Hi everyone, trick room as a playstyle has been underexplored since the beginning of scarlet and violet, however with this team I would like to make the case that trick room is still a very potent playstyle that can provide consistent game results. Despite half of the team being below OU, these mons come together to make something greater than the sum of their parts. With that I would like to present choice spam trick room.
Table Of Contents:
1.Proof Of Peak
2.Teambuilding Process
3.Pokemon Description
4.Threats
5.Replays
6.Conclusion
7.Importable
1.Proof Of Peak
2.Teambuilding Process
This team was inspired by a team I saw on ladder.
The original version of the team had a magnezone and a slowbro, which was cool but this team had a massive problem with fairy types like iron valiant. I changed this in order to gain much better matchups across the board.
My version of the team is much more consistent as it has a better defensive backbone and has better synergy with breaking.
3.Pokemon Description
Iron Hands @ Choice Band
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Adamant Nature
- Wild Charge
- Ice Punch
- Close Combat
- Earthquake
Iron Hands is a very underexplored attacker in SV OU mainly due to its poor matchup against great tusk, however choice banded iron hands is an excellent trick room abuser. Tera fighting close combat will 2hko even the bulkiest great tusk, allowing you to break past and destroy teams relying on it. Iron Hands is also excellent defensively, being able to hard counter kingambit for the team.
Tera Type: Fighting for max stab damage
Evs: Max hp for bulk and max attack for max damage output
The reason why Iron Hands does not have absolute min speed is because it intentionally outspeeds all of the really slow defensive mons such as toxapex and amoongus. It's nice to be able to threaten pokemon outside of trick room and in these more bulkier matchups you would rather not waste time setting trick room. Pelipper and gholdengo at min speed also outspeed these pokemon.
Hatterene (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 224 Def / 32 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Draining Kiss
- Healing Wish
Hatterene is important on this team as our main way of preventing entry hazards. Our team is quite weak to entry hazards and hatterene provides some much needed relief from them, try not to let it get koed too early as you may end up being overwhelmed by hazards before you can win. Usually Hatterene will leverage its good bulk to deny entry hazard setters and set up trick room throughout a game. Healing wish is for endgame scenarios where, if used properly, you can grantee a win. Hatterene is NOT a suicide lead for the team, rather it is a midgame piece.
Evs: Evs maximized for physdef, I don't know what the 32 evs in spdef are for but I've seen other people using those evs so I decided to throw them on.
Tera Type: Steel is an overall good neutral tera type that can allow us to reliably set up trick room vs various threatening attackers if needed.
Bronzong @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 128 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Body Press
- Iron Defense
Probably the most critical member of the team, Bronzong turned this team from average to excellent. Bronzong fulfills the roll of a mixed wall on this team, and a potential end game sweeper with iron press. Bronzong is able to be a reliable switch in to moves from iron valiant, while hard countering baxcalibur and non fire punch Dragonite. Bronzong also has the excellent quality of being so bulky that it will be able to live any one hit to set up trick room, even super effective ones like specs dragapult from full. If you are able to remove all special attackers and ghosts from the opponent's field, bronzong becomes a devestating win condition that is nearly impossible to stop. It is very similar to iron press corviknight in this regard except that it can also use trick room to "outspeed" anything faster than it. Psychic is a very effective move in the last slot, allowing bronzong to fulfull its defensive roll by hitting targets like iron valiant and great tusk for a 2hko. It was also chosen in order to immediately threaten the defensive poison types amoongus and toxapex, while hitting everything else for good neutral chip. Overall Bronzong can be played in 2 different ways on this team depending on the matchup, being either a defensive pivot or an end game sweeper.
Evs: Mixed bulk split evenly between the defensive stats emphasize Bronzong's ability to be a mixed wall. Sassy and 128 spdef evs hit a jump point. Sassy was chosen as we needed more emphasis on special bulk.
Tera Type: Tera Fighting lets us gain a resistance to dark while gaining stab on body press. This allows us to check dangerous dark types like kingambit in the end game.
Pelipper @ Choice Specs
Ability: Drizzle
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Hurricane
- Surf
- U-turn
- Hydro Pump
Basically mini kyogre, Specs pelipper acts as a near unwallable wallbreaker for the team. In many matchups it is the pokemon required to be tera'ed in order to break the opponent's defensive core. It is very easy to spam either stab move depending on what is better. Specs Pelipper's main drawback is its low speed, which makes it an excellent trick room abuser, as it makes it very hard to respond to offensively. Pelipper is by far the team's most important breaker and you might just auto lose certain matchups if you blunder early on with it. Pelipper also fulfills a crucial defensive role for this team, as it shuts down volcarona and uses it as attacking fodder. The rain Pelliper brings is also useful as it helps our 3 fire weak pokemon take fire attacks better.
Evs: Max hp to take hits better and max special attack for the highest damage output
Tera Type: Tera water or tera flying for max stab damage, I find tera water to be a bit more consistent.
Toedscruel @ Leftovers
Ability: Mycelium Might
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Trick Room
- Spore
- Earth Power
- Rapid Spin
Did you know toedscruel gets trick room? Neither did I until recently. Toedscruel is my favorite pokemon introduced in gen 9 and this set takes full advantage of its 2 best stats, hp and spdef. With max investment toedscruel becomes a vey effective special pivot for the team, allowing us to sponge hits from every special attacker in the tier bar iron moth and volcarona. From there Toedscruel can spore something and set up trick room, gaining us massive momentum and giving us safe switchins to our powerful attackers. Earth power is so we can counter gholdengo and other poison types more consistently. Rapid spin provides crucial hazard control, particularly against opposing glimmora leads. Always lead this against opposing glimmora, if you click the right moves you can completely deny entry hazards from it.
Evs: Max special bulk to counter special attackers. 4evs in spatk allow for a garunteed ohko on non booster energy iron moth. Our speed stat is set to outspeed defensive great tusk outside of trick room for better hazard control
Tera Type: Tera water is necessary to emergency check walking wake and iron moth. You will usually have to use your tera against walking wake or you will get run over.
Gholdengo @ Choice Specs
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Make It Rain
- Shadow Ball
- Focus Blast
- Trick
Gholdengo is a very powerful specs attacker that can easily break defensive cores relying on bulky poison types like toxapex. Ghost is an excellent offensive type and so having a slow powerful ghost attacker really benefits the team. there isn't too much to be said about gholdengo, it's one of the best meta mons for a reason.
Evs: Max hp to take hits better and max special attack for the highest damage output
Tera Type: Tera water lets us better deal with iron moth
4.Threats
Booster energy Iron moth can ohko the entire team if it gets going. Your tera is required to beat this mon as pelipper can't stand up to it. Having trick room up at all costs is recommended. Specs is still scary but can be played around.
Substitute tera steel is an awful matchup for this team as it can easily 6-0. you need to use iron hands or bronzong to beat it and even then it still isn't great, this is arguably the worst matchup for the team
Booster energy Roaring moon ohkos the entire team after a single dragon dance. You must hit this when it comes out and probably use your tera in order to survive. If you can you will usually be able to sweep the opponent with your remaining pieces
If it is substitute it can easily sweep you and only pelipper can stop it. However the standard utility set is a lot easier to handle
Bulk up is scary as Pelipper is our only check to it. If pelipper is gone this will sweep the entire team completely uncontested, keeping Pelipper alive is critical to win this matchup. Swords dance on the other hand is much more manageable as it is a lot less bulky.
Specs is scary because it uses our own rain against us and heavily abuses choice locked pelipper. Tera water on toedscruel will handle it very well however, so make sure you tera if you need to.
5.Replays
Some of these were played on my alt which also hit 1900+
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1866085564-136d4j183ao1lf9ae26v2eajq6oiz4zpw ->Game we hit our peak on
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1865405363-x4vwc3sr2q2qrc12o82yr3yamshmv49pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1865391643
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1864623105-wl5x1sq3cya8zvbh7si1e3a31br1kebpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1864648149-q3zdyfpeemnefryai633sdq6vjjwiwhpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1865314037-gthc4w7f62lm9vcn3nq9a4g18uv3itwpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1866208214-hmddyhu1jg37osfh9lvpyouo4atfk0fpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1866211869
6.Conclusion
The replays show that trick room does very well against many common team styles in the current metagame. It is very good against the common balance teams and semi stall teams as it usually can lock down their threats and break their defensive cores very easily. This team struggles more vs. offensive playstyles and specific popular offensive mons, however it can still play to win these matchups quite effectively. The best matchup for this team by far is against psychic terrain offense, which is almost 6-0ed on account of never being able to sweep with trick room being set permanently. I would like to see this playstyle more explored in the future of scarlet and violet as I think there are other great abusers of trick room waiting to be used. Pokemon like sylveon and the popular kingambit have great potential on this style of team.
This team is by no means perfect. This team requires a lot of skill to pilot and games can often be decided by how well you lead vs your opponent. You will get 6-0ed on occasion but that is the nature of this team. You're also gonna have to make some 50-50 tera decisions inevitably. Despite this flaw the team is still mostly consistent. Trick room is not necessary to be spammed in bulkier matchups and the team is still functional outside of trick room thanks to its bulky nature.
For those who care about fun factor I can report that this team is very fun to use :)
This RMT was inspired by Maverick Shooters, your format is awesome and I used it for this post!
7.Importable
The team -> https://pokepast.es/b1872df4dd05a97f
The original team I saw on ladder, only tera types are not confirmed. Original creator is user Potayo on pokemon showdown -> https://pokepast.es/46cbe23a6940000a
Table Of Contents:
1.Proof Of Peak
2.Teambuilding Process
3.Pokemon Description
4.Threats
5.Replays
6.Conclusion
7.Importable
1.Proof Of Peak
2.Teambuilding Process
This team was inspired by a team I saw on ladder.
The original version of the team had a magnezone and a slowbro, which was cool but this team had a massive problem with fairy types like iron valiant. I changed this in order to gain much better matchups across the board.
My version of the team is much more consistent as it has a better defensive backbone and has better synergy with breaking.
3.Pokemon Description
Iron Hands @ Choice Band
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Adamant Nature
- Wild Charge
- Ice Punch
- Close Combat
- Earthquake
Iron Hands is a very underexplored attacker in SV OU mainly due to its poor matchup against great tusk, however choice banded iron hands is an excellent trick room abuser. Tera fighting close combat will 2hko even the bulkiest great tusk, allowing you to break past and destroy teams relying on it. Iron Hands is also excellent defensively, being able to hard counter kingambit for the team.
Tera Type: Fighting for max stab damage
Evs: Max hp for bulk and max attack for max damage output
The reason why Iron Hands does not have absolute min speed is because it intentionally outspeeds all of the really slow defensive mons such as toxapex and amoongus. It's nice to be able to threaten pokemon outside of trick room and in these more bulkier matchups you would rather not waste time setting trick room. Pelipper and gholdengo at min speed also outspeed these pokemon.
Hatterene (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 224 Def / 32 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Draining Kiss
- Healing Wish
Hatterene is important on this team as our main way of preventing entry hazards. Our team is quite weak to entry hazards and hatterene provides some much needed relief from them, try not to let it get koed too early as you may end up being overwhelmed by hazards before you can win. Usually Hatterene will leverage its good bulk to deny entry hazard setters and set up trick room throughout a game. Healing wish is for endgame scenarios where, if used properly, you can grantee a win. Hatterene is NOT a suicide lead for the team, rather it is a midgame piece.
Evs: Evs maximized for physdef, I don't know what the 32 evs in spdef are for but I've seen other people using those evs so I decided to throw them on.
Tera Type: Steel is an overall good neutral tera type that can allow us to reliably set up trick room vs various threatening attackers if needed.
Bronzong @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 128 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Body Press
- Iron Defense
Probably the most critical member of the team, Bronzong turned this team from average to excellent. Bronzong fulfills the roll of a mixed wall on this team, and a potential end game sweeper with iron press. Bronzong is able to be a reliable switch in to moves from iron valiant, while hard countering baxcalibur and non fire punch Dragonite. Bronzong also has the excellent quality of being so bulky that it will be able to live any one hit to set up trick room, even super effective ones like specs dragapult from full. If you are able to remove all special attackers and ghosts from the opponent's field, bronzong becomes a devestating win condition that is nearly impossible to stop. It is very similar to iron press corviknight in this regard except that it can also use trick room to "outspeed" anything faster than it. Psychic is a very effective move in the last slot, allowing bronzong to fulfull its defensive roll by hitting targets like iron valiant and great tusk for a 2hko. It was also chosen in order to immediately threaten the defensive poison types amoongus and toxapex, while hitting everything else for good neutral chip. Overall Bronzong can be played in 2 different ways on this team depending on the matchup, being either a defensive pivot or an end game sweeper.
Evs: Mixed bulk split evenly between the defensive stats emphasize Bronzong's ability to be a mixed wall. Sassy and 128 spdef evs hit a jump point. Sassy was chosen as we needed more emphasis on special bulk.
Tera Type: Tera Fighting lets us gain a resistance to dark while gaining stab on body press. This allows us to check dangerous dark types like kingambit in the end game.
Pelipper @ Choice Specs
Ability: Drizzle
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Hurricane
- Surf
- U-turn
- Hydro Pump
Basically mini kyogre, Specs pelipper acts as a near unwallable wallbreaker for the team. In many matchups it is the pokemon required to be tera'ed in order to break the opponent's defensive core. It is very easy to spam either stab move depending on what is better. Specs Pelipper's main drawback is its low speed, which makes it an excellent trick room abuser, as it makes it very hard to respond to offensively. Pelipper is by far the team's most important breaker and you might just auto lose certain matchups if you blunder early on with it. Pelipper also fulfills a crucial defensive role for this team, as it shuts down volcarona and uses it as attacking fodder. The rain Pelliper brings is also useful as it helps our 3 fire weak pokemon take fire attacks better.
Evs: Max hp to take hits better and max special attack for the highest damage output
Tera Type: Tera water or tera flying for max stab damage, I find tera water to be a bit more consistent.
Toedscruel @ Leftovers
Ability: Mycelium Might
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Trick Room
- Spore
- Earth Power
- Rapid Spin
Did you know toedscruel gets trick room? Neither did I until recently. Toedscruel is my favorite pokemon introduced in gen 9 and this set takes full advantage of its 2 best stats, hp and spdef. With max investment toedscruel becomes a vey effective special pivot for the team, allowing us to sponge hits from every special attacker in the tier bar iron moth and volcarona. From there Toedscruel can spore something and set up trick room, gaining us massive momentum and giving us safe switchins to our powerful attackers. Earth power is so we can counter gholdengo and other poison types more consistently. Rapid spin provides crucial hazard control, particularly against opposing glimmora leads. Always lead this against opposing glimmora, if you click the right moves you can completely deny entry hazards from it.
Evs: Max special bulk to counter special attackers. 4evs in spatk allow for a garunteed ohko on non booster energy iron moth. Our speed stat is set to outspeed defensive great tusk outside of trick room for better hazard control
Tera Type: Tera water is necessary to emergency check walking wake and iron moth. You will usually have to use your tera against walking wake or you will get run over.
Gholdengo @ Choice Specs
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Make It Rain
- Shadow Ball
- Focus Blast
- Trick
Gholdengo is a very powerful specs attacker that can easily break defensive cores relying on bulky poison types like toxapex. Ghost is an excellent offensive type and so having a slow powerful ghost attacker really benefits the team. there isn't too much to be said about gholdengo, it's one of the best meta mons for a reason.
Evs: Max hp to take hits better and max special attack for the highest damage output
Tera Type: Tera water lets us better deal with iron moth
4.Threats
Booster energy Iron moth can ohko the entire team if it gets going. Your tera is required to beat this mon as pelipper can't stand up to it. Having trick room up at all costs is recommended. Specs is still scary but can be played around.
Substitute tera steel is an awful matchup for this team as it can easily 6-0. you need to use iron hands or bronzong to beat it and even then it still isn't great, this is arguably the worst matchup for the team
Booster energy Roaring moon ohkos the entire team after a single dragon dance. You must hit this when it comes out and probably use your tera in order to survive. If you can you will usually be able to sweep the opponent with your remaining pieces
If it is substitute it can easily sweep you and only pelipper can stop it. However the standard utility set is a lot easier to handle
Bulk up is scary as Pelipper is our only check to it. If pelipper is gone this will sweep the entire team completely uncontested, keeping Pelipper alive is critical to win this matchup. Swords dance on the other hand is much more manageable as it is a lot less bulky.
Specs is scary because it uses our own rain against us and heavily abuses choice locked pelipper. Tera water on toedscruel will handle it very well however, so make sure you tera if you need to.
5.Replays
Some of these were played on my alt which also hit 1900+
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1866085564-136d4j183ao1lf9ae26v2eajq6oiz4zpw ->Game we hit our peak on
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1865405363-x4vwc3sr2q2qrc12o82yr3yamshmv49pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1865391643
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1864623105-wl5x1sq3cya8zvbh7si1e3a31br1kebpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1864648149-q3zdyfpeemnefryai633sdq6vjjwiwhpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1865314037-gthc4w7f62lm9vcn3nq9a4g18uv3itwpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1866208214-hmddyhu1jg37osfh9lvpyouo4atfk0fpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1866211869
6.Conclusion
The replays show that trick room does very well against many common team styles in the current metagame. It is very good against the common balance teams and semi stall teams as it usually can lock down their threats and break their defensive cores very easily. This team struggles more vs. offensive playstyles and specific popular offensive mons, however it can still play to win these matchups quite effectively. The best matchup for this team by far is against psychic terrain offense, which is almost 6-0ed on account of never being able to sweep with trick room being set permanently. I would like to see this playstyle more explored in the future of scarlet and violet as I think there are other great abusers of trick room waiting to be used. Pokemon like sylveon and the popular kingambit have great potential on this style of team.
This team is by no means perfect. This team requires a lot of skill to pilot and games can often be decided by how well you lead vs your opponent. You will get 6-0ed on occasion but that is the nature of this team. You're also gonna have to make some 50-50 tera decisions inevitably. Despite this flaw the team is still mostly consistent. Trick room is not necessary to be spammed in bulkier matchups and the team is still functional outside of trick room thanks to its bulky nature.
For those who care about fun factor I can report that this team is very fun to use :)
This RMT was inspired by Maverick Shooters, your format is awesome and I used it for this post!
7.Importable
The team -> https://pokepast.es/b1872df4dd05a97f
The original team I saw on ladder, only tera types are not confirmed. Original creator is user Potayo on pokemon showdown -> https://pokepast.es/46cbe23a6940000a
