Team Report - 4-2 at Manchester Midseason Showdown

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Pyritie

TAMAGO
is an Artist
Disclaimer: although I won 4 matches and lost 2, I circled the wrong thing during round four and accidentally reported a win as a loss, so officially I went 3-3 and came 24th. But if you took my resistance and put it next to the other 4-2's, I came around 14th. There were 40 people total at the event, and this was my second IRL tournament I've ever been to (my first being UK nats last year), and my goal was to keep a positive win/loss ratio so I'm happy with my result.

The team



I started throwing together team ideas about a week ago, since the last time I had done any battling was around december, and my team from then was no longer relevant. I initially started by trying out xerneas and rayquaza, and while they were great at destroying unprepared opponents, their hyper-offense playstyle didn't suit me. Later, I heard people hyping up yveltal and groudon in the vgc PS room, so I looked up some other teams that had used that core and went from there.

I saw that most other groudon and yveltal teams had either mawile or kangaskhan, so I plonked in a kangaskhan since I had used one earlier when I was testing out stuff earlier. I liked talonflame and kangaskhan as a lead together, so I threw on a talonflame for some speed control and extra priority. From there though I kept trying out a bunch of combinations for the last three slots, without much success:

Eventually I ended up liking talonflame and amoonguss together, but still couldn't think of anything for the last slot. I asked my friend Optimura and he suggested mawile. After playing with the mawile addition for about 2 battles I ended up loving it and finalized my team then and there.

So, on to the team!



Yveltal @ Black Glasses
Ability: Dark Aura
EVs: 244 HP / 4 Def / 36 SpD / 228 Spe
Timid Nature
- Snarl
- Foul Play
- Sucker Punch
- Protect

I LOVE yveltal in this format's current metagame. It helps deal with so many team archetypes, from rayogre, to dialga/ogre, to double primal, and so on. I'm not going to explain what this spread does because you can read all about it right here. It did its job well, though I found myself mostly just using foul play and occasionally sucker punch, as most of the things it faced were physical attackers. I'm definitely going to keep experimenting with yveltal for the upcoming international as I feel it has a lot of potential. One of my biggest complaints is that while yveltal is certainly capable of withstanding powerful attacks, it gets worn down quickly. Yveltal also loves tailwind for getting off fast snarls and foul plays, but found that it didn't really work with talonflame all that well.

I also discovered that you need life orb to guarantee the foul play OHKO onto landorus-t's, whereas it's a roll with black glasses. More on that later.



Groudon @ Red Orb
Ability: Drought
EVs: 252 HP / 180 Atk / 4 Def / 60 SpD / 12 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rock Slide
- Fire Punch
- Precipice Blades
- Protect

Yveltal and groudon go great together, with groudon taking electric and fairy attacks from yveltal and yveltal's snarling helping to patch up groudon's weaker special defense. There's not really a whole lot to say about this set -- I got the benchmarks from here, EVing to survive timid groudon's earth power, with a bit of speed creep and the rest in attack. Groudon did what groudons well, which is to say, nuke things with precipice blades. Unfortunately, many of the teams I faced had multiple flying types so I couldn't spam it as much as I would've liked to. I'd like to try swapping out rock slide for something like substitute, but then I don't really have anything to hit talonflame, salamence, or ho-oh with.



Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 4 HP / 172 Atk / 76 Def / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Double-Edge
- Power-Up Punch
- Sucker Punch

Mostly standard kang stuff. I chose power-up punch over low kick because boosting myself to spam +2 dark aura sucker punches sounded like a good idea at the time, and I felt like the rest of my team threatened ferrothorns enough.

I don't know what this spread does; I stole it from Therazer456's mega manectric team. I assume it can live low kick from another kangaskhan, but I'm not sure what else.



Talonflame (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Gale Wings
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Brave Bird
- Taunt
- Tailwind

I chose jolly over adamant because of all the other talonflames I was running into. I also chose taunt over quick guard to help deal with smeargles and other support mons. I loved taunt when I was practicing with this team, but at the tournament it wasn't very useful. I would've much preferred having quick guard here. But then again, I never ran into any smeargles at the tournament, so who knows? Both are good.



Amoonguss @ Mental Herb
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 76 Def / 180 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Spore
- Rage Powder
- Grass Knot
- Protect

My anti-trick room mon and slow team punisher. The EVs were originally meant to let it survive a jolly LO rayquaza dragon ascent with a Coba berry, but after I stopped using thundurus/weavile I changed it to a focus sash but forgot to change the EV spread to something else. In practice I kept getting taunted and liked having the mental herb more. But at the tournament I don't think I was never taunted. Oh well!



Mawile @ Mawilite
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 148 HP / 252 Atk / 108 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Iron Head
- Play Rough
- Protect

The speed EVs hit 84 speed, which underspeeds minimum speed primals (and other base 90's) while outspeeding lots of other stuff in tailwind, with maximum attack and the rest of the EVs dumped in bulk. Helps me with my xerneas matchup and again helps me punish less offensive teams. I literally threw it on the team at 10pm last night so I had hardly practiced with it, but it did well in the matches I brought it to, from what I can remember. Also lets me hit other yveltals with something, if I encountered any! Which I didn't.

The event

I completely forgot what train I was supposed to catch from birmingham and ended up leaving the house at the wrong time. Ended up being 10 minutes late but when I got there they were still doing registrations and stuff so it was fine.

Round 1 vs Jack Whittington (win)
His team:
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I brought:
(
???)

I wish I saved this battle because I started off from a terrible turn one but somehow clawed my way back for a close win at the end. Yveltal put in tons of work, making me feel great about including it. A very exciting game to start the day off!

Update: Jack remembered how this game went and here's what happened.

Round 2 vs Chris Barton (lose) Havak
His team:
(
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I brought:
(
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Turns out both of our primals speed tied, but I didn't realise it until the end, despite it being shown from turn 1. I leave his raichu alive for too long and I don't make the correct reads into his rayquaza. Really wish I had kept sash on my amoonguss, as I probably would've been able to work around his rayquaza a bit better. Later in the game I forget that he paralyzed my kangaskhan. Oh well!

Battle video: TWKW-WWWW-WW3P-5PNK

Round 3 vs Ashley Graves (win)
His team:
(
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I brought:
I forgot again

Another great battle that I didn't save the video of because my fingers were on "don't save the battle videos for battle spot" autopilot.

Round 4 vs Luke Dunscombe (win)
His team:
(
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I brought:
(
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Another raichu! I could've played better here after I got a quick 4-2 in the beginning (although volt tackle paralyzed my yveltal), and only barely scraped out a win due to a fire punch burn on his rayquaza and him forgetting to use a PP max on his choice banded rayquaza's extremespeed, which ended up struggling to death. Quick guard would've also been extremely useful to have here.

This is the battle that I reported wrong and I ended up getting recorded as losing. I talked to the organizers and even though I had a battle video and luke would vouch for it, they wouldn't change my score because I had signed the little form. Oh well. Unfortunately, they recorded Luke as losing as well for some reason.

Battle video: SPJG-WWWW-WW3P-5PP2

Round 5 vs Andrei Muntean (win)
His team:
(
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I brought:
(
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Oh hey a pachirisu!

He gets the early lead with knocking out my talonflame turn 1 without it doing anything, but I make a risky play and keep mawile in while he doubles into my groudon, letting me knock out the talonflame and kangaskhan. From there, amoonguss comes in and puts everything to sleep and groudon and mawile clean up.

Battle video: 7MTG-WWWW-WW3P-5PQF

Round 6 vs Joshua Penny (lose)
His team:
(
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I brought:
(
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Oh hey, dialga/kyogre! Yveltal loves this matchup! Then I completely forget gardevoir learns trick room (this would've been the perfect place to use taunt!) and it all goes downhill from there. I try to stall out trick room but I couldn't manage that and dealing with weather wars at the same time. Lando-t dodges a rock slide and then survives a foul play with 3HP remaining and explodes in my face, though the battle was basically over by that point. That's what I meant about blackglasses making foul play a roll!

Battle video: 8R9G-WWWW-WW3P-5PRF



After that I went and got some lunch (the paninis at that sandwich shop next door are really good by the way) and sat around and watched top cut. Fun day, would come play again,
/10.
 
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It was a great day, and it was nice to meet you there. At least I wasn't the only one with a last minute 6th mon on their team. Shame about the mishap with the slip. See you at Sutton Coldfield hopefully
 
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