ON THE KUMMUK SPIKES
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This team was actually birthed by my desire to use Alolan Muk, rather than Chesnaught. I thought muk would be a really nice defensive piece and progress maker on a spikes team due to its particularly threatening poison touch knock off to remove opposing boots.
This isn’t a new strategy, RU stall teams have used Muk and Chesnaught in tandem to great success, so I wanted to try a variation that has a little bit more offensive oomph and revenge killing power. This, I hoped, would allow me to use Cyclizar over Talonflame as is commonly seen on these stall teams, and avoid the obligation to use Chansey as well.
So, let’s start with our team of the week piece, Chesnaught. I was going to use the standard set with knock off, however, after the team came together, I realized I probably had enough knock off between the rest of the members, so I could afford to run roar instead to rack up spikes damage and phase out dangerous sd sweepers like iron leaves and bisharp.
<—THIS UGLY BASTARD IS KNOCKING OFF HOT CHICKS
, FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN TOO BELOW VVV
Now the other centerpiece, Alolan Muk. Another standard set with rest talk for longevity, but I run quite a bit of speed to get the jump on enamorus-t, which is an absolute demon for this team to face. If it tera poisons, at least I can knock the boots and rack up hazard damage later, but it’s still pretty precarious.
I needed a way to deny Cyclizar from spinning, and while Chesnaught is an ok candidate to tera ghost and block spin, it would have to keep taking Draco from bike. I wanted to try Tera Ghost Sticky Hold Rocky helmet Gastrodon, as I’ve seen it used before to annoy bike. It can’t get its helmet knocked off which means it’s a permenant annoyance to bike, especially one that continue to take hazard damage. Sludge bomb + Earth Power is great coverage and lets me fish for poison chances unlike ice beam or surf. Max defense lets gastrodon handle some physical attackers along with chesnaught. Stealth rocks are also necessary on hazard stack, and chesnaught has spikes covered.
Cyclizar is a great spinner, has all of the qualities we like about it. I have double edge to potentially revenge enamorus-t and still do decent damage to thundurus. Assault vest is necessary on this team A-Muk can’t handle special threats alone.
I need a revenge killer on this team, preferably one that can stick around and clean up lategame with hazards up. Zapdos-G is in my opinion the best most spammable scarf in the tier, and has knockturn for removing boots and keeping momentum. It’s also immune to spikes itself and takes neutral damage from rocks. Speaking of, Tera fighting is used to take less damage from rocks unlike tera flying. Zapdos is also a great check to bisharp which is otherwise looking like a huge threat.
The last mon on this team needed to be a steel or resist many of the things steel does, so jirachi is a good fit as it is on many teams. Because my team is already so defensive, I liked the idea of superrachi with psychic noise as a way to make damage stick to bulkier pokemon. It’s also a good reuniclus check when muk can’t quite stop it by itself, which is important for spikestack. I think you could use a different rachi set here, like meteor beam with iron head, protective pads, or one of my favorites, Wish+CM.
REPLAY ZONE
Vs Cyclizar BO:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2117150747
Vs Stall:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2117161636
Week 9: Terrakion
