Hello friends. I've played my first Premier Challenge of this format a week ago. It was somewhat resembling of Regionals: I felt shit going into it, then I played, and then I took first fucking place. Looking forward to all the tournaments not won when I'm actually feeling good...weeelll, what might help me in that regard is that there's a realistic chance that I'm just never feeling good this year. That's just what a nice new format we have! *cough*
Anyway, before you actually read further in this, you might want to check out the two articles I posted on Nugget Bridge recently, which are first my Regionals report and second a new entry of Dreykopff Explains the Game. The latter also has a few bits about the PC I'm talking about, so I'm not gonna repeat that stuff here and just show and explain the team.
UltraUmboxer (Groudon) @ Red Orb
Ability: Drought
Quiet Nature
- Eruption
- Earth Power
- Precipice Blades
- Protect
Ho-Oh @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
Adamant Nature
- Sacred Fire
- Brave Bird
- Substitute
- Protect
Mihiip (Amoonguss) (F) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Effect Spore
Relaxed Nature
- Grass Knot
- Spore
- Rage Powder
- Protect
Muttis Stolz (Kangaskhan) @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Inner Focus
Adamant Nature
- Frustration
- Sucker Punch
- Low Kick
- Fake Out
Cresselia @ Lum Berry
Ability: Levitate
Sassy Nature
- Ice Beam
- Helping Hand
- Skill Swap
- Trick Room
♪S♪G♪Q♪F♪ (Lapras) (F) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Water Absorb
Sassy Nature
- Sheer Cold
- Perish Song
- Ice Beam
- Protect
This whole team is an upgrade of the very first thing I tested with the new rules: a Cresselia/Groudon/Kangaskhan Trick Room core joined by a Ho-Oh that plays like a Heatran that hasn't yet been made the (2015) metagame's hottest whore. Basically, I wanted to play the new CHALK without ever having played the original CHALK, lol. Definitely behind time and maybe also ahead of time, you know. This team is indeed kinda complicated for contemporary early-format standards. But that's just me, I just have to be different, you know... Coin flips will be lost with 50% chance and that is bound to be a problem when there are too many coins flipped.
Groudon, Kangaskhan and Cresselia are as self-explanatory as always. Ho-Oh pretty much is as well. I really wanted to use it just for the hell of it, because it's one of my favorite Pokémon and there are so many common mons that can't touch it, it's crazy -- attributes that Heatran and Ferrothorn can only dream of. The moveset apparently is just what about everyone would think of first when using Ho-Oh with the intention to wall stuff and it's decent, but it may not be optimal yet. I basically want Recover somewhere but I just have no space for it -- the two attacks are mandatory and Protect is very helpful, too. So that's the first 4 slots. Ideally, I'd just bring those to games and make them work. The last two slots were just for matchups that the original core struggles with, and I tried probably at least 10 different mons in those by now.
Lapras is stupid, and my Lapras set is stupid, too. I hated Kyogre matchups, I hated Salamence matchups, I hated Rayquaza matchups, I hated Cresselia matchups. All of them. A lot. Out of all the random mons I tried to help me there (most prominently Ferrothorn: Ferrothorn sucks, it just gets beaten up all the time and does nothing back), Lapras was the one that could actually be considered a threat. Spam Sheer Cold when foes can't touch it, easy. That happened multiple times on that day. I just...had really bad luck with that move, lol. Can't complain when I still win I guess, but it just looks so retarded when you try like forever and nothing happens. Protect because I like to have Protect, Ice Beam as the only damaging move because Lapras won't do notable damage ever anyway, but this move specifically does at least OHKO Salamence and Rayquaza with 100% accuracy. Finally, Perish Song to put 3-2 situations and stuff on lock without having to rely on any of the other shit.
And then Amoonguss again, memiest of memes. It's kinda good and it kinda isn't. I didn't like it in this team because I liked to bring Cresselia to every game but I absolutely hate to bring Cresselia and Amoonguss to the same games. Other than that, yay Spore, yay redirection, yay horrible Ability activation luck! Oh yes, people already made those jokes about me possibly using Amoonguss for another whole format...and it's not entirely unrealistic, because the thing is simply more reliable than Smeargle and can help with possible Trick Room weaknesses instead of amplifying them.
Overall, the team is as early-format as it gets. So unoptimized. It's slow, so it just gets punched a lot and can do nothing about it sometimes. It absolutely hates Crobat, mainly because Cresselia can't carry Mental Herb and some Dark Void insurance at the same time. (Naturally, I faced only Crobats and Talonflames but no Smeargles, who knows how the hell I won...) It's sadly not much of a surprise that my win ratio in practice was only around 50%, and I brought it to the tournament only because I had nothing that went better for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment