy with how I played, but we take those.

6-0

Round 7 Vs Sam Pandelis (ZeldaVGC)

My Team:

Opponents Team: +

I critted every move I needed to here and he could have won if he just used Follow Me + Belly Drum against my Thundurus and Cresselia, but he said it was too obvious of a play. He soon realised there was literally nothing I could do, especially considering Clefable was Lum Berry. I then continued to critical hit everything in sight.

7-0

Top 8 Vs Joshua Spriggins (NidoVGC)

My Team:

Opponents Team: +

His team had a very noticeable Heatran weakness without Swampert, so I knew removing that off of the field and getting up a Substitute was my win condition. I led fairly well here threatening the Swampert with Leaf Storm, because I assumed that he didn't have Protect. I went straight for the Fake Out knowing that Ferrothorn could have come in, because I figured a double switch would be fine considering I'd get to +2. I kinda just flailed about with Kangaskhan here until it fainted whilst Protecting Serperior. I managed to force out the Swampert so I could bring in Heatran safely and then KO the Salamence on the turn it Mega Evolved with +4 Hidden Power Rock, which rolled in my favour. Serperior and Heatran swept from here. Bringing Cresselia here was kinda stupid, and Thundurus would have dealt with Salamence just as effectively, especially considering the fact that Snarl and Leech Seed is a thing.

Top 4 Vs Sam Pandelis (ZeldaVGC)

My Team:

Opponents Team: +

I remember Landorus Earthquaking here putting Kangaskhan and Azumarill in Rocky Helmet range, so he was hard pressed and had to switch accordingly. His Talonflame got off a Swords Dance here after a great read, but it did 60% to itself after Brave Birding Cresselia. With recoil, Rocky Helmet and Life Orb, Talonflame was brought within suicide range if it touched Cresselia, meaning whatever touched Cresselia essentially just fainted. I managed to retain a lot of momentum here thanks to Rocky Helmet and after getting off a Moonlight I sealed up the game.

Finals Vs Nihal Noor (UchihaX96)

My Team:

Opponents Team: +

Finals was Best Of One because I had to leave, and Nihal agreed to play Best Of One because he'd already gotten information from Swiss. I made a very risky play first turn, assuming he'd take the speed tie risk with Kangaskhan to get off a guaranteed Belly Drum, so I switched Kangaskhan to Cresselia for Rocky Helmet damage and Earthquaked, similar to what I'd done against Sam in the previous game. If he'd Ice Punched and Belly Drummed I would have lost straight away, but I'm glad it worked in my favour. He then had to play around Cresselia awkwardly and brought in Amoonguss, which I Critted with EQ and then took out with a Psychic, essentially winning me the game from this point onwards with Kangaskhan and Cresselia.

Overall Score: 10-0

Placement: 1st in Swiss, 1st overall

Conclusion

After multiple second place finishes this season I was really excited I'd finally won something, but I'm surprised it came from using Serperior and Secret Power Kangaskhan. I realised after this event that I'd won both PokeMelbourne September events undefeated, so I was 19-0 in September tournaments, and that was cool. As for the team itself, Kangaskhan, Serperior and Landorus carried me through Swiss, and Cresselia and Landorus carried me through top cut, so MVP here was definitely Banded Landorus, with Thundurus being without a doubt the weakest team member as Swagger didn't pull through as often as I would have liked. Overall I'm super excited with how the team went and will probably take this to PCs in the near future.

Shoutouts:

- The AusTerrain crew for coming up with the idea, as it was really you guys who created the team and I just put my personal finishing touches on it.

- PokeMelbourne for another September 1st place trophy. Oh, and they ran the event well too

- Sam Pandelis for the "Undefeated Maki Keyring" he used to win undefeated in Janurary. I swear that thing is cursed.

- The Delphox Cubs, because you guys are awesome

- PKHex My extreme luck when breeding and soft resetting shiny Pokemon

Hope you enjoyed the report! Thanks for reading!

Making the Opposition Sleep on Gardevoir: A Top 16 Australian Nationals Report

Introduction:
How’s it going, I’m Matt Jiwa, known as JiwaVGC on Twitter and Nugget Bridge, and I’m a VGC player from Melbourne, Australia. I played VGC casually throughout 2014 and decided to get involved in the actual circuit this year. I got more involved with the community, and got to know some of the Australian players via Pokemon Showdown and Facebook. This is going to be a report about the Australian Nationals of 2015; my second VGC event, and my team building journey leading up to it.

Teambuilding prior to the event:
Early in the format I felt somewhat lost due to the vast number of options available for team building, particularly due to my absence during the '13 format. I ended up just testing whatever the common, popular archetypes were at the time, seeing if anything would stick. A couple of months into 2015, I encountered a Japanese player on battlespot using a Trick Room Mega Gardevoir team. After he caught me off guard and tore me asunder, I decided to test out my own approximation of their team for a while, and immediately found it interesting. I stumbled across a Japanese player's blog featuring a very similar team to the one I'd faced on battlespot, and ended up with M-Gardevoir, Heatran, Hydreigon, Landorus-T, Amoonguss and Gyarados as a starting point. After some testing, as well as influence from other player's reports and input, I ended up bringing a team of M-Gardevoir, Safety Goggles Heatran, Rocky Helmet Amoonguss, Assault Vest Azumarill , Life Orb Hydreigon, and Scarfed Landorus-T to my first VGC event; Melbourne regionals, finishing with a somewhat disappointing 5-3 record.

With my first face-to-face battling experience under my belt, I was keen to improve before nationals, and set about testing various other Pokemon around the core of Gardevoir, Heatran and Amoonguss. After coming across another player using a similar team to mine on Pokemon Showdown, I discussed their choice of Rotom-W over Azumarill as a bulky water type. As they explained, the additional levitating Pokemon was definitely appreciated with a choice scarfed Landorus on the team, so Azumarill made way for the washing machine. As it turned out that person was Lajo, who later helped me out with other aspects of my team, as well as making top cut in the UK nationals and top 8 at worlds with the very 6 Pokemon he’d been using at that point.

Up until this point, I’d been relying somewhat on catching my opponent off guard with Trick Room, as only a couple of my Pokemon could seemingly utilise it, but with Trick Room becoming increasingly prevalent on Gardevoir and nationals announced as a best of 3 swiss format I wasn’t confident in this paying off for me. I was keen to press on with the archetype as a whole, however, as it had solid match-ups against the popular Japanese sand team, as well as many variants of the Kangaskhan goodstuffs. I began toying around with the idea of Scrafty instead of Hydreigon, giving me a Fake Out option to help get Trick Room up more reliably. I went with a set of Fake Out, Drain Punch, Knock Off and Stone Edge, the latter of which prevented Quiver Dance Volcarona from 4-0ing me with the help of Wide Guard, as well as defeating Charizard-Y (albeit only 80% of the time), which could otherwise cause a fair amount of problems. At this point, speed tiers became my main focus, particularly in deciding what speed I wanted my Heatran to hit. I spoke again with Lajo, as well as Szymon (Szymoninho), whom Lajo had mentioned, and who had recently used the same 6 as Lajo to make top cut at German nationals. I found that their teams were entirely different, despite using the same Pokemon. Lajo’s team utilised various forms of speed control with mid-speed Pokemon to gain the speed advantage in any condition, whereas Szymon’s was more focussed on slower sets and using Trick Room as the only form of speed control. After some testing, I settled on a modest Heatran with no speed investment, allowing me to outspeed any common variants of Sylveon and Aegislash. This was due to the fact that, upon it’s suggestion from Szymon, I’d decided on Overheat as a 4th move instead of Substitute or Ancient Power. This set allowed me to consistently outspeed and OHKO Aegislash before it could attack or substitute, as well as KO Sylveon in combination with a Hyper Voice from Gardevoir. The final change to my team was also a product of my discussion with Szymon, as LO Garchomp replaced the scarfed Landorus-T. This gave me a better check to Charizard-Y, as it could switch in more reliably to its fire-type attacks, as well as either OHKO with Rock Slide or 2HKO it through Wide Guard with Dragon Claw. This change also removed my second intimidate, which really loosened my options against teams with intimidate deterrent, most commonly Bisharp and Milotic.

The team:

Gardevoir @ Gardevoirite  
Ability: Trace  
EVs: 252 HP / 132 Def / 100 SpA / 4 SpD / 20 Spe  
Modest Nature  
- Hyper Voice  
- Psychic  
- Trick Room  
- Protect  

Reasonably standard spread and moveset here. Enough speed to outspeed adamant Bisharp, enough SpAtk to put it in range of 1 hit of Life Orb/Rocky Helmet with a spread damage Hyper Voice. The Def EVs allow it to survive a CB Brave Bird from Talonflame, and the SpDef prevents Mega Gengar’s Sludge Bomb from KOing.

Heatran @ Safety Goggles  
Ability: Flash Fire  
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD  
Quiet Nature  
IVs: 0 Spe  
- Heat Wave  
- Earth Power  
- Overheat  
- Protect  

“But Jiwa, you just said you settled on a Modest Heatran with 31 Speed IVs!?” Yup, I managed to lock in the wrong Heatran before the event, failing to realise my mistake until midway through day 1. Though a seemingly small difference, this had a real impact on the team, making it far weaker to Sylveon than I had intended, as well as making Aegislash more of a nuisance, as I would have to do some scouting to find out whether or not it outsped my Heatran, rather than consistently outspeed it. Heatran's general role on the team is to deal with steel-types as well as Amoonguss. The EV spread isn’t particularly interesting, had I been able to make one to survive Earth Power from timid Heatran or Low Kick from jolly Kangaskhan I would’ve loved it, but that’s not possible to do consistently, so this had to suffice. It does, however, survive a +2 Shadow Ball from Aegislash, and has the ability to OHKO it with Overheat provided it doesn’t invest heavily in SpDef. It did its job well, and Overheat was a godsend.

Scrafty @ Assault Vest  
Ability: Intimidate 
EVs: 252 HP / 140 Atk / 92 Def / 24 SpD  
Relaxed Nature  
IVs: 2 Spe  
- Fake Out  
- Drain Punch  
- Knock Off  
- Stone Edge  

The moveset is reasonably standard, perhaps with the exception of Stone Edge, which is for Charizard and Volcarona, as mentioned. Aside from those, Scrafty also improves the rain match-up, as well as weakening physical attackers upon switch-in, and helping Gardevoir set up Trick Room with Fake Out support. The speed IV allows it to hit 57 speed, moving after min-speed Aegislash to hit it in Blade-Forme, as well as outspeeding any variant of Jellicent or Abomasnow in Trick Room, should they show up. The attack investment allowed the combination of Drain Punch and a Hyper Voice to pick up the KO on 4 HP Kangaskhan, which I was expecting to encounter a fair amount of the time at nationals. Here are some calcs to show Scrafty’s offensive and defensing capabilities:

140 Atk Scrafty Stone Edge vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Mega Charizard Y: 196-232 (105.9 - 125.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO

-1 252 Atk Aerilate Mega Salamence Double-Edge vs. 252 HP / 92+ Def Scrafty: 144-170 (83.7 - 98.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

-1 252 Atk Tough Claws Mega Metagross Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 92+ Def Scrafty: 49-58 (28.4 - 33.7%) -- 0.5% chance to 3HKO

Amoonguss @ Rocky Helmet  
Ability: Regenerator  
EVs: 252 HP / 164 Def / 92 SpD  
Relaxed Nature  
IVs: 0 Spe  
- Spore  
- Rage Powder  
- Giga Drain  
- Protect  

Amoonguss makes bad match-ups manageable. I opted for Giga Drain over Sludge Bomb, electing to hit the likes of Rotom-W, Gastrodon, and Suicune harder rather than Breloom and Sylveon. I resented that choice somewhat in my top 16 match, but appreciated having Giga Drain for much of the rest of the event. I considered Sunny Day to boost Heatran's attacks and disrupt opposing weather, but all of my moves were vital to the set, and my match-ups against most weather based teams was pretty favourable, perhaps, ironically, with the exception of sun teams (though the later additions of Stone Edge and Garchomp may have swung this). Additionally, with the switch of Heatran's final move to Overheat, the need for boosting its Heat Waves became lessened. All of that said, it would definitely make certain match-ups easier, for example a rain team with Ferrothorn can be hard to deal with. My recollections of the purpose of the EVs are vague, but here are a couple of hits that I made sure my Amoonguss survived:

252 SpA Life Orb Protean Greninja Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 92 SpD Amoonguss: 182-218 (82.3 - 98.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

+6 252+ Atk Huge Power Azumarill Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 164+ Def Amoonguss: 186-219 (84.1 - 99%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Rotom-Wash @ Sitrus Berry  
Ability: Levitate 
EVs: 252 HP / 116 Def / 12 SpA / 108 SpD / 20 Spe  
Calm Nature  
- Hydro Pump  
- Thunderbolt  
- Will-O-Wisp  
- Protect  

A good answer to the likes of Heatran and Talonflame (which is more relevant in Australia than one would expect for reasons I can’t quite fathom), as well as being yet another great Pokemon in the Japanese-Sand and other Mega-Salamence match-ups. Rotom-W was a valued member of the team, and fortunately didn’t miss too many important attacks over the course of the event. I initially ran a faster and more offensive spread, but with Rotom-W becoming the sole levitator on the team, I found myself occasionally having to switch in rather obviously. This caused me to switch to a bulkier set, able to switch in on both physical and special attacks with a decent degree of comfort. The speed EVs were, in theory there to outspeed Pokemon that were made to outspeed adamant Scarfed Landorus with a tailwind up, such as Suicune. I didn’t find outspeeding Bisharp too necessary, as I had better answers to it on my team. I managed to calculate that with the Sitrus Berry, defense and HP EVs, the combination of Fake Out and Double Edge from a jolly M-Kangaskhan had a 1.4% chance of KOing, and M-Metagross’s Zen Headbutt had a 1.2% chance of 2HKOing. I resent the fact that I was opening myself up to being on the less favourable end of some unfortunate rolls with these EVs, but I felt that with each round being best of 3 I could recover in a later game should these rolls occur.

Garchomp @ Life Orb  
Ability: Rough Skin 
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  
Jolly Nature  
- Earthquake  
- Dragon Claw  
- Rock Slide  
- Protect  

Garchomp didn’t get much chance to shine at nationals, as I didn’t face a single Charizard team all weekend. Being my least used member, I only brought it to about a quarter of my games, though that said, I didn’t lose a single game that Garchomp made an appearance in. The EV spread is unremarkable, I briefly considered Substitue, but found all 3 attacking moves to be vital to the set. Here’s what it was here for anyway:

252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Mega Charizard Y: 203-239 (109.7 - 129.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Dragon Claw vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Mega Charizard Y: 109-129 (58.9 - 69.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Weaknesses:


The snarling dogs can completely neuter the team’s damage output, allowing my opponent to stall out Trick Room or set up with the likes of CM Cresselia. Shoutouts to Luke (DawgVGC) for making me aware of just how alarmingly bad this match-up was by THRASHING me on battlespot with substitute snarl Entei just days prior to nationals.

I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that my team was quite so weak to such a common Pokemon as it was, though I feel that it would’ve been much less threatening had my Heatran been the intended nature. I did face a few Sylveons throughout the event, and things didn’t go as badly as one might expect. The severity of this weaknesses really hinges on its teammates.


Yes this team is dated at this point, and Maranga Berry Milotic massacres it. If I were to alter this team to bring to a future event, I’d likely opt to implement the solution used by Lajo in his world championships team; Toxic on Rotom-W instead of Will-O-Wisp.

When you only have one Pokemon that outspeeds it, Smeargle is an issue. Having Lum Berry on Garchomp would help out in this match-up, but I was far more concerned about Charizard-Y than Smeargle, so that was off the table. Though it can generally get off a Dark Void successfully, the team does have ways of dealing with the more common strategies that are paired with Smeargle, but I'd really prefer not to see this thing at team preview anyway.

I don't regard too much else to be a terrible match-up. Opposing steel-types that carry substitute are naturally important against a core of Gardevoir and Amoonguss, but with correct management of the other team members, they can definitely be overcome. 5 of my 9 swiss rounds featured an opposing sub-steel, and more often than not I was able to come out on top.

The Event:
I’ll apologise in advance for my patchy recollections of the games, nationals was some time ago and my memories are vague for the most part.

Round 1: David Ripper (2-0W)

I didn’t recognise my opponent’s name, and as we waited for the round to begin, it became obvious that he wasn’t hugely confident in his chances at winning. Team preview showed me some things I wasn’t too happy to see, but I felt confident that with Trick Room up I’d be able to deal with his team reasonably well. I lead with Gardevoir and Rotom-W against his Serperior and Infernape, which promptly set up Stealth Rock as I protected. I was able to get up Trick Room and from there the combination of Amoonguss, Rotom-W, Gardevoir and Heatran were able to beat his team.

Game 2 went in a similar fashion, as I ended up seeing all of his Pokemon except for Mawile across the course of the 2 games, a peculiar decision from him in what seemed like a reasonably good match-up for it, but I won’t complain as I took the set 2-0.

Round 2: David Patane (2-0W)

I felt that I had seen David’s name before, and as it turned out he had made top cut at Adelaide regionals. His team was a fairly standard, though somewhat outdated, even for the time, Mega Metagross team. Despite this, I wasn’t hugely pleased to see it, as it was far from my best match-up, but it definitely seemed manageable. He lead Terrakion and Thundurus against my M-Gardevoir and Scrafty. The game started in my favour, as I read into his Quick Guard and Taunt and dealt massive damage with a Hyper Voice and Stone Edge, leaving his Terrakion hanging on by its focus sash and Thundurus at about 10% HP. From there the game swung in my favour, and despite his Terrakion’s last ditch Close Combat KOing my Scrafty with a crit, I took game 1.

Game 2 was less straightforward, and looked to be slipping out of my grasp, but a bit of fortune came my way when his Specs Hydreigon failed to KO my Heatran from a little over half HP with a Dark Pulse, getting what seemed to be quite a low damage roll. My Rotom-W avoided getting flinched by his Metagross to close out the game. It was after this match that I noticed my Heatran was Quiet natured as I went to check its EVs.

Round 3: Justin Lok (2-0W)

Justin was one of the travelling Singaporeans, so I presumed he wasn’t a casual player. I later found out that he was 12th in the CP rankings going into the event, but later went on to miss out on a world's invite. My heart sunk at team preview, mainly due to the fact that my newly discovered Sylveon weakness was bound to come into play in this game, particularly as the combination of Talonflame and his rain mode could really neuter my Sylveon checks, namely Amoonguss and Heatran. I lead Amoonguss and Gardevoir into his Politoed and Ludicolo, protecting Gardevoir and switching into Scrafty, which took minimal damage from an Ice Beam. I used Fake Out on the Ludicolo, and got Trick Room up finding out that his Politoed wasn’t choice scarfed as it switches move to Scald, snagging a burn on my Gardevoir. Knock Off revealed the Assault Vest on his Ludicolo, and its removal allowed Gardevoir’s Hyper Voice to pick up the KO. The game continued, and came down to my Scrafty at approximately 70% health vs. his non-intimidated LO Talonflame at full health. Brave Bird left Scrafty at 3 HP, who went on to land the Stone Edge to seal the game.

After its ineffectiveness in game 1, I predicted that my opponent would leave out his rain mode in game 2, and decided to bring Heatran. This made the game much easier, as he did indeed leave Politoed out. I took advantage of Sylveon’s turn of recharging after using Hyper Beam by Sporing it, and the game was sealed rather more comfortably than the first one as Sylveon failed to wake up in time to do too much damage.

Round 4: Brendan Webb (floristthebudew) (2-0W)

I wasn’t aware of my opponent’s online alias as we sat down to battle, though at this stage I figured my opponents were bound to know what they’re doing. I found myself much more relieved at team preview this round, as my match-up looked much stronger here. I decided that getting up Trick Room will be important, as would Scrafty and Heatran, with Rotom-W rounding out my 4. I remember knocking out his Tyranitar as it aimed a low kick at my Heatran, which promptly switched out, before realising that his remaining 3 Pokemon of supportive Sitrus Berry Volcarona, special attacking Mega Salamence, and Ferrothorn couldn’t really touch my Heatran, so it proceeded to clean up the game.

I decided that I would take a similar approach to game 2 provided I saw that he’d brought 2 or more of those 3 Pokemon that Heatran walled, so I double targeted his Rotom-W turn 1 with a combination of Psychic and Giga Drain to knock it out. Much to my surprise I found that he had, in fact, brought all 3 of the aforementioned Heatran fodder mons, so the second game went much the same way. I later talked to Brendan before top cut the next day he recognised that he had really needed to focus harder on checking my Heatran, though the match-up was a bad one for him nonetheless. He went on to make top 8, so good work on that part, and congratulations on the strong finish.

Round 5: Nihal Noor (UchihaX96) (2-0W)

Nihal’s was the first name I recognised with any real clarity, as we’re a part of the same Facebook group. I also recalled the fact that he won Adelaide’s regionals this season, so I was well aware that this match wouldn’t be easy. He was running what appeared to be the popular Japanese-sand team with the addition of Landorus-Incarnate over the more standard Excadrill. My game plan this time wasn’t much different to my initial plan last round, with Rotom-W and Goggles Heatran set to come up big once again. Game 1 got off to a strong start, as I got the guaranteed Intimidate Trace off against his Salamence and Aegislash, leaving them at -2 after Scrafty's Intimidate also activated. Turn 1 I predicted his Protect + Shadow Ball into my Gardevoir, protecting with Gardevoir and hitting Aegislash’s Blade-Forme with a Knock Off, revealing its leftovers. I didn’t have to play spectacularly to win this game, since the strong match-up allowed me some freedom. I managed to whittle his team away, before Rotom-W and Heatran cleaned up the latter end of this game.

My game plan didn’t seem particularly flawed, so I entered into game 2 with a similar mindset. He played more conservatively with his Aegislash this game, setting up a substitute, but he wasn’t able to stall out my Trick Room without it costing him too much of his team to recover, as his Landorus was OHKOd upon switch-in by my Heatran’s Overheat. Good games to Nihal, who fought valiantly against a very tough team match-up, ending up marginally bubbling at 18th place.

Round 6: Saamid Zikria (Yourf) (1-2L)

At 5-0 with a game record of 10-0 I was feeling confident and happy with how the team was performing. I’m not surprised that I again recognised my opponent’s name, Saamid is also a member of the same Facebook group. It was also apparent that I had been paired against both finalists of Adelaide's regionals in consecutive rounds, as Saamid had taken second there, losing to Nihal in the finals. We’d played multiple games on Pokemon Showdown, with mixed results, and he clearly remembered them too as he started writing down my team members before team preview had begun. I was well aware of how competent he is, so I was expecting a great set, and I was not disappointed. Going into team preview, I recognised what was much the same that he had used at Adelaide regionals. I don’t feel that the match-up was heavily in either player’s favour, and the game would likely be decided by his management of his Heatran, though Cresselia and Breloom would also be potentially influential factors as well. Going into game 1, I believe I lead Garchomp and Gardevoir, keen to pressure his Heatran early on, as he leads Heatran and Kangaskhan. My recollections of the start of the game are shaky, though I remember him making a good play on turn 1, Faking Out my Garchomp as my Gardevoir switched out for Rotom-W. I eventually got up Trick Room, losing Garchomp in the process and his Cresselia set up a Calm Mind. I began to watch the juniors’ game on the big screen as I wore the timer down, believing that I could no longer remove his Cresselia with my remaining Heatran + Scrafty. The game came down to his Cresselia with a Calm Mind set up, plus his just-protected-Heatran at low HP vs. my own Heatran and Scrafty with 2 turns of Trick Room remaining. He was able to nail the double protect as I Earth Powered into it, targeting the Cresselia with a Knock Off, revealing its Rocky Helmet. With 1 turn of Trick Room remaining, I ignored his Heatran as it went for an unsuccessful triple protect, and instead doubled into the Cresselia, which fell to the combination of a Knock Off and an Overheat. The game was mine from there, and we moved on to game 2.

I decided that the game would’ve been easier had I tried to get up Trick Room earlier, so I lead Gardevoir and Amoonguss into his Heatran and Kangaskhan. I was able to get up Trick Room, though I allowed his Heatran a substitute in the process. Beginning to get a feel for his playstyle, I decided to predict him to predict my Heatran to come in in favour of my Amoonguss, so I left it in, switching Gardevoir out for Scrafty. Sure enough he directed an Earth Power, as well as a Low Kick at my Amoonguss slot. From there I was able to put Kangaskhan to sleep, and whittle at his team with Scrafty, stubbornly refusing to bring my Heatran in as he again aimed another Low Kick at my Amoonguss upon waking up. The game came down to my Scrafty and Gardevoir vs. his Heatran at about 60%, and full health Landorus-T, with 1 turn of Trick Room remaining. Rueing my own lack of Ice Punch, I figured that Scrafty could survive 2 Heat Waves and beat his Heatran in the subsequent turns if I could just knock out his Landorus before it got an attack off, so I doubled into it with a Hyper Voice and Knock Off. Unfortunately, this failed to KO as his Superpower knocked out my Scrafty. He took game 2 from there.

I hate to use the phrase “on tilt” since I feel it’s thrown about as a poor excuse too much within the community, but I feel it might be applicable here. I started to wonder how I could win if he brought the same 4, as I had lost despite feeling as though I had made enough plays based on correct predictions to put myself in a winning position. I played poorly in game 3, losing badly in an underwhelming conclusion to an otherwise thrilling set. Looking back, I feel as though Garchomp was more important to the match-up than I gave it credit for, and though its impact in game 1 was minimal, I should've gone back to it for game 3. This was the one time I really resented the lack of option to save replays in tournament mode, as I would’ve liked to be able to watch this entire best of 3 set back, both for entertainment and education. We both took a step outside for a breather after that set, well played to Saamid, and congrats on going on to make top cut and finish in the top 16.

Round 7: Emily Woodward (2-0W)

Emily’s team looked to be comprised of mainly standard Pokemon, with the exception of  Dugtrio, which could actually be a nuisance to me given it could trap and OHKO my Heatran. I was keen to play a conservative game 1 to find out as much information as possible. I find out her Rotom-H has HP-Ice as it does negligible damage to my Heatran as it switches in for Garchomp. Her Metagross carried Leftovers, confirming that her Salamence was the mega, which fell to a Hyper Voice following my late game Trick Room to seal game 1.

Game 2 was rather more straightforward, as I went for Trick Room much earlier, cleaning up with Heatran and Gardevoir, good games to Emily.

Round 8: Jackson Lakey (FamousDeaf) (2-0W)

 
We’re back to the recognisable names, and this time it’s Jackson, one of the Australian players with reasonably consistent finishes, who managed to make top 4 at this years Melbourne regionals. I recognised his team as the one he brought to Melbourne, with a Clefable in the place of what was previously a Clefairy. His double steel types looked to be the key to the match-up, as they were the only things preventing Gardevoir from sweeping through. My Heatran and Scrafty also looked good here, with Rotom-W rounding out my line-up. Game 1 saw Gardevoir met with little resistance, as I got up Trick Room with the aid of Scrafty’s Fake Out, proceeding to sweep through with Gardevoir and Heatran.

He opted not to bring Aegislash to game 1, and I expected him to leave Virizion behind in favour of it going into game 2. He made a good adjustment, leading with Clefable and Heatran, allowing himself to get up a substitute safely. I played around trying to bait out a Moonblast with Scrafty, but he revealed his attacking move to be Ice Beam, allowing me to bring Scrafty back in to sponge his Heatran’s attacks alongside Rotom-W. I’m able to whittle his Heatran and force it out, which allows Gardevoir to get up a Trick Room once again. He revealed Virizion again, perhaps sticking with it in fear that he would be stranded with no way to effectively hit Rotom-W, though in my opinion Aegislash was a more solid option in this slot. I was later able to Overheat the Virizion upon its switch in for his Heatran as he attempted to stall out my Trick Room. He was unsuccessful in doing so, and Gardevoir and Heatran sealed the game one again. Jackson went on to make top cut and finish in the top 4, well played to him for making it so far, another solid finish.

Round 9: Ty Power (Sarkastik) (2-0W)

Yet another name I recognise, I’m a lot more relaxed for this round as I both of us will likely make top cut regardless of the result. Ty seems similarly chilled out, and due to it being at the end of a very long day, my memories of this set are vague at best. Goggles Heatran came up big once again, and alongside Rotom-W and Amoonguss there was little he could do. His Aegislash was a pain to deal with as it ran Safety Goggles, as well as substitute, but was unable to do much more than stall briefly. I was worried that his Suicune could be a nuisance by spamming Snarl, but that didn’t happen, and I was able to take game 1.

Trick Room went up early in the second game, and he mentioned to me that he wasn't even going to bother trying to Spore my Heatran as the Goggles were blatantly obvious. This game was a grindy one, though it never really strayed out of control. His Aegislash continually set up substitues as my slow Heatran failed to outspeed it to KO, but since my -2 Heat Waves were able to continually break the subs he wasn't able to gain any advantage from the exchange. We were about to run into time before Heatran was able to finally finish the game with an Overheat. Both games passed by with few hiccups, as he unsuccessfully battled his way through a tricky match-up, and the match was mine.

Interestingly, Heatran’s Safety Goggles didn’t come into effect once across the course of day 1, as both opponents that carried Spore were aware of my item. That said, it didn't bother me particularly, as their presence allowed me to switch in fearlessly.

The End of Day 1:

I finished the day at 8 wins and 1 loss, with a game record of 17-2, guaranteed to make top cut. I stood around for a while, talking to various people before the top cut was finally posted. It looked like this:

I was to be 3rd seed going into top cut the next day. I recognised a number of the other names in top cut, including 4 of my opponents from the day, so I congratulated them, wished them luck for the next day and then headed home for a decent rest.


Day 2 - Top Cut:
Top 16: Phil Nguyen (Boomguy) (0-2L)

Phil’s a fairly recognisable figure within the Australian VGC community, and I was half wishing I’d lost my final round seeing as it might’ve gotten me an easier pairing going into top 16. I hadn’t bothered asking any of his day 1 opponents about his team since I didn’t have the energy to during the previous evening, having slept pretty much immeidately upon getting back from the venue. Had I asked around I wouldn’t have liked what I’d have heard, however, as I was about to face my least favourable match-up of the event so far. We waited around for quite some time before top cut got under way, and the hack checks had me hurriedly checking Serebii to make sure that Gabite evolved before level 50. All of that out of the way, we finally got into team preview. On the surface, the match-up didn’t look too bad, I recognised his team as similar to that used by Billa in some of the European nationals, so began to think that his items could potentially be similar; Sitrus Berry on Rotom-H and Rocky Helmet on Suicune. Amoonguss and Rotom-W looked good to press through his team with some assistance from Gardevoir. Choice Specs Sylveon was a clear problem, particularly thanks to my own blunder in selecting my Heatran, but if I could get it to sleep, some favourable sleep rolls could see me through the game. Going into turn 1, Phil revealed Power-up Punch on his Kangaskhan, leading me to believe that it was likely running Protect instead of Fake Out, which could certainly work out in my favour. I opted to try to beat down his team with Gardevoir and Heatran, and the end-game came down to Gardevoir and Amoonguss against his Rotom-H and sleeping Sylveon. As it turned out, his Rotom-H was in fact carrying the Safety Goggles, as my Spore failed, and from there his Sylveon was able to wake up and finish me off.

My options were starting to look severely limited, I decided my best option was to get up Trick Room as soon as possible, and hope to read his switches often enough to prevent him from stalling it out. I lead Scrafty and Gardevoir, hoping to abuse his lack of Fake Out, but I was in fact mistaken once again, as his Kangaskhan was able to Fake Out my Scrafty, which promptly fainted to the subsequent Hyper Voice. I wasn’t able to efficiently punish his switches from there, and the game quickly went in his favour.

After our match, Phil admitted that he knew of my team as he’d asked some of my day 1 opponents about it, though the match-up was so poor on my end that information was pretty much irrelevant, and the game between our two teams in the hands of two competent players would almost always end up going against the Gardevoir player. That said, some planning and research wouldn't have gone amiss, and I should have gone into the set with some sort of plan, even if it was to just paint a pentacle on the table and spam Rock Slide with Chomp.

Though I was somewhat disappointed not to progress further through top cut, I can’t deny that I was pleased with making top cut at all. I hung around to watch the finals then headed off for some more rest. Workload permitting, I'll be back again next season, hopefully we’re in for a similar run next year!

Shoutouts:

• Lajo: Really helped me get my thoughts in order regarding the team I was building, thanks for the openness and generosity with your own thoughts

• Szymoninho: Similar comment here really, your help was invaluable, Overheat Heatran was MVP on the day for sure

• Dawg: Caused me to hurriedly try to paper over the glaring weakness to Entei, thankfully Luke can't win a round 1 in Melbourne, so we never got paired up

• UchihaX96: Helped with the production of the report and played a good set despite a bad match-up, I'll make sure to go into top 16 with a plan next time meat

• Yourf: Gave me my most entertaining match of the tournament by some distance, keep on low kicking Amoongusses, they'll switch out one day

• Sarkastik: Gave me a great set and went on to make top 8, please don't bring goggles Aegislash ever again that thing is just unpleasant

• The event organisers: It's worth mentioning that despite being best of 3 swiss and having a large number of entrants, nationals ran on schedule consistently, which is worth mentioning given the apparent fiasco that was UK nationals this year

• All the pear: You know who you are, thanks for making the weekend memorable, hopefully there are many more similar experiences on their way

Tyranitar Passes the Check : A Top 32 Australian Nationals Report

Introduction

Hey guys, my name is Nihal Noor, and I usually go by the handle of UchihaX96 on Twitter and Nuggetbridge. I’m an Australian (not really, I just live here) VGC player residing in Melbourne, and I’m here to talk about my experience at Australian Nationals which was held on June 6^th-8^th , but first let me give you a brief run down of who I am.

I started playing VGC in mid 2014, but I only attended one regional level event that year where I finished in the top 16. In 2015 I took the game a little more seriously, and attended more events, eventually winning a regional in Adelaide, while top cutting another one in Melbourne. Over the past year I’ve gotten to meet, interact with and play against some really awesome people, and it has definitely helped me grow as a person. This report outlines my cumulative experiences over this season and what I’ve learnt about the community.

Pre-Nationals Teambuilding Woes

The Australian regional circuit had just concluded, and I was on a high note after winning the regional event in Adelaide. After coming back to Melbourne I decided that I wanted to have some fun with the game in the upcoming PC before preparing for Nationals. I looked on some Japanese blogs and found that I liked the idea of Japanese SunRoom, with Charizard+Venusaur and Cresselia+Rhyperior. I added the genies for safe measure and to cover some of the threats the team faced. So I took this team to the PC, but found that it wasn’t as easy to win a best of 3 with it than it was to win a best of 1 since the opponent would catch on to the tricks the team had in game 1 and would be able to take the set in the remaining games. I finished a meager 3-3 at this PC and then it was back to the drawing board for nationals, but this time I wasn’t in such high spirits.

The 2 weeks before Nationals I was frantically testing all sorts of teams on Battle Spot along with Luke Curtale, trying to ladder as well as find a team that was comfortable for best of 1 swiss. These teams ranged from Kang and friends to Mence/Mawile + Rain, Japan Sand, and even TR Garde. I wasn’t making much progress, and not feeling comfortable with any of the teams. About 3 days before the event, we got an announcement that Nationals was going to be best of 3 swiss, and this really threw me for a loop seeing as how all the events I’d played in had been best of 1 swiss so far.

Since Nintendo Australia wasn’t kind enough to give me my free hotel accommodation for winning regionals, I asked fellow player Ty Power (Sarkastik) if I could crash with him for Nats weekend, to which he complied. Spring regionals had just occurred in the US, and while I was still trying to decide on something to use, one team really stood out to me. Angel Miranda’s 3^rd place Georgia Regionals team consisting of the Japan Sand core, but with Landorus-Incarnate instead of Excadrill really intrigued me. Now, when I tested Japan Sand before, I really disliked the team since Landorus-T’s intimidate really hampered Excadrill and Tyranitar, and Excadrill lacked the coverage moves I wanted. With Ty’s help, we managed to build the team 2 nights before Nationals, and I felt very pleased that I didn’t have to stress about my team anymore.

Day 1 of Nationals was for TCG players, but also for VGC pre-registration. I wanted to get to the venue to register before sundown, so I took the train down to the city in the afternoon. Unfortunately during the train ride the train actually broke down, and so I was stuck for about an hour before the train started moving again. After registering our teams, Ty and I went back to his place for a bit before heading out for dinner with a few friends. We had a great time, and after we had our fun we wanted to get back to his place and get some rest. We took the tram back, and well what do you know, the tram crashed into the back of a car. So we ended up walking a solid 20-25 minutes back, and when we got back we just wanted to relax. Sometime around 1 am, I decided to do a few battles on Battle Spot, since I hadn’t actually played a lot of battles with Landorus-I on the team. Sadly, I found out the hard way that my Landorus-I had Hidden Power DARK instead of Hidden Power Ice. Now at this point I wasn’t feeling great, and had to contemplate whether to enter the tournament with it or somehow try and take it out of my battle box and replace it. After this blunder, Ty suggested that we might as well check for any other mistakes in our teams that could potentially harm our run at Nationals. To my absolute shock and horror, this last minute review of my team revealed that I had a LEVEL 50 Tyranitar locked into my battle box for the competition. The Landorus-I was a blow that was hard enough to deal with, but I was now confronted with a Nationals ending mistake that would cost me the competition without a doubt, especially after the Level 50 Hydreigon fiasco in Europe earlier in the year. I made a tough decision to cancel participation to unlock my battle box and fix the team at 3am, hopefully giving a good enough excuse to the organizers the next morning to warrant my re-registration for the competition. So after train failures, tram crashes, illegal pokemon, and 3 hours of sleep, we headed to the event. W A R S T O R Y

The Team at a Glance

    

THE SQUAD

 

Salamence @ Salamencite ** Mence-Sama~~

Ability: Intimidate

EVs: 20 HP / 244 Atk / 4 Def / 36 SpA / 204 Spe

Jolly Nature

- Double-Edge

- Hyper Voice

- Roost

- Protect

Built to speed creep pokemon that speed crept max speed Thundurus-I by 2 points. This EV spread allows Salamence to pick up a KO on some bulky Mega-Kangaskhan after Hyper Voice + Double Edge. The 36 SAtk EVs also allow it to chip things, and it allowed me to KO Breloom with Hyper Voice after it’s sash was broken. The rest of the EVs were dumped into HP and Defense. Salamence performed really well on the day, and I brought it to almost every single battle. It didn’t let me down a bit. Looking back on it now, I didn’t use Roost as much as I thought I would, and switching from Jolly to Naive, with Draco Meteor over Roost would have been a much better call.

 

Rotom-Wash @ Sitrus Berry ** ♥Accelerate♥

Ability: Levitate

EVs: 244 HP / 44 Def / 12 SpA / 68 SpD / 140 Spe

Calm Nature

- Thunderbolt

- Thunder Wave

- Hydro Pump

- Protect

Rotom-Wash provided a good way to beat water types, and the spread was designed to outspeed bisharp by 2 points, and still have a respectable amount of bulk. 244 HP EVs ensures it has an even number HP stat, therefore activating Sitrus Berry when Super Fang was used against it. 44 Def was for the guaranteed survival against the rare Mawile that might have appeared, while the rest was dumped into Special Defense and Special Attack for efficient use of the EVs. The use of Thunder Wave over Will-o-Wisp was questionable, as burn damage would have definitely helped against other bulky pokemon. Thunder Wave did help me in a few rounds though, so it wasn’t that bad.

 

Amoonguss @ Rocky Helmet ** ZzNapTimeZz

Ability: Regenerator

EVs: 172 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA / 76 SpD / 4 Spe

Bold Nature

- Spore

- Rage Powder

- Protect

- Giga Drain

This is your standard physically defensive Amoonguss, built with enough bulk to take a Zen Headbutt from Metagross, while the rest of the EVs were dumped into Special Defense. The 4 Speed EVs were rather useless, but it meant that I out sped other base 30’s and didn’t waste any EVs. The HP EVs on Amoonguss bring it to an HP stat of 211. This number maximizes the HP gained from Regenerator while also taking less sand damage each turn. Along with Aegislash and Tyranitar, Amoonguss gave me a way to deal with rain, as I could reset the weather, redirect attacks, and spore things while using Amoonguss’ ability to it’s full potential.

 

Aegislash @ Leftovers ** ♠Yosen♠

Ability: Stance Change

EVs: 204 HP / 4 Def / 244 SpA / 28 SpD / 28 Spe

Modest Nature

- Shadow Ball

- Flash Cannon

- Substitute

- King's Shield

I opted for a faster Aegislash with Substitute on this team instead of the more standard wide guard that normally appeared on sand teams. Aegislash was able to speed creep other Aegislash and Sylveon and get an attack off before they could move. In Aegislash mirror match cases I could set up a substitute and force them into Blade form to have the advantage the next turn. The HP stat reaches a 16n+1 number, maximizing both leftovers and substitute, and a few EVs were put into Special Defense and Special Attack. Aegislash was a beast all day, becoming a win condition behind a substitute. It’s hard to say that it wasn’t a key pokemon for this team, being able to deal with fairies and mega pokemon like Kangaskhan, Metagross, Mawile and Salamence.

 

Tyranitar @ Choice Scarf

Ability: Sand Stream

EVs: 12 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 12 SpD / 228 Spe

Jolly Nature

- Rock Slide

- Ice Punch

- Superpower

- Crunch

Tyranitar was one of the stars of the team alongside Mega Salamence. With Salamence next to it, it could support Salamence by threatening some of it’s checks (Thundurus-I, Rotom-H, Heatran). Tyranitar was also intentionally made to be 1 point slower than Mega Salamence, and this was for the rare case where if Amoonguss used Rage Powder, I could knock it out with Salamence and then Tyranitar could hit the partner hard without being redirected. Tyranitar was also incredibly useful by setting up the sand to chip opposing teams, and helped in the weather wars as well.

 

Landorus @ Life Orb

Ability: Sand Force

EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe

Timid Nature

- Earth Power

- Hidden Power Ice

- Stone Edge

- Protect

Landorus, pretty much the epitome of VGC’15, but not in it’s Therian form. Landorus helped deal with other Landorus/Salamence, and any pokemon weak to ground would be OHKOed 100% of the time in the sand by Earth Power.

I went with max speed to out speed base 100’s and below, and max special attack to deal as much damage as it possibly could. Special attacks don’t exactly hurt Sylveon, but Landorus could do a solid 50% to it with Earth Power, which helped in a couple of sets.

THE SWISS ROUNDS

Round 1 : Bailey Gabell (2-0W)

I’ve known Bailey for quite some time as we battled early season. Seeing his Sun team made me feel very confident as I figured Tyranitar and Salamence could do a lot of work with the sand up. I took game 1 with relative ease as I predicted Wide Guard from his Gallade and simply ignored it as I took out the rest of his team. Game 2 was slightly more difficult, as he set up tailwind. It came down to whether his AVest Landorus could flinch my Tyranitar twice, and he didn’t end up getting the flinch so my Tyranitar locked up the game with Rock slide.

Round 2 : Anthony Sullivan (2-0W)

Going into team preview, this team really scared me. It had a sand mode which was presumably faster than all of my pokemon, and it had the Trick Room mode with Abomasnow, Mawile and Chandelure. The Trick Room mode scared me the most, since I wasn’t sure how I would be able to handle Chandelure + Abomasnow together. Fortunately I only had to deal with them one at a time since he had to set up Trick Room with Cresselia, which he brought both games. There’s not much to be said about this set except that SubAegis carried both games by just being there and threatening his pokemon behind a sub while Rotom-W essentially took care of the rest.

Round 3 : Travis John (2-0W)

So this guy had a Blissey, a Ditto, a Wailord and a Scolipede. Right from team preview I knew this wasn’t going to be a match decided on skill, so I started to plan 3-4 turns in advance on how to run the timer down to win.

It wasn’t too hard with all my shinies and contest ribbons on my pokemon, sand damage, leftovers, Aegislash changing forms, switching, protecting and shell bell activating…?

Round 4 : Alex Rosenzweig (2-1W)

Round 4 was the first real challenge. I knew I’d finally be having a tough battle here. I figured he’d want to keep Zard and possibly Sylveon out of game 1, so I left Amoonguss and Aegislash on the bench as they wouldn’t be able to do much against Breloom and Heatran anyway. I took game 1 pretty convincingly, chipping everything with T-tar and Mence and finishing the game up with Rotom-W.

Game 2 he led Sylveon + Suicune, and since I didn’t bring Aegislash, he set up tailwind and tore through my team with Hyper Voice. I had already started to think about game 3, and reasoned that he would probably bring the same core of Sylveon, Suicune and Heatran, so I made up my mind to bring Aegislash to this next game and keep Landorus-I out of it.

This definitely paid off in game 3, as I curbed his screaming fairy and forced switches. With sand damage taking it’s toll and Salamence threatening, he was forced to make defensive plays with his Breloom, allowing my Rotom-W to deal with his team. Thunder Wave really came in handy against his Breloom and Suicune here. Good games to Alex.

Round 5 : Matthew Jiwa (JiwaVGC) (0-2L)

I had heard of Jiwa before as we were both part of a Facebook group, and I was definitely expecting to run into someone I knew by this time. A wild Garde TR team appeared! I knew this matchup was going to be tough no matter what. In Game 1, I lead Salamence + Aegislash into Scrafty + Gardevoir and he traces intimidate, so my Salamence is left at -2 Atk. Things go sour from here as he outplays me every turn, KOing my aegislash, and then locking down my Salamence with his Rotom-W and Heatran. He takes game 1 with ease. After that horrendous Game 1 I knew that I didn’t have a great chance to take this set, as the matchup was tilted completely in his favour. I wasn’t going to let him have a free win though, so this time I tried to get Aegislash behind a substitute, and try and chip his pokemon with Rotom-W so Salamence could come and clean up later. Unfortunately he carried on with his great playing, and I’m not sure he even had to set up Trick Room to win this one. Good games and well played to Matthew.

Round 6 : Billy Stanley (2-0W)

I had played Billy earlier in the season in the PC I went to. I remembered his Raichu + Zard + Trevenant combo, that liked to protect Zard with Lightningrod and Will-o-Wisp, and abuse Trevenant’s Harvest ability in the sun. This matchup was fairly simple for me, as I cruised through the set just letting the Salamence + Amoonguss combo handle everything, with Double Edge picking up quite a few OHKOes.

Round 7 : Brendan Webb (FloristtheBudew) (1-2L)

In Round 7 I was matched up against Brendan Webb, in what was essentially a mirror match. In Game 1 he brought his Ferrothorn, Tyranitar, Salamence and Volcarona. My Salamence deleted his Volcarona instantly and I took a quick lead. I was able to hold on and close out with Aegislash being clutch against his Ferrothorn.

In Game 2, I picked up a turn 1 OHKO onto his Salamence with my Landorus, which surprised him. In this game he revealed that his Rotom-W was specially defensive with Leftovers and Thunder Wave for support. This led to some problems for me since I didn’t have a great way to deal with his Rotom-W, and since his Tyranitar was max speed, it was faster than my Salamence and threatened with Rock Slide. After taking out my Landorus, he managed to put himself in a good position by playing well with his Ferrothorn and getting a timely Thunder Wave paralysis to stop my Aegislash from getting up a Substitute and setting up a Leech Seed on to it. Aegislash slowly whittled away and I had no way to beat his Ferrothorn and Rotom-W.

Game 3 was a tight game, but once again his Rotom-W proved to be very difficult to handle, as I let my Salamence get paralyzed and consequentially taken out soon after. He still had his 4 pokemon left while I tried to get back into it with Rotom and Aegislash, but Thunder Wave and Rock Slide sealed the deal for him, flinching my Aegislash a few times, ensuring it wasn’t able to KO his Tyranitar before Rotom-W had a chance to do much. Good games Brendan.

Round 8 : Stephan Lowing (2-0W)

At 5-2 I wasn’t sure about my chances to Top Cut, but regardless I still needed to win this round. Stephan had a fairly standard team with some anti-meta picks in Milotic and Blaziken. Blaziken was a real threat as it had the potential to OHKO 5/6 of my pokemon with it’s coverage moves.

Game 1 started with his Zapdos and Blaziken vs my Aegislash and Rotom-Wash. Both of us played this game very safely, and I switched in and out a lot to try and take care of his Blaziken before it could cause too much trouble. At the same time Zapdos was firing off Thunderbolts after setting up tailwind, and Roosting off the damage it had taken. This was a rather long battle, and the game came down to Blaziken vs Salamence + Aegislash. Only being able to KO one pokemon, he had a choice to make, and he KOed Salamence while I set up a Substitute with Aegislash. At this point there was about 1:30 on the game clock, and his Blaziken was at 80%, from Life Orb recoil. Now if this was a more experienced player I’d have to say he would have taken this game, for all he had to do was run the timer down and Protect, and then run the timer down another time to win based off % HP remaining, as my Aegislash was at 10%. That wasn’t the case, as he Overheated, breaking my substitute, putting Blaziken in Shadow Ball KO range, and Aegislash promptly picked up the KO giving me Game 1.

Game 2 was pretty much over in two turns.

He led Blaziken + Kangaskhan vs my Rotom-W + Salamence. Blaziken protects and Kangaskhan uses Fake Out into Rotom’s protect as I launch a Hyper Voice with Salamence. Based off the previous game’s plays, I make the read that he will not HP Ice into my Salamence slot, and since Kangaskhan took a Hyper Voice earlier, it was in range for a Double Edge. He Superpowers Rotom-W as I pick up a double KO with Double Edge and Hydro Pump. He has nothing else to beat Rotom-W and my Aegislash, so that was the game in a nutshell. Good games Stephen.

Round 9 : Justin Lok (Singapore) (2-1W)

Round 9 was a very tense round for me as my Top Cut hopes were on the line, and what better way to decide which of us had a shot at Top Cut then to have a weather war! Justin was a pretty friendly guy and we talked about how this was the deciding match for us. We wished each other luck (but not too much, since he had Thundurus) and started our set.

I decided to lead with Salamence all 3 games to put pressure on his physical attackers and Sylveon if he brought it. Game 1 he led rain, and thus ensued the war between sand and rain. With Amoonguss and Substitute Aegislash I was able to dispose of his Sylveon quickly, and Tyranitar helped take out his Ludicolo, but not before I sacrificed my Amoonguss. The endgame came down to my Salamence at 9HP vs his Thundurus in Double Edge range. Sand was up, so at the end of the turn I would faint, regardless of what happened. All he had to do was get the full paralysis from Thunder Wave, and he did, winning game 1.

In game 2 he decides to lead Talonflame and Sylveon, hoping to set up tailwind and beat my team with sheer offensive prowess. Tyranitar does a good job beating Talonflame, but his Sylveon reveals Hyper Beam and really chunks my Aegislash switch in. After pulling some more switches and stopping his rain mode, Aegislash and Salamence clean up after I KO Politoed and set up the sand.

This was game 3, potentially the last game that either or both of us would play at this tournament. He decides to bring Thundurus back in instead of Talonflame and keeps his rain mode + Sylveon in as well. I get rid of the Thundurus pretty quickly, and get a Substitute up on Aegislash well. I make a read that he won’t protect his Sylveon and get the KO on it with Salamence, but not before my Tyranitar is taken out. The rain is up, and he has no switches, but I have lost access to my weather as well, and he has an ample number of turns to take out my remaining pokemon. Playing smartly with SubAegis and Amoonguss allows me to stall out some turns of his rain, and put Politoed to sleep as I chip at both his pokemon with Aegislash when I can. For some reason the rain just doesn’t let up, and he is able to KO my Aegislash, but I KO his Politoed with Giga Drain in return. At this point I’m really praying for the rain to let up, as the only explanation is that his Politoed had a Damp Rock. I protect both of my pokemon, and the rain finally lets up. I heave a sigh of relief as Salamence cleans up his Ludicolo and we shake hands. Good games Justin!

It turns out we were the last 2 people left battling as we were alone at the tables, and our results were the final ones they needed in order to determine the Top Cut. We gathered with everyone else and after waiting for what seemed like an eternity, the Top Cut results were announced. They are as follows :

Bubble and Beyond

I ended up finishing 7-2 at 18^th place, bubbling pretty hard, missing Top Cut by 2 places. It was a disappointing end to my tournament, but I had only myself to blame for my 2 losses during the day, though 4 of my opponents did drop and put me in quite the situation. You can’t stay sad forever though, and I was glad that some of my good friends made the next round, including Ty Power (Sarkastik), Saamid Zikria (Yourf), Phil Nguyen(Boomguy) and Matthew Jiwa (JiwaVGC).

After the day was over I went back to Ty’s place, and we worked on his Top 16 matchup against Mustafaa (musty)and then got a nice 5 hours of sleep.

I stayed at Nationals to watch the finals the next day and hang out with everyone else who was still there. Nationals was a lot of fun, and even though I didn’t make it to the final stages I still had an incredibly good time, and I look forward to being able to do so in future events.

Shout-outs :

Ty Power (Sarkastik) - Cheers for letting me crash at your place and just being great overall. Also for helping point out that ridiculously hilarious Level 50 Tyranitar.

Luke Curtale (Dawg) – Cheers to Luke for trying to register a MALE Kangaskhan for Nationals! Seriously though, you helped a lot during the teambuilding phase before Nationals. I appreciate it. Fantastic job commentating too!

Daniel Pol (Chiron) – We were sand buddies with Luke, and our Pokemon plushes said no less. Good times, and you did a superb job co-commentating on the stream with Luke as well!

Saamid Zikria (Yourf) – Solid Top 16 performance, and hopefully you can do better next time without having to blow anything up!

Layne Hall (Lejn) – Poor Layne had to study for his exams and miss Nationals. Maybe you’ll be able to compete at Nationals next time!

Matthew Bockman (Zyihk) – The Algerian Prince has yet to make his mark, but I’m sure he’ll be back better than ever this season. I hope.

Mitch Kendrick (MitchVGC) – Shout out to Mitch here who was surprisingly sober the whole day I presume. Was good seeing you again, and I’m sure you’ll get better and be more consistent this season.

To all of the above - Squad was on point. Parmas were great. Warstory is real. We out.

New Beginnings and an Introduction to AusTerrain

Hey guys,

This blog is going to be where a few Australian players keep a record of the teams we’ve used throughout the season. Our goal is to help ourselves, and anyone interested, by keeping a record of what we’ve achieved over the course of the VGC 15-16 season.

Australian Terrain is a concept that revolves around setting up Grassy Terrain with Serperior, and using Secret Power Mega-Kangaskhan. In Grassy Terrain, Secret Power has a 30% chance to put an opponent to sleep, which with Parental Bond, becomes 51%. The idea came about in a skype call with Zyihk, Dawg, Yourf and Sarkastik, where we were talking about how overpowered freeze is, and were messing around with trying to exploit it. Unfortunately, Hail doesn't give Secret Power a chance to freeze because it doesn’t change ‘Terrain’, but after some strenuous research and testing (looking at a Bulbapedia page), we found out that Grassy Terrain does, and came up with a team around it.

The focus is around Kangaskhan putting things to sleep while Serperior does what only it can do, i.e, demolish teams with Contrary Leaf Storm.

• +6 252 SpA Serperior Leaf Storm vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Amoonguss in Grassy Terrain: 275-324 (124.4 - 146.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO (Metronome at 2x)

That being said, we hope you enjoy the content we produce here at AusTerrain.

Contributors: 

• Sarkastik (@TyyyPoWeR)

• UchihaX96 (@UchihaX96)

• Dawg (@DawgVGC)

• Yourf (@YourfVGC)