(pictured: electromagnetic interaction from quantumdiaries.org, thanks)
(format ripped from CrashinBoomBang because it's very pretty, thanks and also thanks for improving the RMT forum with your own team)
(sprites ripped from pkparaiso.com, thanks)
Hey all, five years and two Pokémon generations have passed since my last RMT but I am back again with another one. I will keep the introductions brief, but basically this is one of the teams I have used in recent tournaments since about February or so. I am posting this team mainly because, among other users, I am dissatisfied with the dearth of tournament teams in the RMT forum, and as someone who was very involved in the RMT forum years ago when it was one of the bastions of competitive Pokémon theory, I think if more tournament players posted their teams here, this forum could become relevant again. As a brief brag, this team has served me very well in tournament play, facing quite a few top players and receiving, as of now, only one loss, to CrashinBoomBang (see the team he used here and the replay of the match here) in a very intense game that basically came down to a last turn 50/50 after a turn 1 flinch stopped me from setting up sticky web, a deterrent to two of the most dangerous Pokémon on his team. I used this team extensively in OST 10 where it provided me with at least one win each round until quarterfinals where I did not use it. Since there are 5 or 6 replays of the team in use, and since the metagame has shifted heavily towards Sand rush offense, bird spam, and the incredibly bulky and powerful mega mawile and assault vest azumarill, all of which give this team problems, I doubt I will be using it again, except perhaps in random frontier games if I am bored and feel like mixing it up. Seems like the perfect time to retire this team.
As an aside, I'm going to pre-emptively reject this team from the RMT archive, since it seems every RMT that has a good ladder or tounament run gets nominated. This team is pretty niche, had little to no impact on the metagame, and is not the type of thing I'd want to see in the archive which is supposed to chronicle the evolution of the metagame. Instead, I envision an RMT forum in the not-too-far future where tournament teams are posted regularly and only those that were truly metagame-defining are nominated and archived, rather than the quality being so bad that every half-decent team is nominated. Archive CBB's team; everyone uses it and it actually shaped the metagame.
Team Design Process
The team started out fundamentally as an anti-stall team, because I felt some of my opponents in OST 10 were going to bring stall to the tournament, so I wanted to counterpick them. Furthermore, I wanted to punish my opponents for bringing stall to tournaments, because seriously who wants to play for 2 hours+ per game with 300 turns where more than half the turns are 50/50 guesses? I have better things to do FFS. With that in mind, I chose the core of calm mind landorus + specs keldeo + a pursuiter. At the time, latios was the common defogger and running earthquake, so I chose assault vest bisharp with max hp and enough bulk investment to survive draco meteor + earthquake after stealth rock. incidentally the same EVs allow you to not be 2hkod by hidden power fire or ohkod by hidden power fighting, which is cool.
From there I realized that if the strongest levitating threat of the time is pursuit-bait, then the rest of the threats are all grounded and if I could get them to be slower than all my high-firepower pokemon, I would be all the more threatening. Sticky web was the obvious choice, given that I already had a bisharp on the team that could punish and destroy defoggers. Shuckle was chosen because every other sticky web user is ass and if not for him, the web wouldn't even be worth using. I chose encore+infestation as the moves other than the obvious sticky web and stealth rock to turn the tables on pokemon trying to set up on shuckle, and use them as set up bait for my own pokemon.
At this point I needed to decide my mega pokemon. I knew I wanted one that could hit really hard to keep the anti-bulk theme, so the options were basically medicham, pinsir, one of the charizards, gardevoir, or mawile. Since nobody on the team really cared about stealth rock and I wanted my hazards to stay up, I steered away from the zards and pinsir as defog hinders the rest of my team but stealth rock hinders them. Mawile was too slow even after sticky web, and between medicham and gardevoir, gardevoir has the added bonus of being able to tank a hit from the genies and KO back (after rocks anyway), a huge boon since they are not affected by sticky web.
For my last slot I was out of ideas, just wanted a really strong and bulky attacker in the 100ish speed tier that could take advantage of sticky web. Kyurem-black has a stat total of like 700 so I figured I would chuck him on the team and call it a day. He has the added bonus of being absurdly hard for the conventional walls to beat, a veritable monster to stall once chansey is down, and his most common check keldeo no longer checks him in sticky web, while his other main check latios is nicely pursuited.
Somewhere down the line people started using gyarados-mega, scizor-mega, bird spam, and sand rush offense, and all were massive threats to the team once they set up. Without any boosts they were easy to handle but getting even one meant it was curtains. As such, I replaced the two pokemon they could set up on, bisharp and kyurem-black, with other choices. If EV'd properly, aegislash could do almost as good of a job pursuiting as bisharp, koing switching latis after SR and one turn of recoil. I replaced kyurem-black with thundurus, a check to bird spam that could also provide either a last ditch thunder wave or another defiant user to beat defogs. With these concessions I became a bit less evil to stall but still maintained a healthy team advantage against stall teams while not outright losing to the things mentioned above.
From there I realized that if the strongest levitating threat of the time is pursuit-bait, then the rest of the threats are all grounded and if I could get them to be slower than all my high-firepower pokemon, I would be all the more threatening. Sticky web was the obvious choice, given that I already had a bisharp on the team that could punish and destroy defoggers. Shuckle was chosen because every other sticky web user is ass and if not for him, the web wouldn't even be worth using. I chose encore+infestation as the moves other than the obvious sticky web and stealth rock to turn the tables on pokemon trying to set up on shuckle, and use them as set up bait for my own pokemon.
At this point I needed to decide my mega pokemon. I knew I wanted one that could hit really hard to keep the anti-bulk theme, so the options were basically medicham, pinsir, one of the charizards, gardevoir, or mawile. Since nobody on the team really cared about stealth rock and I wanted my hazards to stay up, I steered away from the zards and pinsir as defog hinders the rest of my team but stealth rock hinders them. Mawile was too slow even after sticky web, and between medicham and gardevoir, gardevoir has the added bonus of being able to tank a hit from the genies and KO back (after rocks anyway), a huge boon since they are not affected by sticky web.
For my last slot I was out of ideas, just wanted a really strong and bulky attacker in the 100ish speed tier that could take advantage of sticky web. Kyurem-black has a stat total of like 700 so I figured I would chuck him on the team and call it a day. He has the added bonus of being absurdly hard for the conventional walls to beat, a veritable monster to stall once chansey is down, and his most common check keldeo no longer checks him in sticky web, while his other main check latios is nicely pursuited.
Somewhere down the line people started using gyarados-mega, scizor-mega, bird spam, and sand rush offense, and all were massive threats to the team once they set up. Without any boosts they were easy to handle but getting even one meant it was curtains. As such, I replaced the two pokemon they could set up on, bisharp and kyurem-black, with other choices. If EV'd properly, aegislash could do almost as good of a job pursuiting as bisharp, koing switching latis after SR and one turn of recoil. I replaced kyurem-black with thundurus, a check to bird spam that could also provide either a last ditch thunder wave or another defiant user to beat defogs. With these concessions I became a bit less evil to stall but still maintained a healthy team advantage against stall teams while not outright losing to the things mentioned above.
Team In Depth
Shuckle @ Mental Herb
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Encore / Toxic
- Infestation
- Sticky Web
Shuckle is generally the team's lead, unless I am facing something that can specifically beat him, in which case I will lead with the least important member of the team (which I deduce based on our matchup at team preview) and try to get a good lead matchup for shuckle, so that he can more easily get his hazards down. If I do lead with shuckle, I will generally assess which hazard is more important and lay that one first. If I don't need sticky web, I sometimes just don't set it at all. The team is fast enough with the genies and keldeo, and bulky enough with gardevoir (on the special side) and aegislash that I don't explicitly need sticky web, so if the opponent doesn't have one of: garchomp, greninja, manectric, keldeo, heatran (if it looks like scarftran from team preview), excadrill (if it looks like scarf drill from team preview, this team was most used during the time when scarf drill was the most popular set), deoxys-speed (rip), or some other strange fast grounded pokemon, I don't set it at all. Against teams that do have those pokemon, putting down sticky web turns them into liabilities that are slower than most of my team and also suffer OHKOs from many pokemon on my team, allowing me to go effectively a pseudo 6-4 or 6-3 at the very beginning of the match if we are counting useful pokemon on each team. To make these pokemon useful, my opponent has to defog, and often the battle between the defogger and the defog stopper will decide who wins the game (i.e. if I can stop them from defogging, or force them to take a kill in exchange for the defog, I can win, but if they get it for free they win). Against teams without these pokemon, depending on the shuckle lead matchup, I may not have the luxury of a free turn for sticky web, so I do not set it. If the sticky web isn't doing wonders for the team matchup, it is better to conserve chuckle for a sacrifice later and get an infestation+encore off to ensure that one of my pokemon enters the field safely and with a free turn. Having the early game momentum and a nice death fodder for later in the game is often much better than a near-useless sticky web. I have chosen infestation over other options (namely toxic and knock off) because infestation traps pokemon, and I can often use infestation on an incoming pokemon, then encore its set up move or weak attack. From there I gain the freedom to 1. set all my hazards and get a free switchin or 2. set some hazards, get a free switchin, and get a free attack while they are stuck in encore. If the opponent is not setting up something too dangerous, I safely go for option 1, but if they are getting dragon dances with their charizard or something I will instead go for the safer option 2 and kill whatever is setting up with one of the many high-firepower pokemon on the team. That being said, the moveset of infestation+toxic deserves mention since it allows me to almost guarantee one KO and hazards after shuckle goes down. In addition, if the defogger comes in on an infestation after hazards go up, I can toxic it as it defogs and then spam the hazard of my choice, guaranteeing that after the defogger dies I get at least one hazard up. This is a really strong combo but in high-risk tournament play the safer and more predictable encore won out, based mostly on personal preference. Encore+toxic is decent but the moves do not combo into each other quite as nicely as encore+infestation or toxic+infestation, so I would not choose this combination over the other two, which are in my opinion equally powerful. The EVs are pumped into physical defense because I cannot stop specs keldeo or landorus from 2hkoing outside sandstorm, but with physical defense I can better take attacks from non-CB azumarill, lead mamoswine, lead tyranitar, landorus-therian, unboosted excadrill, and most popular leads. Against lead loom I have a tough matchup but I basically decide whether breaking his sash is more important than hazards, and if there is no obviously useless pokemon in the team matchup I let shuckle take the sleep. If there is a less useful pokemon on the team I lead with that one and hit breloom, allowing it to take the breloom hit or spore then going to aegislash, and generally switch to shuckle after that. Shuckle @ Mental Herb
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Encore / Toxic
- Infestation
- Sticky Web
Landorus (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Earth Power
- Psychic
- Focus Blast
- Calm Mind
Thundurus (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 56 Atk / 200 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Knock Off
- Superpower / Focus Blast / Hidden Power Flying
- Thunder Wave
Gardevoir (F) @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Psyshock / Future Sight
- Focus Blast
- Hyper Voice
Aegislash @ Air Balloon
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 160 HP / 76 Atk / 252 SpA / 20 Spe
Quiet Nature
- Shadow Sneak
- Pursuit
- Shadow Ball
- King's Shield
Keldeo @ Choice Specs
Ability: Justified
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Scald
- Secret Sword
- Icy Wind
Overall Theme
I am going to keep this brief since I covered most of the goals of the team in the team members' descriptions. The point of this team, aside from being a powerful counterpick to the stall that permeates tournament play, is to abuse a few fundamental interactions between team members. Sticky web + keldeo + gardevoir is one, future sight + keldeo is another, pursuit + keldeo + landorus is a third, double genie wearing down each other's counters is a fourth, and encore/infestation + setup sweepers (landorus and possibly gardevoir depending on the set) is a fifth Furthermore, each pokemon hits really hard on the overall less bulky special defense side of bulky teams, meaning that once the assault vest user has been broken by the collective team's effort, the rest of the pokemon have little trouble bowling over a weakened opponent. Each of these interactions serves to make these pokemon, which were already top metagame threats, even more powerful. By completely neutering the common revenge killers with sticky web, I am able to forego speed for power (choosing, for example, mega gardevoir over manectric, calm mind landorus over rock polish, and specs keldeo over scarf) and really have it both ways, giving me the firepower to take down stall and the matchup-specific speed to take down offense. I realize a lot of my choices look pretty aidsy and silly but I promise it works well when it's all put together.
Threats
Gonna keep this one brief too because again I talked about the threats and how I deal with them in the team members, so I'll only list the ones that give me a good amount of trouble / require me to play around them a lot. I might think of more later that I forgot; I'm mostly just tired of thinking about this team right now.
Bisharp - It forces me to either not use sticky web or take it out before I do. The best way to deal with bisharp is to, if he and latios are not on the same team, get chip damage on it in passing, primarily with aegislash who is generally sacrificed at some point, and goad my opponent into sacrificing it, then using sticky web later. If my opponent has bisharp without the usual threats that I use sticky web to beat, the matchup is much easier and I just play without the web. Still hard to switch into, but does not outright beat anyone other than aegislash one on one.
Talonflame - teams with talonflame are usually really anal about having a way to clear hazards so that is always annoying, and talonflame can beat many pokemon on my team. otherwise, he himself isn't a huge threat but the team surrounding him almost never gives me an easy matchup since it's usually bird spam + hazard removal
Excadrill - scarf and other mold breaker variants are no problem, but the sand rush ones are a bit of a pain, forcing me to play very carefully with aegislash. Depending on his teammates, this can be a manageable matchup or a really tough one.
Charizard-Y - he is never seen anymore but he is a threat and very difficult to switch into. if I keep rocks up it's not a huge deal to just force him out once with thundurus after sacrificing something but like talonflame teams with charizard-y are usually very anal about keeping hazards off the field. it requires a bit of careful play and the speed tie against gardevoir is infuriating.
Rain - oddly I can do decently well against rain teams by leaving gardevoir un-mega'd and tracing their swift swim. against kingdra i can mega evolve while fighting it and retain my swift-swim boosted speed while koing with hyper voice, and against kabutops i do even better by staying unevolved and koing with focus blast and if he switches I can pull the same trick later. never had trouble with rain oddly, which is rare for offensive teams such as this one
Shoutouts
Replays
because everyone has to stroke his own dick once in a while / gotta show how the team works / + many unsaved games i think the official tournament record is 9-1 or something but here are notable ones
I only have one person to shout out, because this man has taken me to new levels of pokemon ability with his sage advice. he is the powerful and brilliant pokemon master r willy. I would share his wisdom here but it is a secret of which nobody, myself included, is worth of knowing
r willy is love
r willy is life
r willy is love
r willy is life
Replays
because everyone has to stroke his own dick once in a while / gotta show how the team works / + many unsaved games i think the official tournament record is 9-1 or something but here are notable ones
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