Wait, seriously?? That's the same exact team as Marshmallow...the guy who got fifth! I know because I played him twice!:
First battle: PBZG-WWWW-WW4Y-ULY8
Second battle: VNKG-WWWW-WW4Y-UMHE
Clearly it's the same guy using 2 different games.
For those who don't want to look up the battle videos... I lost in the end of the first one due to Heat Wave burning my Swampert and missing some crucial damage...and what also appears to be a low damage roll from my Garchomp's Rock Slide single-targetting Zapdos. 252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 116 Def Zapdos: 114-135 (57.8 - 68.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
I think he was rated around 1,817 when I played him.
But I got sweet revenge later on. I encountered him when he was at 1,867, and I managed to get some great predicitions once again. But mostly I won because his Zapdos and Garchomp were so weak to the teamwork of Swampert and Ninetales. Yeah, I beat the winner with a Swampert and Ninetales. I can barely believe it myself. Ninetales was my MVP throughout the entire tournament...but Swampert was the real star this time around. Glad I can still win using my favorites! :D
So apparently I beat the guy who won the entire competition. WOW. For a moment I thought this was one of my weaker competitions. Clearly not if I have that to show for it. Here's my somewhat wild team:
View attachment 66466
(LONG POST FROM NEW POSTER INCOMING. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. :P)
Yup, I used Cherrim. Unfortunately not against Marshmallow, or even in half of my matches, but enough to make a difference. I knew that in a format without megas and a lot of weather control, Cherrim would be a really neat support Pokemon that could help the right teammates do a lot of work if I could keep the sun up. Glad I could fit it in this time around! It's a Pokemon I've been wanting to use for a while.
Once I had my Cherrim and Ninetales locked onto the team, I knew what to put on next. I knew that I was going to use Swampert, which I put on every team that it's legal since Swampert is my absolute favorite, and Garchomp, who was clearly one of the best Pokemon this format, as well as one of Cherrim's best teammates. Getting a Sp. Def boost to survive Ice attacks and a boost to its already great Attack is more than enough to make Garchomp a deadly force.
For my last 2 slots, I picked Pokemon that would fill in the holes that my 4 Pokemon had. I used Staraptor since I've had great experience with it in the past and was a fast check to a lot of Pokemon that were unprepared. The last slot was Togekiss, (this was based off of a team I made in Pokemon Battle Revolution,) but changed to Gengar real quick when I realized how much ground it could help me cover. Speed control, Trick Room trumping, and giving most support Pokemon trouble made it a worthwhile addition. I've used Gengar so many times in Doubles at this point that I find it hard not to include it. Having only Shadow Ball to deal decent damage with seemed like a hurdle at first, but considering what I used Gengar for in the first place, it pretty much did what I needed it to do. I have no regrets using the set I did, no matter how oddly Sash and support mixed with Gengar.
Another thing I have no doubt about is who my Most Valuable Pokemon was. It was
easily Ninetales. Considering what the rest of my team was, I knew I wanted to use a more bulky Ninetales as opposed to a hyper offensive one. I had Flamethrower, Will-o-Wisp....and really couldn't think of anything else I wanted, so I slapped on Imprison and Protect. Sadly, I felt myself never using Imprison. Shame, too, because I've praised it in the past but never actually used it. Perhaps Ninetales is the wrong Pokemon to use it on?
The other problem I had is that Cherrim would only be supporting 2 Pokemon on my team, since I needed Ninetales to activate its ability. Using Sunny Day on Cherrim requires setup that isn't possible a lot of the time. I learned this when using Cherrim multiple times, since it's a hard Pokemon to use. This also means that I can't bring Gengar and Cherrim to the same battle, due to Gengar not being able to take advantage of Flower Gift, and only bringing one Pokemon from my team that appreciates Cherrim's attack boost. So since my Ninetales was all bulk, I switched to Flare Blitz to take advantage of Flower Gift. In the end, that's not where the move became an advantage over Flamethrower or Heat Wave. It was my fourth move: Pain Split.
Looking through all of Ninetales's moves to replace Imprison with, I was starting to lose hope. But one of the last ones I came across was Pain Split. I saw this move, and I immediately saw so many ideas running through my head. I put it on...and had decent results on Showdown. I figured that no other move would be better than it, and kept it on for the competition since Flare Blitz was helping me out a lot. Then I got to the real competition...and everything changed. Ninetales was just...perfect. Here was the spread I decided on, after having trouble deciding HP due to 2 usually counter-intuitive moves:
180 HP / 12 Atk / 252 Def / 60 SpD / 4 Spe , w/ Careful Nature, and a Shuca Berry.
Countless numbers of Pokemon had so much trouble dealing with this thing. Water moves got nerfed by the sun, most Rock type attacks were Rock Slide, which meant less damage because spread moves, and Earthquakes were covered by my hold item: Shuca Berry. I'm not exactly sure what lead to this decision, but I put it on in Showdown over Heat Rock just to see if I would ever need a Heat Rock. I almost never did, so I kept it on. And like everything else about Ninetales transitioning from practice to the real competition...it worked so perfectly. 2 or 3 times I had to Earthquake into my own Ninetales, and Shuca Berry helped it live and then Pain Split. Shuca Berry allowed it to bulk so many Earthquakes, which were already nerfed by spread damage, and become even more of a nuisance. Cherrim's Flower Gift gave it a 50% boost to its already fantastic Special Defense stat. Combine that with Will-O-Wisp...and you've got one heck of a strange wall.
It might sound gimmicky on paper, but I can say with confidence that this thing alone won me at least 40% of my battles. I won 2 stall-wars thanks to Pain Split, Flare Blitz did more damage to Physically frail Pokemon like Ludicolo, (assuming I could control weather,) and when Ninetales barely lived, I could use a combination of those 2 moves to deal damage to one Pokemon and drain it back from another. After about 5 battles, I ended up realizing how great it was, and brought it to over 75% of my battles. If I ever make a team like this again with Cherrim...I'll know exactly what to do with Ninetales. It looks like Megas are going away next Gen, anyways. I think it's safe to say that Ninetales was a god. Which means I'll be nicknaming it to Helios. 8P
Overall, I flopped towards the end. I lost my last 2 battles, and the second one took one minute too long and ended right at 8 o'clock EST, which meant no more battles for me. Mostly because my Vulpix breeding took way too long, but it was totally worth it. 8D Additionally, my last battle was the only time I came across Abomasnow surprisingly. It was a Pokemon I thought a Ninetales team would have a blast going up against, but clearly I was wrong. :(
I finished 46th in the U.S. with 1700, even though I was somewhere around 1,736 when I beat Marshmallow. At first, I was disappointed considering I finished 27th in the U.S. during the Kanto Classic, and I had some battles that I absolutely should not have lost and were my own fault. But after seeing Marshmallow at #5, and then figuring out that he was also #1, I was ecstatic. I can't wait for another competition as balanced as this one! :D
P.S. If you got this far, thanks for listening to me, even though I'm new and posted way too many paragraphs praising Ninetales. :)
P.S.S. Here are some more battle videos I found on my competition page on the Global Link. Not sure what determines which battles get codes or not, considering the only 2 I saved were the ones against Marshmallow.
E9NW-WWWW-WW4H-28DV : Against AquaDragon, who ranked at 1,701...one more point than me! LOL...
QB5W-WWWW-WW4H-XU5T : Just like when I taunted Marshmallow's Zapdos, I read my opponent's gimmick and punished them for it. Goes to show how good Taunt on Gengar is. I'm just glad I didn't get haxed out by Umbreon, who has violated me in that past...